Let them go on ignorantly. I used to encourage it figuring it was free, unintentional advertising, then I realized that they were so lazy and intellectually flaccid that they never read anything before reacting. I don't care, the only thing they risk is making me feel smug.
Also: The claim that "the biggest school of theology in New England is closing" would seem to be based in their ignorant and illiterate hopes. It is a minor school which has long had financial problems, it's not that old and, well, here, I know they won't read it but you might. I'm hardly an expert but it's my impression that theological study and writing is in pretty good shape.
I'll patch that leak, now.
Also: The claim that "the biggest school of theology in New England is closing" would seem to be based in their ignorant and illiterate hopes. It is a minor school which has long had financial problems, it's not that old and, well, here, I know they won't read it but you might. I'm hardly an expert but it's my impression that theological study and writing is in pretty good shape.
ReplyDeleteI know of at least two former church buildings that have been repurposed for other uses (one for offices, one as a library). That's just personal knowledge.
Neither represented the ultimate collapse of religion or Christianity, however. And frankly, I'm always heartened when seminaries stay open another year. You'd think with this rising tide of atheism about to drown us all in reason, seminaries would be dropping like flies.....
You have to wonder why they would be happy with the idea that one of the most liberal institutions in the country having problems was a good thing. Me, I think it's just more evidence that their liberalism is defective.
DeleteI really do think that the secular left, the left which has frittered away all of the progress of the period up to the mid-1960s is motivated primarily by its animus to Christianity, mostly, but other religion too. Frankly, I think a lot of it is based on two things, people who grew up under a rigid, oppressive fundamentalist or integralist regime on the one hand and Jews who gave up on Judaism because they were interested in assimilating but for whom conversion was distasteful. Having heard them on atheism, it certainly wasn't out of any positive aspect of atheism.
There is a piece up at Religion Dispatches, so called, that crowed about the low retention rate at "mainline Protestant Churches" you know, the bulwark of American liberalism, but according to those surveys they put so much stock in, atheists have one of the lowest retention rates of any allegedly measured groups. Up to a third of their young are reported to find religion. And that's with the atheism fad of the last two decades. Only, I don't share their faith in surveys.
That should get them going, a good test for my spam filter.
"I really do think that the secular
ReplyDeleteleft, the left which has frittered away all of the progress of the
period up to the mid-1960s is motivated primarily by its animus to
Christianity, mostly, but other religion too. Frankly, I think a lot of
it is based on two things, people who grew up under a rigid, oppressive
fundamentalist or integralist regime on the one hand and Jews who gave
up on Judaism because they were interested in assimilating but for whom conversion was distasteful."
Wow -- you know as much about Jews as you know about heterosexuals. Which is to say very little.
Seriously, Sparky -- you're insane. Get help.