Yes, Bowser. I recall the glorious stories the old folks tell about the Atheist Revolution in Russia in 1918.
Consider this, Bowser ... if there are one million people who recite the Nicene Creed, or the Apostolic Creed, and proclaim Jesus to be their savior, and agree to this and this and this and this and this and this and this and
that point which were agreed to in a convention of non-divine humans (e.g. not Jesus), then we might say that these are Christians.
Now, you have one person who has never been taught about God.
Now, you have one person who has been actively taught that the Christian God is evil.
Now, you have one person who has been taught specifically that religious people believe in a fiction called God.
You equate the term that describes them,
atheist, with a term which describes much greater connections between people, such as
Lutheran, or
Latter-Day Saint.
I like the fact that you would accuse our atheist neighbors here at Exoscience of being bloodthirsty tyrants caught up in an international balance of economy and human dominion. I'm willing to bet the more common sentiment among them is that they wonder why Christians and other monotheists are so desperate to
force people to believe in a monotheistic God.
Do you have a
valid point?
Christians were called atheists before they killed off the people who called them atheists. I guess you're right. When I consider the toll wrought by these atheists who call themselves christian, it seems that atheism suddenly rises to become one of the most dangerous ideas in the history of humankind.
You have yet to demonstrate a toll of atheism that does not derive from prior mistakes made in the name of religion.
And you have to understand, about the pseudo-Communist crusades against religion: it had
nothing to do with whether there was a God; it had to do with the fact that the churches were organizing and encouraging political dissent. One can believe in God in a pseudo-Communist tyranny. In effect, what I think you're resenting there is that it's a man with a gun telling you what to believe about God instead of a man with a book and a funny white collar.
But crimes against the church had more to do with economy and dominion than with God specifically. But, since God is an idea largely exploited for economic dominion, I see how the theists might resent the Communist intrusion onto their enterprise.
Simply put: the bigotry against atheism of which I am accusing is simply the theistic dismissal of atheism based on theists' assumptions about atheists' beliefs.
I'm dragging out a portion of a thread where Alderian and I bashed heads over Satanism. I was disturbed at his assumptions about other people's beliefs.
Bold is me, and bold-italic is our friend Alderian
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I have no problem marking groups. I have a problem with people who decide that their own idea of what that group is happens to ignore, completely, the group's own assessment of itself.
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I do not completely ignore what a group says about itself, I just consider the source and note the bias. I, like most people, use my common sense combined with my own experience, frame of reference, as you like to call it when it comes to the mandates of common sense.
http://www.exosci.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000282-4.html (it's the 5/24, 8:08 pm post)
Now, do you see above what I'm objecting to? It's the reason I'm on a "murderous bigots" bent. I am intentionally ignoring the manner by which Christians define their faith in order to exploit a limited portion of Christian history so that I might falsely maintain that all Christians are murderous bigots.
Do you understand this? Is it easy enough to see? I'm actualizing Alderian's declaration that, "I do not completely ignore what a group says about itself, I just consider the source and note the bias."
In other words, what I'm driving after with "murderous bigots" is that I have "considered the source" of Christian witness, and "noted the bias".
Now ... how does this apply to the present?
Very simply, stop assuming that atheism means what
you decide it means. Or, to be more accurate, stop deciding that an atheist believes what you decide s/he believes.
What you seem to have missed throughout your entire participation in the current thread is the rousing exchanges in other threads whereby theists were dismissing the atheist perspective merely because it was easier to espouse common theistic propaganda about atheism than to actually give any real thought to what atheists were saying. From the word "Go", lately, the theistic assumption has been that without the Christian God there to whip you into conformity, people will dissolve into anarchy. I find that notion offensive, since it only describes the depth of vision of those particular theists. It says more about the theists who believe such stupid things than it does the atheists they've chosen to hate.
Atheism would count up all of the rapes, murders, and pillages of the past, look at its theistic human brethren, and simply move on with life, except that the raping, murdering, pillaging theists think that God excuses their part of it, and seem to want to hold atheism responsible for ... well, if you really believe that Atheism is the motivating factor for Communist Russia, Red China, or Red Korea, then, sure .... Anyway, if you choose to believe that, then we can watch the Christians forgive their own historical sins because God allows it while trying to hold atheists accountable. At least, it really does seem that theists are trying to hold atheism accountable for tragedies not exclusive to atheism.
In other words, it's more theistic hypocrisy. But that's okay, right, 'cuz God forgives?
And as I write this I see yet another post which misses the point.
No, Bowser. It's not atheistic morality.
It's me trying to demonstrate exactly how ridiculous you're being. My conduct, with the "murderous bigots" bit is, at its heart, inexcusable. But that you choose to plow right through it and still try to make the same kind of generalizations just cracks me up.
That is why I'm being so damned inexcusable. Is it that you're comfortable working with that kind of generalization? Where you simply call what you don't like negative, and discredit its attempts to dispel such prejudices because, well, they're negative just like you've imagined, even though you've never really paid attention?
Puh-leeze.
I've watched this same function pop up over and over recently. My point is that I can do it, too, and if you can't see how worthless it is when I do it, then it scares me to think that you might believe such a practice has worth when
you engage it.
Atheism claims that there is no God to force people to conform. It makes no other moral assumptions, except to assume that such morals are left to individuals to figure out.
Now, what's the safeguard? Well, if we don't shortcut, compress, economize, or betray knowledge in order to conform it to an artificial, religious template, then morality becomes quite, quite easy. Morality would thus come from nature. Since Western religion generally sees nature as subservient to Mankind and its God (Genesis, anyone?), it tends to try to make reality conform to its religious assumptions. For instance,
Why do we say "God bless you" when someone sneezes? What were "Prayer Towns" or
encomienda? Whence comes the idea that the employment of modern medicine to prolong life is offensive to God? (Church of Christ Science, I believe, is an acceptable reference for this practice. As a personal note, I recall a young girl named Abby, who lived next door to me when I was 7. When I asked my folks why Abby was ... well ... the "PC" term is "developmentally delayed" ... it was explained to me that she'd been sick with a high fever for over a week, and that this hurt her brain. Her older sister told me that a demon had attacked her for a week, and that her parents and the pastor fought off the Devil and saved Abby's life. Might I tip my hat to Abby's folks both for their Godly wisdom and the produce of their faith.)
These are negative examples, to be sure, but I often have difficulty extracting the positive processes of this similar artifice against nature. It is the right of any human being to believe what they want. But if one insists on applying an artificial template to reality and demanding that the Universe conform, well, would it be too much to ask that they should understand the contrivance they see?
When you assume that atheism A) is doctrinally structured like religions, or B) is unable to cause morality as you see fit, you are simply applying your preconceived template to reality. It doesn't make sense that someone can be a naturally moral atheist, hence atheists cannot be naturally moral.
But I don't think the Black Magick bit is inexcusable. That's true, from my point of view. I recognize Christians don't think that way, but I also recognize that they don't see it as a matter of disrespect to invoke supernatural intervention against an unwitting participant.
But I'm going to be a pain in the ass about the murderous bigots until a few things change. I'm perfectly willing to waste my time fighting fire with fire. (See what happens when I take part in Dog-Eat-Dog?
)
thanx,
Tiassa
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot
[This message has been edited by tiassa (edited October 08, 2000).]
