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12-09-2011, 06:05 AM   #136
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QuoteOriginally posted by kenafein Quote
No offense was intended ash. I just like to argue.
I was just making a joke, not making a point of theology. I said "depending upon how you look at it."

12-09-2011, 06:32 AM   #137
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QuoteOriginally posted by Jonathan Mac Quote
I think that the issue of distrust of atheists stems from a very common misconception that causes it to fall outside of what people understand in a way that a believer in another religion wouldn't. What I hear a lot when I tell people I'm an atheist is something along the lines of "What? You don't believe in anything?"

That's where the problem lies, because this idea is a misconception & anathema to most people, whereas belief in another religion is not. I believe in lots of things, and I believe in them strongly: brotherly love, morality, truth, being kind to your fellow man etc etc, blah blah blah. Most of what christians like to call 'christian ethics', though they bear little or no resemblance to what's in the bible. I also believe that there is no god and that the belief in gods is highly detrimental to the state of the entire world and to mankind. And most importantly that one does not need to believe in a god to be moral or good. In fact, a disbelief in god is preferable as it indicates that one believes in good for good's sake, not due to a fear of ending up in hell & being punished for all eternity.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm an atheist myself as I find it impossible to conceive of a creator, of a god of any kind, or even of the supernatural. I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know that the above don't exist, I just find it impossible to conceive. However, provide me with verifiable, repeatable evidence and I'll change my opinions. My atheism has come about after a lot of soul searching, meditation, thought experiments, reading and a pretty intense period as a psychonaut, so it's not a position I've espoused lightly.

My view on religion is that it makes sense that man created god, not the other way round, and for the simple reason that there are a lot of complex, hard to answer questions that stone age pagans and the fore-runners of all modern religions had no way of answering. God or gods were a one-size-fits-all answer to questions such as 'why does the sun rise?' However, just as the stone axe was the pinnacle of technology for a couple of million years and we now have such things as the computer I'm typing on, religion, to me, has been somewhat left behind by scientific knowledge and enquiry. I do find much of religion to be problematic, such as the things touched on before like the Spanish Inquisition - though I'm not so simplistic as to think that religion is the sole cause for such atrocities. It is however a wonderful excuse for those who commit such crimes against humanity. I liken it to guns, which as the cliche states don't themselves kill people - they just make it so much easier to do so.

As I said, I'm an atheist but I have no problem with those who aren't. As long as they respect my (lack of ) beliefs and accept that I live by a strong moral and ethical code, I respect them and their beliefs. In fact I spend every Tuesday volunteering with a church group helping to teach immigrants and refugees English and have made some good friends there who do just that. The consensus we've reached is that people will do as people do, regardless of faith or belief.
12-09-2011, 06:51 AM   #138
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QuoteOriginally posted by GeneV Quote
I was just making a joke, not making a point of theology. I said "depending upon how you look at it."
For my part I was trying to build another joke on top of that with the symbols of the three big currencies. The attempted joke aside, I have pondered whether, these days, money, or having the maximum amount of it, is in fact the only universally shared and strongly held 'value' (and how this might (or might not) explain many of the contemporary ills ... ).
12-09-2011, 03:10 PM   #139
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QuoteOriginally posted by wildweasel Quote
Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm an atheist myself as I find it impossible to conceive of a creator, of a god of any kind, or even of the supernatural. I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know that the above don't exist, I just find it impossible to conceive. However, provide me with verifiable, repeatable evidence and I'll change my opinions. My atheism has come about after a lot of soul searching, meditation, thought experiments, reading and a pretty intense period as a psychonaut, so it's not a position I've espoused lightly.
QuoteQuote:
My view on religion is that it makes sense that man created god, not the other way round, and for the simple reason that there are a lot of complex, hard to answer questions that stone age pagans and the fore-runners of all modern religions had no way of answering. God or gods were a one-size-fits-all answer to questions such as 'why does the sun rise?'
Actually, that view of 'stone age Pagans' is kind of a projection of what word-based religions and certain more modern rationalisms find to be 'the important questions,' ...it basically claims that the ancients must have basically had the same questions and uncertainties about the world as are important to *moderns,* when that's just not quite the case. What most people think of as 'Religion' these days is much more based on claiming/needing 'Answers' ...and with a certain 'literal-mindedness' that's sharply divergent in many ways from being able to 'think mythically.' ...'Myth' is kind of a dirty word to both rationalism, and to literalist forms of religion that claim 'Myth is bad, but our myths aren't myths, they're 'Truth.'

Consequently, people tend to say of ancient or tribal cultures, "They must be trying to do the same sort of thing, just more 'ignorantly and primitively,' ...but that just wasn't the central raison d'etre *of* religion and spirituality, ..it's really much more about relationship and wisdom-teaching than 'searching for authoritative definitions.'


Part of that image was actually deliberately-crafted by colonizing monotheisms: portraying the native cultures wherever they go as 'primitive, fearful, ignorant, appeasing Gods cause they feared death and the natural world because they couldn't understand or control it,' ...but actually those are ideas these colonizing monotheisms brought *with* them. Even 'Superstition' is a Christian missionary word for 'holdovers from the native/ancestral religion, as opposed to *ours.* ' That's actually where those portrayals come from.


There's an interesting book by Stephen Prothero that got some coverage like last year, the title escapes me: but it speaks much of how different religions actually are about asking *different questions,* so to speak, seeing different fundamental *problems* for human experience/soul, and thus coming to different ideas of 'solutions.'

Simply assuming that other paths are trying to do the same thing, just 'badly,' is in some ways a failure to *understand or recognize* that differences exist, not, for instance, some 'proof' that they're necessarily all the *same* somehow.

Even as a *modern* Pagan, I find that a lot of the assumptions that people bring to certain conversations are pretty strange: all about 'proof' and usually *that* to the end of dealing with, really, Christianity's own fixation on death and belief-about-authority-for eternal not-dying and all. (Missionaries almost always lead with this presumption, however they present it. ) I think the disconnect usually shows on my face: they'll come up being like, 'How will you deal with your overpowering fear of Death and Hell?' I'll be like, 'Say what?'

It also seems that a lot of atheists inherit the same idea of the 'stakes' even if they take the other side of the 'belief' issue: often they find the idea that they're the pinnacle of 'spiritual evolution' as flattering as do many Christians. ...the idea that 'One God's better than a hierarchy of Gods which is better than a multiplicity of Gods: see, must be progress,' is one many atheists will say, 'Hey, no Gods is doing that one better!' ...Of course, others in the world might just not see it that way.

People really would be better served to be careful what assumptions and priorities they're bringing to a given question, before assuming everyone else in the world must/must have shared them.

In the case of a lot of the Neolithic societies, it would seem there was far less existential 'doubt' about whether or not or how the dead continued to exist and more concern about keeping a *continuity* with them among the living. We can pretty much infer a lot of this from some of the megalithic architecture: (It doesn't speak of *fear,* but a certain intimacy. ) also by what points of view over time have seemed to find them the most *baffling.*

12-10-2011, 02:29 AM   #140
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QuoteOriginally posted by Ratmagiclady Quote
Even as a *modern* Pagan, I find that a lot of the assumptions that people bring to certain conversations are pretty strange: all about 'proof' and usually *that* to the end of dealing with, really, Christianity's own fixation on death and belief-about-authority-for eternal not-dying and all. (Missionaries almost always lead with this presumption, however they present it. ) I think the disconnect usually shows on my face: they'll come up being like, 'How will you deal with your overpowering fear of Death and Hell?' I'll be like, 'Say what?'
Oh yeah. You want to truly baffle a rabid evangelist? Show absolutely no fear at all when they mention sin and fear of death et all. They just don't get the whole concept of NOT fearing death or "God" at all. You don't believe in Original Sin, saviors et all, fear the after life you're really hard to subject, subdue and convert. Getting someone to toe that imaginary line when they're just not afraid at all of what comes after death is almost impossible.

Religious people simply don't get people who have no use for fear of any of that. I said something like that to a witnessing person once and he just shook his head at me. He was like "We all fear death. It's a part of human nature." I just wanted to smack the guy he was so patronizing. I didn't. I just politely explained my stance on that subject but I could tell he just didn't believe me at all. He thought I was just saying that to mess with him. I wasn't.

For the record I just don't even see the point. That's not to say I want to die right this minute, but I've actually been thatclose to death a couple of times and my last thoughts were not about my supposed "sins" and/or what "wrath of God" I might be facing. It was more like "Oh sh-Now? Oh well, okay..." Acceptance was a very rapid thing for me at the time and I was actually very surprised not to die. Both times I really thought that was IT. The process of dying I am not looking forward to. I have a feeling some types of dying can hurt. But that's over after a bit and what comes after? That's the biggest adventure of all so far as I am concerned.

Curious, yes. Scared, nah...
12-10-2011, 02:33 AM - 3 Likes   #141
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Just for the record this is amazing, this conversation, that we can all have it here without it ending up a shouting match, that's awesome. Most places I go an attempt at a rational conversation about any of this usually ends up a big old verbal slug fest. I'm really impressed with you all on this one. We do get into it, but this place is one of the few places I've ever hung out in where even people who are polar opposites in terms of this kind of thing can get along well enough to openly discuss why they believe what they do. Cool.
12-10-2011, 05:36 AM - 1 Like   #142
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QuoteOriginally posted by kenafein Quote
All I am saying, if you take the bible at face value, it seems polytheistic, and a much easier conclusion to come to. I'm aware of the mental gymnastics they go through to call themselves monotheists. It is interesting, like much of the astonishing feats surrounding Jesus, that the trinity is not a unique or original idea either. Ash corrected Gene's joke. It's fine to express a different opinion, but there are other opinions supported by scripture and many sects don't believe in the trinity at all.
The bible actually preserves the sort of historical 'gradient' leading the Jews from polytheism to monotheism, if you look through the older books of the old testament. Yahweh was one god of many, and the road to monotheism was set when he started demanding exclusivity. The Christian Trinity thing is a later reinjection of polytheism from Roman thinkers, but it's a bit of an intellectual fabrication which is why people still have trouble making sense of it in a truly 'felt' way.

My view is that the monotheism thing, for all its faults, has been a necessary step in the evolution of our modern culture but ultimately doomed to crumble. I used to think that monotheism made more sense than polytheism, that polytheism was a bit silly, and, crudely, that if a belief in God is false, a belief in multiple gods is multiply false! But now I think I have understood that monotheism demands a different mode of belief than polytheism, and denies dualism, the possibilty of doubt, and in most cases a tolerance of other beliefs.

I think that Polytheists and Atheists are more comfortable together than Monotheists and Atheists. Polytheists, I think, can hold their religious view of the world alongside a scientific knowledge of the world, with far less of a sense of conflict. Atheists struggle with Polytheism sometimes becuase mostly we are accustomed to dealing with Monotheists, and mistakenly believe that Polytheistic beliefs inhabit the same space as Monotheistic beliefs, which would make them absurd. I think we are incorrect when we think like this, for the reasons I have stated above. The same is true when we meet individual belief systems such as Les's 'Oneness'. But most Atheists realise we are not under attack from Polytheists or 'personal spiritual beliefs' and many of us ultimately gravitate towards those sort of 'beliefs' when we realise they can provide an enrichment of our life exerience without flying in the face of scientific, empirical reality. Sometimes we can share these beliefs and still refer to ourselves as Atheists, as most people's idea of what it is to be a Theist is so havily coloured by Christianity, Islam et al.

The circuits in the brain which are programmed to look for purpose and 'agency' in the universe can't be shut off, so we need a 'religion' (or personal spirituality, or whatever) which is subtle enough to stmulate those circuits, and provide us some relief from this quest, while being open to the fact that despite the glorious interconnectedness of the universe, no-one's actually in charge!


Last edited by ihasa; 12-10-2011 at 05:51 AM.
12-10-2011, 05:42 AM   #143
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QuoteOriginally posted by magkelly Quote
Just for the record this is amazing, this conversation, that we can all have it here without it ending up a shouting match, that's awesome. Most places I go an attempt at a rational conversation about any of this usually ends up a big old verbal slug fest. I'm really impressed with you all on this one. We do get into it, but this place is one of the few places I've ever hung out in where even people who are polar opposites in terms of this kind of thing can get along well enough to openly discuss why they believe what they do. Cool.
Very cool indeed .
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