An atheists guide to Scorseses Silence: You dont need faith to be astonished by the faithful

[rug]

Martin Scorsese's new film “is about faith and God and Christendom that, ultimately, valorizes humanity



People: Andrew Garfield as Father Sebastião Rodrigues and Shin'ya Tsukamoto as Mokichi (Credit: Paramount Picutres)

SATURDAY, JAN 14, 2017 02:00 PM EST
JOHN SEMLEY

In 203 CE in Roman Carthage, a 22-year-old woman, still breastfeeding her infant child, was brought before the local administrator. Her name was Vibia Perpetua, and her crime was belonging to the emerging cult of Christianity.

Perpetua squared off against the Roman procurator — a mid-level government bureaucrat, playing the role of Christian-hunting Inquisitor — and a small assembly of gawkers. She was given every opportunity to recant her faith. But she would not. When asked point-blank if she was a Christian, Vibia Perpetua signed her own death sentence, asserting, "Christiana sum."

Her prosecutor was seemingly confounded by her decision to die for her faith, desperately urging her to recant. As she recalls in her diary, the procurator pleaded, “Have pity on your father’s grey head; have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.”

A modern reader may share this bafflement. Like, “Just do it! Just cross your fingers and repudiate Christ! You have a kid! It’s not worth it! Apostatize! C’mon!”

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/14/an-atheists-guide-to-scorseses-silence-you-do-not-need-faith-to-be-astonished-by-the-faithful/

[J_William_Ryan]

1. Yet another straw man fallacy...

‘But the New Atheist notion that hectoring about “logic” and even “science” will somehow introduce disbelief into civilization’s atmosphere like fluoride into a water supply, that you can just simply wish religion away, strikes me as just as stupid.’

The notion that those free from faith seek to ‘wash away’ religion is what’s in fact untrue and stupid, just as untrue and as stupid as the notion of the ‘new atheist.’

“I find myself arguing not against religion but in favor of it.”

As do others free from faith; or more to the point, arguing in favor of the right of theists to practice their faith, just as those free from faith have the right to practice no religion at all.

[Nitram]

2. I've never bought into the idea that confessing for Christ was better than saving your

innocent child. I call BS!

[rug]

3. If you're talking about perpetua, her son was never at risk. He remained with his grandfather.

"There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for." Albert Dietrich

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3o4JN_C69VwC

[struggle4progress]

4. The stories about the early Christian martyrs often seem to ask:

"Which side are you on?"

It is, of course, quite natural to adopt the view that Perpetua's behavior is perplexing

But perhaps we should also notice that anyone, who adopts such a view, has chosen not to notice the possibility of taking sides in this story

On the one side, there is the strange young woman Perpetua, and on the other, the Romans who execute her for her unwillingness to offer a meaningless "sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors"

Well, suppose Perpetua IS insane: is not that itself good reason to side with her against the people that will use her stubbornness as an excuse to have her butchered for sport?

Or we could regard her as an early victim of the long struggle for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech: one can hear in her story the voice Moses heard from the burning bush --- I will be what I will be

[rug]

5. Good points. They're valid from the early days, through Thomas More, to the present.