Atheists Agonistes

[Nubclear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/opinion/27Shweder.html?ex=1322283600&en=1916dcdec4888ed6&ei=5088&partner=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]

Re: Atheists Agonistes

I love this game.


Watching over the 'Eenemies of the People'

[CrONoS]

Re: Atheists Agonistes

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...