Posted on 10/15/2003 4:29:25 PM PDT by Truth666
Here are the some of the results of a 1999 Gallup poll on creationism, evolution, and public education :
49% believe that human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life.
Evolution theory is the most important weapon to twist people's minds.
For 99% of the people the most important REAL reason for believing in it : a trick that costed a few bucks, 100 years ago.
Even more incredible : the trick has remained the same until now.
Only lately, with very fast computers that allow virtual reality software to perform convincing enough, have we seen some effects added to the base trick.
I wonder who is the first Freeper to find out the trick behind the most devastating lie in the history of mankind.
Call them both philosophies, but they're not both religions. "Religion" implies worship, usually of a supernatural person of some kind, which is something an atheist would have a hard time getting excited about. :-)
Fine -- then point out to me where some "atheist's guidebook" or "council for atheism" ever advocated genocide. If not, then you can go argue with the folks on this thread who are blaming all manner of evil acts on "atheism" if they happen to be done by some leader or individual who didn't go to chuch every week.
Yes, I have heard people try to designate what I call atheism as "hard atheism" and what I call agnosticism as "soft atheism". I've been led around and around on this so many times, I really can't handle it anymore.I thought "non-theist" was the currently fashionable term for "soft atheist": A nontheist is someone who lacks a belief in God, but doesn't necessarily believe they can make a positive case for the impossibility of God. (That would be me, BTW.)For the sake of discussion, and because it really -is- a heck of a lot simpler, can we just go with the definitions as I presented them? If I have to get into Latin-parsing over what really doesn't materially change anything regarding the discussion, I'm going to pass out.
Step 3: Religion is a system of beliefs that attempts to explain HOW -and/or- WHY we exist.By "why we exist", do you mean, "for what purpose did [someone] create us"? If so, then I agree, we atheists don't think there's an externally-imposed "why".This is where atheism becomes unique as a religion. All other religions (and now we include Taoism and Buddhism) do indeed attempt to answer WHY we exist, but atheism doesn't. Atheism doesn't even try. Atheism is purely concerned with the How.
If you mean "why do we exist instead of something else or nothing at all", then the answer will be found by science. (At least in principle, someday.)
The fact that atheism doesn't even attempt to explain Why is what troubles me about it. In the vacuum that renders life as generally purposeless, with survival and self-gratification as the only potential purposes inherent in it, it is clearly going to be devoid of social obligation.Here's an analogy: My parents wanted me to go to college, get a degree, marry a rich man & probably also become a highly paid professional myself. In fact I never finished college, and pursued an entrepreneurial path instead. I also didn't happen to fall in love with a rich guy. (Darn! :-)Since social obligation is a requirement of civil society, atheists attempt to form philosophies to explain why human behavior should be expected to rise above that of animals. Secular Humanism is one good example. Marxism is another. The problem, though, is that with no answer to the "Why?" question that mandates consistent civility, morality becomes completely fluid. Ethics become completely subservient to convenience, and the ends always justify the means. And if the civil society that provides the reason for those philosophies breaks down, the beliefs that justify not killing and generally humane behavior are completely disposable - whereas even without society the religious person's moral inhibitions survive.
So - am I violating my "Why"?
I say NO. Because my purpose for being is simply to prosper - to maximize the quantity & quality of my life & of those whom I love. My purpose in life is to thrive. To maximize my eudaimonia. That's what keeps me going, and no externally imposed "purpose" that was decided before my birth is ever going to impress me.
That kind of concept of an externally imposed obligation makes absolutely no sense to me. I think there's a deep logic error in there. So, likewise, the idea that Man cannot have a purpose unless someone imposes some kind of Command from supernatural-land also comes from a flawed premise.
Oh - and your fear that this leads to some kind of postmodern nihilism ignores the fact that there is one world, and this one world represents only one objective truth. So all these competing ideas of right & wrong all have to answer to the same reality when they get tested out there in the same, real world. Moral codes have to work in this one real world. (Unfortunately which moral system is the best is not "self-evident". It can take a generation or more for the logical consequences of any given moral code to play itself out.)
You're kidding, right? Did you miss the 20th century? China? The Soviet Union?
Read my post again, then attempt a more on-target reply. Also reread the post I was responding to if the thrust of my point was not clear enough on its own.
That's not atheism's fault. Blame Hegel & his vision of a grand historical process inexhorably working its way thru the world stage. Marx, Mussolini and Hitler all stood on Hegel's shoulders. (Marx & Hitler altered a lot of Hegel's system, while Mussolini was truer to the original vision.)
Idi Amin was Islamic.
Napoleon would not admit that there had ever existed a genuine atheist, and:
A Christian and a Catholic, he recognized in religion alone the right to govern human societies. He looked on Christianity as the basis of all real civilization; and considered Catholicism as the form of worship most favorable to the maintenance of order and the true tranquility of the moral world; Protestantism as a source of trouble and disagreements.All atheists, every last one of them
-- Clemens Lothar Wenzel, FŸrst von Metternich-Winneburg, Memoirs of Prince Metternich, 1773-1815, ed. Prince Richard Metternich, tr. Mrs. Alexander Napier, 5 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1880-1882), I: pp. 272-273.
Then again, maybe not.
"Concentration Camps" were invented by the British during the Second Boer War. The "Gulag" was simply enforced slave labor, and that's been known since before the beginning of written history. Indeed, all of the stuff you accuse "atheists" of doing (and an official government position on something does not mean the populace necessarily is of that particular bent -- note the modern United States, as officially atheist as you can possibly get) was created in more theistic times. The only thing different was the equipment which allowed efficiency on scales hitherto unknown. You can only whack so many people a day with an axe or guillotine, but automatic weapons increase your efficiency a couple of orders of magnitude.
Religion also gives one a ready-made justification for the slaughter of "non-believers" -- "God said it's alright because they're doomed anyway."
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