...

But I was even more dismayed by the generally favourable reception from many of its readers who seemed to imagine that Dickson's piece is a work of scholarship that strikes a telling blow against atheist ignorance.

Tamas Pataki

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Gus: I was dismayed too... so many back slapping inane comments... with circular justification.

Meanwhile at the 7-branch candelabra:

The aspect of vicariousness has been found in our chapter by theologian and scholar alike for nigh on two thousand years. But does this aspect really obtain in our text? Is the personage in Chapter 53, whoever it may be, a vicarious: did he really act as a substitute for the guilty who deserved punishment because of their iniquity, but who escaped it because this personage, while himself innocent of sin, bor their punishment for them? It is remarkable how virtually every scholar dealing with the subject has merely taken it for granted that the principle of vicariousness is present in Isaiah 53…No one proves it, everyone assumes it. SO THAT WHEN Eissfeldt, e.g., asserts (“The Ebed-Jahwe,” etc., p.265), “Finally, the last Servant Song, which by its unique content (the discovery of  the significance of vicarious death) stands on a pinnacle by itself…,” it is actually he himself, in common with the other members of the theological and scholarly guilds in post-biblical times, who has made the discovery, no the author of Isaiah 53. [pg. 51-52]

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Vicarious? As I said before, no one can accuse anyone else of being a sociopath either... to which I will add:

Exodus 20:2–17: I am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me...

To which a believer like Joe Hockey did say: "The God of my faith is not full of revenge, as the Old Testament would suggest with a literal interpretation..."

 

Yep, the more boloney the more faith...

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The last quote goes to Pataki:

CHRISTIANITY WAS A SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCE ON THE CULTURE OF THE WEST, BUT IT WAS AND IS EXTRAORDINARILY SYNCRETISTIC. WITHOUT ATHENS, ROME AND PERSEPOLIS, CHRISTIANITY'S CONTRIBUTION IS SLENDER.

please also visit "painful pyne" and "of false crusade" especially http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/9258#comment-16035

 

 

"By continuing to ignore its debt to the Christian intellectual and moral revolution, and by severing itself from the profoundest insights of its own tradition, the "New Atheism" will find it impossible to avoid becoming a fad, a pseudo-intellectual trifle."

The comment above comes from the ringmaster at the ABC's religion and ethics website:

Scott Stephens is the Religion and Ethics editor for ABC Online. Before joining the ABC he taught theology for many years, and even did a stint as a parish minister with the Uniting Church in Australia. He has written extensively on the intersections among philosophy, theology, ethics and politics, as well as on modern atheism's dependence on the Christian legacy.

He is a regular contributor to The Drum, Eureka Street and the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited and translated (with Rex Butler) two volumes of the Selected Works of the highly influential philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek - including The Universal Exception, which was named by The Guardian newspaper one of its "Books of the Year" in 2007.

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Gus: What else can I say?...

People believe what they want to believe, often in defiance of fact and logic.

When the CSIRO launched its Changing Atmosphere website last month, research leader Paul Fraser insisted the timing was not in response to recent criticism of climate science. Rather, the peak scientific organisation simply wanted to let the facts speak for themselves.

However, a rather inconvenient truth needs to be borne in mind: recent research shows that ''facts'' alone rarely persuade us to change our minds on anything significant. In fact, they frequently entrench a contrary view.

Numerous studies underline how impervious to evidence our strongly held convictions are. Whether on political, religious or ethical issues, it seems our minds have an unusual power to reorganise contrary facts in order to support our beliefs.

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In You are Not So Smart, journalist David McRaney teases out what psychologists call the ''backfire effect'', where counter-evidence, far from changing our views, actually strengthens them.

He cites a study by Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan and Jason Reifler of Georgia State University. They asked subjects to read mock news articles that reported as fact certain politically contentious claims: for example that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Participants with strongly ''liberal'' political biases tended not to believe the ''facts''. Those with strongly ''conservative'' political leanings accepted the facts readily. No surprises there, perhaps.

However, when the conservative subjects were later given articles claiming the opposite - that no WMDs were discovered in Iraq - they reported stronger levels of belief in the claims of the original mock articles. The study concluded, "Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a 'backfire effect' in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question."

The backfire effect is a kind of self-protection mechanism. When you are confronted with data that threatens your convictions, your mind works overtime to defend you. It reorganises information and re-establishes arguments allowing you to continue believing what you already believed.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/art-of-persuasion-not-so-simple-20110708-1h6m9.html#ixzz1RZSZIA39


Gus: So?
As a committed Christian with strong views, Dickson falls into his own trap... Sure many people believe what they want to believe but most people are able to change their beliefs or their views should they be given the chance... As I have mentioned on this site many times before, the memory in the brain is at the core of our behaviour and understanding. Anything (true or false), that would be going against our memory stack, is going to be rejected not because we cannot deal with the truth (true or false) but because any change to our memory stack (accepted and processed true or false information)— on which our beliefs are strongly reliant upon — is "traumatic". Change demands energy and a shift in our "comfortable" groove. This groove has long been established by our interactions with other people, their beliefs and their bribes for us to believe in whatever. Changing belief is difficult but not impossible.
One of the problem is that as I have mentioned before, to induce a change in complex systems, especially that of our memory, one often needs several sources (or repeats) of change to induce a change. A eureka moment only happens if there has been a flux of questioning, over a certain amount of time. To expect change instantly in one's belief because a new information comes to light is ridiculous, unless there has been several exposures to this new information...
Believe me, this is the way advertising (and religious indoctrination) works... Relatively, one does not buy a product because one has seen an advertising piece once. Advertising will have to repeat and been seen several times, with little tweaks to wiggle a small spark in the brains of the advertisees... Seeing something once is rarely enough for change unless one has been prepared for change. One stone may not kill someone. But several eventually will. And Dickson in defiance of fact and logic won't change to understand this...
And having the proper facts drummed up eventually might induce more people to change... Some people won't... See picture at top.