Letters to the Editor
Picko
Published Letters: 265 Editor's Choice: 11
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Fetboy
[Read the article: Should I come out as an atheist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What do I do to include other people into my atheism? Well, there's not a lot you can do.
Several years ago, when my sister confessed that the fear of hell was one of the things that kept her a Christian, I explained to her why I think the idea of hell is monstrously improbable and hideously immoral. I think I converted her for a little while, but eventually she went back to being a believer.
When I explicitly "came out" to my mother, I explained to her many of my rationales for not believing in God, but this was more in the way of helping her to understand where I'm coming from than an actual attempt to convert her.
Occasionally I have religious discussions with open-minded friends, which sometimes involve making the reasoned case against specific religious beliefs.
But even though atheism is a belief about the universe, it doesn't really lend itself much to collective efforts, mostly because atheists tend to be very individualistic people who don't much go in for group activities. We tend to congregate around our other interests - film, music, literature, etc. - rather than around our atheism.
Honestly, I think if it weren't for the perception of a threat posed by religious people, most atheists wouldn't spend a lot of time thinking about religion one way or another. They would view religion as just an occasionally interesting fairy tale that they don't have to take terribly seriously.
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Anonymous
[Read the article: Should I come out as an atheist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Atheism is a belief about the universe, inasmuch as it is a belief that there is no God. Nothing more complicated than that. Technically, we don't absolutely, definitively, undisputedly know that God doesn't exist, so it's a belief. Now some beliefs are reasonable, others aren't. I wasn't saying it in the way that religious apologists do - that is, drawing a false equivalency between religious faith and atheism.
As I've said in my other posts, the fact that I'm sitting in a chair typing at my computer is a belief. It's a much more reasonable belief than that I am Napoleon, but it's a belief nonetheless. And inasmuch as it takes place in the universe, you might say it's a belief about the universe.
I agree with you that the burden of proof should rest with the person who asserts that something exists, rather than with the person who asserts that it doesn't.
I'm surprised that someone is accusing me of giving theists an easy time. Anyway, they're going to believe whatever they want to believe, no matter what we say.
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Oy, Anonymous!
[Read the article: Should I come out as an atheist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a pointless semantic game. We can debate whether a belief that something is not true is really a belief, but I wonder what the purpose is.
I think you're falling into the trap of thinking that just because someone is an atheist, they object to the very existence of religions or religious people. I honestly don't care what private beliefs you ascribe to. I really don't care if you believe you're Napoleon unless you raise an army and try to conquer Europe.
Of course you can't prove definitively that there's no god. But you have to live according to some set of beliefs. If you believe in any of the plethora of gods that are offered by mankind, you are going to live your life a certain way; if you don't believe in god, that is also going to affect how you live your life.
If I'm going to live my life as if god doesn't exist, then to me it's a matter of profound indifference whether you call me an atheist or agnostic or whatever. If there weren't any people who believed in god, there wouldn't even be a word to describe those who don't believe. They would just be called "people."
It's a bit annoying that some people seem to caricature atheists as either 19th century positivists or as merely inverted religious believers. In my experience, atheists don't even think of themselves as atheists most of the time, because they've got better things to think about.
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Life imitating art
[Read the article: Col. Boylan's denial]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm currently re-reading "Catch-22" and I couldn't help thinking that our Col. Boylan reminds me of the characters in the novel. Pretty soon he's going to be signing his e-mails alternately "Washington Irving" and "Irving Washington" (and then "John Milton" and "Milton John" when that grows monotonous) wearing a fake moustache and sunglasses like Major Major Major Major....
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@Arne Langsetmo
[Read the article: Col. Boylan's denial]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The more I read about the Iraq occupation, the more I wonder when this whole debacle is going to find its own Joseph Heller to satirize it. Or has this already happened? Have any satirical novels been written about the current Iraq war? If anyone knows of any, I'd be interested to hear.
The closest I can think of is NON-fiction such as "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, which had a quite few Heller-esque moments in it.
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So easy to break, so hard to fix...
[Read the article: When results don't matter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it's telling that America's reputation worldwide is so damaged that the White House thinks it's going to take a time period comparable to the duration of the Cold War to turn things around....
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Some historical background
[Read the article: Boys against girl?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When Hillary ran for the Senate in 2000, one of the defining moments of the race occurred when Rick Lazio was supposedly too aggressive in attacking Hillary in a debate. In the post-mortem it was widely suggested that Lazio had been hurt by his "ungentlemanly" conduct towards Hillary in the debate. Personally I think Lazio lost because he was so obviously a sacrificial lamb thrown into the race by Republicans when it became clear that Hillary was going to win anyway. But it hardly matters what the truth is, if the Clinton team thinks that gender expectations can be used in spinning their debate performance and deflecting criticism...