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Then lucky for you that what the user said was not all that smart... here is why...
.... because we simply are not let "be done with it". Religion creeps its insidious corrupting tendrils into our halls of power, education and science. It throws it's weight around and makes it felt in all levels of all walks of life. Simply being godless but remaining quite about it is not an option for people like myself.
And on top of that a second equally valid answer to your question is "Why should we?". We have every right to espouse vocally our world view as any other person has. Perhaps even more of a right given our world view does not require us to espouse lies or unsubstantiated fantasy or to condemn others to hell or other unpleasant after lives.
Nay it is not just our right to stand up and be heard, it is incumbent upon us simply as humans to stand up against charlatans, liars, fraudsters and purveyors of woo.
Yeah, and you're like Martin Luther King
A very tiny fraction of believers are guilty of all the things that you blame on religion. Most religious people are happy to leave you alone and are mortified that you won't leave them alone in return. This, coming from a committed agnostic who would rather deal with a decent believer than an irascible atheist.
A very tiny fraction of believers are guilty of all the things that you blame on religion.
I do not count heads. I count the impacts and effects. And they are large, gross, and horrific.
Quote:
Originally Posted by athithi
Most religious people are happy to leave you alone and are mortified that you won't leave them alone in return.
Speak for yourself. Do not pretend to speak for "most" people. You do not. At all. The fact is we do leave "most of them" alone. Our battle is with the public social face of religion. As well it should be.
Well I'd think religions are the so-called 'incumbent'. They've been around for a while. I'd suggest why isn't it enough that if one wants to be 'godless' then so be it and be done with it. Keep it in your heart and to your content. Enjoy that belief then. Bask in it. Revel in it. Yet to me I see some 'uncomfortableness'. I think it takes alot of energy to get that hard shell up and keep on the constant offensive against those who you think are duped.
By this logic anything that has been around for a while gets to stay intact, regardless of its worth.
100 years ago only men could vote. Women were politically powerless. This was the 'incumbent' state of being. It was also wrong and many people spoke up to change this. Not all women or men spoke up, but enough did that our society has changed for the better.
By your logic women should have remained silent, not voted, and been content with the 'incumbent' situation.
I could draw similar analogies to slavery, gay rights, civil rights, etc.
One can be an atheist without being politically active, and most are. Sounds like the OP is. To silence atheists and shame them into acquiescing to religion is wrong though.
Atheism is literally to be A-Theos, which is to say, without theology. It literally means to be without religion. Atheism is the very antithesis of a religious belief. Not believing the in the existence of Santa Claus for example, does not comprise a religious belief. All religions hold some form of a belief in the supernatural in common. If one does not believe in the existence of the supernatural, then one is an atheist.
No, it's Without + God, according to merriam webster. Not without religion.
Taoism (traditionally), Buddhism, and many Eastern religions are in fact atheistic. And they are perfectly content carrying on ceremonies. Yea, I know you'd like to paint atheists as "above all that superstitious nonsense", but nice try there.
Quote:
.... because we simply are not let "be done with it". Religion creeps its insidious corrupting tendrils into our halls of power, education and science. It throws it's weight around and makes it felt in all levels of all walks of life. Simply being godless but remaining quite about it is not an option for people like myself.
Pffft, you sound like a conspiracy nutter. If anything religion has been a part of such places since about the 1950s and before, but got forced out of them at around the 1970s. Also, tendrils?!? Seriously? You used the word, tendrils?
Tendrils are those things around the guy (except those in that case are tentacles, as a tendril refers usu to plants). Enough said.
A very tiny fraction of believers are guilty of all the things that you blame on religion. Most religious people are happy to leave you alone and are mortified that you won't leave them alone in return. This, coming from a committed agnostic who would rather deal with a decent believer than an irascible atheist.
Then you are free to wave us goodbye and do so. In fact we are not really approaching religious people at all, only arguing against the unsupported claims of religious belief and the reason why is because religion, with no valid basis for it, influences our lives and would influence it still more if we did not oppose it.
Becase we are small in numbers, we do have to come onto what the religious would consider 'Their Turf'. But, here on our turf, it is you coming to visit us.
That's fine. We will get nowhere preaching to the converted. I would much rather deal with an irascible Believer than a decent atheist.
.... because we simply are not let "be done with it". Religion creeps its insidious corrupting tendrils into our halls of power, education and science. It throws it's weight around and makes it felt in all levels of all walks of life. Simply being godless but remaining quite about it is not an option for people like myself.
All well and good. You are standing up for your beliefs but you have a insidious approach Nozzferrhhtoo where you denigrate your opposition. Things I'd like to see: an atheist arguing with only feathers er not with sledgehammers. Which leads me to this.
The atheistic argument appears to really to be on all cylinders when in opposition to religion. It's the nature of attack and its goal is complete destruction of an edifice. An edifice that has been built up since pre-history coloelcting the thoughts and deliberations of man's approach to spirituality, divinty, the supernatural. You have an idea, i.e there are no 'gods. Pretty simple and clean. But what's your 'godless' edifice built on? I would say taking a page from the Wizard of Oz, a clinking, clanking collection of caligioous junk. But perhaps it's not even that. It's more like, nada, zilch, zero, nil, nothing. It's almost as if you are moles burrowing, eating and chewing into religious constructs of millenia using the contents as sustenance and offal at the same time. After your rationalized analytcis, you leave everything full of holes and build nothing. It's a lan of dessication. And isn't ironic that there are images of vampires hovering around the attempted destruction?
So the question is ultimately what does 'no god' offer? I don't think 'godlessness' is enough. Now if one wants to have no gods I accept that. That's not an issue personally for me. What I wonder is how that new atheistic world, if it ever comes to pass, will comport itself. Will it do right? Can it do right? What is the conception of its 'responsibilities' to mankind? Who will carry the fire? Can a-theists carry it?
Short answer is that atheism targets god - claims the way the police target crime.
What it is based on? Reason and evidence. What is religion based on? Myth and tradition. And the length of the tradition somehow makes it true? The same can be said of astrology, which actually is far older and even more widespread than Christianity, at least.
That doesn't make it right. And that's why we do what we do, because our societies are largely based on an invalid claim.
Aside the debates about what an atheist world would be like, that is the reason why we have to have one. I see what is essentially a secular world around me and I am far convinced that it is noticeably worse or indeed better than the the Good Old Days. Aside debates about who is responsible for the problems that still exist or whether atheism would make things better or worse, I don't believe that the Dire Warnings are justified in suggesting that an atheist or at least rational and secularist worldview is too dangerous to try.
I am going to stick my neck out here: Atheism is right, and the world deserves to be given a chance to choose what is true according to the evidence over what is "Truth" according to religious faith.
I am going to stick my neck out here: Atheism is right, and the world deserves to be given a chance to choose what is true according to the evidence over what is "Truth" according to religious faith.
But perhaps it could be a dangerous game. You ironically are dealing with complete utter mystery then. Your reason here cannot answer for the future.
You cannot tell how the world would react if theism would be destroyed. I know you want a 'new world' with your deepest being and look it as 'better' state of affairs. The big philosophical question is will it be 'better? Will it be 'good' for mankind? With the overthrow comes responsibility. Of course all of this assumes that a-theists are a monolithic bloc as such at the time. But will it have an 'institutional' memory? But then how can it have a memory when it was never really 'organized?' to begin with? Further what are its precepts?
Questions, questions. From one always having the lamp unto my feet. One learns much by walking through the skies of metaphysics around here and trying to understand the working out of some wanted new orders of man within the cosmos.
But perhaps it could be a dangerous game. You ironically are dealing with complete utter mystery then. Your reason here cannot answer for the future.
You cannot tell how the world would react if theism would be destroyed. I know you want a 'new world' with your deepest being and look it as 'better' state of affairs. The big philosophical question is will it be 'better? Will it be 'good' for mankind? With the overthrow comes responsibility. Of course all of this assumes that a-theists are a monolithic bloc as such at the time. But will it have an 'institutional' memory? But then how can it have a memory when it was never really 'organized?' to begin with? Further what are its precepts?
Questions, questions. From one always having the lamp unto my feet. One learns much by walking through the skies of metaphysics around here and trying to understand the working out of some wanted new orders of man within the cosmos.
The bolded above leaves me thinking that you are viewing atheism as a replacement religion. An all atheist world would be one where no one spends any time thinking about god/no god, not one with some new set of rules by which we should live. Moralism would still be viable since it is the minimum necessary for a functioning civilization and most people would still prefer civilization to anarchy with or without the moralism grounded in religious fears. It would be pragmatic moralism but it would be that which evolves from necessity, not imposed by some post corporal notion of reward and punishment or pleasing/displeasing a creator.
But perhaps it could be a dangerous game. You ironically are dealing with complete utter mystery then. Your reason here cannot answer for the future.
You cannot tell how the world would react if theism would be destroyed. I know you want a 'new world' with your deepest being and look it as 'better' state of affairs. The big philosophical question is will it be 'better? Will it be 'good' for mankind? With the overthrow comes responsibility. Of course all of this assumes that a-theists are a monolithic bloc as such at the time. But will it have an 'institutional' memory? But then how can it have a memory when it was never really 'organized?' to begin with? Further what are its precepts?
Questions, questions. From one always having the lamp unto my feet. One learns much by walking through the skies of metaphysics around here and trying to understand the working out of some wanted new orders of man within the cosmos.
I think that, if the reasons for having a secular society (and many countries do have this in tandem with a 'believing society' without any really alarming breakdown of social fabric that I am aware of, are persuasive, we could try it. If there were serious problems, I don't doubt the some move back to the way things were would become necessary. I don't see the alarmist argument as very persuasive.
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In fact we are not really approaching religious people at all, only arguing against the unsupported claims of religious belief and the reason why is because religion, with no valid basis for it, influences our lives and would influence it still more if we did not oppose it.
