Magic Statistics

Fr Daniel Sparks at Miserere Mei is hosting this week's Christian Carnival, and he's posted it an hour ahead of schedule (in my time zone anyway). Way to go, Daniel!

Check it out.

Islam has an eschatology; and it turns out to be a twisted version of Christian eschatology. A long, detailed, and thoroughly documented exposition of Islamic end-time beliefs is posted at Answering Islam. The exposition, written by Joel Richardson, is to be published in book form in the near future. I haven't read it (yet), but Infidel blogger Elmer's Brother has. This is some of what he has learned.

Islamic end-time prophecies correspond in a perverse way to biblical end-time prophecies. Christianity expects the return of Christ in glory as a righteous ruler; Islam looks for the appearance of the Mahdi, who will lead Islam to military victory, wiping out all other religions. Islam teaches that the second-most important event of the last days, after the emergence of the Mahdi, will be the return of Jesus Christ. Directly counter to Christian expectations, however, Jesus will be a faithful Muslim who makes pilgrimage to Mecca, destroys Christianity, and institutes Sharia law throughout the world. Islam also has a verison of the biblical Anti-Christ, called the Dajjal. The Dajjal will be an infidel who claims to be the divine Jesus Christ; he will be followed by women and Jews, and killed by the Muslim Jesus.

Clearly, these prophecies parallel each other; but the Islamic versions consistently pervert the Christian ones. In fact, they directly contradict each other at virtually every point. To be blunt, if the one is correct, then the other would have to be the work of the devil.

via Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Italian atheist Luigi Cascioli wrote a book called The Fable of Christ, whereupon a local priest Father Enrico Righi denounced Mr Castioli in the parish newsletter. So, what did Cascioli do? He sued. Now there's a rational response to a difference of opinion over history and theology.

An Italian judge originally refused to consider the claim but now has been ordered by the Court of Appeal to hear Castioli's case. Mr Castioli is alleging "abuse of popular credulity" and "impersonation" (whatever those are). The burden of Mr Castioli's claim is this:

Signor Cascioli’s contention — echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites — is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.

If that's really all he's got, I'd say he has a very weak argument. First of all, there is evidence outside the New Testament that Jesus was put to death in first-century Palestine. Those sources, however, were apparently not eye-witnesses, so they can perhaps be set aside for the moment.

Nevertheless, it's a blatant non sequitur to argue that, because the only evidence is in the Bible, there is no basis for Christianity. The fundamental issue is the reliability and authenticity of the New Testament. But you can't just say: Because the Bible supports the Christian faith, we can just toss it out without a hearing. Talk about assuming what you have to prove.

Christianity is unique among world religions in its emphasis on progress, says Rodney Stark, in an interview with World Magazine in connection with the release of his latest book, The Victory of Reason. The interviewer then asks: But what about the Dark Ages, when Christendom fell into a long period of social and economic retrogression? Dr Stark's response: That's not what happened at all.

The Dark Ages have finally been recognized as a hoax perpetrated by anti-religious and bitterly anti-Catholic, 18th-century intellectuals who were determined to assert their cultural superiority and who boosted their claim by denigrating the Christian past—as Gibbon put it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after Rome came the triumph of barbarism and religion. In the past few years even encyclopedias and dictionaries have begun to acknowledge that it was all a lie, that the Dark Ages never were. This always should have been obvious since by the end of the so-called Dark Ages, European science and technology had far exceeded that of Rome and Greece, and all the rest of the world, for that matter.
. . .
Perhaps the most revealing instance involves the story that in order to gain backing for his great voyage west, Columbus had to struggle against ignorant and superstitious churchmen who were certain that the earth was flat. Truth was that all educated Europeans, including bishops and cardinals, knew the earth was round. What produced church opposition to the Columbus voyage was that Columbus believed the circumference of the earth was only about one-fifth of its actual distance. Thus, the church scholars who opposed him did so because they knew that he and his sailors were bound to perish at sea. And they would have done so had the Western Hemisphere not been there to replenish their food and water.

Dr Stark also argues that Christianity–again, alone among world religions–provided a doctrinal basis for freedom of conscience, private property, and democracy.

via Pensées.