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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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I'll concede I am wrong, but to clarify one thing:
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| Well, first of all, Sergio, mises, and Street Magic are all educated individuals who are in this thread agreeing atheism is not a religion. |
I meant educated in religion, not educated in general. I'm not obtuse and rude enough to think most people on this forum aren't educated. I realize that wasn't clear in what I wrote though. |
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.38 Special
Joined: 08 Jul 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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Fox, I have to say that that article is pretty low quality, interesting though it may be. It makes a lot of assertions that are quite poorly supported -- if at all. It's brevity, I think, is not the source of this failure to explicate, but instead a failure to explicate is the source of the brevity.
"... atheism is the absence of one particular belief while religion is a complex web of traditions and beliefs."
Atheism is the belief in non-divinity. The absence of divinity is a logical void that must be replaced. For most people, this absence is filled by the provenance of science -- a series of beliefs used to explain the natural world and how we interact with it. I love science, I think it is great, but it is akin to water sprites and astrological coincidence -- it is an explanation, imperfect, and supposed to the best of our knowledge and understanding. For example, compare modern science to Aristotelian science, to early Mythology. It is an evolution.
"An ideology is any "body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group." There are two key elements necessary for an ideology: it must be a group of ideas or beliefs and this group must provide guidance. Neither is true of atheism. First, atheism is by itself just the absence of belief in gods; it's not even a single belief, much less a body of beliefs. Second, atheism by itself offers no guidance on moral, social, or political matters. Atheism, like theism, can be part of an ideology, but neither can be an ideology by themselves."
Atheism isn't simply the absence of belief as listed above, but to qualify it as an ideology we must go into more detail. What about science is certain to the mind that rejects creation, control, and absolutism in a divine power?
First, atheism is more than an absence of belief, as noted above. Belief is a thing that cannot exist in absence -- if you don't believe in Santa Claus, you don't have a negative "absent" belief -- you believe in parents tricking young children to believe in fantasy. You don't believe in an absence of Santa Claus, but in parental deception. One belief replaces the other. Therefore there is the core belief and a system of beliefs surrounding it -- the phenomenon of where the milk and cookies really go, the explanation of why we must be asleep despite Santa's supposed great magical powers, etc.
But we do not, in our arrogance, consider these things beliefs. We think them certainties, beyond doubt, and therefore fact. It's easy to consider the absence of Santa to be a fact because it is easy to discover an alternative, superior belief (superior in a relative, intrapersonal sense). Replace Santa with God the creator and things get a lot more hairy. Science, coincidence, certainty -- the doctrine of replacing God with alternative means of understanding the natural world and the human condition is massive and complex -- an ideology perhaps more intricate and more hotly debated than the most detailed of religions.
"Second, atheism by itself offers no guidance on moral, social, or political matters."
This is certainly a tricky one. How does believing in an alternative to God provide guidance on morality and ethics, and the practice of the two? In reality, it is quite simple and it is apparent that the author of this article put forward very little thought on the subject: Both the Torah, the Old Testament (basically the same as the Torah in the Books of Laws), and the Qu'ran (similar to both others) give quite detailed explanation of social laws. These laws, however, are quite loose and vague. Why not eat pig, or shell fish? Why must a woman face isolation during her menstruation? What's so bad about adultery? Undomesticated pigs are dirty and transmit disease communicable to humans; shell fish, in the absence of refrigeration, often possesses truly gnarly parasites; fornicating with a woman during her menstruation or otherwise contact with the vagina during this time is dangerous for the woman; adultery leads to murdered fornicators and can disintegrate entire communities in the presence of large, intertwined families.
Considering the sophistication of biological and social sciences in the 15th Century BC, the laws given in the Books of Laws (Book is singular for Jewish readers) are all quite remarkably useful. In other words, like all other things, trial and error created traditional mores and morals, all of which are necessary for a society to prosper, which is the essential focus of the Books of Laws.
In other words, a prosperous society that worships God honors God by its social prosperity.
The Qu'ran uses the same principle: Traditional Bedouin and Arab culture, plus contributions from the Judeo-Christian book that inspired it, contribute to form the ethical and moral requirements therein.
But how does the belief in no divine presence result in morality and ethics? Here is a better question: Why and how are there moral, ethical, and generally quite lovely atheists? What beliefs control their behavior; what internalized incentive inspires honesty and socially-conscious behavior in atheists?
The intellectually dishonest practice of considering atheism as a single, self-contained supposition is similar to considering Christianity to be only, merely, and singularly the self-contained supposition that there is a God of some kind.
But of course that isn't true. The Holy Bible expounds intensively the history, ideology, sociology -- many subjects -- as they are to be understood to those who ascribe to this religion.
But everything in the Bible -- even the dry history! -- exists externally of the Bible in other forms. Believe it or not, atheists also menstruate, and when they do they respond in a particular fashion. Some religious people will believe inserted tampons (pardon my lack of jargon on this matter) to be "unclean" or "sexual," while some atheists will find pads to be "unclean" and "ineffective."
Tradition drives the atheist's moral compass. Also, science. For example: Environmentalism isn't a science. Environmental science is. Environmentalism is a series of beliefs that dictates right and wrong in managing and interacting with natural resources. Environmentalism is an example of an atheist ideology.
Of course, not all atheists believe in environmentalism. In this case, the principles of environmentalism would be replaced by parallel, but different, beliefs.
Environmentalism: Potable water is finite, conserve it.
Non-Environmentalism: 3/4 of the Earth is covered with water, and whatever goes down the drain evaporates and comes back as rain. I'll only be conserved about water conservation when my water bill goes up!
The supposition made by the environmentalists is based on science, which is based on trial and error, which results in general agreement -- and a tradition is born.
Just as many atheists do not believe in environentalism, not all Christian women hide in the basement for their menstruation week. Most have adopted different, secular beliefs regarding menstruation.
So you can see that atheists do have a "guiding principle" just as Christians do -- and the two are quite simple. Prior to science, mores and laws were created by trial and error. After modern science, mores and laws were created by trial and error.
"New Leviticus, Chapter 27, verse 13: Thou shalt wash thine hands before eating, for tiny demons, too small to be seen, have taken up residence there, and must be purified with water and sacred soaps"
Replace "tiny demons" with bacteria and you don't have a different belief system, you have an updated one.
Thus, neither does the "guiding principle" nor the ideology of Christianity originate from the belief of God than does the absence of "guiding principle" and ideology originate from the belief in no God. As each individual culture has a different take on Christian ideological institutions, so do cultures other than Christians, or even religion whatsoever.
I hope I have written this well enough that it will not be misunderstood. To summarize:
The belief in the non-existence of supernatural beings neither prevents nor even discourages holding traditional beliefs, constructing ideologies, or possessing "guiding principles" for morals and ethics. Certainty in God as the premise for the Wisdom behind traditional beliefs, ideologies, and "guiding principles" is merely replaced by certainty in science, reason, and past experience.
Simply put, the same process is applied to both: X concept is true because of Y premise, and Y concept is true because of W premise.... For atheists, there is likely a basic "law" of science at the heart of the concept/premise vine. For the religious, however, it is God. Same function, same purpose, and same result.
The author of that article made the first and massive mistake of presuming that the belief in God or the absence thereof is not relevant and therefore inconsequential to how human beings explain the world around them, interact with it, and interact with each other. On the contrary, theism or atheism exist and are used exclusively and indispensably to this purpose. Therefore are all beliefs relative to this core belief and all beliefs are thus created.
ETA: Please pardon my many typos, especially those inconsiderations that may seem to imply that the Christian God is the default or singular religion. I refer to God as the deity that is, though specific to each anthropological institutions, understood in so many different ways. I also apologize for appearing to sound like a know-it-all and contesting the intellectual rigor of the article. I know what I know in my own opinion and my relativistic understanding of institutions of belief and understanding is directly at odds to the singularity and exclusivity expressed by the author of the article.
Last edited by .38 Special on Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Atheism is the belief that there is no God. It is not necessarily a religion (although people can take it there). But it is a belief. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
Fox, I have to say that that article is pretty low quality, interesting though it may be. |
As I said, it's a brief, simplified explanation. It's still far better than anything any of the theists aggressively and offensively trying to forcibly assign religion to the atheists in this thread has posted, though.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| It makes a lot of assertions that are quite poorly supported -- if at all. |
That's because most of what's written is so obviously true that it needs no support.
| .38 Special wrote: |
"... atheism is the absence of one particular belief while religion is a complex web of traditions and beliefs."
Atheism is the belief in non-divinity. |
No, atheism is the lack of belief in a divinity. Theism is the belief in divinity. Atheism is the lack of theism. You can say otherwise a thousand times, and you'll be wrong a thousand times.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| The absence of divinity is a logical void that must be replaced. |
Why? I don't see any obvious truth here at all. If I believe in unicorns and you don't, there's no logical void that you must fill in place of it. You simply don't believe in unicorns. The same is true for God; my lack of belief in God does not necessitate a shift in focus onto anything else. It just means I lack a particular belief. Unless you have a very compelling defense for this incredibly questionable statement, I think we can safely say it's just wrong. I and others feel no logical void pressing down upon us, in need of replacement.
Perhaps you, as an individual, have a void that needs filling, and for whatever reason you've filled it with God. That's fine. Some of us have no such void.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| For most people, this absence is filled by the provenance of science ... |
Science is a useful intellectual tool, not something to worship. You should stop trying to project your need to worship onto others. Using an intellectual tool to create predictive models with regards to the world around us is not equivalent to religion. I'm sorry, but it's just not. Science is also unrelated to atheism; many theists utilize the scientific method just as proficiently as atheists, and accept science's working models just as readily as atheists.
Science is just a tool.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| a series of beliefs used to explain the natural world and how we interact with it. |
Science is a set of working models. There's no faith in science at all. A given model is accepted because it seems to be best at predicting outcomes.
Your entire case suffers from the fact that you take your own mindset and project it onto others. You feel the need to worship something, so others must as well. It's just not so, though; I don't worship science, anymore than I worship a pair of scissors that I use to cut paper. Scissors are a useful tool for cutting paper, and science is a useful tool for building predictive working models. That's all there is to it. The day the scientific method stops being an effective tool is the day I and others like me will abandon it, just as we would a pair of rusty scissors. No faith, just utility.
Perhaps if you stopped trying to project your own feelings onto others and started listening to what others say about themselves, you'd have a clearer understanding of the atheist mindset.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| ... atheism is more than an absence of belief ... |
You say various permutations of this phrase repeatedly. Your case is ultimately based on this phrase. This phrase is either confusion or lie on your behalf. Whichever it is, though, it's false, and thus your case fails.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| But how does the belief in no divine presence result in morality and ethics? Here is a better question: Why and how are there moral, ethical, and generally quite lovely atheists? What beliefs control their behavior; what internalized incentive inspires honesty and socially-conscious behavior in atheists? |
Atheists derive their ethics from any number of sources, usually ultimately tracing back to human welfare.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| The intellectually dishonest practice of considering atheism as a single, self-contained supposition is similar to considering Christianity to be only, merely, and singularly the self-contained supposition that there is a God of some kind. |
No, it's not. Christianity is obviously far more than the belief in some kind of God; that's what differentiates it from other theistic beliefs. On the other hand, atheism simply is the lack of theism. It has no substance beyond that. That's why you keep having to make references to science, .38.
And that's the killing blow to your case, as far as I'm concerned. Again and again and again you've referenced science, logic, our own minds, and so forth. Atheism is not necessarily linked with science; one can be atheist and also reject the scientific method. Atheism is not necessarily linked with logic; one can be atheist without being a logician or putting any particular value on logic. Atheism is not necessarily linked with our minds; one can be an atheist without venerating the human mind.
If atheism were a complex belief system worthy of being called a religion, you wouldn't need to constantly appeal to these other things which are ultimately separate and distinct from atheism. Theists and atheists alike can respect science as a tool. Theists and atheists alike are known to respect logic. Theists and atheists alike can see value in the human mind. These things aren't religions; any view of these things an atheist can hold, a theist can just as easily.
| .38 Special wrote: |
Tradition drives the atheist's moral compass. Also, science. For example: Environmentalism isn't a science. Environmental science is. Environmentalism is a series of beliefs that dictates right and wrong in managing and interacting with natural resources. Environmentalism is an example of an atheist ideology.
Of course, not all atheists believe in environmentalism. In this case, the principles of environmentalism would be replaced by parallel, but different, beliefs. |
Again, you're just highlighting the lack of substance in atheism by talking, instead, about environmentalism. Again and again, you're just pointing out other philosophies or ideologies atheists could ascribe to. And you need to, because atheism itself isn't a philosophy or ideology. As you sit here, trying to rebutt what you call a poorly written article, you're just proving it correct.
Just look at your case:
Atheism isn't a religion: you respond by saying atheists worship science, logic, their own minds, etc; even if this were true (and frankly, outside of perhaps some very confused, juvenille atheists, it's not), atheism still wouldn't be a religion. Rather, science, logic, or whatever would be. Atheism isn't necessarily linked with these things.
Atheism isn't an ideology: you respond to this by pointing out other ideologies atheists sometimes ascribe to. Something like environmentalism being an ideology doesn't mean atheism is an ideology, though. All that means is, sometimes, atheists ascribe to ideologies unrelated to atheism. That doesn't mean atheism itself is an ideology.
Atheism doesn't provide ethical guidance: you respond to this by talking about the various sources atheists derive ethical guidances for. Notice that out of those sources, their lack of belief in God isn't one of them. Atheists do need to turn to other sources -- be it tradition as you say, or other ideologies, or so forth -- for their ethical guidance, because atheism provides none.
Everytime you try to rebutt one of the article's points, you instead reinforce it. Christianity is a religion. It contains a belief structure, it gives ethical guidance, and so on. Atheism is not; anything an atheist is going to get with regards to belief structures, ethical guidances, and so forth, he has to get somewhere else. You clearly recognize this (which is why you keep bringing up things like science), so perhaps it's just time to come clean? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 5:38 am Post subject: |
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| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| Atheism is the belief that there is no God. It is not necessarily a religion (although people can take it there). But it is a belief. |
Yes. This is correct. |
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.38 Special
Joined: 08 Jul 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 6:57 am Post subject: |
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Every person employs a massive, unique, and intensely ideological construction of the world. Every tree, every expression, every pop song, every bird chirp, every smell, interacts with their mind according to their experience. There are no two similar experiences, no two ideologies the same, religious or otherwise.
If a religious person has morality, it's blindly following mythological guidance.
If atheism has morality, it's noble philosophic guidance from an unknown source, based on tradition, and completely unrelated to their belief system.
Hypocrisy.
If a religious person believes the world was created by and will be destroyed by a divine being, its wacko.
If an atheist believes the world was created by a giant, random explosion, and that it will end by a giant, derivatively random implosion, it's science.
Both are based on belief systems, each of equal validity in terms of "evidence" proffered. Again, hypocrisy.
Science is a tool? It is a system of beliefs based on prior beliefs.
All people have creation myths, no matter how "absent of belief." Some use the science mythos, others use giant turtles with gods living on its shell. There isn't a difference.
Do you really think you're special, Fox et al.? Do you think that you've somehow evolved, that you've ascended a million years of humanity, bending at the feet of idols and sacrificing livestock? Are you better than them, more refined?
Yet, your god says that we shouldn't eat eggs one week and that we must another. Your god has explosion for a creation story, directed by strange quantum principles, and an aging star as its apocalypse.
But are you really so special? The laws and morals you obey are derivative of Christian beliefs. Applying Socratic method to why atheists do/don't do something ultimately results in "just because" or "because someone thousands of years ago began this tradition and I don't know why" or "because once upon a time a brave knight did ____ and was eaten by a giant blob as a result." It is a system of beliefs. Renaming it to "ethics" doesn't change the fact that it is all based upon a system of so-called truths that are no less faiths than Christian or Muslim or Buddhist truths.
If it looks like a theism, walks like a theism, talks like a theism, then it is a theism.
Or in your arrogance, in your supposed superiority to all of human history that precedes you and defines your world for you, in your self-delusion of enlightenment you rename a thing because the ideologies that shape your world, which are equal in function and form to religion, are only superior to those poor, ignorant, theists if you are capable of maintaining the illusion of objectivity. To admit that your entire world-view, everything in your consciousness, and every word in your vocabulary indexes to your core understandings of the world -- your mythologies, your "science," your "principles" -- would make you equal to theists.
But you can't have that. After all, it is neither possible to prove nor disprove God. It is also irrelevant to applied science whether you believe a god created quantum mechanics or if it "just is." It's about being edgy, different, non-conformist, "cool." It's about setting yourself apart from the races of men who preceded you and saying you're better.
You're not. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:03 am Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
Science is a tool? Why yes, it is a system of probable suppositions based on prior research. |
Fixed. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:13 am Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
But you can't have that. After all, it is neither possible to prove nor disprove God. It is also irrelevant to applied science whether you believe a god created quantum mechanics or if it "just is." It's about being edgy, different, non-conformist, "cool." It's about setting yourself apart from the races of men who preceded you and saying you're better.
You're not. |
You like to tell people what they believe, that is clear. As an athiest, I'll give you an insight into my mind.
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If a religious person has morality, it's blindly following mythological guidance.
If atheism has morality, it's noble philosophic guidance from an unknown source, based on tradition, and completely unrelated to their belief system. |
My best guess at the origin of morality is that is an evolutionary trait that was beneficial when humans lived in kin groups (most of our history). That is just a guess however and by no means is there a scientific consensus on this. My mind is open on this one. My morality was there even before I realised I was an athiest. I assume it is inbuilt into our society.
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If a religious person believes the world was created by and will be destroyed by a divine being, its wacko.
If an atheist believes the world was created by a giant, random explosion, and that it will end by a giant, derivatively random implosion, it's science. |
The second one seems more plausible and has more evidence behind it as far as I know. My mind is open to new evidence on this one also.
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Science is a tool? It is a system of beliefs based on prior beliefs. |
Prior beliefs that were rigourously tested. These things are not the same no matter how you want to make them so.
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| Do you really think you're special, Fox et al.? Do you think that you've somehow evolved, that you've ascended a million years of humanity, bending at the feet of idols and sacrificing livestock? Are you better than them, more refined? |
Evolution is not about being better. Humanity is not better than any other animals and neither am I.
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| The laws and morals you obey are derivative of Christian beliefs |
No morality before christianity...really?
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| After all, it is neither possible to prove nor disprove God. |
It is impossible to disprove almost anything. This is not a good argument.
One thing is clear. You are the king of false dichotomies and strawmen. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:24 am Post subject: |
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| ^ What the above poster said. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
Every person employs a massive, unique, and intensely ideological construction of the world. Every tree, every expression, every pop song, every bird chirp, every smell, interacts with their mind according to their experience. There are no two similar experiences, no two ideologies the same, religious or otherwise.
If a religious person has morality, it's blindly following mythological guidance.
If atheism has morality, it's noble philosophic guidance from an unknown source, based on tradition, and completely unrelated to their belief system.
Hypocrisy.
If a religious person believes the world was created by and will be destroyed by a divine being, its wacko.
If an atheist believes the world was created by a giant, random explosion, and that it will end by a giant, derivatively random implosion, it's science.
Both are based on belief systems, each of equal validity in terms of "evidence" proffered. Again, hypocrisy.
Science is a tool? It is a system of beliefs based on prior beliefs.
All people have creation myths, no matter how "absent of belief." Some use the science mythos, others use giant turtles with gods living on its shell. There isn't a difference.
Do you really think you're special, Fox et al.? Do you think that you've somehow evolved, that you've ascended a million years of humanity, bending at the feet of idols and sacrificing livestock? Are you better than them, more refined?
Yet, your god says that we shouldn't eat eggs one week and that we must another. Your god has explosion for a creation story, directed by strange quantum principles, and an aging star as its apocalypse.
But are you really so special? The laws and morals you obey are derivative of Christian beliefs. Applying Socratic method to why atheists do/don't do something ultimately results in "just because" or "because someone thousands of years ago began this tradition and I don't know why" or "because once upon a time a brave knight did ____ and was eaten by a giant blob as a result." It is a system of beliefs. Renaming it to "ethics" doesn't change the fact that it is all based upon a system of so-called truths that are no less faiths than Christian or Muslim or Buddhist truths. |
None of this has anything to do with whether atheism is religion. It's just a long lists of ways you feel atheists slight or look down upon theists in a hypocritical fashion.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| If it looks like a theism, walks like a theism, talks like a theism, then it is a theism. |
Except atheism doesn't look, walk, or talk like theism. Theism is believing in the divine. Atheism is lacking such a belief. The two are complete opposites in a very literal sense of the word. None of your emotional baggage changes that.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| Or in your arrogance, in your supposed superiority to all of human history that precedes you and defines your world for you, in your self-delusion of enlightenment you rename a thing because the ideologies that shape your world, which are equal in function and form to religion, are only superior to those poor, ignorant, theists if you are capable of maintaining the illusion of objectivity. To admit that your entire world-view, everything in your consciousness, and every word in your vocabulary indexes to your core understandings of the world -- your mythologies, your "science," your "principles" -- would make you equal to theists. |
Even if it made us equal to theists, it still wouldn't make us theists. You keep talking about science, but science isn't atheism (and science also isn't equivalent to theism; science creates working predictive models. Theism does not).
| .38 Special wrote: |
| But you can't have that. |
Of course I can't, because it's wrong.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| After all, it is neither possible to prove nor disprove God. |
This is totally irrelevant to the conversation; whether or not it's possible to prove or disprove the existence of God (which is another discussion), atheism and theism are not equivalent.
| .38 Special wrote: |
| It is also irrelevant to applied science whether you believe a god created quantum mechanics or if it "just is." |
I agree, which is just another reason why science isn't a religion. Atheists and theists both use science as an intellectual tool. It's not a religion, it's a method. Anyone calling it a religion is confused.
| .38 Special wrote: |
It's about being edgy, different, non-conformist, "cool." It's about setting yourself apart from the races of men who preceded you and saying you're better.
You're not. |
No, it's really not. My atheism has nothing to do with people who came before us, .38. It has nothing to do with being cool. It has nothing to do with conformity or a lack thereof. It's not to be special, it's not because I've evolved, it's not because I'm better than anyone else. It has to do with a simple lack of reason to believe in God. That's it, seriously. There's genuinely no solid, evidence-based rationale for believing in God, so I don't. Why is that so hard for someone like you to grasp? Your usage of the term arrogance in this discussion is remarkably hypocritical. The sheer arrogance with which you've paraded in here, insisting you know better than atheists how atheists think, feel, and what our motives for being atheists are is just pathetic. You very clearly don't understand, kiddo.
Your "argument" has devolved into an emotional rant about how hypocritical and arrogant atheists are. If you need to let more out, go right ahead; unlike theists, I doubt any atheist here is going to report you for expressing any anger you've got regarding atheism. Let it out if you need to. I don't have anything more to say to it, though; your emotional baggage regarding religion and culture is your problem. |
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Reggie
Joined: 21 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 2:49 am Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
| It's about setting yourself apart from the races of men who preceded you and saying you're better. |
How is that different than theists?
I've heard Jews call themselves "God's Chosen People" like they're better than the "heathens." All my life, I've heard Christians talk about how everyone else is going to Hell but them. Ann Coulter, a Christian told Donnie Deutsch, a Jew, that Christians are "perfected Jews" and invited him to go to church with her. I've heard Muslims look down on Christians for worshipping two or three gods (the Father, the Son, and sometimes the Holy Ghost) and call non-Muslims "infidels."
Arrogance and feeling more highly evolved isn't exclusive to atheists. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 5:26 am Post subject: |
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http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/time-to-set-the-chechen-free.aspx
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TIME TO SET THE CHECHEN FREE
There is an old saying about the fierce Chechen tribes who inhabit southern Russia�s Caucasus mountains: `Chechen cannot ever be defeated. They can only be killed.�
Chechen are Russia�s nemesis. Even the notoriously brutal Russian mafia fears the ferocious Chechen, and for good reason.
Last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proudly proclaimed that resistance to Russian rule in the North Caucasus had been eliminated. The region was pacified.
Confounding Putin�s claim, Chechen suicide bombers hit Moscow�s subway last week, killing 39 and injuring over 70. Chechen suicide bombers in Dagestan killed twelve, mostly policemen. There were further attacks in neighboring Dagestan. The North Caucasus was again at a boil.
The attacks seriously rattled Russians and left the Kremlin deeply embarrassed and enraged.
Two `black widows� � wives or daughters of Chechen independence fighters killed or raped by the Russians (Russians call them `Islamic terrorists� and `bandits�) � took their revenge last week, as so often in recent years.
The latest Chechen leader, Doku Umarov - all his predecessors were liquidated by Russia � claimed from his hideout in the Caucasus mountains that the subway attacks were reprisal for the recent killing of Chechen civilians by Russian security forces.
He warned Moscow, `we will make you feel what we feel.�
In recent years, Chechen `black widows� have brought down two civilian airliners. Other Chechen hijacked an entire Moscow theater, and derailed the �Alexander Nevsky� Express that runs from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
Chechen are a tiny but fierce North Caucasian mountain people of Indo-European origin. They, and other Muslim Caucasian tribes, such as Dagestanis and Cherkass
(Circasians), have battled Russian imperial rule for the past 300 years.
In 1877, Imperial Russia killed 40% of the Chechen population of about 220,000. Four hundred thousand Cherkass were expelled.
Stalin, from neighboring Georgia, hated Chechen. He divided Chechnya, creating the republic of Ingushetia. Then, in July 1937, his secret police, NKVD, shot 14,000 Chechen.
In 1944, Stalin ordered the entire Chechen people rounded up and shipped in cattle cars to his Siberian concentration camps or dumped to perish into icy fields. Other Muslims followed: Ingush, Tatars, Karachai, Balkars.
Neither bullets nor gas chambers were needed in Stalin�s death camps. A third of the prisoners died each year from cold, starvation or disease in the concentration camps. In all, some 2.5 million Soviet Muslims were murdered by Stalin, �the Breaker of Nations,� among them half of the Chechen people.
...
Gulag survivors filtered back to Chechnya. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechen demanded independence like the Soviet republics.
Instead, Boris Yeltsin�s government invaded Chechnya, killing some 100,000 Chechen civilians through massive carpet bombing and shelling. Chechen leader Dzhokar Dudayev was assassinated, reportedly thanks to telephone homing equipment supplied to Moscow by the US National Security Agency. President Bill Clinton actually lauded Boris Yeltsin�s as �Russia�s Abraham Lincoln.�
...
Powerful Russian forces invaded and crushed the life out of Chechen resistance. All moderate Chechen leaders were assassinated, the last in Qatar in 2004, leaving mostly militant Islamists. A Moscow-installed Chechen puppet regime imposed a rein of terror upon the population, using torture, murder, mass reprisals, hostages and rape.
...
Moscow should end this historical tragedy by granting Chechnya independence. Doing so is of course risky: it could spark demands by other Caucasian Muslims for independence, and enflame some of Russia�s 20 million-strong Muslim minority � though most still appear content to live in the Russian Federation.
An independent Chechnya could also open another door to growing US penetration of the Caucasus and campaign to encircle Russia. The US and Russia came frighteningly close to a head-on clash over Georgia. The Cold War has not ended.
An independent Chechnya would be unstable and violent. But that is better than the savagery and atrocities that this terrible conflict continues to generate.
Modern Russia needs to set the Chechen free. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 5:38 am Post subject: |
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| Some are putting up billboards and ads these days |
Thats actually been going on for a while depending on which country you are in.
There was one on main street when I was 12 that said "Don't believe in God, come in and learn the scientific reality). It had a sign outside the building saying "Atheistic society".
It looked like a religious building and had times for meetings on a saturday and a greek quotation on the side. It was there for a number of years. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 6:13 am Post subject: |
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| My atheism has nothing to do with people who came before us, |
Oh come on. That is not true.
You are not that superior to everyone in humanity that you supposedly came to your belief with no external influences.
A lack of awareness is not a lack of influence. |
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.38 Special
Joined: 08 Jul 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 9:46 am Post subject: |
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| Reggie wrote: |
| .38 Special wrote: |
| It's about setting yourself apart from the races of men who preceded you and saying you're better. |
How is that different than theists?
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Arrogance and feeling more highly evolved isn't exclusive to atheists. |
You're correct, Reggie. It is no different from theists. For all people possess ideology, even if their ideology disavows ideology -- in name.
All ideologies, whether scientific "fact" or religious "truth," indexes and corresponds to an ideological world view, which is in turn based upon one's belief of the nature of the world.
For atheists to believe theists fools is no different than the theists believing the atheists to be ignorant. For atheism is no less ideological, and no more certain than theism, and theism is no more ideological, and no more certain than theism. Both require faith and reward with the illusion of enlightenment.
Atheism is neither new nor special among the countless ideological approaches to understanding the human condition and its environment.
My ideological world view that supposes that ideological world views to be equalative in function and circumspection, but unique in content, can either be accepted or ignored -- it cannot be altered. After all, for someone to disagree with me on fundamental levels only reinforces my argument that all participants have approached from their own ideological perspective, whether they recognize that fact or not.
Either way, this dialogue, amusing as it may be, has endured nearly two weeks. It would be wise to agree to disagree and move on to other subjects, preferably those not quite so.... ideologically driven  |
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