Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

my social life is mostly restricted to my bandmates and people at my kids' co-op. haven't found a temple I'd like to belong to.

and I mean there's work and ILX but those seem different

i go to shul to drink + gossip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiddush_club

Oh shit i forgot drinking, that is embarrassing

Sub the bar for church, or Tarot carts for the Bible, or frat parties for youth groups, everyone falls into social structures no matter what.

bars are expensive. also I hate constantly yelling.

Well not you, per se. Yeah i don't like bars. Some people are really into them for the social reasons.

at my temple 90% of their programming is non-prayer service related. they run a montessori school that my daughter attends, learning groups, festive + sabbath meals, sunday school classes, mommy + me classes, challah baking, drinking at synagogue (super underrated), youth groups, etc

The appeal I see in religious community is that it's officially not about economic relations. You're bound together by an idea of one another's intrinsic worth rather than practicality. It's something you get from true friendship too, but maybe never on the same scale. And, yeah, that's something for which I want secular society to have a solution.

the communal part of religion is like so not the best part, the best part is the mystical power and the grandeur, the mighty hand that led us out of the wilderness, all that

how you guys gonna go for the coffee with your neighbors over the mighty saving Hand c'mon, you impious bastards, you

man does not live by Hand alone.

god ur such a catholic xp

spoken like a true catholic lol xxxp

as an introvert I was more into the mystery than the awkward donut and coffee hour. Was also more into the foosball in the basement.

Trade in the church for a bar cos you have to kill all those extra brain cells you get from being smarter than people that believe in God.

^fucking loves science

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus

temple 乒乓 table ftw

mordy otm

i have personally not found a better way of belonging to / participating in a community than frequently attending a particular religious institution. it does seem to be the (a?) dominant way that social life (especially when you have children) is organized in the united states.

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 3, 2013 1:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post

i have a decent amount of friends who all, like, know each other & am a part of other loose community-like things like my dept or music scene, but neither really give the same feeling

Of course the problem being that life is quite often deliberately made harder for those whose lifestyles go against the core values of these communities.

thread moved on but that greenwald guardian piece i posted is pretty booming

the trick is finding a community that shares your core values xp

Trade in the church for a bar cos you have to kill all those extra brain cells you get from being smarter than people that believe in God.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, April 3, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Past the Pub who saps your body
And the church who'll snatch your money

xp: reddit island?

there are plenty of liberal/egal/progressive/etc religious institutions is what i meant

greenwald writes in that link:

That said, what I did say in my emails with Harris - and what I unequivocally affirm again now - is not that Harris is a "racist", but rather that he and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism. I've long believed this to be true and am glad it is finally being dragged out into open debate. These specific atheism advocates have come to acquire significant influence, often for the good. But it is past time that the darker aspects of their worldview receive attention.

fwiw this is pretty much the same argument word-for-word ppl have been making about ppl like greenwald (esp when he was at salon), stephen walt, mondoweiss, etc regarding promoting antisemitism under the guise of progressive liberalism. greenwald wrote last year on that issue:

“There are few things more reckless and disgusting than publicly smearing someone as a racist – easily one of the worst things you can say about someone in America, for very good reason – purely for partisan gain. That’s especially true when you are well aware that you have no basis for the accusation.

For years, neocons did the same thing with “anti-Semitism” charges. They seized on a real and serious problem – anti-Semitism – and converted it into an exploitative, opportunistic weapon to punish those who deviated from their political views, particularly on Israel. The worst part of that behavior – aside from ruining people’s reputations by casting them as bigots without any cause – is that it dilutes the power of that term and makes it no longer effective to use when it actually appears.

That is precisely what spouting knowingly baseless accusations of racism achieves. Obviously, racism plays a substantial role in motivating some of the hostility toward the first African-American president, just as anti-Semitism plays a role in some hostility toward Israel. That’s precisely why it’s so vital to avoid casually exploiting those terms for gross partisan opportunism: because people will stop taking the terms seriously when they genuinely arise.

Few things are lowlier than tossing around those accusations purely to discredit someone for partisan gain. It happens often, but this case is particularly egregious given the accuser’s admissions in the comment section combined with the total lack of retraction or correction by that blog.

Yeah, Chris Hedges wrote about that in his book _I don't believe in atheists_ a few years back, about how Sam Harris was incorporating full neocon bloodthirst against Muslims under some atheist guise.

i think that element derives mainly from a major flaw in their conception of the relation between science and religion, in that they see religion as a rival theoretical framework (again, they're re-fighting the enlightenment) when that hasnt been the case for some time. some outliers aside, i doubt many fundamentalists even take this position (ie, i doubt many of them look to scripture to understand, i dunno, cancer).

Lol at atheists dont have real friends, goes p well with us not having real ethics i guess

yeah, that's a funny statement. would have been pretty funny if anyone had actually said that.

Cant c&p but its p explicit 17:22 dmac time

i think you misunderstood Träumerei's statement. He wasn't saying that atheists don't have real friends.

Hm maybe so, idk

i think u misread the word "scale" for "level"

Maybe ive been overfeisty on the internet lately tbh

there prob are secular communities on the same scale as religious ones but theyre all like rainbow gathering or cults??

A corporation can be a secular community.

Yeah, I meant scale as in number of people. In religious communities you have relations that are akin to friendship (in that they're based on the intrinsic worth of the members), scaled up to a community level. Or that seems to be the goal.

k voluntary whatever

My bad, lucky you got to forgive me right

there prob are secular communities on the same scale as religious ones but theyre all like rainbow gathering or cults??

juggalos

My bad, lucky you got to forgive me right
--mister borges (darraghmac)

lol this was a Bill Hicks joke he told about being confronted by audience members who didn't like his jokes about Christians. "So? Forgive me."

needs a pinch more of contrition

juggalos were xian i thought

I am sorry for being mean to the theists

have we ever done a thread about communities + belonging to them?

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:15 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd like to read this thread.

I thought mordy had done something tbh

i am a hermit, or at least have the personality of one.

turns out that dissing Dawkins on Twitter is a good way to get smug undergrads to limply try to tear you apart, whoda thunk it.