1. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160309 by Skid on April 13, 2008 at 11:28 pm

Let's not overvalue the word "inspired" too much! If religion never existed to inspire, talented and thinking people would still have had a million other things they could draw upon for inspiration in a split second (philosophy, nature, people, love, sex...to name a few). Sources of inspiration are a dime a dozen, often a mere passing thought, or (more often than not) entirely someone else's idea. Let's be truthful here -- gainful employment was (and is) the true "inspiration" that the church offered the many artists it has employed. The true magic (metaphorically speaking) always was/is in the minds and bodies of the architects, the engineers, the painters, the craftsmen, the thinkers, the philosophers...not in the inspirational source! Please stop the idiotic practice of equivocation between the true value of art/architecture/philosophy/thought and the inspirational sources behind them. Inspiration is, at most, a mild catalyst and more often than not, quite disposable.

Who knows what future generations will truly find helpful from our reign on Earth, but to think our own experiences of life are likely to be indispensable (or even useful) to the people who come after us, simply because we found them so, is the definition of a solipsistic mind at work. People will continue to grow and flourish in ways we can't even imagine -- and quite likely, with minimal help from Mr. Ravenhill's precious church and Bible.