Materialist Traditions and Philosophies

 

The movie is based on religious and philosophical subject matters. The movie is a debate between an atheist and an evangelical pastor on whether religion is important or not. The atheist, Hitchens and the pastor, Wilson use philosophy and their intellect to argue it out. The film also tries to argue out if science sets the moral standards of the society or the religion decides for the people. Hitchens argues that man created religion due to the fact that he did  not understand  natural phenomena around him .He goes further to argue that science has discovered and improved much in the life of a human being than  religion. He cited example in medicine and the hobble telescope. Hitchens claims that even if Prophet Mohammed and Jesus still existed, humanity would still face the same questions on the relevance of religion. Wilson argues that time, chance and atoms cannot create the odder witnessed by man today. Chance is not powerful enough to compose music and build buildings. Wilson claims that the universe was not created by chance and relates it to shaking of a bottle full of water. If one shakes a bottle, no one can come to see the water fuzzing ,therefore  atheists gives preconditions about different phenomena  which cannot be accounted for when due procedure are put to practice (Green ,2009).

The readings deal with a transition from a religious society to a more secular embracing society and to eventually embracing atheism. One of the reading tells of a girl who is fed up of Muslim laws and the oppression it has on women, she finally decides to leave the religion and not to put any belief on any god (Hirsi. (2007). The reading also deals with western civilization that is dimmed as more civilized than other parts of the world but the atrocities that have been witnessed throughout its history are harsh, cruel and barbaric at best, despite the fact that they are religious (Coats,2013). The western world has conceived wars and has seen the rise of the Nazis killed many people (Clark, 2011).

The film and the movie, both talk about atheists and Christianity. Whereas the film shows reasons why people embrace atheism and why it is relevant in the society, the readings show how the society came to transform from Christianity to a more atheist embracing society. The movie and the readings dwell mostly on core fundamentals that bring about atheists and Christianity to existence. For example, atheist rely more on tangible proof without which they cannot believe in the existence of a god whereas Christians only rely on faith. The Christian religion is closely related to Muslim religion as they have similar prophets such as Jesus and Abraham. The American society has used Christianity based laws to come up with principles and laws that govern and influence their society. Christianity also influence the government principles and ideas. Christianity brings about equality in the American society as it opposes some of the oppressions in the society. Some people claim that Christians was the first religion to oppose slavery in America and its environs.

 

 

Reference

 

Emily S. Clark. (2011). Religion in American History. Retrieved from http://usreligion.blogspot.co.ke/2013/10/reflections-on-public-atheism-american.html

Ta-Nehisi coats. (2013).The Myth of Western Civilization. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/the-myth-of-western-civilization/282704/

Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. (2007) “How (and Why) I Became an Infidel.” PDF.

Scott Green (2009) Collision .Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ23ZPIZIao