The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda.
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The more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views. The secular Left argues that this correlation is due to the fact that a college graduate knows more and thinks more clearly and therefore gravitates leftward and toward secularism. But if you believe that the average college graduate is a clear and knowledgeable thinker as a result of his or her time at university, I have more than one bridge to sell you. A radio talk-show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they had attended. It takes higher education to learn that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc.
A second reason God is not doing well among Westerners these days is that many members of the Jewish and Christian clergy decided that their primary role was not to advocate their religion’s moral and religious standards, but rather (1) to make congregants comfortable (“Don’t call me ‘Pastor’ [or ‘Rabbi,’ or ‘Father’], call me Jerry”) and (2) to promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities.
A third reason God is not doing well is that most of the men and women who are products of this secular left-wing education (meaning a large majority of Western men and women) are theologically, intellectually, and emotionally ill-prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world. I will never forget a Swedish pastor’s reaction to the 1994 sinking of the Estonia, a ferry that capsized in the Baltic between Estonia and Sweden leaving 852 passengers and crew dead. He said he could not believe in a God who allowed such injustice to take place.
This pastor spoke for vast numbers of modern Western men and women. The existence of so much unjust suffering in the world has strongly contributed to their rejecting belief in God. And undoubtedly the devastation caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has further reinforced many individuals’ rejection of God.
Of course, none of us has a fully coherent solution to the problem of theodicy. But the problem is not exactly new. Every great religion has dealt with it, and most of the brilliant minds in history retained their faith in God despite all the unjust suffering they saw.
The difference today is that life has been so good for most Westerners that suffering is no longer regarded as part of life, but as an aberration that can be done away with. Meanwhile, the liberal wings of Christianity and Judaism are too influenced by secularism to make an effective religious case for God, whom the religious Left has largely rendered a celestial buddy.
The fourth reason is Islamic violence and the tepid response to it by the liberal churches and synagogues. It would seem pretty clear that a major, albeit almost never acknowledged, reason for the huge audiences for recent books advocating atheism has been the massive amount of evil committed in God’s name by radical Muslims. Nothing creates atheism as much as evil done in God’s name.
That is why the pathetically weak responses from within mainstream — i.e., liberal — Christianity and Judaism have only added to the contempt for God and religion sown by beheadings and suicide bombings in Allah’s name. The liberal Christian and Jewish responses have been to attack fellow Christians and Jews who have focused on Islamist terror. Instead of drawing attention to the damage radical Islam does to the name of God, liberal Christians and Jews focus their anger on co-religionists who do speak out on this issue and label them “Islamophobes.”
That God is not doing well in the Western world may trouble God. But it is we humans who should be most troubled. The moral, intellectual, artistic, and demographic decline in Western Europe (people in secular countries don’t even have the will to reproduce themselves) is only gaining momentum. And the consequences of that decline will be far more devastating than all the tsunamis and all the earthquakes that may come our way.
— Dennis Prageris a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.
,Fundamentalist Christians have done more damage to Christianity than universities could ever do. The more ignorant and militant the Christian right gets, the farther the educated will run to the left. Try modernizing your approach, show us how you can square science and reason with the teachings of Christ...just then you might succeed in bringing God back to college.
I expect this article this will provoke the typical derision from the usual suspects: the "smartest-guy-in-the-room" leftists, the "most-rational-guy-in-the-room" atheists, the "can't-we-all-get-along" religionists and the "I-never-met-a-subject-I-didn't-want-to-ridicule" cynics. Mr. Prager, you always hit the nail on the head. You always throw your pearls before swine too. The swine are due here any minute.
This situation is a big factor driving the home schooling movement & hopefully more people wake up to the fact that our society is poisoned by Big Education. God help us.
I went to a very liberal public university and took a course on the New Testament. The course was taught by a Roman Catholic who questioned many precepts but remained faithful which goes very far in promoting faith. Overall, I would say that it's not institutions that are promoting a lack of faith, but a neglect of families to instill intelligent faith in their children.
Mr. Prager is fair to say that no one has a "fully coherent" answer to the problem of theodicy. I am still amazed that the vast efforts of every religion to discuss the problem seem to be so completely unknown to the sort of folks who focus on all the unjust suffering in the world. [I wonder what "just suffering" would be.] This must be a symptom of modern people's apparently complete unawareness of every other kind of history.
An awareness of history would also make it possible to note that there is actually less widespread suffering now than in any previous era. Modern medicine and dentistry alone have barely existed 100 years. Before them, life could be painful torture for an even greater number of people in the most advanced societies.
Buddhists and to some degree Hindus likely have less trouble with that issue, as their faiths hardly promise them paradise on this earth. But what galls me about liberal clergy is that Christianity doesn't promise that either. Never did. SO why not only expect it but actually use it to judge the truth of the Christian message?
One could look at it in a very simplistic way and apply the story of Adam and Eve and the doctrine of the Fall. TO the modern ear a very simple fairy tale, but it does provide a fully sufficient explanation for human suffering if one is necessary.
One could also note that for many Christians the idea that God's creative role is acted out through natural and physical laws is and has long been unexceptional. Well, then. In that case natural phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, solar flares, asteroids, or ship-swamping waves are physical phenomena to be studied and mitigated where possible. No issues of cosmic justice or injustice are involved. The question of whether there is or is not a God and whether or not he shows mercy is settled only after that, and we will not see it until our own time comes.
As an atheist, I am pleased to see society becoming more secular. I think we live in the greatest time of human history and that religion's usefulness as a comfort to the downtrodden is eroding in the western world. I don't need God to comfort me when I have my Ipod and Xbox.
Part of the problem is wide variation in both thought and action of our Churches (both Protestant and Catholic. We either have extreme intellectualism or extreme piety. Our Elites say we are an unphilosophical people here in America. I beg to differ; the age old debate between Reason and Revelation is alive and well here.
I also frame the religious debate between Hetrodoxy and Orthodoxy. Those who tend to be religiously hetrodox are well grounded in Reason (too well grounded, and at times thier Reason becomes dogmatic). Those who tend towards religious orthodoxy tend to favor Revelation (in the Roman Catholic Church the very orthodox Catholics are sometime dubbed Ultradox -more Catholic than the Pope. For Protestants, the Christians who favor strict interpretations of the Gospel tend to favor Revealation over Reason).
This helter skelter variation is very much American. Our politics are very polarizing, why not our religion? One can normally get a person's religious as well as political thoughts via the abortion issue. You can't get more polarizing than that.
But, Prager does have a point. Christians today of all stripe are fairly homogenized into the wider secular culture at large. Just bring up artificial contraception with Catholics, or for that matter abortion with Protestants (most favor abortion for the Big 3 (Rape, incest, and the mother's health).
I've also seen a trend amongst the more orthodox Protestants to leave the contientious political issues behind and focus on social justice and personal self-help instead. Most Catholic today have no problem with the more "modern" forms of Mass that just 3 decades ago would have scandalized thier parents.
Militant Christians? Christian Taliban? These are references to Christianity I see frequently, I just don't see the actions to back up these perceptions.
The social issues are largely what define Christians. The secular notion of political correctness has made Christian doctrine incorrect in our society and subject to the above-mentioned slurs.
Since we've kicked God and Jesus out of the public square we are seeing the erosion of our society and it appears our country and way of life. We truly were a blessed country. Its too bad we weren't thankful for it.
I suspect God is doing just fine, his followers may leave something to be desired however.
In my youth, I was much to busy living day to day, hugging trees, saving the whales, sponsoring future terrorists in Guatemala, etc. to have any serious thoughts on my relationship with God.
(tongue in cheek of course, but I really did do all those things and belong to the extreme-left groups associated.)
Then I grew up.
It's a process however, and requires active participation to make any headway. With society's focus on profit and it's partner, greed, it's not surprising many have either lost their faith or never had it revealed to them in the first place.
There is always hope.
I wouldn't say God of Christianity and Judaism isn't doing well. I would say their messengers aren't doing well.
I don't know much about Judaism. As a Christian, who is also an educated elite, I know that Christianity is a religion for the marginalized. So, this religion hasn't kept up with the educational level of its constituent over the years.
As people are no longer marginalized economically, they want to believe in the consistent and reliable God. And, when God's messengers can't speak to the intelligence of their constituent, they lose the followers.
The only reason I could become a Christian was by applying the Buddhist discipline to understand God of Christianity. As Buddhism is the religion for the upper class in the East, it has a rigorous discipline of rationality. Every time I applied the Christian hypotheses, I either got stuck or ended up with divine contradiction.
So, it is the seminary or dinivity schools that have to elevate their intellectual level to speak to the more educated audience.
It took me more than 10 miserable years to find preachers who don't put down my intelligence but work with it.
It's amusing to note that many people believe that (for sure!) extra-terrestrial life exists. Anecdotally, I'd say many God-Does-Not-Exist people hold this belief. Very funny how it's possible to accept near-total probability for one, and assign zero probability for the other, when there's no hard evidence for either!
"I don't need God to comfort me when I have my Ipod and Xbox."
Anyone who believes God is a simple source of emotional distraction such as an Ipod or Xbox clearly hasn't given much thought to the issue.
"Fundamentalist Christians have done more damage to Christianity than universities could ever do. "
Such as? Remember, if Christians are really fundamentalist, they're following the fundamental teachings of Jesus - helping the oppressed, giving of themselves to help others. It should be no surprise, then, that those you villianize are, by the numbers, more generous with their time and money to help the disadvantaged. Those naughty naughty Christians - helping people, fostering and adopting kids, giving their money to secular and religious causes more than you. tsk tsk.
"And, when God's messengers can't speak to the intelligence of their constituent, they lose the followers."
It's true that many people don't advance past childish understandings of faith. If that's all you've got, no felt-board cut-outs of Noah's ark does not compete well against graduate profs promoting different world-views. It's worthwhile to advance your understanding of the faith rather than let it be in your childish understanding of things. Then again, Dennis Prager is a religious person, as have been and continue to be some of the brightest intellects in history - perhaps you're simply saying you're simply far above the intellect of any of these? That would at least bring clarity to what you are saying.
God unconditionally promised he would not completely flood the world. Otherwise he would let the natural order continue. When Jesus was asked about the accidental deaths when the tower of siloam fell he responded by saying all men were sinners and admonished that all men perish, all cannot escape death. The argument wasn't the unfairness of God because accidental death happens in this world, it was the acceptance of God's compassionate offer before death makes it impossible to accept his unconditional pardon. The human race has a 100% death rate. We cannot say this is so because God is unfair. But if we recognize the sacrifice of his only son for our sake then we have to realize the opposite is true. God is very compassionate. Religion and science are mutually exclusive magisterum. Science explains the ordinary working of the natural world. It is not the pervue of science to explain or debunk miraculous or supernatural events. Scientific methodology was created by religous people to confirm the glory of Gods creation. The problem with humanism is they worship their understanding of the creation but not the creator of it. Humanism cannot remove the inherent guilt that was bestowed as an integral part of the human psyche, the second leg of the triune Godhead. Original sin has a purpose. It drives us to long for redemption. to seek something eternal, to seek the almighty. It reminds us that we were indeed made in the image of God for we are implanted with moral discernment.
I don't think it is God that is falling out of favor, so much as it is traditional religion. I think most Americans still believe or at least entertain the possibility of God. But our modern world is increasingly causing people to question the validity of thousand year old theologies. In particular, the exclusionary nature of many ancient religions. In the middle ages, when most people didn't travel, the idea that some nebulous infidel a thousand miles away was damned to hell was quite palitable. But today, when your college roommate is a very nice Hindu you really start to question why a just God would judge him differently than you.
In many ways, I think the current age resembles the period immediately prior to the rise of Christianity. In the late Roman world the idea of individual God or Goddess for a particular city ceased to make sense in a cosmopolitan Roman Empire. Paganism was moving towards monotheism even before the rise of Christianity. Then Christianity came on the scene and offered a more persuasive vision of monotheism. I think the same thing is happening today. A God of the Christians or the Muslims or the Hindu's no longer makes sense, so people are drifting from these ancient traditions searching for a conception of a universal God.
1) The universe we inhabit is not meant to be paradise, it is meant to be a place of trial--a place where, through the freedom of our wills, we sort ourselves according to the best or the worst we choose to be. I think God is free to intervene however He might in the affairs of the universe (as through miracles and prayers answered), but for the most part, allows us work things out for ourselves. God is not looking for sycophants, He's seeking those who choose to follow Him and heed His laws by virtue of their own free will.
So yes, bad things happen to good people. But people prove their good according to how they respond to adversity.
2) Unless you're an atheist, there are worse things than death. To deny oneself salvation and eternity in the company of God would be a fate worse than death. To doom oneself to a belief that this is all there is would be a fate worse than death.
So I have little stomach for the attitude of those who say they cannot believe in a God who allows injustice to take place. God made us, not we Him. It's not our place to judge Him, but to reconcile ourselves according to His law in this place of trial.
To think that "God is not doing well" demonstrates a pretty pithy view of what God is, but to the degree that our society's relationship with religion is fundamentally changing, it's difficult for Chritianity to compete as a comprehensive philosophy when most of the problems we need to address today aren't covered by its texts.
The world today is arguably more different from ancient Egypt or Israel than it is the same. Sure, there's still religious fighting in those regions, but it's hard for stories of wandering tribes and fishermen to gain traction with modern westerners living in suburbs and metropolises, trying to find their way in a global economy largely dominated by information systems that didn't exist twenty years ago. What does the bible say about the grid, climate change, or offshore drilling?
The most lasting message from the bible should be the Lord's explicit request that we put Him first and love our neighbor as ourselves, but you've clearly bundled goodwill into the things that only leftists strive for.
When it gets down to it, I guess the biggest problem with your argument, Mr. Prager, is that you're old. You're like a feudal lord arguing that the merchant class will never amount to anything, and so people should be content with serfdom. God is not dead, but your doggedly narrow perspective of Him is.
When people say that such things as the tsunami in Japan would not be allowed by a just God or that such things are proof of no God at all I am amused at how shallow such reasoning is.
Consider the tsunami. It was caused by a massive earthquake. The massive earthquake happened because of tectonic plate shift. Why do the plates shift? Because the earth's core is molten. Well that is clearly a mistake because if the core was cold and solid the plates would be stable and, therefore, no earthquakes. Either God goofed, or He is unjust, or He does not exist.
It sounds good but there is a great problem. The molten core of the earth is highly magnetic precisely because it is molten. This enormous magnetic field surrounds the planet and deflects the solar wind from the sun. This wind, if it were not deflected away from the planet, would strip the atmosphere from earth and this loss of the atmosphere, along with the intense radiation, would render the planet lifeless. Mars is an example of what happens when there is no strong magnetic field to protect a planet's atmosphere.
The molten core makes life on earth possible and without it billions of people would die.
A person who wants to deny God's existence or justice will find a way to do so. I see wisdom and love in all of the natural world. Things that appear to be great bads are actually often a great goods if only we understood a little better why.
What can I say? God is a genius.
P.S.
Hello Smithers-Jones!
"I don't need God to comfort me when I have my Ipod and Xbox."
That is, without doubt, the saddest thing I have ever read.
But didn't God create the laws of physics which require a molten, earthquake causing core in order create a magnetic field? In other words, if you are going to operate on the common assumption of an omniscient deity, you are still left with the "why does God let bad things happen" problem.
