Timothy Sandefur has an excellent quote from H.L. Mencken on how we ought to be responding to creationists.
This actual conflict is joined, and it is the height of absurdity for the...compromisers to seek to evade it with soft words. That conflict was not begun by science. It did not start with an invasion of the proper field of theological speculation by scientific raiders. It started with an invasion of the field of science by theological raiders. Now that it is on, it must be pressed vigorously from the scientific side, and without any flabby tenderness for theological susceptibilities. A defensive war is not enough; there must be a forthright onslaught upon the theological citadel, and every effort must be made to knock it down. For so long as it remains a stronghold, there will be no security for sound sense among us, and little for common decency. So long as it may be used as a recruiting-station and rallying-point for the rabble, science will have to submit to incessant forays, and the same forays will be directed against every sort of rational religion. The latter danger is not unobserved by the more enlightened theologians. They are well aware that, facing the Fundamentalists, they must either destroy or be destroyed. It is to be hoped that men of science will perceive the same plain fact, and so give over their vain effort to stay the enemy with weasel words.
Mencken sure was right — his prediction came true. It's the 21st century. Let's finally get around to demolishing the old superstitions.
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Slightly OT. Two of my favorite Mencken quotes
and
Mencken should have gotten a Molly by now.
H.L. Mencken wrote:
Ummm, but science did step on religion's toes. It always is. Gallileo, etc.. Didn't doctors once need degrees in theology?
But I agree with this: "A defensive war is not enough; there must be a forthright onslaught upon the theological citadel, and every effort must be made to knock it down."
There's far too much defense and not nearly enough offense against creationism. That's partly because we can give answers to the IDiots, while they ignore what we say because they have no answers.
Nevertheless, we need to press these jerks. Keep asking why vertebrate wings were made out of legs. Keep asking why the "designer" made a web of life among the prokaryotes, and a tree of life among the eukaryotes (hint, differences among known mechanisms explain it, "design" can tell us no reason why "macroevolution" happens to agree with evolutionary predictions). Ask them to explain taxonomy, for gosh's sake.
They get off too easy when we merely demonstrate that their criticisms are bogus. Evolution was developed to make up for what seemed terribly curious by design standards, and the buffoons haven't closed that gap in the slightest in over 150 years.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Only because religion claimed to rule in every sector of life.
Yes, if it claims jurisdiction over science, science will step on religion's toes, as it continues to do with religions that wish to control everything in society. But not if religion were to leave science alone in the first place.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
More from Mencken
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty... I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect. I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech... I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run. I believe in the reality of progress. I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
H.L. Mencken
have you ever noticed that the fields of science being invaded by the theologians appear to be the most rarefied fields?
I never see Intelligent Design being applied to, for instance, the construction of large bridges, the mixing of industrial chemicals, or the (spiritual) control and monitoring of nuclear power plants.
It's an indication of the quality of the argument -- at least so far as I can see -- that it's never applied to an area where cars can be dropped in a river like dumplings into a soup, or chemical factories can suddenly spew out a fog of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate, for instance.
Furthermore, I would guess that only a tiny percentage of creationists or other religionists would consider using religious engineering strategies for everyday construction. The others, along with the rest of us, would be out there buttonholing their state highway department or whoever, demanding that they get back to the techniques of "cold iron".
I wonder if there's any way to bring evolution as far forward in most people's minds as the structural members of a bridge, or the LD50 of a chemical factory?
The difficulty in dealing with creationists is that they are lying machines. They generate slime quicker than hagfish. One strategy might be, as much as possible, to always have experts in more than one area of evolutionary biology at creationist meetings. A sadly overlooked field for this is biogeography- nowhere else can YEC's be so easily crushed. Discuss the pre-19 century distribution of coconut palms, biogeographic regions, adaptive radiation, etc. Always point out to others that they are being actively deceived
Off topic- I have the latest issue of AiG in front of me- there is reason for good news here. Looks like the CM funding situation may be getting a bit desperate.
I was gonna say something similar to Norman Doering (#2). The religious were all deluded into their fantasies about the world until more critical and generally smarter people hit them with something called "reality" and made their delusions (at least for reasonable religious people) ever so smaller. The unreasonable ones are reasonably pissed off, and I wouldn't care if they are ('cause reality doesn't care), unless they were planning on bombing me or burning me or something else.
But the thing is that religion, as long as it claims anything about the universe, be it the earth is The Center, witches exist, evolution doesn't, or some more trivial things like prayer works, it's a moral code, etc., is always and by definition stepping on reality, and thus, science.
As an aside, the general public needs to realize that "science" is not just some guys in lab coats handling test tubes, nor wacky-hairstyled nerds doing equations on a blackboard. Instead, if the public just understood science as the only reliable to find what's real, they would realize that there's no other choice. Whatever method or theory that comes up that's reliable, will be integrated by science, it's not gonna become an "alternative".
I agree about soft words, and especially about muddying of the waters, which theologians tend to be good at. But I think that the important thing is for the scientific community and creationists to develop better personal relationships. Isolation always leads to exaggeration and other distortions; I was raised a fundamentalist, and we were led to believe that pubs and cinemas are hell-holes, that "Rome" is constantly plotting against us in N. Ireland, that "Darwinists" are trying to push some hidden agenda, etc.
On the other hand, your post about Rudi Boa seemed absurd. It was surprising, because I recall you once posting that it was good that your students met some creationists and found that them to be nice people.
So, yes, less soft words, but not less friendship. As an illustration of what can be acheived in a few months of personal contact, after a few decades of fighting, think of Paisley and McGuinness in N.Ireland, who are now known as the "Chuckle brothers". (Alas...)
My two pennies.
Emphasis mine.
Especially as we near the christian high holy day disguised as a happy go lucky consumerist orgy, this advice to those who might want to use more liberal or inclusive approaches designed to not ruffle any feathers, makes a lot of sense. Thanks.
The religious have a trump card. They are free to espouse that God/Allah/Hindu-deities created the world, exclaim "I didn't come from no monkey," or demand that a book which asserts the Grand Canyon is 6000 years old be sold at a National Park (because that's what their holy book says). However, you are restricted to pointing out that their specific claims relative to the natural world are inconsistent with reality and scientific knowledge. What you are not permitted to do is attack the underlying supposition; that their supernatural sky-spirit is a superstitious fantasy and a childish delusion. Doing so is tantamount to telling little Sally that Santa is make-believe. Even though we are discussing adults the reaction is the same. That it, you are a bully for telling anyone that their religion, faith, or belief is make-believe. You have hurt their feelings, made them upset, and caused bystanders to get angry at your insensitivity. This includes all supernaturalism including the established religions, belief in ghosts, souls and reincarnation, voodoo, etc.
Another favorite Mencken quote; "There's only one way to look at a politician......down your nose."
I never see Intelligent Design being applied to, for instance, the construction of large bridges, the mixing of industrial chemicals, or the (spiritual) control and monitoring of nuclear power plants.
Well, to be fair, that's all engineering not science.
Doesn't Ann Coulter claim to be the right-wing Mencken?
In your dreams, baby, in your dreams...
My current favorite Mencken:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
I still don't believe in psychics, but damn.
"Doesn't Ann Coulter claim to be the right-wing Mencken?"
Mencken was the right-wing Mencken.
Speaking of HLM, everyone here would probably enjoy his "Christmas Story," a tale of Baltimore free-thinker philanthropy gone horribly wrong. It's in his "The American Scene" collection, edited by Huntingdon Cairns.
It's interesting to compare the writings of the contemporaries, HL Mencken and GK Chesterton. Mencken's writings resonate with the future, Chesterton's with the past.
"It's interesting to compare the writings of the contemporaries, HL Mencken and GK Chesterton. Mencken's writings resonate with the future, Chesterton's with the past."
I am quite fond of one thing Chesterton wrote. In answering a reader about what was wrong with the world today, he said it was him. He meant something along the lines that he failed to live up to his own standards, and so did millions just like him. I instead take it to refer to the times he did live up to his own backward-looking, irrational standards.
Ah, my man H L Mencken ! Two gems from the sage of
Baltimore:
"Theology is an effort to explain the unknowable in terms
of the not worth knowing. . . it is not only opposed to the
scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other rational
form of thinking."
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in
the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory
that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
We will never have his like again, nor can our current crop
of rationalists extol his sane and ascerbic wit. He will
always remain among my favorite rational people.
Another thing you need to do, at least for the sake of the bystanders, is to keep the devious cdesign proponentsists from moving the goalposts when discussing this stuff. Almost inevitably, they say they want to talk "evolution" and they start talking about abiogenesis. My proposed rhetorical strategy for doing this is to, as much as possible, nail them down on the definitions of words right at the outset. When they move to Conservative Non-Argumentation Tactic #2, which is "Dodge, Obfuscate, and Change the Subject," then you can point at all your invisible readers and say, "See? Look! S/he can't even define the thing s/he claims to be talking about."
I've seen way too many blog comments threads get hopelessly off-track because the busy creationist is pulling up the rails ahead of itself and laying them down at warp speed, heading in a direction completely antithetical to the original thrust of the conversation.
The kicker is, as a student of rhetoric, pretty much all right-wingers do this. If they can't nail you on the facts (and they usually can't), they move the goalposts. If you don't let them do that, and try to get them to define something, they obfuscate, bluster, and change the subject. If that doesn't work, next comes projection and the Tu Quoque accusations. After that, name-calling and "I'm leaving" followed by nearly endless posts to the same effect, generally followed by the site mods shitcanning the creep(s). They generally have all the imagination of a dead gym sock, so the pattern is pretty predictable.
I said: I never see Intelligent Design being applied to, for instance, the construction of large bridges, the mixing of industrial chemicals, or the (spiritual) control and monitoring of nuclear power plants.
And then coathangrrr said:Well, to be fair, that's all engineering not science.
I'm not so sure of that. At first glance, it seems like a reasonable separation. However engineering is either built on pure science, or is built on trial and error, which is a quick and dirty back-of-the-envelope version of science herself. You keep throwing the spaghetti at the wall until one day it sticks.
If science were being attacked at this end,(I can't at the moment imagine how), then one or two fallen bridges would stir up the interest of citizens in short order.
But when science is in her inner chamber, dealing with quantum effects or evolution or the age of the universe, then the guy on the street can feel free to say whatever he likes about her, because before he was in a position to really understand any of these areas very well, he would have to ask her out now and then, buy her an ice cream and actually listen to her conversation. Too much work. But a falling down bridge -- that's not much of a feat of imagination.
Noni
H.L. Mencken said:
Summary: Creationists tried to serve us, then they got served: now it's ON!
DAAAAAMN!!! Oh, Mencken did not just go there!
What tripe. The Diary of H. L. Mencken, published recently by Alfred A. Knopf, shows that Mencken was a racist and an anti-Semitic bigot. Myers' anti-Christian bigotry fits nicely with Mencken's.
Modern science arose only in Judeo-Christian civilization. It arose because Christians (i.e., virtually all scientists of the Enlightenment)believe that the world is rationally ordered by God, and that we can and should explore that order. Atheism is parasitic on Western Culture. Its gifts have not been scientific but political- Communism is atheism's gift to mankind.
So, Mark. Creationism is therefore true, and evolution is false?
"So, Mark. Creationism is therefore true, and evolution is false?"
Kseniya,
I said nothing about creationism or evolution. That's a separate discussion. What I said is this: modern science arose from Christian civilization, and Christianity was and is indispensible to the scientific revolution. The view that nature is intrinsically rational and that man intrinsically has the capacity to understand it and should use that capacity is a direct consequence of Christian theology. Modern science arose only in a culture soaked in Christianity.
To understand the contribution that atheism has made to scientific progress, consider the scientific output of explicitly atheist cultures- the Soviet Union, Cambodia under Pol Pot, North Korea...
"What I said is this: modern science arose from Christian civilization, and Christianity was and is indispensible to the scientific revolution. "
Got anything to back up this assertion?
In what way is Christianity indispensable?
From where I sit science is being attacked by the religious.
1.what's this business talking about witches as if they don't exist? I hang out with witches, danced in the circle, called the quarters... I expect Google will give you the address of the nearist coven to your area.
2 No, Mencken was not a liberal. He may have agreed with liberals on some topics, like censorship, but he was not a liberal
Holy non sequitir, Batman. Whether early science was supported by Christianity (it's hardly the creation of Christianity by any stretch of the imagination) has nothing to do with the fact that creationists actively campaign against science now. Science doesn't even seek to step on the toes of any religion, it just happens that religions were silly enough to make claims about reality that are false. Now we have a bunch of people throwing hissy fits because scientists have too much integrity to lie about reality to prop up ancient beliefs that were pretty ridiculous even before bringing the evidence into it.
Atheism (possessing no belief in gods) makes no contribution nor does any harm to science because it posits nothing to be considered by science. Simple theism (merely believing at least one god exists) at best makes no contribution to science (the non-empirical belief in gods being compartmentalized away from affecting scientific work) and at worst causes some harm by presupposing the existence of something without any evidence (much less sufficient evidence). Quite simply, you can't have atheistic science or theistic science. You have good science and bad science. Both kinds of science can be practiced by atheists and theists alike.
Also, fuck you for insinuating that atheism leads to mass murder. It seems you've got your own bigotry. Perhaps you should remove that plank from your eye before worrying about others.
spurge,
You've got to be kidding. Are you telling me that you don't know that modern science arose in Christian Europe over the past 5 centuries? Christendom is the only culture that has given rise, in any systematic way, to modern science. Virtually all Enlightment scientists (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, etc) were passionate Christians, and most would today be considered to be particularly dogmatic fundamentalists. Rodney Stark's 'For the Glory of God' (2004) is one of countless books in which the connection between Christianity and modern science is spelled out. No historically literate observer can deny the intimate connection between Christianity and the rise of science.
As for your view that science is being attacked by the religious, that's not true. Most people are religious, and no one is attacking Newton's laws, Charles' law, the Watson-Crick model of DNA, or String theory. Some religious people are attacking Darwin's theory because atheists have advanced their unscientific ideological viewpoints by hijacking genuine science. In addition, some Christians have opposed experimentation on human embryos. Regardless of what you think about the issue, the use of embryonic human beings for research is a moral, not scientific, issue, and 'science' isn't being attacked.
Mark
"As for your view that science is being attacked by the religious, that's not true."
Liar
Mark:
Despite the fact that the Christian Church tried hard to snuff it.
In addition, the development of science was heavily influenced by cultures in the Middle and Far East as well. Not everything good came from Europe.
Wake up.
uknesvuinng,
Re: "fuck you for insinuating that atheism leads to mass murder."
There have been only a small number of explicitly atheist governments in human history. The first was the Reign of Terror in France ('The Cult of Reason'). A bloody affair. Next was the Bolsheviks (Lenin, Stalin, the Ukranian Famine, the Gulag, etc), followed by Mao's China (probably more than 50 million people starved and murdered), Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (a third of the population exterminated), North Korea... the list goes on. 'The Black Book of Communism' counts 100 million people dead from Communism in the 20th century.
I'm sure that you have plenty of excuses (they were different atheists...). Of course all of those excuses can be applied to religous violence as well. Yet the fact remains that every explicitly atheist government in human history has been homicidal, and homicidal on a scale never before seen in human history. Stalin killed more people each day (about 3000) than the Spanish Inquisition killed in 300 years.
List for me the explicitly atheist governments in history. Tell me which ones haven't been murderous.
Open your eyes.
None of your examples did what they did because of atheism.
They did it for power.
While I don't agree with your thesis (or Starks'), Mark, I do find it interesting that you failed to give the full title of Stark's work: "For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery". It seems Dr. Stark has a much less narrow (or more honest) view of history than you exhibit. Why, I'd imagine he gives a little credit to Muslims for preserving the early scientific thought of the Greeks.
Yes, I know, you're arguing that "modern" science sprang full-grown from the head of Christianity, but I suspect you're not that simple, simply blinkered.
JRY,
Re:"Wake up."
I'm wide awake. The science questioned by religious people is either 'science' that makes atheistic assertions that aren't supported by the science at all (the atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory), or raise very real moral questions about which reasonable people can disagree (human embryonic stem cell research), or makes claims on limited evidence that would radically alter human society (Global Warming).
The questions raised are reasonable, and your view that science is being attacked is paranoid. America is the most religious Western nation, and is also the world leader in science.
Now, now, let's be charitable.
How about,ignorant and misled, with little or no regard for the facts.
"What tripe. The Diary of H. L. Mencken, published recently by Alfred A. Knopf, shows that Mencken was a racist and an anti-Semitic bigot."
And this invalidates everything else he said? Sorry, we don't deal in cults of personality.
"It arose because Christians (i.e., virtually all scientists of the Enlightenment)believe that the world is rationally ordered by God, and that we can and should explore that order."
And now it has outgrown the need to presume that the Sky Daddy loves us all very much and is behind everything.
spurge,
Re: "None of your examples did what they did because of atheism.
They did it for power."
Of course they did it for power, just like religious thugs did it for power. Do you really think that the European Wars of Religion in the 16th Century were mainly about 'works vrs faith', or that the car bombs in Baghdad are about disagreements over 7th century succession to the Prophet? All violence on a large scale- theist and atheist- is about power. The fights are over family ties, sectarian loyalties, booty, revenge for personal issues, etc. Do you really think that the terrorism in Northern Ireland was because of disagreements over the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist?
The real question is this: in what cultural environment- say, Christian vrs. atheist- is the violence worse?
The answer is obvious. For all of the violence that has taken place in theist cultures, is has never been even remotely as horrendous as violence which has taken place in atheist cultures.
Again: which explictly atheist civilizations have not been murderous? I can name scores of theist civilizations that have been relatively humane.
"The science questioned by religious people is either 'science' that makes atheistic assertions that aren't supported by the science at all (the atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory)"
Please elaborate.
"or raise very real moral questions about which reasonable people can disagree (human embryonic stem cell research)"
Stem cell research only raises moral questions if you believe that some sort of magical ensoulment happens at conception. Science has shown no evidence for this, but religious people frame the argument as if it were true. Therefore, they are impeding the practice of science.
And anyway, on what grounds can religion question science anyway? Science is based on evidence. Religion is based on revealed knowledge and tradition. There is no reliable way to know whether your religious claim is wrong. It's all just made up.
"or makes claims on limited evidence that would radically alter human society (Global Warming)."
What does religion have to do with global warming? I think you're getting religion and right-wing politics mixed up. Forgivable.
Dear Mark,
Wipe that "scowling clown" face, please! You are not frightening anyone, anywhere, anytime with these attempts at polishing the cow pie that is Xianity. You sound like a lonely little whimperer calling up from the the bottom of the miles-deep well of lies you were stupid enough to dig yourself down into.
I'd offer, as many here would, a candle to light your darkness, but it's clear you are afraid to see yourself even in the weakest light, much less to allow youself to be hoisted into the light of the sun beneath which ordinary human beings walk.
(Hopefully we can enrage your shrunken "soul" enough to not notice you have learned something about yourself, maybe even about something new about the world you clearly cannot see in the thick, smelly burlap bag that is your "faith".)
Ta!
There's not exactly such a thing as explicitly atheist countries. As it turns out, there's no further implication of beliefs stemming from a lack of belief in a certain premise. On the other hand, technically, every secular country is an "explicitly atheist" country (as much as the absence of a belief can be explicit), as they hold no national beliefs in in any gods. So, following the definition of atheism as possessing no belief in any gods, then the US is an "atheist" country. But, it's kind of silly to define a country by beliefs it lacks, as non-belief has no effect on policy or national acts, and defining countries as atheist conflates the term with secular. Individuals are atheists, countries are secular.
The countries that you listed were explicitly anti-theist (a tiny circle inside the big circle of atheism if described by a Venn diagram). While technically atheist (as they lack beliefs in gods), they can hardly be considered representative of all atheism, and their policies and acts stemmed not from the atheism itself, but from anti-theistic motivations that also led to their atheism.
A difference in atheism and religions is religions have the ability to provide motivation for horrible acts of evil. Atheism posits nothing by itself and so cannot do the same. Of course, you can replace "horrible acts of evil" with "great acts of good" and the above still holds true. You can't really credit atheism itself with anything good or bad because it doesn't do anything. Saying atheism causes something is really making a claim that theism inhibits it and vice versa.
While thinking of "explicitly atheist" countries, try to think of some explicitly a-unicornist countries. If we're lucky, you might realize why it's so stupid to label countries as explicitly atheist.
Rey,
Re: "Stem cell research only raises moral questions if you believe that some sort of magical ensoulment happens at conception. Science has shown no evidence for this, but religious people frame the argument as if it were true. Therefore, they are impeding the practice of science."
First, sicence doesn't address the issue of ensoulment. Furthermore, all sorts of things 'impede the practice of science'. Science- like every other human activity- is heavily regulated by law. We can't experiment on people in ways that are likely to harm them, we're not allowed to do painful experiments on animals, we can't spew nuclear waste all over the countryside.
Regulation of expermentation on human embryos is no different. People on both sides have moral viewpoints, and both sides have a right to be heard. Are you suggesting that the viewpoints of religious citizens should be excluded from influencing public policy?
Your argument is with democracy, not religion.
uknesvuinng,
Atheism's biggest problem in the 21st century is the blood spilled by atheists in the 20th. Your hand-waving about "You can't really credit atheism itself with anything good or bad because it doesn't do anything." is nonsense.
The murders committed under the auspices of Communism (and by the Jacobians in the Reign of Terror) were committed by fervent atheists. They were committed for a host of sectarian and ideological reasons. Every 'excuse' you can offer for atheist atrocities can be offered for theist atrocities.
The fact remains that cultures that have been explictly atheist (as Marxist cultures tend to be) have been extraordinarily murderous. Your refusal to come to grips with the real history of your ideology, as we Christians have had to come to grips with our less-than-peaceful history, prevents you from being taken seriously.
Atheism needs fewer hacks, and more thoughtful adherents who are willing to be honest about history.
Wow -- did you actually flunk history? Do you have any notion of the contribution of the medieval Muslim world to science (you do know that terms like "algebra" and "alcohol" derive from Arabic, right?). Are you completely ignorant of the "Islamic Golden Age", when thinkers in the Muslim world laid the groundwork for science while most of Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages? Did you not know that a great many historians of science think that the beginnings of modern science can be attributed to the Muslim world?
No one claims that atheism is some sort of moral code or that it leads people to be good.
All it means is lack of belief in gods.
That is it. It doesn't in itself lead people to do anything.
Only religion makes a claim to morality and fails.
Tulse,
Re: "Do you have any notion of the contribution of the medieval Muslim world to science"
I have great respect for the contributions of medieval Islamic civilization to science. Medieval Islam contributed more than modern atheist (Marxist) civilization has. Yet the fact remains: the scientific revolution is a product of Christian civilization.
Why are you evading the obvious?
Again: which explictly atheist civilizations have not been murderous? I can name scores of theist civilizations that have been relatively humane.
The Spanish Revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil war for one. They were avowedly atheist and they were slaughtered by the Catholic, Nazi supported Fascist Franco.
Moreover, look at Hitlers actions, again an avowed Christian. He slaughtered more people at a higher rate than any before or since, he killed somewhere around eleven million in four years of death camps. That's some efficiency that the Atheist regimes couldn't match.
And as per Mao and the Chinese communist regime, people starving because of bad policy decisions, which is what a huge number of the deaths were, is no where near the same level of evil as the sort of thing Hitler did.
Mark, you still don't understand what atheism is. It doesn't make any claims, period. It's merely not accepting other claims of a specific nature. We wouldn't even need a word for it if the assholes of religion didn't overstate the value of their particular religions. Atheism makes no claims for anyone to act on.
I don't deny the communist regimes were atheist, but your implied claim that their atheism was causal regarding their actions and policies is false. Your post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and your bigotry are duly noted.
I haven't dealt much with the other false implied premise that's being thrown around, that atheists do not contribute to science, but I'll point it out now. The contributions of atheist societies are not the sum total of the contributions of atheists to science.
I'm feeling rather lazy now, but maybe someone could be kind enough to list some numbers on how many scientists are atheists, and maybe a short list of atheist scientists that have made a notable contribution to science.
coathangrrr,
The Spanish revolutionaries slaughtered priests wholesale. There were atrocities on both sides.
Hitler doesn't fit easily into either Christian or atheist philosophy. He was a baptized Catholic, but Nazism obviously wasn't Christian, and wasn't explictly atheist either. It was nearest to paganism, worshipping blood, race, and nationhood. Nazism owed much to Nietzsche, who hated Christianity, and historian Richard Weikart in "From Darwin to Hitler" traces much of Nazi eugenic policies to Darwinism and the eugenic movement in the late 19th century that it spawned.
To claim that Nazi atrocities are 'Christian' is to seriously misunderstand Nazism.
Communism, on the other hand, was explictly atheist.
Minor correction to my penultimate post (excluding this one). It's not post hoc ergo propter hoc but cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
"It was nearest to paganism, worshipping blood, race[...]"
Things which are totally alien to Abrahamic tradition. Riiight.
Hitler doesn't fit easily into either Christian or atheist philosophy.
Nonsense, he claimed over and over that he was Christian and that he was doing what he was doing for the white Christian race.
Nazism owed much to Nietzsche, who hated Christianity, and historian Richard Weikart in "From Darwin to Hitler" traces much of Nazi eugenic policies to Darwinism and the eugenic movement in the late 19th century that it spawned.
You are totally not spouting that crap. Nazism owed much to Nietzsche's sister who doctored up a couple of his works to make them pro-Christian and then gave them to the Nazis. The Nazis were fucking Christian, they said it again and again.
Oh and countries that are atheist and peaceful. Try Estonia and Sweden, right now.
The anti-semitic tradition that the Nazis exploited is a Christian one. Europe was not pagan or overwhelmingly atheistic at the time, unless I'm mistaken on that little detail.
One of my favorites from the Sage of Baltimore, which I think I've posted here before:
"The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous."
-jcr
Quoth Mark:
And the culture which put "Gott Mit Uns" on its uniform belt buckles, how life-affirming was it?
Quoth Tulse:
That's a pernicious bit of Islamic propaganda (anyone who recalls the imperialist Soviet claims to have invented everything under the sun should be skeptical of similar claims from Muslim imperialists). This claim is addressed at Dhimmi Watch, and in more depth by Fjordman.
Science only got going in the West when the hold of christian orthodoxy was weakened. The sterility of the Islamic world can be traced directly to its suffocating religious orthodoxy. While there are certain philosophical requirements for science, religious orthodoxy is antithetical to it. Even Mark moves his goalposts by saying "Christian culture" without any reference to church dogma. Nice job of equivocation there, Mark.
Some religious people are attacking Darwin's theory because atheists have advanced their unscientific ideological viewpoints by hijacking genuine science.
I would ask Little Mark how he accounts for Christians who accept Darwin's theory, since Darwinism is just one big wicked atheist conspiracy, but he's not very bright and I have my doubts his explanation would make any sense.
I would also ask him that given that the great majority of scientists accept Darwin's theories, whether that means that most science is not 'genuine', but I don't want to confuse him more.
So, go ahead, Mark. Explain to us why Noah's ark and the resurrection and a 6,000-YO earth are 'scientific ideological viewpoints'. We can't wait.
No way. It is a product of the enlightenment and Western civilization. Xianity had nothing much to do with the scientific revolution and to this day mostly just gets in the way. Bruno died an agonizing death for defending heliocentrism and Galileo almost followed him. To this day, when you find a speed bump in the road, it has Xian fundie written all over it. You are mistaking correlation with causation, a fallacy so old it was first written in Latin when Latin was a living language.
coathangrrr,
What Nietzsche's sister added to his philosophy was virulent anti-Semitism. Nietzsche's hatred of Christianity was unambiguous.
Neither Hitler nor the Nazi leadership were practicing Christians in any meaningful sense. They had plans to kidnap the Pope, and they killed as many Christians as Jews in the concentration camps. The Vatican frequently condemned Nazism, and Pius XII harbored may Jews in the Vatican to protect them from the Fascists. The Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism after the war, and Pius XII was proclaimed a "Righteous Gentile" by the State of Israel. There were millions of Christian martyrs to the Nazis- among them Lutheran pastor and theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Polish Franscican priest Maximilian Kolbe. By the way, who were the (non-Communist) atheist martyrs to Nazism?
The 20th century was characterized by the weakening of Christian culture in Europe, a decline that had been accelerating since the late 19th century. The Nazis (and the Communists) rose when the influence of Christianity was waning. Yet they arose from a Christian culture, of course, and therefore Christianity has some soul-searching to do (which it has done) about 20th century Europe.
I have seen no analogous soul searching by atheists about Communism, which was explicitly and proudly atheist. You behave as if your ideology sprung out of the ground a few years ago, newly formed, innocent of history.
You still haven't answered my earlier question: list the explicitly athiest civilizations (there have been many in the 20th century and there was one in the 18th century)that weren't murderous.
No one doubts that mankind is brutal. My argument is that atheist civilizations are objectively more brutal than theistic ones. By far.
Hitler doesn't fit easily into either Christian or atheist philosophy. He was a baptized Catholic, but Nazism obviously wasn't Christian, and wasn't explictly atheist either. It was nearest to paganism, worshipping blood, race, and nationhood.
Short Mark: "even tho Hitler explained he was a Christian hundreds of times, he was a bad person, therefore I get to decide that he wasn't a Christian".
Christians have treated Jews so wonderfully over the last 2,000 years, Mark. We're sorry we forgot.
What tripe. The Diary of H. L. Mencken, published recently by Alfred A. Knopf, shows that Mencken was a racist and an anti-Semitic bigot.
Certainly. This proves that everything he said was false, and that evolution is false. Your logic bowls us over.
"They were committed for a host of sectarian and ideological reasons. Every 'excuse' you can offer for atheist atrocities can be offered for theist atrocities."
Bingo. Neither theism nor atheism are enough to encompass an entire ideology. Stalin was not simply an "atheist", he was a Hagelian, a Marxist-Lenninist and a cultural heir to the monarchial tradition of Tsarism.
The latter, by the way, in explicitly tied to Orthidox Christianity and established many of the facets of the Soviet regime we consider the most grotesquely inhumane. For instance, Lenin and Trotsky didn't themselves commence the incarceration of political dissident in Siberia prison camps, their Tsarist predecessors had been doing this for centuries.
The 20th century was characterized by the weakening of Christian culture in Europe, a decline that had been accelerating since the late 19th century. The Nazis (and the Communists) rose when the influence of Christianity was waning. Yet they arose from a Christian culture, of course,
You mean...
Antisemitism arose from Christianity?
But... I thought Antisemitism was never a problem when Europe was *Christian*.
Oh my god, you've gotta be shitting me, Mark.
"Neither Hitler nor the Nazi leadership were practicing Christians in any meaningful sense."
How about the fact that they were expressed Christians? How about the fact that they denounced the Communists primarily because they were "godless"?
Or if you don't consider the Nazis "practicing Christians in any meaningful sense", how about Martin Luther?
"You behave as if your ideology sprung out of the ground a few years ago, newly formed, innocent of history."
Bzzzzt. Wrong, thanks for playing. Atheism is not an ideology, try again.
Mark:
Here's your reading for the weekend, there'll be a short quiz tomorrow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies
Mark,
Apologia isn't compatible with "soul searching."
Don't strain yourself.
Religion (maybe politics is a better term?) does interfer with bridges from my standpoint. I live in Minneapolis where the bridge collapsed last August. These fricken republicans actually back this lousy government we have in state and out state. I am totally disillusioned with this country and where is has gone but not many people seem to care. I am not a scientist but I am not stupid like the religious right counts on to survive. Scarey country I live in these days.
Tyler,
Re: "Neither theism nor atheism are enough to encompass an entire ideology. Stalin was not simply an "atheist", he was a Hagelian, a Marxist-Lenninist and a cultural heir to the monarchial tradition of Tsarism."
I agree. As I wrote earlier, thugs (atheistic and theistic) act for a variety of reasons. Metaphysical reasons are usually not up front.
My point is this: given the complexity of motivation for human atrocities, which milieu (explicitly atheist or explicitly theist) yields the worst atrocities? The history of the 20th century is unambiguous: explictly atheist civilizations are astonishingly bloody. For goodness sake, the first atheist government in human history (Revolutionary France) quickly earned the name "Reign of Terror".
Atheists need to take the bloody history of their ideology seriously.
"The history of the 20th century is unambiguous: explictly atheist civilizations are astonishingly bloody."
"Atheists need to take the bloody history of their ideology seriously."
You seem to be stuck on two fatuous propositions: 1. that atheism is an ideology and 2. that atheism is something that can fully encompass a "civilization". It is neither. The histories of Soviet Russia, Maoist China, etc. have numerous subtleties and nuances and crisp divisions into "atheism" versus "theism" tell you virtually nothing that is historically meaningful.
You continually reference the French Revolution, but fail to acknowledge that "The Cult of Reason" was only one part of the entire affair. Robespierre, the figure behind the most bloody aspects of the French revolution, was reacting against the atheists and was himself a theist. You also ignore the various historical contingencies that cause the French revolution to descend into chaos, ones that could have easily hapened in its American counterpart (the French revolutionaries, for instance, did not preserve the institution of land ownership and had a proto-Leninist notion that liberation could be achieved by an omnipotent political party).
Mark,
It's obvious that religion was outlawed by Communism and other totalitarian regimes because of political reasons. When people can gather together they can, and will, devise plans of opposition.
You're forgetting a similar scenario when Constantine "invented" Christianity (aka the Roman Catholic Church) piecemeal out of various religions of the day as a ploy to rob the religious elite of power and yet not alienate the masses. Very similar although much smarter way of keeping power while de-legitimizing those who were formerly in power.
"My point is this: given the complexity of motivation for human atrocities, which milieu (explicitly atheist or explicitly theist) yields the worst atrocities?"
There are some theists that would like to even up the score--if only they could get their hands on some nukes.
Hitler invoked god and Jesus often. It is all through Mein Kampf. He also thought the neopagan stuff was dumb and said so as well.
Xians have been lying about this ever since. They do it every time Hitler and the Nazis come up. A lie repeated a million times is still a lie. FWIW, they also forged documents after the war to try to cover up Hitlers reliance on Xians and Xianity to massacre millions of people. That didn't work either.
Mark, we've heard your standard homeschool, brainwashed, moron, lies millions of times over the last 62 years. It was bullcrap in 1945 and it is bullcrap in 2007.
Try to do something honest for the first and last time in your life. Copy Martin Luther's plan to eliminate the Jews, 7 points and it is on Wikipedia. At Nurenberg, some of the Nazis said they were just carrying out Luther's plan. It was true but they hung them anyway.
Mark, do you really believe that if theistic governments of the past had had access to modern technology they wouldn't have been as violent and ruthless as your examples of atheist regimes? Technology is responsible for the difference in body counts, not ideology, and certainly not an anomalous capacity for violence.
And BTW, please at least try to understand that atheism is not an ideology. It is not a competing religion. And saying that science is dependent on religion is like saying that a dog is dependent on ticks. Religion has an indisputable history of opposing and impeding science. It is still opposing and impeding science because religion is the opposite of science, and your failure (inability?) to understand that is why you think "(the atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory)" are ideologically driven.
Man, this Mark dude sure is full of bullshit.
You have not demonstrated that atheism is a bloody ideology. The 20th century has seen the growth of explicitly secular nations, and it has also seen the growth of strongly totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism is clearly vile and leads to all kinds of bloody minded catastrophes; it is independent of atheism and secularism. We're also seeing modern states that are progressively shedding more and more of their religious baggage, and they are among the most peaceful nations on earth.So don't waste your breath on this bogus, simpleminded claim that you can pin totalitarian excess on atheism.Note also that your argument here is basically a fallacy -- you are attempting to argue from consequences. Even if you were right (and I definitely don't concede that you are) that atheists were more likely to kill, it would not say a thing about the validity of religion or the falsity of atheism.
I'm sure that you have plenty of excuses (they were different atheists...). Of course all of those excuses can be applied to religous violence as well. Yet the fact remains that every explicitly atheist government in human history has been homicidal, and homicidal on a scale never before seen in human history. Stalin killed more people each day (about 3000) than the Spanish Inquisition killed in 300 years.
Gee what about the Christian anhilation of Native American's remember those heathen devils? Who is the murderer in that? You are all sick in denial about forcing Christianity on others when it is convenient for you.
This nugget came from the same mind that preaches about historical literacy.
No, Mark. "Some religious people" are attacking Darwin's theory because they're fools (ignorant or deluded, pick one) who put more faith in mythology than in fact and reason.
What difference does it really make who killed whom and who killed more than the other? People kill people. America's had its share of murdering, starting with witches, continuing with Native Americans, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, and we're not done yet.
I'm willing to speculate that many of those who have perpetrated murder under Stalin and Pol Pot were likely religious. Ideology doesn't kill. People kill.
"My point is this: given the complexity of motivation for human atrocities, which milieu (explicitly atheist or explicitly theist) yields the worst atrocities?"
How about neither? Your question presents a false dilemma. Atrocities are the result of the human condition and one of the few things that are not predicated on race, creed, gender, age, era, education, sexual orientation, or any other category I can think of.
The numbers quoted from the 20th century are a function of the amount of people inhabiting the earth at that point in history. I am confident the Assyrians, as representative of a theistic culture, would have been prepared to slaughter as many had they encountered the requisite number of victims. What I think Mencken would agree with is that unbridled power generally results in atrocity in direct proportion to the amount of unbridled power possessed, regardless of who wields it.
What is interesting about this question is Theism's and Naturalism's--I tend to agree with the assertion that atheism makes no positive claims--attempts to wrestle with the atrocities we all recognize under the broader heading of the problem of evil.
Even if we agree with that, what makes you attribute it to "Christian" rather than "European"? Maybe it was the Indo-European linguistic heritage. Maybe it was the influence of Greek philosophy. Maybe it was the influence of the Roman legal system. Maybe it was the climate, the geography, or the set of constellations in the sky. Or maybe the dominant religion screwed things up so badly that they were forced to invent another approach.
Your assertion is utterly groundless.
A fact that contradicts one of your cherished myths is not thereby an atheistic assertion. There are an infinite number of theistic religions that are fully compatible with Darwin's theory.
So if you're so interested in being that honest about history, Mark, are you willing to step up to the plate about the central role the illegal US bombing of Cambodia played in taking the Khmer Rouge from their origins as a rag-tag handful of disaffected Cambodian Parisian ex-pats to control of the entire country? Wouldn't that implicate the (Christian) US politicians in the massacre as well as those who supported them, since the KR would never have come to power without that illegal bombing, resulting in an inconvenient messy complication of your overly-simplistic thesis?
Or are you just cherry-picking when you talk about honesty and responsibility and history?
"Rational religion"? "Enlightened theologians"? That's appeasement talk, Mencken.
That aside, neither theism nor atheism - in and of themselves - can be blamed for any atrocity litany since these are both simple propositions. As such, they are elementary components of larger mobilizing worldviews, that includes cosmology, theories of historical change, value systems, eternal enemies, imperatives, rationales. The historical record has demonstrated that terroristic, totalitarian, imperialist, oppressive mobilizing worldviews - or benevolent ones, for that matter - may be theistic or atheistic (or deistic).
The issue of God-belief and nonbelief may not even be an more important component of a particular worldview. Or it may be crucial.
uknesvuinng: "A difference in atheism and religions is religions have the ability to provide motivation for horrible acts of evil. "
Apples and oranges. The proper comparison with atheism is theism. A religion is a specific theistic belief system. (However, it is not a complete belief system; note the difference between Romney and Reid.) Therefore, the appropriate comparison for a religion, or a set of religions, is with a specific atheistic belief system or a set of these. These atheistic belief systems - mobilizing worldviews - encompass much more than mere atheism, just like theistic belief systems (religions) encompass much more than the simple premise that God (or gods) exists.
In that case, religions should not be compared with atheism itself - the mere nonbelief in God - but specific atheistic worldviews and their many variants: dialectical materialism, Objectivism, secular humanism, Darwinian conservatism, atheistic transhumanism, etc.
Colugo,
Good point, well made.
Colugo,
I concur with Numad. It was what I was trying to get across, but you did so in a much more elaborate and incisive way than I.
Modern science arose only in Judeo-Christian civilization.
the Chinese, for one, are laughing at you.
besides which, science arose OUT of a response to the dark ages (the enlightenment, recall that one?) which was created BY judeo-xian "civilization".
so, saying modern science owes it's origins to xianity is like saying anti-fascism owes it's origins to hitler.
godwin that, baby.
Mark:
Reply to #27: "Modern Science arose only in a culture
soaked in christianity." Yes, in spite of it, not because
of it.
#35 Right on the mark. If those regimes were religious it
still would have happened
#46 True, but how about the present?
#58 Another good one by my man H L !
Anyone else notice Mark's goal-post shift? Menchen was advocating secularism and decrying fundamentalism. Mark has recast the discussion in terms of atheism against all religion.
And please make up your mind if you're criticizing the atheist regime of Stalin, one of the most murderous regimes in history, or the atheist regimes of Lenin or Kruschev, which were quite a bit less murderous than the god-fearing czars who came before them.
Reasonable people can disagree whether Hitler's regime was primarily Christian or primarily Nazi invented paganism, but it certainly wasn't atheist.
The assertion that atheism is not an ideology is nonsense. Of course it's an ideology. It's a metaphysical opinion, which is an idea, which, when systematically asserted using evidence and logic, is an ideology. Theism is the metaphysical opinion that god(s) exist, and atheism is the opinion that god(s) don't exist. It's an ancient debate, and there have always been two sides to it.
It's amusing that you deny that atheism is an ideology. What a feeble attempt to evade its bloody history ('Communism had nothing to do with atheism, because there is no such thing as atheism')
It's ironic that atheists so often pose as brave realistic thinkers (Freethinkers, Brights,...), but you scamper when the history of atheism in power is broached. Pitiful.
Mark, speaking of evading Xianity's bloody history, you keep changing the subject every time your lies and delusions are exposted. Most mainstream academic historians put a lot of the blame for Hitler on German Xianity long ago. From Martin Luther wannabe genocidal maniac on, they've been consistent.
This is typical Vox Day fundie honesty. They lie. When their lies are exposed, then they lie some more. Lying is all fundies can do (1) and it can go on for longer than anyone sane can stay interested. After all, it has been centuries already.
For extra credit, look up the Taiping Rebellion on wikipedia. It was started by a Chinese Xian and was one of the bloodiest civil wars in history. It is estimated that 20 million people died.
1. Online. In the real world they also can and do kill and steal.
Really? So heliocentrism is an ideology. Endosymbiosis is an ideology. The idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs is an ideology. Good to know!
Mark had a number of things to say:
WRONG! Communism is primarily a sociological and economic phenomenon, although it does include a strongly atheistic philosophy. Look to the history of strong support of socialist regimes by Catholic priests in South America if you think communism is purely atheistic.
WRONG again! They are an example of how Totalitarianism interferes with scientific progress. Any regime in which the state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior will have poor scientific progress. Do you seriously think that a Totalitarian Christian Theocracy led by a Fundamentalist Christian nutbag would have any more scientific progress in a year than the Soviet Union ever put out on a February 29th?
You think the death count is high because they are atheists, and not because they used modern machine guns, petroleum powered vehicles and high explosives?
If the medieval crusaders had had machine guns, cluster bombs and other modern weapons, just think of how much death they'd have been able to accomplish. If they'd had atomic bombs, Mecca might still be radioactive. And If the United States is ruled by a Christian Theocracy bent on reversing all of the world's non-Christian influences by violence,... communist violence will barely be significant. And let us not forget the Nazi's belief in their divine right to kill "inferior" people for living space (Lebensraum), and the support they got from the Catholic church.
Changing the subject as soon as someone utters the word "Greek", I see. Once people no longer forget when science *really* originated, and what put the "re" in "Renaissance", that "Christianity created science" argument is revealed for what it is: it isn't even a good lie. Science predates Christianity and Christianity did its level best to strangle it - it wasn't until schisms weakened Christianity's hold that science began to be rediscovered, starting in the most *notoriously secular* (at the time) parts of Europe.
You also miss Colugo's point about atheism: it isn't an ideology because it is a *category* of ideologies. Some vile, some civilized. If you're a theist and haven't sacrificed any children or burned any witches lately, you should be familiar with the basic concept: the terms "theism" and "atheism" are broad and cover a lot of ground, some of it blood-soaked.
The assertion that atheism is not an ideology is nonsense. Of course it's an ideology. It's a metaphysical opinion, which is an idea, which, when systematically asserted using evidence and logic, is an ideology.
Just like not liking bacon is an ideology. Or not believing in unicorns is an ideology. Nonsense.
It might be one aspect of a specific ideology, say in the way that Christianity is an ideology that includes, but is not limited to, a belief in God.
Dangerous Dan,
Re: "You think the death count is high because they are atheists, and not because they used modern machine guns, petroleum powered vehicles and high explosives?"
Stalin didn't use high tech stuff to kill tens of millions of his own people. He killed 10 million Ukranians merely by starving them. Most of his murders were carried out the old fashioned way- a pistol bullet to the head, a lead pipe, freezing to death or dying of typhus in the gulag. Stalin's tactics (and Mao's and Pol Pot's and Kim Jung Il's)were decidely low-tech. What distinguished them from political murders in medieval times was two things: 1) the sheer magnitude of the Communist-atheist low-tech murders was unprecedented- Stalinism alone probably killed 30 million 2) Communist-atheists killed their own people. Most theistic atrocities in history were in war against other religions or nations. Communism-atheism had a remarkable propensity to kill its own people. Name the analogue in theist violence to Pol Pot's extermination of a third of his own people.
Re: "If the medieval crusaders had had machine guns, cluster bombs and other modern weapons, just think of how much death they'd have been able to accomplish."
Your hatred of Christian militarism is ironic. Name the atheists at Tours, Vienna, and Lepanto. If it had not been for the Christian willingness to take up arms and defend Christendom, we'd be having this conversation now in Arabic.
Of course, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all, because you would have lost your head (literally) long ago.
Atheists are parasitic on Christian culture. Europe is gradually losing its Christian foundations, and it's dying, demographically and culturally. Largely because of atheism, Europe will, in a century or so, be largely Muslim, with little pockets of Balkanized Christians still willing to fight for the faith. We'll have you scum to thank for it.
Mark also wrote:
Darwin's "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" have precisely the same atheistic aspects as Newton's laws of gravity or Maxwell's equations. Darwin looked about, saw that there were a lot of distinctly different animals with varying degrees of similarity and he wondered how this situation had come to be. His theories on these topics neither required nor excluded the existence of god. This is similar to the state of chemistry, particle physics, quantum physics, geology, electromagnetism, and so on. Darwin's theories do contradict interpretations of the book of Genesis as literal truth, much as did Galileo Galilei's theory that the Earth went around the sun and not the other way around. Fortunately for Darwin, there was no longer and Inquisition to keep him under house arrest for the rest of his life, unlike poor put-upon-by-religious-zealots Galileo. Much of Darwin's theory remains compatible with things we have since discovered in fossils, biology, genetics, and even nuclear physics.
"Creation Scientists" or "cdesign proponentsists" have attempted to either replace or supplement these theories of evolution with "God did it." "God did it" is in no possible way, a scientific theory. There isn't any science in it, and it isn't even a theory. Flood Creationism, Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, and all of the other creationisms require faith in things unseen and almost all of them require one to ignore or disbelieve facts and theories in other solid branches of science.
"Intelligent Design" religious fanatics have, in their effort to "Get God back into the school," sworn in court "so help me God," and then proceeded to tell bald-faced lies left and right, and their lies have been exposed with their own documents and statements. Not only are they attacking science, but some of them have broken one of their "Ten Commandments" to do so. If you want to bring up "claims on limited evidence," Creation Science or Intelligent Design is the real place to start, not Global Warming. Global Warming has atmospheric measurements, chemistry, retreating glaciers, mathematical models, and more behind it. "Creation science" has -- words.
Dictionary.com offers many definitions of the term ideology, none of which come close to that of Mark. A typical one is:
"The body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group."
Note that the definition includes the words "myth" and "belief". Indeed, there was an interesting quote by one D.D. Raphael:
"Ideology ... is usually taken to mean, a prescriptive doctrine that is not supported by rational argument."
Pretty much the opposite of Mark's version, right?
Mark is not the first to try to equate atheism and totalitarian thinking. As I see it, though, the doctrine-based thought process of a totalitarian ideologue is much closer to that of the religious mindset of myth-based "truths" than either of them are to the scientific modus operandi of tentatively accepted "best current model of the facts".
A little thought experiment: a hallmark of ideologies is rallying cries which are logically empty but can fire up the adherents:
- "God is on our side, so we shall win the day"
- "Gott mit uns!"
- "Workers of the world, unite!"
- "Long live The Great Leader!"
Atheism, relying on facts and logic, isn't easily reduced in this way.
- "There are no gods, so we will win!"
Doesn't. Quite. Work.
You'd think Islamophobe wingnuts like Mark would appreciate a Communist tyrant like Enver Hoxha of Albania, who tried to exterminate Islam in his country. Ingrates!
Since the "atheist dictatorships" meme is so easily refuted (such regimes are the reverse of rational and secular, rather they exalt irrational ideologies which are highly isomorphic with "conventional" religions) and the refutation has been repeated so often, trolls who continue to repeat it in a pavlovian manner are merely displaying their brainlessness.
You keep repeating this trope, but you never quite manage to address how the US-backed overthrow of Sihanouk by Lon Nol, and the death toll and the urban influx of refugees from the US bombing in the early 1970s promoted Pol Pot from just another crank in Paris to a crank with the power to carry out his ideas. If you're going to claim causal links, you have to deal with all the data, not just the subset you prefer because it backs up your pre-fab conclusion.
I can't tell if you're consciously cherry-picking, or just invincibly ignorant.
If it had not been for the Christian willingness to take up arms and defend Christendom, we'd be having this conversation now in Arabic.
And the racism inherent in so many godbags' argument pokes its little head through. God forbid we would ever speak that horrible barbarian Arabic!
Name the analogue in theist violence to Pol Pot's extermination of a third of his own people.
How about the murder of at least eleven million people by the Christian Nazis?
And that isn't even counting the amount of death they cause in WW2 itself.
Steve LaBonne,
Why do you think that I'm an Islamophobe? I'm the guy defending theism. Do you believe that the rise of Islam in Europe is a good thing?
Re: "Since the "atheist dictatorships" meme is so easily refuted (such regimes are the reverse of rational and secular, rather they exalt irrational ideologies which are highly isomorphic with "conventional" religions)"
I love the canard :'atheist dictatorships are highly isomorphic with conventional religions'. Aside from your idiotic jargon ('highly isomorphic'), your evasion of responsibility for the consequences of your beliefs is deplorable. Atheists kill people wholesale, and...it's religion's fault!
In your view, has atheism played any negative role in human affairs? There are many Christian moral theologians who have written about evil that arises from Christendom (JP II formally apologized for anti-Semitism). Name the atheists who have written about the atrocities of atheism or who have expressed regret for what atheism brought to the 20th century.
You are moral cowards.
For Mark's benefit, as well as to celebrate the great HLM:
Non-combatant (n) - a dead Quaker
Why do you think that I'm an Islamophobe?
I'd refer you back to the comment about us all speaking Arabic you made earlier. Clearly a reference to your fear that the Muslims, or should I call them the muhammodans, are on their way to get us.
I think Christianity and Islam are BOTH very bad things. Since you're a god-botherer, why do YOU think the (greatly overhyped by the ignorant) "rise of Islam" in Europe is a BAD thing?
Communism et al. ARE religions, complete with eschatologies and demands for unquestioning belief in nonsensical metaphysical propositions. They appeal to exactly the same type of lizard-brain as "conventional" religions.
Like many stupid people, you are unable to get your tiny mind around the fact that atheism is merely absence of belief in sky fairies. It is not a positive doctrine that can 'play a role" in anything. What does play a role (an essential one for democracy) is secularism, which among other things is the only possible way for different religions to live together in peace.
JP II formally apologized for anti-Semitism
Which was a fucking joke..."Individuals may have been guilty but not the Church itself"
I'll condemn those murderous regimes, but to attribute atheism as a central cause--well you're making a causal relationship that just ain't there. But, knowing the kinds of nonsense you believe, that's not surprising.
thalarctos
Re: "You keep repeating this trope, but you never quite manage to address how the US-backed overthrow of Sihanouk by Lon Nol, and the death toll and the urban influx of refugees from the US bombing in the early 1970s promoted Pol Pot from just another crank in Paris to a crank with the power to carry out his ideas."
What's this got to do with our debate about the impact of Atheism on the 20th century?
You're allowing your 60's leftism to sneak in. Your asserting that the atrocities of a fervent atheist like Pol Pot are not only theism's fault, they're America's fault too!
Why not just take responsibility for your ideological bedmates, and try to understand why they killed so many?
There's no "debate" going on here, just chastisement of an ignorant, racist troll. You.
Atheism isn't the only ideology with blood on its hands. Just look at the horrendous history of heliocentrism. Hitler believed the earth orbited the sun, and sent six million Jews the gas chamber. Stalin was a heliocentrist, and killed millions in his great purges. In fact, virtually every serial killer who has ever lived believed that the sun lies at the centre of the solar system.
All you heliocentrists should take a frank look at your blood-soaked ideology.
And what about those evil blood-circulationists? Surely we should hold Harvey responsible for the mass murders of the modern era.
Steve,
Re: "There's no "debate" going on here, just chastisement of an ignorant, racist troll. You."
Spoken like an atheist. 'Atheism isn't an ideology, and there's no debate'. And I'm a racist to boot! (Islam's a race?)
You guys are pure entertainment (except for the atrocities...)
You're a racist for being consternated by the thought that we might be communicating in Arabic (a beautiful language, by the way.)
Troll.
hyperdeath, well said!
Stalin's purges weren't driven by some silly desire for official atheism, but by his paranoia that spared no one. Hitler was a believer in God, but it was his irrational hatred of the Jews that led to his final decision.
You're the one asserting the causal connection; I'm providing the evidence that your asserted cause is not sufficient to account for the outcome.
Until you deal with the demonstrated problem in your asserted causal connection, there's really nothing more to say on the issue. Get back to me when you have something more substantive than just cherry-picking, goalpost-moving, and ad hominem aspersions on my argument.
You guys are pure entertainment (except for the atrocities...)
Likewise, silly.
Steve,
Re: "You're a racist for being consternated by the thought that we might be communicating in Arabic (a beautiful language, by the way.)"
I don't speak Arabic, but I have no doubt that it's a fine language. You seemed to have missed my point, so I'll repeat it. If it were not for 'militant Christendom' over the past 1300 years, Islam would almost certainly be the religion of Europe, and of us.
I'm a Christian, so I'm partial to Christianity (that's part of the definition of 'Christian'). I think that we'd be worse off if Islam had won at Tours, Vienna, and Lepanto. Do you disagree?
It seems that you accept dhimmitude more readily than I would. Keep in mind that Islamic forbearance is only for 'people of the Book'. You're Bookless, and under a Caliphate, headless.
It seems that your cowardice extends beyond the moral.
we're not only dealing with a Christianist, we're dealing with a neo-con. The constant fear and obsession with dhimmitude...As Colbert noted, we're dealing with backwash here.
well, maybe not a neo-con, but at least one of the bedwetters.
it's fun how they get all worked up about the beheadings of atheists (and queers and feminists....), and yet it seems to be more fantasy wish fulfillment than anything else.
Why should I care whether the religion plaguing the Western world was Christianity or Islam? I object to them equally. Without the scholars of the early Islamic world, by the way, the Christian West would have been cut off from Classical philosophy and science.
Ignorant, racist moron.
You can define countries/cultures and their system of governance in many ways. One is to score them on two separate dimensions or scales:
- Secular to Theocratic (influence of religion on policy)
- Pluralistic to Totalitarian (diversity of policies available for citizens to choose from)
One of the errors Mark committs is to conflate these, as if a society that is not using religion to set policy is necessarily a totalitarian state. While we all abhor the totalitarian dictatorships he has mentioned, keep in mind that their problem is in the lack of diversity, pluralism and respect for the rights of minorities, not in their lack of religion as a basis for policy. That is on a different, orthogonal scale.
It is easy to list totalitarian regimes of both a secular and theocratic nature, and there are several good examples of secular and pluralistic nations, but can you think of any pluralistic theocracy? An oxymoron, if I ever saw one...
Mark,
There is no such thing as an "exlicitly atheist government" -- any government that is not explicitly theist is atheist. And no, under this reasonable and obvious definition "atheist governments" have not all been homicidal, nor has the majority of them been homicidal.
Steve,
Re: "Why should I care whether the religion plaguing the Western world was Christianity or Islam? I object to them equally. "
Actually, I have a lot of respect for Islam (a lot more than I do for atheism). I just don't want to live under Sharia law or Communism. I strongly support secularism in government, in the sense that there should be no established religion and that religious diversity should be welcomed. The whole concept of secularism is Christian at it's origins (Render unto Caesar...).
Go live in the Islamic world for a while. Then come back and tell us if you still "object to them equally".
"You are moral cowards."
What about when the old testament describes the divinely-ordered death of the heathen (man, woman, child, animals)? Theism at its best? And did they have it coming?
Or the Left Behind crowd drooling over the prospect of the divinely-ordained death of billions. Theism at its best? And do they have it coming?
And let's say that you somehow acquire secular power, what specifically would you like to see happen to all atheists, agnostics, and non-Christians? Kill them, kill them all?
And what do you think about say, nuking Iran? Good idea to keep the Islamic hordes at bay? Good way to prove you're not one of those pussy liberal cowards?
Which is why standing up strongly for the secularism of the political system is in your own best interest, if you weren't too dimwitted to realize it. Even the Southern Baptist Convention USED to realize this and was a powerful supporter of the separation of church and state- before it was taken over my mental defectives.
If it were not for 'militant Christendom' over the past 1300 years, Islam would almost certainly be the religion of Europe, and of us.
Or not, you know that the Khalifat allowed other religions, as you point out, so why would the case of Europe be any different. It isn't like the Catholics when they reconquered Spain and started purging the place of anyone who wasn't Catholic. And you wonder why you get called an Islamophobe.
I think that we'd be worse off if Islam had won at Tours, Vienna, and Lepanto. Do you disagree?
Whole heartedly. A large part of the reason that there are so many fundamentalist Muslims is because it is in large part, though not wholly, a reaction to western colonialism. Were the religion of Europe Islam, and you still haven't shown why this would happen if the Khalifat was extended to Europe, then it is highly unlikely that there would have been European colonialism of Islamic peoples and there would thus be less fundamentalist Muslim groups.
Of course, we would then likely have a greater number of fundamentalist Christians, which could be even worse considering their history of intolerance when not the target of oppression.
Further, the advances that the Arabic philosophers made on the Greek philosophers would have been mixed with European thoughts earlier and might have caused an age of enlightenment even earlier. Not to mention having direct access to Chinese inventions, through the Muslim Mongols.
Of course, we would be speaking Turkish not Arabic, as the Ottomans were Turks and not Arabs, assuming that they forced us to speak their language.
Ultimately, this is all idle speculation. Perhaps we would all be far worse off. Likely none of us, as individuals, would ever have existed, so we can't really talk about whether we personally would be better off, for we wouldn't be.
The point is that you are clearly so afraid of the spectre of Islam that you refuse to think straight. Thus, you are an islamophobe.
FWIW, Christianity is an amalgam of Hellenistic philosophy and Hebraic monotheism. So what affinity Christianity has for science due to its Greek heritage has always been subject to the suspicions of the true believers in the Church. It wasn't due to some great revolution in Christianity itself that science blossomed in Europe after the fourteenth century, but instead due to the rediscovery of ancient Greek thought. Thanks to the development of the printing press, the ideas of the early modern age were able to be spread widely instead of being kept under an ecclesiastical thumb, and a great acceleration of scientific and technological progress followed.
Mark,
as a former xian I can feel your dissonance in the creeping thoughts you are having...the stark realization that you've been lied to your whole life by people who say they care...people like your parents and the pastors at your church, it really hurts!
Heck, the way I look at it...even god and jebus let you down since they haven't "returned" in 2000 years of prophecy.
It's emotionally unsettling as the bottom falls out of the afterlife delusion. It's surreal as you observe the bible's measly 1800 pages of "rhetorical hyperbole" of hate, anger and the worship of a "jealous" diety (Ex 34-14) vs. a huge stockpile of overwhelming "scientific evidence" that clearly shows how things operate (i.e. evolution).
In summary, I encourage you to "shine your light" and move from the worship of an angry, jealous, vengeful, genocidal god who apparently is protected by popes and pedophiles to the rational, calm waters of science (try biology)....and never look back to religion again...lest you turn to a column of salt.
If "Islam" had won at Tours, then a civilization known for religious tolerance, an intellectual tradition and comparatively sophisticated science might have conquered Europe two generations before Charlemagne. (I put "Islam" in quotes because we're not talking about the whole religion here, and trying to find "the true Islam" is a pointless exercise in essentialist thinking; the Muslims in question were the Umayyads of al-Andalus.) While historians have argued the significance of Tours back and forth — argument is, indeed, a big part of their job — there's still a great deal to be said for Edward Gibbon's classic position:
Charles Martel's victory at Tours deprived Europe of the civilization which produced men like Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes:
"If it were not for 'militant Christendom' over the past 1300 years, Islam would almost certainly be the religion of Europe, and of us."
And you would be on this blog defending Islam against the infidel hordes. So what?
Regarding the death tolls: absolute numbers don't really cut it. If you really want to compare death tolls, the way to do it is via percentages of the population that were killed. So, Mark, you got any percentages? Else, I won't believe, or even argue, with you.
Mark lied:
Wow, how deluded must one be to think a society which burned witches, heretics, and other religious dissenters at the stake for centuries originated the "concept of secularism?"
Un. Fucking. Believable.
I'm not going to repeat everything that has already been said, since it appears that for Mark all arguments, evidence, and truth fall only on deaf ears.
What do you about someone who literally will not listen to reason?
all arguments, evidence, and truth fall only on deaf ears
Such a heat generating compost pile of stupidity is a one day wonder to behold, isn't it?
There's more light than heat being given off here thankfully, although this time of year the heat is also welcome.
Mark:
Wait, I thought that atheists were murderously intolerant of religion -- now somehow an excess of atheism is going to promote Islam?
At least be consistent in your argument.
Tulse, it's like the game rock, scissors, paper. Christianity beats Islam, Islam beats atheism, and atheism beats Christianity.
Ergo, my lack of belief in the Tooth Fairy is an ideology.
You know, the tripe you post here is a good illustration of why we hold creationism's proponents in such low regard.
Aaauuugh! a Christroll with the same first name as me! What a horrible way to start a Monday morning!
Now I must post simply to clear ny name...
I tend to disagree with Mencken on this:
I would like to believe that, and certainly we have come a long way, but in the end I suspect we will still see the vast ocean of truth lying mostly undiscovered before us. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying, of course.
I do appreciate the other quotes from Mencken in this thread, as well as those from the modern-day Mencken's (responding to Mark).
Mark, technology is more than just better weapons; it is better communication and better transportation, and, subsequently, more effective control of larger numbers of people.
We'll have you scum to thank for it.
Your god isn't very powerful, is he? Are you sure you actually believe in him?
In your view, has atheism played any negative role in human affairs?
Has disbelief in unicorns played any negative role in human affairs?
Why not just take responsibility for your ideological bedmates, and try to understand why they killed so many?
We are trying to understand; Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein--all abused as children. And, as been pointed out, much violence has been done in the spirit of retaliation against religious oppression. There are many, many factors to consider, (surprise!) but in no case are we willing to live in a world of play pretend just to advance your absurd and easily disproved notion that the Christian religion is the source of morality. (And science, LOL!).
If it were not for 'militant Christendom' over the past 1300 years, Islam would almost certainly be the religion of Europe, and of us.
Having one superstition overpower another one is not progress. It is not to be equated with advancing rational thought.
I just don't want to live under Sharia law or Communism.
Neither do we. We want freedom from all oppression--including yours.
The world is full of people like you, people who want to believe things instead of getting to the facts and living in the real world. The 'Atheism" you describe is exactly the mindset that we abhor and must be on guard against. If 'disbelief' ever becomes just another belief system, with the requisite rules and regulations that impede critical thinking, then its followers will be people like you.
Largely because of atheism, Europe will, in a century or so, be largely Muslim,
Atheism leads to Islam?
Does it also lead to dancing?
The whole concept of secularism is Christian at it's origins (Render unto Caesar...).
Wow, so NOT being Christian is in fact Christian? Wow.
And yet you think science shouldn't be secular. Whoops.
Thanks Numad and Tyler DiPietro.
On the issue of Nazi Christianity and paganism:
Richard Steigmann-Gall, author of 'The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945,' ABC (Australia) radio interview, 9/17/03:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s946813.htm
"There is a branch of the Nazi movement, which I label paganist, and they are people who supposed that they were trying to propagate a new faith which was actually based on an old faith ... Himmler and his cohorts profess an interest in resurrecting these older religions. ... [Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg] writes prolifically about the new religion that he wants to shape for the "New Germany" ...
If you look at Hitler's ... reactions to Himmler's and Rosenberg's writings, he ... ridiculed the paganism of these sort of second-tier Nazi henchmen. ...
(T)he leadership of the Nazi Party embraced the idea - at least those who weren't the Pagans like Himmler and Rosenberg - ... of what got called "positive Christianity" ... (I)n some way or other Hitler regarded himself to be a Christian ... his religious views were unorthodox, as were those of his immediate associates.
... Nazis, even the Catholic Nazis ... keep privileging Protestantism over Catholicism. They believe that if Catholicism is an international religion, with a leader who is not part of Germany - obviously in Rome - that by contrast, Protestantism is more innately amenable to nationalist politics. They cast Luther as not just the first Protestant, but also the first German. ...
Almost to a man, the Nazis insisted (a) that Jesus was in fact not Jewish but an Aryan; and (b) that the Old Testament should be dispensed with as a Jewish tract, and that it should be removed from the Christian canon. Now, Christians these days, at least in mainstream culture, would claim neither of these things."
Nazi ideologue Dietrich Eckart's 'Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin' is representative of Nazi antipathy towards the Old Testament.
Other recurring ideas associated with Nazi "Positive Christianity": Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier; the Jewish Paul of Tarsus corrupted Christ's message of opposition to Jewish capitalism into a Jewish conspiracy against the Roman Empire.
Interestingly, Ernst Haeckel, one of the early promoters of the notion of a Nordic Christ, himself rejected Christianity.
Excerpt from The Holy Reich (selected by Austin Cline, About.com: Atheism/Agnosticism:
"In the Nazis' conceptual universe, the struggle against Marxism and liberalism was similarly bound up with antisemitism. Those who revered Jesus as the first antisemite often cast him as the first socialist as well. ...
In (Joseph Goebbels') "Michael," the evil of Communism finds its greatest enemy in Christ, who is elevated as the ideal expression of "German" socialism: "The idea of sacrifice first gained visible shape in Christ. Sacrifice is intrinsic to socialism. ... The Jew, however, does not understand this at all. His socialism consists of sacrificing others for himself. This is what Marxism is like in practice."
Obviously the idiot knows nothing of the astounding religious diversity of the pagan Roman Empire (which of course was later brutally stamped out by Christianity), with only the most token observance of certain state-cult ceremonies required (and that only on rare occasions)and belief otherwise left to the individual's conscience.
The abysmal ignorance of the Christards- historical as well as scientific and philosophical- is depressing.
That last comment was in reference to # 144.You people are too quick for me today. ;)
I'm a latecomer to all of this. But I have never understood the argument that not believing in an invisible being makes one murderous.
Given the nearly 1 billions atheists in the world the existence of Pol Pot would statistically be an aberation.
How can that possibly further the argument that atheism leads to anything?
"How can that possibly further the argument that atheism leads to anything?"
Mark has made no arguments at all. Just assertions.
More on Nazism and Christianity:
Richard Steigman-Gall, author of The Holy Reich, interview with The Turning Magazine, Spring 2005:
http://www.theturning.org/folder/nazis.html
".. I don't consider Hitler a good Catholic - he never went to Mass, he never went to confession. But what he had to say about Christianity behind closed doors was that he too esteemed Protestantism as the 'natural' religion of the Germans. ...
Almost all of the Nazis I investigated esteemed Christ... Now how did they square the circle by esteeming the king of the Jews? By determining that, all along, Jesus had really been an 'Aryan.' ...
(T)here is a lineage behind the idea that Jesus had in fact been an Aryan. And one of the places that you see this is in 19th century German thought. Two men are most often seen as originating the idea of the Aryan Christ - one is an Englishman, Huston Stewart Chamberlain, famously the son-in-law of Richard Wagner, who lived long enough to see Hitler's rise and who sanctioned Hitler as God-given. And the other was a 19th century Frenchman, Ernest Renan, who came out with a theory that Jesus had not been a Jew at all. Antisemites in the 19th century looked at Jesus and said 'Well, he doesn't care about the law, he doesn't like the Old Testament, he throws the moneychangers and hagglers out of the temple.' In John 8:44 he says 'Jews, you are the children of the devil',' this kind of thing. ..."
What Nazis meant by opposition to "Jewish capitalism":
"[The Nazis] had this idea of a qualified anti-capitalism. The Nazis distinguished between an exploitative capitalism and a productive capitalism. What the Nazis hated in capitalism was high finance capitalism, which they associated with Jews. They hung onto the anti-Semitic canard that banks and other institutions of high finance were run by Jews. What they admired in capitalism was its productive capacity, so it's productive estates they value. ... (T)hey loved the captain of industry. So their very famous relationship with Henry Ford, an icon of American capitalism."
"Your hatred of Christian militarism is ironic."
Your hatred of atheism is ironic, as you appear to be using a computer right now.
"Largely because of atheism, Europe will, in a century or so, be largely Muslim, with little pockets of Balkanized Christians still willing to fight for the faith. We'll have you scum to thank for it."
Nice flexible goalposts. You covered your ass with the "explicitly atheist governments" to exclude modern largely faithless communities in Europe and Japan. But if atheists are responsible for recent Muslim immigration to Europe, it must be that atheists are in power in Europe now? Maybe they are doing it by stealth, instead of "explicitly".
Does it also lead to dancing?
oh we got trouble, right here in River City!
...
mark is just a deluded, ignorant, salesman.
the very kind of person that would accuse the educational system of "indocrination" without realizing what a projection from a church upbringing that is.
hopeless doesn't even cover it.
"oh we got trouble, right here in River City!"
I thought the trouble in River city was pool, not dancing.
it's the attitude and logic that are equivalent, not the specifics.
gorram literalist.
;)
besides, I simply couldn't resist tossing out a line from my favorite musical.
It may be worth noting that non-religion has grown significantly in the past 20 years or so, quite possibly due in part to the end of the cold war. I really don't want to hash the old nonsense about "atheists" and atrocities, socialism, nazism, etc., only to point out that the strong association of "communism" with "godless" may very well have impeded secularism and atheism in this country.
Mark and so many of the other IDiots have not forgotten the old unestablished "connections" that they made between the reaction against the ancien regime, which produced so many of the same evils that those they opposed had made (Stalin explicitly modeled himself in part on old czars), and "atheism". However, many people have, and I believe it is likely that secularism has opportunities that it never could have had as long as the major voices for atheism happened to be the believers in the mystical economy called "communism".
The great thing is that "godless communism" isn't the major stumbling block to getting rid of ancient prejudices that it was. Even the head IDiots are more inclined to blame "materialism" or "naturalistic science" rather some foreign "atheist conspiracy" now, and of course these bugaboos just happen accord with good old American Enlightenment and justice under the law (which is based on science and evidence).
Though it's probably still true that promoting science and the rule of evidence is more compelling than any salesmanship of such a negative as "atheism" ever can be. I suspect that targeting religion is not now, any more than it was in time of America's founding, an especially great liability. I'm just not sure if it should take a name for itself. It could be cosa nostra, in fact, while religions and ideologies like communism are attacked for the many flaws that can be identified in them.
It wasn't such a bad idea for the IDiots to try to shed religion as a label. Unfortunately for them, religion is their raison d'etre, however, so it hasn't worked out so well for them. Nonetheless, they confused a lot of people, and they continue to have fanatic believers who are shocked that anyone would find ID to be religious, because, you know, it says it isn't.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Wow, this thread is all over the map. But it comes down to this: Supernaturalism is simply fantasy, imagination, and make-believe. The Hindu-deities are no less childish whimsies than Allah, or ghosts, or spirits, or angels, or a soul, or a mystical place called heaven, or Santa delivering gifts on a flying sled, or daddy deity, or the Xtian three-person sky god, or voodoo, or witches, or demons, or magic unicorns. It's all make-believe. Grow up.
@ Ichthyic
As long as you are not a fan of Footloose!
He said everything I am thinking right now on this suject.
Mark,
I can't speak for the odd examples you chose of North Korea and Cambodia, but I can speak with some knowledge about the Soviet Union.
First, the "Great Terror" (which encompassed collectivization, dekulakization, the arrests of Stalin's political enemies, as well as the snowballing of the whole purge process) was not, as you and others keep saying, done in the name of atheism. The Orthodox Church was never outlawed in the USSR, though of course anti-religionism was a part of what was going on in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition, many scientists ended up in the camps, and research was systematically suppressed if it did not fit with the current Party line.
That all being said, the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, produced quite a large number of prominent scientists and scientific achievements.
The Vavilov brothers, Nikolai and Sergei;
Sergei Korolev, the father of the Soviet space program;
Numerous winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, and other scientific disciplines, such as Pavel Cherenkov, Petr Kapitsa, Il'ia Frank, Igor Kurchatov, Igor Tamm, and Iakov Zel'dovich, among many others.
My advice to you and others who try to blame the evils of the world (and especially those of the past 100 years or so) on atheism is this: do some basic research before making claims that you otherwise have parroted from your pastor or other ignorant sources.
@ #159:
Mark isn't interested in reasonably assessing history and the details. It's just easier to blame communism on atheists and leave it at that. Of course, Mark is also wrong about North Korea, as Kim Jong Il occupies much the same place as Tojo did for Japan. That is, he is sold to his populace as a being above all others, whether or not it's literally true. He is held to standards no normal person is judged against in his country, and thus he is above the law. KJI very much occupies a place reserved for religious figures or symbols. He is the state religion.
Worshipping a man as a power above all others on earth is religion, whether the symbol is actually divine or not. North Korea, regardless of what anyone says, has religion.
I don't have time or patience to wade through 160 comments of this twaddle, but a few comments for Mark:
1) The French Revolutionaries, despite their vehement opposition to the legally entrenched and privileged clergy of France explicitly rejected atheism. From Robespierre: "Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular."
2) As I have argued elsewhere, Communism as practiced by your so-called "Atheist regimes", while technically "atheistic" in that it does not postulate any beings which match the description of "gods", is more of a religion than some systems that are labeled "religions" (such as Buddhism): it postulates a set of doctrines that are held to be received from a visionary (whose followers have subsequently split into warring camps over who has the "true" interpretations of his teachings) and which are not to be questioned, among them superstitious belief in an impersonal "driving force" behind history, economic models that satisfy the conventional criteria of "belief in magic", the equation of dissent with treason, the promise of a paradise to its followers, the tenet that it is the only true belief system and that its eventual victory over other belief systems is inevitable, and in almost all its incarnations, the portrayal of the founding leaders of Communist states as messianic figures.
Additionally, only two Communist regimes (China and the Soviet Union) are credited with a greater death toll than that resulting from the Taiping Rebellion, of which every smarmy Christian apologist I have ever encountered is surprisingly ignorant, and those deaths are largely due to famine resulting from putting the above mentioned "magical" economic models into practice rather than intentional killing.
Furthermore, the Communist regimes were explicitly opposed to freethinkers and in many cases intellectuals were persecuted quite violently. Meanwhile, Communist leaders rarely objected to working with the church when it was willing to cooperate with their goals, as Stalin did with Russian Orthodox church. It is clear from an examination of history that the traditional opposition of Communist societies to religion was due to the desire of one totalitarian belief system to rid itself of a competing totalitarian belief system, not due to the pursuit-of-truth and/or human welfare motivations that drive atheists such as those here assembled.
Even if the Communist regimes were in fact "atheist" in the sense we use the term, your argument would prove little more than that atheism does not, in itself, make a person immune to the corrupting effects of power. To which I would reply, "YEAH, NO SHIT!"
(For the record, would you care to provide a hypothesis as to why, in your view, "atheist" regimes have been so much more violent?)
godwin that, baby.
since you asked...
"Atheists are a people of robbers. The atheist has never founded any civilization, though he has destroyed civilizations by the hundred. He possesses nothing of his own creation to which he can point. Everything that he has is stolen.... He has no art of his own: bit by bit he has stolen it all from the other peoples or has watched them at work and then made his copy. He does not even know how merely to preserve the precious things which others have created: as he turns the treasures over in his hand they are transformed into dirt and dung. He knows that he cannot maintain any State for long. That is one of the differences between him and the Christian. True, the Christian also has dominated other peoples. But how? He entered on the land, he cleared the forests; out of wildernesses he has created civilizations, and he has not used the others for his own interests, he has, so far as their capacities permitted, incorporated them into his State and through him art and science were brought to flower. In the last resort it was the Christian and the Christian alone who could form States and could set them on their path to future greatness."
isn't that about the gist of it, Mark?
he has, so far as their capacities permitted, incorporated them into his State and through him art and science were brought to flower.
bloody romans...
If Communism is a "political religion" (or secular religion, or crypto-religion), then religion is independent of theism.
That also problematizes the very definition of "religion." We all acknowledge that not all theistic religions are totalitarian. In fact, some lend themselves to rationales for secularism, democracy and pluralism. And if religion transcends theism/atheism, then it is not necessary - nor consistent - for non-theist religions to be totalitarian by definition. So non-theist political religions must encompass much more than Communism and other totalitarian ideologies.
In this definition of a religion - logically following the identification of Communism as a religion, any number of political, social, and mystical belief systems qualify as religions. "Religion," then, becomes a larger set of social "myths" in the generic Sorel-Gramsci sense. (For memeticists, "religion" is the memeplex of memes called "myths".)
Otherwise, it's just rhetorical gymnastics to have it both ways in which religion (obviously identified with theism in general - God-belief, but conveniently including noxious non-God-belief systems) is blamed for everything and atheism (redefined to not include atheist "religions") is blameless. As I already pointed out, it is hardly justifiable to blame or credit either theism or atheism for any sociopolitical deeds since these are merely simple propositions readily inserted into a wide array of mobilizing belief systems, but are not mobilizing belief systems themselves.
Here is the question for freethinkers: Is your primary quarrel with God-belief itself or is it with particular sociopolitical belief systems? If it's both, try not to confuse the two.
I don't know about you, but my problem is with all dogmatic belief systems that try to immunize themselves from questioning. Most especially when they seek political power. The rest is a matter of semantics.
I don't know about you, but my problem is with all dogmatic belief systems that try to immunize themselves from questioning.
I just see so many people say this and then go on to make claims that are totally dogmatic. Not you per se, but many people, even among the "New Atheists" who claim to be such great sceptics.
Examples please.
@ 164:
I see what you are saying, but the fact remains, blaming atheism for anything sociopolitical is attributing things to it that fall outside the realm of its focus. If atheists are attributing too much to atheism, theists attribute FAR too much to atheism, something that is much more (by way of its simplicity) defined than the definition religion itself.
Atheism says one thing. I won't get into that because it should be obvious at this point (to anyone that allows themselves to parse the definition of it). But from that people have attributed everything bad to it, from the invasion of nihilism in youth (and the supposed associated suicidal tendencies it instills), the rise of communism in Russia, Hitler and his regime, North Korea's current state, racism as it's ever been known, eugenics, decline in ethics and morality, Pol Pot, communism in general, mass killings in churches and malls, terrorist acts, transformation of other religions into subversive terrorist-supporting entities invading entire continents, most of the world's killings over the last 300 years, slavery, I should probably throw in fascism in Spain and Italy for good measure, taxes, toe jam...you name it, atheism caused it.
I think it's a heck of a lot easier to see how religion translates into other things than how atheism (which amounts to one simple statement) supposedly causes everything the trolls around here keep adding to its list of ills. Perhaps the next thing atheism will be guilty of is epidemics like malaria and AIDS...
oops, meant to say: "...If atheists are attributing too much to theism..."
Carry on.
Colugo,
I don't have time to make more of a contribution (I'm juggling 3 essays due too soon, which leads me to procrastinate here), but it sounds like you're addressing points in a conversation Scott and I are having over the last dozen posts or so on the Slice it, Occam! thread. Got any light to shed over there? I don't have the time to repeat myself over on this thread. I'm interested in what you'd have to say.
Examples please.
There's the folks who swear up and down that we can have objective moral standards as atheists, something I have never seen even close to justified. Then there are the people who swear up and down that they can argue for a naturalized ethics and yet never do. There are the Popperites who claim that he solved the problem of induction, when that is patently not true. There are those who claim that they don't make any metaphysical claims about the world when they obviously do. As I mentioned on another thread, the belief in the inherent value of human life, a belief I share. Pretty much every value-laden belief, which is a great many, is undergirded by some sort of dogma.
Which of these classes of people actively reject and seek to suppress critical inquiry into their positions, and seek to punish apostasy, the way adherents of such systems as (many) religions and Communism have done? That is the feature that makes dogmatism dangerous rather than merely irritating.
Martin said:
Largely because of atheism, Europe will, in a century or so, be largely Muslim, with little pockets of Balkanized Christians still willing to fight for the faith. We'll have you scum to thank for it."
Out of curiosity, if this situation is so awful, why won't God prevent it?
Sorry, that should have read 'Mark', not 'Martin'.
(Still a nicer name than he used on us.)
My point in these posts is that "atheism" and "religion" are not directly comparable concepts.
That's why blaming God-belief for political atrocities is an error homologous to Mark's blaming atheism for various crimes.
Specific "religions" (what I earlier called mobilizing worldviews), both theistic and non-theistic, are directly comparable with each other, and theism is directly comparable with atheism. Of course, comparing the whole set of non-theistic religions with the whole set of theistic religions leads to the body count contests of Mark and his detractors, and of Hitchens and his detractors.
As I wrote above: "Is your primary quarrel with God-belief itself or is it with particular sociopolitical belief systems"
In other words, is it with theism or is it with particular "religions"?
Since "religions" need not be theistic, it is not logically consistent to blame theism for the sins of "religions." (One can be opposed to theism for other reasons; because, for example, belief without evidence is an affront to human intelligence and hence dignity. I'm not prepared to make that argument myself at this point, but some might.)
But pointing to the crimes of religious regimes and offering that as proof that theism is bad, and then attributing the crimes of non-theistic regimes to "religion" is to present a expediently protean target of blame; namely, an inconsistent concept of "theism/religion."
Which of these classes of people actively reject and seek to suppress critical inquiry into their positions, and seek to punish apostasy, the way adherents of such systems as (many) religions and Communism have done? That is the feature that makes dogmatism dangerous rather than merely irritating.
Well given that none of them have political power, none of them do any of those things beyond simply sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling when someone disagrees with them. This is the internet, there isn't much they can do. But you're moving the goal posts now, before you were just against dogma.
Thanks Colugo. That clarifies.
"Is your primary quarrel with God-belief itself or is it with particular sociopolitical belief systems"
I have quarrels with both, and like you, prefer precision in language, as your prescriptivist approach avoids obfuscation. More can be learned by keeping track of what distinguishes things--conflation is a rhetorical trick that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
I do not particularly care about the wacky beliefs of the many harmless theists and certainly do not directly blame them for the harm wrought by their dangerous cousins. But I do object, in Dawkins / Myers mode, when they provide aid / comfort / cover for the crazies instead of openly distancing themselves from them. (Some of the more liberal denominations, especially the UCC, DO have a praiseworthy track record of doing exactly the latter, and I doff my cap to them.) Also in Dawkins / Myers mode, I worry to some extent that the intellectual atmosphere is made more favorable for the dangerous ones when it is poisoned by a pervasive free ride given to irrational beliefs. I don't know how to make my position clearer than that.
I AM just against dogma, but I'm much more exercised about harmful dogma than about harmless dogma. Shouldn't I be?
Let me propose the opposite: the Enlightenment was the result of the Church getting weaker and weaker; the state of science is inversely proportional to the power of religion.
Look at Islam. They were way ahead of Christian Europe in science -- till 1300 or so. Then the fundies took over, and science stagnated all the way to the age of colonialism.
Or look at China. Had they sailed in the right direction, they could have discovered America 100 years before Columbus; had they just kept sailing in the same direction, they could have done Vasco da Gama's voyage in reverse. But then the Confucian fundies took over, and China stagnated, till various European powers turned it from the world's richest into the world's poorest country within 100 years.
Or look at the Soviet Union. Scientific hypotheses are normally evaluated on how well they agree with reality. Not so under Stalin, when he gave power over the universities to Lysenko (biology) and Marr (linguistics), who instead evaluated hypotheses based on how well they agreed with "truth" -- with Stalinism.
The only difference I can see is that the Muslim, Confucian and Communist fundamentalists all came to power after science (or at least exploration) was already there, so they had something to destroy; the Christian fundamentalists came to power at the end of the Migration Age, so everything was already destroyed, and they could only delay its reemergence -- which they managed to do just fine for a thousand years.
Communism is much more Christian than you seem to believe. Everything a Western-style religion needs is there: a dogma that must be believed on faith, even though it is declared to follow logically from reason; an organization; unquestioned authority figures, some of whom are prophets and/or saviors; a promise of salvation, complete with heaven (on Earth, though -- it took decades till the term "Soviet Paradise" was dropped from official Soviet terminology), at an unspecified time but "soon"; salvation history (an inevitable progress of history towards salvation); God's ineffable wrath (Stalin's paranoia descending upon innocent people like in the Book of Hiob); everything. All that's missing is the afterlife; only Kim Jong-Il has so far got one (he's still the president of North Korea) -- wait, some Chinese have started worshipping Mao in temples and sacrificing oranges to him. Mao himself used to joke about it, calling dying "going to Marx".
There's a very impressive Soviet painting which is clearly modeled on Christian imagery: Lenin as the Father, Stalin as the Son, and the sunlight that falls on them from the window as the Holy Spirit.
Totalitarian regimes need an ideology. That can be communism; it can be fascism; or it can be a religion in a stricter sense (Calvin's Geneva; the Taliban's Afghanistan). Atheism alone does not suffice, just like how theism alone doesn't.
Yes, your eyes are open, but you don't look -- because you believe you already know everything.
Oh boy.
Atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory? What, pray tell, are those? I study paleobiology and molecular biology and haven't encountered any such "aspects" -- which is no surprise, because it's science and not philosophy.
And by saying there's "limited evidence" for global warming, and even by saying that doing something against it would necessarily "radically alter human society", you merely show us what is really limited: your knowledge. Go read.. You also show us what is not limited: your arrogance in believing that everyone is just as ignorant as you. It's really strange that acceptance of reality has become an issue of political (...or should I say ideological...) matter in the USA.
(Though maybe, as I parenthetically implied, I shouldn't be all that surprised.)
The latter part was more true under Clinton than under Bush Jr....
Albania under Enver Hoxha.
What statistics are you going to do with a sample of one? Especially when that one data point was communist... and, for a communist country, not terribly murderous, AFAIK, certainly less than your average crusade (hey, you started counting victims).
(Not that it matters, but I wonder if you've actually read it. It doesn't say "100 million". It says "between 80 and 120 million", and provides evidence that makes the higher end of that range look more plausible.)
<yawn>
And you really think atheists wouldn't have defended themselves against a military attack?
And? Why should I, an Austrian living in Paris, be having this conversation in English? Why should I care? (Sure, English is easier than Klingon for a German speaker, but so is Arabic, most of the time.)
Anyway, Rey Fox (# 131) has said it best.
It's always the same thing: ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism.
Dude, France has managed to increase its birth rate to 2.1 children per woman. How? By means of rampant socialism.
And whenever I see an ad in Turkish hanging around in Vienna, it depicts a scantily-clad girl and advertizes a party in a disco... man, are you misundreshtmatin the attraction of Western civilization. Here in Paris I've lately seen ads for a pop/rock/hiphop/whatever band called Beni Snassen...
Although the context is different, let me conclude withwhat could, and perhaps should, have become a Bible verse. (Please follow the link, together with the commentary it's too long to post here.)
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Never been anywhere in Europe, eh?
Indeed, the Epistles of Paul can only be understood if one knows Epicureanism. Paul argues against Epicureanism throughout -- on Epicureanism's terms, accepting many of its doctrines. Of all ideologies of the time, only the Christians and the Epicureans were named for their founders... Never mind Thomas Aquinas, who had the unfortunate side effect that arguing against Aristotle became tantamount to arguing against the Church. Let me just repeat:
The man is describing science. In one thousand twenty-eight. Doesn't that make you weep?
godDAMN but Marktard is one bald-faced liar.
-- CV
and yet somehow, *we're* the scum, CV--go figure...
I think I've just made an argument that Communism as practiced is less unlike the archetypal concept of "religion" than some "religions", in that it is both extremely dogmatic and intensely superstitious. I would appreciate you engaging it, if you're going to reject my conclusion.
What definition of "objective" are you using that Universal Utilitarianism fails to satisfy?
A long post by me is being held up for moderation because it contains too many links.
Let me mention an erratum in advance: instead of "Kim Jong-Il" read "Kim Il-Sung". That's the guy who, while dead, is still the president of North Korea, making him arguably the only communist with an afterlife.
-----------------
The random quote this time is an antiscience quote from Luther:
---------------
:-o
----------------
Eh, indeed it isn't, because it's a wrong question. It is like asking why Napoleon crossed the Mississippi.
I don't believe the sun will rise tomorrow because of induction. I deduce the testable hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow from the laws of gravity, impulse conservation, energy conservation, and so on. Really. Honestly. :-)
-----------------
Easy: if human life has inherent value, then my life has inherent value, and so does the life of everyone I can empathize with. Nice, isn't it? In other words, I'm making an argument from consequences. After all, this isn't science, it's ethics. To make an argument from consequences in ethics is harmless as long as definitions of, in this case, "human" and "life" are agreed upon...
Azkyroth: "I would appreciate you engaging it, if you're going to reject my conclusion."
In fact, I do not reject your conclusion. I'm extending the logic. By a definition of religion based on its social and behavioral aspects rather than cosmology (including undetectable realms and beings), religion and theism are independent concepts - ones which only happen to intersect in particular cases, but need not.
The concept of an "archetypal religion" is interesting. Is it generic totalitarian? Does the idealized "pure type" (like Owen's vertebrate archetype) even include the issue of the existence (or nonexistence) of deity, the soul, other noncorporeal beings or afterlife? Clearly not. The same is true of the less extreme (less archetypal) cases, whether theistic, esoteric, or nontheist, from Methodism to secular humanism. All are "religions" by this definition.
(Even Buddhism can approach the archetype. Consider WWII-era Shinto or Sarin gas terrorists Aum Shinrikyo.)
The particular terms used matter less than the consistency and application of their application.
Communism is interesting as a "political religion" not only because it was atheistic but also because it repeatedly claimed over its history to be "scientific." It held great appeal for professional intellectuals, unlike, say evangelical Protestantism today. Of course, while there is no doubt that Communism was atheistic, its claim to be scientific was always contested. Which raises an intriguing possibility: is science itself - or at least belief systems claiming to not just be atheistic, but scientific as well - fertile ground for the generation of new religions, even totalizing and fanatical religions?
The answer to that can only be yes.
Colugo,
"By a definition of religion based on its social and behavioral aspects rather than cosmology (including undetectable realms and beings), religion and theism are independent concepts - ones which only happen to intersect in particular cases, but need not."
Aren't they independent following most, if not all, definitions to begin with? Belief in the supernatural doesn't necessary imply theism, unless I'm mistaken.
Using 'theism' and 'religion' as synonyms seems to be a problematic idea.
Suggested correction: "I recognize my life as inherently valuable in the same sense that I recognize the evidence of my senses as corresponding roughly to a real world. I recognize also that other humans are "like me" and therefore it follows that their lives are valuable as well." The objectivity denialists love splitting hairs on this sort of thing.
Just in case anyone missed the funniest comment on this thread, here it is again:
[This has been a Public Service Announcement.]
As a good place to start...
can we stop calling it "faith"
and start calling it "superstition?"
Since when did theists have objective moral standards?
No, I mean *have* them, not just claim to have them.
And what's so great about you Indo-European speakers lording it over everybody, anyway? Damn immigrants...
Some of the comments here, attacking Mencken rather than engaging with the meaning of the quote, made it clear that there's two very different reasons for deploying a quotation, and confusion between the two tends to produce serious miscommunication.
In a religious or authoritarian context, the provision of a quote and citation to the author carries the message: what is said here is true, because of the authority of the person that said it.
But in a rational context, the provision of a quote, like the section from Mencken above, carries an entirely different message. The use of the quote in the OP carries the message: here is a thought well stated. As it happens, the author was such-and-such; but the identity of the author is not vital to the content of the thought.
Then there are the people who swear up and down that they can argue for a naturalized ethics and yet never do.
you must not pay much attention to things you don't agree with.
ever check out naturalism.org?
you're tremendously oversimplifying even the arguments that have been raised time and again here on THIS site, let alone the thousands of others where cogent arguments have been presented.
I gotta call BS on that.
it's like you simply decided no cogent arguments have ever been made, and that's simply a ridiculous position to take.
and theism is directly comparable with atheism.
not if you are comparing them as per your original definition of "mobilizing worldviews".
that would be quite a stretch to make.
atheism itself is hardly a mobilizing worldview.
it is too broad a concept to encompass something that is directed at a specific target.
you can be a nihilist atheist, or a totalitarian atheist, or an existentialist atheist or a socialist atheist...
etc.
the difference between theism and atheism is that there IS a driving force behind the theist worldview, a belief in a deity goes a long way towards forming behavior patterns that simply aren't comparable to "atheism" itself.
the LACK of belief in a deity does NOT limit one to even be rational, for that matter, let alone tend to limit one in other directions.
no, I'm not buying your comparison.
you want to limit the scope of your comparison to a philosophical subset of atheists, like the creationist so called "philosophical materialists", then you have something to work with to construct a comparison.
but you really can't compare atheists to theists in the way you are attempting to do.
Seems like I stirred things up. Some commentators, like colugo, have made some excellent points. Particularly true is this: if atheism of the Communist variety is a 'religion', then religion (and its many sins) is unlinked to theism. For atheists, it's a self-defeating argument.
Obviously linkage between theistic and atheistic philosophies and the cultures in which they play roles is complex. Many factors are involved. People generally do not kill others either because of differences in opinion about theological issues (transsubstantiation) or metaphysical issues (Stalin didn't kill people because he differed with their views on metaphysical naturalism.)The proximate reasons for killing are generally more mundane.
Yet theism and atheism form an important part of how a civilization behaves. Organizing philosophies about fundamental metaphysical truths (the atheism inherent to Marxism or the Christianity inherent to the Holy Roman Empire) create a cultural milieu, and that has real consequences. We have many examples of civilizations which have been organized along the lines of ideologies that espoused either atheism or theism. If you make a list of various organizing metaphysical views:Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, atheist, a pattern emerges.
Civilizations that are Christian are (generally- not always) among the most humane, democratic, and successful in science. Civilizations that are atheist (Communist) are undeniably the most brutal.
The issues here are complex, but the pattern is clear. One reason that I have so little respect for atheists is that there is in atheism a pervasive unwillingness to look at the real consequences of atheism in power. Hitchens is a good example. He is a former Marxist, and I understand that he still is an admirer of Trotsky. Yet he has the audacity to criticize Christianity for atrocities.
Atheists have plenty of work to do understanding their own enormous contributions to the atrocities of the 20th century. When they do a credible job of introspection, we Christians will pay more attention to their critique of our culture.
Speaking of introspection, perhaps you should consider the possibility that one of the major causes of mass atrocities is the vilification of minorities by those in the social and political majority - specifically, the determination that a given minority is dangerous; that, given power, they would do terrible things, and that even without power their insidious influence undermines the very fabric of civilization, leading to the unravelling of culture and morality; that such people are unworthy of respect, and are just generally scum.
I don't have to do any work to understand the atrocities.
They have nothing to do with my belief that there is no gods.
Mark. You're an idiot.
MartinM,
The rise of atheism in Europe since the late 18th century has had a profound impact on European culture and politics. I think that that impact has, on the whole, been bad. If European civilization crumbles (and only a fool would look at it now and insist that it faces no challenges), atheism will bear a significant part of the responsiblity. Hence the appelation 'scum'.
Stevie_C
You're an example of what I'm talking about.
Again just skimming these comments Mark seems to be going out of his way to pin anything on non-belief.
My gosh man your like the ostrich in the sand here. This has been talked about, written about, and discussed ad nauseum. You need more education before you say such
things.
I can't believe someone just typed that crap. Undeniably? China is more brutal than Iraqor Iran or Afganistan? Japan? Sweden? Puh-leez.
The USA has one of the highest crime rates in the world. The Christian USA purged the land of Indians and had a massive civil war prior to which they freaking enslaved other humans. You seem to think because you have a few dictators who did horrible things who happen to be atheists they are the norm. The simply fact is your wrong.
Not to mention the fact that virtually all Christian societies before being neutered by the enlightenment where extremely brutal and inhumane societies.
Why shouldn't he? He says people have done things in the name of religion. They have. No one kills for atheism.
Speak for yourself fella. I am a Christian and I pay attention to them because more often than not I have found them honest and accurate. Which is more than I can say for my brethren in the churches. It's folks who make your own mundane arguments without really understanding what you are saying.
The simply truth is people do not kill for not believing something, they kill because they do. That includes authoritarian states of all kinds.
And to say they is no discussion of a natural ethics system is just uninformed.
Mark, you're an example of why religion is so dangerous.
Logic, you're doing it wrong.
You think incorrectly. Standard of living up, crime down. General happiness up. In any event how would superstition help things if they did go bad?
Scum huh? You sir do not distinguish yourself here and frankly are embarrassing my religion.
I don't have the time to catalog Mark's dishonesty here, as he has yet to address anybody who has corrected his atrocious mangling of facts and history, but even if his notion of atheist regimes was worth discussing (America's Constitution is explicitly without theism, does that make it an atheist regime?), all Mark has provided is one fallacy after another, particularly the--well, not an argument so much as a protracted whinge, from consequences.
Colugo, it looks like you've got a new BFF. While I think separating atheism and theism from religion is a good start, I must side just a bit more with Ichthyic in objecting to the notion of atheism as a mobilizing worldview. I'd call it more of a result of a worldview than a principle in itself. As I wrote on that other thread, those of us who have learned to value the utility of science, skepticism, reason, honest self-examination and communication, have issues that find commonality even with those who retain their theism. Those values are clustered around the choices that often lead to atheism, and serve well the choice to live without theism--in that sense atheism is more of a symptom than a positive premise. Such attributes are not generally polished among those in pursuit of power for its own sake.
I second Steve_C.
JimC,
I've said nothing about 'naturalized ethics'. You've got the wrong commentator.
Some of your points about Christian atrocities are quite true. I've never denied that. Human beings do terrible things. Christians included (perhaps it has something to do with Original Sin...)
My point is that atheism has a record. It's a record for which atheists seem to have little interest. In power, ideologies that deny the existence of God are astonishingly brutal. I'm no fan of Islamic governments in Iran or Afganistan, but they don't compare to Communism. In power, atheism (as Communism) has been a meat-grinder virtually unprecedented in human history.
Why deny it?
Ken Cope:
Re: I must side just a bit more with Ichthyic in objecting to the notion of atheism as a mobilizing worldview. I'd call it more of a result of a worldview than a principle in itself. As I wrote on that other thread, those of us who have learned to value the utility of science, skepticism, reason, honest self-examination and communication, have issues that find commonality even with those who retain their theism. Those values are clustered around the choices that often lead to atheism, and serve well the choice to live without theism--in that sense atheism is more of a symptom than a positive premise. "
In other words, atheism is immune from criticism, because it's just naturally accompanies science, reason, honesty... What nonsense. You're describing a dogmatic religion- atheism is just the natural soulmate of all that is good.
Atheism has had consequences. You're amusingly selective about them. Which is dishonest.
JimC: re: "Scum huh? You sir do not distinguish yourself here and frankly are embarrassing my religion."
'Your religion'?
Ichthycic: agreed, it's another attempt at the old equating not collecting stamps with being a hobby argument, to paraphrase.
Atheists don't have to defend themselves against your bullshit because we're not all communists, dictators, socialists, revolutionaries, fascists or whatever social political movement you want to peg on us.
There has never been a massive politcal movement based on the belief that there is no gods.
Communism does not equal atheism.
That I even have to make the above statement is a sad point on just how big of a douche bag you truly are.
Mark=Douche Bag
Civilizations that are Christian are (generally- not always) among the most humane, democratic, and successful in science.
And yet I bet this guy finds a way to claim that early-20th century Germany and Russia WEREN'T 'Christian Civilizations'. So two of the worst genocides of the 20th century, which undeniably took place in countries completely steeped in Christian tradition, somehow dont contradict the asinine idea that 'Christian civilizations are the most humane'.
Civilizations that are atheist (Communist) are undeniably the most brutal.
Hey, 'atheist' and 'Communist' are now synonyms. Mark's really thinking outside the box here.
But hey, Mark probably thinks the Nazis were communists, since, of course, they were bad and thus had to be atheists.
My point is that atheism has a record.
Bullshit, your point is 'atheists are scum'.
Christianity has a horrible record, too, Mark, which kind of renders your 'points' irrelevant.
I also notice that Mark scurried away from his earlier asinine statements about how scientists who believe that evolution is true are atheists who support 'unscientific ideological viewpoints by hijacking genuine science'. I so wanted to hear Mark's explanation about why evolution isn't genuine science, or hear his contorted explanation of Christians who accept evolution.
Monkeys who fling shit usually do.
What a dissembling lying blowhard.
I said no such thing. There is no way you could derive that from what I wrote in #203, where I said that the traits that drive some people to atheism are traits held in common with those who are theists; you especially couldn't stand for that to be true. Just as the statement that somebody is a Christian tells me squat about how they came to be one, or what behavior to expect from them, neither does the statement that one is an atheist tell me anything, which you also don't want to be true.
Atheism is not a mobilizing worldview: the reasons to reject theism and the resultant landscape of personal choice and responsibility after making that decision are endless. To identify as an atheist is not signing on to sending Christians to gulags, but posts like yours, where you can't believe that JimC is a Christian if he disagrees with you, makes me understand the urge. That's the part I was talking about where atheism has as much in common with theism, JimC and I have more in common than you and I do.
Thats right use superstition rather than trying to find a real answer.
Because atheism is not communism. And honestly through the ages religion is much more of a meat grinder than communism. Atheism is not communism so conflating the two is just absurd.
I'd deny it because it's not true.
No because it is nothing. Atheism is simply not believing something. How hard is that for you to understand? It's not immune from critisism but what would you be critical of- nothing? There is no dogma no creed.
What are they? Seriously? If you don't believe in superstition your become a killer? The sheer numbers of atheists who don't do this refutes that idiotic point of view.
Yes, mine and many others.
Jim C: re: "No because it is nothing. Atheism is simply not believing something."
This is a good example of the moral cowardice of atheism. Atheists tout themselves as "Brights', defenders of science, etc, but as soon as the history of atheism in power in the 20th century is brought up, suddenly atheism is "nothing", and thereby unaccountable.
I don't believe in metaphysical naturalism. Does that thereby exempt all of my consequent beliefs and actions from scrutiny and criticism, merely because my ideology can be expressed, by linguistic manipulation, in the negative?
Some folks have taken exception to my use of the word "scum".
So I've reconsidered. From now on, I will refer to the atheists whose ideology, when in power in the past century, killed 100 million people and who have weakened European civilization to the point that it may collapse in a few generations by a new term, less likely to offend delicate atheist sensibilities.
'Naughty'
By your own "arguments" you should be accepting "responsibility" for Hitler, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in this thread. Actually you do seem like the sort of person who would have been an enthusiastic Nazi.
Awww, Mark, won't you tell us scum why evolution is an ''unscientific ideological viewpoint"? :-( Quit repeating yourself over and over and help us out!
I mean, we never knew that atheism led to Islam before you told us!
No, your are incredibly resistant to being educated. Atheism has never had power. You don't get it. It's not a system, there are no beliefs, nothing. A leader can be an atheist. He can be a theist.
Pol pot was an atheist, Hitler a theist. I have no doubt either would have killed if the situation was reversed.
Priests have molested children, religious people do the vast majority of terrible acts in the world today and throughout history. Most of these people would be the same regardless.
Ug, atheists have not killed 100 million. Thats just to dumb to respond to if in fact you actually believe that drivel. Atheism has killed no one, it is nothing, has no creed or dogma. Repeat till you get it.
European civilization is weak? Huh. Who would know by actually looking at factors that measure strength.
How is that possible? JimC is not an atheist, thou fucktard! More evidence of Mark's inability to parse simple English.
I don't believe in metaphysical naturalism
That's a ludicrous strawman created by a Berkeley lawyer who wants to displace science education with meaningless and fatuous supernatural explanations. Science is about methodological naturalism. Stop cutting and pasting other people's insults unless you can show you understand what they mean.
I hope you realize that early Christians were thrown to the lions because they rejected the Roman pantheon. They were executed for their atheism.
Let's take a look at your 'logic'...
European society faces challenges -> challenges may eventually cause it to "crumble" -> anyone who even indirectly causes challenges European civilization is scum.
What are some other, even bigger challenges to Europe besides those nasty, nasty atheists?
Population ageing? Old people challenge our glorious civilization. Scum!
Integration of Eastern Europeans? Scum!
Integration of Muslims? I think this one got covered already...
Steve LaBonne: re: "Actually you do seem like the sort of person who would have been an enthusiastic Nazi."
JimC: "Atheism has killed no one, it is nothing, has no creed or dogma. Repeat till you get it."
Atheists, reverting to type. Shall I pack my clothes for the re-education camp?
Are you guys still entertaining this ass?
Mark: Go away. You're stupid and boring.
Re-education?
Try education. You completely failed to learn logic in the first place.
He's probably a YEC too.
Ichthyic: "the difference between theism and atheism is that there IS a driving force behind the theist worldview, a belief in a deity goes a long way towards forming behavior patterns that simply aren't comparable to "atheism" itself."
I would disagree with the assertion that theism is a mobilizing worldview (AKA generic "religion"). (And I do not believe that atheism is either - I have never argued that, unless I used poor phrasing that suggested otherwise.) Specific manifestations of theism that include values, cosmologies, etc. are mobilizing worldviews. But not the proposition of theism.
Atheism, like theism, has demonstrated itself to quite susceptible to mobilizing worldviews both malign and benign. People seem to seek out some kind of faith - the absolute certainty of being one of the elect confronting the lost, a grand millenial vision in which they can participate, mythic narratives that instill them with purpose. Even God and the supernatural are merely optional for the construction of these mobilizing myths.
Ken Cope: "those of us who have learned to value the utility of science, skepticism, reason, honest self-examination and communication, have issues that find commonality even with those who retain their theism. ... in that sense atheism is more of a symptom than a positive premise."
Definitely, there is a cluster of worldviews that cross the atheist-theist divide that value skepticism, self-examination, and communication. And that self-examination and skepticism is conducive to agnosticism and atheism. You're right, this is not driven by the initial premise of atheism, but more by true rationalism - and some might not like this - a kind of humility. But there are other styles of being an atheist. One which uses "rationalism" as a crusading banner and "atheism" as an ingroup emblem.
My argument that these categories are directly comparable:
1. naturalism - supernaturalism
1a. atheism - theism
2. mobilizing worldviews (AKA "religions," a set that includes the secular and theistic dichotomy and the liberal democratic - totalitarian continuum)
Not atheism vs Abrahamic theocracy or God-belief vs Communism.
Rival atrocity litanies (AKA body count contests) can only be between rival worldviews or sets of them. Comparing the entire set of theistic vs nontheistic worldviews yields Mark's pointless argument. (Which is wrong on the facts anyway - not just the specific nature of the French Terror and Nazism, which are complex - but also the notion that the atrocities of theistic groups are less heinous or massive in scale.)
My point is that it is an error to blame God-belief or lack of same ALONE for these atrocities (or by the same token, to credit these for social progress, science, art).
There is a lack of a nuanced appreciation for sociological, anthropological, and historical processes in these reductive arguments, which come down to scoring points.
As mentioned I'm not an atheist there clueless.
The reason Christians have committed atrocities over the centuries is because they didn't believe in the one true goddess Athena. Atheist scum.
Colugo:
Re: "There is a lack of a nuanced appreciation for sociological, anthropological, and historical processes in these reductive arguments, which come down to scoring points."
True, although strings on blogs don't do nuance well. One must also be careful that nuance isn't used to evade fairly obvious truths.
Re: "Rival atrocity litanies (AKA body count contests)..."
I've repeated the facts of Communism's bloodletting not to prove that 'you killed more than us', but to point out the yawning gulf between atheist history and rhetoric. A frank discussion that both theism and atheism have played major roles in cultures in which atrocities have been perpetrated would be a real victory for honesty.
Atheists seem to have no interest in owning up to their own quite real history. Christians haven't done enough of their own soul-searching, but there is a massive literature by Christians about Christian participation in evil. No analogous literature exists by atheists for atheism.
That's what I mean by moral cowardice.
Mark: "Christians haven't done enough of their own soul-searching, but there is a massive literature by Christians about Christian participation in evil."
Mark, do you believe that the atrocities committed by Christian movements, regimes, and individuals were motivated by Christianity, or, more generally, by theism? If not, what do you believe the motivation was?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Note how Mark's silently abandoned his three original arguments about how all atrocities are committed by atheists, evolution is pseudoscience, and atheists are to blame for letting the 'green peril' take over Europe next week.
Now all we're getting is "YOU ATHEIST SCUM AREN'T SORRY ENOUGH FOR KILLING EVERYONE! YOU ATHEIST SCUM AREN'T SORRY ENOUGH FOR KILLING EVERYONE! YOU ATHEIST SCUM AREN'T SORRY ENOUGH FOR KILLING EVERYONE! YOU ATHEIST SCUM AREN'T SORRY ENOUGH FOR KILLING EVERYONE!"
Mark's moral courage is dazzling.
Or could it be that people with education realize that atheism didn't cause a death toll but totalitarian regimes did?
It's not moral cowardice to not accept your absurd premise.
For really no good reason and you have ignored evidence to the fact that atheism isn't communism.Ug.
"No analogous literature exists by atheists for atheism."
I'm not an expert in whatever field that would fall under, but it sounds absurd to me. Are you suggesting that atheists refuse to consider the consequences of disbelief? Atheist scholars never study the psychology, the social implications, group dynamics, etc.?
In any case, should research be done into ALL the things that Stalin didn't believe, and the ramifications of his many disbeliefs?
Do disbelievers in astrology study patterns of violence done by their fellow disbelievers on the assumption that they are violent because of their disbelief?
You keep trying to turn atheism into a prescriptive dogma. It isn't.
Approximately how old is the earth Mark?
Since the dawn of times the rich and powerful have recognized how useful carefully crafted myths could be. For those myths to be efficient they had to be strongly believed and particularly sticky. The less educated the masses, the better. Then they could be used to mobilize the masses to wage wars, or exploit them for further enrichment of the elite.
Now, those myths may or may not have included God(s) or other mythological figures. For example, the most recent one, the so called "9/11 myth", cannot be categorized as an "atheist" or "Christian myth", but the last 7 years of history show how efficient and deadly those can be.
So, when one dicusses the root causes of atrocities of the past, it is quite obvious that accusing the myths is quite ludicrous.
SteveC: Re: "Approximately how old is the earth Mark?"
About 5 billion years. The Universe, about 15 billion.
My turn:
How did life first arise on earth, Steve? How did the genetic code arise? What gave rise to the Big Bang? How do you explain the laws of nature- where did they come from? How is it that you have subjective experiences? What is it in matter (an objective phenomenon) that gives rise to subjectivity?
Why is there something, rather than nothing?
The only worthwhile issue here is whether or not atheists are right. Even if Mark could, you know, think, make arguments, understand the differences between Nietzsche and Stalin, and convince anybody that atheists are murdering scum, atheists would (in most minds, at least) be sanctioned in that role simply by being honest about god while Mark is lying about god.
It's sort of like the noxious BS spewed by the DI about evolution and eugenics. Even if there were a solid link between the two (there are cultural and social links, but a science link will not congeal), that would only be an argument that eugenics is worth considering, since MET is science while ID is a sad little replay of pre-science mythologies (coupled with anti-science "philosophy"). Now it does matter that the IDiots are wrong about that as well, but they didn't in the slightest make even a false argument against evolution thereby, but merely claimed a consequent that doesn't in fact follow.
Atheism may not be the preferred outcome of honest searching, after all (it wasn't really my preference). Nietzsche certainly found it to pose rather large problems, if also a mind-blowing freedom. However, Mark cannot come up with any legitimate case for God, so he has to pull the usual immoral tactic of smearing the opposition. As such, he's already forfeited the high ground.
Wrestle the pig if you must. But he's never going to do anything other than to try to smear mud and his excrement onto you, for he is devoid of any argumentation that is worth anyone's while.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I have a question! Why do trolls exist?
Man, this guy is rich!
Well one could fairly say 'I don't know'about some of them but we have evidence that will one day lead to an answer and many scientists are working on this as we speak. Or we could be dishonest and pretend to know something and profess certainty about it.
Which do you choose?
Oh and by asking these questions you are I'm supposing setting up a false dicotomy as in 'You don't know what caused the big bang? Well then G-O-D.'
Which of course is infinite regress. What caused him/it? Yawn.
Mark:
So far you have failed to engage the point that only two of the many Communist regimes have a higher estimated death toll than the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war waged by heretical but sincere Christians against the Chinese government resulting in between 20 and 30 million deaths (hence your claims that no Christian regime has equalled the atrocities of Communism), to say nothing of the democide of Native Americans, the Slave Trade, and the Thirty Years' War (see here. The evidence is even more damning if you consider the number of deaths as a percentage of world population at the time, and I suspect the difference between Christian and Communist atrocities will tend to even out if that's taken into account. Finally, note also that Communist atrocities invariably occurred in the 20th century, and therefore their perpetrators had access to weapons and logistics that simply weren't available to earlier tyrants - or would you actually contend that, had machine guns and gas been available to the Crusaders or the Inquisition, that they would not have been used?
More importantly, you have failed to engage the point that this is irrelevant to criticisms of the combination of Freethought and Secular Humanism driving atheism as it is experienced here. Aside from the common trait of lack of belief in a "god", we have virtually nothing in common with the Communists, who, aside from lacking belief in a "god", have much more in common than with us. Attempting to pin the evils of the intersection of Communist totalitarianism and modern war technology on Secular Humanist Freethinkers simply due to the shared trait of lacking belief in a deity is preposterous.
Finally, you have failed to provide even a plausible hypothesis as to why, according to you, atheist regimes are so much more brutal. Still waiting...
No, not G-O-D, you silly man! The correct answer is I-S-I-S. Or is it C-O-Y-O-T-E?
How did life first arise on earth, Steve? How did the genetic code arise? What gave rise to the Big Bang? How do you explain the laws of nature- where did they come from? How is it that you have subjective experiences? What is it in matter (an objective phenomenon) that gives rise to subjectivity?
Why is there something, rather than nothing?
I, for one, don't know the answers to these questions, and I'm not interested in pretending like I do. I'm even less interested in pretending that the ancient Hebrews did, either.
I don't know. Neither do you. I support the Not-God Theory though.
How did life first arise on earth, Steve? How did the genetic code arise? What gave rise to the Big Bang? How do you explain the laws of nature- where did they come from? How is it that you have subjective experiences? What is it in matter (an objective phenomenon) that gives rise to subjectivity?
Is this your attempt to refute evolution, Mark?
Mark - Once again, do you blame Christianity and/or theism in general for atrocities perpetrated by Christians?
negentropyeater: "the most recent one, the so called "9/11 myth", cannot be categorized as an "atheist" or "Christian myth""
Please explain.
Glen Davidson: "Even if there were a solid link between the two (there are cultural and social links, but a science link will not congeal)"
I disagree, since eugenic reasoning was developed, and eugenic policies promoted, by mainstream scientists. Charles Davenport was one of the founders of American genetics, while Pearson was one of the founders of biometrics. Eugenics was an ideologically informed applied pseudoscience that became an even more virulent social movement and associated governmental policies. See Jonathan Marks - a molecular anthropologist, not an IDist - on the history of the eugenics movement. West's narrative (namely, that eugenics are an inevitable implication of Darwinism) is wrong, but so is the historical narrative that seeks to exculpate the science - and more to the point, the scientists - of the late 19th C-early 20th C.
"that would only be an argument that eugenics is worth considering, since MET is science while ID is a sad little replay of pre-science mythologies"
No, the "scientific" nature of eugenics would not be an argument for eugenics being worth considering. Eugenics was not just a theory (actually the theory of the dysgenic effect of civilization), but a prescriptive program. In addition, scientists are often wrong. Consider phrenology, somatyping, organ slippage, hysteria, psychosomatic migraines, and innumerable other examples of "scientific" biomedical errors.
Azkyroth: "Communists ... who, aside from lacking belief in a "god", have much more in common than with us."
Yes, totalitarian theists have more in common with totalitarian atheists than either have in common with liberal democrats - theist or atheist. But that is not the same as the incorrect proposition that communists are more like theists in general than they are like liberal democratic atheists.
Azkyroth,
Re: So far you have failed to engage the point that only two of the many Communist regimes have a higher estimated death toll than the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war waged by heretical but sincere Christians against the Chinese government resulting in between 20 and 30 million deaths (hence your claims that no Christian regime has equalled the atrocities of Communism)"
The deaths from the Taiping Rebellion were caused in significant part by the Qing government's supression of the rebellion (which was the civil war). There was plenty of blame for all.
Hong Xiuguan was a Christian heretic; his views were at odds in very important ways with genuine Christianity. As such, Christianity bears some responsibility for his actions, and he bears some responsibility for the deaths.
I point out that had he lived under the Inquisition, he would have been kindling in short order, before the social disruption killed 30 million. The Inquisition had its reasons. Not all of the reasons were utterly evil. Spain was spared the bloody wars of religion in the 16th century. Ever wonder why?
If your point is that atheism has killed people on a scale like that of lunatic Christian heretics, you'll get no argument from me.
Try making points that advance your cause.
In other words, you agree with what I wrote, that there are cultural and social links, but the "scientific link" (which, if you learn to read properly, refers to scientific evidence, not pseudoscientific claptrap) does not congeal.
Your equivocation over what I meant by "science" doesn't wash, either. Even you call it "pseudoscience", which is not what I meant when I wrote of "science." Is that really so hard for you to understand? See, if you had any sense you'd know that I was primarily writing about MET, which can hardly be linked to eugenics, for it didn't exist as such then. The DI is attacking MET, not "Darwinism," no matter how often you and they equivocate in your terms.
You just fault me for your own mindless strawman. Why the hell do we have so many trolls?
Blah blah blah, can you actually speak to anything I wrote, or is it always going to be your idiotic strawmen that you attack?
You didn't begin to answer a damn thing I wrote, you're just droning on about a bunch of stuff that I already factored in. My god, eugenics isn't a theory? Of course it isn't, dolt, that's what I said. I said that it was neither science, nor was the Di actually making a case that evolution as science led to eugenics. Plus, it's your fantasy that I ever suggested that mainstream scientists were not involved--I just don't credit pseudoscience as being science no matter the source.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Oh, sorry, you didn't say that eugenics isn't a theory, you said it wasn't "just a theory" even though its status as "theory" is rather suspect.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
One true scotsman. A Christian 'heretic'? You mean someone who disagrees with the current leaders? Genuine Christianity? What exactly is that?
In my view you have exposed yourself as dishonest with this comment and the coward you claim others are above.
1. Atheism is not responsibly for Pol Pot and others. It has no creed and no dogma to adhere to.
2. Lunatic Christian heretics? You mean Christians. They where no more heretical than Martin Luther or the Pope.
Chill out, Glen D.
"The DI is attacking MET, not "Darwinism,""
No duh. It's a convenient conflation for them, isn't it?
Mark's category of "lunatic Christian heretics" is similar to arguments that Communists were not really ideologically informed by their concept of atheism, or that they were more like Christians than like atheists.
Is God-belief or its negation really the issue? I don't think so.
Colugo,
Christianity played (and plays) a major role in Christian civilization, for good and bad. By Christianity I mean the human application of Christianity. As a Christian, of course, I believe that Divine inspiration is wholly good. We Christians don't always understand inspiration correctly, and sometimes we do understand it and disobey it. We're a work in progress.
Cultures are influenced by many things, and the metaphysical views of people and leadership are obviously an important part of that influence. Civilizations exist in a milieu, and atheists are astonishingly reluctant to take responsiblity for their contribution to the milieu.
Except for the good stuff. That's what I mean by moral cowards. It's on exhibit here, in spades.
Glen D, I think we're using two different concepts of science: 1) "science" as a pristine algorithm employing valid data and analytical techniques, 2) "science" as a specialized type of human social activity and its products.
Yes, that should have been apparent from the context:
One problem is that you took what I wrote out of context, by quoting the second sentence without the first one.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Don't bother getting upset over "moral cowardice". Moral bravery to Mark is tribal thinking and punishing yourself for the sins of the fathers (not that the people in question are our fathers by any stretch of the imagination, but just try telling Mark that). I got better things to do with my morals.
Glen D, I regret my role in our mutual misunderstanding.
There should always be a precise distinction made between the scientifically supportable (by contemporary standards) and what was considered "scientific" during a particular place and time.
Is there any other kind?
So do Muslims and others.
Or B. It varies from one person to the next because it was never meant to be a coherent whole. Your argument is essentially that your version of God is not a good communicator and hence his message is poorly received.
Reluctant? Heck they embrace their flaws. You just haven't justified your argument in any sense and as such are passing judgement where there is none to pass.
I am a Christian and I don't agree with your argument.
Such an idiot.
JimC:
Re:Atheists taking responsiblity for negative influences of atheism: "Reluctant? Heck they embrace their flaws."
Name the books or papers written by atheists that specifically examine the negative influences of atheism in history.
Mark: "By Christianity I mean the human application of Christianity. As a Christian, of course, I believe that Divine inspiration is wholly good. ... don't always understand inspiration correctly, and sometimes we do understand it and disobey it."
In other words, the human application of Christianity is a combination of (highly variable) interpretations of the meaning of Christianity, and differential degrees of adherence to these interpretations. I have no quarrel with that. (Except I would add that that's all it is - interpretation and differential adherence - since there is no external source of inspiration, i.e. God. But the existence or nonexistence of God is not relevant for the purposes of this discussion.)
So is the cause of these atrocities? True Christianity? Generic Christianity? Theism itself, as a simple proposition? I would argue that the causes are particular applications - that is, highly variable interpretations and adherence to same. In fact, Christianity is just one component of these larger mobilizing worldviews.
How about atheism? Is the cause of atrocities atheism itself? Or is it the "human application of" the simple proposition atheism - that is, particularistic and highly variable interpretations of the significance of atheism (and really, what you really mean by atheism - metaphysical naturalism, materialism, etc.)? And atheism is but one component of these larger mobilizing worldviews, which includes value systems and theories of history, some of which are much closer to theistic totalitarianism than they are to liberal secular humanism.
You are no more justified in blaming atheism in general or the mere proposition of atheism for Communist atrocities than one would be in blaming the notion of the existence of God for all atrocities committed by Christians.
You are arguing with liberal democratic secular humanists, not totalitarian revolutionaries. I suspect that you are not a hardcore theocratic Christian Reconstructionist, but a somewhat naive Christian armed with some apologetics tracts.
What is your quarrel with? Totalitarianism? Fanaticism? Crimes against humanity? Then decry that. If you have a problem with atheism on truth value grounds, fine, make your philosophical case. But don't denounce atheism itself on the basis of historical atrocity, unless you are also prepared to denounce Christianity (not just its "human application") and theism itself on the same grounds.
Mark-
You just don't get it. You can't write a book about how non- belief caused one to do something, it's like saying since I'm not an astologer I can't add.
Can you possibly fit your mind around the fact that no books have been written because it isn't a possible negative influence?
Atheists embrace their flaws on a personal level. They don't seek to find solace in the invisible. It actually is pretty honorable once you take the time to understand their point of view. Something you obviously have not done.
Like I said I find them very honest, educated, and straight shooters.
It's down the memory hole, Colugo.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
What part of "the Communist regimes, aside from an incidental advocacy of a lack of belief in a god, have no other philosophical relationship to Secular Humanist Freethought" was unclear, you sniveling little weasel?
And I believe your original claim (the one I was engaging with the death toll examples, anyway) was that
which I have already disproven (only two have surpassed the worst of Christian atrocities, unless you count the dead in wars between Christian nations, which I'm fairly certain you would if they were wars between atheist nations - if WWI and WWII are counted then Christians still "win"). You also asserted incorrectly that the French Reign of Terror was inspired and carried out by adherents of atheism, which I also showed to be false. You additionally assert that the rejection of god-belief itself is somehow responsible for their atrocities, and yet you have not provided
One.
Single.
Shred.
of evidence to back up that assertion. You have not even provided a plausible explanation of why such might be the case. Who do you think you're fooling?
Try this concept mark.
Not believing in god has no negative effect on a person whatsoever.
Not believing in god is only positive. Period.
Can someone show me any evidence that not believing in a god is a negative.
And I don't mean societal perceptions.
What evidence WOULD you accept as proof that the atrocities of Communist regimes were due to the totalitarian component of Communism as practiced rather than to the atheistic component of Communist theory?
As for papers, here is an essay explaining why "atheism" in general, and "atheists" as they exist here, have no "negative influence" of the sort you describe to answer for. I suggest, hopelessly I fear, that you read it before dismissing its arguments.
(Would any atheists here who do NOT condemn the atrocities committed by totalitarian governments, Communist and otherwise, please step forward?)
I am quite positive that link was correctly coded.
Azkyroth,
Thanks for the link. The essay isn't introspective, it's apolgetic. I don't agree with the author's conclusions that atheism as a worldview bears no responsibility for Communism. Of course it bears some responsibility. The only honest question is: how much.
There is a massive Christian literature on moral theology, much of it examining, in very painful detail, the moral failings of individual Christians and Christianity. No such introspection or literature exists within atheism.
In fact, the Reformation was largely the working out of a searching and relentless self-esamination within Christendom. Atheism admits no sins of atheism itself, and that precludes any sort of atonement for the astonishing atrocities committed by atheist individuals and atheist governments.
Inquisition apologist? Now I've seen everything.
Not because of lack of effort, anyway. There was that small mishap with the Armada...
I am aware that you believe that. However, you have yet to cite a single piece of evidence in support of it. So far as I can tell, your position here is as insane as claiming that the United States of America bears responsibility for the atrocities of the French Revolution on the basis that both originated in defying a monarch. Feel free to convince me otherwise whenever you get around to it.
I point out that had he lived under the Inquisition, he would have been kindling in short order, before the social disruption killed 30 million. The Inquisition had its reasons. Not all of the reasons were utterly evil.
Well, if Mark is defending the Inquisition, that's a hint that he's Catholic. It's also a hint as to what kind of government he would consider ideal.
Spain was spared the bloody wars of religion in the 16th century. Ever wonder why?
Having already terrorized the public into submission during the Inquisition, the good Christian Spaniards were too busy killing Indians, I guess.
Hey Mark, how about that evolution rebuttal?
This seems to be what Mark's argument has boiled down to, repeated as nauseum:
"YOU ATHEISTS DON'T APOLOGIZE ENOUGH TO MAKE ME HAPPY!"
In his moral courage, he's ignoring everything said to him.
BTW, is it just me, or does Mark sound a lot like the old troll Ghost of Paley?
An excerpt from Ebonmuse's essay above, which I highly recommend everyone read:
The above is a rebuttal to exactly the argument Mark is trying to make. I assume, since he claimed to have read the essay, that he read the above. He has repeatedly claimed that it is invalid, that beyond all reason Humanists do bear responsibility for Communist atrocities, yet in two hundred and sixty seven comments as of this writing we have not one single post from him that gives a reason why this should be - or even a reason why, as he claims, the atheism of the Communists (rather than power-hungry leaders and totalitarian ideology, both things found abundantly in theist nations as well) is responsible for their atrocities. It is my inferrence that he can produce no such reason. Mark, time to put up or shut up.
Arden,
Re: "Well, if Mark is defending the Inquisition, that's a hint that he's Catholic. It's also a hint as to what kind of government he would consider ideal."
I am a Catholic. I'm not defending the Spanish Inquisition, in the sense that I advocate its policies today. Neither does the Church.
What I am saying is two things:
First, the Inquisition was a very complex matter, and many of the individuals investigated and punished by the Inquisition were not merely heretics, but 'secular' miscreants of various sorts, and many of the executions were of people who were considered enemies of the Spanish Throne. Politics throughout the world back then (and in many places now) was a play-for-keeps business, and the Spanish monarchy used the Inquisition to maintain political stability. I don't advocate this, but it had effects. One effect is that the civil disorder that tore Europe apart and killed millions oddly skipped Spain.
One wonders what would the 20th Century would have been like if Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, etc. had been dealt with more decisively early in their careers. Certainly no one thinks that permitting them to wreak societal chaos was beneficial to mankind. The Spanish civilization in which the Inquisition took place was one of the least bloody of its time. Perhaps there's a connection between the Inquisition and Spain's relative lack of wholesale slaughter.
Second, as a matter of scale, the Spanish Inquisition pales in comparison with the atrocities of Communism. A reasonable estimate of the number of people put to death by the Inquisition is 3000 people in 300 years. Stalin killed 3000 people each day.
Atheism wins again.
I think that's enough for Mark.
Without the lie that Atheism=Communism he's got nothing and his fake little world would crumble.
True, by crushing their dissidents at home, Spain was better able to concentrate on killing Indians in the New World. That's much better than a messy religious religious war in those icky Protestant countries. So all in all, the Inquisition was a nice, healthy thing. In the long run, Spain benefited by it. Christianity wins again!
I won't bother with your infantile comments about atheism = Stalinism, since you've signalled your intent to ignore any rebuttal anyone says to that.
So, now able to defend your earlier asinine comments about evolution, tho? I think "atheists have advanced their unscientific ideological viewpoints by hijacking genuine science" was what you said. What exactly is 'unscientific'?
PS: Are you 'Ghost of Paley'? Just wondering.
Without the lie that Atheism=Communism he's got nothing
Well, let's see then...
Try to picture a Gumby, creationist tagged behind this blockquote:
Ayn Rand, you've got some 'splainin' to do...
Mark, was my long reply that is now comment 180 already up when you posted what is now comment 196?
(Apparently not, because you haven't replied to it.)
Wrong comparison. The right comparison to the atheism inherent in Marxism would be the theism inherent to Christianity.
That list has to be either "theism, atheism" or "Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, fascist, communist".
Civilizations that are secular and lack a driving ideology are always the most humane, democratic, and successful in science.
Now, what do you mean by "civilizations that are Christian"? Do civilizations count where the majority of people are secular Christians and the country as a whole (constitution and so on) is secular? Do only theocracies count? Or what?
I'll repeat yet once again: you are looking at the consequences of ideology in power, not of atheism in power, nor (in the other cases) of theism in power. We are looking at what happens when people believe there's something that's worth killing for. Simple.
What about the Enlightenment?
Only an ignoramus would be afraid of any such thing having any chance to happen.
See? That's why I'm against ideologies.
Untrue. They were executed for refusing to worship one god -- the emperor.
You are accusing all atheists of being communists.
What next? Will you accuse all theists of being Taliban? That would be the logical equivalent.
Well, slowly. We haven't figured out terribly much yet, but, for example, chemically simpler nucleic acids than RNA are known. You might want to start here -- note that I said "start".
What do you mean, the question of why the universal code is exactly what it is? A good case has been made that natural selection is to blame: the universal code is among those possible codes in which any nucleotide substitution has the least chance of leading to an amino acid substitution.
Massimo Di Giulio (2004): The coevolution theory of the origin of the genetic code, Physics of Life Reviews 1, 128 -- 137
Abstract:
"A review of the coevolution theory of the origin of the genetic code is presented. This theory maintains that the origin of the code should be sought in the biosynthetic relationships between amino acids. In particular, some amino acids, the precursors, occupied the structure of the genetic code early on. As the product amino acids developed from these precursors, part or all of the codon domain of the precursor amino acid was ceded to the product amino acids, which resulted in the structuring of the genetic code. This paper therefore reviews the evidence in favour of this theory. The existence of some molecular fossils representing the biosynthetic pathways on which the coevolution theory suggests biosynthetic transformations took place (precursor amino acid → product amino acid) seems to be a strong corroboration of this theory. A generalisation imposed by this theory on the ancestral metabolic state is then discussed and, finally, the main prospects that seem to stem from the coevolution theory are presented."
Probably a quantum fluctuation or a black hole.
Why shouldn't there be any?
This is probably a wrong question (like "why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi"). If anyone else were wired into my nervous system, they'd probably have the exact same subjective experiences as I. But because this is not testable, science ignores it.
Why is there God rather than nothing...? Have you really never thought about that?
Well, he certainly wasn't a genuine Scotsman.
I don't advocate this, but it had effects. One effect is that the civil disorder that tore Europe apart and killed millions oddly skipped Spain.
And your proof that this was an effect of the Inquisition is...?
Stalin succeeded in wielding power because he was cleverer than his opponents. Smart people need to admit that being intelligent leads to atrocities, apologize for Stalin's behavior, and express remorse for his actions.
He also didn't believe in the tooth fairy. Atoothfairyists should admit that there is a problem with their belief system.
Because the Inquisition successfully drove all Jews, crypto-Jews, and even former Jews away respectively killed them?
Methinks not.
Evidence, please. Good luck in finding any -- for many cultures we simply have no idea how much killing they did at that time.
I wrote:
Congratulations, Mark! I fell into your trap! It doesn't matter if Hong was a genuine Christian or not. What matters, in your logic, is that he was a genuine theist.
I certainly wouldn't advocate fascism, but notice how the devastation of WWII oddly skipped Spain? When will anti-fascists own up to this fact?
I'm still waiting on a reply.
Atoothfairyism leads to criminal behavior that is FAR in excess of those who believe in the Tooth Fairy. Prove me wrong!
You are moral cowards for not addressing this issue.
Atheism wins again.
Atheism, winning since before 300 BCE...
I chose to ignore the rest of his BS.
I'll defend Mark a bit :
I disagree with many of his arguments, but there is an underlying theme , which I would say is the following :
-is there sufficient evidence to assert that a world rid of religion would be a better place ?
I think it is essential that Atheists be capable of answering this simple question.
My personal view is that an Aheist world can, one day become a better place, but only when the world is ready for it.
- Is the world ready for it ? I don't think so, and I think it is obvious to any person with a pragmatic view.
- How does it become a gradually more (and not less like in the last 10 years) Atheistic world and possibly a better place ?
- Well, for sure, not with a direct confrontation with religion.
- Why ? Because if it is, as I suspect, the truth of the way things really are, it's victory should come through a natural process : as generations become more and more educated and liberated from the old untenable dogmatic myths, they will naturally evolve to Atheism. On the contrary, some of the more fanatical religious folks could become more and more aggressive, first by remobilizing their troops, which they are already doing, but then get to further escalating steps, and the results could become ultimately, bloody.
The New Atheist movement has been very succesful at "rallying its troops" (for now in a metaphorical way), mainly in the USA. It is little known in Europe, where it was less necessary. But the question is, what needs to be done now ? Will this strategy bring its fruits peacefully, or, on the contrary lead to more and more tension and ultimately, violence.
The question is not only, about the truth, but about how we tell the truth.
mark is the classic ignorant religious apologist -
considers intellectual fencing to be sticking himself in the chest with his own sword, and then claiming victory.
"Suicide squad, attack!"
*aaargh*
"that showed 'em"
there was a reason everybody hated the Judean People's Front...
In other words, it is I think ,an illusion that uneducated people can move towards Aheism. And because the world still has, at least 80% of undecutated people (and at least 50% in the so called developped countries), how does one expect to really change things ? Education is the key, atheism will follow naturally.
Mark: "the Inquisition was a very complex matter, and many of the individuals investigated and punished by the Inquisition were not merely heretics, but 'secular' miscreants"
"Miscreants"? In your eyes or in the Church and the Spanish throne?
"of various sorts, and many of the executions were of people who were considered enemies of the Spanish Throne. ... I don't advocate this, but it had effects. One effect is that the civil disorder that tore Europe apart and killed millions oddly skipped Spain."
Theocratic purges, mass torture and executions, state antisemitism, and political democide is preferable to civil conflict? What a creepy rationalization.
"One wonders what would the 20th Century would have been like if Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, etc. had been dealt with more decisively early in their careers."
Who else should be dealt with "more decisively early in their careers", Mark? Got any names in mind?
"Certainly no one thinks that permitting them to wreak societal chaos was beneficial to mankind. The Spanish civilization in which the Inquisition took place was one of the least bloody of its time. Perhaps there's a connection between the Inquisition and Spain's relative lack of wholesale slaughter."
Too bad Continental Europe and England didn't have their own inquisitions. If only the Reformation, Age of Reason, and Enlightenment had been nipped in the bud. Then the West would have only been set back a few hundred years. Maybe the West would have been so set back that we would be living under a Caliphate by now.
Full blown rationalizing of the Inquisition. This is where knee-jerk apologetics gets you. You were already insufferable in your broken-record bleating against atheism; now your rhetoric has become downright sinister. I hereby give up my attempt to have a dialog with you; you're not worth the effort.
If Atheism is about proving, to the rest of the world, what the truth is, I shall have nothing to do with it.
If Atheism is about explaining, to the rest of the world, that only human reason, through science and the humanities can ultimately lead to the truth, than I think it is a worhty cause.
Ibn Al Haytham said the right thing, about 1000 years ago :
"Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency."[
Education is the key, atheism will follow naturally.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I would prefer to say "rational thought will follow naturally"
This isn't a confrontation of atheists against theists; it is a confrontation of rational people (many of whom happen to be atheists) against superstition.
The time for placation and smooth, seamless transitions is over because there is no time left. We have had several fundy presidents in White House, and we are in danger of electing another one that could be even worse. The religious right is trying to reframe the constitution, and they are sabotaging education and science. This country is 32 trillion dollars in debt and a significant portion of the population believes in the rapture. It is an extremely volatile situation and we are being railroaded into a concocted Armageddon, or some approximation of it, by sinister people.
I personally couldn't care less whether people are atheistic or not, but I do care if they are pushing us back into the dark ages, keeping us from saving the planet, and trying to get us all blown up. The "New Atheists" didn't start this confrontation; we are just reacting out of necessity--and alarm.
If Atheism is about proving, to the rest of the world, what the truth is, I shall have nothing to do with it.
If Atheism is about explaining, to the rest of the world, that only human reason, through science and the humanities can ultimately lead to the truth, than I think it is a worhty cause.
what if also can be neither AND both of those.
atheism is just the lack of theism.
the rest is whatever direction one decides to take from there:
naturalism, rationalism, humanism, etc.
but then, we've certainly had this debate before. IIRC, the thread where PZ decided to ask for a slogan and artwork for "atheism" lead to a 2K plus post thread discussing the fact that atheism isn't really a dogma of any kind.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I would prefer to say "rational thought will follow naturally"
yes.
Colugo,
Re: "Full blown rationalizing of the Inquisition. This is where knee-jerk apologetics gets you. You were already insufferable in your broken-record bleating against atheism; now your rhetoric has become downright sinister. I hereby give up my attempt to have a dialog with you; you're not worth the effort."
I'm not rationalizing anything. I'm merely recounting facts and rather widely held historical inferences. Facts are stubborn. The Thirty Years' War reduced the population of Germany by 1/3- about 10 million people perished. They perished for a variety of reasons, political and religious-sectarian. There were parts of Europe in which the bloodshed didn't happen, such as Spain. Spain had an ongoing Inquistition, which killed a (comparitively) small number of people, many of whom threatened the Monarchy. The number of people killed in the entire three centuries of the Spanish Inquisition was about the same as the number that Stalin (and Mao and Pol Pot) killed each day. I'm not rationalizing the Inquisition, I'm pointing out that the scale of the Inquisition is orders of magnitude smaller than the scale of cold-blooded murder carried out by atheist butchers. I'm also pointing out that the Inquisition occurred in continent ripped to shreds by civil disorder. This is not rationalization. It's fact.
Your 'dialogue' depends on moral posturing. Denial of substantial atheist responsibility for atrocities that kill a hundred million people gets gentle treatment- you dice definitions and spin philosophical subtleties. My factual observation that Spain during the 16th century Inquisition was one of the safer places to be in Europe is treated as a thought-crime.
I'm not advocating any inquisitions today. I have great respect for our Constitution, and in my work I spend quite a bit of time defending people from a particular contemporary brand of inquisition. What I am arguing is that there is a double standard regarding the judgement of atrocities associated with metaphysical ideologies. The wholesale slaughter of a hundred million people by avowed militant atheists is explained away feverishly. A comparatively small theist atrocity that may have in fact averted bloodshed on a much wider scale cannot even be described factually in a way that mitigates it, without accusations of 'thought-crime'.
Colugo,
Re: I said "One wonders what would the 20th Century would have been like if Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, etc. had been dealt with more decisively early in their careers."
You asked: "Who else should be dealt with "more decisively early in their careers", Mark? Got any names in mind?"
I've thought of a few:
American Airlines #77
Boeing 757
8:10 am departed Washington Dulles for Los Angeles
9:39 am crashed into the Pentagon
1) Khalid Al-Midhar - Possible residence (s) : San Diego, California and New York, New York; Visa Status: B-1 Visa, but B-2 Visa had expired.
2) Majed Moqed - No information available.
3) Nawaq Alhamzi - Possible residence (s) : Fort Lee, New Jersey and Wayne, New Jersey and San Diego, California.
4) Salem Alhamzi - Possible residence (s) : Fort Lee, New Jersey, and Wayne, New Jersey.
5) Hani Hanjour - Possible residence (s) : Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California. Believed to be a pilot.
American Airlines #11
Boeing 767
7:45 am departed Boston for Los Angeles
8:45 am crashed into North Tower of the World Trade Center
1) Satam Al Suqami - Date of birth used: June 28, 1976; Last known address: United Arab Emirates.
2) Waleed M. Alshehri - Dates of birth used: September 13, 1974/January 1, 1976/ March 3, 1976/ July 8, 1977/ December 20, 1978/ May 11, 1979/ November 5, 1979; Possible residence (s) : Hollywood, Florida/ Orlando, Florida/ Daytona Beach, Florida; Believed to be a pilot.
3) Wail Alshehri - Date of birth used: July 31, 1973; Possible residence (s) : Hollywood, Florida, and Newton, Massachusetts; Believed to be a pilot.
4) Mohamed Atta - Date of birth used: September 1, 1968; Possible residence (s) : Hollywood, Florida/ Coral Springs, Florida/ Hamburg, Germany; Believed to be a pilot.
5) Abdulaziz Alomari - Date of birth used: December 24, 1972 and May 28, 1979; Possible residence: Hollywood, Florida; Believed to be a pilot.
United Airlines #175
Boeing 767
7:58 am departed Boston for Los Angeles
9:05 am crashed into South Tower of the World Trade Center
1) Marwan Al-Shehhi - Date of birth used: May 9, 1978; Possible residence: Hollywood, Florida; Visa Status: B-2 Visa; Believed to be a pilot.
2) Fayez Ahmed - Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
3) Ahmed Alghamdi - Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
4) Hamza Alghamdi - Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
5) Mohald Alshehri - Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
United Airlines #93
Boeing 757
8:01 am departed Newark, New Jersey, for San Francisco
10:10 am crashed in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania
1) Saeed Alghamdi - Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
2) Ahmed Alhaznawi - Date of birth used: October 11, 1980; Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
3) Ahmed Alnami - Possible residence: Delray Beach, Florida.
4) Ziad Jarrahi - Believed to be a pilot.
I too, have had enough of this stupid, repetitive, boring, insipid troll.
Wouldn't now might be a good time to show the instruments, as I'm sure nobody expected to see a defense of a sort of Spanish Inquisition--
Mark's tasteless whoring of the events of September 11 serves to undercut his whole point once again, as those fanatics he lists were religious, not atheists.
Much like the whole demonstrating his Christian love by calling others "scum", though, I doubt he's got the acuity to recognize this other particular little irony either.
thalarctos,
Re: "those [9-11] fanatics he lists were religious, not atheists."
Oh, gosh, I hadn't realized that. But, as I've pointed out, your metaphysical atheist bedfellow Stalin committed a 9-11 each day (3000 murders)--- on his own people.
Atheists don't even have to go to pilot school.
Can we now ignore Mark the dipshit?
Mark, you have been asked no less than three times by myself and several times by others to
A) provide any evidence at all for your claim that Communist atrocities were in any way due to the atheistic component of Marxist theory and
B) provide any evidence at all for your claim that Humanism and Freethought have any meaningful relationship to Communism.
Please either do so or quit your tiresome blathering.
♪ And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love / Yes, they'll kno-oow we are Christians by our love ♫
Mark is also a liar, a poor historian, or broken calculator. The 3,000 excess deaths/day figure for the Stalin regime exceeds reasonable estimates by about 75%.
Azkyroth,
Here's the link:
http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/March_2000_4.html
Atheism: The State Religion
"One can hardly exaggerate the moral disaster of [religion]. We have to thank the Soviet Union for the courage to stop it."
--W.E.B. Du Bois
"The more representatives from the reactionary clergy and the recalcitrant bourgeoisie we shoot," Lenin wrote in March of 1922, "the better it will be for us. We must teach these people a lesson as quickly as possible, so that the thought of protesting again doesn't occur to them for decades to come." When Lenin and his progeny were unable to teach the clergy a lesson, they simply murdered them. In 1922 alone, more than 8,000 priests, monks, and nuns were executed in the Soviet Union. Nearly a decade after the Revolution, however, 20,000 churches and mosques were still in operation. By 1941, that number shrank to less than 1,000. "In October of 1929 the seizure of all church bells was ordered because 'the sound of bells disturbs the right of peace of the vast majority of atheists in the towns and countryside,'"
Werth points out.
Elsewhere, Communist leaders followed the anti-religious blueprint of Marx and Lenin. In 1967, Albania declared itself the world's first officially atheist nation and reduced more than 2,000 churches and mosques to rubble or expropriated them for state use. Almost fifty percent of all Catholics were killed in Cambodia, the highest fatality percentage for any demographic group. Moslems saw more than 40% of their co-religionists killed. Mosques and The Koran were burned and Pol Pot's henchmen sadistically forced followers of Islam to eat pork. In Romania, Communist persecution of Christians took on a sinister nature that eclipsed the practices of the Romans. The Romanian Secret Police encouraged prisoners to devise "reeducation" programs. The leader of one such program named "Eugen Turcanu devised especially diabolical measures to force seminarians to renounce their faith," co-author Karel Bartosek reports. "Some had their heads repeatedly plunged into a bucket of urine and fecal matter while the guards intoned a parody of the baptismal rite." Bartosek continues:
Turcanu also forced the seminarians to take part in black masses that he orchestrated himself, particularly during holy week and on Good Friday. Some of the reeducators played the part of choirboys; others masqueraded as priests. Turcanu's liturgy was extremely pornographic, and he rephrased the original in a demonic fashion. The Virgin Mary was called "the Great Whore," and Jesus, "that cunt who died on the cross." One seminarian undergoing reeducation and playing the role of a priest had to undress completely and was then wrapped in a robe stained with excrement. Around his neck was hung a phallus made of bread and soap powdered with DDT. In 1950, on the Saturday before Easter, the students who were undergoing reeducation were forced to pass before the priest, kiss the phallus, and say, "He is risen."
As you would be aware if you had read the essay I linked to, the aggression of Communist regimes towards established churches was due to a desire to rid themselves of a competitor, not to encourage free thought and a reason-based worldview free of superstition. As you would be aware if you had read the essay I linked to, Communist regimes have been perfectly willing to persecute atheists and even collaborate with churches when it served their needs. Your last paragraph bears no relationship to atheism whatsoever and I oddly can find no mention of Eugen Turcanu in any English-language website in Google. I am curious whether you can name any source other than right-wing partisan websites (their description of Joseph McCarthy as persecuted by liberal historical and media bias is a pretty good indication of their honesty and research quality) that corroborate any of the major claims in the piece you've cited.
However, that's beside the point, since your article does little to establish that the lack of god-belief was responsible for Soviet atrocities (contempt for and a desire to humiliate and oppress political opponents is not the same thing) and does absolutely nothing whatsoever to bolster your claims that Freethought-Humanism has any relationship to Communism.
Try again?
I can see that you are deeply brainwashed, and preoccupied with the things that a good Christian is supposed to be preoccupied with--sin, forgiveness, atonement, morality, divine grace, feeling guilty etc.--but try anyways to get this: We are not atheists because we get something out of the deal or because we've chosen it has a belief system for personal gain, spiritual or otherwise. It's not a system of rewards and punishments. We are not atheists because it's the practical thing to do, or because we are trying to please anyone or anything--invisible or not. We are not atheists because, well, you HAVE to believe SOMETHING! Most of us are atheists because (are you listening?) we simply don't believe in invisible beings. Because we see it as the truth, and the truth is more important to us than whether it is convenient or socially acceptable or practical. It has nothing to do with morality, virtue, rules for living, adherence to any dogma, personal hygiene, our favorite music, etc. etc. In fact, as atheists, we are all over the damn board. Stalin was an atheist supposedly, did ya know? Creepy, huh?
Atheism is not an ideology to aspire to and promote; it is a consequence, not a cause. Rational thought and critical thinking are things to aspire to and promote, and we do and will continue to do so. Even if murderers have been atheists, it doesn't change the fact that science has shown very clearly that we live in a world governed by natural laws--not capricious gods. Even if Stalin was an atheist, it doesn't change the fact that lightning bolts are not thrown by angry deities, sacrificing animals--or people-- has nothing to do with the weather and crops, and believing wholeheartedly in the superstitions of the ancient Hebrews is stupid.
Stalin was a murderous dictator, one of many throughout history who believed, and didn't believe, an endless number of things. He killed enormous numbers of people because he had enormous numbers of people to kill--due to modern technology enabling large populations to survive. He was not a rational, critical thinker, he was a paranoid murderer who was beaten as a child until he was broken. To blame his murderous ways on the lack of belief in your superstition is ludicrous.
Your obsession with atheism is typical of people who have been brainwashed by religion to the point that the very idea of not believing in your particular invisible being terrifies you into imagining that it is the cause of all manner of evils. You don't have insight into human nature; you have dogma, and it's not even your own.
Okay, I've looked over this increasingly long series of posts and we're making a tactical error.
We have one closed mind holding a "debate" with more than a dozen reasonable people and we've made no progress whatsoever. There is something we have missed.
"Mark" is not like us.
We may know something, say "X=1", but if new evidence comes up that, for example, "X=2" we'll look over the evidence, and if it's good, we'll change our minds.
We are faced with someone who has decided that "X=Screaming Walnut Handbasket" and there is nothing any of us can say that will change that. No evidence we present will be good enough. Even if his god came down and said "No, really X=2", there's a pretty good chance he'd run off, thinking it was a trick to see if he'd question his faith.
Mark is lost. His mind has failed and shut itself off and we are not going to change that with this debate. He will not see the light of reason. The best we can hope for is that he's sterile and he doesn't molest anyone before he eventually dies.
Now, what CAN we do? Well, when someone like Mark makes you angry, don't engage them. Get angry, but count to ten and then do something else. Write a letter to a school board in support of evolution. Support candidates who don't pander to ignorant extremists. VOTE. Get angry, but then try and find a way to help prevent other minds from closing off and dieing.
Arguing with people like Mark just wastes our time while his cronies run behind our back trying to drag the world back into darkness, pain and ignorance.
To end on a lighter note:
"Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it."
Unistrut,
At the risk of appearing to defend pig-wrestling, the real conversation, some of which appears to be addressed to the brain-dead troll, is actually primarily among the intelligent contributors to this thread. Trolls are part of the slight variation in the scenery we share as we find ourselves inspired by the dungeon-bound to discuss topics and tease out distinctions we might not have otherwise have had the pleasure of learning about from each other. That fatuous, time-wasting turd may think we're talking to him, but he is as mistaken about that as he is about all the rest of his unsupported assertions.
modern atheist (Marxist) civilization
Predictable lying Xtian idiot.
It's not a complete waste of time. Wrangling with true believers is good exercise for us. And, like Ken says, I learn a lot reading the other comments.
And he may not be completely lost. Maybe something we say will sink in and eleven years from now he'll make a connection that he wouldn't have otherwise. Or maybe what we write will help keep other minds from closing off and dying. Or maybe I'm just an idealistic sucker.
In any case, I'm trying to learn how to write and this is good practice for me. : - )
provide any evidence at all for your claim that Communist atrocities were in any way due to the atheistic component of Marxist theory
This is irrelevant, and treats Mark's fallacy of affirmation of the consequent as if it were valid. Even if every single action by every single Marxist were motivated by the Marxist's view of atheism, that would tell us nothing of atheists who aren't Marxists, or atheism generally.
Unistrut:
Robert Ingersoll once observed that "to argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." This is true. However, while giving medical treatment to a corpse will be of no benefit to the deceased, it does give one an opportunity to develop and maintain the skills and knowledge needed to practice medicine effectively on those who can benefit from it. Additionally, it leaves one in the position of being able to positively say that they did everything they plausibly could for the victim if it comes up, even attempting probably futile lifesaving efforts. The same applies here.
your metaphysical atheist bedfellow Stalin
He's also your oxygen breathing bedfellow, moron. It's a fallacy of inapt analogy -- one similarity doesn't imply other similarities.
This is true, but if he could provide such evidence it would be a major effort towards dragging his argument, no doubt kicking and screaming, a little closer to internal coherence.
The lying broken record piece of shit that is Mark isn't listening to anything anyone here might say. He has nothing more to offer than ATHEISTS ARE STALINISTS THEREFORE YOU GUYS KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHY DON'T YOU SCUM APOLOGIZE?!??!?! Trying to reason with him further is a waste of time.
This is true, but if he could provide such evidence it would be a major effort towards dragging his argument, no doubt kicking and screaming, a little closer to internal coherence.
I don't see how. He attempted to provide such evidence in #300 but, even if the evidence is valid, it does nothing for the "internal coherence" of his argument because, as I said, the argument is fallacious. Consider Ramblindude's "[Stalin] also didn't believe in the tooth fairy. Atoothfairyists should admit that there is a problem with their belief system." This argument wouldn't be improved any by providing evidence that Stalin felt that believing in the tooth fairy was so absurd that anyone who did so deserved to be snuffed out, and that this was a major motivation behind his policies. It would still only be a fact about Stalin, not about lacking a belief in tooth fairies, and those of us who don't believe in tooth fairies still would bear no responsibility for Stalin's actions. But asking for such evidence suggests that providing it furthers the argument somehow.
True. I guess what I was attempting to establish was that even if his conclusion did follow from the premises, he still had not provided evidence to demonstrate that the premises were true.
your article does little to establish that the lack of god-belief was responsible for Soviet atrocities (contempt for and a desire to humiliate and oppress political opponents is not the same thing)
From http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/com/marca.html
It sounds like Turcanu was an opportunist thug who adopted "Communist Beliefs" to avoid punishment and gain power within the prison system. Odds are that he was a Xtian himself.
True. I guess what I was attempting to establish was that even if his conclusion did follow from the premises, he still had not provided evidence to demonstrate that the premises were true.
I can go with that. Even if his argument were valid, it still wouldn't be sound unless he could establish the premise. But strategically, it's better to stick with the clear invalidity of the argument, because such evidence may well exist, and it seems to me that asking for the evidence invites obscuring the point, getting into a side debate about the validity of the evidence, again with the implication that, if the evidence is valid, then he has a point.
I oddly can find no mention of Eugen Turcanu in any English-language website in Google
I'm not sure what you mean by "English-language website", as the right-wing site you linked to is English language, but Turcanu is mentioned in this Wikipedia article and this one.
Poor phrasing; when I entered his name in Google seeking corroboration none of the sites that came up in the first batch of results had excerpts in English. I followed up on at least one of the Wikipedia articles that a search for his name returned but a text search for his last name on the article text didn't find anything. I checked Snopes.com too, which had nothing on him specifically.
...then again I suppose my search for "Turcana" might have had something to do with it. Oops. x.x
Trying to reason with him further is a waste of time.
This is just for the non-batshit people, then:
I'm surprised that the "Stalin killed 30 million of his own people" has gone unchallenged. Stalin didn't kill 30 million Georgians! The Soviet Union was not somehow more homogeneous than pre-war Germany and Poland. Stalin specifically targeted various ethnic and cultural minorities. Also when did genocide become the lesser evil?
RamblinDude:
Re: "Most of us are atheists because (are you listening?) we simply don't believe in invisible beings. Because we see it as the truth"
I used to be an atheist. Ayn Rand turned me from agnosticism to atheism in college, and I was passionate about the same things you are. One of my favorite Christmas gifts, years ago, was a beautiful edition of Origin of Species. I've made the same arguments you're making, and believed the same things that you believe.
I won't go into the details of my becoming a Christian- it's beyond the scope of this thread. The fact is that none of us knows how we got here, where the universe came from, why there is anything, rather than nothing. We don't even know for sure the right questions, let alone the right answers. We're all believers, not 'knowers', about the important stuff. None of us has access to the whole of truth, even about the basis for our own existence.
Atheism is an inference, just as theism is. The atheistic assertion--- that it is nonsense to believe in immaterial things (like God) because such things cannot be demonstrated scientifically--- is, ironically, self-refuting. The assertion that it is nonsense to believe in things that can't be scientifically demonstrated is itself not scientifically demonstrable. The basis for the atheist stance--- that faith in scientifically untestable things is irrational--- is an act of faith. We all live by faith, to greater or lesser degrees. None of us know.
In fact, if you think about it, the most important things in our lives are things that we do not scientifically demonstrate. We love our families with certainty, yet we would never do 'daily love experiments' to confirm our love. I don't get up in the morning and tabulate quantatitively my love for my wife and kids, yet I know I love them. In fact, the most important things in our lives are explicitly those things that we don't subject to scientific empirical verification. Science is a method of knowing natural truths, but there are other truths beyond the reach of science, and they are the most important ones. As Pascal said- 'the heart has reasons that reason knows not of'.
Chesterton said that he believed in Christianity because 'it fit like a lock and key' with all of life. It made sense to him, in ways that nothing else did. I feel the same way.
I disbelieve atheism because it is too shallow and limited, and doesn't explain the most important things in life to me. And, as the 20th century amply demonstrates, disbelief in God, when raised to political power, unleashes something remarkably hideous in man.
Three words, Mark: limpieza de sangre.
The Inquisition was not after Protestants; there weren't any. It was for the most part after Jews, former Jews, and descendants of Jews.
Atheists, all of them...
I also notice that you still haven't read comments 180 and 274.
It didn't stop it. It merely replaced two religions (Christianity, Islam) with a third (communism).
---------------
Let me summarize, Mark.
1) You don't read the replies to your statements.
2) You keep implying that all atheists are communists. By that logic, you are a Talib, and so are all other theists.
3) You keep making an argument from consequences: "Atheism leads to bad things; I don't want bad things to happen; therefore I don't want atheism to be true; therefore atheism is not true." I think even you can see that this is a logical fallacy -- and still would be if the premise were true, which (see points 1 and 2) it isn't.
4) You throw out statements, but, when asked to explain, you don't explain them. What are "the atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory"? Inquiring minds want to know!
Looks like you're an overfed troll. Go ahead, show us you aren't a troll.
Wow. He miraculously found Lenin the way US prisoners miraculously find Jesus. :-o
That is, nothing?
These are great arguments for agnosticism.
Indeed not. That's what science is for. Read comment 180 and several others around it.
How do you know?
You don't know. You only believe.
We could, though. Even though quantification would be difficult or impossible without very detailed measurements of brain chemistry.
Neither does anything else. You'll have to live with not knowing.
"To believe means to know nothing"
-- Austrian proverb
Incidentally, the major difference between Rwanda 1994 and the Thirty-Years War is that in the latter it wasn't the population that wrought the destruction, it was the mercenary armies. As long as they didn't reach Spain, Spain had to make its own religious wars (the Armada has been mentioned; there were also perpetual pointless and almost successless efforts of extending the Reconquista into what is now Morocco and Algeria).
Mark,
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The 20th century (along with all the other centuries) demonstrates that something far more universal than atheism, when combined with political power, unleashes something remarkably hideous in man. (I believe it's tribalism, but that may be the wrong word. It's too early in the day for me to be bright.)
Consider this: You go on (and on, and on) about Stalin, and rightly so, but Hitler accomplished more in less time - far more deaths-per-day, a unit to which you seem unusually wedded - and he did it in the name of God and Country. Are you aware that your favorite resource, The Little Black Book of Communism, attributes more deaths to Hitler's regime than to Stalin's? What does this tell us?
All that aside, I appreciate your honest statement of belief. I respect your right to your "lock and key" experience. Everyone's mileage does vary, though, as this thread amply demonstrates.
(But really, did you have to pull out the "you can't measure" love cliche? You know, you probably could, at least on a kind of sliding scale. Do you love your wife more than you love me? Do you love me more than you love Stalin? Do you love Jesus more than you love your wife? Do you love warm gingerbread right out of the oven more than you love Jesus? And so on. Collect enough data points, and you might have something. But even if we agree, for the sake of discussion, that it's literally impossible to measure your love for your wife, this does not mean there is no evidence for your love. There is a lot of evidence.)
My own skepticism is fed not so much by the fact that the god hypothesis cannot be tested, it's fed by the utter and overwhelming lack of evidence to support it and the circumstantial evidence against it. I'm not trying to measure god - I'm just trying to detect it, and coming up empty most of the time. I see no evidence of god's existence or love. The naturalistic model explains reality (as we perceive it) far better than the theistic model. I see religion as little more than a sort of template, a conceptual framework within which many people are better able to organize and understand their relationship with reality. The existence or non-existence of a Creator entity (or two, or, twenty, or eight billion) is another matter altogether.
I suppose everyone has moved on now but I might as well respond about naturalized ethics anyway.
"I recognize my life as inherently valuable in the same sense that I recognize the evidence of my senses as corresponding roughly to a real world. I recognize also that other humans are "like me" and therefore it follows that their lives are valuable as well."
Meaning that you think, for unsupportable reasons, that you are inherently valuable and thus others like you are inherently valuable. And we get yet another layer of unsupported belief.
Also, for those of you who point out that many have argued for a naturalized ethics, this is true, but they haven't successfully argued for an objective naturalized ethics. The site pointed out above, naturalist.org, which I have certainly read before, has a essay on norms[1] which is most definitely not about objective moral norms, but instead is about inter-subjective or some other sort of norms. I'm not saying there are no moral norms, but that objective moral norms are dogmatically adhered to despite a complete lack of good explanation that they exist.
oops forgot the footnote.
1.http://www.naturalism.org/normativity.htm
I used to be an atheist. Ayn Rand turned me from agnosticism to atheism in college, and I was passionate about the same things you are. One of my favorite Christmas gifts, years ago, was a beautiful edition of Origin of Species. I've made the same arguments you're making, and believed the same things that you believe.
I don't think you ever believed the same things I believe. If you had, you could not possibly have given up the desire for further investigation.
I am not an atheist simply because of scientific evidence; I am an atheist because perceiving the difference--within myself--between play pretend and reality is important to me. Even without super colliders and test tubes, it is obvious that the God of the Hebrews, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are fictional characters. All invisible beings worshipped by all cultures that have ever existed are fictional characters, and I am not going to believe in any of them just because my fellow human beings want me to get into a big group hug, feel comforting emotions, and play pretend along with them. It is ugly to even think about. It doesn't matter how beautiful the underlying concept of the religion is. Living in a world of make believe is not beautiful, it is ugly, it is extremely ugly, and that willingness to lie has caused, is causing a lot of problems in the world. Why can't we appreciate the beauty and live in the real world?
It is possible to appreciate the mysteries of life, and ponder its meaning, without resorting to superstition. Do I wonder if there is more to life than we are able to sense? Of course, I'm a human being, we all do. Are we more than just an elegant and temporary arrangement of atoms created out of random chance in a cosmic blender? I don't know. I suspect that there is a bigger picture, but I don't know what it is, and answering that question so that I can be comforted with the feeling of "I know" is abhorrent to me. It's a way of giving up and settling for less. I want to know what the real answers are, not the ones that are 'close enough' because they make me feel all warm and fuzzy--no need to look anymore. As long as the truth is "I don't know" then I will be in a state of search; I will not accept anything else. It doesn't matter if a religion "fits like a lock and key" onto life; is it true? Is there falseness within its truth, and truth within the false? And do we ever stop trying to separating the truth from the false?
Our intelligence can't function if our perception is distorted, and having my perception be as clear as possible is more important to me than being comforted. The very idea of 'giving up' and settling for a beautiful religious fantasy--any of them--is anathema to me. I won't do it even if it supposedly has practical benefits. I won't join a cult of subservience and give up the authority over my life to anyone or anything--not even to get something out of the deal.
We human beings are not very good, or practiced, with dealing with the truth. We are taught from childhood what is good and bad, right and wrong. What emotions and desires we should strive for and those we should suppress. This mentality of suppression and acceptance, this incessant activity of thought, is deeply ingrained in us. Why is it we are not taught to simply let the truth exist and learn to deal with it? We don't investigate ourselves, we manage ourselves. We don't ponder the mysteries within ourselves, we answer them with other people's answers.
I grew up with this. I was taught to pray to Jesus whenever I felt something "bad" or wanted to do something "sinful". There is great fear of focusing our attention on the 'negative'; we are taught only to suppress it, get away from it, control it, and, in the case of the religious, let Jesus (or whoever) take it from us. We are not taught to let reality exist, focus our attention on it and find out about it. We need to examine everything from all angles all the time without preconceived notions and biases and conclusions--religious or otherwise.
You have settled for the simplistic worldview that Stalin was a bad man because he didn't have Jesus in his heart, and you look no further. There are many factors involved in the case of Stalin, but you aren't learning about them because accepting religious dogma as the authority in your life has stopped you from further investigation. You have given up, you have settled for less, and you are not helping.
Ah, his brain was permanently damaged by Ayn Rand. That explains everything.
I've decided since a large number of priests are pedophiles, that means all christians are guilty of pedophilia.
Why don't your own up to the christian abuse of children Mark?
I should note, too, that telling Mark that atheism at its most basic is a negative, with no consequences that logically follow, is pointless, because these people know that we're really following the devil, or for the more "sophisticated ones," atheism is some evil belief that we adopted precisely because we're wicked folk.
(To be fair, and to disagree with some (I don't recall who)there's no particular reason why a lack of "belief" in something couldn't be warping and corrosive of our minds. After all, "mere lack of belief" in evolution, the scientific methods, etc., has a great many consequences for those so intent on denying what's before their faces. So the mere fact that atheism is a negative doesn't by itself keep it from being a force for evil, the fact that it is a reasonable conclusion is what keeps it from causing pathology on its own.)
He's only interested in believing that atheism isn't a reasonable conclusion from the evidence, rather it is a full-blown demonic force quite unlike what we say and understand that it is.
Note that he brings up Chesterton. Does anyone think it likely that he doesn't know and believe Chesterton's canard that 'if you don't believe in God, the problem isn't that you believe nothing, it's that you believe anything'? It's not the worst warning in the world, in fact, since people leaving religion and picking up communism, New Age beliefs, and UFO fanaticism have indeed been observed. But it neither describes many who indeed do not believe in just anything but only that which can be shown, nor does it explore the causal directions involved in producing bat-shit secularists.
Anyway, I just thought I'd point out that Mark's whole line of "argument" apparently stems from beliefs such as Chesterton and/or more primitive religionists, with his whole purpose being to "show" that atheists aren't just benign unbelievers. He can't hope to demonstrate it by pointing to the unbelievers here, or those generally in America, so atheism=Stalinism=Pol Pot=Mao, which is his axiom, not a theorem that he understand needing any sort of proof. No, he begins with the axiom that atheists are evil murderous bastards, and all he wants after that is acknowledgement that therefore atheism must be fought and destroyed as an enormous threat to society and humanity.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Glen Davidson (#330):
That bromide, almost always attributed to Chesterton, is apocryphal to boot:
Not that the epigram is any great truth by itself, either.
Thanks, that's good to know, Blake.
Not that it doesn't sound bad enough to be Chesterton's.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
By your logic, I also believe "for unsupportable reasons" that the world around me actually exists, that I am actually experiencing anything, or that "I" actually exist, therefore nothing is "objective." If that's how you want to interpret the term and its applicability, go ahead, but you'll find yourself rather alone in that particular form of masturbation.
No, he begins with the axiom that atheists are evil murderous bastards, and all he wants after that is acknowledgement that therefore atheism must be fought and destroyed as an enormous threat to society and humanity.
I don't think he begins with that axiom; I think he ends up with it (by design, of course). He begins with the assumption that atheism cannot be a good thing--because it invalidates his worldview--and then cherry picks evidence to validate that belief. He has an entire network behind him to validate his methods and his findings. Being part of that group is more important than getting to the truth through real investigation--which is hard work and tedious. Of course, it's all pretense and sleight of hand as being able to confidently state that "atheists are evil"--in order to comply with the dogma of the church-- was the ultimate goal in the first place.
'if you don't believe in God, the problem isn't that you believe nothing, it's that you believe anything'?
That always cracks me up. The one's who don't believe in invisible, supernatural creatures are the ones who will believe anything...right.
By your logic, I also believe "for unsupportable reasons" that the world around me actually exists, that I am actually experiencing anything, or that "I" actually exist, therefore nothing is "objective." If that's how you want to interpret the term and its applicability, go ahead, but you'll find yourself rather alone in that particular form of masturbation.
And which sense is it that tells you about your inherent worth?
I'm not a neurologist, but it would seem to be, like the experience of being "me", a synthesis by the cerebral cortex, a sensory organ which gathers and integrates information about the state of the rest of the brain, of the instinctive responses of the rest of my nervous system to various stimuli.
(Which sense is it that tells you that your senses tell you anything meaningful about the external world or that their impressions actually correspond to one?)
Let me elaborate. It is clear both that I experience the real world and that I think that I have an inherent sense of worth. The difference is that I can offer no explanation for why I experience the real world other than that there is a real world, whereas I can explain my sense of inherent worth as an effect of society and the way I was raised.
The sense of one's life being valuable as evidenced by the prioritizing of self-preservation seems to be universal in humans except in cases of severe psychological pathology. This is not to be confused with self-esteem.
And for that we can thank evolution, but pretty much every animal has that prioritization. That doesn't make it so that there is inherent value in those lives. I mean, wanting to eat is also universal but we don't want to say that it has inherent value. And the fact that you recognize there exists humans who don't prioritize self-preservation should show us something.
I used to be an atheist.
Once scum, always scum! Hey, how many people did you murder during your atheist years?
Ayn Rand turned me from agnosticism to atheism in college, and I was passionate about the same things you are. One of my favorite Christmas gifts, years ago, was a beautiful edition of Origin of Species.
Great, then you'll have no trouble telling us where that book argues for atheism.
Facts are stubborn.
no, people who invent or cherry-pick "facts" in order to support their preconceptions are stubborn.
and ignorant
and deluded
and should see a mental health care professional.
like you, Mark.
Once scum, always scum!
AARR!
Keelhaul that yella' dog!
I knew there was a reason I was drawn to pirates.
In fact, it takes all i can muster not to go off, steal a ship, sail the high seas and rape and pillage all the coastal towns in the Carribean.
fortunately, all my xian acquaintances keep the shackles on me to prevent just such an occurrence.
bastards.
...btw, every time i hear:
"I used to be an atheist"
I just know that person is lying through their fucking teeth, as it is ALWAYS the case that the person who said it is in fact a dribbling moron (Mark, for example), and will utilize any means to try and "convince" nonbelievers that they "understand" what it means to be an atheist.
it's a truly pathetic tactic typically reserved for the slimier used car salesman, but which "xians" seem to embrace often enough in debate.
even ones like Francis Collins.
heck, I used to be the Pope.
That is not as bad as when they say "I used to be an evolutionist but after careful consideration of the evidence I changed my mind"
Usually followed by writing things that prove that they are ignorant of evolution outside of what they "learned" from AIG.
yes, it's exactly the same rhetorical device (which has a name that is eluding me at the moment).
it's the device itself that disgusts me so much, more than the details of any particular usage.
"i used to think just like you do now..."
you just KNOW that's a lie as soon as you hear it, and it always takes supreme effort on my part not to simply take a swing at someone who uses that kind of rhetoric to my face.
of course the ideal responses are to either just walk away, because you're obviously dealing with a scheister, or do exactly what windy did and call them on it.
I wonder how people learn ploys like that?
Is it explicitly taught as a way to sway the heathens?
If so I find it even more despicable.
I have had little religious instruction and none of the fundie variety.
Do churches have prostylization class?
I wonder how people learn ploys like that?
effectiveness as a debate tactic learned when one is young through trial and error, I would suppose.
it's the same thing as:
"look, I understand where you're coming from, but..."
this is a very old debate tactic, and has a name, but I'm blanking on it. something as simple as "false identification" maybe?
It's sometimes an effective tactic, but one also should learn along the way just how slimy and dishonest it is to use in order to attempt to persuade someone to your POV.
I think it's the case that most who utilize it as has been done in this thread, haven't the slightest clue just how dishonest it is, nor do they even care.
too caught up in trying to form mental defenses around their delusional worldviews.
Do churches have prosetylization classes?
I know the Jehova's witnesses do. past that? never cared to take a look.
I thank the more courteous commentators for their insights. I'd like to comment on what I think is a misperception--- the misperception that believers in God have less doubts and are less skeptical than non-believers. I've found, for myself and for many other Christians I know, that the opposite is true. Before I was a Christian, I was quite sure that theism was nonsense. I had very few metaphysical doubts of any sort. Freud explained religion (projection of our need for paternal approval and security), Darwin explained life, Newton and Einstein explained physics. I thought that religious belief should be classified as a mental illness. After all, if I believed that a giant invisible rabbit told me how to order my life and guaranteed me eternal reward or punishment depending on whether I listened to him, I would quite properly be classified as mentally ill. Why should belief in an invisible Creator be any different? The arguments of Dawkins et al are nothing new. The material world was all that existed, and people who disagreed were nuts, if generally pleasant. I was skeptical about very little, and quite content. Even smug.
A lot of things changed the way I see things. I had a gnawing feeling that there was something very important I was missing, particularly as regards the questions 'why is there something rather than nothing', and 'why am I here/where did I come from?'. I began to read and question things more deeply. I had children, family illnesses, all sorts of things that often lead people to God. I had some Christian friends who I deeply admired and who spoke openly about their own experiences in ways I found quite meaningful. I had a few experiences of my own that were spiritual. Not Damascus road sorts of things, but an awareness that I was being led in my understanding. I read and prayed a lot, and I questioned things a lot more than I ever had as an atheist. I had been, like many atheists, quite unskeptical about my own beliefs. My metaphysical education began when I began to believe.
I question things a lot more now than I ever did. I am a devout Christian, but devout Christians (in my experience) are not the least bit complacent about metaphysical things. Cultural Christians, who just go through the motions, and many atheists and agnostics who are quite convinced that matter is all there is, are, in my view, often remarkably unskeptical about their own views, which are the most important views to be skeptical about. It's easy to be skeptical about views that you don't share. Your own beliefs should be the ones you question the most seriously. Deeply religious people often struggle painfully with doubt and questions about their faith. In Christian spirituality, it's called 'Dark Night of the Soul', and it's quite common among people who take their spirituality seriously. The notion that devout Christians are gullibly unskeptical isn't true at all. They are among the most introspective and skeptical people I know.
On the issue of atheism and Communism, if I were still an atheist, I would be wracked with questions about the relationship between atheism and the atrocities perpetrated by Communists in the 20th century. After all, of all the political movements in the 20th century, the people whose views on the ultimate reality (matter is all that there is and God doesn't exist) were most closely aligned with mine were, when they achieved power, the most brutal killers in human history. Sure, I could explain it away ('Oh, I'm a different sort of atheist' or 'they acted just like the religious nuts'), but I'd realize that I was being evasive and that there were some genuine issues there that I needed to take to heart. Atheists could use a 'dark night of the soul' too.
As it happens, I'm no longer an atheist, so I get to agonize over the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church...
And again, it all comes down to guilt. Mark, you're a broken record. Please go away.
Before I was a Christian, I was quite sure that theism was nonsense.
see, there it is again - the same rhetorical device.
one would think after having seen us actually ANALYZE it, that he might have avoided using it again.
but no, mark has a case of terminal delusion, and is unavoidably drawn to using horrendous rhetorical devices in his arguments, since of course there is not now, nor ever will there be, any substance to them whatsoever.
which of course is why many of those in this thread have responded with one line summaries of mark's "position", as there is really nothing much left after one removes the misconceptions, cherry picking, and rhetorical devices.
it's also quite remarkable how common this is when arguing with the terminally delusional.
Not like we haven't seen it a thousand times before.
*shrug*
As it happens, I'm no longer an atheist, so I get to agonize over the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church...
as it happens, I'm no longer the Pope, so I don't have to agonize over the scandals any more.
Um, no. If you doubted as much as we did, you'd be an atheist. By definition, you have fewer doubts.
Ichthyic:
I said: "Before I was a Christian, I was quite sure that theism was nonsense."
You said: "see, there it is again - the same rhetorical device."
I'm just telling the truth. It's not a rhetorical device.
MAJeff:
Re: "If you doubted as much as we did, you'd be an atheist. By definition, you have fewer doubts."
I came to doubt atheism. It's not exempt.
Mark,
all you've done is handwaving. That's it. Indeed, that's all theology is, so I'm not surprised it's all you have to offer.
MAJeff:
Re: "all you've done is handwaving...Indeed, that's all theology is"
Theology is a vast subject that has occupied the best minds for millenia. Whether you believe God exists, theology's not handwaving.
What did you think of Aquinas' Summa Theologica when you read it?
theology's not handwaving.
OK, the rhetorical conjuring of a non-being into being through the very discourse that is used to describe it. There's no there there.
Theology is a vast hugely overrated subject that has occupied the best minds suffering from cognitive dissonance for millenia.
there, fixed that for ya marko.
MAJeff:
What do you think of Aquinas' distinction between existence and essence? What do you think of Anslem's Ontological argument? What do you think of St. Augustine's understanding of time?
How much theology have you read?
I'm just telling the truth. It's not a rhetorical device.
then you don't even understand that you are doing it, which of course also doesn't surprise me. whether it is accurate or not is not important (and frankly, I couldn't care less). it's how you are using it that galls me.
put simply, that form of argumentation might work on an ignorant child (heck, it probably worked on you), but it ain't gonna fly here.
What do you think of St. Augustine's understanding of time?
what do you think of Mendel's pea experiments?
has as much to do with THEOlogy as your examples do.
I mean, Mendel was a monk, so that must mean that everything he did was theological in nature, right?
damn, you're a complete idiot.
What do you think of Anslem's Ontological argument?
You take this seriously? Pathetic. Augustine's meditation on time? Ricouer's done something interesting with it in his work on narrative, but this notion of eternity in a non-being? nonsense. for crying out loud, all of it relies upon the nonsense of that deity. Why is that nonbeing even necessary? What is the point of attempting to make sense out of reality through something that's not real? To give that unreality a causal force in reality? For fucks sake, you're dense. It makes no sense.
MAJeff and Ichthyic:
I've asked you questions that would arise in an elementary course in theology.
Your answers?
I had a gnawing feeling that there was something very important I was missing, particularly as regards the questions 'why is there something rather than nothing', and 'why am I here/where did I come from?'.......
Fear, credulity, and wishful thinking. That's all I'm seeing in this narrative.
It's idealistic and dualistic noise.
I think it's fantastic. You can use it, by extension, to prove that not only does God exist, but because it is greater to carry a lightsaber than to not carry a lightsaber, he is also a Jedi.
The account of time given in physics is much more amenable to and consistent with experiment. The H-Theorem and General Relativity are more to my liking, thanks.
Enough to get tired of intellectual masturbation and platitudes passed off as philosophy. How much Quine, Putnam or Dennett have you read? Hell, Kant took the axe to most of those theological arguments long ago, so you don't even need to make it to 20th century philosophy to dispense with the tired old apologetics.
MAJeff:
Re: "You take this seriously? Pathetic. Augustine's meditation on time? Ricouer's done something interesting with it in his work on narrative, but this notion of eternity in a non-being? nonsense."
Google sure helps when you gotta look something up quick, doesn't it. You don't even have the guts to admit that you don't know anything about it.
Actually, Augustine's understanding of time (that it was created with space and matter, and did not pre-exist creation) antedated Big Bang cosmology by 1700 years.
Theology.
Google sure helps when you gotta look something up quick, doesn't it. You don't even have the guts to admit that you don't know anything about it.
bzzt!!!
but you're cute in your humble believer's arrogance.
Church officials, including Gregor Mendel's successor, thought that it was extremely inappropriate for an abbot to go puttering about in a garden and writing about what he grew, and had all of his notes and journals burned after his death. If Mendel's essay describing his experiments had not been published before he died, most likely, that, too, would have been destroyed, and his work would have been lost entirely, simply because the Church, at the time, disapproved of a grown man growing (pea)flowers.
additionally, in dealing with the priestly sex scandal, sociology and psychology would probably be far more useful than theology in understanding the situation.
I'm not directly addressing Mark, who has ignored the content of my arguments, but this might be of historical interest.
Mark mentioned the Iron Guard. Another name for that Orthodox Christian fascist cult was Legion of the Archangel Michael. Among their depraved atrocities were the murder of Jews inside a slaughterhouse, mutilating the victims in mocking imitation of kosher slaughter practices. Think Christian antisemitism was involved? How about centuries of Blood Libel and charges of "torturing the host"?
Another WWII-era fascist group was the Croatian Catholic Ustasha ("insurgency"), who murdered Jews and Orthodox fellow Christians.
Some of these fascists readily became Communists when the tide of history changed. Even though their professed faith changed from Christian to Marxist-Leninist, they didn't have too far to travel ideologically. The totalitarianisms - whether Catholic, Orthodox, atheist variants - resemble each other more than liberal humanist atheism resembles atheistic totalitarianism.
One interesting feature of classical fascism (WWI-WWII) is that it was compatible with an any number of religious beliefs - Catholic (another example - Father Charles Coughlin), Orthodox Christian, Positive Christianity, neo-paganism, Shintoism, Islam (e.g. the Bosnian SS division Hanjar), or no religion at all. That tells us something about fascism (and totalitarianism in general), and about theism and its absence.
On the subject of Marxism and Catholicism, ever heard of Liberation Theology?
And let us not forget the Rwandan genocide, in which Catholic priests and nuns led fellow Hutu killers to their Tutsi victims.
Unlike Mark, I'm not blaming theism itself - and not even Catholicism in general (although I definitely would blame some certain tendencies within Catholicism) - for the crimes of people informed by totalitarian and fanatical ideologies.
Colugo:
Re: "Unlike Mark, I'm not blaming theism itself - and not even Catholicism in general (although I definitely would blame some certain tendencies within Catholicism) - for the crimes of people informed by totalitarian and fanatical ideologies."
Do you blame tendencies within atheism or philosophical materialism for the crimes of people informed by totalitarian ideologies?
Mark: "Do you blame tendencies within atheism or philosophical materialism for the crimes of people informed by totalitarian ideologies?"
First, let me specify what I meant by "tendencies." I mean particular factions, movements, sects, and subcultures within Catholicism (I mentioned the Ustasha and Coughlin, and I could bring up many other examples).
I certainly blame Marxism-Leninism, which pretended to be science, for its crimes. But I will never blame its crimes on atheism, naturalism, nor materialism. Just like I do not blame theism, supernaturalism, nor spirituality - as general categories - for the crimes of theists. Don't you see what your error is?
I'm not so sure, actually. The context I usually see it in is the one spurge mentions, 'I used to accept evolution...'
This should typically be read as 'I never had a damn clue about evolution, nor made any attempt to critically evaluate it, but assumed it was correct by default. Then, when I converted to a pro-pseudoscience form of religion, I uncritically swallowed everything they told me about creation, without any attempt to critically evaluate it.'
Mark described himself as, essentially, a smug, unthinking atheist. That seems fairly credible, given that he's now a smug, unthinking theist.
For the third time, Mark: why is there God rather than nothing?
Why do you participate in a thread without having read it!?!
There is no reason why you are here. Everything is the way it is because it got that way. There is no reason why just that particular sperm cell hit just that particular egg cell. Why should there be one?
As for where you come from, Darwin and his successors explain that quite nicely, don't they?
Which reminds me. What are the atheistic aspects of the theory of evolution? Tell me at last.
Please. Gaunilo's Island, already in Anselm's lifetime.
Anselm got to reply to it. That reply is utterly pathetic in stating the analogy somehow doesn't apply.
I was taught at school, in (Catholic) Religious Education, that God cannot be proven, and that a god who could be proven would in fact be poor. What about free will and so on?
Just on general principle, if someone says they are a christian, then that's good enough for me: they're a christian. I don't try to second guess whether they are a True Christian. Similarly, when someone like Mark says they were once an atheist, I roll my eyes a bit at the tired old trope, but sure, I'm willing to accept that they were once an atheist. Just keep in mind that there are some very, very stupid atheists out there, so it's a mistake to consider that claim as a claim to virtue. We should be just as critical of atheists as we are of christians.
As for his challenge, bugger that. I quite agree that some of the best minds in Christendom have been recruited for millennia into the arcane circle-jerk of theology, and they have crafted some of the most elaborate rationalizations for mythology ever. They're kind of impressive, in a futile, time-wasting sort of way. But elaborate logical constructs don't impress me: evidence does. Show me the evidence, not the convoluted rationalizations.
It is easy to go on at length about nothing when you're trying to build a case out of air for a baseless claim, and theologians do go on and on. It's also easy to completely miss the power of good, testable hypothesis when your career is built on inventing dance-steps for angels. Where is the theologian who came up with cell theory, for instance? Something so obvious and so fundamental, and also so easily supported with evidence, yet all the gassing in all the chapels of the west never came up with it.
Now I know that you and I have no common ground. I arrived at my disbelief in the Christian god, and all other gods, by doing nothing but questioning and being skeptical. I also understand why you think atheism is an ideology. Your atheism was a belief system, and it was nourished by your own complacency and other people's ideas.
It sounds to me like all you've ever done is go from one belief system to another so that you don't have to be bothered with doubt. Sure, you went through an uncomfortable period of life when you wondered which belief system to attach yourself to, but you never applied your energy toward understanding the mechanics of what motivated you to do this. The desire for security through group conformity, and seeking comfort through images, and rituals, and other constructs of thought. The desire to escape from all that pesky discontent and not knowing.
It takes time and energy to understand the underlying structure of things, to keep stepping back to see the bigger picture, and, honestly, it sounds like you just can't be bothered. It's so much easier just to have a belief system and then pretend that you're deep.
How much theology have you read?
Mark, how much have you read that makes testable predictions that have been validated by evidence?
If you truly 'question things a lot more now than [you] ever did', you'll be satisfied with nothing less.
Yes, that's exactly it. In terms of the semantic triangle, which is Ogden and Webb's representation of the relationships among terms/strings for things, concepts about things, and referents/real-world things themselves, creationists and other zealots like Mark spend a lot of time on terms and concepts. Evidence about real-world referents--not so much.
So he can freely bandy around terms like "responsibility" when he hectors us, and he convinces himself that his concept is coherent, but when it comes to applying it to real-life historical events, he has to cherry-pick the evidence to make it fit his concept.
I'll make a testable hypothesis here--Mark thinks that we should take "responsibility" for what Ho Chi Minh did in Vietnam when he came to power, because we're all godless atheists or something. But I'll bet my left ovary that Mark feels absolutely no responsibility as a theist or an American or a Caucasian or a male over the fact that Ho Chi Minh had Thomas Jefferson as an ideal when he approached the US for support for Vietnamese independence, and that by choosing to support France's failed bid to reassert colonialism instead, a bunch of white male Christian Americans pushed him into a much harder-line position, setting the events of the Vietnam War into motion.
I'll make an additional testable prediction--to quash his cognitive dissonance over his cherry-picking, rather than engage with the issues, Mark drop the pretense of engaging on the facts, and instead will accuse me of my "60s leftism", despite the fact that in the actual 60s, I was too busy playing with my Barbie and my GI Joe to work on forming coherent political opinions.
Yeah, dealing with referents is hard. By contrast, concepts and terms are a lot easier to take refuge in, if reality is too messy, scary, and confusing. It's not the only reason to stay in those areas--for example, Mr. thalarctos really does love theory for theory's sake, but he doesn't feel any need to deny reality in order to do so--but the ones who do are pretty easy to recognize because they deny reality so consistently.
Of course, that should be "Mark drops the pretense of engaging on the facts".
Apparently, I find English grammar too messy, scary, and confusing...
Mark is apparently incapable of seeing complex historical factors when an atheist is involved.
Perhaps you meant, "Mark de(fact-engagement pretense)!"
LOL, Kseniya!
Pretty amazing how much power, we have, isn't it? Like those anti-miscegenation laws, where "one drop of black blood" overruled any amount of other ancestry. Put just one atheist in any complex socio-political picture, and fear shuts Mark's rational brain right down.
Hey, Mark--BOOGA BOOGA!!!!!!!
"For the third time, Mark: why is there God rather than nothing?"
Because atheists killed a lot of people.
"Why do you participate in a thread without having read it!?!"
Because atheists killed a lot of people.
"Which reminds me. What are the atheistic aspects of the theory of evolution? Tell me at last."
Atheists killed a lot of people.
Just saw this on the quotes, and thought it was appropriate for the Mark situation:
Indeed. And bringing up Anselm and ancient prejudices like "essence vs. existence" (neither term of which is meaningful enough even to use, other than in the barest vernacular sense) hardly changes the fact. Or rather, it emphasizes that fact, for these non-arguments are brought up merely to distract from thinking without the intrusions of hoary old falsehoods.
Mark never reached the first base in thinking. He merely was shamed as a non-religious person for not knowing very much. Then he fell for a lot of empty assertions that he was too ignorant to counter, and thought that thereby he was deep. Furthermore, since he's so damn ignorant, he thinks that "other atheists" know as little as he did, or one might say, as little as he knows (how pathetic to bring up the ontological argument, which always hinged on the ancient and unsupported belief that existence=goodness).
But he's been fun to kick around, if altogether too predictable.
I might ask, why do people who have picked up theological tripe that generally is destroyed in Phil 101 always end up thinking that unbelievers just have never dealt with such great profundities as "existence vs. essence" or Anselm's confusions?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Brownian OM,
Re: "How much theology have you read? Mark, how much have you read that makes testable predictions that have been validated by evidence?"
I've read a bit, although not as much as I'd like. It's a vast subject, and even a specialist (which I'm not) can only be comfortable with a portion of it in a lifetime. I've tried to grasp a few of the basics.
Leaving aside the vast theological literature on morality, ethics, personhood, faith--- literature which forms much of the basis for our civilization--- I'll deal with a few predictions about the natural world. Theology is often divided into natural theology (what can be known by reason alone) and revealed theology (what can be known only by scripture). Both have made important predictions about the natural world, some vindicated, some not.
A couple of the vindicated ones are:
1) Augustine (as already noted) proposed that time was created at the same moment as matter and space, and that the concept of 'time' didn't apply to that which was outside of the created universe (eg, God). Time was part of the created universe, not external to it. Augustine's understanding of time was vindicated 1700 years later, with Big Bang cosmology
2) In the centuries before Hubble and the red shift, it was widely assumed in scientific circles that the universe was eternal--- it had no moment of creation. This was the view held by the vast majority of scientists and secular philosophers. Theologians (Christian, Jewish and Islamic) had a different view, sometimes called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It was advocated explicitly in the 4th century A.D. ,and developed later by many theologians, including Aquinas and Averros. It's an argument about first causes, but the most interesting part (to me) is the argument:
1) An actual infinite cannot exist.
2) A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite
3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events cannot exist, because it would require the passage of an actual infinity of intervals of time to reach the present time.
4) Therefore, the universe is not eternal. It had a moment of creation.
The theologians were proven right in the late 1920's, with Hubble's discovery of the red shift and the later discovery by Penzias and Wilson of the remnants of the Big Bang.
It's important to understanding the magnitude of this insight. Theologians a couple of millenia ago, using brute force reasoning, predicted the core of Big Bang cosmology. The fact that 'today' exists proves that the universe had a moment of creation. It's an astonishingly elegant argument- simple, but compelling, and true. This was natural theology. Revealed theology of course predicted the same thing: "Let there be light...". If you were an astronomer in the early 20th century, and you wanted to understand whether the universe had an origin, you would have been led correctly by theology, and astray by contemporary science.
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow famously commented on the theologians' prediction of a moment of creation in the Big Bang:
"At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greated by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
To RamblinDude: Atheism is a belief system, like theism. None of us know ultimate reality for sure, so any opinions we have, of whatever content, are parts of a belief system. No opinions are beyond critique.
One can doubt atheism. Most people do.
First off, in what sense did the Big Bang vindicate Augustine's belief that time doesn't apply to God? Did he actually tie time to space (hint, I know the answer, and it is "no")?
Secondly, Augustine's view of time is more akin to Newton's than to Einstein's.
Thirdly, Augustine didn't do so badly with his view of time, given when he lived. So what? Does his view of time come at all out of his God or his belief in God, and if it does, how does it? IOW, for once why don't you do some critical thinking, instead of uncritical propagation of old claims?
Supposing that such thinking were actually correct, how does being able to think through issues of finitude and the infinite actually relate to inherently religious ideas, Mark? I know that you uncritically accept that it does, what you've never done is to actually show that this comes out of religion per se, instead of just some thinking that had not managed to reach separation from religion at that time.
Gee, they could think. Must be a miracle, huh Mark?
Then again, what a crock your claim is. The Big Bang theory refers to a specific kind of a beginning, and it does not hinge upon or speak to pre-existence of matter or the non-pre-existence of matter. What your theists did was to speak to ultimate beginnings, and they have not been proven to be right or wrong about that (however, their premises are highly suspect).
Dim bulb, there are varieties of atheism, and it is very difficult to find any variety that actually constitutes a belief system. Of course atheism is part of the belief systems of most people (if we utilize the term "belief system"--"worldview" is more appropriate for intelligent secular viewpoints) who are atheist, but so is their belief in using logic.
Furthermore, not believing in God may have very little to do with even one's wordview (except to those on the outside), once one has chosen to base one's conceptions and "beliefs" on what the evidence tells one, without much regard for the urgings of the ignorant like Mark. Indeed, atheism does not have to be a belief, or any more an integral part of one's worldview than a-Formism (not believing in Plato's "theory of forms") is part of one's worldview.
In America there is too much religion for this to be common, but in Europe it is not so unusual to have barely thought of the ancient myths and prejudices as anything but an academic exercise.
Of course you have your little supporting myths to complete your ignorant view of these matters, and you cannot disabuse yourself of them even to be able to engage in discussion with people who know a great deal more than you do about such issues.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
By the way, "Mark" could be "Mark Hausam," who dissembled and attempted to mislead for months at PT on the longest thread that has ever existed there (comments were ended at 1000 posts).
Just like this Mark, Hausam never would step outside of his little dungeon of metaphysics, always assuming that ancient lies were superior to, say, science and modern physics. Hausam, IIRC, did not actually claim there to have been an atheist, but to have not been raised religious. Given Hausam's penchant to "lie for Jesus," though, I don't think that this difference matters much.
What I'm saying is, it can be interesting enough to bother with these witless trolls (yeah, I know, it may not fit the formal definition, who cares?), but they'll suck away an enormous amount of time if you let them control the discussion. It's really not worth spending too much time on them (both there and here I've posted in response to them (him?), but really have limited myself for the most part).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
GlenD,
Re: "Dim bulb... the urgings of the ignorant like Mark... Of course you have your little supporting myths to complete your ignorant view of these matters..."
I was accused a while back by Ichthyic (351) of using rhetorical devices. You're plainly immune to that charge.
Moron, first you took those snippets out of context, then you didn't answer anything that I wrote to demonstrate that you're clearly an ignorant cretin deserving of those terms.
IOW, you're really too stupid and dishonest to bother with much more. You're like the cretins at the Expelled site, rather than dealing with the substance, you complain that I came up with conclusions regarding your lack of intelligence, honesty, and learning (the difference is that at Expelled they censor when they really want to get away with their lies, and you can't censor this discussion). The trouble is, however, that those are the only relevant factors for explaining your ignorant tripe.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
To me it is very strange to say that disbelief in something is a system of belief. A belief system is a positive thing, it requires mental energy. Atheism/disbelief doesn't, it is the negation or the absence of a belief system.
If a few people grow up on an island, completely isolated from any society, and all they know are cocoanuts and clams, they've never heard of any gods and have no idea of worshipping anything--the concept has never been introduced to them--is their lack of belief in gods a belief system? Is a child's? If you come along and say to them "The wind is caused by invisible monkeys farting" and they don't believe you, is that a belief system of theirs?
Does unbelief become a belief system when it is the specific rejection of a belief system? That, I think, is what you are going for, because that somehow implies that they are equally valid points of view (in your world) and you can say, "Oh, well, they're both "belief systems" so they're equally valid."
I don't believe gravity goes sideways, is that a belief system? What an odd and cumbersome way of thinking. I do believe gravity goes straight down, and you could say that that is a belief system, but here's the thing; such a belief doesn't required the slightest bit of effort. It's an absolutely silly thing to start a war over. It's only when you begin to postulate things that require faith, things you have to continuously focus your attention on, and remind people to believe or they'll forget them because such beliefs have no connect to the real world, that you get into the whole problem of religion--and outrage when your belief system is attacked.
Perhaps you are distinguishing between "absence of belief" and "negation of belief". If you are, then I can see your point, although it still seems an unnecessarily clunky way of thinking.
I don't "believe" in gods, but I don't have a system in place for doing so. The unreality of gods is as obvious as the direction of gravity; there's nothing to maintain. I don't have to think about it, there's no system in place.
One can doubt atheism. Most people do.
Most people wouldn't even think about it if the concept of "god" hadn't been drummed into their heads from an early age by religion. Number of believers, in anything, tells us nothing about how the world actually works in any subject other than human dynamics.
1) An actual infinite cannot exist.
So there is no God. Sounds like a rather poor theology, or, more like a philosophy seeing as someone can be both a theologist and a philosopher. In fact, the argument you present doesn't mention God at all, and is thus philosophy and not theology.
It's important to understanding the magnitude of this insight. Theologians a couple of millenia ago, using brute force reasoning, predicted the core of Big Bang cosmology.
No, they didn't predict the core of the Big Bang cosmology, they predicted that there was a beginning of the universe, which isn't what the Big Bang necessarily states. From wikipedia:
"The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe whose primary assertion is that the universe has expanded into its current state from a primordial condition of enormous density and temperature."
No mention of there being a beginning. It is likely that there was an initial moment, but in fact there is a point before which we can know nothing about, currently.
Wow, that's really interesting about Augustine, Aquinas and Averros. I mean...wow...it is obvious that Christian theologians were the only one's in history to have deep thoughts and intellectual musings and make connections and think hard about things.
I give up, you have convinced me that modern scientific findings are all wrong and that I should praise Jesus because he died for my sins, and that miracles really do happen, and that a life of eternal joy awaits me after I die and go to heaven--a big city that has streets paved with gold and seven gates that are huge pearls.
PRAISE JESUS!!!
RamblinDude
Re: "Wow, that's really interesting about Augustine, Aquinas and Averros. I mean...wow...it is obvious that Christian theologians were the only one's in history to have deep thoughts and intellectual musings and make connections and think hard about things."
Averros was a Muslim.
Wow, that convinces me I should get started on my zebibah.
Both invalid and unsound, I'm afraid. Invalid because a closed causal loop of events satisfies 1-3, but doesn't lead to 4. And unsound because 1) is a bald assertion without support - and certainly one modern physics doesn't accept. The simplest prevailing Big Bang model is an actual infinite - a spatially infinite manifold. Furthermore, past-eternal cosmological models exist. Apparently the physics community didn't get that memo.
MartinM,
Unbounded is different from infinite, and a singularity is not physically infinite, it's undefined. The radius of the universe has been estimated at 80 billion light years--- big, not infinite.
Actual infinites (as opposed to conceptual infinites) don't exist, because infinity is a concept, not a measurement.
If the universe is spatially infinite, how can it be expanding?
RamblinDude
Re: "Wow, that convinces me I should get started on my zebibah."
If you're an atheist and you live in Europe, you might as well.
Stop feeding the Markist.
Markism is dangerous and nonsensical.
Markism ignores reality.
Markism is futile and pointless.
Markism is sad.
If the universe is spatially infinite, how can it be expanding?
The same way that the natural numbers are a larger set than the reals, even though both are infinite. Or perhaps it is because the expansion of the universe means that the distance between objects therein is increasing, not that the size of the whole is increasing.
Or maybe you don't actually know what you're talking about.
GlenD
Re:"First off, in what sense did the Big Bang vindicate Augustine's belief that time doesn't apply to God?"
A small point, but you seem confused. God has always been understood in Christian theology as uncreated--- figuratively, outside of the created universe. Augustine proposed that time was part of creation. The Big Bang model is consistent with this view.
Because time is created, and God is not created, God is not in time.
You know, Mark may be on to something--reading this thread, I can actually feel time coming to a stop.
coathangrr,
Re: "The same way that the natural numbers are a larger set than the reals, even though both are infinite."
The smallest infinite cardinality is that of the natural numbers. The cardinality of the reals is greater than the cardinality of the naturals.
Re: "Or maybe you don't actually know what you're talking about."
See above.
Of course I reverse the damn cardinalities. But you haven't even addressed the real issues about the expansion of the universe. I explained exactly how an infinite universe can be expanding and how the Big Bang does not necessitate a non-infinite universe. So how exactly is it impossible to have an infinity in the real world.
Whatever the nuances of Big Bang models (which are beyond me), the assertion that there are no actual infinities in the real world is certainly defensible. The Kalam argument has been debated for a couple of millenia, and the question of the existence of actual infinities and the capacity to traverse an actual infinity has been at the core of the debate.
Yet the theologians who made the argument were right empirically, and the argument undeniably has elegance and power.
If you're an atheist and you live in Europe, you might as well.
You might be on to something. Just last night I, an atheist European, ate some kebab. KEBAB! WILL NO ONE SAVE US FROM THE MUSLIMS IMPOSING THEIR CULTURE ON US! AAAARGH!!!!!
405, 406, 407...
the nuances of Big Bang models (which are beyond me)
shocker!
Yes, but it's also different from finite and bounded. Kalaam doesn't recognize that distinction; it argues against infinite, and draws a conclusion of finite and bounded. It simply skips over finite unbounded models, like the Hawking-Hartle no boundary proposal, or models involving CTCs.
No, that's just the radius of the observable Universe. In no Big Bang model does the Universe simply stop at the edge of our light-cone. The simplest models consistent with observation are spatially infinite, and this gives physicists no great trouble.
Actual infinites (as opposed to conceptual infinites) don't exist, because infinity is a concept, not a measurement.
By definition, one can always pick out a subset of an infinite set such that the two have the same cardinality. The set of all natural numbers and the set of all even natural numbers are both aleph-0, for instance. And within the set of all even numbers, we can pick out all multiples of four, for another aleph-0 set. We can repeat this indefinitely.
Which is hardly the point. The opposite is also defensible.
Firstly, that's not so; as I mentioned before, past-eternal cosmological models are still very much an option. Secondly, so what if they do turn out to be right? What does it mean if some theologians managed to pick out a true conclusion with a bad argument?
Well, I deny it, actually.
Yet the theologians who made the argument were right empirically, and the argument undeniably has elegance and power.
They were not right empirically. You have stated that you don't understand the nuances of the Bog Bang Theory and made this perfectly clear with this assertion. The Big Bang Theory does not necessitate a universe finite in time.
And more importantly, when will you recognize that just because someone whose main writings are theological writes a proof, does not make that proof theology. If they started doing math we wouldn't call the math theology, nor would we call biological studies by a theologist theology.
Guessing right isn't the same thing as science--I think it's very, very cool that the Navajo story about how Death entered the world distinguishes between two kinds of Death, one of which is peaceful and right in the fulfilledness of time, and one of which is angry and violent and leaves behind malevolent traces.
The fact that the story fits the distinction between cellular mechanisms of death so well is not at all to be confused with the idea that the Navajo actually investigated apoptosis and necrosis; it's just a very neat convergence between a centuries-old origins story and a later research discovery. I think it's also much more elegant and powerful an explanation of a natural phenomenon than your example is, but even that doesn't make it science per se.
Science isn't only about getting the answer; it's about the process of getting that answer. Guessing right is insufficient.
Thalarctos is right, I guess.
Re: Non-believing Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow: "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greated by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
So the theologians were prescient, or fools. Sounds like a fight between you God-deniers. Perhaps it's a fight between deniers with a modicum of integrity and those without. Let me know when you get it worked out.
Mark continues to prove his inability to comprehend the written word.
Or is it deliberate.
Either way he is a waste of time.
Or lucky. Or like virtually any other theists who cling to a creation myth.
That's twice now that you've quoted Jastrow. (And I have to wonder about the proper context of the quote.) Is one agnostic astronomer's opinion really so important? Here, I'll give you the opinion of another scientist, Dr. Norman F. Hall, offered as a direct response to the Jastrow quotation:
So the theologians were prescient, or fools.
They were philosophers who came up with some good a priori arguments that sometimes conformed to the real world. Go back and re-read Summa Theologica and tell me he know what the hell he was talking about. He is so wrong in that book that it hurts. So saying that he got one or two things right is about as good of an argument as pointing out that my horoscope was right twice last year.
A big point, but you seem stupid, Mark.
First I know all of the mindless tripe that you wrote, secondly, it answers nothing regarding my question.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Yet the theologians who made the argument were right empirically, and the argument undeniably has elegance and power.
I'll halfsies with you on 'elegant' (ranks right up there with epicycles), but as for power?
There's no explanatory power there.
There's no explanatory power there.
Sure there is: Goddidit.
There's no explanatory power there.
Aah, but he clearly meant rhetorical power, not explanatory. As in "it sounds good but doesn't actually explain anything."
Last!
:)
heck no, you ain't!
Let me propose the opposite: the Enlightenment was the result of the Church getting weaker and weaker; the state of science is inversely proportional to the power of religion.
Look at Islam. They were way ahead of Christian Europe in science -- till 1300 or so. Then the fundies took over, and science stagnated all the way to the age of colonialism.
Or look at China. Had they sailed in the right direction, they could have discovered America 100 years before Columbus; had they just kept sailing in the same direction, they could have done Vasco da Gama's voyage in reverse. But then the Confucian fundies took over, and China stagnated, till various European powers turned it from the world's richest into the world's poorest country within 100 years.
Or look at the Soviet Union. Scientific hypotheses are normally evaluated on how well they agree with reality. Not so under Stalin, when he gave power over the universities to Lysenko (biology) and Marr (linguistics), who instead evaluated hypotheses based on how well they agreed with "truth" -- with Stalinism.
The only difference I can see is that the Muslim, Confucian and Communist fundamentalists all came to power after science (or at least exploration) was already there, so they had something to destroy; the Christian fundamentalists came to power at the end of the Migration Age, so everything was already destroyed, and they could only delay its reemergence -- which they managed to do just fine for a thousand years.
Communism is much more Christian than you seem to believe. Everything a Western-style religion needs is there: a dogma that must be believed on faith, even though it is declared to follow logically from reason; an organization; unquestioned authority figures, some of whom are prophets and/or saviors; a promise of salvation, complete with heaven (on Earth, though -- it took decades till the term "Soviet Paradise" was dropped from official Soviet terminology), at an unspecified time but "soon"; salvation history (an inevitable progress of history towards salvation); God's ineffable wrath (Stalin's paranoia descending upon innocent people like in the Book of Hiob); everything. All that's missing is the afterlife; only Kim Jong-Il has so far got one (he's still the president of North Korea) -- wait, some Chinese have started worshipping Mao in temples and sacrificing oranges to him. Mao himself used to joke about it, calling dying "going to Marx".
There's a very impressive Soviet painting which is clearly modeled on Christian imagery: Lenin as the Father, Stalin as the Son, and the sunlight that falls on them from the window as the Holy Spirit.
Totalitarian regimes need an ideology. That can be communism; it can be fascism; or it can be a religion in a stricter sense (Calvin's Geneva; the Taliban's Afghanistan). Atheism alone does not suffice, just like how theism alone doesn't.
Yes, your eyes are open, but you don't look -- because you believe you already know everything.
Oh boy.
Atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory? What, pray tell, are those? I study paleobiology and molecular biology and haven't encountered any such "aspects" -- which is no surprise, because it's science and not philosophy.
And by saying there's "limited evidence" for global warming, and even by saying that doing something against it would necessarily "radically alter human society", you merely show us what is really limited: your knowledge. Go read.. You also show us what is not limited: your arrogance in believing that everyone is just as ignorant as you. It's really strange that acceptance of reality has become an issue of political (...or should I say ideological...) matter in the USA.
(Though maybe, as I parenthetically implied, I shouldn't be all that surprised.)
The latter part was more true under Clinton than under Bush Jr....
Albania under Enver Hoxha.
What statistics are you going to do with a sample of one? Especially when that one data point was communist... and, for a communist country, not terribly murderous, AFAIK, certainly less than your average crusade (hey, you started counting victims).
(Not that it matters, but I wonder if you've actually read it. It doesn't say "100 million". It says "between 80 and 120 million", and provides evidence that makes the higher end of that range look more plausible.)
<yawn>
And you really think atheists wouldn't have defended themselves against a military attack?
And? Why should I, an Austrian living in Paris, be having this conversation in English? Why should I care? (Sure, English is easier than Klingon for a German speaker, but so is Arabic, most of the time.)
Anyway, Rey Fox (# 131) has said it best.
It's always the same thing: ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism.
Dude, France has managed to increase its birth rate to 2.1 children per woman. How? By means of rampant socialism.
And whenever I see an ad in Turkish hanging around in Vienna, it depicts a scantily-clad girl and advertizes a party in a disco... man, are you misundreshtmatin the attraction of Western civilization. Here in Paris I've lately seen ads for a pop/rock/hiphop/whatever band called Beni Snassen...
Although the context is different, let me conclude withwhat could, and perhaps should, have become a Bible verse. (Please follow the link, together with the commentary it's too long to post here.)
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Never been anywhere in Europe, eh?
Indeed, the Epistles of Paul can only be understood if one knows Epicureanism. Paul argues against Epicureanism throughout -- on Epicureanism's terms, accepting many of its doctrines. Of all ideologies of the time, only the Christians and the Epicureans were named for their founders... Never mind Thomas Aquinas, who had the unfortunate side effect that arguing against Aristotle became tantamount to arguing against the Church. Let me just repeat:
The man is describing science. In one thousand twenty-eight. Doesn't that make you weep?
A long post by me is being held up for moderation because it contains too many links.
Let me mention an erratum in advance: instead of "Kim Jong-Il" read "Kim Il-Sung". That's the guy who, while dead, is still the president of North Korea, making him arguably the only communist with an afterlife.
-----------------
The random quote this time is an antiscience quote from Luther:
---------------
:-o
----------------
Eh, indeed it isn't, because it's a wrong question. It is like asking why Napoleon crossed the Mississippi.
I don't believe the sun will rise tomorrow because of induction. I deduce the testable hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow from the laws of gravity, impulse conservation, energy conservation, and so on. Really. Honestly. :-)
-----------------
Easy: if human life has inherent value, then my life has inherent value, and so does the life of everyone I can empathize with. Nice, isn't it? In other words, I'm making an argument from consequences. After all, this isn't science, it's ethics. To make an argument from consequences in ethics is harmless as long as definitions of, in this case, "human" and "life" are agreed upon...
Mark, was my long reply that is now comment 180 already up when you posted what is now comment 196?
(Apparently not, because you haven't replied to it.)
Wrong comparison. The right comparison to the atheism inherent in Marxism would be the theism inherent to Christianity.
That list has to be either "theism, atheism" or "Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, fascist, communist".
Civilizations that are secular and lack a driving ideology are always the most humane, democratic, and successful in science.
Now, what do you mean by "civilizations that are Christian"? Do civilizations count where the majority of people are secular Christians and the country as a whole (constitution and so on) is secular? Do only theocracies count? Or what?
I'll repeat yet once again: you are looking at the consequences of ideology in power, not of atheism in power, nor (in the other cases) of theism in power. We are looking at what happens when people believe there's something that's worth killing for. Simple.
What about the Enlightenment?
Only an ignoramus would be afraid of any such thing having any chance to happen.
See? That's why I'm against ideologies.
Untrue. They were executed for refusing to worship one god -- the emperor.
You are accusing all atheists of being communists.
What next? Will you accuse all theists of being Taliban? That would be the logical equivalent.
Well, slowly. We haven't figured out terribly much yet, but, for example, chemically simpler nucleic acids than RNA are known. You might want to start here -- note that I said "start".
What do you mean, the question of why the universal code is exactly what it is? A good case has been made that natural selection is to blame: the universal code is among those possible codes in which any nucleotide substitution has the least chance of leading to an amino acid substitution.
Massimo Di Giulio (2004): The coevolution theory of the origin of the genetic code, Physics of Life Reviews 1, 128 -- 137
Abstract:
"A review of the coevolution theory of the origin of the genetic code is presented. This theory maintains that the origin of the code should be sought in the biosynthetic relationships between amino acids. In particular, some amino acids, the precursors, occupied the structure of the genetic code early on. As the product amino acids developed from these precursors, part or all of the codon domain of the precursor amino acid was ceded to the product amino acids, which resulted in the structuring of the genetic code. This paper therefore reviews the evidence in favour of this theory. The existence of some molecular fossils representing the biosynthetic pathways on which the coevolution theory suggests biosynthetic transformations took place (precursor amino acid → product amino acid) seems to be a strong corroboration of this theory. A generalisation imposed by this theory on the ancestral metabolic state is then discussed and, finally, the main prospects that seem to stem from the coevolution theory are presented."
Probably a quantum fluctuation or a black hole.
Why shouldn't there be any?
This is probably a wrong question (like "why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi"). If anyone else were wired into my nervous system, they'd probably have the exact same subjective experiences as I. But because this is not testable, science ignores it.
Why is there God rather than nothing...? Have you really never thought about that?
Well, he certainly wasn't a genuine Scotsman.
Because the Inquisition successfully drove all Jews, crypto-Jews, and even former Jews away respectively killed them?
Methinks not.
Evidence, please. Good luck in finding any -- for many cultures we simply have no idea how much killing they did at that time.
I wrote:
Congratulations, Mark! I fell into your trap! It doesn't matter if Hong was a genuine Christian or not. What matters, in your logic, is that he was a genuine theist.
Three words, Mark: limpieza de sangre.
The Inquisition was not after Protestants; there weren't any. It was for the most part after Jews, former Jews, and descendants of Jews.
Atheists, all of them...
I also notice that you still haven't read comments 180 and 274.
It didn't stop it. It merely replaced two religions (Christianity, Islam) with a third (communism).
---------------
Let me summarize, Mark.
1) You don't read the replies to your statements.
2) You keep implying that all atheists are communists. By that logic, you are a Talib, and so are all other theists.
3) You keep making an argument from consequences: "Atheism leads to bad things; I don't want bad things to happen; therefore I don't want atheism to be true; therefore atheism is not true." I think even you can see that this is a logical fallacy -- and still would be if the premise were true, which (see points 1 and 2) it isn't.
4) You throw out statements, but, when asked to explain, you don't explain them. What are "the atheistic aspects of Darwin's theory"? Inquiring minds want to know!
Looks like you're an overfed troll. Go ahead, show us you aren't a troll.
Wow. He miraculously found Lenin the way US prisoners miraculously find Jesus. :-o
That is, nothing?
These are great arguments for agnosticism.
Indeed not. That's what science is for. Read comment 180 and several others around it.
How do you know?
You don't know. You only believe.
We could, though. Even though quantification would be difficult or impossible without very detailed measurements of brain chemistry.
Neither does anything else. You'll have to live with not knowing.
"To believe means to know nothing"
-- Austrian proverb
Incidentally, the major difference between Rwanda 1994 and the Thirty-Years War is that in the latter it wasn't the population that wrought the destruction, it was the mercenary armies. As long as they didn't reach Spain, Spain had to make its own religious wars (the Armada has been mentioned; there were also perpetual pointless and almost successless efforts of extending the Reconquista into what is now Morocco and Algeria).
For the third time, Mark: why is there God rather than nothing?
Why do you participate in a thread without having read it!?!
There is no reason why you are here. Everything is the way it is because it got that way. There is no reason why just that particular sperm cell hit just that particular egg cell. Why should there be one?
As for where you come from, Darwin and his successors explain that quite nicely, don't they?
Which reminds me. What are the atheistic aspects of the theory of evolution? Tell me at last.
Please. Gaunilo's Island, already in Anselm's lifetime.
Anselm got to reply to it. That reply is utterly pathetic in stating the analogy somehow doesn't apply.
I was taught at school, in (Catholic) Religious Education, that God cannot be proven, and that a god who could be proven would in fact be poor. What about free will and so on?