On 10 Apr 2013, at 16:16, Aahz Maruch <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 09, 2013, Paul Stenquist wrote: >> On Apr 9, 2013, at 9:33 AM, Aahz Maruch <[email protected]> wrote: >>> On Tue, Apr 09, 2013, Paul Stenquist wrote: >>>> On Apr 8, 2013, at 11:41 PM, [email protected] wrote: >>>>> >>>>> There are a lot of people who believe in no gods. >>>> >>>> But those too have created gods in their own image, just as people >>>> have done since the beginning of time. Witness the Christmas displays >>>> in Santa Monica stage by the atheists. They outdid all the religious >>>> groups. They worship at the shrine of secularism. We all have our >>>> gods. >>> >>> Category error, you are warping other people's beliefs to suit your own. >>> >>> "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, >>> "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." >> >> Not my beliefs. I'm agnostic. But mankind has always found something >> to believe in, and a new system of beliefs always involves rejection >> of the old. Today's secularists are to christians what the christians >> and jews were to sun worshipers thousands of years ago. > > You are mixing up beliefs, gods, and worship. You are making as much > sense as Humpty Dumpty. > and confusing atheism and secularism. Secularism does not imply atheism. Secularism is about the distinction between religion and, essentially, state; so the notion of a 'shrine of secularism' is a contradiction in terms. You could be the most God-fearing Christian this side of Eden and still be a secularist, and still have secular, that is non-church, matters to deal with, and secularist ideas. Or, you could take the view that all of life should be subject to religious law, and be wholly opposed to all forms of secularism.
Atheism is an absence of a particular belief, it is not a belief in itself. Atheists, like all people, obviously have beliefs, but there is not a body of interlocking ideas that one could call atheism, or practices that atheists undertake as a function of their atheism, and even if there were it could not be called a religion since the defining property of a religion is that it believes in the existence of at least one god, and the defining property of atheism is that it rejects all belief in gods. Now, some atheists may have big christmas displays, but that does not mean that that is some necessary part of atheism. Christmas is now far more of a cultural festival than a religious one - probably always has been, given that the Puritans banned it. Similarly, many atheists have ceremonies and take part in ritual practices such as weddings and baby-namings that parallel those of Christians and other religious people, but that's not because they want a substitute religion, it's because people everywhere feel a need for rites of passage, and that need has historically been co-opted by religion. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
