Wirt wrote in part:
> I've included a NY Times article on this subject
> below, but just to leave no one's ox ungored, virtually all Christian
> scholars now quite similarly believe that the Star of
> Bethlehem was simply a
> fiction that Matthew created, regardless of the 10,000 web
> pages that purport
> to calculate what kind of astronomical event the Star was. Heroes of
> Matthew's day all had stars associated with them and Matthew
> apparently
> wanted his hero, Jesus, to have an appropriate star also.
>
> No matter how any of this works out, I am a firm believer in
> John 8:32. As
> the world grows ever closer together electronically, actions
> taken on behalf
> of the fanatical beliefs in the various religious myths is
> probably going the
> primary cause of human suffering in the coming century. In
> the last century,
> it was misinformation, disinformation, greed and perhaps most
> of all naivety.

Oh, but there are plenty of ungored oxen left. Two of those would be
secularism and scientism. Unfortunately, the link I kept to an AP wire
article on this subject, Criticizing Science-Driven Secularism,
<http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=HOME&PACKAGEID=religi
oninthenews&STORYID=APIS79OG9200>, seems to have rotted. If anyone can find
the story based on its "storyid", I would like to know how. Entering
"secular AND scientism" into google did not yield the desired article,
although it did yield a number of interesting results. I would recommend the
search for those who find this sort of thing interesting.

I am not sure how Wirt would classify Stalin and Mao's ideas. But I believe
that they claimed more lives and caused more suffering than our many great
wars, or those "actions taken on behalf of the fanatical beliefs in the
various religious myths", unless one wants to reclassify Stalin and Mao's
ideas as religious myths (they do share many of the attributes of
fanaticism). I think that they would lay claim to being secular and
scientific, and perhaps even Darwinian. While totally outside the purview of
science, their origins held certain ideas of science and materialism as
their inspiration.

One may disagree with that, because ideas should only be so elastic. And we
violate them when we take them beyond their intention, which is what many in
this century have done with Darwinism (coming to political and sociological
conclusions, even where those seem inevitable). And yet, examination of John
8:32
<http://www.netbible.org/cgi-bin/netbible.pl?book=joh&chapter=8&verse=31> in
its context do not appear to speak of being set free from ignorance,
misinformation, disinformation, or "fanatical beliefs in various religious
myths". Rather, they speak of freedom from sin, and of following a set of
teachings which seem steeped in "religious myths" such as Adam and Eve,
Abraham, and Moses, and even the existence of their God, and his
intervention in history and self-revelation. Jesus apparently believed in
all these things, if we are to believe that he actually existed at all, or
actually did or said anything that we can know about.

As for using a group's religion against them, that takes some understanding
of that group's religion, and it's hard enough to get Americans who have a
religion to understand those, let alone anyone else's. But I would suggest
that if the victims of terrorists could be humanized in the eyes of those
among whom terrorists live, if the necessary question of who is and is not
innocent can be raised, support can be shaken. Perhaps the better weapon
against a religion is not hostility, but the religion itself, and reasonable
doubt about how true to their own religion our enemies are. True believers
who feel betrayed by their leaders are not known for their patience or their
kindness toward them. And a coup can make for a potentially satisfying
victory. Or, perhaps, fewer enemies.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com

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