…and this is a 
An inspirational poster
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: July 31, 2008 9:46 PM, by PZ Myers
I must confess to a cruel game with this post. I saw this poster and thought, "What? But most of these people weren't atheists!" Surely someone could do a far better job with this idea than that, and everyone would see the problem here (at least John Wilkins did, as did many of the commenters). You were supposed to be inspired to make a better version. At least one person was, but they took it in a completely different direction than I expected.
Anyone care to try and do something better, with a positive message?
Comments
Posted by: Rob | July 31, 2008 9:51 PM
Remember, religion the source of morality
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 31, 2008 9:51 PM
Of course, it should be more like "Deism: Good enough for these idiots".
Posted by: Wowbagger | July 31, 2008 9:56 PM
How about:
Interventionist God?
These guys didn't think so.
Posted by: Janine ID | July 31, 2008 9:57 PM
Rob, I would say at the most, religion is no guaranty that a person will be moral.
Posted by: DCB | July 31, 2008 9:59 PM
Longtime reader, first-time poster...while sympathetic to the thrust of the cracker issue, scientifically, you could do better.
First, in terms of hypothesis testing, your null should have been that nothing will happen to you if you desecrate the cracker (especially since there is no historical evidence that (a) god has ever killed someone for blasphemy). That you were not struck down does not reject the null, it merely fails to reject the null, a result that is statistically uninteresting.
Second, if you really want to prove that it's a cracker, perform a DNA test on one of the blessed things. The Nicene creed says that "he came down from heaven and became man." If this is true, then Jesus had DNA. If the cracker is really Jesus after the blessing, it should have DNA. It would even be better to get a priest (or better yet, the Pope) to wager their faith on the result. PZ will become Catholic if a blessed cracker has human DNA; the Pope will renounce the Church and close it down if it does not.
Posted by: rmp | July 31, 2008 10:00 PM
OK, I know that this is a bit of a cop out but I think we should abandon the atheism label and just call ourselves Unitarians. A little heavy on the 'woo' and wishful thinking but still, people seem to accept you as long as you belong to 'some religion'. Of coarse with the tragedy at the Unitarian Church the other day, there does seem to be a flaw in my logic.
Posted by: Nick | July 31, 2008 10:01 PM
I know I should know this, but who is upper left and upper right?
Posted by: rmp | July 31, 2008 10:02 PM
Hemingway and Carl Sagan.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | July 31, 2008 10:04 PM
Upper right is Carl Sagan. Upper left reminds my of Ernest Hemmingway. I would love to have a long conversation with any person in that group. It would be most enlightening.
Posted by: Dixie Myers | July 31, 2008 10:04 PM
Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sagan, respectively. Where can I get the poster?
Posted by: Wowbagger | July 31, 2008 10:04 PM
DCB,
Probably best if you start from the start - but, to save you a lot of time, you should know that the catholics have argued that the cracker does not become actual flesh in a testable sense.
It appeared in more than one of the relevant cracker threads.
Posted by: notthedroids | July 31, 2008 10:05 PM
I think my grandma is better at photoshop than that.
Posted by: Nick | July 31, 2008 10:06 PM
Of course, Sagan! *smacks self* I knew I recognized him. Hemingway was not one I recognized at all though. Thanks!
Posted by: Adrienne | July 31, 2008 10:07 PM
Ugh, I don't think Hemingway is a good advertisement for atheism due to his alcoholism and suicide. Surely we could find people with lives that ended happier than his for this poster? Like George Carlin, maybe? Steve Allen?
Posted by: Wowbagger | July 31, 2008 10:07 PM
For the ignorant amongst us (I speak mostly for myself) can someone list who they all are?
Posted by: SC | July 31, 2008 10:07 PM
Rather testosterone-heavy.
Posted by: Adrienne | July 31, 2008 10:08 PM
Testosterone-heavy and melanin-impaired.
Posted by: Carlie | July 31, 2008 10:09 PM
What Adrienne and SC said.
Posted by: BaldApe | July 31, 2008 10:11 PM
But Vox Day said that atheists are all like Stalin and Mao. He wouldn't lie, would he?
Posted by: samu | July 31, 2008 10:13 PM
For the ignorant amongst us (I speak mostly for myself) can someone list who they all are?
top left: Ernest Hemingway
down from him: Mark Twain
down: Einstein
top middle: Abe lincoln
down: thomas jefferson
down: Darwin of course
top right: Carl Sagan
down:Benjamin Franklin
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 31, 2008 10:13 PM
But Vox Day said that atheists are all like Stalin and Mao. He wouldn't lie, would he?
Does the Pope shove mystic man meat into the mouths of...
um nevermind.
Posted by: Steve_C | July 31, 2008 10:13 PM
I think it's Mark Twain and Jefferson in the center.
Posted by: JoJo | July 31, 2008 10:17 PM
Top three, from left: Ernest Hemmingway, Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sagan
Middle three, from left: Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin
Bottom two, from left: Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin
Posted by: Wowbagger | July 31, 2008 10:19 PM
Thanks, Samu - most of them I knew, Jefferson was a guess - but it was Mark Twain I was stuck on; I've only seen pictures of him when he was older.
Is there a site where you can generate these or is it a photoshop thing? I've got a ton of ideas.
Posted by: Bob Vogel | July 31, 2008 10:20 PM
Hell, PZ, I have a wide-format printer that can do a poster 24" wide on inks that are touted to last 85 years. Is there a link to the large-format download?
Posted by: DaveX | July 31, 2008 10:20 PM
TOP ROW- Ernest Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sagan
MIDDLE - Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin
BOTTOM - Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin
Pretty sure about this, correct me if I'm wrong. I'd be interested in atheist quotes from each that confirm this, though... I don't know ones for folks like Lincoln or Hemingway, especially.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | July 31, 2008 10:20 PM
Darwin was not an atheist, nor was Jefferson, Einstein, nor Franklin, who were all deists. Darwin was, for much of his life, also a deist, but ended up an agnostic. They are only atheists if you use the "american definition" of "atheist": someone who is not an orthodox Christian or Jew or Muslim. Elsewhere in the world, "atheist" means "lack of belief in any god, including the deist or possibly existing one".
Posted by: S.Scott | July 31, 2008 10:21 PM
Love it!
Posted by: A RIce | July 31, 2008 10:21 PM
>> Upper left = Ernest Hemingway
I kind of thought I it looks like PZ...
Perhaps in 15-20 years.
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | July 31, 2008 10:25 PM
PZ-
Thank you for your clarification in post #2.
I am quite positive that Mark Twain, Einstein, Lincoln,
Jefferson, Darwin, Sagan, and especially Benjamin Franklin were not atheists at all.
Hemingway did profess himself to be an athiest, but aside from him, that poster is bullshit. Atheism certainly wasn't good enough for the rest of those pictured.
Posted by: Stu | July 31, 2008 10:26 PM
Hate to be a spoiler, but I don't really think it could reasonably be considered accurate to call Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Darwin, or Einstein atheists. I suspect that some of them might have been so internally but never left any cues that they unambiguously were. Suggested reading:
--Autobiography of Charles Darwin
--Freethinkers (Susan Jacoby, especially chapters on Jefferson and Lincoln)
--Einstein: His Life and Universe (Walter Isaacson, chapter "Einstein's God")
Posted by: Susan | July 31, 2008 10:26 PM
What Carlie said. Someone with no imagination made this one.
Posted by: Wowbagger | July 31, 2008 10:29 PM
Like I said, a good alternate title would be:
Interventionist God?
These guys didn't think so.
Posted by: joy | July 31, 2008 10:31 PM
Now, if only I could have that on a t-shirt... Though Deism is more appropriate.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 31, 2008 10:31 PM
Why the self-deprecation? I'd rather it said, loud and proud
"Good enough for these great minds."
Posted by: Allytude | July 31, 2008 10:33 PM
Where can I get a poster?
Posted by: N.K. | July 31, 2008 10:37 PM
Lincoln was an atheist?
I have a quote from him that says:
"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."
...?
Posted by: The Chemist | July 31, 2008 10:39 PM
Ah yes, the Great Debate- Now just a pissing contest.
Posted by: hf | July 31, 2008 10:40 PM
I thought Clemens was an atheist. But I'm clearly not an expert, since I didn't recognize him with dark hair. I was going to ask about the guy with the Moustache of Rassilon.
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | July 31, 2008 10:41 PM
Carl Sagan-
"My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic."
Posted by: Doug Little | July 31, 2008 10:42 PM
How about Personal God These guys don't think soPosted by: 386sx | July 31, 2008 10:44 PM
Now, if only I could have that on a t-shirt... Though Deism is more appropriate.
Thanks for the understatement! Whoever made that poster is the victim of myths and quote mines. Just like yer average creationist, or even your typical Ann Coulter fan.
Posted by: BobC | July 31, 2008 10:45 PM
You're positive? You can read the minds of dead people?
I thought Einstein's god was nature. That's sounds like an atheist to me.
I thought Sagan was an atheist. I can't imagine him being anything else.
Mark Twain enjoyed ridiculing Christians. I'd be very surprised if he wasn't an atheist.
Darwin not an atheist? That's what I would expect a liar for Jesus to say. I think he was a very strong atheist. He probably didn't talk about it because he had a very religious wife.
Posted by: MikeM | July 31, 2008 10:46 PM
I've decided to settle on "Atheist Christian."
While talking with an Atheist Jew friend at work, it occurred to me, why not?
I pretty much celebrate the Christian holidays;
I pretty much accept the message of being the best person you can be;
I pretty much wish there WAS a bad place we could torment Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Reagan;
I really wish that 3 year old who was swept away in a tsunami, but never got within 1,000 miles of a Bible, DID have a nice, sunny place to spend eternity (or not; it'd be her choice -- Heaven sounds boring to me. Maybe I could hang for 30 years, then beg for freedom from the monotony);
But I reject, thoroughly, the spirit world.
Thus, when I read/consult the Bible, I definitely go to SAB first, so I can see the absurdities of much of it, all the while understanding that there is a little good stuff in it. For the most part, when an invisible deity no one has ever met demands that we love his son or face the consequences (and reject all forms of scientific thought), wow, that's controlling and petty... On the other hand, going through life without stealing, murdering, kidnapping, raping, ruining the environment, etc, well, that's desirable. So I accept that part.
It's the ultimate smorgasboard.
Posted by: Amplexus | July 31, 2008 10:46 PM
Meh, this stinks of argument from authority and it doesn't help dispel stereotypes of atheists.
Posted by: 386sx | July 31, 2008 10:47 PM
Now, if only I could have that on a t-shirt... Though Deism is more appropriate.
Why would anybody want a t-shirt or a poster of that? It's flat out wrong! I'm surprised they don't have Voltaire in there.
Posted by: Escuerd | July 31, 2008 10:49 PM
Of course, I'd like to see some folks like Dirac or Feynman up there instead of Einstein, since they are both less cliché, and more clearly atheists. The downside is that the kind of people who think atheism is a foolish position would not be likely to recognize them.
Rob @ #1:
Anthony Hopkins, eh? Interesting. The killer shares a name with the actor who portrayed Hannibal Lecter. I suppose if he shared a name with the character it just would have been too obvious. Who would trust the Reverend Lecter, after all?
Posted by: llewelly | July 31, 2008 10:56 PM
PZ:
Unfortunately that's below the fold. And more, some of them were only called deists by their enemies. Yes, they were deists by today's standards, but not by the standards of their times. So you're going to upset the nitpickers, the people who don't read your comment, and the people who didn't realize that while TGD briefly discusses the Hitchens argument that Jefferson was a closet atheist, Dawkins at least admits the evidence is against it. So, the poster needs a lot of re-thinking.
Posted by: rif | July 31, 2008 10:56 PM
All white dudes.
Posted by: Paul | July 31, 2008 11:00 PM
Is that Obi-Wan Kenobi at the top?
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | July 31, 2008 11:00 PM
BobC-
No, I can't read the minds of dead people, but I sure as shit can, and have read what they wrote, as can you.
I just gave a rather specific quote from Sagan. Read his books, and you will see. I will present further documentation as I choose to, but unquestionably, Jefferson & Franklin were Deists, and Einstein believed in the god of Spinoza.
The closest thing that this subset includes is a general abandonment of theistic religions espousing a personal, judging deity. That much is clear. If any of them went for the old "Sin & Salvation Show", I will have to do mpre research, but I doubt it. Einstein most assuredly did not.
Posted by: Spinoza | July 31, 2008 11:01 PM
"Non-theists" is probably a better word, for sure.
If you sat down and really talked with those guys, I'm sure they'd all admit to "atheism" in restricted senses of the word though...
Posted by: Chris | July 31, 2008 11:03 PM
re: "Testosterone-heavy"
Most of the famous thinkers (and artists and scientists and writers) of history were men.
Posted by: Spinoza | July 31, 2008 11:04 PM
"Einstein believed in the god of Spinoza."
Yes, and to most people, for the past 350 years, that's been tantamount to atheism (according to F.H. Jacobi, "Nihilism, Fatalism, and Atheism".)
People need to read more Spinoza, and commentary on Spinoza, before mentioning "the god of Spinoza"... because they obviously have no idea what that means.
The "God" of Spinoza is the "God" of Steven Hawking.
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | July 31, 2008 11:05 PM
Albert Einstein
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
Posted by: inkadu | July 31, 2008 11:06 PM
This poster is a sign of atheism's growth beyond the population of pedants like myself and wowbagger.
Posted by: rmp | July 31, 2008 11:09 PM
Oh goody, we haven't had a thread for a while that centered on the definitions of athiest/agnoistic/deism/fsm. I'll still think we'd save a lot of time and energy if we all just say we're unitarians. Every Sunday we could have an argument about who was more confident that there is no God and then we could go for brunch (preferably a place that serves Bloody Mary's).
Posted by: Matt Hussein Platte | July 31, 2008 11:14 PM
Everyone of them is looking right at me, except for weird Uncle Ernie.
Posted by: Tim | July 31, 2008 11:16 PM
They wouldn't have all agreed with the label of
'atheist" in their lifetime, but none would've been considered properly religious by their contemporaries, cool poster, needs Heinlein.
Posted by: lago | July 31, 2008 11:17 PM
Yeah...they were far from all atheists. Did they all question dogma? Sure...but atheists? sorry..nope..
Posted by: Russell Stewart | July 31, 2008 11:18 PM
I didn't know Tom Selleck was an atheist.
But why is he made up to look like Mark Twain?
Posted by: iamthebrillo | July 31, 2008 11:19 PM
"There is no god. I am an atheist." -Albert Einstein
"Einstein's right. There is no god." -Thomas Jefferson
"Additional unsourced quote likely taken out of context." -Carl Sagan
Posted by: Wowbagger | July 31, 2008 11:20 PM
Tim, #59:
If you're gonna have Heinlein you gotta have Asimov - and probably Vonnegut as well. Apart from anything else seeing pictures of him always makes me smile.
Posted by: Julian | July 31, 2008 11:21 PM
I've read rather significantly on Twain and, from the opinion he's expressed in his writing, I can say that he wasn't a believer in the currently accepted sense, but neither was he an atheist. He really didn't care one way or another about the issue of deities; what was important to him was that people stop being such assholes to one another, and at the very least stop blaming their asshollery on people and things other than themselves. He very well may have been a self-declared atheist, its difficult to know given his family having tampered with so of his posthumous work, but from his writings the message seems to be that he cared not a wit for rhetoric and would prefer to see action instead.
As to Darwin; the man was the son of a minister, and even one himself for awhile, iirc. He wasn't an atheist. Then again, neither was Demosthenes, Pasteur or Newton; does that fact detract from their accomplishments? Of course not!
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 31, 2008 11:22 PM
A better version of that poster
Posted by: DLC | July 31, 2008 11:23 PM
Having read some Sagan, and seen Cosmos, I would tend to think of him as an atheist, or at least a negative agnostic.
Franklin donated to every church, and even helped start the first Synagogue in Philadelphia, but doubted the divinity of Christ, and seems to have been more interested in Churches as social institutions.
A nice poster though.
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | July 31, 2008 11:24 PM
I've been wracking my noodle for weeks (months?) now to try and come up with a good name for the movement that the great men pictured in the poster really stood for.
Atheist has such demonic connotations that an atheist couldn't get elected as dogcatcher.
Anti-thiest, and anti-religionist fall into the anti-abortion trap. Too much of a negative connotation.
Deist is too old fogey, like Puritan
Free-thinker? Feh
Brights? Too british (sorry brits, but I am more concerned with the ultra religious in the USA)
Agnostic? nah, in Latin it means no knowledge.
Materialist? too consumery, makes us out to all be A&F patrons.
Modernist? Good, but it's already been used & discarded.
Post-Modernist? see Modernist above.
I'm thinking Rationalists
It's the best I've come up with so far, but maybe some of the solid thinkers out there can help me out and come up with something better.
Posted by: Oz Atheist | July 31, 2008 11:25 PM
WHAT! No PZ in that picture?
someone. please photoshop hemmingway out and replace him with PZ - now that's a T-shirt I'd wear!
Posted by: Timothy Wood | July 31, 2008 11:25 PM
Man... Sagan is happy as shit. everybody else is just... "eh, posing for a poster. Let's get it over with so I can go have a beer."
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | July 31, 2008 11:29 PM
#63
Asimov - athiest
Heinlein - not an atheist
Although both are heros of mine.
Posted by: Observer | July 31, 2008 11:31 PM
Timothy Wood,
I'm sure Hemmingway would prefer a scotch.
Posted by: Julian | July 31, 2008 11:32 PM
Franklin: The Sagan quote is an issue of semantics. Sagan's point was that, given the lack of any evidence, he does not hold to any belief in the existence of a god or, for that matter, anything else lacking evidence(Extra-terrestrial visitation, for instance). This is the same view of practically every atheist. If there were verifiable, irrefutable, testable, experiential evidence of a deity, then Dr. Sagan would have been as devoted a supplicant as can be, and I'm sure Dr. Myers would follow suite. If there were a god and it performed daily miracles (subverting the laws of reality to commit good deeds) and interacted with everyone on a personal level as the religious claim it would do, then there'd be no such thing as atheists; to deny such a god would be the same as denying air exists or that green is a color.
My point is this; regardless of what he called it, Sagan was saying that his view of the world includes what can be experienced and tested and really known, not taken on faith, and that's about as atheistic a statement as can be made.
Posted by: I am me | July 31, 2008 11:32 PM
Anyone else ever thought that Darwin looks like a right 'ard bastard? He is not someone I'd ever disagree with, face to face. He looks like he could break both your arms without breaking a sweat.
Mark Twain looks kinda like Billy Connelly in that picture, too. Which is awesome.
Posted by: Jeremy | July 31, 2008 11:43 PM
There's no way I'm identifying myself with the woo of Unitarianism.
I agree with Amplexus' "argument from authority" point. When talking to people about atheism, I never feel compelled to say "so-and-so was an atheist". It's not much of an argument, which is why I readily dismiss such points from religious people.
And as others have said, it would be difficult to argue that even half these people were really atheists. To me, deism and pantheism, although closer to atheism than traditional religions, are definitely *not* atheism. If the word "atheism" in the title was replaced with something like "religious criticism", it would be accurate.
So while this poster is initially humorous, it doesn't take much analysis to show its flaws.
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 31, 2008 11:50 PM
Darwin was most definitely NOT an atheist. We have his short autobiography and many letters -- he was an agnostic.
Posted by: labert | July 31, 2008 11:52 PM
"#63
Asimov - athiest
Heinlein - not an atheist
Although both are heros of mine."
As a fairly accomplished reader and student of Heinlein's work, I can say that no *definitive* statement about his beliefs can be made. He might have been an atheist, perhaps an agnostic, perhaps a deist of some loose sort. Almost certainly not Christian.
Posted by: LisaJ | July 31, 2008 11:52 PM
Love it! I want it... where can I get one?
Posted by: Spinoza | July 31, 2008 11:54 PM
"Rationalists" is a bad label for "us", because it is already used to refer to Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza ("The Rationalists"), two of which were explicitly Christian, and the third ... well, like Einstein, he'd deny the "atheist" label vehemently... and he was called "The God intoxicated man" by Novalis... but he was a Naturalist of the highest order, a determinist of the highest order, a rationalist, a dogmatist... and he definitely did not believe in the gods of traditional religions...
But yeah, as a label for "non-believers", "Rationalist" doesn't work.
Posted by: SC | August 1, 2008 12:01 AM
Quick Google search - women ahteists/freethinkers:
Marie Curie
Hypatia
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Gloria Steinem
Helen Keller
Ayn Rand
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Ursula LeGuin
Virginia Woolf
Nadine Gordimer
Simone de Beauvoir
Barbara Ehrenreich
Maragaret Sanger
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Saraswathi Gora
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXaYWottYtY&feature=PlayList&p=614BEDCFECE8B22C&index=4
Posted by: John Marley | August 1, 2008 12:02 AM
benjamin franklin:
Do you have any evidence of this. I can only find circumstantial evidence that he was an atheist, ie: the anti-religious sentiments in his books (more specifically anti-xian in his later ones, I admit) and these quotes:
Robert A. Heinlein, quoted in McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, p. 375, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of DisbeliefRobert A. Heinlein, from Laurence J. Peter, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief
He seems to lean strongly towards atheism, as far as I can tell.
Posted by: Azdak | August 1, 2008 12:02 AM
@Julian
If there were verifiable, irrefutable, testable, experiential evidence of a deity, then Dr. Sagan would have been as devoted a supplicant as can be, and I'm sure Dr. Myers would follow suite. If there were a god and it performed daily miracles (subverting the laws of reality to commit good deeds) and interacted with everyone on a personal level as the religious claim it would do, then there'd be no such thing as atheists; to deny such a god would be the same as denying air exists or that green is a color.
...err... what? There's a big leap between accepting that such a being exists and falling all over oneself to serve that being. If a god of an Abrahamic persuasion suddenly comes out of hiding to announce himself, I'm reverting to misotheism. Anyone who expects or demands worship is automatically unworthy of it.
Posted by: Tom | August 1, 2008 12:03 AM
Jefferson's enemies called him an atheist. It was used against him in the presidential election of 1800. But he was a sometimes Deist, sometimes Unitarian, sometimes other. But not an atheist.
Posted by: John Vreeland | August 1, 2008 12:04 AM
They were all atheists in the sense that "religious" people would have considered them atheists. Most of them were called atheists in their lifetimes. Jefferson and Lincoln both were labeled as atheists during their presidential campaigns, though they were probably less atheistic than Einstein, who was some sort of pantheist. Franklyn was almost certainly a deist, but to many people deism amounts to atheism. What good is a deist god? Might as well be an atheist.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | August 1, 2008 12:04 AM
Hell, I'd worship the SOB even if s/he were performing bad deeds daily. Wouldn't want to get on god's bad side :)
Posted by: writzer | August 1, 2008 12:06 AM
RE: Religion = Source of all morality. This from a book called The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality (kind of a Golden Book title) I just picked up by the French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville:
"Where morals are concerned, the loss of faith changes nothing ... That you have lost your faith does not mean that you will suddenly decide to betray your friends or indulge in robbery, rape, assassination and torture. 'If god does not exist,' says Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov, 'everything is allowed.' Not at all, for the simple reason that I will not allow myself everything! As Kant demonstrated, either morals are autonomous or they do not exist at all. If a perosn refrains from murdering his neighbor only out of fear of divine retribution, his behavior is dictated not by moral values by by caution, fear of the holy policeman, egoism. And if a person does good only with an eye to salvation, she is not doing good (since her behavior is dictated by self-interest, rather than by duty or by love) and will thus not be saved. This is Kant, the Enlightenment and humanity at their best: A good deed is not good because God commanded me to do it (in which case it would have been good for Abraham to slit his son's throat); on the contrary, it is because an action is good that is is possible to believe God commanded it. Rather than religion being the basis for morals, morals are now the basis for religion ... To have a religion, the Critique of Practical Reason points out, is to 'acknowledge all one's duties as sacred commandments.' For those who no longer have faith, commandments vanish (or rather, lose their sacred quality), and all that remains are duties ... that is, the commandments we impose on ourselves."
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | August 1, 2008 12:08 AM
SC,
You win the internets! Would you like one of my delicious, feminist cookies?
Posted by: SC | August 1, 2008 12:09 AM
From EMMA GOLDMAN, "The Philosophy of Atheism," 1916:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/goldman/philosophyatheism.html
Posted by: Wowbagger | August 1, 2008 12:10 AM
Azdak, #81:
Bingo.
As far as I'm concerned, for me to become a christian (for example) there are three steps involved:
1) convince me there's a god
2) convince me he's the god as defined by christians
3) convince me he should be worshipped
Heck, to be honest, if all anyone could do was 1) then my life wouldn't change at all. Even they got as far as 2) I'd probably go for Judaism anyway, just 'cause I like being difficult.
I had to look up misotheism; I was wondering at first if you were going to start worshipping soup...
Posted by: rmp | August 1, 2008 12:11 AM
Jeremy, "There's no way I'm identifying myself with the woo of Unitarianism. "
Resistance if futile.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | August 1, 2008 12:12 AM
This is totally OT, but I just had a discussion about evolution with my Wal-mart cashier and I totally blanked on books/websites that combat creationist claims except for talk origins. I'm thinking that I might print up some business cards (just a few) that just list good evolution resources. Then I could give them to someone who seems sincerely interested. Any suggestions on what would be good?
Posted by: Chris Crawford | August 1, 2008 12:17 AM
I think it important to factor in the social context in which these people lived. Until quite recently, being called an atheist was almost as bad as being called a 'sodomite'. We readily acknowledge that many historical figures who were publicly straight were privately gay. I think a similar consideration should be applied to anybody from before 1950 who might have been secretly atheist but publicly deist.
The labels of today often don't fit the people of history. Was Jefferson a racist because he owned slaves? Was Socrates an atheist? Was Washington a 'liberal' or a 'conservative'? These modern labels just don't work in those contexts.
Posted by: Mike Wilhelm | August 1, 2008 12:20 AM
If this is true, then Jesus had DNA. If the cracker is really Jesus after the blessing, it should have DNA
speaking of which, if Adam was a human man, he had DNA, and if Eve was made from his rib, then she would have identical DNA, in which case they would be twins....and then they did the nasty.....gross, lol
silly religious people
Posted by: SC | August 1, 2008 12:21 AM
...which is not even to mention the wonderful Voltairine de Cleyre, as well as practically every single anarchist woman, or man - Bakunin, Kropotkin, Chomsky,..., who really were and are atheists.
Or non-Westerners - e.g., Nehru, Tariq Ali, Salvador Allende, Slavoj Zizek,...
It seems to me it would be far more interesting to explore the rich global history of atheism and freethought rather than to try to jam some of the standard acclaimed figures into the atheist mold.
Posted by: phentari | August 1, 2008 12:21 AM
Twain may not have been, in the strictest sense, an atheist, but he was virulently anti-religion (certainly towards the end of his life.)
For those who haven't, I recommend reading "The War Prayer." It says a lot about the man's viewpoints on religion and jingoistic nationalism.
Posted by: Wowbagger | August 1, 2008 12:25 AM
Mike Wilhelm, #92,
DNA doesn't come into it. Catholics argue that while it turns into Jesus, it isn't in a way testable by physical means.
Convenient, isn't it?