Letters to the Editor
-
Fast and Loose
Elaine Pagels is an established scholar. I hope her readings of "the sacred scrolls" are not so fast and loose as her reading of Einstein. He was a determinist about nature and found quantum mechanics, with its essential indeterminism, to be unfathomable. Hence the "God does not play dice" line.
-
Folks, Get a Clue
Salon writers and readers, please get a clue.
You are living in a nation filled with people that are faith-based.
So, when you run stories on the wonders of gay-marriage, abortion on-demand or fringy theories on why God may not exist or Jesus' real name might be Harry, you have a problem:
- More people will tune you out.
This is a problem for you, and frankly, for me.
See, I'm a "born-again liberal." I agree on liberal policy issues in general, vot Democratic, but time and time again, you slap me in the face with some drek like this story, which most serious religious scholors would quickly slice to ribbons.
It's fine for you, the writers and readers of Salon, to believe what you want. Worship trees, the Yellow Pages, or yourselves (which is what Athiests do).
But could you give me a break? Could we agree to disagree on religion and put it by the side. I'm fine with that! I'm NOT fine with a constant stream of stories from Salon that forces me to tune you out.
Sure, I read the stories, I have no problem with debate. But really. How about the stories about how faith is doing GOOD? How about stories about Christians who are helping feed, clothe and help millions of homeless accross America and throughout the world? How about that?
Could you take a break from thrashing religion? The main result is to keep liberals out of power.
Because here's what's happening, right now and from now on unless you get a clue:
- Most faith based people will keep voting for the GOP because even though they LIE about what they are going to do, even though they LIE when they talk about how they want to help people and all that, at LEAST they don't make fun of my faith. At least they make the pretense of honoring God.
You, you worshipers of Self, care nothing, really for True Believers. You think it's your duty to bring me down to your level.
I'm sick of it.
If you ever want to win back the Presidency and get out of Iraq, slow down Global Warming or make headway on issues that ALL liberals can agree on, you're going to have to give up on this issue- eliminating Faith. It won't work. The USSR spent 70 years trying it, using harsher methods than you are using it. Heck "back in the day" Christians were boiled in oil and it didn't shake their faith.
You're not going to shake mine with a constant stream of anyone you can find to make light of my God.
You're just going to piss me off and drive me back to the GOP.
That's the ONLY thing you'll get out of this.
Are you LISTENING?
-
Our President was Judas!!!!
Joy Livingstone (I presume) gave this list of Judas' personality traits (straight from Omega Proxima 7, I think):
'1. He was an isolated type of human being. He was highly individualistic and chose to grow into a confirmed "shut-in" and unsociable sort of person.
2. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bitterly resented thwarting. He always expected to win; he was a very poor loser.
3. He never acquired a philosophic technique for meeting disappointment. Instead of accepting disappointments as a regular and commonplace feature of human existence, he unfailingly resorted to the practice of blaming someone in particular, or his associates as a group, for all his personal difficulties and disappointments.
4. He was given to holding grudges; he was always entertaining the idea of revenge.'
(snip remainder, you can read it above)
It all makes sense now....
-
Neil
One of the first posts I've completely agreed with so far, although there have been smatterings of a lot of good points.
I absolutely agree that Dawkins and his crowd is totally guilty of feeding the religion vs. science debate and widening the (artificial, imo) polarity between these two "camps". Most people have it in them to see God and science as fundamentally compatible. A couple of whacko fundies say otherwise, so you have to AGREE with them? Thanks a lot.
And as for defending Dawkins *because* he only chooses to respond to the fundies and not to speak to the rest of us, well, that's not an argument I find particularly compelling. No matter what RD says, in terms of his "I'm not a strict atheist," he is definitely preaching to his own choir, with conversion on his mind. It puts him in the same camp as the fundies, imo, by implying that everyone "on the other side" is a moron, (how many of these 'atheistic' posts have resorted to calling the rest of us delusional, emotionally challenged fools?).
Further, for those who love to misquote history, some of the biggest social movements of our time have had huge religious components...Ghandi, the Civil Rights Movement, slave revolts in Jamaica and other parts of Latin/South America, the liberation theology movement in the 80s in Nicaragua, etc. To say that religion does nothing but "cow the masses" is patently incorrect. To say it only promulgates war is also incorrect. You can selectively choose from a lot of historical events...the ones motivated purely by materialist concerns rarely result in changes towards more egalitarian social structures, (e.g., communism did nothing but reshuffle the deck and modernize feudalism in many respects...Ghandi's movement and the Civil Rights movements redesigned whole caste systems).
I'm not saying religion isn't used in the name of violence and war...of course it is. But to view it as having solely this effect is a pretty childish argument, and does not hold up to historical scrutiny. The fact is, people are more willing to die for God/spirituality than they are to die for food, even if they're starving. Religious beliefs/identities are powerful forces in human lives, and power always cuts both ways.
Creating new ways to incite hatred and fear/paranoia over these beliefs as well as new demands that we "join up or doe" only exacerbates and illustrates this truism, it doesn't come close to fixing it.
So chill, radical hand-waving atheist dudes. Most of us agree with you that the fundies are dangerous. Most of us agree with you that Bush is a total whack-job, manipulating hordes of poor, under-educated Americans. We just may not agree on the reasons why this has occurred.