the sermon on the mount
Craig Keener, in his excellent commentary on Matthew, says "more than thirty-six discrete views exist" on the Sermon on the Mount.
Seriously.
He quotes Blomberg (1992) summarizing the most critical of these:
The predominant medieval view, reserving a higher ethic for clergy, especially in monastic orders;
Luther's view that the sermon represents an impossible demand like the law;
The Anabaptist view, which applies the teachings literally for the civil sphere;
The traditional liberal social gospel position;
Existentialist interpreters' application of the sermon's specific moral demands as a more general challenge to decision;
Schweitzer's view that the sermon embodies an interim ethic rooted in the mistaken expectation of imminent eschatology;
The traditional dispensational application to a future millennial kingdom; and
Blomberg's and others' view of an "inaugurated eschatology", "in which the sermon's ethic remains the ideal or goal... but which will never be fully realized until the consummation of the kingdom..."
neo-atheism
Two atheists - John Gray and Alain de Botton - and two agnostics - Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I - meet for dinner at a Greek restaurant in Bayswater, London. The talk is genial, friendly and then, suddenly, intense when neo-atheism comes up. Three of us, including both atheists, have suffered abuse at the hands of this cult. Only Taleb seems to have escaped unscathed and this, we conclude, must be because he can do maths and people are afraid of maths.
via the New Statesman.
De Botton is the most recent and, consequently, the most shocked victim. He has just produced a book, Religion for Atheists: a Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion, mildly suggesting that atheists like himself have much to learn from religion and that, in fact, religion is too important to be left to believers. He has also proposed an atheists' temple, a place where non-believers can partake of the consolations of silence and meditation.
This has been enough to bring the full force of a neo-atheist fatwa crashing down on his head. The temple idea in particular made them reach for their best books of curses.
“I am rolling my eyes so hard that it hurts," wrote the American biologist and neo-atheist blogger P Z Myers. "You may take a moment to retch. I hope you have buckets handy." Myers has a vivid but limited prose palette.
There have been threats of violence. De Botton has been told he will be beaten up and his guts taken out of him. One email simply said, "You have betrayed Atheism. Go over to the other side and die."
De Botton finds it bewildering, the unexpected appearance in the culture of a tyrannical sect, content to whip up a mob mentality. "To say something along the lines of 'I'm an atheist; I think religions are not all bad' has become a dramatically peculiar thing to say and if you do say it on the internet you will get savage messages calling you a fascist, an idiot or a fool. This is a very odd moment in our culture. Why has this happened?"
inglish
Let me revert back to you on the same after I have done the needful. I will be out of station this weekend as my cousin niece is passing out from college. All her mugging and all the coaching classes paid off for her I guess. The ceremony is at a hill station. It will be good time pass. It is also my native place so all our near and dears will be there. Definitely worth using up all my casual leaves.
Read the whole hilarious bit at Quora.