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Sip definition synonyms12/18/2022 ![]() All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. I interpret all of these things secularly as a secular person that I am: “Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. Critics of religion in general may view religion as one or more of: outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science or humanity, a source of immoral acts or customs, a political tool for social control.” I can’t celebrate in Heaven knowing that billions of people are residing in hell. Thus, some criticisms of religion become criticisms of one or more aspects of a specific religious tradition. Every exclusive religion on Earth (as well as every exclusive world view) that promotes exclusive truth-claims necessarily denigrates the truth-claims of other religions. In ancient Rome, an early known example is Lucretius' De rerum natura from the 1st century BCE. ![]() Historical records of criticism of religion go back to at least 5th century BCE in ancient Greece, in Athens specifically, with Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos. “Criticism of religion involves criticism of the validity, concept, or ideas of religion. ![]()
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