Atheists Agonistes

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

I can easily count on at least 3-4 "Religions is teh ghey thread" per month.

the quotes are in a funny place

[Sandman]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
19th century Reform Jews brought us the phrase "Islamofascism"?

edit: apparently the word is later than I thought, at least in English. OED records only a couple of obscure uses before 1945.

"It was during the Hitler years that American philo-Semites invented the 'Judeo-Christian tradition' to combat innocent, or not so innocent, language that spoke of a totalitarian assault on 'Christian civilization.'"
Peter Novick, Holocaust in American Life

However I can say that the CONCEPT was certainly common in late 19th and early 20th cent Jewish thought, in particular in Franz Rosenzweig, and I think Herman Cohen.

C'mon, anyone who uses the phrase nowadays just means 'capitalist democracy'. The American kind, mostly. Whatever stretched heritage you can find for the phrase has little to no meaning nowadays.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sandman


C'mon, anyone who uses the phrase nowadays just means 'capitalist democracy'. The American kind, mostly. Whatever stretched heritage you can find for the phrase has little to no meaning nowadays.

yeah, cause the only folks who use it are the US and other pols who you read about in UK papers, there couldnt actually be Jews wrestling with how we fit in to larger civilizational patterns that actually use the term, oh no. BTW, I think that both the term "judeo-christian" and "judeo-Islamic" are meaningful terms, as there are values and traits we share with each that we dont share with the other. (There are also things Christianity and Islam share with each other that they dont share with Judaism, but I dont find most of those things appealing, needless to say)

[Kuciwalker]

What, Judeo-Christian or Islamofascist?

xpost

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sandman


C'mon, anyone who uses the phrase nowadays just means 'capitalist democracy'. .

Given, that Turkey and Indonesia are capitalist democracies, I find that rather odd.

[lord of the mark]

BTW, I didnt note Judeo-Hinduism, cause, unfortunately I dont think it exists. It should though.

POTM - "Daddy, youre wrong, its not the Chinese who are the new Jews, its the Indians. Cause theyre smart, but also kinda crazy"

[Sandman]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
yeah, cause the only folks who use it are the US and other pols who you read about in UK papers, there couldnt actually be Jews wrestling with how we fit in to larger civilizational patterns that actually use the term, oh no. BTW, I think that both the term "judeo-christian" and "judeo-Islamic" are meaningful terms, as there are values and traits we share with each that we dont share with the other. (There are also things Christianity and Islam share with each other that they dont share with Judaism, but I dont find most of those things appealing, needless to say)

I don't think that they are very useful terms, considering the enormous intra-religion diversity and the fact that religion can be adapted to suit any set of values anyway.

Given, that Turkey and Indonesia are capitalist democracies, I find that rather odd.

I never said that it was a sensible term. In fact, I was probably a bit hasty in calling it a reference to capitalist democracy, it's looser than that. A handy catch-all term for people of a religious persuasion to hurl about.

[Nubclear]

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...

There are and continue to be unreconcilable differences in the make up of western civlization and Sharia based civlizations.

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.

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.

Because that system of belief is illogical and irrational and is used as justification for all manner of bizarre actions wtihin the Untied States. We may agree wrt/ Islamic fundamentalism, but even "moderate" Christianity continues to oppress today (to varying degrees).

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

Speaking of dealing with strawmen....I am simply saying that Christianity, as it was originally practiced, is not particularly different from Islamic fundamentalism. The Bible and the Koran both detail large numbers of human rights atrocities, and the only difference between the two groups is that Christians have largedly embraced liberalism (including secularism) and hence ignore those parts of the Bible whereas the same has not quite occured in the Islamic world.
When dealing with fundamentalist Christianity, of course, it is very easy to draw parallels to fundamentalist 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.

But this rests on the assumption that rational beings are unwilling to bear these costs.
If a person is commited to rational lines of thinking, they are not going to simply give up and abandon these things because the cost becomes "too great" - to allow Islamic fundamentalism to penetrate society is an affront to all the (presumed) values of the rationalista, which includes a particularly strong emphasis on rational and logical thought (both of which are incompatible with most religions in general, but particularly fundamentalist abrahamic doctorines)

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.

Except that the rationalista (presumably) has a value system beyond mere self-preservation that includes combating harmful irrational thought. Hence why the article references to many such as Richard Dawkins - his survival is not threatened by fundamentalist Christianity, but he fights against it anyway.
Because of this value system, there is a moral imperative to fight against radical Islam.

Furthermore, it is entirely impossible to envision a situation where, say, the atheist is threatened by Islamic fundamentalism? At least Christians are people of the book Just like in Christianity, atheists are highly unacceptable in Islam.

I think the likelihood ends up being we will be required at times to fight and resist the anticivilizational movements of religious dogmatics.

Sure, at some poitn in time we will be required to fight such things.

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.

Except that a large portion of the fundamentalist Christian community is not an ally of supposedly Western ideals (liberalism, tolerance, etc) since, by their fundamentalist doctorine, they are required to "spread the faith" through whatever means possible.

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.

Except that, again, these "forces" are harmful to society in general. There are other reasons, beyond merely combating Islamic fundamentalism, to fight fundamentalist Christianity.

No it has over the years of reformation transformed itself not been obliterated by liberalism.

The fundamentalist, by rejecting such thoughts as liberalism, has little problem with things such as the Bible because they take it as literal truth.
Liberalism, however, has invalidated a large portions of the Bible since large portions of the Bible are not compatible with ideals such as human rights or tolerance.
Hence, it can be said that large portions of Christianity have been eliminated by liberalism, since they have been taken out of the sphere of the religious.

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.

Or one can look at Islamic fundamentalist organistions providing food aid, shelter, etc to those who were affected by the Israel-Lebanon war. Obviously feeding the hungry is a good thing, but that does nto automatically mean the organisation is also good.

. 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.

Indeed, Communism itself became a religion in many of these areas, where the Party (and the leader, in particular) were elevated to the status of God-like beings who could do no wrong.
Such is what happens when we stop using rational thought and instead move toward blind faith (which is what happens in most fundamentalist doctorines)

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.

But when we talk about "Christianity" in this sense, we are talking about liberalism and other philosophies of tolerance and compassion. Things that are not entirely present in Christianity, hence why it has "reformed" to do away with many of its less compassionate doctorines.
But when we look at what fundamentalist Christianity is, when we look at the words of Christianity as spoken through its holy books and various doctorines, we see that apart from the things that liberalism has chosen to remove, Christianity is very similar to Islam in this respect.

Lastly for all your talk of fundamental christianity and its adherents you again conflate fundamentalism (a rapidly dying faction of Christianity) with evangelical Christianity.

Both are extremely harmful forces within society because they promote extremely illogical patterns of thinking. There may be some minor philosophical differences between the two, but so far de facto they both appear to operate very similarly (relying on ancient dogmas, steadfast belief that all nonfollowers are going to hell, etc).

Neither group uses rational thought as a means to their conclusions, and both arrive at very morally repugnant conclusions.

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.

They can be loony as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. When their looniness starts spilling over into the rest of society...it crosses a line and needs to be fought.

Of course, a debate can easily be had on the factual accuracy of many of their statements, and that debate is also well within the right of free speech.

[DaShi]

But. . .but you're a communist.

[Nubclear]

Okay?

[Elok]

Aeson

And, as has been said here before but it warrants repeating, the reason atheism isn't associated with atrocity is basically that atheists have rarely been in power from a historical perspective. Aside from Robespierre (and iirc, he favored a bland deism for the sake of encouraging morals in the people or something), atheists in charge are pretty much a twentieth-century phenomenon.

Since "there is no God" isn't much to build an ideology on, atrocities committed by atheists have been in the name of much more complex ideologies, e.g. Communism, which incorporate atheistic elements but focus on something else. Certainly there were some monsters; just a week or so ago, Fr. Gheorge Calciu died of prostate cancer--he was a political prisoner under Ceausescu (sp?) in Romania for over a decade, during which time he was continually tortured and threatened with death for preaching.

But to blame any atrocity on an ideology, secular or religious, is short-sighted. The true "cause" is invariably that people can be stunted, hateful creatures sometimes, and the elaborate belief systems they may construct to justify their hatefulness is just a symptom.

[Impaler[WrG]]

But to blame any atrocity on an ideology, secular or religious, is short-sighted. The true "cause" is invariably that people can be stunted, hateful creatures sometimes, and the elaborate belief systems they may construct to justify their hatefulness is just a symptom.

Thier are three theories as to why people comit violence.

1 - Human nature is inherently violent and savage under all conditions (which I belive is what your claiming)
2 - People commit violence because of their learned belif systems (oposing view)
3 - Violence is due to resorce competition and scarcity and will be directly proportional to levels of resorce stress (a historical perspective)

Each one of these reasons might be true or false and if more then one is true then each true theory is a contributing factor with different degrees of weight between them.

If #2 is false then religion (a learned belif system) has no effect on society and religion is ineffective at achiving is stated goal of making people act in "good" ways atleast in the sphere of violence. So if what I belive you belive (#1 and #3 are true, #2 false) is correct religion is a meaningless waste of time and Athiesm would de-cloak our violence and perhaps allow its true causes to be adressed. If on the other hand #2 is true and acts as even a small contributing factor to violence then nutrality is superior of to a violence inducing belif and inferior to a peace inducing belif. I would argue further that Abrahamic religions are violence inducing and Atheism/Liberalism is peace inducing. Only if you can demonstrate the reverse would my position be overturned.

[Impaler[WrG]]

On Atheism vs Agnostism

I consider myself an Atheist in that I assert with the highest degree of certanty that the God hypothesis is false. I do not consider the belif of a Theist or the ambiguity of an Agnostic to be rational. Just as beliving in magical purple unicorns that disapear as soon as you look at them and being ambiguos about them are both wrong for even entertaining an untestable hypothesis. The hypothesis is as they say "Not Even Wrong".

All theories are falsifiable thus no one should "Belive" anything 100%, you can only Assert with varrying degrees of certanty. If something isn't testable or falsifiable its not a theory and should by default be asserted to be false.

I Assert that I Belive in Nothing

[DaShi]

But that's just it. You have to believe that God doesn't exist.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Elok
...

Oh, and WRT us believers and the fundies, Proteus, I suggest we attack from two different angles; atheists/agnostics strike at the scientific errors of a literalist reading of Genesis or what-have-you, while religious moderates such as myself question the theological justification of whatever halfwit draconian system they're implementing. That way we're each fighting on the territory we tend to know best, instead of me trying to argue from studies I never cared enough about to research and you digging at the complex underpinnings of a worldview you do not follow. For example:

Atheist: "All the studies supposedly 'proving' the inadequacy of condoms are compromised by a conflict of interest/poor methodology/blah blah blah..."
Religious Moderate: "The majority of Americans are not theonomists; given that at the very least there are conflicting opinions about contraceptive effectiveness blah blah blah..."
Either one or both: "I find your use of scientific evidence you plainly don't care about to support a belief you endorse for other and unrelated reasons troubling blah blah blah..."

Yes, in the Battle of the Fundamentalists against the (nopn fundamentalist) scientific community this is definitely correct.

Good examples would be the scientific arguments against Noahs flood (i.e. rebuffing the story with scientific arguments, like the amount of food needed for the animals, the amount of water that would be necessary to flood earth and the like)

IMHO this isnt even a pure battle between atheists/agnostics and the fundies.
Those that write books against the existence of god for sure are atheists, but there are many within the scientific community who, just like myself either believe in god or adhere to some other faith, but are drawn into the battle by the attacks of the fundamentalists against Evolution (and therefore scientific education) and therefore, too, begin to argue against the literal truth of the bible with scientific arguments (where before the fundamentalists began to battle against Evolution, they kept quiet and tolerated even the fundamentalist beliefs).
I think the people that write books that go totally against religions/god can be called the extremists on the side of the scientific community