Hello Steve, Ron: >Steve, I think what makes atheism a threat is it is construed as >arrogant.
Steve: That is a common criticism of atheism that Sam Harris addresses in 10 Myths about atheism... http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1/ "When scientists don?t know something ? like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed ? they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn?t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn?t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty." Ron: You're preaching to the choir Steve, I'm offering some reasons I've Been hit with in the past. I have conversations with my parents about Such things. My mother is very religious My father is more a traditionalist He used to take me out on walks in the woods on Sunday mornings telling My mother that that was his church. My father believes in the great spirit My mother believes in the Christian God. My father is a follower of Science and reason, my mother of faith and feeling. I grew up in a Heated theological climate (this usually occurred on a Sunday when My father and I did not go to church with her) Atheism was always a hot topic especially for my father, I guess because He experienced combat in Vietnam, He said once that there are no atheists In a fire fight. He also once said to me that to deny a great spirit is to deny any connection to life and reality. All things are connected he said This connectedness is the great. All have a relationship with the universe. What sense does it make to deny your relationship with all things? He said the idea that we are separate from the universe was called "the White mans sickness" by the natives. He said it was this that creates all the trouble not God. He thought And still thinks that atheism makes this worse. The average person doesn't know what atheism is because no one looks into it. They settle for the preconception and leave it at that. Likewise A lot of my pseudo-intellectual friends do not know what atheism is either they call them selves atheists as a façade to justify their lo-quality lifestyle or to be thrown around in coffee shop prattle parroting any religion bashing rhetoric they hear second hand and not developing their own opinions. As William James said "many people think they are thinking when they are merely re-arranging their prejudices". I am not bashing atheists or atheism; I am not bashing theists or theism. I bash those who take second hand information as a philosophical position. Those who take hard judgmental stances based on hearsay, un-researched Information and preconceptions. My first hand experience tells me that all things are connected. That it has A way or a nature. That if one moves in harmony with it they have greater Power than those who struggle with it. I can not deny my connectedness. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
