Letters to the Editor
debaser
Published Letters: 656 Editor's Choice: 11
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Put 1 in the plus column
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I for one am kind of happy Salon printed this article. Mainly because in the letters section I find myself agreeing with people with whom I fundamentally (heh) disagree with politically (Rosenkavelier) and vice versa (Xrandadu). It's kind of the point of this whole online community (or "salon") to find out that we can hold a myriad of opinions that don't necessarily match up perfectly with our equals. I think it's great.
(incidentally, "josiah"'s theology appears to be the closest to mine that I've read on this thread...nice to see someone reference Tillich! :)
on to Hedges piece: I was quite happy to see him bring up the whole concept of "progress"...in my many, many discussions with my Atheist buddies (one of the dangers with being the only Catholic in your friend group is that you become the sounding board for any theological discussion :) is that it always seems to have a fairly strong whiff of Whig History...and I've never heard anyone else mention it.
p.s. For those interested, John Haught's book is an excellent dissection of the New Atheist Philosophy...he takes it as a philosophical whole (which, if you're gonna tear down a cohesive philosophical whole, you better have a compelling replacement) and shows its logical flaws...he relies pretty heavily on William Jamesian thinking, but it's a fascinating read.
cheers!
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I dunno
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with you about the stupidity of the organizers, but golf really REALLY prides itself on self-policing. Too many clubs in your bag? You're DQ'd. Don't keep your own score properly? DQ'd etc etc etc.
I for one love John Daly, precisely because he's a flawed, larger than life figure (no fat joke intended!). From all accounts he's a jovial, caring person...which of course made his famous collapse on the course all the more heart-wrenching. Watching a man defeated by his personal demons in such a public setting would rip the heart out of any mortal, and made most golf fans love him even more.
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@palindromebeta
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for replying to my post! To be honest I suspected I was being overly clever with my Whig History comparison...it was kind of neat to see someone else say the same thing :)
I see what you're saying about technological advances, but I was thinking specifically of Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Progress"...a truly fascinating read wherein he shows that despite all of our technological advances we keep making the same damn mistakes over and over (just better and more efficiently). He focuses on environmental degradation (like how Sumeria wasn't always desert...they over-cropped their way there. Likewise The Dust Bowl wouldn't have been so devastating without rapacious farming techniques) but I think the concept holds true across the board.
On to another point - we need to stop seeing theology and science as being at odds. They're not. No theologian worth his/her salt would ever claim The Bible as Literal Truth, or try to defend God as a Hypothesis. Evolutionary biology does not debunk theology, and theology does not debunk evolutionary biology. Simply put, both can co-exist. I have numerous atheist friends, we all get along great. Or put another way: belief or unbelief in God really doesn't get in the way of wings and beer and hockey :)
(sorry for the interruption, now we return to our regularly scheduled flame-war ;)
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@cross1242
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I see what you're saying. John Haught argues that one of the major faults with these three authors is that they ignore, or refuse to engage with contemporary theology...he sees it as them setting up a straw man argument against a literalist faith that has very little in common with the dominant streams of religious thought...I personally think they just aren't very intrigued by the concept and don't feel much like delving into such a broad and daunting school of thought.
cheers
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re: reader t
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"what exactly is a New Atheist, verse those that are the Old ones?"
From what I understand, New Atheists refers to Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, Dennet et al. who appear content to tear down religious faith, claiming it the root of all evil. Whereas Old Atheists are more in the vein of Camus, Sartre, Nietzche et al who sought to replace one all-encompassing theology with another.
cheers
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@theobald.
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]With all due respect, I disagree. Atheists, theists, all humans require faith.
Will you grant that faith and trust are essentially the same thing?
See you, me, and everyone else trusts our mind and our senses. You trust your mind enough to make the assertion "there is no God", you trust the scientific method wholly.
There is no reason to trust either of these assumptions.
The mind, like everything else in the world is subject to evolution, under what pretense should you trust the human mind as it stands right now, to be able to state "there is no God. I know that". (unfortunately, if you counter with "all I'm saying is that there's no evidence for God" then you're not much of an atheist. It's intellectually dishonest to tear down one philosophical whole and then refuse to build one up yourself...you gotta go the whole way, and not just say "nope. no god.") There's no reason to beleive your mind, there just isn't. You just have to trust your mind, and trust = faith.
all humans have faith, whether you want to admit that or not is up to you.
Look, I'm not saying that you're wrong to believe what you do...I personally don't care, but I find it irksome when people state "faith is wrong" or "faith is stupid", when they themselves exhibit faith on a daily basis (they just have faith in different things). It's the intellectual superiority vibe that irks most people.
(although to be fair, this message board has been MILES better than earlier ones for showing restraint and common ground...maybe that's another reason why these discussions aren't totally useless :)
(of course this could easily devolve into an interminable "brain in a vat" discussions...but those just give me headaches :)
cheers