Atheists and religious boards

[foggedinn]

I thank the board for their reply's. Some were comical/farsical, some were interesting. Apparently there aren't as many atheists hanging out here as I'd imagined.

 

[KittenKoder]

I thank the board for their reply's. Some were comical/farsical, some were interesting. Apparently there aren't as many atheists hanging out here as I'd imagined.

Sometimes us who are not atheist are called such wrongly by others just because we put science first, religion second. Sometimes it's just because some people don't like to face the fact that other religions exist. But meh. Sometimes a lot of atheists do hang out. Perhaps it was just their off time.

 

[Diuretic]

Psssst -I didn't want to blow my cover

 

[YWN666]

Why do atheists spend so much time on religious boards?

Even though we don't subscribe to any religious belief, the belief of others directly affects us and there is plenty to discuss.

 

[Anguille]

An old friend of mine writes on another board in a discussion of PBS's NOVA:The Buried Secrets of the Bible:

"E.O. Wilson interviewed in the current issue of "Esquire" and a thoroughly reasonable human being seems to believe that we are enmeshed in the tribal ethos of wanting to belong... but I don't know.... something more seems to be at the bottom of the idea of a capricious and indifferent god being able to attract so many disparate believers...

And today's Washington Post carried the glad tidings that the economic downturn and the general stress suffered by contemporary Americans has caused church attendance to increase demonstrably.... apparently the people rushing to pray for an improvement in the stock and housing markets, haven't stopped to think that the god who caused the slump isn't likely to end it just by being asked to do it.

In scanning through the enormous progress that neuro-biologists, chemists, and physicists have made in in the last two decades in determining the functions of the various and complicated areas of the brain, it seems clear that the answer to this important question will come not from theology or even secular philosophical determinations but from the neurosciences.... one day we will know how and why humans persist in the folly of faith in a doppelgänger that at best is indifferent to man's woes, and at worst can be said to be actively hostile to his favored species...
But oh, in the meantime, it would it be more than gratifying were some other subject - birth control and family planning for instance - given the respectful treatment by even skeptics that is enjoyed by religion and god in all public discussion.. including Public Radio and Television with the pretense of being "fair."
There is no end to the nonsense that is treated as if it is the dealing of a fair hand, the giving of an equable hearing.
But of course it is not... because skepticism of religion, the supernatural, as an attempt to control men's minds and actions is never really treated as a meaningful subject... hours of public time are never devoted to rationalist rebellion against the dissimulation that inevitably, deliberately, surrounds all dissection of religion and its place in society.
While there are attempts to discuss the invasion of fundamentalist religionist beliefs into the civil life and politics of modern civilization, that is hardly tantamount to exploring the irrationality of the religious conception as either a practical or a MORAL paradigm.
The very idea that it is considered rebellious to question the value of monotheism over and above polytheism is the best example of such deliberate ineptitude in the attempts to introduce serious exploration of how values are formed APART from the Abrahamic bible..
I was treated as a sort of Lolita-ish pariah when I first asked the question in fifth grade ("but WHY, Mrs. Rich, is one god an advance over the gods I've been reading about in my Bullfinch? They do seem to have a lot of fun, are by and large awfully goodlooking, and they don't seem as bloodless and forbidding as the god I read about in the bible, or as effete as the Christ whose image is all around us?" ), and I have never received an even mildly satisfactory answer since...
Of course by now, the subject is more or less moot, other than for its historic aura: why, what made the Israelites so easily switched from many gods to one, when the one god couldn't even get them to the Promised Land in the two weeks it should have (at best) taken them to get there?
Why were they so easily bamboozled by Moses, who was clearly past his prime as a leader?
Now, the skeptics question of one god versus many has been replaced by the realization that there is no god, and that's good enough for a start towards understanding the world as we know it to be, and about which we are learning more every day.

NMB "

 

[Anguille]

An old friend of mine writes on another board in a discussion of PBS's NOVA:The Buried Secrets of the Bible:

"E.O. Wilson interviewed in the current issue of "Esquire" and a thoroughly reasonable human being seems to believe that we are enmeshed in the tribal ethos of wanting to belong... but I don't know.... something more seems to be at the bottom of the idea of a capricious and indifferent god being able to attract so many disparate believers...

And today's Washington Post carried the glad tidings that the economic downturn and the general stress suffered by contemporary Americans has caused church attendance to increase demonstrably.... apparently the people rushing to pray for an improvement in the stock and housing markets, haven't stopped to think that the god who caused the slump isn't likely to end it just by being asked to do it.

In scanning through the enormous progress that neuro-biologists, chemists, and physicists have made in in the last two decades in determining the functions of the various and complicated areas of the brain, it seems clear that the answer to this important question will come not from theology or even secular philosophical determinations but from the neurosciences.... one day we will know how and why humans persist in the folly of faith in a doppelgänger that at best is indifferent to man's woes, and at worst can be said to be actively hostile to his favored species...
But oh, in the meantime, it would it be more than gratifying were some other subject - birth control and family planning for instance - given the respectful treatment by even skeptics that is enjoyed by religion and god in all public discussion.. including Public Radio and Television with the pretense of being "fair."
There is no end to the nonsense that is treated as if it is the dealing of a fair hand, the giving of an equable hearing.
But of course it is not... because skepticism of religion, the supernatural, as an attempt to control men's minds and actions is never really treated as a meaningful subject... hours of public time are never devoted to rationalist rebellion against the dissimulation that inevitably, deliberately, surrounds all dissection of religion and its place in society.
While there are attempts to discuss the invasion of fundamentalist religionist beliefs into the civil life and politics of modern civilization, that is hardly tantamount to exploring the irrationality of the religious conception as either a practical or a MORAL paradigm.
The very idea that it is considered rebellious to question the value of monotheism over and above polytheism is the best example of such deliberate ineptitude in the attempts to introduce serious exploration of how values are formed APART from the Abrahamic bible..
I was treated as a sort of Lolita-ish pariah when I first asked the question in fifth grade ("but WHY, Mrs. Rich, is one god an advance over the gods I've been reading about in my Bullfinch? They do seem to have a lot of fun, are by and large awfully goodlooking, and they don't seem as bloodless and forbidding as the god I read about in the bible, or as effete as the Christ whose image is all around us?" ), and I have never received an even mildly satisfactory answer since...
Of course by now, the subject is more or less moot, other than for its historic aura: why, what made the Israelites so easily switched from many gods to one, when the one god couldn't even get them to the Promised Land in the two weeks it should have (at best) taken them to get there?
Why were they so easily bamboozled by Moses, who was clearly past his prime as a leader?
Now, the skeptics question of one god versus many has been replaced by the realization that there is no god, and that's good enough for a start towards understanding the world as we know it to be, and about which we are learning more every day.

NMB "

 

[Anguille]

No comments? I think my friend is a very provocative and well spoken person. Don't you?

 

[KittenKoder]

No comments? I think my friend is a very provocative and well spoken person. Don't you?

To each their own opinion. It's too much for me to read after partying last night, sorry.

 

[WillowTree]

How does one study atheism?

and how long does it take???

 

[Anguille]

and how long does it take???

 

[Diuretic]

No comments? I think my friend is a very provocative and well spoken person. Don't you?

The thesis seems to be that there is a sort of slow movement from pantheism to monotheism then to, I suppose, atheism, in human nature as a whole. Or I could have completely missed the point of course...

 

[KittenKoder]

The thesis seems to be that there is a sort of slow movement from pantheism to monotheism then to, I suppose, atheism, in human nature as a whole. Or I could have completely missed the point of course...

Actually that is a good observation, and it also demonstrates that us pantheists are far more religious than monotheists ...

 

[AllieBaba]

I love it that people think God created the economic crisis.

Talk about avoidance of any responsibility.

 

[foggedinn]

I love it that people think God created the economic crisis.

Talk about avoidance of any responsibility.

I don't believe that God created the economic crisis. I do, however, believe that America is under God's curse and that he put the people in leadership positions that did cause the current crisis.

God always picks the perfect tool for the job.

 

[Anguille]

The thesis seems to be that there is a sort of slow movement from pantheism to monotheism then to, I suppose, atheism, in human nature as a whole. Or I could have completely missed the point of course...

I think you got it. She's an atheist and the mother-in-law of a famous one.

 

[KittenKoder]

I love it that people think God created the economic crisis.

Talk about avoidance of any responsibility.

Well ... it's no different than using a god to justify hatred and violence.

 

[Anguille]

Originally Posted by Diuretic View Post
The thesis seems to be that there is a sort of slow movement from pantheism to monotheism then to, I suppose, atheism, in human nature as a whole. Or I could have completely missed the point of course...

I just love how she writes.

 

[Diuretic]

Actually that is a good observation, and it also demonstrates that us pantheists are far more religious than monotheists ...

Worship in bulk - you get a better rate

 

[Diuretic]

Originally Posted by Diuretic View Post
The thesis seems to be that there is a sort of slow movement from pantheism to monotheism then to, I suppose, atheism, in human nature as a whole. Or I could have completely missed the point of course...

I just love how she writes.

Definitely - she writes expressively but clearly.