Atheists Agonistes

[Nubclear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/op...rssnyt&emc=rss

Why, then, are the enlightened so conspicuously up in arms these days, reiterating every possible argument against the existence of God? Why are they indulging in books — Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell,” Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation,” and Richard Dawkins’s “God Delusion” — in which authors lampoon religion or rail against the devout under the banner of a crusading atheism? Books dictated or co-written by God sell quite well among the 2.1 billion self-declared Christians and 1.3 billion self-declared Muslims of the world. What explains the current interest among secularists in absolutely, positively establishing that the author is a fraud?

I can think of a reason.....

[Aeson]

It begs the question, do "reasonable" people really want the nutcases on "their" side? With or without the idea of God, I think humanity still has the same underlying problems... namely that some people can be capable of justifying any atrocity in their own minds even given the flimsiest of claims to truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9S6yAaSYSc
(southpark)

[DinoDoc]

I love this game.


Watching over the 'Eenemies of the People'

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar

I can think of a reason.....

Why do you blame superman or UFO?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Aeson
It begs the question, do "reasonable" people really want the nutcases on "their" side? With or without the idea of God, I think humanity still has the same underlying problems... namely that some people can be capable of justifying any atrocity in their own minds even given the flimsiest of claims to truth.

Or is the bigger concern the level of fanaticism that can be generated by hijacked dogmas that can never be matched by the likes of rational secularism?

Edit - To Dinos point, Communism aside as that was a defacto religion.

Given the choice between lukewarm secularism or a potentially strong counterbalancing judeochristian belief vs. the alluded to fanatical islamicists I'll lay odds the judeo chrisitians stand better odds at resisting the advances of Islamic radicalism in the inevitable clash of civilizations. Sometimes rationality isn't the cure for irrational adversaries.

[Aeson]

Fanaticism can take many faces, included secularism. If God were somehow taken off the table, we'd still have much the same fanatics, just with some other cause.

I don't agree that the best defense against fanaticism is countering it with fanaticism. Many of the problems we are facing in the world today are a direct result of the extents we went to "win" the cold war. The terrorists are using techniques we trained them with to fight the "evil". Now we're the "evil" that's targetted. They're ranks are filled, supported, harbored, or tolerated by those who we've trodden upon in the name of our own "righteousness".

If our response is to continue this "good" vs "evil" crap to justify killing of innocents for our "national interests", we are adding to the ranks of those who oppose us, and we've become what we are attempting to erradicate.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

You seem to imply that the cause of these attacks are in some way a function wholely of past US policy. I don't necessarily subscribe to that point of view.

There are and continue to be unreconcilable differences in the make up of western civlization and Sharia based civlizations. The stated goal of islamic fundamentalism is adoption on mass scale of Sharia law as the abiding law of the lands. That is something no right minded westerner with any sense of fairness would ever consider. The liberal western world view with respect to womens rights and tolerance to others religious persuasions (yes even those fundy chrisitians in the US everyone is so afraid of but who have yet to ever really meaningfully make the US a theocracy despite the bugbears fears they might one day do so)

The point ultimately being either resistance to those ideals and confining it or conversion of ideology to something more palatable via some form of internal reformation of the islamic beliefs.

The former requires a resolve I think incapable from the feckless rationalistas. The latter a desire to adopt rational lines of thought by elements of Islamic fanaticism, a hope perhaps but faint considering there has yet to be a reformation over the 1600 odd years of Islamic history.

Given those two options if fight we must, fight with conviction and determination. If rational thought can help provide that conviction and determination great, I simply think though that is a rather fluid foundation as what one day seems irrational appears quite rational the next. I see no reason however to exclude those who have convictions anchored in Judeo-Christian (for what most would say at least) relatively tolerant world views.

Furthermore to the opening post the point attempting to being drawn is that all religions are equal. This of course starts with the premise of aetheism and leads ultimately to the derision/decision that all religions lead to bad things such as the intolernance evidecned inthe 911 shots. What it fails to reconciel is the balance of good and bad the various religions offer. On the whole not all religions stack up the same (which of course is somewhat dependent on your world view as well)

[Bkeela]

The advent of Intelligent Design seems to have energised science popularists like Dawkins and the scientific community in general. With pseudo scientific creationism poisoning the minds of young people in schools, rational people had to get off their arses and fight back.

[Nubclear]

Given the choice between lukewarm secularism or a potentially strong counterbalancing judeochristian belief vs. the alluded to fanatical islamicists I'll lay odds the judeo chrisitians stand better odds at resisting the advances of Islamic radicalism in the inevitable clash of civilizations. Sometimes rationality isn't the cure for irrational adversaries.

Indeed. Why, maybe we should start a crusade....After all, illogical fanaticism clearly must be fought with illogical fanaticism

The point ultimately being either resistance to those ideals and confining it or conversion of ideology to something more palatable via some form of internal reformation of the islamic beliefs.

The former requires a resolve I think incapable from the feckless rationalistas.

Really? Why? Considering that the "feckless rationalistas" are ardently opposed to religious dogma (which would necessarily include fundamentalist Islam), I somehow don't think that they are going to oppose resisting forced conversion to Islam

Of course, they are also not likely to accept the "We must let Israel bomb the hell out of X (Lebanon, etc) because JEBUS will come!!!1" argument either. And that probably isn't an argument that should be driving US foreign policy in any way whatsoever, considering that it is generally ineffectual in in either resisting Islamic fundamentalism or causing an internal reformation within Islam.

Given those two options if fight we must, fight with conviction and determination.

One problem is that you are presenting the entire situation as either we fight against the Islamic world, or we stop opposing them and instead attempt to promote internal reform.
Why can't we, instead of dogmatically clinging onto one doctorine or the other, instead choose the action that will be maximise our ideals in a given situation.

For instance, perhaps promoting economic prosperity in the Islamic world in one instance is best (as improving material conditions will likely also result in social development, especially if the Islamic world can be tied to the international capitalist system), whereas in another situation using the military to defend our interests is best.

If we just choose one or the other, because such an approach fails to account for the complexity of the situation (the complexity of religion, of the social dynamics within the various nations, of humans in general) then of course it will be doomed to failure: If we simply accept fundamentalist Islam, obviously our greater liberal and social ideals will not be promoted. If we completely ignore the "arab street" and instead attempt to bomb our way to victory, obviously we will only increase the gap between Islam and liberalism and radicalise increasing sections of the population.
Neither approach is going to work solely on its own.

Furthermore to the opening post the point attempting to being drawn is that all religions are equal.

Oh indeed not! For instance, the Dharmic religions as a whole tend to be somewhat better wrt/ violence than the Abrahamic religions.
It's just that fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are extremely similar in that they are both hate- and violence-filled religions that call for the deaths of nonbelievers and the forceful conversion of society.

Christianity in its modern form is simply different because, again, it has largely been obliterated by liberalism. All one has to do is look to many African Christian demoniations to see what the lack of liberalism turns Christianity into: Something that is very difficult to seperate in principle from fundamentalist islam. Numerous crimes against humanity, as occur today in the Islamic world, were once condoned in the Christian world as the will of God.

We can praise liberalism and socialism and whatever other philosophical systems have turned us into a more open and free society. But lets not pretend that Christianity is somehow a pure religion as opposed to evil, hate-infested Islam. Fundamentalist Christianity, indeed any form of dogma that promotes illogical thinking patterns, holds us back far more than it propels us forward. Hence, embracing Christianity once again in order to fight fundie Islam seems, to me, to be turning into the thing we're trying to destroy.

[Berzerker]

You seem to imply that the cause of these attacks are in some way a function wholely of past US policy. I don't necessarily subscribe to that point of view.

I do, Muslims didn't wake up one day and decide they wanted to kill people on the other side of the planet.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
You seem to imply that the cause of these attacks are in some way a function wholely of past US policy. I don't necessarily subscribe to that point of view.

Neither do I. You say "wholely", which I definitely don't agree with. There are plenty of other factors, but our policy has definitely been an influence as well. We as a nation have to take responsibility for those actions, learn from our past mistakes.... not just pretend everyone hates us because we're "good" and they are "evil".

There are and continue to be unreconcilable differences in the make up of western civlization and Sharia based civlizations. The stated goal of islamic fundamentalism is adoption on mass scale of Sharia law as the abiding law of the lands. That is something no right minded westerner with any sense of fairness would ever consider. The liberal western world view with respect to womens rights and tolerance to others religious persuasions (yes even those fundy chrisitians in the US everyone is so afraid of but who have yet to ever really meaningfully make the US a theocracy despite the bugbears fears they might one day do so)

There are of course those who wish to make the US a theocracy. And there are those in Islamic countries who have supported secularist governments/movements as well. Steps towards human rights are being made in even some of the theocracies.

Painting it as black and white is a huge part of the problem. It was not that long ago (historically speaking) that the western world had much the same views on women's rights, religious tolerance, ect. We managed to work things out without having to be bombed into submission.

The point ultimately being either resistance to those ideals and confining it or conversion of ideology to something more palatable via some form of internal reformation of the islamic beliefs.

Neither of which requires us to adopt our own intolerance.

The former requires a resolve I think incapable from the feckless rationalistas.

Of course the "feckless rationalistas" won't have much resolve, but not all rational people are feckless. You seem to be rather irrational on this point.

The latter a desire to adopt rational lines of thought by elements of Islamic fanaticism, a hope perhaps but faint considering there has yet to be a reformation over the 1600 odd years of Islamic history.

There have been advances in human rights in Islamic countries though. There is definitely hope, but the more we alienate them, the more it will galvanize the resistance to further progress.

If you look at the Islamic world, or the world in general, the more educated and affluent the general populace, the less acceptable midevil intolerance seems to be. If we want to win this "war", we should be working to increase the affluence of the general populations on the other side.

Sadly that seems to be considered incompatible with our "national interests". We'd rather support the dictators denying human rights as long as they give us good deals on oil, drop bombs on those who aren't so willing, and further alienate the entire region for generations to come. Too much fanaticism on our part already, not enough rational thought and long term vision.

Given those two options if fight we must, fight with conviction and determination. If rational thought can help provide that conviction and determination great, I simply think though that is a rather fluid foundation as what one day seems irrational appears quite rational the next. I see no reason however to exclude those who have convictions anchored in Judeo-Christian (for what most would say at least) relatively tolerant world views.

I would hope that rational thought can lead us to solutions that don't require outright holy war.

[Dis]

increasing the affluence of the Islamic world (specifically the middle east)?

They need to be increasing our affluence.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Dis
increasing the affluence of the Islamic world (specifically the middle east)?

They need to be increasing our affluence.

Because Americans are just so poor....

[Sandman]

Secular > 'Judeo-Christian'

Mind you, 'Judeo-Christian' is just another fruity neologism from the people that brought us 'Islamofascism'. Bring on the clash!

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar

Furthermore to the opening post the point attempting to being drawn is that all religions are equal.

We can praise liberalism and socialism and whatever other philosophical systems have turned us into a more open and free society. But lets not pretend that Christianity is somehow a pure religion as opposed to evil, hate-infested Islam. Fundamentalist Christianity, indeed any form of dogma that promotes illogical thinking patterns, holds us back far more than it propels us forward. Hence, embracing Christianity once again in order to fight fundie Islam seems, to me, to be turning into the thing we're trying to destroy.

I mostly agree with some of the stuff you say, but you should stick to the point you're trying to make.

In the same post, you quote people arguing that all religions are equal and then argue that we should not "pretend that Christianity is somehow a pure religion as opposed to evil, hate-infested Islam", basically wasting a full paragraph on a strawman you just created...

[Jon Miller]

I know lots of fundamentalist Christians who are pacificists...

JM

[Sava]

Religion doesn't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people.

[Arrian]

Fanaticism can take many faces, included secularism. If God were somehow taken off the table, we'd still have much the same fanatics, just with some other cause.

That's my opinion as well. Fanatics worry me, regardless of what they happen to be fanatical about (sometimes they bounce around).

-Arrian

[Elok]

Fanaticism is actually more often a symptom of weak faith, in my experience. My opinion of the almighty is not so low as to feel threatened by some bozo quoting Thomas Paine or pointing at fossils and talking about pink unicorns.

EDIT: Is it Paine or Payne? I can't recall.

[Sava]

I guess some of us are just born with a sense of reason and some aren't.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar

Given the choice between lukewarm secularism or a potentially strong counterbalancing judeochristian belief vs. the alluded to fanatical islamicists I'll lay odds the judeo chrisitians stand better odds at resisting the advances of Islamic radicalism in the inevitable clash of civilizations. Sometimes rationality isn't the cure for irrational adversaries.

Indeed. Why, maybe we should start a crusade....After all, illogical fanaticism clearly must be fought with illogical fanaticism

Too late as the battle lines (of holy Jihad vs. Crusading Zionists) are already drawn at least from what Islamic Fundies would have you believe. Now given that why would you proceed to discount and diminish a portion of the western populace that has a belief system at least aligned with your world view in that it believes people should be allowed the choice of religion, believes (in its current reformed and now western liberal incarnation) that people of any race, sex and creed need to have the free will to find their own path, etc.

Rather than deal with the issues from a rationale point of view namely attempting to promote the aforementioned reformations and/or dealing with a compartmentalizing policy for Islamic Fundamentalism you would rather equate Christianity in all its myriad and mostly liberal forms to that of Islamic Fundamentalism. Hmmm..... where have I heard that arguement before. Shades of the failed pretext for the Iraqi invasion arguement. Sadaam's Iraq = Islamic Fundamentlaism if only by tenuous association.

Perhaps, though, I give to much credit to the tolerance of your world view in that I can only surmize your motive has something to do with the thing you find so abhorrent about Christianity (or any of the Abrahmic religions) the assurance of your correctness and the likewise assurance of the incorrectness and abject stupidity of an opposing world view.

The point ultimately being either resistance to those ideals and confining it or conversion of ideology to something more palatable via some form of internal reformation of the islamic beliefs.

The former requires a resolve I think incapable from the feckless rationalistas.

Really? Why? Considering that the "feckless rationalistas" are ardently opposed to religious dogma (which would necessarily include fundamentalist Islam), I somehow don't think that they are going to oppose resisting forced conversion to Islam

Why? What gives you any evidence that rational lines of thought provide ardent opposition to expansions of religious dogmas including Islamic Fundamentalism if faced with costs rational beings are unwilling to immediately bear. That assumes long term multigenerational cost benefit analysis which is not a strong suit of the rationalista crowd. Given this scenario one could easily envision a rational approach to be allowing an expansion of religious fundamentalism (even something as malignant as Islamic Sharia law) under the guise of its too expensive to combat or 'hey it doesn't impact me" arguements.

Of course, they are also not likely to accept the "We must let Israel bomb the hell out of X (Lebanon, etc) because JEBUS will come!!!1" argument either. And that probably isn't an argument that should be driving US foreign policy in any way whatsoever, considering that it is generally ineffectual in in either resisting Islamic fundamentalism or causing an internal reformation within Islam.

And no one of any real standing including teh EVIL Bush has ever used this as a meaningful arguement for foreign policy decisions. Nor would I expect anyone in any foreseeable future to do so.

Given those two options if fight we must, fight with conviction and determination.

One problem is that you are presenting the entire situation as either we fight against the Islamic world, or we stop opposing them and instead attempt to promote internal reform.
Why can't we, instead of dogmatically clinging onto one doctorine or the other, instead choose the action that will be maximise our ideals in a given situation.

For instance, perhaps promoting economic prosperity in the Islamic world in one instance is best (as improving material conditions will likely also result in social development, especially if the Islamic world can be tied to the international capitalist system), whereas in another situation using the military to defend our interests is best.

If we just choose one or the other, because such an approach fails to account for the complexity of the situation (the complexity of religion, of the social dynamics within the various nations, of humans in general) then of course it will be doomed to failure: If we simply accept fundamentalist Islam, obviously our greater liberal and social ideals will not be promoted. If we completely ignore the "arab street" and instead attempt to bomb our way to victory, obviously we will only increase the gap between Islam and liberalism and radicalise increasing sections of the population.
Neither approach is going to work solely on its own.

I believe you misinterpret my meaning. I was never saying it was an either or proposition merely that as a realist/pessimist I think the likelihood ends up being we will be required at times to fight and resist the anticivilizational movements of religious dogmatics. A threat I see far greater in the form of Islamic fundamentalism an avowed enemy of western ideals as opposed to modern reformed Judeo Christianity an avowed ally in supporting western ideals in relative comparison/contrast.

I of course would like to see all avenues opened for possible exploitation. (BTW my pessimism is rooted in the failed 'bring democracy to the ME' as much as it is the ardent and pre-emptive opposition from so called rational people to such a policy for reasons of petty short term political gain.)

Given that struggle is likely, I see no reason to start an internal and counterproductive purging of those elements that would be most material in that resistance. I would of course be opposed to those attacks regardless of the above reason for reasons of tolerance alone.

Furthermore to the opening post the point attempting to being drawn is that all religions are equal.

Oh indeed not! For instance, the Dharmic religions as a whole tend to be somewhat better wrt/ violence than the Abrahamic religions.
It's just that fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are extremely similar in that they are both hate- and violence-filled religions that call for the deaths of nonbelievers and the forceful conversion of society.

Truly I should be refering to you as Aneeshm going forward.

Seriously you again conflate rogue minority factions of Christianity vs. mainstream established and the vast majority of Christendom. Those rogue factions have over all our lifetimes engendered condemnations from the more established Christian denominations (even your beloved Mormonism).

Christianity in its modern form is simply different because, again, it has largely been obliterated by liberalism.

No it has over the years of reformation transformed itself not been obliterated by liberalism. In fact one could say liberalism owes as much to many of the philosphers of the reformation as modern Christianity owes to the secular liberal philosphers.

This marks the stark contrast between modern Christianity and Islamic Fundamentalism.

All one has to do is look to many African Christian demoniations to see what the lack of liberalism turns Christianity into: Something that is very difficult to seperate in principle from fundamentalist islam. Numerous crimes against humanity, as occur today in the Islamic world, were once condoned in the Christian world as the will of God.

All one has to do is see the missions and soup lines to understand the great works of caring and giving the church does to understand it is a force for good as well. But I guess I could argue on the lines of that other great caring and giving religion, secular communism and all that communism turned into: Something not so different in principle from fundamentalist Islam. Numerous crimes against humanity, as occur today in the Islamic world, were once condoned and ordered in the communist world as the something done for the greater good of the party.

We can praise liberalism and socialism and whatever other philosophical systems have turned us into a more open and free society. But lets not pretend that Christianity is somehow a pure religion as opposed to evil, hate-infested Islam. Fundamentalist Christianity, indeed any form of dogma that promotes illogical thinking patterns, holds us back far more than it propels us forward. Hence, embracing Christianity once again in order to fight fundie Islam seems, to me, to be turning into the thing we're trying to destroy.

And here again is where you analogy fails because it is because Christianity has adopted and embraced a reformation and has adopted and even help shape the logical thinking patterns of liberalism to an extent(and no I don't agree with all views held by the Christian church by I do understand they offer them up for discussion and debate) while in stark contrast Islam has not shown that same tendency.

Lastly for all your talk of fundamental christianity and its adherents you again conflate fundamentalism (a rapidly dying faction of Christianity) with evangelical Christianity. The latter rapidly growing and relying on powers of argumentative perusasion to promote its faith and relying on personal experience of conversion, the former relying on ancient dogmas instructing and its steadfast beleif that all nonfollowers/believers are destined to damnation if not holding their own specific interpretations.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Sava
I guess some of us are just born with a sense of reason and some aren't.

Y'know, if you say your name backwards it sounds kinda like "half-ass." Quit Avas'ing your trolls, foo'.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Bkeela
The advent of Intelligent Design seems to have energised science popularists like Dawkins and the scientific community in general. With pseudo scientific creationism poisoning the minds of young people in schools, rational people had to get off their arses and fight back.

Jep,
the gentlemens agreement that we don´t mess with christian religion as long as the religious people don´t mess with sciencific education was broken by the christian fundamentalists.
Therefore it is justified to fight back

[Elok]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Jep,
the gentlemens agreement that we don´t mess with christian religion as long as the religious people don´t mess with sciencific education was broken by the christian fundamentalists.
Therefore it is justified to fight back

You're being rather indiscriminate attacking ALL religion, though. I don't care for ID or creationism myself. In fact, speaking for myself, I'd gladly tag-team the fundies with the atheists if they weren't being all pissy with us.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Elok


Y'know, if you say your name backwards it sounds kinda like "half-ass." Quit Avas'ing your trolls, foo'.

Sorry, but some people aren't worth a full ass.

[Arrian]

Lastly for all your talk of fundamental christianity and its adherents you again conflate fundamentalism (a rapidly dying faction of Christianity) with evangelical Christianity. The latter rapidly growing and relying on powers of argumentative perusasion to promote its faith and relying on personal experience of conversion, the former relying on ancient dogmas instructing and its steadfast beleif that all nonfollowers/believers are destined to damnation if not holding their own specific interpretations.

Evangelicals seem awfully loony to me. Perhaps a different sort of loony, but still loony. Anti-reason.

By the way, I do consider "liberal Christianity" far preferable to radical Islam. But it's a lesser of two evils thang.

-Arrian

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Arrian


Evangelicals seem awfully loony to me. Perhaps a different sort of loony, but still loony. Anti-reason.

By the way, I do consider "liberal Christianity" far preferable to radical Islam. But it's a lesser of two evils thang.

-Arrian

Thats cool. AS long as you and others here feel free to allow people to be loony without repercussion or recrimination, I'm down with that.


The constant haranguing some (not you per se) have to show OMFG!!111!! Look at teh stoopid Christian gets a tad bit tiresome.

[Arrian]

Absolutely. They can be looney for all I care. I reserve the right to argue against them when they seek to base policy decisions on their looney beliefs, of course.

As for the haranguing... it's a bit chicken & the egg. Christians take plenty of potshots at atheist/agnostics too. Both "sides" in such flamewars think the other started it.

-Arrian

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

You'ld be hard pressed to find a relgionista "your all going to hell" person posting on these boards.


Save a few fanatical commies that were intent on burning all us capitalistic piggies.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Elok
You're being rather indiscriminate attacking ALL religion, though. I don't care for ID or creationism myself. In fact, speaking for myself, I'd gladly tag-team the fundies with the atheists if they weren't being all pissy with us.

Yep, that´s often correct.
I think the devil lies in the design of the religions.
For example the three large abrahamic religions all share the idea of one god and even many of their religious books.
If you attack some/all books of the old testimony (or the existence of god) you cannot other than attack all of the three great religions at the same time.

It seems to be difficult to aim an attack the evangelical fundamentalists alone as they derive their faith from the same sources as the liberal christians, just as difficult as bombing a house (where a criminal is hiding) in a crowded street without hurting innocent bystanders.