Posted on 11/17/2003 6:02:20 AM PST by Tribune7
And with that good night.
To live: Atheism is a capital offense in Muslim countries, and used to be one elsewhere.
To be able to function in a 'believing' society: It used to be impossible for an atheist to testify in court
Honor, riches, power and glory: I don't need to go into details here, I hope.
In one sense there is no single universal value, like Marx believed there was: Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And yet the difference between a life-affirming principle and a life-destroying principle is the difference between thriving and extinction. So my goal of a society that sustains the lives of humans as humans (as opposed to savages or slaves) is hardly something that needs to be justified. It's axiomatic, IMO. How could you begin to convince people that the goal they should be orienting their life around should be death & destruction?
But even if so, Jesus plagiarized it from Rabbi Hillel:
These two great scholars born a generation or two before the beginning of the Common Era are usually discussed together and contrasted with each other, because they were contemporaries and the leaders of two opposing schools of thought (known as "houses"). The Talmud records over 300 differences of opinion between Beit Hillel (the House of Hillel) and Beit Shammai (the House of Shammai). In almost every one of these disputes, Hillel's view prevailed.Rabbi Hillel was born to a wealthy family in Babylonia, but came to Jerusalem without the financial support of his family and supported himself as a woodcutter. It is said that he lived in such great poverty that he was sometimes unable to pay the admission fee to study Torah, and because of him that fee was abolished. He was known for his kindness, his gentleness, and his concern for humanity. One of his most famous sayings, recorded in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, a tractate of the Mishnah), is "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" The Hillel organization, a network of Jewish college student organizations, is named for him.
Rabbi Shammai was an engineer, known for the strictness of his views. The Talmud tells that a gentile came to Shammai saying that he would convert to Judaism if Shammai could teach him the whole Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot. Shammai drove him away with a builder's measuring stick! Hillel, on the other hand, converted the gentile by telling him, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it."
Personally, I think theism survives so tenaciously because it's much easier for most people to think about such mind-blowing questions as "why is there something instead of nothing?" or "how did my consciousness get here?" when they can reify the hard, abstract parts. And if reifying an abstraction is good & nobody ever points out to you that it's a fallacy, then why not go it one better & anthropomorphize it? If we are all here by accident why not just party on? Sex and drugs and rock & roll?
Because actions have consequences, and actions declare principles. What kind of world are you creating for you & your loved ones to live in by your actions, given that you're declaring that everyone else should act the same way in the same context as you're acting?
"Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" is revolutionary.
But it does not eliminate the ambiguity, if it needs to be eliminated in the first place. The Hindus, for example, do not believe in a deity, but no one considers them atheists? This is also true of Confucious, Shinto, and most varieties of Buddhism (which sort of says you can believe whatever you like as long as it includes reincarnation). What atheist really means is anyone who doesn't believe in anything people believe in for which there is no evidence.
As far as I'm concerned, it is a non-concept and very ambiguous.
(I am not trying to convince you, by the way. I fully understand your intention. Atheist is a useful word if the question of whether someone believes in one of the recognized deities is in question. I just think it is a mistake for people to identify themselves as "atheists." Asuperstitionist would be a better word, I think. Skeptic, rationalist, and realist are all out, because of the philosophical baggage they carry. Objectivist would be best, but unless they really are an Objecivist, which most people who call themselves that are not, they ought not use that word.)
An atheist could rightly be insulted by the idea, "atheism describes something without theism -- someone who is not a theist (lacks theism) is an atheist." To an atheist you are only saying they lack what does not exsit, which is nonsense, because everyone lacks what does not exist. To an atheist it is tantamount to saying, "you don't suffer from this particular delusion and therefore you deserve this special label to indicate that fact." If the term was meant to indicate that soundness of mind (lacking a delusion) it would be a compliment. It is ussd almost invariably with the opposite intention, and is therefore both absurd and insulting.
Hank
Read Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" and look at the atheists that you know. It's one long rationalization for personal misconduct.
Or look at it another way. It's a fact that people who attend Church regularly live on average 7 years longer than those who don't. Now this can be explained in one of two ways. Either there is a God and He generally rewards those who seek Him with longer lives, or Churchgoers are healthier because they refrain from unhealthy vices; i.e., they generally lead more virtuous lives.
The same asinine remark has been said of Christians "excusing" personal misconduct. People frequently get a little too exited when they first learn to spot hypocrisy and over generalize it to all members of competing ideologies.
"people who attend Church regularly live on average 7 years longer than those who don't. Now this can be explained in one of two ways."
I think the starts that I heard on Dr. Larua were regarding something more general than Church attendance, something along the lines of a strong believe system. That does not require a theological base.
Fortunately there is a controlling “legal” authority on this.
The Rule -- especially if we agree as to it's mathematical backing -- precedes the Lord's walk on earth. There were smart and wise people who understood this B.C. But it did not become the cultural foundation until Christ.
The Old Testament's rule was eye for an eye.
Jenny, theism survives because it is more rational. It requires much more faith -- not reason -- to be an atheist than to believe in a creator.
And don't discount personal experience. Many, many people -- including me -- have felt the touch of God.
You can claim we are delusional -- albeit rationalizing why us have done rather significant things after this conversion. Or you can accept that there is something to it.
The Hindus do believe in a deity -- some argue several -- although the Hindus insist it is just one.
IMHO, the metaphysical naturalist (atheist) claim to being rational rests on the worldview that: "all that there is" is all that exists in nature.
That worldview is not shared by many (if not most) physicists and mathematicians - the most epistemologically zealous of all the disciplines. It is also not shared by most philosophers and the general public.
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