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Bashing Mother Teresa: Christopher Hitchens Goes E. O. Wilson One Better

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E. O. Wilson | Christopher Hitchens

In THE DESIGN OF LIFE, Jonathan Wells and I describe E. O. Wilson’s attack on Mother Teresa as follows (the context of the discussion is that whereas traditional morality must come to terms with the problem of evil, evolutionary morality must come to terms with the problem of good):

For E. O. Wilson, goodness depends on “lying, pretense, and deceit, including self-deceit, because the actor is most convincing who believes that his performance is real.” Accordingly, Wilson attributes Mother Teresa’s acts of goodness to her belief that she will be richly rewarded for them in heaven. In other words, she was simply looking out for number one, acting selfishly in her own self-interest, looking to cash in on the Church’s immortality. As Wilson puts it, “Mother Teresa is an extraordinary person but it should not be forgotten that she is secure in the service of Christ and the knowledge of her Church’s immortality.”

Not to be outdone in bashing Mother Teresa, Christopher Hitchens launched this missile on in a recent Dennis Miller interview (go here):

Mother Theresa spent her whole life saying (that what Calcutta needs) is a huge campaign against family planning. I mean, who comes to that conclusion who isn’t a complete fanatic? She took – and I would directly say stole…millions and millions of dollars and spent all the money not on the poor, but on the building of nearly 200 convents in her own name around the world to glorify herself and to continue to spread the doctrine that, as she put it — when she got her absurd Nobel Peace Prize — that the main threat to world peace is abortion and contraception. The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.

Comments
Well Graham, As you can see by my nickname (John 3:3) I am far from the one to ask about this matter,,,, and I can assure I have no college degree in the philosophy of science (Meyer does),,, but as far as my limited ability can tell on these matters there are only two options for reality,,,either reality is the result of a Materialistic line of reasoning or it is the result of a Theistic line of reasoning, with all other options falling into the gray area in between,,,, thus the reason God "keeps popping up" is because the evidence for design becomes so overwhelming that there simply is no other reasonable explanation to explain the staggering level of design found in the universe and within life... This article explains it in a little more clarity: Theism Compared To Materialism http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dc8z67wz_5fwz42dg9 By the way you mentioned "science" as separate from God as if "science" could actually exist without the rationality and order God's provides for reality,,,(i.e. as opposed to the chaos/chance that materialism requires for its foundation that would preclude "science" from being possible if it were true) This following quote and videos may interest you:
"However we may interpret the fact, (sustained) scientific development has only occurred in a Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations, ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China, the Abassid empire and so on, science developed to a certain point and stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact it never did." Robert E. D. Clark - Christian Belief and Science
Christianity Is The Foundation Of Modern Science - Henry Schaefer PhD. Part 1 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI-4aVG0UxI part 2 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlShXV98H3g part 3 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGrBCy_A0CEbornagain77
October 31, 2009
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To bornagain77: Im repeatedly censored on this blog for mentioning it, but why does God keep popping up ? ID is deperately trying to distance itself from religion (Dover) yet God just keeps popping up, again and again. Is this a 'scientific' blog, or a theological one ?Graham1
October 31, 2009
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Seversky, You know you are about the most rabid atheist I know, who will not accept anything no matter what because of your personal hated of all thing pertaining to God,,, not a very fair position to do science to put it mildly,,,but I will try anyway seeing as I pretty hard-headed myself,,, Now as a materialist you must explain reality to some type of material basis,,,but as is clearly shown in quantum mechanics , "material reality does not even "materialize" until a conscious observer is present....thus clearly showing that "material" reality is subservient to "higher dimensional" consciousness in the first place,,,the phenomena of wave collapse to conscious observer is a well accepted fact in science. So well accepted that it led Barrow and Tippler to postulate, in order to explain the staggering fine-tuning of the universe, that "human consciousness" evolves to such a point in the future that it/we reach back in time and create the universe ourselves,,,,, Anthropic Principle - God Created The Universe - Michael Strauss - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjn8poWD7tM Quantum Mechanics - The Limited Role Of The Observer - Michael Strauss - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elg83xUZZBs I could get into the technical details of why this scenario is completely off the wall, but even without the details, to the fair minded man this evidence is clear and undeniable evidence for the consciousness/soul of man. Though I am sure you will be quite unfair with even this evidence and deny that it is relevant,,,but rest assured you are truly fooling no one except yourself.bornagain77
October 31, 2009
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The following is a Near Death Experience (NDE) under tightly monitored conditions (i.e. she was dead, dead, dead as far as science was concerned): The Day I Died – Part 4 of 6 – The NDE of Pam Reynolds – video
The Pam Reynolds case proves nothing. There were periods of unconsciousness both before and after the period when her EEG was flatlined when she was under the effect of anesthesis. The experience could have occurred at either of these times. With regards to van Lommel's research there are a number of questions which need to be answered. First, how sensitive is an EEG to neural activity? Could signgificant electrical activity occur which is to weak for the machine to detect? Second, in how many of the cases reported by van Lommel were measures for detecting electrical activity in the brain employed? Third, remembering the problem with the Pam Reynolds case, in how many of the cases reported by van Lommel could the time of the experience be reliably assigned to the period when the EEG was flatlined?
Well Hitchens can mock God and his saints if he wants but for the evidence for a soul is overwhelming, as is the evidence overwhelming that it is very important to have a foundational Judeo/Christian belief. This following NDE is very interesting Blind Woman Can See During Near Death Experience
But before getting too carried away we could also look at the phenomenon of blindsight, as in this exmple.
Blind man navigates maze Scientists have discovered that a blind person can navigate through a maze of obstacles unaided using undiscovered sensory pathways alone. The man, left blind by a stroke, was able to walk around chairs and boxes without bumping into them using hidden pathways in the brain. The study suggests we all use subconscious brain resources and can do things we think we are unable to do.
Seversky
October 31, 2009
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And just how did Hitchens come to the conclusion there is no hell? Did he do research and study and prove there is no soul? The following is a Near Death Experience (NDE) under tightly monitored conditions (i.e. she was dead, dead, dead as far as science was concerned): The Day I Died - Part 4 of 6 - The NDE of Pam Reynolds - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA37uNa3VGU Here is a leading Medical Doctor's opinion who has done extensive research on NDE's
A Reply to Shermer - Medical Evidence For NDEs - Pim van Lommel M.D. Excerpt: as soon as the function of brain has been lost, like in clinical death or in brain death, with iso-electricity on the EEG, memories and consciousness do still exist, but the reception ability is lost. People can experience their consciousness outside their body, with the possibility of perception out and above their body, with identity, and with heightened awareness, attention, well-structured thought processes, memories and emotions. And they also can experience their consciousness in a dimension where past, present and future exist at the same moment, without time and space, and can be experienced as soon as attention has been directed to it (life review and preview), and even sometimes they come in contact with the “fields of consciousness” of deceased relatives. And later they can experience their conscious return into their body.
etc..etc... as far as such evidence goes,,, But of the evidence for the soul that I think is literally a slam dunk case for proof of the soul,,,,, the "mind" of a individual observer plays an integral yet not complete "closed system role", in the instantaneous quantum wave collapse of the universe to "3D centrality" for each "conscious observer"in the universe, This gives us clear evidence that our "mind" is a unique entity. A unique entity with a superior quality of existence when compared to the "uncertain 3D particles" of the universe. The Center Of The Universe Is Life - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do2KUiPEL5U Hitchens surely cannot claim that "material" reality precludes the soul! Thus it cannot be through the "physical" evidence that Hitchens draws his conclusion, so it must be through his own arrogance that he presupposes there is no hell. But if, unlike apparently misguided Hitchens, we were to grant the reality of a soul, as is clearly sufficient to warrant by the evidence. What do we find between different cultures NDE's for evidence of Heaven and Hell: Several studies (Pasricha, 1986, Schorer, 1985-86) & Kellehear, 1993) Murphy 1999,2001) have indicated that the phenomenologies of NDEs is culture-bound. (Of Note: Judeo-Christian Culture NDEs are by far the most pleasant "phenomena") Greyson and Bush (1996) classified 50 Western reports of distressing NDEs into three types: * The most common type included the same features as the pleasurable type such as an out-of-body experience and rapid movement through a tunnel or void toward a light but the NDEr, usually because of feeling out of control of what was happening, experienced the features as frightening. * The second, less common type included an acute awareness of nonexistence or of being completely alone forever in an absolute void. Sometimes the person received a totally convincing message that the real world including themselves never really existed. (note* according to one preliminary study, a similar type of this NDE may be very common among the Buddhist culture of China) * The third and rarest type included hellish imagery such as an ugly or foreboding landscape; demonic beings; loud, annoying noises; frightening animals; and other beings in extreme distress. Only rarely have such NDErs themselves felt personally tormented. Distressing Near-Death Experiences: The estimated incidence of distressing NDEs (dNDEs) for western cultures has ranged from 1% to 15% of all NDEs (Bonenfant, 2001). The results of prospective studies in which the researchers interviewed everyone who experienced cardiac arrest in one or more hospitals during a period of at least several months are noteworthy. In the four prospective studies conducted between 1984 and 2001, involving a total of 130 NDErs, none reported distressing experiences. This finding seems to confirm that the experience is relatively rare in western cultures. A couple of examples: Former Atheist Howard Storm's Hellish NDE - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7AzxplsME This following man was confirmed dead for 90 minutes before being brought back to life: Don Piper - 90 Minutes in Heaven - A Trip To Heaven and Back! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O0KCfLqMZo Whereas foreign cultures report:
There is no Being of Light in these Thai NDEs, although The Buddha does appear in a symbolic form, in case #6. Yama is present during this truncated Life Review, as is the Being of Light during Western life reviews, but Yama is anything but a being of light. In popular Thai depictions, he is shown as a wrathful being, and is most often remembered in Thai culture for his power to condemn one to hell. Some of the functions of Angels and guides are also filled by Yamatoots. They guide, lead tours of hell, and are even seen to grant requests made by the experient.,,,The most common affect in our collection is negative. Unlike the negative affect in so many Western NDEs (cf. Greyson & Bush, 1992), that found in Thai NDEs (in all but case #11) has two recognizable causes. The first is fear of `going'. The second is horror and fear of hell. It is worth noting that although half of our collection include seeing hell (cases 2,6,7,9,10) and being forced to witness horrific tortures, not one includes the NDEer having been subjected to these torments themselves. (Murphy 99)
A Comparative view of Tibetan and Western Near-Death Experiences by Lawrence Epstein University of Washington: Excerpt: Episode 5: The OBE systematically stresses the 'das-log's discomfiture, pain, disappointment, anger and disillusionment with others and with the moral worth of the world at large. The acquisition of a yid-lus and the ability to travel instantaneously are also found here. Episode 6: The 'das-log, usually accompanied by a supernatural guide, tours bar-do, where he witnesses painful scenes and meets others known to him. They give him messages to take back. Episode 7: The 'das-log witnesses trials in and tours hell. The crimes and punishments of others are explained to him. Tortured souls also ask him to take back messages to the living.
Well Hitchens can mock God and his saints if he wants but for the evidence for a soul is overwhelming, as is the evidence overwhelming that it is very important to have a foundational Judeo/Christian belief. This following NDE is very interesting Blind Woman Can See During Near Death Experience - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw0lNh7NVb0 Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper (1997) conducted a study of 31 blind people, many of who reported being able to see during their NDEs. 21 of these people had had an NDE while the remaining 10 had had an out-of-body experience (OBE), but no NDE. It was found that in the NDE sample, about half had been blind from birth. In all, 15 of the 21 NDEers and 9 of the 10 OBEers could see during their experience while the remaining participants either claimed that they did not see or were not sure whether or not they had seen.bornagain77
October 31, 2009
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Never having been to Calcutta, I cannot say what it needs. Except: Clean free tap water and free antibiotics are useful, along with law enforcement - but any trad Canuck like me would say that. That said: Demographics is a game of last man standing. And in today's world, if every kid has four grandparents to support, what will happen? Many nation states have stepped below the survival rates, apparently. Just sayin' is all.O'Leary
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