Secular comedy writer disturbs church leaders
Offline From the Christian Post:
Richard Curtis, a successful comedy writer with no particular religion, was interviewed at a fundie leadership summit, and the 100,000 church leaders across the country who witnessed the interview found it disturbing because, as the interviewer said, "I'm interviewing a guy who doesn't even have his faith figured out and he's doing 100 times more work than I am to alleviate the suffering in this world."
These church leaders are giving each other prizes for being compassionate, and meanwhile Curtis is raising hundreds of millions of dollars to fight poverty out of a secular, moral world view. So the churchies feel bad, but are they doing anything? Not that this story tells about.
The best part, though, is the reader comments at the bottom of the story that say things like, "Sure helping the poor is a great thing, but no Christian needs words other than Christ's to aid the poor," and "being a Christian has nothing whatsoever to do with helping the poor. It has to do with believing in what Christ said, and the sacrifice He made, accepting God's word that through repentance and belief in Christ's sacrifice you have salvation"
Christianity used as an excuse *not* to help people. That makes sense.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
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Those reader comments are frightening , are people like that really allowed the vote?
[MOD EDIT] DOUBLE POST
I think what bothers me most is that all these religious leaders seem surprised that a non-faith person is doing so much to help.
If it's disturbing that a person who hasn't figured out their faith is doing more than religious people to help out with poverty, that just goes to show how these leaders view non-Christians.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
Maybe a couple people who see the article and witnessed the interview will actually change for the better, or question things more. The amount of bigotry in our society has never stopped appalling me though.
Well yeah, it makes perfect sense to call oneself a Christian and not be concerned with helping the poor. I guess I can call myself a follower of Ghandi and carry an assault rifle and kill those who oppose me. It seems perfectly appropriate that Christians slap the word god onto our currency. That way they can hold it up as a sacred idol to be collected, just like Brian's sandals.
I think the better question is: are people like that really allowed to breed?
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Wouldn't it be nice if a condom was included in a pack of baseball cards rather than that lethal stick of gum. For some reason people have a compulsion to breed like rabbits. Overpopulation by animals is controlled by a lack of resources leading to mass starvation. Given that it took only 11 (or was it 14) years to produce our last billion people, peak oil and global warming resulting in drier climates I can imagine that this entire issue of having too many people will be solved.
Naturally the response by the clergy will be to pray to Jesus and blame the homosexuals.
The comments on the article reflect the sad effect which the mistaken Protestant dogma of "sola fide" or faith alone has on the thinking of fundamentalists.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
"Criticizing the teachings and public associations of Hybels or the pope is not criticizing brothers in Christ, for they left the brotherhood of faith a good while ago. Sure Gandhi was a nice and peaceful man, but he denied Christ, for whatever good reason, and that makes him alien to Jesus. Sure Bill is a good administrator, but maybe he should have stayed with business administration. Sure helping the poor is a great thing, but no Christian needs words other than Christ's to aid the poor."
OMG!
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. - Immanuel Kant
Perhaps they need to read the Parable of the Good Samaritan again.
You gotta wonder! This guy has raised over $200 million to fight poverty. That's amazing. That's right up there with what Bill Gates (an atheist, by the way) is doing.
Later in the article, it mentions that churches were awarded $100,000 because they won a contest of some sort trying to fight AIDS.
Churches actually applied for the award.
Wouldn't it have made more sense for those churches to say "keep the money and use it to fight AIDS"? (or poverty or whatever)
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Have any idea how much money it costs to convert a former school space into a medical clinic, or a church basement into a soup kitchen?
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
but imagine how much money was used to build those in the first place!
The church I used to go to had over 17 million dollars worth of equipment and land, and I used to wonder just how much money was wasted on all that worthless crap that could have been used for more charitable causes.