Letters to the Editor
Taliesan
Published Letters: 942 Editor's Choice: 19
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Okay
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, because we are supposed to sit quietly and take it while an American president proclaims all atheists non-citizens and non-patriots.
George H.W. Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
He then promptly got elected.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_03/008488.php
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/ghwbush.htm
http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/aa011.htm
We are supposed to take it when TV pundits declare a culture war against us because some cashier wished him a happy holiday.
http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/03/rush-limbaugh-on-atheists.htm
Rush Limbaugh baby.
We are supposed to take it when deeply Christian figures like Hitler are termed "Atheists" by the popular media.
http://www.atheists.org/action/alert-11-mar-2004.html
Ann Coulter!
We are supposed to take it when even the more liberal voices out there imply that we are incapable of love.
Read the story here.
And for the finale: Where do you think all of this sentiment towards stripping atheists of their humanity is going boet?
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Anonymous
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And I said a president. GHW was president of the United States of America.
pacificwhim.
The thing is it doesn't matter whether that atheist is the nicest person ever, it doesn't matter if that atheist has policies which make 100% sense to everyone, it doesn't matter what an atheist does or doesn't do. Americans won't elect an atheist president.
That is why you get angry atheists.
You say I should stop being angry, what the fuck did not being angry do for the gay rights movement, the black rights movement, the women's rights movement, the every bloody movement towards positive social change in the history of humankind?
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bebop-o
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pascal's wager is as follows (For anyone who doesn't know:)
If there is no god and I don't believe in him, I win nothing.
If there is a god, and I don't believe in him, I lose nothing.
If there is a god and I believe in him I win eternal bliss.
If there is a god and I don't believe in him I win eternal torment.
Hence it is better to believe in god.
(Note that I didn't capitalise god on purpose. You will see why in a second.)
Pascal's wager has the following flaws:
First it assumes that there are only two options (One being a Christian God who rewards believers, the other being nothing.)
That is of course, nonsense and discounts the possibility of a god who may respects doubt and casts the believers into hell, or even their being an entire race of gods which is rather miffed at humans worshipping the Christian one.
Second, it assumes that belief is something you can choose to do - belief isn't as easy as that.
Third it is intellectually dishonest. Rather then commenting on the truth of their being a god or not, it takes the fairly hypocritical approach of claiming that you had better believe it no matter what the evidence is.
Fourth it assumes you lose nothing by belief in God, whereas you can lose every Sunday of your life, a sixth of your earnings, a lot of labour in trying to follow God's teachings, and a few nights sleep over worrying whether you are going to hell or not.
Note, I actually figured that one out before reading Dawkins.
Pascal was a brilliant man in his time, but the wager itself is not actually a sound argument for the Christian or any other God because the balance of probabilities is against the Christian God.
pacificwhim - actually that is precisely how the peaceful resistance movements achieved their success. They went out and made the opposing movements look like stupid, cruel savages. You didn't have Martin Luther King acting like he respected the KKK, and Ghandi for all of his non-violence was not out there making the Brits look good.
Bob Dylan was not writing songs that made the Vietnam supporters look good, Country Joe MacDonald's Vietnam song was not exactly complimentary of the pro-war crowd and "I ain't gonna play Sun City" was not exactly being nice to the Apartheid government.
It is when people have been civil about it, acted like they don't really care that much that they have gotten stepped on.
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pacificwhim
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh, and as to delusion:
1: the act of deluding : the state of being deluded
2 a: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated
b: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs
http://m-w.com/dictionary/delusion
Fossil records, the shape of the earth, the lack of corroboration for the Bible for certain miracles (The sun standing still would be recorded in more places then just one isolated part of Israel for example) the inclusion of lies in the holy book (The blood libel against the Jews for example.)
Even the evidence for Evolution points away from a biblical interpretation of the natural world. Note the lack of real evidence actually for creationism.
Calling a belief in God a delusion strikes me as being a perfectly fair way of putting it. Particularly if you take into account speaking in tongues, seeing visions and people falling over when being touched by an evangelical preacher:
fundamental derangement of the mind (as in schizophrenia) characterized by defective or lost contact with reality especially as evidenced by delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech and behavior
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Appoggiatura
[Read the article: American politics in bad faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would vote a Wiccan, a Mormon, a Scientologist or a Hari Krishna into office if I agreed with their policies.
There should be no religious bar on who can serve as president. As an atheist I feel strongly about this.