EnMasse

[Sifo-Dyas]

There was an article by Christopher Dreher in the March 10, 2007 Globe and Mail entitled "When the ain'ts go marching in" that has been reproduced here. Key quotes from the article include the following:

[Hephaestion]

[smart-ass flippant remark]

They should join the Liberals -- the Liberals don't believe in anything, either.

[/smart-ass flippant remark]
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin

[Tehanu]

[smart-ass flippant rejoinder]

Ah, but atheists do believe in something: The non-existence of God.

Really, the only intellectually honest position is agnosticism. Anyone who disagrees with that is going to burn in hell.

[/smart-ass flippant rejoinder]

Come to think of it, the article seems to imply that anyone ticking "No religious affiliation" on the census form is an atheist ...

[No Yards]

I'd bet that if there actually were a "church of no religious affiliation" a lot more people would "affiliate" with them.

I know I would, especially if that church promised to be 100 times more hypocritical than any previous church and hunt down and discriminate against the "heretics".

The Church of No Religious Affiliation believes that literal reading of any book is a sin against the books of science, and anyone doing so should lose all protections provided by the constitution.

The dogma of the Church of No Religious Affiliation holds that anyone claiming faith in a book of myths does not have the capabilities to lead an old lady across the street, let alone lead a country.

[JPG]

[elmateo]

What value do atheist ideas have if there is no theism? I think atheism is just talking against something, rather than positing much 'positive' ideas that of course interest in atheism is only driven when you have a rise of religious fundamentalism.

Humanism is something different, since it attempts to include with some sort of religious doctrine, other areas such as ethics, politics, and culture into a unified concept along side the nonbelief of a god. I personally don't know if that works out so well. I might prefer that those other things remain in the realm of political and ethical discussion rather than within doctrine.

But I think it is interesting the effect that the loss of church has upon a society - it really is a missing social link. I think the real interesting thing will be how non religious people adapt and change because of the lack of the social role church has played and whether people will construct similar community functions... I think there is going to be a backlash against the individualism which has spread, probably fueling this non-religious affiliation rise, possibly seeing it in the rise of fundamentalism - so what alternatives can be constructed which provide community-meaning for people.

[Tehanu]

[elmateo]

Touché. Though the internet does have an element of faux-relationships. It is in many ways hard to relate to others as a form of communication.

[Hephaestion]

[Rufus Polson]

[Rufus Polson]

[elmateo]

Maybe instead of value I should have said "meaning". I think you got to what I meant to say but didn't very well. Atheism has not meaning in the absence of theism. It would have no importance to call yourself an atheist if there wasn't a a variety of theistic ideas around.

Therefore a rise in atheist literature is not necessarily a rise in interest about atheism - what is there to 'know'? Not a whole bunch.So when interest in atheism rises, it is more an interest against theism of one sort or another which spurs it. And most people who define themselves as an atheist are making a statement against theistic ideas rather than 'for' anything.

Which all stems from the point where we agree (as atheists) that atheism despite the desire of certain religious individuals is not a religion. Humanism on the other hand is - as atheistic as some forms of buddhism. I think it goes a step beyond formulating an ethics, because seemingly is creating a doctrine of beliefs about how to live. An interesting concept, but given my personal headaches over ethics I think a rather impossible task. I would rather leave such processes to politics and philosophy to work out forever and ever.

[Senor Magoo]

[al-Qa'bong]

[skeptikool]

al-Qa'bong:

[al-Qa'bong]

[5 minutes to midnight]

God is a socialist, apparently.
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To be a true radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing

- Raymond Williams

[skeptikool]

al-Qa'bong,

And from where do you believe, "Holy Moley!" was derived?

West Coast Greeny:

[Fidel]

I think that God's church has been very political and extremely anti-communist over the last century. Fascist war criminals were aided by the Church to escape communism.

The pope got behind Lech Walesa and solidarnosc in bringing down communism in that country(and just look how well they're doing today ).

The Church was against liberation theology in Latin America where fascism has prevented populist uprisings against repressive regimes.

And now Pope nazinger has condemned Hugo Chavez for trying to help the poor in Latin America. May their unholy blood scream for all eternity.
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Democracy should more appropriately be referred to as Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. - George Washington

[elmateo]

But it is also a "Church" which created liberation theology and provided the network basis for a lot of the social movements we see occurring in Latin America. The Catholic church tops screwed up massively because their sellout of the liberation theologists in Lat. America really created the opening for evangelical Americans to proselytize the region with an apolitical religion of "jesus loves you, worry about salvation and not what goes on around you".

[Fidel]

That's true. And various Catholic organizations have been watchdogs for the poor and produced reports for UN agencies critical of Canada's child poverty in the past. Catholic groups delivered aid to Cuba in the 1990's. Oscar Romero, Catholic priests and nuns murdered by right-wing death squads will be remembered always. I'll never forget U.S. ambassador to Latin America, Linda Chavez, having a strip torn out of her by a Canadian missionary on Canada AM radio one morning a few years back. I was actually proud to be Canadian that day.
_________________
Democracy should more appropriately be referred to as Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. - George Washington

[Tehanu]

Ronald Aronson has an extensive aronsonarticle in the Nation about the "New Atheism" and the surprising popularity of a number of recent books on atheism, leading to a discussion of a "secular coalition" in the United States ... Interesting read.

[Raos]

[Hephaestion]

[Hephaestion]

The Atheist Bus

[Hephaestion]

University of Alberta considers excising God from convocation speech

[Raos]

Even if they get it taken out it won't really make much of a difference. While the speech cited that might get axed was the most egregious reference that I noticed, every other speech at convocation was throwing "God this" and "bless that" around like they were candy. I was certainly not impressed with it.

[bagkitty]

I like Isaac Asimov's take on the topic:

[Cartman]

The possibility of the existence of hell concerns me greatly. Not the burnination part really. More the fact that there will be a shitload of religious people there who were also wrong.

[Tehanu]

[Cartman]

[bagkitty]

It would have been a lot more fun if the "correct" religion had been the Aztec worship of the feathered serpent. Messy and bloody, but fun.
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Whom the hive does not cherish, it eats.

[Senor Magoo]

[Cartman]

I will have you know sir, that I have seen the flying spaghetti monster! He will not reveal himself unless you profess faith in his existence and buy my FSM t-shirt for only $9.99! That's 10% off MSRP!

[bshmr]

The cultural bias for monotheism and Abrahamic tradition is obvious in most responses.

I think of myself as an atheist Buddhist, nothing deist there. That is distinct from 'trance-rs' and 'pray-ers' denominations, for instance, within the belief.

Classic Mediterranean, including Egyptian, and polytheist Hindu appeal to anthropomorphic attributes -- appeal to the God of War when one needs war skills, the God of Compassion when needing sympathy or cooled blood. Sometimes these faithful are theist/deist and sometimes atheist/adeist.

Then, what of persons essentially worshipping/honoring ghosts of ancestors (or famous individuals). Some are theist and some are not.

[TS.]

bshmr, there were extremely few atheists in the modern sense of the word in the classical Mediterranean. Their gods were deeply entertwined into the daily lives of the Greek, Italian/Roman, Phoenician, Jewish, Egyptian, Carthaginian and Celtic societies. Indications of religious faith, in the form of inscriptions and such like are one of the most common finds at Mediterranean archaeological sites. The idea of atheism would have been very difficult ontologically for any of the societies that I listed to cope with, and during the Roman Empire it would have been a crime, since atheism would have denied the divinity of the deified emperors of the past, the same crime for which Christians, Jews and all other monotheists were condemned during the Empire.
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"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

[Senor Magoo]

[Rufus Polson]

[Hephaestion]

[Rufus Polson]

I just thought of an odd . . . I don't know what to call it. A conceit? It's not a thought experiment. What I mean is, I had this idea and I feel like arguing it and it sorta hangs together as a logical construct, but I don't want to say I actually believe it to be true. It's just a philosophical line of reasoning, a story I'm trying out. Anyway here it is:

Not only is the common religious claim that morality and ethics can only come from religion wrong, it can actually be stood on its head. It is not possible to cleave to a formal religion (which lays down an ethical code) and be truly ethical.

Ultimately, really being ethical and moral must be about doing what you believe to be right, what your best judgment tells you is right. I mean, I don't see how you can be considered to be acting ethically if you're doing something you think is wrong. And I don't see how you can be considered to be acting ethically if you suspend judgment, becoming in effect an automaton with no free will. Just following orders is not ethical action, even if the orders happen to be good ones. You can follow orders and still be ethical, but only if you test those orders for rightness before you decide whether to follow them.

OK, but if you follow a religion there are problems. If you retain your personal judgment, evaluating the ethics of your religion, the two will inevitably come into conflict at some point or other. If such a conflict arises, you have a choice; the religious choice is to privilege the ethical guidelines given you by the religion over your personal insights and reasoning. At that point, you are doing what you believe to be wrong and so you are not a truly ethical person in the way that an agnostic or atheist could be.
Alternatively, you could just decide to start with that God's understanding is far greater than yours and so you will suspend any attempts to judge ethics on your own in favour of applying God's rules as you understand them and/or are instructed in them. You suspend your personal morality in favour of what you believe to be God's. If you do this, you in effect make yourself a psychopath following God's orders. If God's orders are in fact good then you will do good deeds, but that will not make you any more a moral person than would be a non-self-aware robot doing objectively good deeds.

In the real world, many religious people (good and bad) get around this problem by selective reading and selective blindness--that is, they convince themselves that their religion reflects their intuitions about ethics whether it does or not, thus allowing them to follow their own view of what is right. But that just makes it all the clearer that ethics ultimately is seated in personal judgment. Such people are enabling themselves to be moral by behaving *as if* they were not religious. From a purer standpoint, it is only possible to be really ethical if one does not subscribe to a code of conduct coming from outside. Which would imply that you can be an atheist, an agnostic or even a nonspecific deist, but not a sincere member of a codified religion.

Of course that doesn't imply that good ethics follows naturally or inevitably from irreligion. And it doesn't mean you can't use religion as a source for good ethical insights. You have to make an effort to figure out what's right and act according to the beliefs you arrive at, and this probably should involve some effort to find the shoulders of ethical giants before you so you can stand on them. But you have to climb up on their shoulders to see for yourself, not just hide behind them.

[Hephaestion]

Securlarism: The Route To Prosperity And Low Crime

[Chester]

my corporate web filter (just installed) now blocks access to Joe.My.God. 'cause its a porn site

[The Evil Twin]

Me too, I can't access it at work or the library...only at home. Weird because I have no trouble accessing ACTUAL porn sites in these places(not that I surf porn you understand....just sometimes I hit the wrong key by mistake...yeah
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I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day. - Assclown Rob Ford

[bshmr]

Dawkins's approach alienates while the Vatican's doesn't, for example.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16258-how-to-stop-creationism...

How to stop creationism gaining a hold in Islam
19:00 11 December 2008 by Ewen Callaway

[ For similar stories, visit the Interviews and Evolution Topic Guides ]

Salman Hameed teaches astronomy and religious studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has lectured in Pakistan on reconciling evolution with Islam.
Hameed spoke with New Scientist about the rise of creationism in the Muslim world, what scientists can do to promote evolution there, and why he thinks Richard Dawkins and other atheists will push Muslims away from evolution.

[Tehanu]

Interesting (long) article posted on AlterNet. It's pretty clear that in the USA, at least, publicly saying you're an atheist can lead to some pretty damaging consequences. I edited it down to the headings and a few particularly juicy parts. Worth reading the whole thing.

[Hephaestion]

It is neither emotionally nor spiritually deficient to reject religions that seek to infantilise us with impossible beliefs

[Hephaestion]

[Raos]

That's pretty cool.

[Hephaestion]

JMG:

[fork]