Initial remark: I am not a theist! It is possible to reject both theism and atheism. It's called agnosticism.
On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> I agree with the video. You might also like this: >> >> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg >> >> The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible >> thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more >> general. I would say: >> >> "putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing" > > > But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate arbiter of all > morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed. I oppose most organised religions for this very reason, but I don't agree that theism "demands it" (as we've discussed before). The problem with atheism is that it defines the side it opposes (which is inconsistent), and thus engages in the fiction. You want to fight the encroachment of religion in our lives? I'm on your side. >> This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese >> cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the >> name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute >> belief comes with the label "god" or something else. > > > But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and they didn't > demand faith as the basis of morality. They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR. Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten, and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the creationists do). Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the opposition. A funny story about the Fernsehturm is that, when the sun is shining, the reflection on the big ball on top looks like a christian cross. People called it "the Pope's Revenge". Intuitively, everyone knew this was a battle of religions. > They made arguments for their > position, which implies that they recognized the importance of facts and > reason So did the nazis. But then they also had concentration camps. The USSR had goulags, the KGB and the Stasi. They cared about facts only to the degree that they agreed with their preconceived notions. Just like the religious extremists. I always find in this type of discussion that there is a tendency to want to pretend that certain (big) things did not happen. They did, and there are lessons to be learned from them. > - even though they lied about what they were. It is only theism > which says, "It's a mystery. You must accept God on faith." The problem with atheism is that it knows no nuance. Yes, it is stupid to demand god or anything else to be accepted on faith, but it is also stupid to pretend that there is no mystery. >> Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of >> inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent, because >> the thing that it opposes is also not coherent). > > > Sure they are different. But, no, atheism is not a belief system. It's no > more a belief system than failing to believe there are fairies in the garden > is a belief system. Atheism is failure to believe in a certain class gods: > Supernatural eternal beings who created the universe and who judge human > behavior. I partly agree with Sam Harris when he say "atheism" is an > unnecessary word; we don't have a word, "a-fairiest", for those who don't > believe in fairies, or "a-yetist" for those who don't believe in yetis. But > only partly, because theism is (a) common and (b) demands faith (absolute > belief independent of evidence); which is different from belief in fairies > and yetis. Even the advocates of fairies and yetis don't say you should > believe in them by faith. I agree with Sam Harris on this also (and many other things, but not all!). I enjoy listening to his podcast. > You are accepting the theists framing of atheism as an absolute belief that > there is no god of theism. But that's wrong. Atheism is just saying that > based on the evidence theism is no more likely true than fairies in the > garden or yetis in the Himalaya's. Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"? > When Dawkins, who is often castigated as > a radical atheist, was asked, on a scale of 1 to 7 how certain was he that > there is no God, he said "6". And since you like to credence original usage > of words over current usage you should know that agnosticism was originally > just considered a form of atheism - since it implies not believing in God. > And even deists, like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, were considered > atheists because they didn't believe in the god of theism. The religious people in my family consider me an atheist. If I explained all the things that I am discussing in this thread, they would still consider me an atheist. That's what pure belief does to nuance. Telmo. > Brent > "Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel." > --- George Carlin > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
