The Inadequacy of Atheism

I just tuned into this thread and forgive me if I'm a little slow on the up-take, but is this initial post supposed to draw a connection between a disbelief in deities and the downfall of society? It just ain't making much sense to me.

 

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Yep, it's nonsense.

 

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lightgigantic, could you answer the question of: What does it mean to "disharmonize" with the laws of this universe? Also why is it that "Atheists" are some how 'disharmonizing' by simply lacking a beleif in one additional God more than a typical monotheist. No one seems to understand what you mean by disharmonize and how that relates to atheism (lacking a beleif in Gods)


I think Sarkus summed it up:

Thanks
Michael

 

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Like you stated earlier about people on death row being religious - the natural question is why would a person who advocates that god is the cause of all causes perform something that is likely to land them on death row?

Or to look at it another way - if both the mailman and the pope are religious, and if they both (for arguments sake) smoked pot in high school and got a girl pregant, why would the pope be more greatly affected than the mailman?

In otherwords many persons may be religious but that doesn't mean they are all equally religious.

 

Here is a definition of harmony

BG 5.29: A person in full consciousness of Me, knowing Me to be the ultimate beneficiary of all sacrifices and austerities, the Supreme Lord of all planets and demigods, and the benefactor and well-wisher of all living entities, attains peace from the pangs of material miseries.

In otherwords an inharmonious situation is one where a person is thinking that they (or things related to their bodily designation, such as my family, my country, my community etc) are the reason for working or acting in this world, that this world is ultimately mine (in the sense that it is open game and whatever slice of it I can pocket goes to my ultimate benefit) and that the best thing another person can achieve in this world is one's own favour (or alternatively the worst thingthey can do is earn one's disfavour) - taking all these things together in a community of like minded persons (ie the material world) you get a situation far from harmonious

I think Sarkus summed it up:

This is a very unsatisfactory defintion of the universe - who is satisfied with simply observing how laws work in the universe? Desire forces us to become an active participant in this world, even if one is the most reclusive of scientists in history

The laws however are submissive and contingent to his existence - thats the difference between us and god

or alternatively it is us that are not in harmony with god - just like if you fall over board its kind of strange to declare "this water is in the wrong place"

actually the greatest calamity is when one attributes eternal values to one's material designation (my body, my home, my family, my country etc)

 

They need the most forgiveness, and religion offers them that.

I'm not sure that he would be.

 

It would seem that this is yet another excuse for LightG. to post various postmodernist-like nonsense and quote vast tracts of religious mythology, all in some sort of attempt to convince others that his/her brand of mythology is "truth".

 

Its also an opportunity for you to post snide comments - in this way we both reap an element of enjoyment from this thread

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(Why so grumpy? Its a debate site after all - if everyone thought like you your job as a moderator here would be quite boring)

 

Snide, perhaps. Accurate, however.

 

meaning what? you agree with yourself?

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It means that while my response to Boss Foxx's confusion over the apparent purpose of the thread may be perceived as snide, it would also seem to be accurate. Or are you not using mythology to support your support of mythology?

 

Very poor definition - as it assumes and requires belief in God - which means it can not be used within the contexts of a debate that is questioning the existence of that thing.

I'm sorry you think so - however your disatisfaction with the definition is irrelevant - unless you can prove that the Universe is anything MORE than just the Laws that operate within it, or that anything has ever operated outside of those laws?

Irrelevant - ALL our actions obey the laws of the Universe. They can not do anything else. Even DESIRE is merely an obeyance of the laws.

Irrelevant - the thread is about how going against the laws of the universe generates disharmony:

The general principle advocated here is that the universe operates under certain laws and disharmonizing with them is the root cause of all calamity - therefore the greatest calamity is atheism (whether it appears in the guise of organized religion or outright denouncement of the notion of superior maintenance in the universe) - Lightgigantic - Opening post

Yet you have not shown how anyone or anything has ever gone against the laws of the Universe, and especially how ATHEISTS manage to do it, as you seem to claim.

If you are unhappy with the definitions or ideas as put forward by others then you yourself must put forward working definitions of the "laws" that you feel this universe operates under.
And we will debate those.

And who does this? Evidence, please? Or just another red herring?

 

actually it was a response to your question

Also why is it that "Atheists" are some how 'disharmonizing' by simply lacking a beleif in one additional God more than a typical monotheist.

I began by establishing the harmony of a theist (which naturally innvolves a concept of god) and compared that to the harmony of an atheist (that naturally doesn't innvolve a concept of god)

okay here is an example why it is unsatisfactory - the law of gravity may cause a brick to fall on her head or it may cause a $100 to land in our hand - in both cases it is only the law of gravity in operation, so why would we describe one of these incidents as unfortunate and another as fortunate?

Therefore there is no difference between a brick landing on our head and a $100 landing into our hand? After all its all just the same laws in operation - in otherwords comprehending the impersonal forces of nature is no insight into how we interact with the said laws as persons

but its us that experience the results of disharmony - not god - you were suggesting that god is creating disharmony by flauntingthe laws - I was suggesting that such a notion is an oxymoron.

yes I did - it was the part you didn't respond to

In otherwords an inharmonious situation is one where a person is thinking that they (or things related to their bodily designation, such as my family, my country, my community etc) are the reason for working or acting in this world, that this world is ultimately mine (in the sense that it is open game and whatever slice of it I can pocket goes to my ultimate benefit) and that the best thing another person can achieve in this world is one's own favour (or alternatively the worst thingthey can do is earn one's disfavour) - taking all these things together in a community of like minded persons (ie the material world) you get a situation far from harmonious

as above is an indication of how arrangements for material happiness are doomed from the outset

practically everyone - if you ask someone who they are they will give you a whole string of material references

 

Not my question at all. Are you becoming confused?

Your idea of an atheist's harmony only. Anyone can set up a fallacious strawman to knock down. 'Tis easily done.

Personal involvement and outcome. But it is irrelevant to the debate. Both are in harmony with the laws of the Universe - laws that cannot be broken - and laws which you have, as yet, not given any evidence for anything ever breaking them.
Harmony with laws is a neutral stance - neither good nor bad. To assign "good" or "bad", "fortunate" or "unfortunate" is an irrelevant personal subjective assignation - an assignation that is STILL bound by, and thus harmonious with, the laws of the universe.

Irrelevant to the topic of debate.
I AGAIN refer you to your opening post:
"The general principle advocated here is that the universe operates under certain laws and disharmonizing with them is the root cause of all calamity - therefore the greatest calamity is atheism (whether it appears in the guise of organized religion or outright denouncement of the notion of superior maintenance in the universe)" - Lightgigantic - Opening post

We might experience the results of disharmony - but it is not us that are disharmonious!
The innocent citizens of Iraq are feeling the results of war - but they are not doing the fighting!
By flaunting the laws he sets for us he is creating disharmony that we must then live with - all the while we are acting in perfect harmony with the laws of our universe. It is therefore GOD, if he interacts with us outside of the laws that he sets us, that creates the disharmony. No God - no disharmony.

Apologies for overlooking this - but I couldn't - and still don't - see how it related to the earlier part of your opening post.
Furthermore, your assumption within this concerning atheists, and what they see as their "reason for working or acting in this world" requires supporting evidence - otherwise it is nothing but wishful thinking on your part.

Again - your views of atheism show your bias.

And the "eternal value"?

Throughout this you have singularly failed to support your opening statement / hypothesis with any evidence at all.
I suggest you concentrate on that.

 

The way I understand this is that the intention of correct religious belief and practice is selflessness; acting for a greater good; deffereing onesself in favour of a spiritual god or in favour of all other beings (as in buddhism); of generating compassion, charity, ecetera; treating others as you would like to be treated; understanding the divinity in all; living for others not self. This is religion correctly understood and practised.

What LG means is that there is a cult of selfishness that seems to go hand in hand with atheism and materialism - this is called disharmonising with the universe (acting selfishly). To me it is not so much about atheism and theism but about accepting spiritual existence or not.


Now before you all say it... yes I know that not all atheists are selfish, and I know that religion is often not understood or practised correctly. But the mispractise is not the fault of the intention.

 

Then LG has failed to offer any evidence for the ideas that:
(a) atheism = materialism
(b) atheism = selfishness
(c) materialism = selfishness

If anything one would think that the atheist understands that this world is it - not just for themselves but for everyone - and is thus the most precious thing we have.
As such they prefer to treat everyone as they themselves wish to be treated - with compassion, charity etc.

It is patronising and elitist, not to mention absurd and illogical, to think that such things are only found in religion.

LG's problem is clear: he does not fully understand atheism - and puts far more into it than is actually there. LG thus assigns his own bias and stereotypes into his picture of the "Atheist" and creates a strawman that he happily knocks down, not realising that the strawman is not based in reality.

 

I don't understand why people perceive "self interests" as evil, to eat, breath, live, procreate are all selfish acts.

The Virtue of Selfishness:

** The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: "Why do you use the word 'selfishness' to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?" To those who ask it, my answer is: "For the reason that makes you afraid of it." But there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer.

It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word "selfishness" is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual "package-deal," which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind. In popular usage, the word "selfishness" is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment. Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word "selfishness" is: concern with one's own interests. This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one's own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man's actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets:

(a) that any concern with one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and

(b) that the brute's activities are in fact to one's own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors).

For a view of the nature of altruism, its consequences and the enormity of the moral corruption it perpetrates, I shall refer you to Atlas Shrugged-or to any of today's newspaper headlines. What concerns us here is altruism's default in the field of ethical theory.

There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one "package-deal":

(1) What are values?

(2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.Ayn Rand
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/texts/text 1/rand.html

 

I think I would respect him more.

 

Sarkus

atmavan manyate jagat translates as "As I think the whole world thinks" - extended selfishness

Material identification doesn'tt enable that - using one's own existence as the ultimate absolute as a means to venture into further understandings means you will have MY body, MY family, MY people, MY country, and I guess the ultimate limits is MY race (humans) or MY planet, - which means that the circumstances where compassion, charity etc are dictated by one's self or things one sees in relation to one's self (which creates an instant duality - things that are me and things that are not me) - so its limited from the outset

Theistic compassion however is based on the opposite - the ultimate person is god and everyone (myself included) is of the same essential quality as part and parcels of god - therefore applications of charity etc are meant for establishing that connection to god

I never said they were - i said that the proper application of such things (charity, compassion etc) is only found in religion (religiousity properly applied of course)

By the mercy of such great souls as yourself perhaps I am coming closer to perceiving the phenomena - as you can probably also gather I have a few reservations about the extent of your theistic understandings as well

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its not enought to exhibit charity and compassion (after all I imagine that hitler was quite charitable and compassionate to his SS right hand men) - harmony brings in the question of application, not merely exhibition