Atheism and religion

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by molly bloom
I'm not the one doing the assuming:

no. no. stop it, please.

now moll, that is just plain cruel. you know how hard i've been trying to give up the cheese whiz and statements like that just leave me sticky all over.

the vedic process does not involve research work. in mudane scolarship, we have to show our academic learning by some research, but the vedic process is entirely different. in the vedic process the research work is already done; it is complete, and it is simply handed down by disciplic succession from teacher to student. there is no question of research work because the instruments and the means with which one conducts such research work are blunt and imperfect.

if we study bhagavad-gita according to academic knowledge or according to our own mental speculation, we are certain to commit mistakes. it is not possible to understand bhagavad-gita in this way.

elevation to krsna consciousness
a.c. bhaktivedanta swami prabhupada

no assumptions, chook

indeed

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by lebensraum
this could use some clarification. as a personal decision, i don't think any particular faith constitutes "religion." but if you are talking about an organised group who all choose to practice "atheism" in a consistent manner, then that is a different kettle of commies.

Without the intention to polemize, but more talking about game-wise simulation, I am not sure that communism or even "militant atheism" can be considered as absence of religion in game terms. Communist leaders believe in something like the natural evolution of society, as they tend to see communism as the next step in the social evolution. They also believe in an abstract concept that could be called, in absence of a better word, "the Society" or "the Estate". Isn't this a religion?

The scientific positivism many people profess nowadays is also another kind of religion, because people who believe in it tend to think that there is an order in the world. Even is there is not an all mighty god who sets this order, the order still exists. That for me is a religion.

Atheism, real atheism, would be something very different in game therms. It would be just the absence of religion. Your civ would just don't care about this matter. Nor support neither fight against any religion. Your civ would not get any benefit from it. On the other hand, it would not get any perjudice from it. I am not well informed about how religions work in Civ IV, but I suppose that they not only have pros but also some con. Atheism would be like a neutral option. You don't get anything but you don't risk anything.

if you simply choose not to adopt a state religion, that does not guarantee that the populace will follow your lead, they can still be converted by other players.

I completgely agree with that. This would leave free room for all the other religions to penetrate your civ, but would also free many resources which otherwise would be commited to your civ religion (cathedrals, temples, religious leaders...)

it might work, but it's far too passive a strategy for my taste.

Then what you would do is to adopt one of the modern religions, such as comunism, positivism, jacobinism, etc. But you would not be atheist. If you are commiting any civ resources to religion, even to a special kind of religion, then you are entering in religious matters.

Maybe other thing that could be done would be to equally favour two or more religions in your civ. That would put you in a more neutral place.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by OliverFA

Atheism, real atheism, would be something very different in game therms. It would be just the absence of religion. Your civ would just don't care about this matter. Nor support neither fight against any religion. Your civ would not get any benefit from it. On the other hand, it would not get any perjudice from it. I am not well informed about how religions work in Civ IV, but I suppose that they not only have pros but also some con. Atheism would be like a neutral option. You don't get anything but you don't risk anything.

As I understand it (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong; I haven't investigated the game all that much yet), the Civ IV religion model gives players direct control only over how government treats religion, not over the religious choices of citizens. I'm guessing that government policies probably do have some impact on the citizens' beliefs, but the impact is indirect.

Assuming I'm right, the kind of atheism you describe here does not fit the game's model because it would give the player direct power to influence the citizens' thinking about religion. Worse, it would do so without the player having to pay the price that normally accompanies that kind of tyranny. In the real world, any deliberate attempt to use government power to instill such an attitude in the citizens would draw a lot of irriataion and even anger from nations that take religion seriously, and also from highly religious people within its own borders.

In any case, I don't see where your idea is all that different from the concept of religious frreedom. A society that has religious freedom doesn't have to be atheistic in its general outlook.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by molly bloom

as you inimitably showed with your lack of knowledge of the U.S.S.R.'s history ) instead of engaging in even the smallest amount of historical research about models of government that have existed in reality, you choose to make inaccurate comparisons between them based on your own erroneous assumptions about documents ('The Communist Manifesto' of Marx and Engels) you haven't read and forms of government you clearly know nothing about.

ok. i had actually make a start on reading marx ages ago (or was it masoch? - meh, same difference). let's face it, the prose is so wrist-slittingly dull i just gave up. so yeah, guilty as charged. i was hoping someone might have already struggled through it and be able to check the facts for me. failing that, i'll just have to stock up on anti-depressants and do the job myself.

otherwise, there is no need for me to present historical facts as i am not attempting to make an historical argument.

the soviet government actively promoted an atheist state and persecuted those who did not adhere to it's ideals.

this is what we in the trade refer to as "common knowledge." i am not attempting to prove that this really happened. any argument starts by making some form of assumptions. these are my assumptions and i consider them to be quite reasonable.

if you wish to call upon historical data to show that this was not the case, by all means, do so. it would make for interesting reading, and i'd like to see what sources up with which you come.

however, since your a stickler for authorative sources, here you go,..

Originally posted by TriMiro USSR and other countries used oppression against the church (is Eastern Europe it was mainly the Christian Church). For example in my country it was illegal to go to church on Easter. Churches existed more as historical monuments than anything else, like the ancient Greek temples, they still exist however I do not think anyone goes there to pray to Zeus.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by OliverFA
Without the intention to polemize, ... Communist leaders believe in something like ... Isn't this a religion?

The scientific positivism many people profess nowadays is also ... for me ... a religion.

words we use when talking about being
most of us are aware of the way we can become confused by words, sometimes attributing to a word the wrong meaning, at other times getting part of the meaning but missing another. for pretty much the same reason no doubt, st thomas was careful to explain how there are different kinds of words, or terms, we use when speaking about being. hence thomas gave us an account of three different ways he understands that we use words when talking about reality.

sometimes we use a word to express one identical concept. for instance, whether we use the word "man" of plato, of socrates or of fred astaire, what we intend by the word is some feature which is identical in all three. when we use a word in this way, thomas says we speak univocally, and the word we use is, thus, sometimes referred to as a "univocal term."

at other times we use a word to express concepts which are not identical at all. for instance, when we talk about the bark of a dog and the bark of a tree, clearly we understand that while the word is the same the features which we intend by the word are diverse. it is for this reason that comedians and politicians, who seem at times to be so similar in other ways, too, often employ such terms. when we use a word in this way, with what we might call a double entendre, st thomas says we speak equivocally, and the word we use is, therefore, sometimes referred to as an "equivocal term."

finally, sometimes we use a word to express concepts which are not identical, but which are not completely diverse either. we might say such words do not express identical, but rather similar concepts. for they express concepts which are partly the same and partly different. for example, at times we may say that our body is healthy, or that medicine is healthy, or that bread is healthy. clearly, in each of these cases the word "healthy" refers to a different notion, namely, to the human body, medicine and to bread. at the same time, we notice that we use the term "healthy" principally of the human body as the principle residence of health, and secondarily of medicine because it restores health, and of bread because it maintains health. hence the identical word can be used of essentially diverse things because it expresses different relations that these things have to a common feature, but, nonetheless, in a certain order. when we use a word in this way, thomas says we speak analogously, and the word we use is, consequently, sometimes called an "analogous term."

a simplified introduction to the wisdom of st thomas
peter a. redpath

i think that referring to communism or scientific positivism as a religion has some basis, but i don't think it is accurate without carefully qualifying exactly what you mean by the term. there are two sides to the argument, and i feel they both have some validity. for my money, the important thing is to understand the insights provided by both perspectives.

Atheism, real atheism, would be something very different in game terms. It would be just the absence of religion. Your civ would just don't care about this matter. Atheism would be like a neutral option. You don't get anything but you don't risk anything.

If you are commiting any civ resources to religion, even to a special kind of religion, then you are entering in religious matters.

nicely stated. in game terms, the whole religion system is only an abstraction. we all know how futile it can be to compare the game too closely with real life. but overall, it looks like it'll keep me plenty busy.

[Yolky]

sorry couldn't read all the posts so not shure if this was said. MXM i am to asume you are an American with your Avatar.
What would you call America in Civ terms? I would say Christian mostly, but as we know there is other religion as well, but would have to catagorize USA as a christian religion. What would YOU catagorize the USA in Civ terms?

I believe in Civ IV you don't have to pick any religion so you don't have to choose anything. The argument then will be that will put me at a disadvatge then when other civs use religions. But that would be the real world.

What stats would you give Atheism? Name a Civ our Country in the world that has Atheism as their religion? So picking no triats in Civ IV might be like it in real life, but I could be wrong and waiting for your comments.

Not trying to put you down, and sorry if I did.

[Flip McWho]

Does anyone else find it strangely ironic that religion comes with technological advances?

[Addled Platypus]

you get better communion waffers

seriously I would go for anything to keep all religon out of my empire

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
Does anyone else find it strangely ironic that religion comes with technological advances?

"Technology" covers offen "Ideology" in the game.

[MxM]

Originally posted by Yolky
sorry couldn't read all the posts so not shure if this was said. MXM i am to asume you are an American with your Avatar.
What would you call America in Civ terms? I would say Christian mostly, but as we know there is other religion as well, but would have to catagorize USA as a christian religion. What would YOU catagorize the USA in Civ terms?

I believe in Civ IV you don't have to pick any religion so you don't have to choose anything. The argument then will be that will put me at a disadvatge then when other civs use religions. But that would be the real world.

What stats would you give Atheism? Name a Civ our Country in the world that has Atheism as their religion? So picking no triats in Civ IV might be like it in real life, but I could be wrong and waiting for your comments.

Not trying to put you down, and sorry if I did.

To put me down? It will take much more than that Thanks for good questions though.

To answer them. US is a secular democracy. This is a form of government, and it has little or nothing to do with the religion(s) that people practice in the country.

Now for atheism as an official ideology (it is NOT a religion, but in game terms we can say that it is), the example is (or rather was) USSR. USSR was atheistic dictatorship. Another funny government to describe in civ terms is Saddam regime in Iraq, that is before the second Gulf war. I would call it secular dictatorship.

Now I see at least two parameters in government definition
1) Religion/Ideology.
secular - boost in happiness
atheistic - boost in science
religions - stat depends on the religion

2) Form of government
Democracy - boost in commerce
Dictatorship - boost in military
and so on

These are given only as an example to demonstrate the idea.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by MxM
But I think that that you understood yourself that this statement is not very good.

yeah, i should've just deleted that part. i was in a hurry to post and as soon as i'd stopped to think about it, i realised it was mostly crap. then i wasn't sure who might have already read through it and started cooking up a reply. so to be fair to anyone who might have already read through it, i thought it would be better to leave it in situ just in case.

next time i'll save it to disk just in case and go ahead with deleting it. sorry for the confusion.

it does happen that I am sometimes wrong

nooooo! say it isn't so!!

For some time scientist thought that there is some liquid which is responsible for the transfer of heat....
If we still used the same description ... we would not be able to advance physics ... and describe such things like chemical reactions on thermodynamic level.

mind you, the flux model is still quite powerful. it is certainly still useful, not only in pedagogy, but for solving real problems in electromagnetics, thermodynamics - and then there is the question of gravity.

i agree with your point. models develop over time. all the same, i find it really interesting when old and discredited theories become re-incarnated (can a theory be incarnated?? ) as new observations become available.

it probably has more to do with the way we, as humans develop knowledge. i think we tend to look for ways to explain things - to turn the data into stories we can understand. but that would be heading off into the field of epistemology which is probably stirring the pot just a bit too much, so just ignore me.

for myself, i'm not satisfied that 'advanced physics' is always about discovering the nature of reality. i think it may be just about discovering a particular kind of reality. none of the data is visible to the naked eye (ie. it is not accessible to unaided human experience). such data can only be obtained by (for eg.) building a bloody big cyclotron and provoking collisions that would not otherwise have taken place.

in a sense, it may allow observation of a certain level of reality, but you have to actually create that reality in order to see it.

if ... only (our) ancestors described the Earth as a piece of land on elephants, ... then they would not discover Americas.

ahhh yes. if only,..

Through the history we (humans) had to make some assumptions, that were sufficient for description of the world around them, until we were able to find better explanations that give better predictions to more events. This does make one theories more right and others more wrong, by you own suggestion - by the ability to " make accurate and useful predictions".

i generally agree with the idea. i do have some reservations, but they are probably what most people would consider "finicky," "obtuse," "irrelevant" or, most commonly, "bloody stupid."

roughly speaking, classical physics developed within a common philosophical framework. so, classically, physicists take it for granted that (for eg.) "things exist." whether that framework still satisfies the demands of science is a huge area for debate.

at the moment, though what i am mostly trying to address is a broader category of phenomena - spirits, angels, miracle cures, "existence" in itself, faith etc.

eg. miracle cures - science can verify the presence of a particular ailment. it can verify that, subsequent to a certain procedure, the ailment is no longer present. that much is empirically verifiable. but what happened in between?

I think that we do not know enough of civ 4 in order to decide how better to model USSR in the game which is not yet released

so? doesn't mean we can't start cutting each others throats now - saves time and money!

nope that suggestion is just way too sensible for my taste. but what did you think of trimiro's idea??
i thought it was the one post out of the past few pages that was really worthwhile.

[Commy]

I think some people here misunderstand something very important...you don't get to choose religions in civ 4...

You can found a holy city for a particular religion, if you are the first to research the appropriate tech, but that doesn't make all your cities that religion...

Holy cities slowly convert nearby cities...so, if you had the "Christian holy city", some of your cities might be Christian, but some cities on the outskirts near the "Islamic holy city" might be muslim...

Atheism might be a civics choice, meaning no one converts to any religion, and you can try to encourage certain religions in your civ (holy cities, culture), but you can't directly choose one religion for your civ...

[Heresson]

Originally posted by molly bloom
No- you'll find serious discussions of atheism amongst classical Greek philosophers.

But was a substantial part of population sure there are no deities and nothing supernatural? I believe that's what He ment.

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
No the aren't. The Greek prefix "A" means "Without." So "Atheism" literally means "without belief in god(s)," which is the same as "non-theist." The notion that atheism must denote an active disbelief in deities is false.

The true meaning of a word is not necessarily the literal one.
And your opinion about what "atheist" means is, imho, in minority.

[MxM]

Originally posted by Commy
I think some people here misunderstand something very important...you don't get to choose religions in civ 4...

You can found a holy city for a particular religion, if you are the first to research the appropriate tech, but that doesn't make all your cities that religion...

Holy cities slowly convert nearby cities...so, if you had the "Christian holy city", some of your cities might be Christian, but some cities on the outskirts near the "Islamic holy city" might be muslim...

Atheism might be a civics choice, meaning no one converts to any religion, and you can try to encourage certain religions in your civ (holy cities, culture), but you can directly choose one religion for your civ...

I thought, may be incorrectly, that you can have state religion as well. You have to have the state religion in order to speak about government tolerance to other religions.

Assuming that you can have state religion as option, I would like to distinguish between secular government, and atheist government. Atheist government would have atheism as official ideology (or as religion in game terms), meanwhile, the secular government would not have any preferred ideology.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by MxM
To answer them. US is a secular democracy. This is a form of government, and it has little or nothing to do with the religion(s) that people practice in the country

The United States is not a "secular democracy" at all. Trying to define a free society by looking only at the actions of its government misses an enormous part of the nation's character. The fact that we confine our government to power only over secular matters in no sense implies that the nation as a whole is secular.

Even our government can legitimately be viewed as secular only in the passive sense of having no power over religious matters, not in an active sense of being allowed or expected to actively promote secular viewpoints over competing religious viewpoints. I get extremely irritated when I see people try to claim that our government is secular because in my experience, people who use such a choice of wording almost invariably seem to have an active desire to use government power in ways that advance views that devalue religion at the expense of competing religious views. Such behavior by government is a direct violation of religious freedom, and makes a mockery of Madison's and Jefferson's arguments that a major goal of religious freedom is to protect religion against government meddling.

In Civ 4 terms as I understand them, the United States is a nation with religious freedom where a large majority of the population is Christian but where significant religious minorites are scattered throughout the civilization (as opposed to existing essentially only in certain conquered cities). If my understanding of the game's religion model is accurate, nothing beyond that is needed to characterize the United States in regard to religious matters.

Now I see at least two parameters in government definition
1) Religion/Ideology.
secular - boost in happiness
atheistic - boost in science
religions - stat depends on the religion

As I understand it, the roots of modern science are found not in atheism but in the belief that God created a universe that normally operates according to orderly principles. In essence, the view is of God as a "watch-maker" who created the "watch," set it in motion, and at least normally allows it to operate according to the dictates of the principles built into it. That's not to say that the "watch-maker" can't ever reach in and reset this or that if He so desires, much as I can use my watch's reset buttons to circumvent its normal operation if I so choose. But if God does intervene, He does so rarely enough that predictions based on an expectation that the universe will follow natural laws are highly reliable.

The idea of a science bonus tied specifically to atheism would be highly offensive to those of us who hold the "watch-maker" view of the relationship between God and science. I don't think that's a hornet's nest Firaxis wants to stir up. At least I certainly hope they don't stir it up, because I would have serious misgivings about buying a game that promotes a viewpoint that is so directly and deliberately opposed to my beliefs.

The hornet's nest that Firaxis would stir up if it tried to assign specific benefits to particular religions would probably be even bigger. In effect, Firaxis would be putting itself in a position of passing judgment over religions, and would thus anger people who object to Firaxis's judgment regarding their religion.

The situation is further complicated by the enormous variations within each religion, both over time and between factions within the religion. Consider the difference between the brand of Christianity that launched the Crusades and the brand that launched religious freedom through the view that God wants willing converts rather than people compelled or coerced by law. No single concept of advantages and disadvantages to Christianity could even begin to cover both of those extremely different variants of the religion. And except as part of a scenario specifically recreating medieval Europe, I certainly would not want my "Christian" civilization in the game to be forced to embrace a medieval version of Christianity that I regard as a major perversion of Christ's teachings and intent.