Letters to the Editor
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Fenella
"where the untouchables are in the same situation as fifty or hundred years ago"
Not legally. Not politically. Not socially. If you aren't willing to inform yourself by reading relevant scholarship, Fenella, you could save yourself embarrasment by at least dipping into Wikipedia before citing "cases".
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Active versus passive beliefs
Arty kraft: "What's the point of relishing the notion you don't abide by a belief system? Is it that bad boy syndrome?"
If not abiding a belief system is, in your words, a 'bad boy syndrome', then accepting a belief system is a 'good boy syndrome'? Are you defining for us what's bad' vs. good?
Do you see the harm in what you said? If not, how would you feel if the vice-president of the U.S. said "I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic."? This was GHW Bush, back in 1987. The second-highest public official in the U.S. calling atheists unpatriotic and not worthy of citizenship! Let's substitute 'Christian', 'Jew', 'Muslim', or any other adherent to a major religion and watch the results. A MAJOR uproar would have filled the press, and his chances of getting elected would have been close to zero. But say that about a 'bad boy' atheist, and no one even bothers to shrug in this country. So, do you agree with his statement, Arty?
"One of the perplexing dilemmas of atheism is that not only can't atheists prove that what they don't believe in doesn't exist, they can't prove they believe in nothing and don't abide by a belief system, because as soon as they do, they're demonstrating a belief system."
Boy, you're on a roll today. How many times do we have to debunk this 'atheism as a belief system' nonsense? I'll spell it out real slow so you can follow along...
A circle has symmetry to itself if you take one half and compare it to the other. Thus the word 'symmetric'. A clock face with numbers on it, however, is not symmetric when comparing one half to the other because the numbers, when flipped, are not the same from left to right. So in English we us the construct of prefixing the letter 'A' to the word and negate 'symmetric' with 'asymmetric'.
So let's say there is a group of numerologists who find the number 111111 to hold divine value. One might (awkwardly) call them '111111ists'. Do you believe the number 111111 holds divine value, Arty? If not, you can be described as an 'A111111ist', since you don't hold the same beliefs as the group who does.
Do you believe the number 111112 holds divine value? If not, you are also an 'A111112ist'.
How about 111113? Do we need to continue?
Now, to the important point in all this. Before today, did you ever even consider that you might be an A111111ist? By this I mean that you really thought about the idea and applied your mind to determine how you felt about the divinity of 111111? I seriously doubt it (but I could be wrong). Assuming you never put much thought or effort into the divinity of 111111, can your being an A111111ist be described as a belief system? Because by your definition it is.
And guess what, you're probably also an A111112ist, and an A111113ist, and so on to infinity. That's a huge number of belief systems that you carry around with you!
But maybe maintaining all those belief systems is a lot of work. So in this case, let's consolidate the effort and perhaps say that you don't believe in numerology at all. Whew! Now the infinite number of belief systems that you had to actively negate can be encapsulated and negated with the much simpler idea of 'Anumerologist'. And here's something that you and I could then agree on, since I'm also an anumerologist!
But the difference would be that I don't consider anumerology to be a belief system. To me, a belief system requires active participation, whereas anumerology comes effortlessly to me. I don't give it any thought at all unless the concept of numerology is raised first.
So the same can be said for 'Theism'. By definition, 'theism' is the 'belief in the existence of god'. That's an ACTIVE belief by the way, the same way that one would have to ACTIVELY believe in the divinity of 111111. (Such a belief, as we have hopefully demonstrated, does not come naturally - you have to go out of your way to sustain it.) But NOT believing in god? Besides the obvious semantic conclusion that belief is negated here, one does not have to do anything to adopt this position. Any more than being an A111111ist requires thought or effort.
Getting back to your statement about atheism being a belief system, if you've followed along this far, do you now see why that is self-contradictory? Or do you actually wake up every morning and inventory the infinite number of belief systems that you disagree with, formulate opposite belief systems for each and every one, and then figure out how the hell you're going to sustain such a Herculean effort to support them?
'Atheism' as a word only makes sense in the context of the word 'theism'. Atheism comes naturally to rocks, water, wind. None of those believe in god. I would contend that all animals other than humans are also atheists. (If they are not, their god certainly gave them the short end of the extinction ticket.) So are humans naturally atheists, or are they theists? Is the first word out of an infant's mouth "God"? Or was that word placed there later by those who ACTIVELY maintain their own belief systems?
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Timmy,
The untouchables, the millions of them, across the world, beg to differ with your pronouncement made from your cozy position.
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More literalists!!
For a LOT of the atheists posting here, Ben writes: "The only reason to believe in God is if you've got some evidence."
Holy (or rather, "Secular") Cow.
Rocks of Ages, Gould.
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Not interested in nuns
um
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Arty Kraft
Although this thread has probably run its course, I just want to chime in and reject the implication that atheism is the same as anti-religion. Atheism is, in fact, a mindset that does not concern itself with religion or theology at all. The study of theology, as you depict it at some length, strikes me as nothing more than a protracted bullshit session, replete with the wild speculation and twisted logic that often occurs in the lounge of a college dormitory after a few bong hits.
It is true that various despots and charlatans have used religion to further their own selfish or political ends. Henry IV famously remarked that "Paris is worth a mass" before converting to Catholicism and taking the throne of France. Napoleon likewise proclaimed that when in Egypt he was a "Mussulman," and when in Egypt he was a Catholic. But the church itself has often wielded theology like a club to keep its adherents in thrall. Many Catholic saints were originally pagan deities whom the church cynically co-opted in order to increase their dominion over Europe. So what? The fact is that religion is there to be used and abused, whether by secular or religious mountebanks and true believers. Objectively, there is little difference between losing your head to the French Revolution and being tortured to death by the Spanish Inquisition.
Armstrong, and posters like you, strike a condescending pose and decry the fact that people like Dawkins presume to criticize religon without having studied it from the inside out. One needn't make a detailed study of the folkways and "philosophical" underpinnings of astrology or phrenology to reject them as frauds. Ditto Christianity et al.