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Why is religion exempt from critique?

Thread ID: 15900 | Posts: 26 | Started: 2004-12-06

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neoclassical [OP]

2004-12-06 04:07 | User Profile

Written for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Madison, Wisconsin, September 2001.

Distinguished British scientist, author and atheist Richard Dawkins, who was scheduled to accept an "Emperor Has No Clothes Award" on Sept. 22 at the Freedom From Religion Foundation convention, cancelled his appearance in light of travel difficulties after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. He supplied an exclusive article, reprinted below, which was read at the Foundation convention in his stead by James Coors, a professor of Agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The essay is a follow-up to Dawkins' powerful article, "Religion's Misguided Missiles," appearing in The Guardian on September 15, 2001

Stop respecting religion and start submitting it to the same scutiny as any other idea or argument, says Richard Dawkins. And September 11th 2001 makes this scrutiny more urgent than ever...

“To blame Islam for what happened in New York is like blaming Christianity for the troubles in Northern Ireland!” Yes. Precisely. It is time to stop pussyfooting around. Time to get angry. And not only with Islam.

Those of us who have renounced one or other of the three ‘great’ monotheistic religions have, until now, moderated our language for reasons of politeness. Christians, Jews and Muslims are sincere in their beliefs and in what they find holy. We have respected that, even as we have disagreed with it. The late Douglas Adams put it with his customary good humour, in an impromptu speech in 1998 (slightly abridged):

Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, “Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!” If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says “I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,” you say, “I respect that.”

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking “Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?” But I wouldn’t have thought, “Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics,” when I was making the other points. I just think, “Fine, we have different opinions.” But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say “No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it.”

Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe... no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being, and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furore Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be. ([url]http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/index.html[/url])

Douglas is dead, but his words are an inspiration to us now to stand up and break this absurd taboo. My last vestige of ‘hands off religion’ respect disappeared as I watched the “Day of Prayer” in Washington Cathedral. Then there was the even more nauseating prayer-meeting in the New York stadium, where prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonation and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say, “Enough!” Let our tribute to the September dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.

Notwithstanding bitter sectarian hatreds over the centuries (all too obviously still going strong), Judaism, Islam and Christianity have much in common. Despite New Testament watering down and other reformist tendencies, all three pay historic allegiance to the same violent and vindictive God of Battles, memorably summed up by Gore Vidal in 1998:

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved —Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is not just in place for one tribe, but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good.

In the Guardian of September 15th ([url]http://www[/url]. guardian.co.uk/ Archive/0,423,4257777,00.html), I named belief in an afterlife as the key weapon that made the New York atrocity possible. Of prior significance is religion’s deep responsibility for the underlying hatreds that motivated people to use that weapon in the first place. To breathe such a suggestion, even with the most gentlemanly restraint, is to invite an onslaught of patronising abuse, as Douglas Adams noted. But the insane cruelty of the suicide attacks, and the equally vicious though numerically less catastrophic ‘revenge’ attacks on hapless Muslims living in America and Britain, push me beyond ordinary caution.

How can I say that religion is to blame? Do I really imagine that, when a terrorist kills, he is motivated by a theological disagreement with his victim? Do I really think the Northern Ireland pub bomber says to himself, “Take that, Tridentine Transubstantiationist bastards!” Of course I don’t think anything of the kind. Theology is the last thing on the minds of such people. They are not killing because of religion itself, but because of political grievances, often justified. They are killing because the other lot killed their fathers. Or because the other lot drove their great- grandfathers off their land. Or because the other lot oppressed our lot economically for centuries.

My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a ‘they’ as opposed to a ‘we’ can be identified at all. I am not even claiming that religion is the only label by which we identify the victims of our prejudice. There’s also skin colour, language, and social class. But often, as in Northern Ireland, these don’t apply and religion is the only divisive label around. Even when it is not alone, religion is nearly always an incendiary ingredient in the mix as well. And please don’t trot out Hitler as a counter-example. Hitler’s sub-Wagnerian ravings constituted a religion of his own foundation, and his anti-Semitism owed a lot to his never-renounced Roman Catholicism (see [url]http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/murphy_19[/url] _2.html).

It is not an exaggeration to say that religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history. Who killed your father? Not the individuals you are about to kill in ‘revenge’. The culprits themselves have vanished over the border. The people who stole your great-grandfather’s land have died of old age. You aim your vendetta at those who belong to the same religion as the original perpetrators. It wasn’t Seamus who killed your brother, but it was Catholics, so Seamus deserves to die ‘in return’. Next, it was Protestants who killed Seamus so let’s go out and kill some Protestants ‘in revenge’. It was Muslims who destroyed the World Trade Center so let’s set upon the turbaned driver of a London taxi and leave him paralysed from the neck down.

The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the “historic homeland” of the Jews (though the horrific stories of how Joshua and others conquered their Lebensraum might have made them wonder). Even if it wasn’t justifiable at the time, no doubt a good case can be made that, since Israel exists now, to try to reverse the status quo would be a worse wrong.

I do not intend to get into that argument. But if it had not been for religion, the very concept of a Jewish State would have had no meaning in the first place. Nor would the very concept of Islamic lands, as something to be invaded and desecrated. In a world without religion, there would have been no Crusades; no Inquisition; no anti-Semitic pogroms (the people of the diaspora would long ago have intermarried and become indistinguishable from their host populations); no Northern Ireland Troubles (no label by which to distinguish the two ‘communities’, and no sectarian schools to teach the children historic hatreds — they would simply be one community.)

It is a spade we have here, let’s call it a spade. The Emperor has no clothes. It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: ‘Nationalists’, ‘Loyalists’, ‘Communities’, ‘Ethnic Groups’, ‘Cultures’. ‘Civilisations’. Religions is the word you need. Religion is the word you are struggling hypocritically to avoid.

Parenthetically, religion is unusual among divisive labels in being spectacularly unnecessary. If religious beliefs had any evidence going for them, we might have to respect them in spite of their concomitant unpleasantness. But there is no such evidence. To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.

The resilience of this form of hereditary delusion is as astonishing as its lack of realism. It seems that control of the plane which crashed near Pittsburgh was probably wrestled out of the hands of the terrorists by a group of brave passengers. The wife of one of these valiant and heroic men, after she took the telephone call in which he announced their intention, said that God had placed her husband on the plane as His instrument to prevent the plane crashing on the White House. I have the greatest sympathy for this poor woman in her tragic loss, but just think about it! As my (also understandably overwrought) American correspondent who sent me this piece of news said:

“Couldn’t God have just given the hijackers a heart attack or something instead of killing all those nice people on the plane? I guess he didn’t give a flying **** about the Trade Center, didn’t bother to come up with a plan for them” (I apologise for my friend’s intemperate language but, in the circumstances, who can blame her?)

Is there no catastrophe terrible enough to shake the faith of people, on both sides, in God’s goodness and power? No glimmering realisation that he might not be there at all: that we just might be on our own, needing to cope with the real world like grown-ups? Billy Graham, Mr Bush’s spiritual advisor, said in Washington Cathedral:

But how do we understand something like this? Why does God allow evil like this to take place? Perhaps that is what you are asking now. You may even be angry at God. I want to assure you that God understands those feelings that you may have.

What an honour, to be licensed to speak for God! But even Billy Graham’s patronising presumption now fails him:

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a “mystery”.

Less baffled by this deep theological mystery were two of America’s best-known televangelists, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. They knew exactly where to put the blame. Falwell said that God had protected America wonderfully for 225 years, but now, what with abortion and gays and lesbians and the ACLU, “all of them who have tried to secularise America... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.” “Well, I totally concur,” responded Robertson. Bush, to his credit, swiftly disowned this revealing example of the religious mind at work.

The United States is the most religiose country in Christendom, and its born-again leader is eyeball to eyeball with the most religiose people on Earth (the Taliban’s religion-inspired laws include draconian penalties for men whose beard is too short — Monty Python could not have dreamed it up.) Both sides believe that the Bronze-Age God of Battles is on their side. Both take risks with the world’s future in unshakeable, fundamentalist faith that God will grant them the victory. J.C. Squire’s famous verse on the First World War comes to mind:

God heard the nations sing and shout

“Gott strafe England” and “God save the King!”

God this, God that, and God the other thing —

“Good God!” said God, “I’ve got my work cut out!”

Incidentally, people speak of Islamic Fundamentalists, but the customary genteel distinction between fundamentalist and moderate Islam has been convincingly demolished by Ibn Warraq in his well-informed book, Why I am not a Muslim (see also his statement at the website for Secular Islam: [url]http://www.secularislam.org/[/url]).

The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Religion fuels both. All violent enmities in the world today fuel their tanks at this holy gas-station. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different after September 11th. Let’s stop being so damned respectful!

A revised version of a paper written for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Madison, Wisconsin, reproduced by kind permission of Richard Dawkins.

[url]http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/2001-09time_to_stand_up.shtml[/url]

Okiereddust

2004-12-06 05:27 | User Profile

The real question, why is atheism exempt from critique?

Dawkins should stick to science his arguments are pedantic nonsense a smart ten year old could do better on. As with most of the heathen fronters, who by and large are more communist than nationalist anyway.

You don't like God. You never have to hear his name mentioned now, thanks to the ACLU and ADL, in this country. If you really want to live in a more secular state, move to Israel.

and check this out

And please don’t trot out Hitler as a counter-example. Hitler’s sub-Wagnerian ravings constituted a religion of his own foundation, and his anti-Semitism owed a lot to his never-renounced Roman Catholicism (see [url]http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/murphy_19[/url] _2.html).

In other words, people like this view Nazism as another religion, perhaps the worst religion of all. And really the only reason atheistic Nazi's aren't persecuted in this country as a religion is because as a Christian nation their freedom to practice what most view as a bizzare form of medieval superstition is protected by people like me.

Atheistic Nazi's and sympathizers can be the worst sort of dead beat parasites, feeding and parasiting off the legitmate Nationalist movement. I don't always agree with Walter who says basically the NA is as much of a threat as the ADL, but everytime one of them speaks I get the impression I'm more wrong and he's more right.

LlenLleawc

2004-12-06 05:29 | User Profile

I hope you posted this so we all could have a good laugh. The logical holes here are fun to find.

[QUOTE]Stop respecting religion and start submitting it to the same scutiny as any other idea or argument, says Richard Dawkins. And September 11th 2001 makes this scrutiny more urgent than ever...[/QUOTE]

Like the kind of "scrutiny" our society gives marxists and multiculturalists?

[QUOTE] Those of us who have renounced one or other of the three ‘great’ monotheistic religions have, until now, moderated our language for reasons of politeness. [/QUOTE]

Could have fooled me. More likely they've moderated their language because every time they try to comment on what they don't understand they wind up hurting their own cause. Nothing wrong with criticizing religion but most critics haven't spent that much effort understanding it, as this writer obviously hasn't. Most followers of a religion shouldn't have any problem with criticism if you at least know what you're talking about. When, like this writer, you say stupid things like, the biblical God is male and oppresses women, you get ignored. If he had tried to understand his subject he would have known that many christians consider Jesus, Mary and Joseph to symbolicly represent the Trinity. Jesus represents the son, Joseph the Father and Mary the feminine principle of the Holy Spirit. Very few Christians really consider the Absolute God to be limited by the human division of the sexes. I've actually had people tell me that I believe in an old white man in the sky. I find it hard to fathom where these people get off telling me what I believe.

[QUOTE] They are not killing because of religion itself, but because of political grievances, often justified. They are killing because the other lot killed their fathers. Or because the other lot drove their great- grandfathers off their land. Or because the other lot oppressed our lot economically for centuries.[/QUOTE]

Not really, they are killing because we are proactively meddling with their culture.

[QUOTE]The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. [/QUOTE]

Case in point - No, the hatreds stem from the fact that the west and the Jews has been actively engaged in keeping Arabs weak and divided, yet we are too weak and divided ourselves to really dominate them. Even Machiavelli understood you either crush your enemies or leave them alone. Religion has very little to do with it really.

[QUOTE]In a world without religion, there would have been no Crusades; no Inquisition; no anti-Semitic pogroms (the people of the diaspora would long ago have intermarried and become indistinguishable from their host populations); no Northern Ireland Troubles (no label by which to distinguish the two ‘communities’, and no sectarian schools to teach the children historic hatreds — they would simply be one community.)[/QUOTE]

...no pyramids, no cathedrals, no art and literature(since all early art was religious in nature), no medicine(healing practices originated with shamans and priests)...

[QUOTE]What an honour, to be licensed to speak for God! But even Billy Graham’s patronising presumption now fails him:

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a “mystery”. [/QUOTE]

I'm not a big fan of Graham but at least he's honest enough to admit what he doesn't understand.

[QUOTE] The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Religion fuels both. [/QUOTE]

This is the icing on the cake. This author shows all the symptoms of the later disease. The whole article sloppily lumps people together. This reminds of what one of my professors once said, "There are two kinds of people; those who split everyone into two groups and those who don't."

Happy Hacker

2004-12-06 08:53 | User Profile

Dawkins is a militant atheist, with as much faith and devotion as Mother Teresa. Yes, why should Atheists be exempt? Look at how brutal the avowed atheistic countries were in the 20th century. Bush's Iraq war is not for Christianity. Bush has never made that claim. He sold the war on secular ground. And, I certainly don't believe that he is acting according to Chrsitian faith.

Dawkins is all to happy to drag Christianity down by the acts of Jews and Muslims by lumping them together as the same thing, "monotheism."

Oklahomaman

2004-12-06 09:29 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Dawkins is a militant atheist, with as much faith and devotion as Mother Teresa. Yes, why should Atheists be exempt? Look at how brutal the avowed atheistic countries were in the 20th century. Bush's Iraq war is not for Christianity. Bush has never made that claim. He sold the war on secular ground. And, I certainly don't believe that he is acting according to Chrsitian faith.

Dawkins is all to happy to drag Christianity down by the acts of Jews and Muslims by lumping them together as the same thing, "monotheism."[/QUOTE]

There is no way to refute Dawkins claim because his definition of "religion" expands and contracts to conform to whatever claim he's advancing at the moment. Militant religion-is-the-root-of-all-evil atheists are the most arrogant and spiteful creatures on the face of the earth.

Texas Dissident

2004-12-06 14:59 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Oklahomaman]Militant religion-is-the-root-of-all-evil atheists are the most arrogant and spiteful creatures on the face of the earth.[/QUOTE]

You shall know them by their fruit.

solutrian

2004-12-06 18:30 | User Profile

But history shows the contrary: that the most spiteful and vengful creature is one who packs a bible and feels that the Lord of Hosts is backing him up. Atheists are usually just harmless eccentrics who have no wish to damn, burn, banish or break on the rack as many of the believers have done through the centuries. Indeed atheists are usually more intelligent, cultured, and forgiving than the God gang. Looked at closely religion reveals itself as a core of superstitious nonsense.

Okiereddust

2004-12-06 19:20 | User Profile

[QUOTE=solutrian]But history shows the contrary: that the most spiteful and vengful creature is one who packs a bible and feels that the Lord of Hosts is backing him up. Atheists are usually just harmless eccentrics who have no wish to damn, burn, banish or break on the rack as many of the believers have done through the centuries.Indeed atheists are usually more intelligent, cultured, and forgiving than the God gang. So you think Stalin and Mao (and their followers), or the Gestapo for that matter, were just harmless eccentrics, and their methods of interrogating their opponents the epitomy of culture and forgiveness? :wacko:

[Quote]Looked at closely religion reveals itself as a core of superstitious nonsense.[/QUOTE]I have never seen anything that fit the definition of "superstitious nonsense" more than antireligious expressions from people such as yourself.

Compared to believing that modern atheism created a heavenly realm of culture and refinement (surprising a nationalist should head in this direction anyway, but whatever) believing not just in historically established faiths like Christianity, but things like Santa Claus comparatively require much greater maturity and objectivity.

jozen1

2004-12-06 23:53 | User Profile

[QUOTE=solutrian]But history shows the contrary: that the most spiteful and vengful creature is one who packs a bible and feels that the Lord of Hosts is backing him up. [/QUOTE] If you actually do the study, research the numbers not just repeat the tripe atheists like to keep telling each other, you will find this statement to be a bald faced lie. The atheists are tens of millions ahead of all the religions put together and that is handicapping religionists by counting all of history for religion and just the 20th century for the atheists.

Instead of spouting the company line, try thinking for yourself and attempting to verify what someone with an agenda has to say, even if it is someone you agree with. I dare you. Try it sometimes. It really is refreshing.

solutrian

2004-12-07 00:10 | User Profile

It's little suprise that Stalin began as an Orthodox seminarian. And if commentary about his early life is to be believed, many of his later tricks were learned from the church, particularly how fear can controll. The autocrat gang merely substituted one belief system for another and swept into power on it. Superstitious nonsense: Religion is full of it. Take some time to sit down and read the tracts carefully. They pour it out by the ton. Of course , Okiereddust will not include his own religion , but he surely believes that Muslimism, Hinduism, Animisim, etc. are full of baloney and indeed they are. And no, Okiereddust, I do not wish to move out of the Republic to suit you or the ACLU ADL or anyone else. (note the Dictatorial tinge to Okie's advice.) And Israel is not a secular state. Other more apt terms can be applied to it. Okie moreover can not understand how a rationalist can drift to White Nationalism. White National movements in Europe can not understand how American White National movements can be so imbued with the religio- babble so common on these shores. I suspect there is much that Okie misses in the scheme of things. Just take a look at what the United Churches have done the country and how they view White Nationalism. Simply ask them or look at their pronouncements.

Okiereddust

2004-12-07 00:26 | User Profile

[QUOTE=solutrian]It's little surprise that Stalin began as an Orthodox seminarian. And if commentary about his early life is to be believed, many of his later tricks were learned from the church, particularly how fear can controll.[/QUOTE]:lol: Not just Stalin. In fact obviously the entire system of atheism is derived from religion. After all, if there was no religion how could there be any atheism (the negation of religion and God). How can you have somethings negation, when the original object of negsatin doesn't exist.

So religion created atheism, and yourself. I know ewhen we point out its faults, you'll just say

"Darn religionists, they're responsible for everything" :lol:

Posts like your make me think perhaps we need to require a minimal intelligence test before posting

Happy Hacker

2004-12-07 02:03 | User Profile

[QUOTE=solutrian]It's little suprise that Stalin began as an Orthodox seminarian.

What Atheist doesn't have some religious roots?

Superstitious nonsense: Religion is full of it

Arrogance isn't harmless.

Take some time to sit down and read the tracts carefully. They pour it out by the ton.

True enough. But, atheists (and the nominally Christian) out do Christians when they take to preaching their own thing.

Religion strongly influences the culture. Atheism gave us the Communist countries. The Arab countries are created by Islam. Africa and Asia by their religions.

As America becomes less Christian, the less desirable America becomes. The athiests should be loving the direction America is headed.

Christianity contributed to the greatest societies the world has ever known. Christianity also beats all other religions in the free market of religions. Every other religion depends on oppression to spread.

solutrian

2004-12-07 04:14 | User Profile

Okie: Will be glad to test on intelligence with you or anything else. Name your conditions.

Angler

2004-12-07 06:47 | User Profile

People resent having their religious beliefs challenged because it cuts into their comfort zone.

There is more comfort in knowing than in not knowing, and that's why mankind invented religions in the first place. By clinging to religious dogma, an individual can convince himself that he knows something that he does not. In ancient times, people didn't know what caused rain, lightning, or wind, so they invented supernatural beings to account for such phenomena. In Biblical times, epilepsy was explained by demonic possession. In the Middle Ages, droughts and cattle diseases were explained by witchcraft. Eventually natural explanations were found for all those things, but there's always something else that needs an explanation, and the easiest way to explain anything is to say "God did it, and we can't understand how."

Religion is here to stay because the one thing that people fear most -- death -- is also here to stay. People will always need to know what will happen to them after death, since not knowing is just too stressful for many people. Religious dogma fills that gap nicely. Science, by contrast, never claims to know anything with absolute certainty (even atomic theory is still considered a "theory"), and that is an unacceptable substitute for religion and mythology in many peoples' eyes.

Walter Yannis

2004-12-07 11:21 | User Profile

[QUOTE][Angler]There is more comfort in knowing than in not knowing, and that's why mankind invented religions in the first place. By clinging to religious dogma, an individual can convince himself that he knows something that he does not. [/QUOTE]

Which brings us to the basic epistomological question of what you know and why you assume you know it. For assume you must, at least at the most fundamental level.

The mere fact of your entering into reasoned discourse proves your [I]a prior[/I]i faith in reason. We thus see that faith precedes reason, and that reason is the handmaiden of faith.

A leap of faith of necessity precedes all. This is inescapable.

Now, the question of what we will assume before beginning reasoning is of ultimate importance, and it is a question reason itself can advise on. But reason cannot make the choice, and choose we must.

As St. Augustine put it, I believe so that I may understand. The Christian Faith is the matrix within which all of our philosophy adheres. Reason working as handmaiden to the Christian Faith gave us Western Civilization, just as reason working as handmaiden to the a priori faith assumptions of the Jewish Bolsheviks gave us the USSR, and and Romanticism combined with reason gave us Nazi Germany.

I prefer the Christian West. Without the Christian Faith we are but wind in dry grass, gesture without motion, headpiece filled with straw.

Do you see this most fundamental point, Angler?

Petr

2004-12-07 14:48 | User Profile

[B] - "It's little suprise that Stalin began as an Orthodox seminarian." [/B]

And lost his faith (if he ever even had it) through evolutionism. Theological liberalism wasn't invented yesterday:

[COLOR=Blue]"From [B]Landmarks in the Life of Stalin [/B] we read: [/COLOR]

[COLOR=DarkRed] “At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.”

G. Gludjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin’s relates:  “I began to speak of God.  Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence said: ‘You know, they are fooling us, there is no God....’”

Gludjidze reported: “I was astonished at these words.  I had never heard anything like it before.  How can you say such things, Soso?” he asked Stalin, who replied:

[B] “I will lend you a book to read: it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense.”[/B]

“What book is that?” his friend inquired.

[B] “Darwin. You must read it,’ Joseph impressed on me.”[/B] [/COLOR] [COLOR=Blue] A few pages later, another person who was in school with Stalin, said of what they were taught:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=DarkRed] “...in order to disabuse [i.e., free from deception or error] the minds of our seminary students of the myth that the world was created in six days, we had to acquaint ourselves with the geological origin and age of the earth, and be able to prove them in argument; we had to familiarize ourselves with Darwin’s teachings.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Blue] [B]So, in plain words, the church school Joseph Stalin attended labored to get the Bible’s explanation for origins out of kid’s heads and fill those same heads with the evolutionary explanation for origins. [/B] [B]And that was church school well over a hundred years ago! [/B] Education--public, private, church, TV, whatever--is THE tool for getting the evolution explanation for the origin of man and all else into peoples heads. "[/COLOR]

[url]http://www.fixedearth.com/hlsm.html[/url]

Do you really think that Stalin's policies were formed by Christianity, solutrian?

Are you really such a foolish simpleton, or simply blinded by your hatred of God?

Petr

Oklahomaman

2004-12-07 15:02 | User Profile

[QUOTE=solutrian]It's little suprise that Stalin began as an Orthodox seminarian. And if commentary about his early life is to be believed, many of his later tricks were learned from the church, particularly how fear can controll.

Name any non Soviet-era historian that makes the claim. You act as if though Stalin didn't have any contact with any other influences (i.e. V.I. Lenin). More than likely he picked up those tricks from his time in the League of the Militant Godless.

The autocrat gang merely substituted one belief system for another and swept into power on it.

Refer to previous observation about how atheists define religion. If you think Communism is a religion then your hopeless.

And no, Okiereddust, I do not wish to move out of the Republic to suit you or the ACLU ADL or anyone else.

Doubt the ACLU or ADL would what you out in any case. You seem do be doing their work masterfully.

Okie moreover can not understand how a rationalist can drift to White Nationalism. White National movements in Europe can not understand how American White National movements can be so imbued with the religio- babble so common on these shores. I suspect there is much that Okie misses in the scheme of things.

I can't help but to notice that when Europe was Christian, she kept the Saracens out. Make no mistake, the people who gutted Christianity in Europe are also the ones who flooded her with Third World jetsam. Euro White Nationalists are still a partial product of the acedemic industrial complex it would seem.

Just take a look at what the United Churches have done the country and how they view White Nationalism. Simply ask them or look at their pronouncements.[/QUOTE]

As if the Freedom From Religion Foundation holds white nationalism the highest regards.

Ponce

2004-12-07 17:47 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]You shall know them by their fruit.[/QUOTE]

Ponce <------- wants to be a watermelon with a big halo.

il ragno

2004-12-08 08:17 | User Profile

I admire Neoclassical's stones for posting this bit of badly-needed common sense. Heck, I don't even mind the shrill and hysterical responses; I expected them. But the tack of 'atheism is a kind of religion, too' is undiluted boobery. You cannot construct a hierarchy of quasi-religious beliefs around the [B]absence [/B] of a deity.

As for Marxism/communism, these have been assiduously clung-to as though they were religions precisely [I]because [/I] of religion! Prostrating oneself before an all-holy is a hard habit to break, even if you've traded sky-gods and holy books for maximum leaders and five-year-plans.

Walter Yannis

2004-12-08 08:46 | User Profile

[QUOTE][il ragno]But the tack of 'atheism is a kind of religion, too' is undiluted boobery. You cannot construct a hierarchy of quasi-religious beliefs around the [B]absence [/B] of a deity.[/QUOTE]

Nonsense. Zen, as an example, has no diety, but surely it is a religion.

Zen makes its own postulates about ultimate things. Postulating ultimate truths is the very stuff of religion.

Atheism makes its own assumptions about first things, and so by definition is a religion.

Nietzsche had a thing on this, forget where. But as I recall he had little patience with the whole notion that belief in God was religion but denial of belief in God wasn't.

Have you read Kirkegaard?

[QUOTE]As for Marxism/communism, these have been assiduously clung-to as though they were religions precisely [I]because [/I] of religion! Prostrating oneself before an all-holy is a hard habit to break, even if you've traded sky-gods and holy books for maximum leaders and five-year-plans.[/QUOTE]

Respectfully, Ragman, this is boobery.

The sociobiologists (including E.O. Wilson) tell us that evolution designed us for religious belief just as surely as it designed us to reason and make tools. We cannnot NOT have a religion, any more than my computer can hope to function without an operating system. Imagine my computer uploading a new operating system named "Anti-Operating System/1" and then loudly proclaiming its ability to work without an operating system, and you have basically the substance of the Atheist position.

Religion is an inescapable fact of our existence. All this talk about not having a religion is itself a religion, and an ersatz one at that. Such will never be able to satisfy man's most deeply evolved needs. Only real religions can do that, be they theistic like Islam or non-theistic like Zen.

You have a religious operating system. I'm only asking that you have the honesty to admit it, and then take a look at what it is. I'd love to talk to you about whatever your ultimate assumptions about this weird existence of ours are.

But this smarmy above-it-all attitude is a bit much, especially when you're much more of an altar boy in your basic outlook than even I ever was, what with your caterwallering about "morality" and all.

Warmest regards,

Walter

il ragno

2004-12-08 11:04 | User Profile

It would be funny if it weren't so sad, this persistent fantasy that not believing in a God or gods is in itself a kind of religion. Sorry, Walter but just because you preface your remarks with "of course" doesn't make it so. Some kind of concrete proof would help your argument. A [I]lot[/I]. But this odd bit of whimsy appears to be a central tenet of most religions. Everything on Earth is viewed and explained through this most narrow of prisms. (And every seeming contradiction, explained away.) [I]No religion is just another religion[/I] is kind of like convicting a defendant by pointing to the complete lack of any evidence tying him to the crime as the smoking gun sealing his 'guilt'.

I would point out that it is exclusively the skeptics and doubters who have pushed us out of the Dark Ages, but doubtless Petr is in the wings somewhere with more of his 'evidence' that every great thinker and scientific mind was actually a devout Believer travelling incognito; probably faking skepticism just to get into a graduate program the way ethnic types change their names to get into show biz.

By now I'm used to the types of arguments I'm going to receive on this topic around here...but I never fail to be astonished by Walter's ceaseless inistence that:

a] moral codes of behavior are [I]only [/I] an option for the properly pious

and

b] morality in and of itself is a sort of emblem of pussyhood - something to be deeply ashamed of unless you have the validating balm of church membership to make it at least condonable

When an [I]actual [/I] ex-altar boy keeps derisively calling YOU one because you insist on clinging to notions of right and wrong, or good and evil....well, frankly, I get confused. How does this work exactly, Walter? If every system of belief is a religion - as you insist - then why should codes of moral conduct be net-plusses for Christians, Zen Buddhists and Muslims - but net-minuses for we deacons of the One Untrue Not-Church?

Walter Yannis

2004-12-08 11:52 | User Profile

[QUOTE][l ragno]It would be funny if it weren't so sad, this persistent fantasy that not believing in a God or gods is in itself a kind of religion. Sorry, Walter but just because you preface your remarks with "of course" doesn't make it so. Some kind of concrete proof would help your argument.[/QUOTE]

And your persistent failure to address the basic issue is no response.

Do you understand my point that science itself informs us that we cannot avoid having a religion because Evolution designed us that way?

Please address that point directly.

[QUOTE]I would point out that it is exclusively the skeptics and doubters who have pushed us out of the Dark Ages,[/QUOTE]

Would you include in your list of "doubters" the deeply religious Newton?

[QUOTE]but doubtless Petr is in the wings somewhere with more of his 'evidence' that every great thinker and scientific mind was actually a devout Believer travelling incognito; probably faking skepticism just to get into a graduate program the way ethnic types change their names to get into show biz.[/QUOTE]

Name me a few of these skeptic scientists who pulled us out of the Dark Ages. I can't think of a single atheist among them.

[QUOTE]By now I'm used to the types of arguments I'm going to receive on this topic around here...but I never fail to be astonished by Walter's ceaseless inistence that:

a] moral codes of behavior are [I]only [/I] an option for the properly pious

and

b] morality in and of itself is a sort of emblem of pussyhood - something to be deeply ashamed of unless you have the validating balm of church membership to make it at least condonable[/QUOTE]

You miss my point completely. I don't know why this is so hard to get.

Everybody has a moral code of necessity, because Nature designed us that way. You say that moral codes are an "option." TRY TO GET THIS: my point is that moral codes are NOT OPTIONAL. All men must have a moral code because that's just the way Evolution designed us.

This is precisely the point. Do you understand this main point now?

As to why you think I find morality a badge of wussiness, I have no idea. Read the quote from Milosz in my signature. My gripe with you is that you assume without question the rightness of a sort of do-gooder Christianity Lite - moral assumptions that you simply imbibed from the surrounding Deformation cultural environment without apparent question - and then turn around and use your secular Methodism as a bludgeon against the real thing.

It's dishonest, that's all. Well, it's also more than a tad irritating from a man of your obvious intellect, but I won't belabor the point. I'll add that it's unbecoming.

[QUOTE]When an [I]actual [/I] ex-altar boy keeps derisively calling YOU one because you insist on clinging to notions of right and wrong, or good and evil....well, frankly, I get confused. How does this work exactly, Walter? If every system of belief is a religion - as you insist - then why should codes of moral conduct be net-plusses for Christians, Zen Buddhists and Muslims - but net-minuses for we deacons of the One Untrue Not-Church?[/QUOTE]

Because Muslims and Zen Buddhists have the intellectual probity to admit that their morality proceeds from religious assumptions. You in sharp contrast claim a moral superiority for your position just because you LABEL it non-religion, as if we're all supposed to accept that the substance of a thing changes with its name. (There's a name for that, by the way, nominalism. Duns Scotus put that to rest long ago). Calling a dog a horse doesn't make it whinney. Things are what they are regardless of what label you choose.

Non-belief is itself a belief. It is a position that precedes all reason and experience, just like belief, and is therefore by definition a deeply religious position. Calling it the "un-religion" doesn't change the substance of the thing.

But hey, Ragman, I'll admit that it's pretty good marketing. I'm reminded of 7-UP's "Uncola" advertising campaign. They milked that "we're not really just another carbonated softdrink" nonsense for all it was worth, and who can really blame them? They struck pay dirt with that one. It's really the same with the so-called "non religious" folks like you. You claim that your most fundamental assumptions about the meaning of existence aren't the same as everbody else's assumptions, because, well, because, you CALL THEM the "Un-Religion." Good marketing, and it's brought my Modernist enemies victory after victory in the kulterkampf. But as my friend from Mississippi would say, that dog won't hunt. Especially in regard to you and your overweening nicens-little-moo-cow morality. You're busted on that one, old chum.

NeoNietsche to his credit understood this point - it was one that we agreed upon. In fact, I remember he gave me a "rocker" smiley when I first called you an "altar boy" in this same context long ago. Why this is so hard for an obviously smart guy like you to get is beyond me.

Walter

Angler

2004-12-09 08:52 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Which brings us to the basic epistomological question of what you know and why you assume you know it. For assume you must, at least at the most fundamental level.

The mere fact of your entering into reasoned discourse proves your [I]a prior[/I]i faith in reason. We thus see that faith precedes reason, and that reason is the handmaiden of faith.

A leap of faith of necessity precedes all. This is inescapable.

Now, the question of what we will assume before beginning reasoning is of ultimate importance, and it is a question reason itself can advise on. But reason cannot make the choice, and choose we must.

As St. Augustine put it, I believe so that I may understand. The Christian Faith is the matrix within which all of our philosophy adheres. Reason working as handmaiden to the Christian Faith gave us Western Civilization, just as reason working as handmaiden to the a priori faith assumptions of the Jewish Bolsheviks gave us the USSR, and and Romanticism combined with reason gave us Nazi Germany.

I prefer the Christian West. Without the Christian Faith we are but wind in dry grass, gesture without motion, headpiece filled with straw.

Do you see this most fundamental point, Angler?[/QUOTE]I understand what you're saying but totally disagree. There is a world of difference between having faith in reason and having faith in religion/mythology. In fact, I wouldn't even call faith in reason "faith" at all, since people trust reason on account of its empirically-observable correspondence with reality. In other words, trust placed in reason is not blind trust -- we know that reason works because we can see it work.

If human beings cannot even put their faith in logic or evidence, then how on earth can they put their faith in anything else, let alone religion? Logic and evidence are the foundation of all human knowledge. There is no way to reduce it further without crossing into the no-man's land of intellectual nihilism.

Furthermore, I don't agree that Christianity can take credit for the development of Western thought in any regard besides theology and politics. The philosophy of many leading Christian thinkers was just absurd -- the arguments for the existence of God due to Aquinas, Anselm, and others would get any modern philosophy undergraduate student an "F" on his term paper. And the fact that most notable scientists of the Middle Ages were Christian -- a mere reflection of the times in which they were born and raised -- in no way justifies the leap that their beliefs led to their discoveries. In fact, the viewpoint that "God did it, and we can't/shouldn't understand how" was quite prevalent in the Middle Ages, and such a perspective can only be harmful to the advancement of knowledge. Sometimes there was persecution involved, potential (e.g., Copernicus, who refrained from publishing his heliocentric theory until he was close to death) or actual (e.g., Galileo).

One last point. If faith is such a reliable method of arriving at truth, then why can't even Christians make up their minds about what they believe?

[url]http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=192[/url]

You won't see physicists all over the world disagreeing about, say, the fundamentals of electromagnetism. So why can't Christians come to an agreement about something so fundamental as how one is "saved"? (If it's the Devil who has led to the confusion, as I don't doubt some will claim, then how do they know that the Devil hasn't confused everything else they think they know about their religion as well?)

Texas Dissident

2004-12-09 15:42 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]In other words, trust placed in reason is not blind trust -- we know that reason works because we can see it work.

Tell that to the African tribesman who can see his joo-joo working. You're presupposing reason and that is, at bottom, faith in reason, which in turn is a product of Western Christian thought.

If human beings cannot even put their faith in logic or evidence, then how on earth can they put their faith in anything else, let alone religion? Logic and evidence are the foundation of all human knowledge. There is no way to reduce it further without crossing into the no-man's land of intellectual nihilism.

I don't think that's Walter's argument. Nothing wrong with logic and evidence as long as we don't elevate it above God, thereby making it our god. Reason and logic are God given and in their proper place are a wonderful thing. This is characteristic of all kinds of things Angler, from sex to the environment to money. We get into trouble when we try to elevate things above God. As St. Paul said, worshipping the Creation instead of the Creator.

Furthermore, I don't agree that Christianity can take credit for the development of Western thought in any regard besides theology and politics. The philosophy of many leading Christian thinkers was just absurd -- the arguments for the existence of God due to Aquinas, Anselm, and others would get any modern philosophy undergraduate student an "F" on his term paper. And the fact that most notable scientists of the Middle Ages were Christian -- a mere reflection of the times in which they were born and raised -- in no way justifies the leap that their beliefs led to their discoveries. In fact, the viewpoint that "God did it, and we can't/shouldn't understand how" was quite prevalent in the Middle Ages, and such a perspective can only be harmful to the advancement of knowledge. Sometimes there was persecution involved, potential (e.g., Copernicus, who refrained from publishing his heliocentric theory until he was close to death) or actual (e.g., Galileo).

Well, I'm really not qualified to speak on all these mattters, but it seems to me that even taking the bad with the good, none of Western development anywhere could have happened outside of the underlying, Christian foundation of its people. We don't see the same development, on the same level, anywhere else in the non-Christian world.

One last point. If faith is such a reliable method of arriving at truth, then why can't even Christians make up their minds about what they believe? [url]http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=192[/url] You won't see physicists all over the world disagreeing about, say, the fundamentals of electromagnetism. So why can't Christians come to an agreement about something so fundamental as how one is "saved"?[/QUOTE]

I would counter this by saying that despite appearances to contrary, there is an amazing 2000 year widespread agreement of what constitutes orthodox (saving) Christianity. There are many differences in ecclesiastical matters, sure, but the basic foundations of Christian truth are rather widely agreed on.

Okiereddust

2004-12-10 01:38 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Angler]I understand what you're saying but totally disagree. There is a world of difference between having faith in reason and having faith in religion/mythology. In fact, I wouldn't even call faith in reason "faith" at all, since people trust reason on account of its empirically-observable correspondence with reality. In other words, trust placed in reason is not blind trust -- we know that reason works because we can see it work. [/QUOTE] First, I hope you have checked out this thread

[URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15925]Anthony Flew Now Believes In God[/URL] It doesn't go into details, but basically Anthony Flew is stating the limits of what you call empirically-observable correspondence with reality to actually determine reality. Blind faith in empiricism is now pretty much in decline in scientific philosophy, and atheism prevails because of ideological and cultural, not philosophical reasons.

You might check out a book called Darwin's Black Box for a current discussion on the limits of your philosophy.

Ponce

2004-12-10 02:02 | User Profile

Why do you have to read what others have to say in order to believe in God?

You don't need a religion in order to believe in "The Force" and the one that you call God did not asked for a "church" or a building where you can "pray" to him.

Be your heart be your guide, if you do feels good then is good and if it feels bad then stop for it is bad,,,,,simple.

Out here in the forest I go for a walk every day or night, in the day time I see the canopy of the trees and hear the singing of the birds and thats all the evidence that I need that there is something bigger than me, and at night I look at the stars and I feel like it is "it" looking down at me.

Religion and belief in the thereafter was created by man in order to believe that they are not going to die.

Heaven and hell is what you make out of your life while you are alive here on earth and has nothing to do with what will happen after you die, me? I am very happy to say that here in the forest of Oregon I am in my own private heaven.

People are so afraid of not going to "heaven" and so scare of the prechers that they don't enjoy the here now and as far as I am concern that's all that there is,,,,,,,,you are born, you live, you die,,,,,,,,good by.