Pastafarians Remind the Real Motivation of the Modern Atheistic Movement

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Tiassa, Aug 4, 2013.

?

Which most appropriately reflects your outlook? (choose all that apply)

  1. The atheistic movement has no obligation toward intellectual honesty.

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  2. The atheistic movement has no obligation toward basic human dignity.

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  3. The atheistic movement has no obligation toward anything or anyone.

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  4. Other (???)

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Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    Then I guess you can't rightfully say that religion is enforced by the state everywhere

    This also is not an example of religion being enforced by the state
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    By everywhere, I meant all over the non-western world. Although Great Britain still enforces religious education. I mean too many places to list. Yes, my example wasn't religion being enforced by the state, just a problem with religion.
     
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  5. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    then why say ....

    : If we were all oriented towards the same goal i.e., making the world a better place for all, we would scarcely notice our differences be they religious or otherwise.



    .... if you can't advocate even a theoretical approach to the subject that can avoid the same sort of social fracturing you are belittling?


    :shrug:
     
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  7. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    lol

    how provincial ....

    Obviously you don't travel much or stay abreast of international issues outside of CNN headlines

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  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Religion isn't my enemy, or religious people, theocracy is. I don't care what people believe, just as long as they don't try to enforce their religious rules on society, which they too often do. I don't want to destroy religion, nor do I think that's a worthy goal. I certainly wish no harm whatsoever on religious people, who constitute the majority of my friends and family. Militant atheism has no coherent ideology, it's just a collection of people who may agree or disagree on what to do about these issues. Many religions do have as a component, the subversion of secularism. Many churches openly state that the USA is a Christian nation and work towards official prayer in schools.
     
  9. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    Then why attack the rights of religious people to adopt certain dress codes in public?
    Why explain that being familiar with religious ideas is merely a means of getting to know the enemy?

    Then why attempt to erode their social traits?

    lol
    and when such dis/agreement finds political representation (and funding) you not only have coherent ideology but coherent power structures to support it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_the_Militant_Godless
    (at one stage they boasted that 10% of school children in Russia were members)



    many religions also don't have such a component.

    This is why religion has no requirement to be an enemy of secularism.

    Militant socio-political atheism however commonly plays on religion being exclusively portrayed as being such an enemy ... but only because it has the (intrinsic ideological) requirement to focus on religion being the enemy.
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Well we are not responsible for who you know, but among the atheist community, these questions are being asked, and usually answered by some form of humanism. In other words, we should conduct ourselves to produce the greatest benefit to human beings as a society and as individuals. Of course, this problem is not an easy one, since we didn't evolve to live in such large groups. One answer may be biological or chemical. The thing is, all religions do is cobble together some historical rules and announce them fixed for all eternity, so adherents don't even have to think about them. It's another way to evade the question.




    Another strawman. People like Sam Harris, Victor Stenger, and me appreciate the eastern philosophical approach as embodied in Buddhism and Taoism, removed of their supernatural elements. Surely you don't think the supernatural is the only way to understand reality?






    So what. It's weakness is it's strength. (also I don't know who those people are) As soon as you start to write anything down, true morality is subverted, turned into law. Personal liberation is all you need, everything else is just window dressing. I don't know where all your intellectual angst comes from, but the problems of life are simple, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, enjoying the fruits of our labor... Religion makes us worried about stupid things that don't even exist.





    An essential component of bigotry is irrationality, and I would add, irrational hatred for something that is not within people's control. Therefore, you can be bigoted against a certain race or ethnicity, but you can control your religious outlook, and it's fair game for judgement. The thing about bigotry is it's unfair. Hatred of religious ideas is entirely fair, since they do real harm. Unless you think that one can be a bigot against the KKK. It's just another ideology after all, right? I'm in favor of self-empowerment. I'm in favor of ridicule as means of social commentary. Religion doesn't get a free pass. Neither do atheists, some atheists are sexist or racist, and there is much talk about what to do about them.





    I'm personally fine with nihilism, but I realize it's too advanced for most people. They don't want to be empty, they want to fill of their minds with happy fuzzy thoughts. But I agree with the Tao Te Ching:

    Throw away holiness and wisdom,
    and people will be a hundred times happier.
    Throw away morality and justice,
    and people will do the right thing.



    People are individuals, I don't know how they are applying skepticism. I personally try to remain skeptical about everything within reason. It's not unreasonable to find personal meaning in one's life. It's rational to seek happiness and avoid pain.




    I don't hate them, perhaps I pity them. I do want to reform them. I don't think any progress can be made with faith, since faith is the root cause of the problem. I don't think liberal interpretations of religion are much better than fundamentalist ones, worse in some ways, because they make the dangerous seem benign.






    Toronto dad upset he's not allowed to watch daughter's swim class


    TORONTO - When a single dad signed his nine-year-old daughter up for female-only swim lessons, he didn’t realize he — as a man — was going to be banned from watching her practice.

    Chris (who didn’t want his last name published) was shocked when he had the blinds to the viewing area of the Dennis R. Timbrell Recreation Centre pool in Flemingdon Park shut on him and then was told by staffers it was for “religious reasons.”

    “I spoke to a staff member and she told me that it’s because of Muslim women, that we’re not allowed to look at them or whatever,” Chris, 38, told the Toronto Sun Friday. “I don’t think religion has a role to play in a public pool.”
     
  11. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    3,522
    Wow, just wow. A guy wants to humorously protest religions getting special recognition and you want to question the morality and ethics of people who get the joke.

    As for morality and ethics... these religions were created by human beings. Humans are the source of the morals and ethics. Not gods - humans.

    We have rape squads in Egypt that are rooted in one of these religious organizations and you have the nerve to question the morals of someone who makes a point by putting a strainer on his head. Amazing.
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    There Is a Rose Among Thorns

    Says you. While the lack of evidence to support that thesis is not evidence of a lack of truth about it, your point would be better if those answers were available to the public discourse.

    And if you want to be respected for that principle, you ought to try behaving accordingly.

    This is a point well worth its own discussion. You are, indeed, correct. Religion itself, and its diverse manifestations, are symptomatic, not causal. Those who treat religion as causal are making a blatantly obvious mistake. That they don't correct that mistake speaks either to will or competence.

    Yes, and if those rules were fixed for all eternity, religious people wouldn't always be fighting about them.

    Well, here's the thing about your politics: Does the occurrence of deviations in the sample nullify the quantification?

    In politics, we measure the collectives by what they do. Can I find one or two Republicans who disagree with the hardline taken on women's healthcare? Or candidates' dumb remarks about rape? Yeah, actually I can. So guess what? There is no "war on women". Well, at least not by the logic of your point. There is no pervasive misogyny in the GOP right now because we can certainly, somewhere in America, find a deviation.

    Can we find one or two decent, honest Christians in the world? Then your disdain for religion is invalid. Well, at least by the logic of your point.

    I think what cracks me up the most is how this brand of atheism runs around behaving like the religionists it hates.

    Then show it, sometime. Show us what you've learned. Apply it in your arguments.

    What an odd proposition.

    (chortle!)

    Hypocrisy is strength? Hatred is strength?

    I suppose it's easy enough to accept that as the atheistic outlook.

    Well, you could always try paying attention to the discussion.

    But, hey, thanks for making it easy. If you can't be bothered to have a clue what you're talking about, I'll save myself the bother of caring what you have to say.

    Oh, right. Your weakness is your strength.

    You presume "true morality" exists?

    Other than that, yeah, sure.

    Such disdain for the human endeavor might not put you in the same class as Lex Luthor, but it certainly does clear up for us the question of why you're confused.

    Ah, so religion is back to causal?

    Hatred itself is irrational. And, well, your lack of concern for collateral damage—i.e., your fellow human beings—is pretty much indicative. As I said, the modern atheistic movment isn't about any question pertaining to God, but, rather, self-empowerment through bigotry. Thank you for supporting that thesis.

    That would be a very interesting discussion to witness. Too bad the atheists are hiding it in their closets.

    Meanwhile, why are you trying to give these Pastafarians a free pass?

    Well, sure. Thank you for pointing out that the right thing is to take us back to the hunter-gatherer phase.

    I mean, sure, the passage sounds nice and all, but it's a bit more wicked when you take a moment to actually pay attention to what it means.

    A weak excuse. What we don't see is a widespread atheistic application of its skepticism to other myths in society. The state, for instance. Right and wrong. Art.

    Although I do recognize your rejection of the myth of human civilization. (I would hate to be unfair and skip that.)

    That condition, "within reason" is the problem. "Within reason" is sentimental, not actually an appeal to reason or rational argument.

    Looking back to your question—

    "Surely you don't think the supernatural is the only way to understand reality?"

    —I can only say that I await your scientific treatise on the pursuit of meaning in one's life.

    Are you certain? Is that an absolute statement?

    You don't hate religious people? Yeah, I believe you. Because you said so. And, well, it's perfectly reasonable to ignore your behavioral history about this subject in order to accept your present declaration.

    Right? I mean, that's the reasonable thing. Right? To dismiss your observable behavior in order to accept an unsupported claim to the opposite?

    When someone like you, who demonstrates such a fierce disdain for human sympathy, starts speaking of "reform", there's a reason why others hear "pogrom".

    So, yes, we are officially, unquestionably back to religion being causal.

    Until you get past your insistence that religion is causal, you will never be able to understand how the "simple" problems—"food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, enjoying the fruits of our labor..."—shape religious outcomes.

    Thank you. Next time, represent your point honestly. This was about "female only". I'm pretty sure I don't get to go down to Curves and ogle the women all day. As a matter of fact, I've heard some masculinist groups complaining about that.

    But, hey. If you want to get rid of gender divisions, fine. We have a brouhaha going on up here about whether pre-op transsexuals should be allowed to use women's locker rooms when children are present. We can settle that one easily enough by simply having little girls and old men change clothes in the same room.

    May not be wise, but, hey, if a few little girls or boys get molested, we can chalk it up to being fair, and pat ourselves on the back.

    Female-only reservations are not specifically about religion.

    And it should be noted that the community center did, in fact, agree that they should be more clear about what female-only means. Reminds me of that bit about people needing a written warning that coffee is hot.

    Funny thing about the McDonald's thing, though, is that it wasn't really about the fact that the coffee was hot, but that it was improperly prepared, resulting in severe burns. Still, though, people were willing to invoke Argumentum ad Toothpick, which, as silly as it is, provides some degree of contrast for the Canadian consideration: What part of "female-only" is confusing?

    I mean, sure, you can say that such sex divisions are inappropriate; that's a long discussion society probably needs to have. But, in the meantime, I'm hardly sympathetic to a guy whose distress results from his own idiocy.

    You've had more than your three strikes. Sit down, Waldo.

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    • • •​

    There are a lot of people who get the Sandbox Joke, too. It's only the ones who think it's true whose morality and ethics fall into question.

    And, you know, for someone who views the very human experience as shit, you probably shouldn't expect your morals and ethics to rate well in any functional context.

    I'm certain you think there is a point to reminding the obvious. Please feel free to let us know what that point is supposed to be.

    Unless you're willing to offer a testable thesis explaining how we can solve the problems of hatred in human society by pouring more hatred onto the fires, well, yeah, actually I do have the nerve to question the morals of a hatemonger who just pulled off a con job in order to achieve state endorsement of bigotry.

    And as to those who argue that religion is causal and not symptomatic, well, there really isn't much to their argument.

    • • •​

    It will allow opportunities for certain forward progress.

    The animosity my atheist neighbors show is much akin to a grim joke about job security. Christian moralists do this; they're the ones that dragged homosexuality front and center in the '90s, and now that they are unquestionably losing the culture war they started, they're already moving onto things like bestialism and polygamy. If polygamy ever becomes legal in the United States, it will be because our moralist neighbors demanded everyone stop and think about polygamy again.

    I think of alleged feminist Lindy West, who establishes this sort of job security by making a point of behaving like some right-wing myth of the feminazi. I mean, there's nothing like making a problem worse to ensure that it's still waiting for you tomorrow morning.

    The idea of an atheist is just another idea. But it is certainly contextualized by relevant issues of its times. In the context of the old prohibition against atheists serving in public office, or the U.S. Air Force's evangelical Christian cultism, well, duh, of course I'm onboard with equal protection under the law.

    The problem arises when it goes beyond this. The most common atheistic critiques of theism are no less inflexible than what they complain about. Indeed, one can reasonably argue that atheistic rigidity is even more apparent than theistic.

    For instance, your reflection on apathy (apathism?) is, as I see it, a compelling description touching diverse aspects of your life.

    Let us apply our neighbor Gmilam's approach: It's shit.

    This isn't helpful. Such attitudes do nothing to reconcile the differences between people. Rather than elevating the discourse, and bettering the human endeavor, they're looking to drag the whole thing down into the gutter where the least scrupulous religionists play.

    And that's fine. That's their decision. For the rest of us, we can simply wait until evangelical atheists find a reasonably competent voice. Until then, well, as Gmilam suggests, all they have is shit. And, hey, that works well enough. They can sit at the kids table with Dawkins and Dobson and Hitchens as long as they want. Responsible academia, debate, and faith will survive.

    The thing is that there is bad produce in any harvest. This does not define the harvest unless the blight is significant.

    A problem I've long had with religious people is that they cling to a certain common identity—i.e., corpus Christi—while overlooking certain, vital differences. And, it's true that you can point to rivalries between Catholics and Baptists, as such, but a local story from the 1990s will, hopefully, illustrate my point.

    Are Christians advocates of child sexual abuse? Setting aside overworn jokes about the Catholic hierarchy, we might consider the case of a preacher from the Seattle area. The pastor of a megachurch, his congregation was horrified when a local newspaper ran a story alleging that he had been arrested in Florida for sexually accosting a young boy in the restroom at Disney World. The outrage among local Christians was overwhelming: How dare the newspaper report on this! If it was real, there would be a record! The record emerged. Local Christians were outraged: How dare the newspaper report this! If it really happened, and the evidence is real, why wasn't he prosecuted? Evidence of a cover-up emerged. How dare the newspaper report this! Can't you see this is a family issue? Dude! He got caught trying to molest a little boy! It can't possibly be that all these outraged Christians are actually supporting his attempt to molest a child. But that's what they did. This wasn't just his congregation screaming at the P-I. This was regional outrage at a newspaper's invasion of a pious, religious man's private life. Whatever divisions might exist between Catholic and Baptist, Lutheran and Missouri Synod Lutheran, or whatever, diverse Christians came together under the banner of the corpus Christi in order to defend one of their own by asserting that the public had no right to know that this man, who leads a congregation of thousands, with regular access to children, was arrested for attempted child molestation. The damnedest thing, I tells ya.​

    Now, sure, being a Sievehead is not morally comparable to child molestation, but I do find it interesting how the identity politic of atheism transcends the advertised objectivity, skepticism, and rational thought.

    I don't disagree. But that doesn't mean two wrongs make a right.

    To wit, should we go get ourselves some "Niggers Should Hang" t-shirts?

    Here's one: The Gay Fray should already be over, except for Christian supremacism. My religious outlook has no objection to homosexuals getting married at all. Prohibitions against same-sex marriage violate my First Amendment right to free religion.

    We might note that the argument doesn't fly. Well, at least not in the United States. I wonder if it ever worked in the Czech Republic?

    In the end, what it comes down to—or so says me—is what people want. And as we see in our atheist neighbors here at Sciforums, Messrs. Nový and Alm in Europe, and the scathing vice of writers like Dawkins and Hitchens is that it's not really about equality or justice or whatever. It's about empowering and justifying hatred.

    And of course that's their right. Just like it's my right to disdain such bigotry.

    But if ... if, if, if ... this is really about justice and equality and making the world a better place, they will find better progress toward such goals if they overcome this disabling vice.

    • • •​

    Nice dodge.

    If it's too much to ask that you actually pay attention to what you're responding to, just say so.

    Well, it was a nice try.

    A nickel's worth of free advice: Rubber-glue arguments only work if there is a reasonable basis.

    In other words, one should not complain about the application of the principle if one is unwilling to object to the principle itself.

    Well, what would you call them? An organization? Fine. They're no more a church or religion, though, than the Seattle Police Department, and it's an open question which one has the lesser integrity.

    Well, thank you for the clarification.

    As for official establishment of religion, neither is that a surprise from theists.

    Here's the [trickypart]: I would be saying that if I accepted the proposition.

    Sorry if that confuses you.

    [return]

    As I used to tell the Christians around here: Your rules. Don't complain when people play along.

    [gosub trickypart]

    [end]
     
  13. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    That sounds like an earthy way of saying that regardless of whether an idea is traditional or avant-garde, it still stands or falls on its merits. That's a sound view in my opinion. There's also a clear implication that the ideas in question have no merits. That's certainly debatable. So the best response is probably to try to give persuasive reasons why the ideas in question, whether they are old or new, do have merit.

    I personally have the greatest respect for the Buddhist monastic sangha and by extension, for their distinctive dress. But I don't see how they are threatened by somebody who wants to wear a sieve on his head. I don't perceive the threat even if somebody thinks that the monks and their tradition are "shit". (I have no reason to believe that Mr. Novy thinks that, I'm just saying that it wouldn't matter a whole lot if he did.)

    There you go again with the "modern atheist movement" talk. I'm an atheist, or at least I am in some of my moods. (I'm an agnostic in others.) The positions that I take on these issues are my own, chosen for my own reasons. (Those reasons aren't secret and I'm happy to discuss them.) Despite my having been an atheist for all of my life, since I was a small child, I've never received any memos from anyone about the official atheist platform on anything. I'll even go further and say that I don't believe that there is any official atheist platform on anything.

    Atheism is simply a broad general term for those who don't believe in the literal existence of God (however that's defined). It isn't a coherent organization. (Organizing atheists is like herding cats.) It doesn't have any leadership or positions of authority. It's hard to even imagine atheism as a 'movement', except in the vaguest sense.

    Divine command ethics are problematic by their nature. Here's a traditional argument: Does God command things because they are good, or are things good because God commands them? If something is good simply because God commands it, then the good is merely the expression of will and dedication to good becomes obedience to authority. But if we choose the other alternative, and argue that God commands things because they are good, then we've adopted a strong moral-realist position in which the divine will becomes superfluous. (This is a paraphrase of Plato's ancient 'Euthyphro problem'.)

    Metaethics (the study of the philosophical foundations of ethics) is still an active area of philosophical discussion and debate. All kinds of approaches have been suggested. The most popular today are probably the naturalistic theories. These look to nature in order to ground ethics, instead of to religion. Naturalistic theories range from classical utilitarianism to more sophisticated (in my opinion) psychological theories of social-instincts. We also see a variety of forms of virtue ethics, theories that play down the idea of fixed moral rules, and emphasize instead behaviors that maximize desirable psychological traits.

    But the thing is, in real life, people's sense of right and wrong, of what's fair and not fair, isn't really dependent on any metaethical theory, or on any religious doctrine for that matter. It's something that most people feel kind of intuitively. (That's what the theories of social instincts seek to explain.) So again in real life, your nihilistic situation might not really arise. People will retain their consciences, and have some intuitive sense of right and wrong, regardless of what their religion happens to be or the strength of their faith in it. If they don't possess a conscience, if they are basically sociopaths in other words, then no amount of philosophical theorizing is likely to help them very much.

    Again, I don't believe that your "movement" even exists. I suspect that it's largely a figment of your imagination.

    Certainly there are all kinds of atheist philosophers out there. Some of them are working in ethics, some in other areas of the subject. But I don't think that they all share any single approach or are working to further any agenda. In many cases, they don't even know who of their colleagues is and isn't a fellow atheist. I don't think that most of them care about that a whole lot either.

    You keep repeating that thing over and over. Presumably you think that it's important and that everyone should be drawing certain conclusions from it. What conclusions are those? What is it that you want other people to think?

    That seems to assume that not only religion, but explicitly theistic religion, is a necessary condition for the existence of morality, ethics and even the human psyche. That's a questionable proposition at best. (What are we to make of Buddhist family of traditions, with some of the most highly developed ethico-psychological ideas on earth, that aren't dependent in any way on theistic belief?)

    And where does this line of argument leave your own "apathy"? If as you suggest, theistic belief is crucial for the avoidance of nihilism and for the continued survival of ethics, morality and the human psyche, then how can you simultaneously tell us that the existence of God doesn't matter to you?
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2013
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    (Something, Something, Burt Ward)

    It's also a view that reduces the human experiences involved to shit.

    It should not matter whether one's boundaries are religious or otherwise.

    When I was seventeen, my girlfriend was trapped in the unimaginable nightmare of prosecuting her own father for rape.

    Where to begin?

    The question of right and wrong as applies to prosecuting one's own father? What difference does it make if the basis of that anguish is derived from religious or secular psychological processes?

    The question of surviving in a culture that treats rape survivors as sluts? What does it matter if the basis of that anguish is derived from religious or secular psychological processes?

    The question of the girl weeping on your shoulder, apologizing that she wasn't a virgin when you were first together? What the hell does it matter if the basis of that anguish is derived from religious or secular psychological processes?

    Human beings are not static things. They are alive. If I think a piece of art is ugly, the painting isn't going to weep.

    But when telling people their life experiences, their pain and anguish, their moments of triumph, of fear, of safety and love, are shit?

    If you are incapable of recognizing the connection between what people believe and how they feel? Seriously, what is there to say?

    And then there are the billions of non-Buddhists whose faith demands headgear.

    And it's not a matter of threat. It is a matter of willful cruelty.

    Don't waste your time with such amateurish sleights.

    Yes, you are representative of atheists, aren't you? After all, if we take your argument to be anything remotely definitive, we must ignore the fact of the American Atheists and Pastafarians. Thre is also the Secular Coalition for America, the National Atheist Party, the American Humanist Association ("Good Without a God"), Enlgihten the Vote, Freeedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State; and that's just a short list from the U.S.

    To deny that there is a modern atheist movement is an absurd rejection of fact.

    Indeed, freethinker Don Lacey acknowledges the rising movement:

    The subject of the meeting was, “Should Atheists be organizing politically?” The organizer is Nancy and she kicked off the discussion. Apparently, there is a new political party called the National Atheist Party. Nancy wanted to find out from those attending if it is a good idea to have an Atheist political party. Gregg, an occasional contributor to this blog, has been checking into it and was familiar with the organization. Most of us at the meeting were not very familiar with the specifics which is why the question was posed to be more general than, “What do you think of the National Atheist Party?”

    After the requisite discussions about the meaning of Atheism, a frequently debated question in our group, we started kicking around the positive and negatives of organizing Atheists politically. There were some fundamental discussions such as:

    • Would you vote for a poorly qualified candidate simply because he or she is an Atheist?

    • What would we feel about a “National Christian Party?”

    • Are we defined by our Atheism?

    • Is there anything wrong with an elected representative taking governing guidance from an invisible entity?​

    As I mentioned earlier, we are a rather diverse group. We tend to think independently and the discussions were lively. Yet, as heated as the discussions were, everyone left the meeting with the full intention of returning in two weeks. Many of the discussions were continued in the parking lot. No one stomped off and we continued an ad hoc meeting with respect and camaraderie. Amazing!

    Of course, we should also note that the problem, in Lacey's view, is not the potential of dogmatic ossification, but the problems presented by diversity:

    The question of Atheism is very narrow and Atheists are all over the map politically. The difficulty becomes apparent as soon as the political party starts building a platform. Each plank that doesn’t relate specifically to the Atheist question will not be universally accepted and cause minor divisions. In some cases, people will reject the party entirely if it takes a controversial position and all positions other than the “god” question are controversial in the Atheist community.

    So, yeah. Something about facts goes here.

    First, atheists don't get to hide behind that bland, "broad general term" anymore. As long as this was about guarding against religious tyranny, that sort of rhetoric worked. But it hasn't been that for a while, now. As the common bond between atheists—i.e., that "broad general term"—becomes the focal point of political organizing and advocacy, the movement rises.

    Not all black people are part of the Black Liberation Theology movement. Not all women are part of the feminist movement. Not all atheists are part of the atheist movement.

    These three paragraphs really are worthy of ridicule. Where to start?

    Well, in the first place, you have done what every atheist I've ever known who faced this question has done. And it really is quite the graceless dodge.

    Take our neighbor who wants to convert people to atheism. I can put this most important key in his hand with reasonable unfortunate assurance that he will have no idea what to do with it.

    The Euthyphro dilemma is easily answered in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the vaunted objectivity and rationalism of the atheist should easily be able to figure it out. (Indeed, there are hints in a couple of posts about the apathetic approach to God. You're smart, right? Figure it out.)

    (No, really ... it's quite simple.)

    (It's not like I'm asking you to explain the Tawasin, or unravel the web connecting Muhammad to the Aenid; Jaroslav Stetkevych has done a fine enough job on that count. This is basic theology according to logical constrictions.)

    Meanwhile, metaethics is as metaethics does, and while we might thank you for the concise review, it still doesn't answer the question.

    But in real life, right and wrong is not simply left to intuition. People refine and comprehend that intuition. A religious person looks to a holy scripture to reveal the form and develop their comprehension of that intuition.

    Myself? Well, the canon runs the gamut, but even a single sentence from a work of fiction has resounding implications: Nothing ever begins.

    If you actually read what follows, the statement turns out to be accurate.

    Nothing ever begins.
    .....There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.
    .....The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.
    .....Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.
    .....Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden among them is a filigree that will, with time, become a world.


    —Clive Barker

    When I inject the proposition that "nothing ever begins" into a broader consideration of ethics, morality, justice, history, psychology, the human endeavor in general ....

    When I inject the proposition, I can always point to where I got it and tell people what it means.

    Emma Goldman, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Norman O. Brown, Ranier Maria Rilke, Jim Henson, Shel Silverstein, Ray Bradbury, Jack Cady, Roger Waters, Albert Camus ... it really is a broad canon, and each of these and more have contributed something to my understanding of the world around me.

    For a theist to abandon faith and become an atheist, this vacuum previously occupied by moral structure must be filled. In my experience, this proposition seems to confuse atheists, which in turn only reminds me why I won't call myself an atheist. Well, these days, it's because I've become an apathist, but that never would have happened without the piss-poor examples of what counts for atheistic integrity I've observed and encountered distally, proximally, and intimately, for over twenty years. The consistency must necssarily count for something, but in the end, the more important thing is to find a way to reconnect cynical atheists to the human endeavor.

    Additionally, as noted, you don't need to imagine atheism as a movement; you can observe it.

    The reason atheistic skepticism and objectivity does not generally lead to nihilism is that it is selectively applied according to individual aesthetics.

    The principle exists and operates without any integrity unto itself, by the willful choice of he or she who holds it.

    Denial as an ego defense is one of the easiest and most basic to slip into. What I don't understand here is why you're in ego defense about the idea that many of your fellow atheists are organizing into a political movement.

    Like I said, you don't have to imagine it; you can observe it.

    And while that certainly applies to some, the fact of atheistic evangelical advocacy is apparent.

    This is the heart of why Nový's action is hateful. If you can't see the contradiction in the argument, I can't simplify it much more to accomodate your faculties.

    Additionally, it was repeated in the example you quote because it is the specific answer to a direct and specific question. Please do try to pay attention.

    In terms of evolution, the part of our brain that devises fantasies and makes them appealing to our sense of reality is not extraneous. While we can be quite certain that televangelism, for instance, is not its functional purpose, it exists for a reason.

    And here the question of religion as cause or symptom is vital. If, as some insist, it is causal, then the elimination of religion should eliminate all strife in the world.

    That, however, will require some manner of lobotomization, or a widespread evolutionary adaptation that sees that part of the brain deactivated. If you stamp out every religion in existence today, humans will invent another one.

    Indeed, you can watch some try. The X-Files era saw a rise in EBE-Genesis theories, for instance. Takes God out of the equation, leaves a superior creative force in place.

    That they've found other uses for that part of their brain.

    Unless, of course, you are prepared to assert that Buddhists have no creative, subjective faculties.

    I mean, really, you can file that one under, "Duh".

    It's a reflection of both what is real and what I would rather.

    Indeed, if atheism is the intellecutal force its advocates often try to depict it as, apathism shouldn't be difficult to figure out. Indeed, it should be glaringly obvious. After all, it is a fundamental problem affecting Christian and Muslim faith. It kind of stands out like the sun in the sky on a clear summer noon.

    In the end, it's the difference between scholarship and politics. Scholarship will do much to advance atheistic politics, but so far the scholarship dominating the atheistic political discourse isn't really scholarship.

    But in the end, the solution is to make God irrelevant. And if you can answer Euthyphro, you can figure out what the preceding sentence means.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Lacey, Don. "Atheists should not be organizing as a political party". FreeThought Arizona. October 5, 2012. TusconCitizen.com. August 7, 2013. http://tucsoncitizen.com/freethough...hould-not-be-organizing-as-a-political-party/

    Barker, Clive. Weaveworld. New York: Poseidon, 1987.
     
  15. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    @ spidergoat

    I find sometimes, in reading your opinions on ppl who are religious or have faith in "a god," that you subtly infer that if we dismantled all religions or if they simply didn't exist, we would live in some type of utopia. You post above that you feel faith is the problem. Faith is not the problem in the world. People who make wrong choices are the problem. For every "bad" religious person you can name or think of, there is a "good" one in its place. Bad and good being terms used for simplicity.

    I'm not a fan of organized religion. I believe ALL religions should stay the heck out of public policy and our government. I see the ills of what religion does to a country when it infiltrates it. I understand your frustrations but I'm just saying that when I read your posts, you seem to be very regimented into thinking all the ills of the world would greatly diminish if religion somehow disappeared. You may not intend that sentiment, but that's how it seems. If you do feel that, how are you any different from some "radical Christians" who think the world would be better off if everyone were Christian? Such Christians do exist and their thinking is flawed.

    People make choices. The choice to carry out good or bad deeds is based on reasoning or lack thereof. Our society has a number of ills that need ironing out but I don't blame someone's religious slant on why that person chose bad actions.

    You are entitled to plod along in life blaming the religious for most of the problems in the world, but that thinking doesn't help anyone. It doesn't unite anyone. And if you feel humanity should do its best to seek the good for all, then that starts with each of us. It's easy to pontificate and point a critical finger outward to someone else; actions are harder to do.

    @ Tiassa...I enjoy your writing so much; it is raw and always gets me to think. And your humor is delightfully witty and refreshing.

    Just my two cents on all that FWIW.
     
  16. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    My point was that some Czech guy wearing a sieve on his head, and more significantly, winning for other Czechs the right to wear whatever kind of religious headgear they like in their ID photos as long as it doesn't obscure their faces (whether I happen to respect its significance or not - and I don't have much interest in so-called 'pastafarianism'), doesn't threaten the significance of the kinds of religious costume that I do respect.

    Cruelty how?

    It may or may not suggest that Mr. Novy's personal opinion is that some other religions' distinctive headgear is ridiculous. But even if that was his intention, who is being hurt by his wearing clothing that might symbolize that view? Presumably nobody else is wearing their own distinctive religious costume simply to please him, so why should they even care what he thinks? They should have more confidence in what their costume means in their tradition and in why they choose to wear it themselves.

    It was Mr. Novy, not me. But amateurish or not, his testing the rules did win a valuable clarification of the religious-dress provisions by the Czech authorities. It isn't just members of a small set of favored religious communities that that have the choice whether or not to wear distinctive religious dress in their ID photos. It's all Czechs. That's a good change in my opinion.

    As much as anyone else who doesn't believe in the literal existence of God, I guess. And that was my point.

    Why would anyone have to do that? I don't deny the existence of the American Atheists. (The so-called 'pastafarians' look to me more like a fashion-statement than an organization.) What I would question is whether either of them actually speak for atheists as a whole, or whether their views represent any kind of authoritative atheist doctrine.

    All kinds of organizations exist that are organized around atheism or secularism. (Atheism and secularism aren't the same thing and many secularists aren't atheists.) I'm just suggesting that these kind of groups speak for themselves and not for everyone else who happens to not believe in the existence of God. I'm also suggesting that these kind of groups don't all speak with the same voice or promote the same line.

    In other words, there isn't any atheist pope or politburo that establishes an official atheist agenda and defines orthodox atheist doctrine. I think that it's a mistake to lump atheists together into a mass "movement" and then to assume that views expressed by selected individual atheists or by small groups of them are somehow representative of the collective thinking of atheists as a whole.

    Or perhaps more accurately, a host of small groups, some of which might qualify as would-be 'movements', all speaking with their own diverse and often dischordant voices. While the great majority of atheists aren't members of any of these groups and are oftentimes unaware that they even exist.
     
  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    Something About Low-Hanging Fruit

    So would you agree with the following statement:

    The point is that some guy wearing a "Niggers Should Hang" t-shirt with the Sandbox Joke printed on the back doesn't threaten the significance of the skin colors one does respect.​

    Yes? No?

    It's a dishonest joke intended to denigrate billions of people.

    What an interesting straw man.

    Actually, you are the one who changed the question of cruelty and denigration into one of "threat". And you are the one who focused on Buddhists instead of acknowledging the fact of Muslims, Sikhs, and others whose faith demands headdress.

    It is the reduction of billions of people's life experiences to a practical joke. The Czech government has given its imprimateur to hate speech.

    Of course, we can see why this is good news to you, since you wish to be the arbiter of who deserves respect.

    I'm sure your atheistic neighbors will thank you for that caricature of atheists as ignorant, irrational, dishonest, bigoted cowards.

    What is the obligation of a "movement" to have an authoritative doctrine?

    What is the authoritative doctrine of the Occupy movement?

    What is the authoritative doctrine of feminism?

    Why are you trying to carve out a special exception for atheists?

    Ah, yes. Add "apathetic" to the caricature.

    Although sloth, I admit, is a new one. There is no atheistic movement because atheists are intellectually lazy?

    Fine with me. If you intend to represent atheism that way, well, it's an affirmation of what I've been observing and trying to figure out for twenty years.

    Meanwhile, has that atheistic sloth and ignorance helped you find the obvious solution to Euthyphro?

    C'mon ... show off that atheistic intellectual superiority.

    And this one is easy, too.

    If atheists weren't so busy refusing religious doctrine, and actually had a half-whit's worth of respect for their religious neighbors, they might notice the apples that keep dropping on their heads.

    (And unlike gravity, there's no math required this solution.)
     
  18. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    My point about the Communists was that atheism isn't a panacea. Without religion, we are still left with the rest of the world's problems. Atheism is only the beginning of waking up and dealing with the world realistically. This isn't just a rehearsal for our real eternal lives, this is the only life you will ever get. The world wasn't made just for us with a creamy nougat center of petroleum because God wants us to have cheap energy. Things like global warming do matter because the end times are millions of years distant, when our sun burns out. If we depend on reason rather than faith, our decisions will be better. I don't think it's realistic that everyone will embrace atheism, or even think that reason leads to atheism, but it does seem that many people are leaving their faith, and that's a positive thing. Wrong choices are often based on religion. Religion makes otherwise good people do bad things. If there are bad religious people and good religious people, then religion is identical to atheism in promoting morality, it isn't superior.
     
  20. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    I can appreciate (better) where you are coming from now; I don't disagree with much of it.
    Thanks!
     
  21. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    It's all public. You can start on freethoughtblogs, maybe here.
    I think I do, it's like a tough love thing. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Religious people often see the light after analyzing their beliefs.
    In the beginning, religions were a rational way of interpreting the data, and thus simply products (a symptom) of living in a world with sparse knowledge of how it works. These days, it has become the problem, it's often the cause of rejecting what we have learned about the world using science, because it treats faith (the absolute belief in things without evidence) as a virtue.
    Different sets of eternal rules compete with each other for domination. Within each of those differing sects, it's rules are pronounced objective, but the disagreements prove that's a lie. So, the morality of the religious is at least identical to that of the atheist, each has to make personal choices about what is moral.
    Not really. Religion corrupts even decent honest Christians. I know some of them, fine people who help the poor and wouldn't hurt a fly, but yet disrespect gays cause it's in the Bible. Or waste energy because their preachers told them the end times are just around the corner...
    I don't have a problem with evangelizing, or being enthusiastic about a cause. My complaints apply to the most mainstream of religious adherents of all flavors, I'm not singling out the crazy person who says God told them to murder their children.
    Yes, because atheism doesn't have a unified ideology. There is a wide divergence of opinion. Everyone makes up their own mind. This can result in complaints such as yours, which seek to apply a stereotype to all "new atheists", as bigoted hatemongers. Perhaps some of them are, most are not. Do I make the same mistake in mischaracterizing theists? No, I realize most of them are fine people who's belief system leads them to make bad choices, for no good reason.
    Yes, true morality is being guided by one's common humanness, by empathy, compassion, not following bronze age guidelines about pissing off a cosmic father figure.
    Hatred is not irrational, and I don't think by promoting atheism I'm hurting anyone, quite the opposite. Again, your definition of bigotry is unique, and quite absurd. If we can be bigoted against an ideology, what doesn't that apply to? Is it bigoted to dislike bigots like neo-Nazis and homophobes?
    They aren't. It's quite an active group. But I can't be responsible for your intellectual laziness. In the 21st century, there is no excuse for not finding out about it (if you are so curious).
    I guess I'm assuming this is a form of activism, but for all I know this guy could be a real believer, which means he's not an atheist.
    How would you know? There is widespread attention to issues of state power and it's relation to religion. Hitchens often addressed the issue of art and architecture appreciation, since much of it is religious in nature.
    I don't think it's sentimental. It's possible to be hyperskeptical to the point of absurdity.
    I realize a great deal of religious thought is devoted to this sort of issue, but the supernatural isn't a necessary component. We can see this in non-theistic religions that only require tentative faith in something, like an experiment. Atheism isn't scientism, another common misconception.
    No. Sometimes the right thing to do involves pain. I'm not making up rules here (apparent weakness as a strength). But I do think that Hedonism is a reasonable approach to life. Limiting one's pleasure in the pursuit of the fantasy of heaven is not rational.
    I guess I do hate some religious people, because they are assholes, but generally not.
    Right, because even mild criticism of religion in our society evokes images of foreignness, (specifically Russian), a legacy perhaps of the cold war. I don't know how you could think I'm unsympathetic. I wouldn't coddle a heroin addict by telling them heroin is a fine thing to do, everyone has their faults after all, no big deal. I would express my love for them by pointing to a better way.
    Perhaps they do shape religion, I know that monotheism is tied to the rise of agriculture. But that doesn't make religion any more of a rational choice. Christianity specifically endorses the political model of Monarchy, which leads to inequality in society, which leads to insecurity, which lead people to religious institutions which provide mental security, it's a vicious cycle. I believe religion, specifically faith, is the root cause of many problems, both individually and with society, I'm not going to get past that.
     
  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    It's usually best to respond to other people's ideas thoughtfully, persuasively and well.

    In an earlier post you wrote this:

    "There is a saying among religious folk that without God there is no morality... for the religious individual, God becomes the linchpin for proper conduct in society. Very well, convert the religious person away from their faith. The question remains: How does one organize their moral and ethical outlook for proper conduct in society?

    It's not so much that atheistic answers are unsatisfactory. Ten years later, I still have yet to encounter an atheist who will admit to understanding the question."

    While not particularly relevant to the issue of Mr. Novy and his head-sieve, it was an interesting question and a bit of an in-your-face challenge. So I replied to it.

    My first point was that divine-command ethics aren't without their problems. That was noted in ancient times. In Plato's dialogue the 'Euthyphro', Euthyphro starts by insisting (in effect) that good acts are good because they are commanded by the gods. Socrates questions that idea and during the course of the resulting back and forth, the argument emerges that if the only thing good about a 'good' act is that the gods command it, the whole idea of good, of being good and of honoring the good, collapses into mere exercise of will and submission to authority.

    Put another way, just because God commands something, it's still possible for beings like us to question whether or not what was commanded is indeed morally good. And more to the point, it's certainly possible for us to ask whether human beings ought morally to follow the command. That question is both relevant and important in cases like that recounted in the Old Testament's '1Samuel', where the Hebrew God is portrayed as demanding that the Hebrews commit what we today would condemn as genocide, ordering his people to exterminate their Canaanite enemies - men, women and children, and even slaughtering all of their enemies' animals - erasing entire peoples from the earth. It's certainly possible for us to question whether that particular divine command was good, regardless of the fact that a canonical text portrays it as coming direct from God himself. Not only is it possible to question it, I'd say that it's morally incumbent on us that we do so. Ethics needs to be more profound than merely following orders unquestioningly. (That's scarily reminiscent of the 'Fuhrer-prinzep'.)

    But (returning to the argument of the Euthyphro), if the gods' commands are good, not merely because gods command them, but because what they command is in itself good, then good would seem to be good whether a god commands it or not. The command doesn't really add a whole lot to the moral realism that's already there.

    So either way, linking goodness to the divine command is problematic.

    The theological literature is filled with divine-command theorists' attempts to respond to it. But take that up with Plato, not with me. My only point there was to suggest that divine-command ethics aren't without their problems.

    My intention there was to suggest that contemporary metaethics tends to be naturalistic, as opposed to explicitly religious. It generally isn't dependent on acceptance of particular supposed religious revelations or theological doctrines. There are a whole variety of different naturalistic approaches, some more plausible than others. The relevance to your earlier question is that if ethics is indeed fundamentally non-theistic at its core, then a religious person abandoning his or her theistic faith won't necessarily be abandoning good and evil, and all of the rest of ethics, along with it.

    In my opinion, the human conscience is at the heart of it.

    But sure, there are also parental teachings, social pressure, government laws and authorities, cultural traditions and all kinds of stuff. There's a wide variety of social mores and practices out there. The common core of human social instinct does tend to keep us on the same page to some extent though. That's probably why variants on the 'golden rule' tend to pop up all over. Most people have an innate sense of fairness and reciprocity. (That doesn't mean that it isn't routinely violated, but that's another story.)

    Assuming that the person's religion has written scriptures. Many religions don't. But yes, I do agree with you that religion can and does play an important role at times in structuring moral ideas in many people's lives. Having said that, I also have to say that I'm not convinced that morality comes to us from a theistic God or that belief in such a God is necessary in order for morality (and human society) to survive.

    I don't think that most theists center all of their everyday ethics on their belief in God. When they are at work, on the road, at a restaurant or a ball-game, they go with some combination of habit, conformity to social pressure and listening to the voice of their consciences. Their religious ideas typically enter into their thinking when particular religiously-charged problem situations arise. That's when they ask themselves 'what would the Lord have me do here?'

    So you're saying that if atheists pursued the implications of their atheism fully and completely, their lives (and perhaps human society) would fall apart? My reply to that is to say that your underlying idea that ethics, society and the human psyche are somehow necessarily dependent on belief in the existence of God really needs justification. I don't find it the least bit credible.

    That why I pointed out the example of the Buddhists. Here's a family of traditions that includes both highly sophisticated ethics and what we might call spiritual psychology, all things that you seem to think are dependent on theism. But the Buddhists still manage to do it without centering on the person of any monotheistic-style God. The Jains are another example of the same phenomenon.

    I'll finish this post by agreeing with you on that. My opinion is that human religiosity isn't just reducible to foolishness and superstition. I think that religiosity (in the broadest sense) emerges far deeper in the human psyche than that. My speculation is that it arises as kind of a byproduct of other human cognitive traits.

    But religiosity in the broad sense isn't synonymous with theism in the Middle Eastern 'abrahamist' sense. (I'd include many things in our contemporary world, ranging from UFO belief to Marxism, under the wide umbrella of religiosity, as what I think of as 'quasi-religions'.) It's entirely possible to display many elements of religiosity in one's psychology, without having to believe in the existence of a figure like Yahweh or Allah. Again, the Buddhists would be a textbook example of that. Put another way, it doesn't seem to be impossible to be a profoundly religious atheist. There are no end of them out there. (I might even be one myself.)
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    Never Knows Best: Better is Worse

    Oh, I enjoy Pharyngula, but much like I don't pretend The Rachel Maddow Show is "news" (it's "infotainment"), I don't pretend Myers' blog is anything more than a propaganda device.

    Of course you think you do. Observation, however, suggests otherwise.

    And as long as you consider religion causal, you're not working toward a solution, but making sure you always have something to complain about.

    Once upon a time, atheists frequently argued that morality was an illusion because it is subjective.

    I've never figured out why they gave up on that line, but the result seems to be one of convenience. That is to say, they're stooping to the gutter and trying to pretend that they're elevating the discourse.

    Any ideology can corrupt even decent, honest adherents. Singling out religion only reinforces the appearance of willful inconsistency, customized principles designed not for a better world, but personal ambition.

    As I watch atheists and their sympathizers in this community frantically compartmentalize in order to dodge the implications of their rhetoric and behavior, the friction grows between respecting "atheism" and the obligation to tolerate "atheists".

    Well, I disagree with your fundamental answer that hypocrisy and hatred are strength. To the other, there is no unified ideology in Christianity; there is a wide divergence of opinion, and everyone makes up their own mind.

    The problem arises, then, that you are defending an idea of privilege.

    Still, however, diversity of opinion among atheists in general does not excuse the hypocrisy and hatred of any one atheist. And if the individual really wants to hide behind a collective identity label, then, yes, the problem of hypocrisy and hatred will be laid upon the individual by going through the shield.

    This is not some process reserved to atheists. Any time one hides behind the collective label this tension arises. And if the answer from the collective is that one must go through them, first, well, they ought not complain when they get bulldozed.

    As I have explained to religious folks before, and even here at Sciforums, and as I noted last night in this discussion, when you defend the poor behavior of an individual based on the fact of common identity label, you throw your lot in with the poor behavior. Since it's a long post, though, I will excerpt that section here:

    Are Christians advocates of child sexual abuse? Setting aside overworn jokes about the Catholic hierarchy, we might consider the case of a preacher from the Seattle area. The pastor of a megachurch, his congregation was horrified when a local newspaper ran a story alleging that he had been arrested in Florida for sexually accosting a young boy in the restroom at Disney World. The outrage among local Christians was overwhelming: How dare the newspaper report on this! If it was real, there would be a record! The record emerged. Local Christians were outraged: How dare the newspaper report this! If it really happened, and the evidence is real, why wasn't he prosecuted? Evidence of a cover-up emerged. How dare the newspaper report this! Can't you see this is a family issue? Dude! He got caught trying to molest a little boy! It can't possibly be that all these outraged Christians are actually supporting his attempt to molest a child. But that's what they did. This wasn't just his congregation screaming at the P-I. This was regional outrage at a newspaper's invasion of a pious, religious man's private life. Whatever divisions might exist between Catholic and Baptist, Lutheran and Missouri Synod Lutheran, or whatever, diverse Christians came together under the banner of the corpus Christi in order to defend one of their own by asserting that the public had no right to know that this man, who leads a congregation of thousands, with regular access to children, was arrested for attempted child molestation. The damnedest thing, I tells ya.​

    The same rules apply to everyone. If you rush to the defense of bad behavior for the sake of a common identity label, you will be stained by the bad behavior.

    This isn't hard to figure out.

    (Think about the time Rush Limbaugh denounced Obama as anti-Christian because the administration was supporting efforts in Africa to finally bring Joseph Kony to justice. Really, Rush? You want to go there? Of course, it took him a few minutes to figure out the problem; to the credit of Dittoheads, some of them called in rather quite quickly tried to explain. They knew the stake; they didn't want to be stained by this one. And that is, in its own, remarkable; we now know at least one line Dittoheads won't cross. Hell, even Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor to make the point; knowing how closely the GOP was associated with Rush Limbaugh, he was smart enough to try to get the Party out of splatter range.)

    In that light, this thread isn't hard to figure out. A bunch of people ran to the defense of an idiot behaving badly (albeit brilliantly) according to common identity label, just like the Christians in the Puget Sound region who howled in defense of a pastor's right to abuse children. Freakin' Dittoheads have shown themselves smarter than the atheist-advocacy response in this thread.

    You really tanked that one with the last clause, "since much of it is religious in nature". The question of art doesn't make a difference if it's Dali's Hypercubic, Stryper's godawful songs, Serrano's Piss Christ, Dürer's Christ as a Man of Sorrows, Duchamp's Fountain, Mondrian's Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, e. e. cummings' Im(cat)mo, or whatever. Hell, you can invoke the question of art in relation to a '72 Duster with rust hood and doors, primer on the fenders, and a pair of fake giant testicles hanging off the back bumper.

    If one proposes that there is no art, would you disagree? Can you objectively establish that art is real?

    We all know that the historical record is, technically, quite inaccurate. Whether we go with, "Winners write history", or the famous quote attributed to Napoleon that, "History is a lie agreed upon", can you objectively establish that history is real? As historian Jeffrey Burton Russell notes:

    The historical evidence can never be clear enough for us to know what really happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen), but the evidence as to what people believed to have happened is relatively clear. The concept—what people believed to have happened—is more important than what really did happen, because people act on what they believe to be true.

    (12)

    So ... apply that famous atheistic skepticism and objectivity to history.

    True, but absurdity is subjective. In Washington state, we have an astoundingly stupid problem with deaths from controllable diseases because we have proportionately significant sectors of right-wing paranoiacs and liberal hippie idealists who think immunization is evil. To the other, they think they're protective of their children within reason.

    Similarly, you seem to think that customized, aesthetic, inconsistent application of principle is within reason.

    Funny thing is, in the hands of a religious person, I doubt you'd find that customized, aesthetic, inconsistent application of principle nearly as reasonable.

    When science finally grows up enough to tackle such questions as the meaning of life, it will do so. Until then, humans will do what they have always done, use the creative centers of their brain function to arrange symbols, metaphors, and allegories in order to comprehend what is otherwise ineffable to them.

    One would think the better goal would be to reorient religion according to reality, since it cannot be stamped out until humanity experiences a fairly significant evolution of its brain structure.

    Until science and objectivity can quantify the meaning of life, or the pursuit of meaning in one's life, humanity will continue to address those issues that transcend its comprehension or expression artistically. The connection between religion and art would subsume religion under art, not vice-versa.

    If you would be so kind as to explain the functional difference between the Witches' Rede and the Law of Thelema, please do so.

    But you are making things up. There is a difference between the concept of weakness as strength, and apparent weakness as strength.

    Apparent weakness as strength is a long-recognized tactic in warfare, especially pre-aerial warfare. You present your line, engage the enemy. As the battle shifts, the first appearance of significant detriment, you stage an organized withdrawal, and attempt to encircle the pursuit. If that works, it's over. If not, you dig in and hold a defensive line, obliging the enemy to spend significant resources mounting an offensive. It's called maintaining the strategic offensive while playing the tactical defensive. And it's a great chess match to watch, since the two sides, under competent leadership, will be trying to bait one another this way.

    But literal weakness as strength is a fallacy. Ask the French.

    And reserving a special place for assholes that are religious, copared to people who are assholes generally, only further reinforces the point.

    But this is great atheistic logic and rationality and objectivity. After all, there is no stronger argument than, Because I say so.

    Your lack of human sympathy toward the religious is evident. You want to reform them? The first thing you need to do is understand what you're trying to reform.

    Oh, wait. I forgot, you're an atheist. I apologize for holding you to such an unreasonable and irrational explanation. Maybe you should slate me as your surgeon the next time you have a need. I've never been to medical school, but, hey, I want you to be healthy.

    You have no idea how to deal with addicts, do you?

    And that's why you're only making things worse.

    Of course, applying that atheistic skepticism, it doesn't really matter that you're working so hard to make things worse, does it?
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity. 1977. New York: Cornell Univ. Press, 1987.
     

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