I believe I have peace of mind, at last. I was thinking last night that while I can't see the MoQ as either atheistic anti-theistic, I do think it is and should be, non-theistic. For one thing, as a tool, it'd be completely useless if it couldn't ask, "what good is your god?" For another, It's chief value and purpose to those with theistic orientations and conceptualization, is to remind them always that their conceptualizations are choices, that even if there was such thing as an objectively real God, outside of your conceptualization, it wouldn't matter. You are still and always stuck with that fact that any God that could be, or is, is "only in your head".
The trouble as I see with labeling the MoQ plainly atheist, is as I told Dan, the MoQ is no more anti-theistic than it is anti-theory-of-gravity. People come up with ideas to deal with their world. The MoQ says they do this as a function of Quality. What the MoQ is against, is assigning objectivity to subjective ideas about reality. Or reification, in simpler term. And what usually goes by the name "atheist" does this just as much as any theism you can name. Which is why I have no peace of mind with the therm "atheist". It's a 'connotation" thing. I'm sure y'all understand. But non-theist, I can live with, even though technically speaking "a-theist" means exactly the same thing. Atheists in the flesh, however, usually aren't simply non-theists, they are usually actually strident anti-theists. They think religion should be abolished in the name of scientific rationality. The MoQ sees through that silliness - "scientific rationality" as just another thing that's only in your head. Now I realize there are many, if not most, on this list who will strenuously disagree with me. And this is for the very good reason that they truly are antitheistic, and wish to force that view upon the whole. They don't have any patience for varieties of religious experience, because they've got an axe to grind, an anger to assuage or a social group to conform to. Thus psychological dependencies that won't withstand question or inquiry, as dmb so helpfully projected from within his own soul. But how can he help it? When I'm talking about the common connotations of "atheist", I'm talking about the academic community: chief enforcers of an anti-theistic view based upon a long, long pattern of community - formation through enemy scapegoating and a social mechanism that is easy to explain with an analogy. Take a cage full of monkeys, with a room inside the cage. Put shock collars around all the monkeys, and a banana in the cage. Now, every time any monkey approaches the room and the banana, shock all the other monkeys. Very soon, anytime any monkey approaches the cage the other monkeys beat the shit out of him. Obviously. After a while replace a monkey or two with new ones. Ignorant of the social rules, they go for the banana and get set upon immediately. No shock treatment necessary. Keep replacing monkeys, till all the original ones are gone, all memory of shocking punishment forgotten, but a persistent pattern of persecuting any individual that goes for the forbidden banana. The evolution of social patterns, the fear of ghosts. 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/md/archives.html
