John: Three or four times now I have hit the reply button with an urge to respond but then I just hit cancel because I promised myself I'd cut you some slack. But, dude, this is the kind of thing that gives sophistry and specious reasoning a bad name. All you've done here is define theism in such a way that it is not possible to be anything but a theist. All you've done is render the term meaningless. But it does shine a little light into the issue. For a lot of people, when they say they believe in God, what they're really trying to tell you is, "I'm a moral person" or "I like the people at church" or "I'm not a boat rocker" or "I'm not weird", none of which has anything to do with weather or not you really think a supernatural, all powerful creator actually exists. Where is it written that you can't be moral or have any values unless you believe that? And if you're morality springs from such a belief then it's not really morality. It's just obedience. It breeds irrational attitude of submission to authority and all kinds of thing that actually retard moral intelligence. And the idea that people become atheists so they can be naughty is just the stupidest kind of pop psychology I ever heard. This doesn't make me splutter my soup. It just makes me sad.
The idea of a fat guy wearing a tee-shirt that says, "Too big to fail" makes me laugh but you need about 80 more of those just to break even. Let me ask you a straight question. Why do you believe in God? Seriously, give me one good reason. And why are you trying to sell it here, of all places? There are literally a million places on the internet and many thousands of real-world places that would be more receptive and more appropriate. Why do you feel compelled to jam it into the MOQ when you know perfectly well that it's not about that? And it's not just you. Time and time again, religious people with an agenda show up here and do what you're doing, only worse. God, it's sooooo boring! > Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:17:39 -0800 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: [MD] The MoQ can't be atheistic > > Before you splutter your soup all over the floor, I better define > "atheistic" as I mean it. But to give a concrete example, I'll take Arlo. > Arlo can't be a pantheist AND an atheist. Believing that the whole of > nature is the source of being and the source of value is what a pantheist > does. Atheist has practically come to mean "non-christian deists" but it > really means there is no god at all, or no good at all. It's all just > random. Bob Dylan said "ya gotta serve something" and by this he means, > every person must have a source of values. Where a person imagines his > values coming from, is his god. If it's all just cosmic randomness, then > cosmic randomness is your god. Cosmic randomness is your good. > > It seems to me that people posit the good of cosmic randomness, in order to > free themselves from imposed moral restraint. To be free is a moral choice. > But how it works out, is that to such people, the self becomes the source > of values. It's easy and tautological. I value what I value. It's > complete and irrefutable on its own terms. Trouble comes in when you > actually start in and asking questions like "who's this *I* you talkin' > 'bout white man" and learn that your source of self-value is on a very shaky > foundation. > > Ultimately, *I* is a social construct, therefore the source of values to a > self-valuer is the social matrix into which they are born and raised. > > duh. > > That's always the way it's always been. > > But social matrices evolve and change. That's historical. And today we > have a culture and society that brings children into a maze of social > matrices, and say to them, "choose one". Without any over-riding way of > choosing, except for parental preference - but usually they don't really > have a clue. > > And to my mind, most conspicuous of all is that they are never given in > training in how to do this choosing, how to figure out the kind of thinking > it takes to even make such a decision, or analysis, and we let them wait > until they get to college and try and be reprogramed according to the best > thinking of the Academy there and then. > > The MoQ is opposed to all that. The MoQ says there are ultimately values, > the source of value is undefinable, but the realization of value is possible > in pure experience. This is a value, realized in individuals, that > obviates the atheistic assertion that there is no ultimate source of values. > Thus the MoQ can be anti-theistic, if it wants to, but it can't be > atheistic without contradicting itself in the most blatant ways. > > Not that that's ever stopped anybody before.... > 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/ _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/ 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/
