After Religion
*Anarcissie*
of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
Among the Disbelievers
by DANIEL LAZARE
[from the May 28, 2007 issue]
Imagine it's Paris in the spring of 1789 and you have just announced
that you are an inveterate foe of tyrants and kings. Obviously, your
message is not going to fall on deaf ears. But now that you've made it
clear what you're against, what are you for? Do you favor an
aristocratic constitution in which power devolves to the provincial
nobility? Would you prefer a British-style constitutional monarchy? Or
do you believe in all power to the sans-culottes? How you answer will
shape both your analysis of the situation and the political tactics
you employ in changing it. It may also determine whether you wind up
on the chopping block in the next half-decade or so.
This is the problem, more or less, confronting today's reinvigorated
atheist movement. For a long time, religion had been doing quite
nicely as a kind of minor entertainment. Christmas and Easter were
quite unthinkable without it, not to mention Hanukkah and Passover.
But then certain enthusiasts took things too far by crashing airliners
into office towers in the name of Allah, launching a global crusade to
rid the world of evil and declaring the jury still out on Darwinian
evolution. As a consequence, religion now looks nearly as bad as
royalism did in the late eighteenth century. But while united in their
resolve to throw the bum out--God, that is--the antireligious forces
appear to have given little thought to what to replace Him with should
He go. They may not face the guillotine as a consequence. But they
could end up making even bigger fools of themselves than the
theologians they criticize.
Richard Dawkins is a case in point. It is no surprise that, along with
Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian
Nation, and Daniel Dennett, author of Breaking the Spell: Religion As
a Natural Phenomenon, he has emerged at the head of a growing
intellectual movement aimed at relegating religion to the proverbial
scrapheap of history (which by this point must be filled to
overflowing). He's bright, obviously, a lively writer--his 1978 book
The Selfish Gene is regarded as a pop science classic--and as an
evolutionary biologist, he's particularly well equipped to defend
Darwin against neofundamentalist hordes for whom he is the Antichrist.
But Dawkins is something else as well: fiercely combative. Other
scientists have tried to calm things down by making nice-nice noises
concerning the supposedly complementary nature of the two pursuits.
Einstein famously said that "science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind," while the late paleontologist
Stephen J. Gould once characterized the two fields as "non-overlapping
magisteria" that address different questions and have no reason to get
in each other's way. But Dawkins, to his great credit, is having none
of it. Although he does not quite come out and say so, he seems to
have the good sense to realize that no two fields are ever truly
separate but that, in a unified body of human knowledge, or episteme,
all overlap. Conflict is inevitable when different fields employ
different principles and say different things, which is why an
evolutionary biologist can't simply ignore it when some blow-dried TV
evangelist declares that God created the world in six days, and why
he'll become positively unhinged should the same televangelist begin
pressuring textbook publishers to adopt his views.
Consequently, he's got to go on the warpath--not only against the
fundamentalists but against the sloppy logic and wishful thinking on
which they batten. This is Dawkins's forte, and it is what makes The
God Delusion such an entertaining read. Not one for politeness, he is
the sort of fierce logic-chopper who chuckles nastily when coming
across what he regards as some particularly choice bit of inanity.
Discussing Arius of Alexandria, for example, infamous in certain
fourth-century theological circles for maintaining that God and Jesus
were not "consubstantial," i.e., not composed of the same substance or
essence, you can almost hear him snicker: "What on earth could that
possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What 'substance'?
What exactly do you mean by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only
reasonable reply." Quoting a third-century theologian known as St.
Gregory the Miracle Worker on the mystery of the Holy Trinity--"There
is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the
Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once
had not existed, but had entered afterwards: therefore the Father has
never been without the Son"--he can't help sneering that "whatever
miracles may have earned St. Gregory his nickname, they were not
miracles of honest lucidity." Noting that the Catholic Church divides
angels into nine categories, or orders--seraphim, cherubim, thrones,
dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels and ordinary
members of the angelic rank-and-file--he lets slip that "what
impresses me about Catholic mythology is partly its tasteless kitsch
but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the
details as they go along."
This is not entirely fair. The Catholic Church does not just make such
things up but has thought long and hard about angelic orders and other
matters of equal importance. But Dawkins's outrage at the persistence
of medieval ideas in the modern era is warranted. In fact, it's
overdue. Also warranted is the sheer pleasure he takes in recounting a
double-blind experiment funded by a whopping-rich outfit known as the
Templeton Foundation to test the efficacy of prayer. Headed by a
Boston cardiologist, Dawkins informs us, the study involved 1,802
patients in six hospitals who had just undergone coronary bypass
surgery. Researchers divided the subjects into three groups: those who
were not informed that church congregations as far away as Missouri
were praying for their speedy recovery, those who were informed and a
control group consisting of patients for whom no prayers were said and
who were unaware that an experiment was under way. Church members were
provided with each patient's first name and last initial and, in the
interest of standardization, were asked to pray "for a successful
surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications" in just
those words.
The results, announced in April 2006, were a hoot. The first group of
patients, those who had no idea that others were praying for them, did
no better than the control group, while the second, those who knew
they were the object of others' prayers, actually did worse.
"Performance anxiety," the experimenters theorized. "It may have made
them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their
prayer team?" one speculated. Instead of accepting the results
gracefully and conceding that the theory of intercessory prayer had
been disproved, an Oxford theologian named Richard Swinburne
complained that the whole exercise was meaningless because what
matters to God is not prayer so much as the reasons behind it. But if
the experiment had gone the other way and the patients being prayed
over had outperformed the control group, we can well imagine what the
reaction would have been. People like Swinburne would have shouted
from the rooftops that God's existence had been proved and that we had
all better beg his forgiveness double-quick.
But it didn't, and it is now clear that praying for a quick recovery
is on par with crossing one's fingers and wishing for a Mercedes.
Science is predicated on the assumption that belief is unwarranted
without evidence and reason to back it up. But religion is based on
the opposite: that belief in the absence of evidence is a virtue and
that "the more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more virtuous you
are," as Dawkins puts it. "Virtuoso believers who can manage to
believe something really weird, unsupported and insupportable, in the
teeth of evidence and reason, are especially highly rewarded." That
last line is classic Dawkins--provocative, pugnacious, even a bit over
the top, but true.
As Dawkins admits, there is something distinctly nineteenth century
about the new rationalism that he and others are promoting. It smacks
of prairie populism and freethinkers like the wonderful Robert
Ingersoll, who, in the post-Civil War period, used to crisscross the
country, drawing thousands eager to hear him denounce the churches,
poke fun at the Bible and sing the praises of Darwin: "Can we affect
the nature and qualities of substance by prayer? Can we hasten or
delay the tides by worship? Can we change winds by sacrifice? Will
kneelings give us wealth?... Has man obtained any help from heaven?"
These were questions that made Ingersoll one of the most popular
lecturers of his day. Now, after the mushy ecumenism of the late
twentieth century and the religious terrorism of the early twenty-
first, a growing number of Americans plainly long for something more
bracing.
But we are still in the position of the French revolutionary who has
not moved beyond antiroyalism. Atheism is a purely negative ideology,
which is its problem. If one does not believe in God, what should one
believe in instead? Dawkins thinks he has an answer--science--but his
understanding of the term is embarrassingly crude and empirical.
This comes through when he tries to figure out how "the God delusion"
arose in the first place. Why did people latch onto an idea that we
now know to be incorrect? Why didn't the ancient Israelites conduct
their own double-blind experiment to determine whether sacrificing all
those bulls, rams and occasionally children to Yahweh was really worth
the trouble? Dawkins gropes for an explanation at one point in his
book. He speculates that religious visions may be a form of temporal
lobe epilepsy (which implies that there must have been quite an
epidemic in Palestine when people like Elijah, Hosea and Jeremiah were
raising a ruckus) but then lets the idea drop. He suggests that
religion caught on because it confers certain evolutionary advantages
but concedes that this is exceedingly hard to prove. He speculates
that faith may be the result of a self-replicating "meme," the
cultural equivalent of a gene. But after a murky discussion of
"memeplexes" and genetic cartels, the reader is left with the
uncomfortable feeling that Dawkins is lost in a tautological fog in
which religion is self-replicating because it satisfies certain human
needs and is therefore... self-replicating. Finally, he suggests that
religion survives because it is comforting--this, some 200 pages after
conceding that religion is as likely to exacerbate stress as to
alleviate it. (The last thing Old Testament prophets wanted to do was
soothe troubled souls.)
Dawkins's sense of history is so minimal that it approaches the
vanishing point. He is a classic example of the kind of shallow
rationalist who thinks that all you have to know about history is that
everything was cloudy and dark until the scientific revolution of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at which point the sun began
poking through. To quote Alexander Pope: "Nature and Nature's laws lay
hid in night:/God said, Let Newton be! and all was light." Religion
took hold at a certain point because people were stupid and benighted,
but now that this is no longer the case, it should not hang around a
moment longer. Yet it never occurs to Dawkins that monotheism is a
theory like any other and that certain Jewish scribes and priests
adopted it in the sixth century BC because it seemed to confer certain
advantages. These were not survival advantages, since the Jews went on
to rack up an unparalleled record of military defeats. Rather, they
were intellectual advantages in that the theory of a single all-
powerful, all-knowing deity seemed to explain the world better than
what had come before.
Since Dawkins sees all religion as merely dumb, he can't imagine how
this might be. Hence he can't see how the idea of an all-powerful, all-
knowing creator might cause worshipers to see the world as a single
integrated whole and then launch them on a long intellectual journey
to figure out how the various parts fit together. Roughly 2,500 years
separate the Book of Isaiah, in which Yahweh first declares, "I am the
first and I am the last; apart from me there is no god [44:6]," and
Einstein's quest for a unified field theory explaining everything from
subatomic structure to the Big Bang. Everything else has changed, but
the universalism behind such an endeavor has remained remarkably
constant. Dawkins blames religion for stifling human curiosity. But
were he a bit more curious about the phenomenon he is supposedly
investigating, he would realize that it has done as much over the long
haul to stimulate it. For a world-famous intellectual, he is oddly
provincial.
Christopher Hitchens's new book, God Is Not Great, is another example
of atheism as an empty vessel, one he manages to fill with an
intellectual justification for George W. Bush's "war on terror."
Hitchens, of course, is the former left-wing journalist who astounded
friends, colleagues and readers alike by coming out in support of the
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since then, with everyone from Richard Perle
to Peter Beinart busily backpedaling as the dimensions of the disaster
have grown more and more glaring, Hitchens has dug in his heels. Like
John McCain strolling through the Baghdad markets, he is more defiant
of reality than ever, more insistent, as he put it in a March 26
article in the Australian, that the occupation has made the world a
better and safer place. In God Is Not Great, he has something
unpleasant to say about nearly every believer under the sun--except
one. He trots out John Ashcroft's infamous remark that America has "no
king but Jesus" and reminds us that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson
both welcomed 9/11 as payback for America's tolerance of homosexuality
and abortion. He informs us that Hamas has talked about imposing the
old Al-Jeziya tax on Christians and Jews in the West Bank, while in
Gaza in April 2005 Muslim militants shot and killed a young woman
named Yusra al-Azami merely because she was sitting unchaperoned in a
car with her fiancé. For those inclined to think of the late Saddam
Hussein as a Third World dictator in the secular-nationalist mold,
Hitchens points out that Saddam found religion after the 1979 Iranian
Revolution, inscribing the words "Allahuh Akhbar" (God is great) on
the Iraqi flag, building a huge mosque as a showcase for his new piety
and producing a handwritten version of the Koran allegedly with his
own blood.
Yet one person is conspicuously absent from Hitchens's list of
religious evil-doers: George W. Bush. Yes, the man who said Jesus is
his favorite philosopher "because he changed my heart" and, as
governor of Texas, proclaimed June 10 as "Jesus Day," goes
unmentioned. How can this be? The explanation has to do with
Hitchens's subtitle. If "religion poisons everything," then it must be
responsible for most of the evil in the world, since belief of this
sort is currently so widespread and pervasive. If a political leader
is religious, he or she must be bad, and if he or she is bad, he or
she must be religious. This is why Saddam gets slammed for his cynical
exploitation of Islam and why Bush, author of the Global War on Terror
and the war on Iraq, both of which Hitchens supports, gets a free
pass. If he is to be believed, our faith-based President is defending
rationalism against religious intolerance. Despite Hitchens's anti-
Stalinist credentials, arguments like these are so unscrupulous as to
call to mind the Comintern of the late '30s and early '40s. Somewhere,
Andrei Vyshinsky is smiling.
Hitchens's historical sense in God Is Not Great is perhaps even more
stunted than that of Dawkins. Here he is, for example, attacking the
Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which celebrates the Maccabean revolt in
168 BC against the Seleucid effort to de-Judaize the Jerusalem temple
and consecrate it to Zeus:
When the father of Judah Maccabeus saw a Jew about to make a Hellenic
offering on the old altar, he lost no time in murdering him. Over the
next few years of the Maccabean "revolt," many more assimilated Jews
were slain, or forcibly circumcised, or both, and the women who had
flirted with the new Hellenic dispensation suffered even worse. Since
the Romans eventually preferred the violent and dogmatic Maccabees to
the less militarized and fanatical Jews who had shone in their togas
in the Mediterranean light, the scene was set for the uneasy collusion
between the old-garb ultra-Orthodox Sanhedrin and the imperial
governorate. This lugubrious relationship was eventually to lead to
Christianity (yet another Jewish heresy) and thus ineluctably to the
birth of Islam. We could have been spared the whole thing.
If only the Maccabees had stood by as Antiochus IV Epiphanes looted
the temple treasury, the world could have skipped 2,000 years or so of
religious fanaticism and proceeded directly to the founding of the
Council for Secular Humanism. Needless to say, there is no sense here
of historical progress as necessarily convoluted and complex, with
lots of back eddies, side currents and extended periods of stagnation.
But just as it takes a child a long time to mature, it takes a long
time for society as well.
It would be nice to believe that anachronistic thinking like this
halted at Calais, but Michel Onfray's Traité de athéologie, which has
been given the hotter title of Atheist Manifesto for the American
market, is not reassuring. Onfray is more philosophically
sophisticated than Dawkins and Hitchens, and he is entirely
commendable in his determination to hold Judaism, Christianity and
Islam to the same rigorous standard. Whereas Sam Harris singles out
Islam as "a religion of conquest," for instance, Onfray points out
that it was the Israelites who invented holy war, that the Israelite
god Yahweh "sanctioned crimes, murders, assassination...kill[ing]
animals like men and men like animals," and that the Vatican has
distinguished itself more recently as "a fellow traveler with every
brand of twentieth-century fascism--Mussolini, Pétain, Franco, Hitler,
Pinochet, the Greek colonels, South American dictators, etc." Islam's
division of the world into a land of Islam and a land of infidels is
"not too distant from Hitler's," Onfray adds. But Harris should know
better than to call it "unique."
This may seem fairly obvious. But with everyone from atheists to
neocons jumping on board the anti-Islamic crusade, it bears repeating.
Still, Onfray goes astray in the left-Nietzschean twist that he gives
to his antireligious critique. Nietzsche's influence is evident
throughout Atheist Manifesto--in its high-wattage prose style, in its
tendency toward aphorism, but mostly in its treatment of things like
Judaism and Christianity as intellectual categories removed from their
historical contexts. Onfray, to cite just one example, is extremely
hard on St. Paul, whom he describes as a hysteric "driven by a host of
psychological problems," a loser who "converted his self-loathing into
hatred of the world" and someone whose "impotence and resentment took
the form of revenge: the revenge of the weakling." None of this is
surprising, given Paul's views on such subjects as celibacy (strongly
in favor), marriage (only for those unable to forgo sex), slavery
(accepting) and women (condescending, to say the least). But anyone
who reads Paul in the context of the entire Bible--which Onfray says
elsewhere is the only way the Bible can be properly understood--will
likely come away with a different impression. His hysteria, such as it
is, doesn't begin to compare with that of Hosea, Jeremiah and other
Hebrew prophets, whose rages were truly volcanic. His political
quietism is more explicable if one bears in mind that he believed that
an impending apocalypse would soon put an end to all forms of
injustice. His views on gender are more benign than is commonly
realized, which may be why even pagans reported that women were among
the first to convert.
Indeed, Paul was something new as far as the biblical tradition was
concerned, a thinker, polemicist and organizer who was sober,
practical and all but tireless. This is undoubtedly why Engels was so
notably friendly toward him in one of his last essays. Not only did he
describe Pauline Christianity as the socialism of its day but,
referring to an epistle in which Paul reminds parishioners of the need
to provide the new movement with financial support (which he describes
as the "grace of giving"), he even commiserated with him across the
centuries over the difficulty of squeezing party dues out of local
members. ("So it was like that with you too!") Context for Engels was
all. It was obvious from his perspective that someone like Paul could
not be held exclusively to a modern standard but had to be judged on
the basis of his historical role. So what has happened in the century
or so since Engels wrote that essay that has caused otherwise
admirable leftists like Onfray to lose their historical bearings?
Could the baleful influence of Nietzsche, the favorite philosopher of
overwrought 16-year-olds, have something to do with it?
Terry Eagleton shows a firmer grasp of the issues in The Meaning of
Life--far firmer, in fact, than he did in the verbal hurricane that he
unleashed on Dawkins in The London Review of Books last October. That
article, which earned Eagleton a warm note of congratulations from
Peter Steinfels in his "Beliefs" column in the New York Times--an
indication of just how bad it actually was--was filled with ex
cathedra comments and unsupported assertions that Eagleton, a left-
wing Catholic back in the 1960s, somehow thought he could intimidate
his readers into accepting. Thus: Dawkins "does not see that
Christianity, like most religious faiths, values human life deeply,
which is why the martyr differs from the suicide." Or: "Because the
universe is God's, it shares in his life, which is the life of
freedom. This is why it works all by itself, and why science and
Richard Dawkins are therefore both possible." Dawkins is a boor, in
other words, because he is unable to grasp such ineffable truths. Yet
both statements were nothing more than silly. Judaism concerns itself
not with the life of the individual but the life of the nation, while
Christianity saw the life we know as merely a prelude to the real life
that will occur after the Resurrection. If the universe worked all by
itself, similarly, God would have no need to intervene in it
miraculously from time to time, as He does in both the Old Testament
and the New.
With The Meaning of Life, however, Eagleton, the author of such works
as Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory and The
Illusions of Postmodernism, goes back to channeling his inner
materialist. When he mentions God, it is in the sense of an abstract
principle that he identifies by the Greek term agape, or love.
Needless to say, this is not love in the erotic sense of the word but
as a cosmic force that is an expression of the deity's free choice in
creating a material universe in which human beings can exist. Since
Eagleton is coy as to whether he is speaking literally or
figuratively, most readers will assume the latter. As a rhetorical
device, it therefore allows him to make the point that the alternative
to divine creation is not an empty and meaningless universe, as some
moderns would have it. Rather, we can still see the universe as an
intelligible whole, one whose "underlying laws," he writes, "reveal a
beauty, symmetry, and economy which are capable of moving scientists
to tears" (a rare point of agreement with Dawkins). If believers,
according to Bishop Berkeley, believe that God invested the universe
with meaning through the act of creating it, then nonbelievers can
believe that people can invest life with meaning through a similar act
of creating a mode of living that allows people to realize their full
potential.
This supposes that meaning is not something that one discovers "out
there," by, say, sitting on a lonely mountaintop and contemplating the
heavens. Rather, it supposes that one discovers it "in here," that is,
in society and through it. In The God Delusion, Dawkins notes that
people might fill the gap left by religious belief in any number of
ways but adds that "my way includes a good dose of science, the honest
and systematic endeavor to find out the truth about the real world."
The words "my way" are a giveaway, since they suggest that meaning is
something we arrive at individually. Eagleton, by contrast, contends
that individual meaning is a solipsism, because any statement about
oneself--such as "I am handsomer than Adonis" or "I am the greatest
composer since Beethoven"--is meaningful only to the degree it is
recognized by others. Hence, "my life is meaningful" is itself
meaningful only to the degree that other people view it as such and
see their own lives the same way. Hence, meaning can be achieved only
via a collective act of self-creation in which humanity creates new
conditions for itself so that humanity as a whole can flourish. As a
corollary, Eagleton adds that "since there can be no true reciprocity
except among equals, oppression and inequality are in the long run
self-thwarting as well." Freedom and equality are necessary for
humanity to create a meaningful existence for itself.
In short, humanity creates meaning for itself by liberating itself so
that it can fulfill itself. This is also a solipsism, but one as big
as all existence. Odd, isn't it, that atheists can be right about God
but wrong about religion and much else about the modern condition,
while a believer can be wrong about God but at least on the right
track concerning the current spiritual malaise?
Art
wrote:
>[This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
>of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
>counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
>religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
>raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
>it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
>
>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
What will replace religions is knowledge of their mystical and
spiritual core ... providing mankind doesn't eradicate all life
on planet earth first, and make earth uninhabitable.
Don Tuite
It has been many years since I devoured all the essays, and my
critical faculties may have been indifferent at the time, but I had
two impressions. One was R was an appealing writer whose style did
not descend to mean-spiritedness, but whose arguments were
nevertheless devastating. The other was that criticism of R seemed to
focus on his being a randy sort or that the forces of Good were locked
in a deadly war the Russkies, and Russell was their judas goat.
Does Bertrand Russell come up at all in these latter-day discussions?
Don
ike milligan
"*Anarcissie*" <anarc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1178982420.8...@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
[This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
I tried to read it but it was too long.
Enkidu
@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
> "But while united in their
> resolve to throw the bum out--God, that is--the antireligious forces
> appear to have given little thought to what to replace Him with should
> He go."
"Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in
horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A
ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid
yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place?"
-Voltaire
--
Enkidu AA#2165
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
-- Oscar Wilde
*Anarcissie*
> *Anarcissie* <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in news:1178982420.872362.118200
> @h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
>
> > "But while united in their
> > resolve to throw the bum out--God, that is--the antireligious forces
> > appear to have given little thought to what to replace Him with should
> > He go."
>
> "Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in
> horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A
> ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid
> yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place?"
> -Voltaire
The problem, for humans, is that we are the ferocious animal,
and our religions are simply one projection of that ferocity.
One might say that by formalizing and institutionalizing this
projection, we have managed to channel, to reduce, the
ferocity -- or not. We do know that as traditional religions
weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
religions like Communism, Naziism, and fundamentalist
versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on. Being contrary
to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions have
failed or are beginning to fail -- we hope. Then what?
History does not give us much cause for optimism.
Stratum
George Bush is an evangelizing Christian. When one
thinks of what he has done for Iraq, for New Orleans, and
for the national guard, the skeptic is inclined to
give him plenty of encouragement for his efforts in
the God department.
Greywolf
"Art" <nu...@zilch.com> wrote in message
news:iqmb43tk4ocm9ita8...@4ax.com...
What will replace religion? The 'morality' of upstanding, noble-minded,
non-religious men and women of good heart and conscience who look to our
scientists to provide us with the best possible 'evidence' to explain our
universe and our existence. Sort of like a religion without any supernatural
elements attached to it.
It would have to be some sort of philosophy embraced for what it is: a
'philosophy'. Eupraxsophy?
Greywolf
Kate
wrote:
Wow, are you full of it.
Skip the pompous generalities, they make you sound like an idiot.
Immortalist
> [This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
> of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
> counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
> religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
> raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
> it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
>
Humanism has long ago become the replacement, right? The religion of
Humanity.
To a great extent, the world is returning, once again to the school of
humanity, meaning that philosophies of humanity have appeared; and the
strangest of them all is the creed of humanity which Auguste Compte
originated in the middle of the 19th century. Compte came to the
conclusion that the human being needed a creed, the absence of which
results in all kinds of social corruption. According to him, past
religion (Catholicism) is not adequate enough for modern mankind. He
describes three stages of religion;
The Divine Supernatural stage,
The Philosophical Reasoning stage
The Scientific Positive stage.
He said that Catholicism belonged to the human being's supernatural
thinking and this is not acceptable to the person of the scientific
age. His invented religion however, lacked an occult root, but he
accepted all the traditions and rites which existed before, and even
proposed having priests in this new creed, presenting himself as its
prophet, but a prophet without a god. They say about him that he got
his rites from Catholicism and he was criticized for this since he
disbelieved that religion but imitated and adopted its ceremonies and
traditions. He was right in one thing, that the human being needs
worship and devotion as well as the performance of a number of rites.
http://www.najaf.org/english/book/8/2.htm
COMTE - and "The Religion of Humanity"
The Religion of Humanity becomes in the author's intentions the true
Positive religion, the only one capable of replacing Catholicism. Like
the Catholic religion, Positivism will have its cult, its dogmas, its
ceremonies, its "consecrations" or "social sacraments" by which to
sanctify "all present phases of private life, systematically tying
them to public life" (Positive Catechism). Months will take the
meaningful names of Positive religion and the days of the week will be
consecrated each to one of the seven sciences. Lay temples will be
built (scientific institutes) and a Positive pope will exercise his
authority on those who will be committed to the development of
industries and to the practical use of discoveries. In Positive
society woman will become the guardian and the source of the
sentimental life of Humanity.
Humanity will be the Great Being, space will be the Great Environment,
and the earth the Great Fetish: this is the trinity of the Positive
religion. These short hints are enough to give a cue about the
Positive religious legislation, which we are not going to describe in
detail. We intend instead to point out the form of "spiritual
despotism" that derives from this Positive religious construction, and
leads to totalitarianism. In the society governed by Positivism
priests will owe an absolute obedience to the Great Priest, Supreme
Organ of Humanity, both in action and in thought and heart. "Faith,
that is the disposition to believe spontaneously, without previous
demonstration, in the dogmas proclaimed by a competent authority, is a
fundamental truth, the unchangeable and necessary basis of social
order..." (System of Positive politics). On the basis of this sequela
the Positive priests will constitute themselves as the intellectual
class, in charge of thinking on behalf of all the other men: this is
what De Lc defines as "spiritual despotism": the "mistrust in
intelligence" of which it is permeated betrays among other things the
ludicrous character of Comte's idea of science, reduced to the new
dogma.
So if the atheist was succesfull would he eliminate religion or like
Comte attempt not to deny or to eliminate the Catholic religion, but
to empty it of its authentic content, and to reduce it to a mere
social and moral fact. This reduction is carried out through the
negation of Mystery that manifests Itself in reality and in the daily
circumstances of human life. To replace the entire structure with
Government and social functions. Is this actually the Christian fear
of the board of education that they are already making a counter
religion?
In this way as atheism evolves to replace religion does atheism become
a religion?
The object of Comte's synthesis was to prepare the way for bringing
the science of social phenomena, Sociology, into its final, positive,
state and so lay the foundations of a social and political system
proper to the age of industry. Temporal power was to be vested in a
self-perpetuating élite of industrial chiefs. A separate spiritual
authority would be established in the form of a priesthood with the
duty of educating and informing opinion in the general truths of the
positive philosophy and their practical corollaries, and of
administering a formal religion centred on the cult of Humanity
(conceived as a Great Being composed of those men and women, past,
present, and to come, whose lives had been, were, or would be devoted
to human progress or well-being). A preponderant place was to be given
in the organization of religious and social life to the influence of
women on the feelings, in order to foster altruism, the basis of the
Comtean morality, expressed in the motto: 'Live for Others'.
http://www.google.com/search?q=comte+%22religion+of+humanity%22
http://membres.lycos.fr/clotilde/etexts/harrison/religion.htm
Stratum
Good praxis? Empiricism. Fundies disdainfully
call it secular humanism. But I bet a few
harrassed Sunday school teachers have used the
moral example of Abraham's obedience to Big G to
sacrifice his kid Isaac in order to silence a roomful
of screaming little bastards.
Greywolf
"Stratum" <strat...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:EL2dnRBKbvJcadjb...@comcast.com...
instead of 'God-loving'? It's fear of 'God', not a 'love' of him that fuels
the 'God believers'.
Greywolf
James Whitehead
"Don Tuite" <don_...@MAILNOTSAUSAGEhotlinks.com> wrote in message
news:tnmb43h297ejkasq0...@4ax.com...
are you familiar with the Russell / Copplestone debate?
James Whitehead
How in the process of evolution from single celled animals did a mystical
core arrive?
James Whitehead
Its probably a waste of time but i think a little thought to definition
would not go amiss - for instance communism (and say psychoanalysis) might
be considered as religions - whereas Buddhism might not... i think i'd
argue that consumerism has replaced religion - how many die because of it?
How many enjoy its practice?
Paul Ilechko
>
> How in the process of evolution from single celled animals did a mystical
> core arrive?
Why do you think the fundies don't believe in evolution ? Not even the
ones that are running for President, which is truly scary ...
Don Tuite
No. Er, I mean remind me.
Don
Wordsmith
> On 12 May 2007 08:07:00 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarcis...@gmail.com>
How does one analyse faith?
W : )
brique
Surely the passage where the Big Yin sends a bear to rip apart a gang of
kids who are laughing at a bald man is more apt?
brique
James Whitehead <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote in message
news:117899362...@proxy02.news.clara.net...
Must have been that apple........
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
The question is, will it satisfy or distract human ferocity?
Paul Ilechko
> How does one analyse faith?
It's easy to analyze someone else's faith, but people have a real hard
time analyzing their own. Faith is kind of like farting, it's best to
not let it out in public.
Sam Culotta
Faith is kind of like farting, it's best to not let it out in public.
Thanks for this Paul :-). May I use it?
On a less lofty plane, John Updike,in his memoir, "Self-Consciousness",
relates that his father-in-law, a devout Unitarian (what else?), "suggested
that our human need for
transcendence should be met with minimal embarrassments to reason."
Sam
"Paul Ilechko" <pile...@patmedia.net> wrote in message
news:5amnvfF...@mid.individual.net...
Paul Ilechko
> Paul wrote:
> Faith is kind of like farting, it's best to not let it out in public.
>
> Thanks for this Paul :-). May I use it?
Of course ;-)
Actually, I really need to use this in a story ...
Don Phillipson
. . .. . .
> . . . we are still in the position of the French revolutionary who has
> not moved beyond antiroyalism. Atheism is a purely negative ideology,
> which is its problem. If one does not believe in God, what should one
> believe in instead? Dawkins thinks he has an answer--science--but his
> understanding of the term is embarrassingly crude and empirical.
Can anyone cite (and attribute) Chesterton's comment on this
point: something to the effect that the problem remains that
people who ostentatiously dump belief in God lay themselves
open to belief in any snake-oil salesman who may attract
their ear?
> Terry Eagleton shows a firmer grasp of the issues in The Meaning of
> Life--far firmer, in fact, than he did in the verbal hurricane that he
> unleashed on Dawkins in The London Review of Books last October.
Recommended reading.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Paul Ilechko
> But we are still in the position of the French revolutionary who has
> not moved beyond antiroyalism. Atheism is a purely negative ideology,
> which is its problem.
Except that atheism is not an ideology. Neither is faith, for that
matter, although religion is. Atheism is an explicit rejection of
certain ideological (and other) constructs, but is not a replacement for
them.
> If one does not believe in God, what should one
> believe in instead?
This question makes absolutely no sense, it's setting up a false
dichotomy. There is no "instead" required. It's like asking, "if one
does not believe in the tooth fairy, what should one believe in instead?"
Now, there are questions that religion attempts to answer that need to
be answered in some other way once God is dismissed, but that's not the
same thing as an alternative to God.
Francis A. Miniter
Well said.
Francis A. Miniter
Paul Ilechko
> Can anyone cite (and attribute) Chesterton's comment on this
> point: something to the effect that the problem remains that
> people who ostentatiously dump belief in God lay themselves
> open to belief in any snake-oil salesman who may attract
> their ear?
The risk of believing in something even stupider is not a good reason to
believe in God.
Not to mention that Chesterton's comment, as reported here, doesn't take
into account the high snake-oil quotient of God's salesforce.
Michael Gray
>...does
>raise the problem of what will replace religion...
:
One may well ask what will replace the common cold when it is
eliminated?
Why does anything have to replace the contageous mental illness of
religion if it is cured?
--
Michael Gray
<pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
- Refer: <5amev3F...@mid.individual.net>
They *say* that.
They also *say* that they believe in YHWH.
Most are lying on both counts, in order to get into power.
--
*Anarcissie*
Religion, using the term very broadly, is observed in
practically every human community, indicating that it
is an expression of some kind of basic need. And, as
I noted previously, when traditional religions have
weakened they were replaced other religions -- worse
ones from my point of view -- another evidence that
religion serves some kind of basic need. "Alternative
to God" is badly phrased, because it presupposes
that religion (spirituality, superstition, etc.) equals
God, which it obviously does not. The question is
what is the alternative to religion, not God -- what
comes after religion if religion disappears? Judging
by the violence I have mentioned, it seems to be
an important question.
Michael Gray
<pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
- Refer: <5an14oF...@mid.individual.net>
100% at last reading.
--
Michael Gray
<pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
- Refer: <5amue8F...@mid.individual.net>
>*Anarcissie* quoted:
>
>> But we are still in the position of the French revolutionary who has
>> not moved beyond antiroyalism. Atheism is a purely negative ideology,
>> which is its problem.
>
>Except that atheism is not an ideology. Neither is faith, for that
>matter, although religion is. Atheism is an explicit rejection of
>certain ideological (and other) constructs, but is not a replacement for
>them.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!!
Atheism is not an explicit rejection at all.
It is the absence of theism.
Newborns are atheists, but are incapable of rejecting anything.
atheism = lack of theism.
Got it?
>> If one does not believe in God, what should one
>> believe in instead?
>
>This question makes absolutely no sense, it's setting up a false
>dichotomy. There is no "instead" required. It's like asking, "if one
>does not believe in the tooth fairy, what should one believe in instead?"
>
>Now, there are questions that religion attempts to answer that need to
>be answered in some other way once God is dismissed, but that's not the
>same thing as an alternative to God.
--
Paul Ilechko
> Religion, using the term very broadly, is observed in
> practically every human community, indicating that it
> is an expression of some kind of basic need.
Brainwashing can be quite effective, and where religion is concerned, it
starts early in life. This makes it quite self-perpetuating, long after
it has outlived whatever use it held for primitive humanity. Either
that, or humanity is still largely primitive.
> And, as
> I noted previously, when traditional religions have
> weakened they were replaced other religions -- worse
> ones from my point of view -- another evidence that
> religion serves some kind of basic need.
You've stretched the definition of religion to make this point. What in
fact has happened is that other forms of coercion have been introduced
into society.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
>
> - Show quoted text -
Where there is no belief in any THING, then a belief in ANY thing will
happen, which explains why the relgious mystics of yesteryear, have
today only shifted camp, and have become the geeks of global warming,
tree-hugging - the Earth Mother mystics.
The mind of reason only believes the things where there is non-
contradicting sensory evidence offered.
MG
Paul Ilechko
> On Sat, 12 May 2007 18:46:41 -0400, Paul Ilechko
> <pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
> - Refer: <5amue8F...@mid.individual.net>
>> *Anarcissie* quoted:
>>
>>> But we are still in the position of the French revolutionary who has
>>> not moved beyond antiroyalism. Atheism is a purely negative ideology,
>>> which is its problem.
>> Except that atheism is not an ideology. Neither is faith, for that
>> matter, although religion is. Atheism is an explicit rejection of
>> certain ideological (and other) constructs, but is not a replacement for
>> them.
> Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!!
> Atheism is not an explicit rejection at all.
> It is the absence of theism.
> Newborns are atheists, but are incapable of rejecting anything.
>
> atheism = lack of theism.
>
> Got it?
Don't be such an asshole.
Francis A. Miniter
>
>
> Where there is no belief in any THING, then a belief in ANY thing will
> happen,
This does not follow logically or psychologically. It is only a sophistic turn
of phrase.
> which explains why the relgious mystics of yesteryear, have
> today only shifted camp, and have become the geeks of global warming,
> tree-hugging - the Earth Mother mystics.
>
Not only does that follow, it is also not historically accurate.
> The mind of reason only believes the things where there is non-
> contradicting sensory evidence offered.
>
>
> MG
>
>
You clearly have not read Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. Take a look a t Part
I, Sections 40 to 65 or so.
Francis A. Miniter
J Seymour MacNicely
wrote:
> "Art" <n...@zilch.com> wrote in message
> How in the process of evolution from single celled animals did a mystical
> core arrive?
The single cell *is* the mystical core.
Every paramecium is in Nirvana.
Each amoeba is experiencing Satori.
There is not a Euglena on earth that is not high on Deoxyribonucleic
Acid.
Neither is there even one cell
in the succulent green flesh of the peyote cactus that is not
totally tripped out on mescaline.
Can you imagine even the one, square, unenlighted cell in the cap of
Psilocybe azurescens that is not experiencing the beatific vision of
its unity with Alice in Wonderland?
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow!
--
Mackie
http://whosenose.blogspot.com
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com
bob young
Art wrote:
> On 12 May 2007 08:07:00 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >[This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
> >of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
> >counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
> >religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
> >raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
> >it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
> >
> >http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
>
> What will replace religions is knowledge of their mystical and
> spiritual core ... providing mankind doesn't eradicate all life
> on planet earth first, and make earth uninhabitable.
Maybe religions will be studied as
'A quaint pastime in the twenty-first century and before'
>
>
> Art
> http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
>
Al Klein
wrote:
>Among the Disbelievers
>by DANIEL LAZARE
>[from the May 28, 2007 issue]
>Imagine it's Paris in the spring of 1789 and you have just announced
>that you are an inveterate foe of tyrants and kings. Obviously, your
>message is not going to fall on deaf ears. But now that you've made it
>clear what you're against, what are you for? Do you favor an
>aristocratic constitution in which power devolves to the provincial
>nobility? Would you prefer a British-style constitutional monarchy? Or
>do you believe in all power to the sans-culottes? How you answer will
>shape both your analysis of the situation and the political tactics
>you employ in changing it. It may also determine whether you wind up
>on the chopping block in the next half-decade or so.
>
>This is the problem, more or less, confronting today's reinvigorated
>atheist movement.
Voltaire had the answer before 1789.
"Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in
horror. 'But what shall we substitute in its place?' you say. What? A
ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to
rid yourselves of this beast and you ask me what you shall put in its
place?" - Voltaire
Don Tuite
wrote:
>Religion, using the term very broadly, is observed in
>practically every human community, indicating that it
>is an expression of some kind of basic need. And, as
>I noted previously, when traditional religions have
>weakened they were replaced other religions -- worse
>ones from my point of view -- another evidence that
>religion serves some kind of basic need. "Alternative
>to God" is badly phrased, because it presupposes
>that religion (spirituality, superstition, etc.) equals
>God, which it obviously does not. The question is
>what is the alternative to religion, not God -- what
>comes after religion if religion disappears? Judging
>by the violence I have mentioned, it seems to be
>an important question.
>
Can't it just be that people don't want to embrace their personal
extinction?
The rest follows from that.
Don
Al Klein
wrote:
>We do know that as traditional religions
>weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
>replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
>religions like Communism, Naziism
Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
- the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
>and fundamentalist
>versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
replaced THEM.
>Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
diametrically opposed.
It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
Even if that means not posting anything.
Al Klein
wrote:
>The question is, will it satisfy or distract human ferocity?
Evolution will, once ferocity is a detriment to survival. Prior to
that the trait will remain with us. We have millennia of evidence
that this is how evolution works. (Most of us no longer live in a
desert but we still sweat and women, although they no longer only have
food when the men bring some back to the home area, still have
breasts.)
Al Klein
<d.phillips...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>Can anyone cite (and attribute) Chesterton's comment on this
>point: something to the effect that the problem remains that
>people who ostentatiously dump belief in God lay themselves
>open to belief in any snake-oil salesman who may attract
>their ear?
It's nonsense, whether it's true or not.
An addict will always be addicted to something, but that isn't reason
for the non-addict to not become addicted to something. The person
who doesn't need mystic belief can throw off any he's been fed without
succumbing to other mysticism. As for the person who needs mystic
belief to continue to exist, would you deny insulin to a diabetic, or
lithium to someone whose brain lacks the proper quantity?
Dan Clore
> [This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
> of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
> counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
> religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
> raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
> it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
> Among the Disbelievers
> by DANIEL LAZARE
> [from the May 28, 2007 issue]
I think the problem is not so much religion as fundamentalism (and that
would include fundamentalist atheism, as found in Bolshevism, for
example). Rather than seeing religion itself as something to fight
against, I think anarchists and libertarians should focus on combatting
the authoritarianism of fundamentalists while directing those interested
in religion to anti-authoritarian alternatives, ranging from the
Catholic Worker movement to the Sufism of Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn
Wilson) and the Zenarchy of Kerry Wendell Thornley.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Michael Gray
wrote:
- Refer: <l85d43hbe6umj6cip...@4ax.com>
Because like a crazed crack addict in search of a fix, religion kills
other (innocent) people.
That is why.
--
Michael Gray
The Common Cold, using the term very broadly, is observed in
practically every human community, indicating that it is an expression
of some kind of basic need. And, as I noted previously, when
traditional diseases have weakened they were replaced other diseases
-- worse ones from my point of view -- another evidence that colds
serves some kind of basic need. "Alternative to Viruses" is badly
phrased, because it presupposes that disease (colds, cholera, etc.)
equals Health, which it obviously does not. The question is what is
the alternative to disease, not Health -- what comes after disease if
disease disappears? Judging by the violence I have mentioned, it
seems to be an important question.
See just how stupid an d inane and meaningless the question is?
Nothing has to replace the common cold!
Nothing has to replace religion!
--
Michael Gray
<pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
- Refer: <5ana0gF...@mid.individual.net>
Don't tell me, you are a philosopher.
I can tell by your hostile and immature reaction to being corrected on
a basic point.
--
James Whitehead
"Paul Ilechko" <pile...@patmedia.net> wrote in message
news:5amev3F...@mid.individual.net...
> James Whitehead wrote:
>
> >
> > How in the process of evolution from single celled animals did a
mystical
> > core arrive?
>
> ones that are running for President, which is truly scary ...
I think intelligent design is their favourite - and still leaves the
question-
but i dont think the likes of Bush and Blair are religious in the sense of
either belief in the dogma (they clearly do not -~) or operate in some
simple piety - its just what you have to do to get on - like joining the
free masons in the UK to get on in the Police- or playing golf. Playing Golf
is another religion of politics....
James Whitehead
"J Seymour MacNicely" <mac_th...@bigstring.com> wrote in message
news:1179025107.0...@p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
Not to mention the trip that sub-atomic particles are on - "everywhere and
nowhere baby"
James Whitehead
"Wordsmith" <word...@rocketmail.com> wrote in message
news:1178997825.7...@u30g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
> On May 12, 9:30 am, Art <n...@zilch.com> wrote:
> > On 12 May 2007 08:07:00 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarcis...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >[This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
> > >of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
> > >counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
> > >religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
> > >raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
> > >it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
> >
> > >http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
> >
> > spiritual core ... providing mankind doesn't eradicate all life
> > on planet earth first, and make earth uninhabitable.
> >
>
> How does one analyse faith?
>
Various methods - from reading to witnessing the actual activities - one
needs to be careful - for instance many Christians haven't read the bible -
or think they need to - many Muslims cant read Arabic therefore cant read
the Koran. In some cases its a cultural activity with festivals and rites
of passage- these rites being typical across many religions - birth -
puberty marriage death- blood often appears important and ritually
unclean... there is a certain fear of the dead.... one can analyse
anthropologically or even poetically/artistically....
> W : )
>
James Whitehead
"bob young" <alasp...@netvigator.com> wrote in message
news:464686A2...@netvigator.com...
James Whitehead
"*Anarcissie*" <anarc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1179003103....@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> On May 12, 2:15 pm, "James Whitehead" <somewh...@overtherainbow.com>
> wrote:
> > "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >
> > news:1178986829.8...@e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...> On May
12, 11:59 am, Enkidu <fox_rgf...@trashmail.net> wrote:
> > > > *Anarcissie* <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote in
> >
> > news:1178982420.872362.118200
> >
> >
> >
> > > > @h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
> >
> > > > > "But while united in their
> > > > > resolve to throw the bum out--God, that is--the antireligious
forces
> > > > > appear to have given little thought to what to replace Him with
should
> > > > > He go."
> >
> > > > "Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect
in
> > > > horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A
> > > > ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to
rid
> > place?"
> > > > -Voltaire
> >
> > > The problem, for humans, is that we are the ferocious animal,
> > > and our religions are simply one projection of that ferocity.
> > > One might say that by formalizing and institutionalizing this
> > > projection, we have managed to channel, to reduce, the
> > > ferocity -- or not. We do know that as traditional religions
> > > weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
> > > replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
> > > versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on. Being contrary
> > > to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions have
> > > failed or are beginning to fail -- we hope. Then what?
> > > History does not give us much cause for optimism.
> >
> > Its probably a waste of time but i think a little thought to definition
> > would not go amiss - for instance communism (and say psychoanalysis)
might
> > be considered as religions - whereas Buddhism might not... i think i'd
> > argue that consumerism has replaced religion - how many die because of
it?
> > How many enjoy its practice?
>
> The question is, will it satisfy or distract human ferocity?
>
It will do both as its not something separate like an overcoat - its more
like the way in which we are constructed. A non-religious person would be a
very strange person- what i mean is even the decorating of workstations with
family photos - why? A return to ancestor worship? Why do we celebrate...
etc.
James Whitehead
> *Anarcissie* quoted:
>
> > But we are still in the position of the French revolutionary who has
> > not moved beyond antiroyalism. Atheism is a purely negative ideology,
> > which is its problem.
>
> Except that atheism is not an ideology. Neither is faith, for that
> matter, although religion is. Atheism is an explicit rejection of
> certain ideological (and other) constructs, but is not a replacement for
> them.
>
> > believe in instead?
>
> This question makes absolutely no sense, it's setting up a false
> dichotomy. There is no "instead" required. It's like asking, "if one
> does not believe in the tooth fairy, what should one believe in instead?"
>
> Now, there are questions that religion attempts to answer that need to
> be answered in some other way once God is dismissed, but that's not the
> same thing as an alternative to God.
The only alternative is Russell's silence - following Wittgenstein - which
is not satisfying at all - as we are left with the Absurd (Camus) & the
logic of suicide. Why doesnt a rational atheist reading this kill
themselves? For they by living are the cause of poverty and general ruin of
the eco-system - and death would be a nothing... how do they value their
life rationally - or is it the atheist reading this has a god - him/herself
incarnate.
James Whitehead
"Don Tuite" <don_...@MAILNOTSAUSAGEhotlinks.com> wrote in message
news:sj3c43p76vpcv5kgv...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 12 May 2007 19:17:08 +0100, "James Whitehead"
> <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Don Tuite" <don_...@MAILNOTSAUSAGEhotlinks.com> wrote in message
> >news:tnmb43h297ejkasq0...@4ax.com...
> >> Russell is curiously (to me) absent from the review.
> >>
> >> It has been many years since I devoured all the essays, and my
> >> critical faculties may have been indifferent at the time, but I had
> >> two impressions. One was R was an appealing writer whose style did
> >> not descend to mean-spiritedness, but whose arguments were
> >> nevertheless devastating. The other was that criticism of R seemed to
> >> focus on his being a randy sort or that the forces of Good were locked
> >> in a deadly war the Russkies, and Russell was their judas goat.
> >>
> >> Does Bertrand Russell come up at all in these latter-day discussions?
> >>
> >> Don
> >
> >are you familiar with the Russell / Copplestone debate?
> >
> No. Er, I mean remind me.
>
From memory it was a live debate on the BBC Radio (checking) 1948
"A Debate on the Existence of God"
Russell - Certainly the question "Does a cause of the world exist?" is a
question that has meaning....
(Copleston is aJesuit historian of philosophy - here pursues the argument
from contingency...)
[...]
At the end of the debate he clearly wins the argument - Russell has to back
down from his position above... to
Copleston: Your general point then, Lord Russell, is that its illegitimate
even to ask the question of the cause of the world?
Russell: Yes, that is my position.
Copleston: If it is a question that for you has no meaning, it is of course
very difficult to discuss it, isn't it?
Russell: Yes, it is very difficult.
(Game set and match to Copleston)
James Whitehead
"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
> On 12 May 2007 09:20:29 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >We do know that as traditional religions
> >weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
> >replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
> >religions like Communism, Naziism
>
> Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
> as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
> - the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
> How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
>
> >and fundamentalist
> >versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
>
> Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
> versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
> replaced THEM.
>
> >Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
>
> Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
> diametrically opposed.
>
Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
> It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
> Even if that means not posting anything.
Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know anything...
one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
bob young
James Whitehead wrote:
Culture has nothing to do with groveling to imaginary gods.
Would you say the Chinese lack culture?
James Whitehead
i ching through Buddhism and communism- which forms the warp of the weft of
their existence...
http://www.edunetconnect.com/categories/originals/chinafest/chinesef.html
You obviously dont like religion in your pejorative terminology - but do you
have a family photo album - you celebrate birthdays, obviously you don't
celebrate Christmas or Easter- and i suppose you do not hold any
festivals - whose origin goes back to religious fests- or celebrate rites of
passage... as there is no rational purpose in doing so? they are merely
costly and therefore unsound activity...
Art
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
I'm not famililiar with that debate but it strikes me that this is as
elementary as a little kid asking "Who made God?" sort of thing.
The crux of it seems to me to be the faulty logic of assuming
antecendent cause outside the illusion of time. Let's say Big Bang
theorists are right, just for the sake of discussion. That would
mean time began at the Big Bang. Anything before that beginning
of time would be independent of time and therefore independent of
antecedent cause. I suppose the vibrating strings (of energy)
theorists are imagining "vibrations" in timeless dimensions. They
would have be since time itself is one of the things their holy grail
of a TOE would presumably explain. These vibrating strings of energy
would be causeless (in a time antecedent sense anyway), just as God is
imagined to be causeless.
The concept of timeless energy is involved whether you take the
so-called mystical approach or the approach of physicists. The way
I see it, it's a question of whether or not timeless energy is
conscious and creative. Philosophically, I take the mystical
approach since I see it as the seed (at least) of explaining
all observed phenomena including the so-called paranormal.
towelie
> *Anarcissie* wrote:
>
>> [This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
>> of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
>> counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
>> religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
>> raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
>> it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
>>
>> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
>> Among the Disbelievers
>> by DANIEL LAZARE
>> [from the May 28, 2007 issue]
>
> I think the problem is not so much religion as fundamentalism (and
> that would include fundamentalist atheism, as found in Bolshevism, for
> example).
Bolshevism was/is a religion, with the head of state in the role of deity.
James Whitehead
"Art" <nu...@zilch.com> wrote in message
news:nspd4391clq2loaf1...@4ax.com...
Out of the mouths of babes..... have you noticed how most people as the
grow older ask more and more dull questions... look at those TV quiz shows
for an instance..
>
> The crux of it seems to me to be the faulty logic of assuming
> antecendent cause outside the illusion of time. Let's say Big Bang
> theorists are right, just for the sake of discussion. That would
> mean time began at the Big Bang. Anything before that beginning
> of time would be independent of time and therefore independent of
> antecedent cause. I suppose the vibrating strings (of energy)
> theorists are imagining "vibrations" in timeless dimensions. They
> would have be since time itself is one of the things their holy grail
> of a TOE would presumably explain. These vibrating strings of energy
> would be causeless (in a time antecedent sense anyway), just as God is
> imagined to be causeless.
>
> The concept of timeless energy is involved whether you take the
> so-called mystical approach or the approach of physicists. The way
> I see it, it's a question of whether or not timeless energy is
> conscious and creative. Philosophically, I take the mystical
> approach since I see it as the seed (at least) of explaining
> all observed phenomena including the so-called paranormal.
>
> Art
> http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
Its hard to imagine a timeless vibration - but sure before change or process
there possibly wasnt any time "time is just the ticking of a clock - or a
vibrating string" but Where did the big bang come from and what caused it
still remain questions. The idea it just happened is puzzling - how in a
timeless void can anything happen? And the fact that at the big bang the
universe had certain properties and not others - but these were not caused -
but then these properties - energies then are part of a causal history seems
wrong - as nowhere do we see non-casual events - or properties. I could as
Russell once proposed simply argue the universe came into being about a
second ago - with all its current properties - including my memory etc. This
doesn't seem satisfying - or does the something from nothing of the big bang
as it had initial conditions...
bob young
James Whitehead wrote:
Which is totally meaningless, since Copleston was deluded from the cradle
It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but
by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this way is
much greater and more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired by
prayer, because you never could tell whether your prayer would be favorably
heard in Heaven. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it
would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no known
limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed
it; we are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and everyone
believes it. (I.S.S.p15)
[Bertrand Russell]
bob young
James Whitehead wrote:
> "Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
> > On 12 May 2007 09:20:29 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >We do know that as traditional religions
> > >weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
> > >replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
> > >religions like Communism, Naziism
> >
> > Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
> > as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
> > - the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
> > How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
> >
> > >and fundamentalist
> > >versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
> >
> > Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
> > versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
> > replaced THEM.
> >
> > >Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
> >
> > Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
> > diametrically opposed.
> >
>
> Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
ROFL
Yes I see what you mean:
The universe revolves around the earth.
Stars are pinpricks in the heavens.
The world is flat (and on pillars)
Bats are a kind of bird.
Rabbits chew their cud.
There is enough water to flood the entire planet
Women were created from a man's rib
Rainbows are a promise from God
[Acknowledgements to 'James, Seattle']
>
>
> > It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
> > Even if that means not posting anything.
>
> Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know anything...
> one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
See above
bob young
James Whitehead wrote:
If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury,
blasphemy, and disrespect towards your parents, your Church, and your king,
you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never
done a single kind or generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion
of virtue is an outcome of tabu morality, and has done untold harm.
(H.S.E.P.p40)
Bertrand Russell]
The voice of humanism versus rampant religious superstition
Paul Ilechko
> Don't tell me, you are a philosopher.
> I can tell by your hostile and immature reaction to being corrected on
> a basic point.
No, you didn't "correct" me, you said things that were so inane that
they were not worth a serious response. Big difference ...
Paul Ilechko
You clearly don't know what a religion is.
James Whitehead
Strange that a nation with the Atomic Bomb has 3 times been defeated by
nations - or groups with no such weapon - they did have a faith in something
larger than their own egos however - so Bertie was wrong again.
I also think he / possibly you - are using a very narrow definition of
prayer ...
I think he also said "Better Red than Dead"
Kate
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
>> On 12 May 2007 09:20:29 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >We do know that as traditional religions
>> >weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
>> >replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
>> >religions like Communism, Naziism
>>
>> Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
>> as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
>> - the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
>> How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
>>
>> >and fundamentalist
>> >versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
>>
>> Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
>> versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
>> replaced THEM.
>>
>> >Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
>>
>> Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
>> diametrically opposed.
>>
>
>Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
No, because it's been working for as long as man started trying.
>
>> It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
>> Even if that means not posting anything.
>
>Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know anything...
>one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
>
I see you don't understand science or it's rational application.
Neither of which 'sticks only to what you know', but exactly the
opposite.
What's yer problem hon, did your mom forget to home school you in
science?
James Whitehead
Silly miss-reading of a religions text - well of the bible - very smart -
well not - very stupid-
One day perhaps these people will develop sufficently to understand
metaphores - which i think first appeared in The Epic of Gilgamesh
Lord Kelvin said that hevier than air flying machines were impossible
ergo all science is rubbish...
>
> >
> >
> > > It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
> > > Even if that means not posting anything.
> >
> > Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know
anything...
> > one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
>
> See above
>
>
See what. Axioms are acts of faith - on which science and mathematics is
built.
James Whitehead
Blair had done what Lord B frowned upon allot would be alive now who are
dead...
thou shalt not bare false witness.... etc besides.
Course acc Calvin it doesn't matter what one does - the saved are saved the
dammed dammed - no matter... an interesting theology..
Funny an english aristocrat frowns on a religion - which was fundamental to
the development of socialism in the UK and civil rights in the USA :-)
And why is it that in the UK Church schools are so popular?
figures!
Kate
Religion is defined by worshipping a god.
That you project it on other activities means nothing.
Social activities are for socializing which does not depend on
religion. More the other way around. Religion is popular because it
offers a platform in which socializing can occur.
And, oh yeah, because apparently you don't know science. The desire
for socializing is genetically based.
Kate
Why would you kill yourself? Life is good and filled with pleasures.
Genetics makes very sure that killing yourself is a scarey repugnant
idea.
If you found sure evidence there was no god, would you really want to
kill yourself?
You don't need to make up a god if you can't find one. Life works
quite well without one and always has. You seem to have huge problems
with that idea.
James Whitehead
Religion as anyone who begins to study it is often very unclear... and
poses big problems for westerners as there is for instance a clear
separation (or clearer) of religion from philosophy not found in the east...
and in cultures such as village Hinduism (they would not know the term)
where its part of life. I wonder - do all our American friends here - non
of you celebrate thanksgiving do you?
Paul Foley
> Among the Disbelievers
>
> by DANIEL LAZARE
> ...the antireligious forces
> appear to have given little thought to what to replace Him with should
> He go.
Reason.
Paul Ilechko
> Once again Lord B (oh yes Lordy Lordy..) got it wrong. I think if Bush and
> Blair had done what Lord B frowned upon allot would be alive now who are
> dead...
> thou shalt not bare false witness.... etc besides.
>
> Course acc Calvin it doesn't matter what one does - the saved are saved the
> dammed dammed - no matter... an interesting theology..
> Funny an english aristocrat frowns on a religion - which was fundamental to
> the development of socialism in the UK and civil rights in the USA :-)
>
> And why is it that in the UK Church schools are so popular?
> figures!
>
>
Why I am I not surprised that someone so utterly incapable of
structuring an argument would be pro-religion?
Paul Ilechko
> Religion as anyone who begins to study it is often very unclear... and
> poses big problems for westerners as there is for instance a clear
> separation (or clearer) of religion from philosophy not found in the east...
> and in cultures such as village Hinduism (they would not know the term)
> where its part of life. I wonder - do all our American friends here - non
> of you celebrate thanksgiving do you?
>
>
Can you try, just once, to make a clear point? Leave the shotgun at home.
michael
> Why I am I not surprised that someone so utterly incapable of
> structuring an argument would be pro-religion?
well, according to his rather inclusive definition, not being
"pro-religion" would make one "anti-snaps-of-loved-ones-on-the-mantel"
and a non-attender of family dinners at holiday times...
which inclusiveness, if you think about it, is about as silly as the
extensions to communism, fascism and liberalism, so he's in better
company than usual...
michael
Ned Ludd
>
> *Anarcissie* wrote:
>
>> Religion, using the term very broadly, is observed in
>> practically every human community, indicating that it
>> is an expression of some kind of basic need.
>
> Brainwashing can be quite effective, and where religion is concerned,
> it starts early in life. This makes it quite self-perpetuating, long
> after it has outlived whatever use it held for primitive humanity.
> Either that, or humanity is still largely primitive.
>
>> And, as
>> I noted previously, when traditional religions have
>> weakened they were replaced other religions -- worse
>> ones from my point of view -- another evidence that
>> religion serves some kind of basic need.
>
> You've stretched the definition of religion to make this point. What
> in fact has happened is that other forms of coercion have been
> introduced into society.
>
True. I too believe that there is a 'need' within humans for
religion. But there is also a 'use' for it. The need comes
from the fact the humans are societal animals that live in
social hierarchies. An active mind, especially one that can
do high-level abstraction, will easily create the concept of
a deity.
But there is also a 'use' for religion. It's a way of 'keeping
the n*ggers down', to use and old-fashioned term from the US. And
that utility has existed since the first shaman had to talk his
way out of whatever predicament was confronting him at the time.
Very recently the new pope Benedict told the faithful of South
America - as a result of the nasty persistence of 'liberation
theology' - they should in its place embrace the 'theology of
martyrdom', ie. be satisfied with their place in the present,
and wait for the rewards of the hereafter.
This is how a religion can continue to have a high utility
value, in the face of a declining ability to satisfy the felt
needs of its faithful.
Ned
bowman
> Can anyone cite (and attribute) Chesterton's comment on this
> point: Â something to the effect that the problem remains that
> people who ostentatiously dump belief in God lay themselves
> open to belief in any snake-oil salesman who may attract
> their ear?
Considering Chesterton's path, he knew a snake oil salesman when he met one.
However, it is difficult to assess what happened in the motorcycle sidecar
on the way to the zoo that convinced him his latest bottle of snake oil was
the best.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
bowman
> Culture has nothing to do with groveling to imaginary gods.
>
> Would you say the Chinese lack culture?
Despite the Communists' best efforts, they also have a full working set of
gods and goddesses. Who is Quan-Yin?
James Whitehead
"Kate " <cob...@newscene.com> wrote in message
news:465318b7....@news-west.newscene.com...
so that's Buddhism Taoism Confucianism out then.... and devil worship ...
oh and i think in Hinduism Brahman becomes nothing... what do you think zen
monks are doing???????
>
> That you project it on other activities means nothing.
>
No its found...
> Social activities are for socializing which does not depend on
> religion. More the other way around. Religion is popular because it
> offers a platform in which socializing can occur.
>
> And, oh yeah, because apparently you don't know science. The desire
> for socializing is genetically based.
I'm amazed to think there is a gene for it...
give an example - house martins (birds) nest in summer in the UK and spend
winter in South Africa ...
genetic yes .... but
why does the HM who nests in my porch fly back to my porch ... cant be in
the DNA
" you don't know science"
I dont like cricket.....
10cc check it out......
James Whitehead
> On Sun, 13 May 2007 10:28:03 +0100, "James Whitehead"
> <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> >news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
> >> On 12 May 2007 09:20:29 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >We do know that as traditional religions
> >> >weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
> >> >replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
> >> >religions like Communism, Naziism
> >>
> >> Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
> >> as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
> >> - the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
> >> How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
> >>
> >> >and fundamentalist
> >> >versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
> >>
> >> Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
> >> versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
> >> replaced THEM.
> >>
> >> >Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
> >>
> >> Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
> >> diametrically opposed.
> >>
> >
> >Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
>
> No, because it's been working for as long as man started trying.
oh it works so its correct.... ergo grasshoppers listen by their
legs.....cut them of - they dont jump to any audio stimulus...
>
> >
> >> It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
> >> Even if that means not posting anything.
> >
> >Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know
anything...
> >one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
> >
>
> I see you don't understand science or it's rational application.
> Neither of which 'sticks only to what you know', but exactly the
> opposite.
Humm - grasshopper - lots of smart dudes and dudedessesssss have tried to
define science ..... no i dont ...
>
> What's yer problem hon, did your mom forget to home school you in
> science?
oh - thats another story....... my mom forgot - period.... but you dont
want to know that ...
Francis A. Miniter
> "bob young" <alasp...@netvigator.com> wrote in message
> news:464686A2...@netvigator.com...
>>
>>Maybe religions will be studied as
>>'A quaint pastime in the twenty-first century and before'
>
> By a society which has no culture?
>
>
I hope you are not seriously trying to equate religion and culture. Painting,
sculpture, music and literature have for many centuries now escaped the tyrannic
hand of religion. How could you think that they are tied to it in this day and age?
Francis A. Miniter
Don Tuite
<min...@attglobalZZ.net> wrote:
>
>I hope you are not seriously trying to equate religion and culture. Painting,
>sculpture, music and literature have for many centuries now escaped the tyrannic
>hand of religion. How could you think that they are tied to it in this day and age?
>
descended from (or in a dielectic with -- which amounts to the same
thing) the old geezers with the masks and rattles who promised to keep
the dire wolves away from the campfire?
ObBook (For the sake of Painted Stick and Can of Beans): Tom Robbins'
_Skinny Legs and All_.
Don
*Anarcissie*
Apparently most people are not satisfied with it, if
indeed they possess it at all. And why should they
be? About the universe, the totality, we evidently
know (rationally speaking) very, very little. In a
sense, infinitesimally little. For some reason this
bothers "Man". Unlike the other animals, who take
nature as it is and get along as best they can,
"Man" wants answers and he wants them _now_.
And when he doesn't get them, you might say he
raises hell.
Kate
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
Don't you even read what you write yourself? You said reason was an
act of faith, not that it was incorrect.
Al Klein
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
>> Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
>> diametrically opposed.
>Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
An irrational act of faith.
>> It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
>> Even if that means not posting anything.
>Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know anything...
Sticking to posting what you know ...
Al Klein
wrote:
>There is enough water to flood the entire planet
It just isn't doing so at the moment because some creature that
supposedly exists outside of time "wants" it to not flood the planet.
Al Klein
<some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>"Kate " <cob...@newscene.com> wrote in message
>news:465217d2....@news-west.newscene.com...
>> On Sun, 13 May 2007 10:28:03 +0100, "James Whitehead"
>> <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
>> >Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
>> No, because it's been working for as long as man started trying.
>oh it works so its correct.... ergo grasshoppers listen by their
>legs.....cut them of - they dont jump to any audio stimulus...
Try turning a Phillips-head screw with a sledge hammer.
Hmmm.
Evidently Phillips-head screws don't turn.
michael
> bob young wrote:
>
>> Culture has nothing to do with groveling to imaginary gods.
>>
>> Would you say the Chinese lack culture?
>
> Despite the Communists' best efforts, they also have a full working set of
> gods and goddesses. Who is Quan-Yin?
goddess of compassion and mercy... known as kwannon (in japan), kuan im
(in thailand), quan Am (in vietnam)...she is also recognized as
avalokiteshvara, the buddha of compassion, and can be something of a
gender-bending figure of great beauty in statues, despite the occasional
surfeit of arms...
michael
Michael Gray
wrote:
- Refer: <4646DB82...@netvigator.com>
>
>
>James Whitehead wrote:
>
>> "bob young" <alasp...@netvigator.com> wrote in message
>> news:464686A2...@netvigator.com...
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > > On 12 May 2007 08:07:00 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
>> > > wrote:
>> > >
>> > > >[This is probably much too long for the limited attention-span
>> > > >of Usenetters, but is does give an interesting overview of the
>> > > >counteroffensive against religion, especially fundamentalist
>> > > >religion, now being effected by various parties, and does
>> > > >raise the problem of what will replace religion if and when
>> > > >it retreats or falls. I disagree with the conclusion.]
>> > > >
>> > > >http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/lazare
>> > >
>> > > What will replace religions is knowledge of their mystical and
>> > > spiritual core ... providing mankind doesn't eradicate all life
>> > > on planet earth first, and make earth uninhabitable.
>> >
>> > 'A quaint pastime in the twenty-first century and before'
>> By a society which has no culture?
>
>
>Would you say the Chinese lack culture?
Or Sweden?
--
Michael Gray
>
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
>> wrote:
>>
>> >We do know that as traditional religions
>> >weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
>> >replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
>> >religions like Communism, Naziism
>>
>> Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
>> as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
>> - the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
>> How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
>>
>> >and fundamentalist
>> >versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
>>
>> Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
>> versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
>> replaced THEM.
>>
>> >Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
>>
>> diametrically opposed.
>>
>
"Trust", not "faith".
An elementary and inexcusable error.
>> It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
>> Even if that means not posting anything.
>
>Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know anything...
>one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
Another bloody philosopher...
--
Michael Gray
<pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
- Refer: <5aoin8F...@mid.individual.net>
>Michael Gray wrote:
>
>> Don't tell me, you are a philosopher.
>> I can tell by your hostile and immature reaction to being corrected on
>> a basic point.
>
>No, you didn't "correct" me, you said things that were so inane that
>they were not worth a serious response. Big difference ...
Yep, you *are* another bloody useless pseudo-intellectual philosopher,
who cannot even defend his basic errors!
--
Al Klein
A man of faith.
Francis A. Miniter
Well, I am a lawyer, and I do not consider myself descended from Hammurabi nor
in dialectic [or dielectric] with him or the doctors of ecclesiastical law.
Certainly some artists use religious symbolism because it has known meaning.
That does not make them philosophic descendants of Giotto, anymore than
Kierkegaard was a philosophic descendant of Spinoza.
But all that is just a red herring. The statement implied by James Whitehead
was that you cannot have culture without religion. That is pure poppycock.
Francis A. Miniter
Michael Gray
wrote:
- Refer: <rnnf43hb5e78a5rkb...@4ax.com>
That explains a lot.
He regularly conflates "fiath" with "trust".
It might be deliberate.
--
bob young
James Whitehead wrote:
> "bob young" <alasp...@netvigator.com> wrote in message
> news:46470900...@netvigator.com...
> >
> >
> > James Whitehead wrote:
> >
> > > "Don Tuite" <don_...@MAILNOTSAUSAGEhotlinks.com> wrote in message
> > > news:sj3c43p76vpcv5kgv...@4ax.com...
> > > > On Sat, 12 May 2007 19:17:08 +0100, "James Whitehead"
> > > > <some...@overtherainbow.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >"Don Tuite" <don_...@MAILNOTSAUSAGEhotlinks.com> wrote in message
> > > > >news:tnmb43h297ejkasq0...@4ax.com...
> > > > >> Russell is curiously (to me) absent from the review.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> It has been many years since I devoured all the essays, and my
> > > > >> critical faculties may have been indifferent at the time, but I had
> > > > >> two impressions. One was R was an appealing writer whose style did
> > > > >> not descend to mean-spiritedness, but whose arguments were
> > > > >> nevertheless devastating. The other was that criticism of R seemed
> to
> > > > >> focus on his being a randy sort or that the forces of Good were
> locked
> > > > >> in a deadly war the Russkies, and Russell was their judas goat.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Does Bertrand Russell come up at all in these latter-day
> discussions?
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Don
> > > > >
> > > > >are you familiar with the Russell / Copplestone debate?
> > > > >
> > > > No. Er, I mean remind me.
> > > >
> > > From memory it was a live debate on the BBC Radio (checking) 1948
> > > "A Debate on the Existence of God"
> > >
> > > Russell - Certainly the question "Does a cause of the world exist?" is
> a
> > > question that has meaning....
> > >
> > > (Copleston is aJesuit historian of philosophy - here pursues the
> argument
> > > from contingency...)
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > At the end of the debate he clearly wins the argument - Russell has to
> back
> > > down from his position above... to
> > >
> > > Copleston: Your general point then, Lord Russell, is that its
> illegitimate
> > > even to ask the question of the cause of the world?
> > >
> > > Russell: Yes, that is my position.
> > >
> > > Copleston: If it is a question that for you has no meaning, it is of
> course
> > > very difficult to discuss it, isn't it?
> > >
> > > Russell: Yes, it is very difficult.
> > >
> > > (Game set and match to Copleston)
> >
> > Which is totally meaningless, since Copleston was deluded from the cradle
> >
> > It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish,
> but
> > by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this
> way is
> > much greater and more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired
> by
> > prayer, because you never could tell whether your prayer would be
> favorably
> > heard in Heaven. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it
> > would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no
> known
> > limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one
> believed
> > it; we are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and
> everyone
> > believes it. (I.S.S.p15)
> > [Bertrand Russell]
> >
>
> Strange that a nation with the Atomic Bomb has 3 times been defeated by
> nations - or groups with no such weapon - they did have a faith in something
> larger than their own egos however - so Bertie was wrong again.
He was a humanist, something you obviously would never understand....
......so fare thee well, keep up the good work,
far be it for me to try to stop those who insist that faith in nothing will
result in reality
I suppose it can't be much different to skoking opium, althpugh I have never
tried.
>
>
> I also think he / possibly you - are using a very narrow definition of
> prayer ...
The definition of prayer is simple. '
Prayer to the religionist is what 'hoping' is to normal people'
>
>
> I think he also said "Better Red than Dead"
I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What
physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his
opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change
their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the
minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian
proclaims eternal truths. The creeds remain unchanged since the Council of
Nicaea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.
Bertran Russell](D.M.M.M.preface)
The above, as you are probably well aware, was guest lecturer at just about
every leading university in the USA in his day. Just in case that religious
feeling of superiority and arrogence might be kicking in.........
Cheers and ...........Oh I forgot............
<PLONK>
bob young
James Whitehead wrote:
> "bob young" <alasp...@netvigator.com> wrote in message
> news:46470977...@netvigator.com...
> >
> >
> > James Whitehead wrote:
> >
> > > "Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> > > news:r05d4311sgfe036o2...@4ax.com...
> > > > On 12 May 2007 09:20:29 -0700, *Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >We do know that as traditional religions
> > > > >weakened throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they were
> > > > >replaced, not by reason, but by new and much more violent
> > > > >religions like Communism, Naziism
> > > >
> > > > Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was the religion that had Stalin
> > > > as its god. Nazism was, basically, traditional European Christianity
> > > > - the kind that had used Jews as scapegoats for many, many centuries.
> > > > How much more "traditional" do you want to get?
> > > >
> > > > >and fundamentalist
> > > > >versions of Islam, Christianity, and so on.
> > > >
> > > > Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are the older
> > > > versions of these religions. Your "traditional religions" are what
> > > > replaced THEM.
> > > >
> > > > >Being contrary to reason and contrary to nature, these new religions
> > > >
> > > > Religion, per se, is contrary to reason. Faith and reason are
> > > > diametrically opposed.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Its an act of faith that the world can be rationally understood.
> >
> > ROFL
> >
> > Yes I see what you mean:
> >
> > The universe revolves around the earth.
> > Stars are pinpricks in the heavens.
> > The world is flat (and on pillars)
> > Bats are a kind of bird.
> > Rabbits chew their cud.
> > There is enough water to flood the entire planet
> > Women were created from a man's rib
> > Rainbows are a promise from God
> >
> > [Acknowledgements to 'James, Seattle']
> >
>
> Silly miss-reading of a religions text - well of the bible - very smart -
> well not - very stupid-
Which, of course, were you to have verifiable proof of such you would not be
able to wait to write down here and then claim some form of supeririority.
Since you did not such thing I can draw my own conlusions.
Here are a few more miss-readings [sic] from The Bible - for you to
**Blissfully ignore**
Genesis 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
Genesis 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.
Genesis 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
Genesis 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.
Genesis 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created.
Genesis 2:7, 19 Man was created before animals were created.
Genesis 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.
Genesis 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.
Genesis 1:31 God was pleased with his creation.
Genesis 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation.
Christians don't believe there are contradictions in the bible.
Why?
Because it's not written in the bible that there are any.
[With acknowledgments to Andrew W.]
Just about sums you up Eh?
>
>
> One day perhaps these people will develop sufficently to understand
> metaphores - which i think first appeared in The Epic of Gilgamesh
>
> Lord Kelvin said that hevier than air flying machines were impossible
> ergo all science is rubbish...
>
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > > It really DOES make you look better when you stick to what you know.
> > > > Even if that means not posting anything.
> > >
> > > Rationally - Sticking to what you know means you will never know
> anything...
> > > one can only find or gain knowledge of what one doesn't know...
> >
> > See above
> >
> >
>
> See what. Axioms are acts of faith - on which science and mathematics is
> built.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
wrote:
> mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
> > Where there is no belief in any THING, then a belief in ANY thing will
> > happen,
>
> This does not follow logically or psychologically. It is only a sophistic turn
> of phrase.
Only when you drop context and ignore the rest of the post.
> > which explains why the relgious mystics of yesteryear, have
> > today only shifted camp, and have become the geeks of global warming,
> > tree-hugging - the Earth Mother mystics.
>
> Not only does that follow, it is also not historically
> accurate.
Rubbish, there's less mystics of the silly godistic ilk and there's
more mystics of the global warming, tree-hugging, the greater good and
the earth mother ilk, saddly for mankind, total mystics remain a
relatively constant portion of the population.
> > The mind of reason only believes the things where there is non-
> > contradicting sensory evidence offered.
>
> > MG
>
> You clearly have not read Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. Take a look a t Part
> I, Sections 40 to 65 or so.
Leaving aside your appeal to your higher authority, why dont YOU have
a crack at explaining, IF, your knowledge and your beliefs are NOT
directly linked to sensory evidence, which is to say, that IF the
origin of your knowledge and beliefs can NOT be reduced right back
down to an irreducible and sensory level of perception, then WHERE
else can they come from other than having been INVENTED inside YOURS
of some other's MIND? e.g. the god non-sense.
MG
Michael Gordge
James Whitehead
"bob young"
[...]
> >
> > Strange that a nation with the Atomic Bomb has 3 times been defeated by
> > nations - or groups with no such weapon - they did have a faith in
something
> > larger than their own egos however - so Bertie was wrong again.
>
> He was a humanist, something you obviously would never understand....
I think i have a reasonable understanding - what puzzles me is that if
humanism celebrates rites of passage its a religion. Kate and others makes
the big mistake of equating religion with a belief in a god... which is not
so. I gave examples - then i missed ancestor worship and some of the new age
'religions'..
Humanism is a belief system with practices - its for me an example of a
religion...
>
> ......so fare thee well, keep up the good work,
> far be it for me to try to stop those who insist that faith in nothing
will
> result in reality
>
> I suppose it can't be much different to skoking opium, althpugh I have
never
> tried.
>
> >
> >
> > I also think he / possibly you - are using a very narrow definition of
> > prayer ...
>
> The definition of prayer is simple. '
> Prayer to the religionist is what 'hoping' is to normal people'
>
Yes - how wrong you are - to pray to god for something is stupid - as it
offers the idea of being able to change gods mind - though many do this -
its only one of many forms of prayer, more often prayer and chanting
involves an attempt at communion with a divine being - or altering ones
consciousness, it can also be used as a form of sacrifice, worship and
thanks. So praying for something is only one small aspect - though perhaps
dominates the minds of capitalist consumers. If you analyse the Lords Prayer
you can see many of these features...
Beginning with Hallowing the name of god - there is a petition in there
also - but *daily* bread - not a Mercedes Benz Janice!
> >
> >
> > I think he also said "Better Red than Dead"
>
> I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What
> physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his
> opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men
change
> their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the
> minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A
theologian
> proclaims eternal truths. The creeds remain unchanged since the Council of
> Nicaea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your
mind.
> Bertran Russell](D.M.M.M.preface)
>
> The above, as you are probably well aware, was guest lecturer at just
about
> every leading university in the USA in his day. Just in case that
religious
> feeling of superiority and arrogence might be kicking in.........
>
I've yet to express my religiosity or not - i'm now simply pointing out some
misunderstandings over what religion and prayer is - perhaps by someone not
interested in the subject - but that is hardly a recommendation for
judgement - or is it?
Religion has many forms as does prayer - to judge (this is what i suspect)
religion and prayer by reference to bigoted bible belt American think headed
fundamentalists is wrong - such a judgement itself seeming to be similar...
(phew!) *No* i dont judge the citizens of the USA by the intellectual and
moral properties of their president.... :-)