In a word, no, because nihilism is not specifically a belief about the nature and existence of a supreme being, although it can be a philosophy derived from the religious position of atheism.
Posted on 08/20/2005 12:11:11 AM PDT by Lexinom
A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.
"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
I'm actually a deist, i.e. not fond of any organized religion. However, as long as no one is trying interfere (kill me or convert me), I'm content to let each practice his respective beliefs. People who have a problem with Nativity scenes, 10 Commandments displays etc. should really get a life.
HAHAH!!!
Cool- finally, the religion of Communism, at whose altar Stalin murdered 50 million, is being called out!
I love it! I would love to see an atmosphere develop wherein scum like the ACLU are forced to defend their actions of promoting secularism as establishing a religion.
Very good point. I've argued along similar lines years ago over on Salon, with highly intelligent poster Tegularius and the other Jewish posters on Salon's "TableTalk" threads about public morality. They were all in favor of ACLU lawsuits that try to drive specifically Christian symbols and references out of the public space, because they wanted more "freedom from", or space if you will, for Jews. I tried to point out to them that they were, by subtraction, establishing a credo of sorts for the public arena that is unsupportive of large social goals like raising families and liable to make life in the long run much more difficult for observant Christians and Jews, by repaganizing the public space, or enshrining moral nihilism, or atheism, or any and every non-Judaeo-Christian value system in preference to the latter, upon a presumption of sanitizing the public space of religious and moral references.
My arguments fell on deaf ears, since they retreated to a general posture of "we know what you're trying to do, and we're not having any", as if, by agreeing that there ought to be such a thing as public morality and community values, they were provisionally consenting to my sending the Black Hundreds to burn down the synagogues.
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Exactly.
It takes a truely twisted mind to hate something they say does not exist.
In a heartbeat ACLU and allied groups will claim Agnosticism rather than Atheism as their guiding principle in these matters. Agnosticism can never be defined as a religion because, unlike Atheism, it has no beliefs.
If I understand the doctrine of strict construction / scrutiny properly, yes (FReeper lawyers jump in here and correct my judicial ignorance - you were going to anyway).
As a former agnostic, I can tell you that unfortunately your kindness to agnostics is unwarranted. My agnosticism was more a combination of anger toward God, and pure laziness about recognizing his existence and importance. Mathematical proof of his existence (if I could have understood it, a highly doubtful proposition) would have done no good.
At its root, agnosticism is just another belief system that you could loosely categorize as a weak religion. IMHO, of course.
The offended argument can now be applied to its primary users. I am deeply offended by the practice of atheism in the public sector, and especially in the courts and schools.
As mathematicians go, I've always been partial to Blaise Pascal. He would agree with you, I think.
Let us then examine the point and say: "Either God exists, or he does not." But which of the alternatives shall we choose? Reason cannot decide anything. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you bet? Reason cannot determine how you will choose, nor can reason defend your position of choice.
This is the famous wager. No god? Nothing lost. But, if God does exist, then having the faith to believe gets you an infinite reward. Pascal chose to believe.
Ping
In a word, no, because nihilism is not specifically a belief about the nature and existence of a supreme being, although it can be a philosophy derived from the religious position of atheism.
Declaring athiesm a "religion" is a classical instance of a narrow group seeking to project its views backward upon those who founded and created this nation and framed the principles that are supposed to be its guide.
Adherence to this view by an isolated elite such as much of our legal establishment has become reflects a frightening insularity on the part of that legal elite that was never intended to be by our Founders and Framers.
Spot on target. You have hit th ebulls eye.One Problem those legislating form the bench--that despotic branch
who think they alone can say what the Constitution and Law
is --will simply ignore the obvious and cite some Marxist
Communist foreign precedent to declare such astute observation unconstitutional and a threat to their survival.Beware the cattle trucks full of men in black
nija suits and hellicopters flying close by your "compound"/
It's ridiculous! There's no such thing as Leprechans either. Next thing you know the cons will be demanding study groups for tail worship and demand taxpayer supplied porn icons. The only good that could come out of this, is if they note the courthouse is w/o icons and close the damn thing down, because it's an atheist symbol.
Tee-hee
But . . . back to the meaning of it all.
In a word, no, because nihilism is not specifically a belief about the nature and existence of a supreme being, although it can be a philosophy derived from the religious position of atheism.
Should you ever come up on a thread where this sort of thing is the core topic (meaning, no legal or constitutional issues), please give a ping.
I would include neither agnosticism nor nihilism as religions.
But, I don't believe this particular thread would be suitable for such a flight into the spiritual realms. :-)
I agree. This is a huge thing. Sometimes I wonder, why do we have to single out religion from other 'philosophies'? Afterall, religion with its doctrine, claim to knowledge, ideals, etc., is a philosophy. Yet, the relationship between religion and state must be regulated while relationships between other philosophies and state are not. If the answer simply based on some bad experiences in the past (16-17th century AD), it's really give too much privilege to a period of time.
In the 20th century (as well as the 21th), it's obvious that other philosophies have created similar troubles--if not more: how many people died from the idea of facism, communism, nazism? Similarly, of course, many people also died from certain religions.
So, why does the Constitution still only has a clause that is against a philosophy, that is, religion? Perhaps it's time to get rid that part of Constitution, by having another amandment?
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