Emily, We must remember that the atheistic idea was already mentioned in the story of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis. Satan, in the form of a snake, tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit in order to be like God. When she ate the fruit, she too convinced Adam to do the same. There are many layers of ideas to understand the meaning of this story. One of them is that the first humans disobeyed the rules set by the Father in the Garden. Thus, they were banished from the life of heaven here on earth.
But one Jewish rabbi mentioned that Satan was only following the orders of God to tempt the first humans in order to give them the opportunity to exercise their free will and freedom of choice. So, Satan-- albeit a fallen angel-- was more than willing to use his remaining angelic powers to make Adam and Eve to commit the original sin. Ever since then, the descendants of Adam and Eve are suffering the effects of this sin in the various forms of violence, murder, terrorism, fundamentalism, racism, greed, hatred, jealousy, ethnic cleansing, et cetera. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : I like this Armstrong quote, seems atheists are just new religionists coming along in sheep skins aching to explain their experience to larger flocks. ..and, we find now in their writings that these modern day atheists after their thrashing of fundamentalism are meditationists. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <emily.mae50@...> wrote : John, you may find this interesting. "Historically, atheism has rarely been a blanket denial of the sacred per se but has nearly always rejected a particular conception of the divine. At an early stage of their history, Christians and Muslims were both called "atheists" by their pagan contemporaries, not because they denied the reality of God but because their conception of divinity was so different that it seemed blasphemous. Atheism is therefore parasitically dependent on the form of theism it seeks to eliminate and becomes it's reverse mirror image. Classical Western atheism was developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Feurbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, whose ideology was essentially a response to and dictated by the theological perception of God that had developed in Europe and the United States during the modern period. The more recent atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris is rather different, because it has focused exclusively on the God developed by the fundamentalisms, and all three insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religions." ~The Case For God by Karen Armstrong ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Emily, Yes, they do. Atheists are fairly similar to Satanists who were able to eliminate the use of prayers in Arizona. For them, the image of satan is a metaphorical symbol against any established religions. But, for most of them, satan does not exist like the gods in myths and legends. IMO, what exists for them is their own individual selves. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <emily.mae50@...> wrote : Re: "So, why do atheists want others to believe what they believe? Do they? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Ebill, The atheist's belief that their are no gods, transcendence or Samadhi is similarly an non-religious ideology. But, by the atheist's definition, there is no support of Nature nor transcendence which cannot be proved on a scientific basis. So, why do atheists want others to believe what they believe? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <emptybill@...> wrote : To argue that "spiritual experience" is conformable only to the definitions of the TMO is to admit that TM is only a belief system. No experience of Transcendence/Samadhi is actually necessary when the belief system reigns supreme. People who inhabit the "Domes of Doctrine" have separated their meditative experience and their "innocent, native transcendence" and are inhabiting the hierarchy of TMO indoctrination just to keep their badge. This is the very definition of a religious ideology.
