― RickyT (RickyT), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 10:59 (twenty-one years ago) link
― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 11:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
I don't see any particular problem with this. Moreover, in my experience, it is always the 'weak' atheists who suffer from the failings that Dan was so OTM about earlier. Not that all 'weak' athesits do, mind you, but I think those who try to justify their atheism via purely rational means are more susceptible to coming off like know-it-all assholes.
― J (Jay), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 12:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
"Organised religion" historically has been awful and useful - in a pre-democratic society the opposition of secular and non-secular authority provided the same kind of braking mechanism party systems do now - the church could serve as an 'opposition' to political leaders and vice versa. In a democratic society I can definitely see a place for "religion" on an individual basis but not the organisations that sprung up around it.
― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 12:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 17:56 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 18:06 (twenty-one years ago) link
Its not a belief system. Hence, B).
>>3. why *vs christianity*?.<<
Eurocentric question. Really, it should be "Atheism vs. Theism". After all, there are religions in which there is no god (IE, Buddhism).
- Alan
― Alan Conceicao, Tuesday, 29 October 2002 18:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 19:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― J0hn Darn13ll3 (J0hn Darn13ll3), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 19:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 19:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
That's just wrong.
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 19:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 19:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 20:11 (twenty-one years ago) link
― J0hn Darn13ll3 (J0hn Darn13ll3), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 20:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
I suppose the word Religion can be a bit loaded in some peoples minds. I'd say that as a social entity it clearly does need other people, but as a spiritual one, it clearly doesn't.
If they had hunted Christians down to one guy hiding in the woods, praying daily and subsiding on roots and berries, would it still be religion? I'd say yes. Maybe not A Religion (checkbox in the census form), though.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 20:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 20:26 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 20:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 20:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
http://www.lawrence.edu/fac/boardmaw/god_in_quad_berkeley.html
Prayer would seem to me to be something you can do by yourself, apart from god(s), and is fairly crucial to the whole endeavour. But that's a Catholic perspective. Are there other religions where you can't do something holy by yourself, by scripture rather than practice?
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 22:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
This depends on the strength of the agnosticism. "I don't know if God exists" is just a statement, as undeniable as "The sun is shining". Which is not as undeniable as 2+2=4, but that's another ballgame.
But "there is no way of knowing whether god exists" is like "The sun will come up tomorrow, because science says" or "The sun will come up tomorrow, thanks to Ra". You can build consistent world views around it, but it is clearly just a belief. It's a positive statement, and can't be proved right, just wrong.
Hrm. Guess who just read a book on Wittgenstein vs Popper, and thinks he knows the secrets of the ages?
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 22:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
hurhurhur.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 22:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
Oh, I picked Atheism vs. Christianity because a few previous threads were discussing it, and Christianity has more cultural significants around here. Also, I was interested in others view of Christianity specifically.And I totally agree that public schools should have a world religion class. I would have loved to have anything other than American history in high school (I hardly had any social studies in school other than American history, it sucked.)
and as for Tom's explination of his atheism,
"I'm with J. Religion shifts the argument into a non-rational sphere with the introduction of the concept of 'faith' and I'm happy to enter that sphere. I have no faith, indeed I have a felt absence of faith, therefore I am an atheist."
I think that is a great explination. For me, who believes in predestination of man, Tom would be an example of someone who is seemingly not predestined.
― A Nairn (moretap), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 22:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 22:45 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Maria (Maria), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 00:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
All very Judy Blume book, I know, but I drew the inevitable conclusion with half the bizarro Christian sects that if parents had followed any, I'd probably not be alive and writing this.
Good things about religion include great literature produced (where do we get the classic narrative structure of genesis, action, climax denoument anyway, from Greeks or subconscious parallel with How Sex Goes?) and that is why I am able to treat most of it like other, older myths and legends, there to provide object lessons to people who need them and to provide apocryphal plotlines to us what don't.
Maria's question is interesting. First awareness I had of the whole God thing was when I got to primary school and people told me they went to Sunday School, that's how agnostic my folks are. Also when my elder grandfather died, when I was seven, by coincidence there were all these weird Life After Death programmes doing the rounds of the cheapo TV stations and I just sat there watching all these weird talkshow people talking about out of body experiences whilst meeting their pal, The Light, getting told 'it's not your time' by a Marcus Welby type voice and getting sucked back down to the hospital bed. Very 'ooh, freaky, better not tell anyone I'm watching this, they'll freak out because of Grandpa but this is *fascinating*' vibe.
― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 01:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
When I'm in joke arguments with my Jewish girlfriend (we're both atheists, though I was baptised a catholic - the arguments are more about the coolness of the respective literary traditions), and she's nagging me about the unoriginality of the Jesus myths, how they're all derivitive, if not rip-offs of Torah stories (yeah, yeah, there's midrash and all that crap, but still you can take it too far...) I love to point out the extent of borrowing in Genesis from other sources. But even then I know I'm wrong, cos while the details are stolen, the simplicity of narrative and overall point is (was) blatantly revolutionary. Once upon a time, the idea of monotheism must have been a big deal.
― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 01:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
The Gospels contain the greatest alienation in world history, when Jesus is on the cross: 'Eli, Eli, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?' that is, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'"
Excuse the cut and paste but Chesterton is often OTM...
"But if [Jesus'] divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. . . He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."
― Kiwi, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 03:42 (twenty-one years ago) link
― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 05:58 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Kiwi, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 06:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Leee (Leee), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 09:06 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 09:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 09:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Kiwi, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Kiwi, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:17 (twenty-one years ago) link
I sympathise strongly with that Kiwi. But maybe faith in anything but the most amorphous of gods is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
I remember getting in trouble at school for being cheeky when the chaplain told me Jesus died for our sins and I said, yes, but he came back three days later. I was being cheeky but I was also being proto-serious - the happy-ending part of the central story of Christianity diminishes it (and has I think vast and often negative repercussions for Western culture ever since but that's a different thread), which is why I've always had sympathy with radical clergy who've tried to turn the Resurrection into a metaphor rather than literal truth.
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:22 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
Pah, call that radical? Turning it into a roller disco - now that's radical.
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
Anyway yes. To clarify what I was saying, the 'you gotta take it on faith thing' is a nonsense to me. Why not take any old story on faith? If your parents brought you up as devil worshippers and told you to take that on faith, what's the difference?
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
And then they might say 'He has answered my prayers'. And so you ask 'What about kids who die of Leukemia despite people praying for them?'.
And they might reply 'Well God works in mysterious ways'.
And then you give up.
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
No really, what if you came upon any "larger" being/presence -- how would you know if it was god or not? A sort of variation on Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology" maxim.
― Alan (Alan), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
Tom I dont agree with your views on the different "risks" on the Trinity as I think that is misinterpreting the concept from the limited understanding I have of it but I will have to discuss later
― Kiwi, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
― unknown or illegal user (doorag), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
In what way is the concept of faith (or any ‘concept’) non-rational? Raw experiences, emotions, etc are non-rational (in the sense that they aren’t dependant on our rationalising about them – hit your thumb with a hammer and it hurts like hell, no matter how you may interpret the experience) but as soon as you make a knowledge-claim about an experience, such as ‘I knew I was feeling the presence of the Lord’ then you’re putting forward a rational argument about the world: ‘I intuited the existence of God.’ Such an assertion (similar to those of ‘direct realism’ but with the object supposedly apprehended non-inferentially being a benign superbeing rather than, say, a table) is open to a challenge for justification, as all assertions are: What credibility is there, for instance, in claimed intuitions of divine entities when those entities are noticeably defined in terms which correspond to the context of cultural belief in which the ‘intuitions’ occur?
Faith (insofar as it implies dogmatic conviction, as opposed to mere unprovable belief) in no way transcends rationality by claiming immediate knowledge. Furthermore, in offering no support to its claims of knowledge other than ‘I just know,’ it confines itself to the least credible class of all rational assertions, those which rest on dogmatic assumption.
― neil, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 12:26 (twenty-one years ago) link
>That's just wrong. <
Apart from an abscence of God based faith, what then is the "belief system" of atheists?
(hint: there isn't one)
-Alan
― Alan Conceicao, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 19:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 20:29 (twenty-one years ago) link
Atheism is not the belief that there are no gods. It is the lack of belief in a god. It can be part of a religion or belief system (see: Buddhism), but it is not a system of belief onto its own, because it is A) not a belief and B) not a system of anything (as it is a single property).
Theism also has this problem. It, in and of itself, is not a belief system. Its simply states that one has belief in a god or gods. What they are can range from trees to Jehovah to Ganesh to spacemen.
― Alan Conceicao, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 21:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
Alan, if you wouldn't mind not talking smack on this matter, then maybe there's a point of discussion. My mom is an atheist and flat out does not believe in God (or gods), period. That is her BELIEF, not a lack of belief in something else. Do not put words into her mouth or into the mouths of others who think the same way.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 21:10 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 21:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
Alt, websters vs. philosophers
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 21:21 (twenty-one years ago) link