The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
The Atheist Thread, Cont'd.
Impish:
Mikaela,
You and I share of lot of opinions on this matter. I think you'd enjoy reading "The End of Faith," or his much shorter "Letter to a Christian Nation" just released.
Imp
injest:
--- Quote from: Mikaela on October 23, 2006, 11:16:18 am ---I guess that's one of the main contradiction in terms that I struggle with when trying to understand the concept of religion and to understand people who do truly believe in a God; that they can be so convinced that their God is all-powerful and yet be equally certain that they have to act on his behalf, that he in fact needs them to do so. ???
I'd sincerely wish they'd leave the action and judgement and missionary work and whatever else to their omnipotent God and not be so eager to do his job for him, especially since they have to base their work on interpretations of millenia-old ambiguous texts. (I know that won't ever happen, of course, long as religion is and remains mainly a tool of power politics and not just a question of spirituality between each person and their conscience.)
--- End quote ---
see here is the danger. If you KNOW that God is going to cast that person over there into the 'pit' then it is not a far step to think...well I don't have to like or be cordial to that person...even God wants to hurt them.
and from there it is a small step to ...that person is not a real person not a person like me...if I hurt them..well I am just doing what God wants to do!!
and from there to...I am a warrior of God! here to deliver punishment on his behalf!
Lort, when I think of all the hate crimes commited by these religious nuts (or their kids) ....
Kelpersmek:
Amen <chuckle> :laugh:
I would more accurately describe myself as a disbelieving agnostic. I don't think God exists, but I'll admit I cannot prove that. I've wasted too much time in philosophical word-games to claim any absolute.
The only way for religious groups to protect their freedom is to accept a secular state.
Right now in the UK we're facing down the first wave of Intelligent Design, this time dressed up as the Campaign for Truth in Science. It's going to prove an interesting time...
Impish:
Here's an excerpt from Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" (2006) that I found thought-provoking. It begins a chapter that examines the claim that morality must come from religion.
"There are two ways in which scripture might be a source of morals or rules for living. One is by direct instruction, for example through the Ten Commandments, which are the subject of such bitter contention in the culture wars of America's boondocks. The other is by example: God, or some other biblical character, might serve as -- to use the contemporary jargon -- a role model. Both scriptural routes, if followed through religiously (the adverb is used in its metaphoric sense but with an eye to its origin), encourage a system of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would find -- I can put it no more gently -- obnoxious.
To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of our morals and rules for living. Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, in The Sins of Scripture, rightly observed."
__________
The chapter then continues with stories from the Bible, to show just how 'weird' they are. He begins with Noah and the Ark, but his analysis includes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is the basis of religious morality on subjects of concern to us, such as the "sin" of homosexuality.
If there's any interest, I'll excerpt that analysis in a separate post.
starboardlight:
--- Quote from: Impish on October 26, 2006, 10:47:51 am ---Here's an excerpt from Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" (2006) that I found thought-provoking. It begins a chapter that examines the claim that morality must come from religion.
"There are two ways in which scripture might be a source of morals or rules for living. One is by direct instruction, for example through the Ten Commandments, which are the subject of such bitter contention in the culture wars of America's boondocks. The other is by example: God, or some other biblical character, might serve as -- to use the contemporary jargon -- a role model. Both scriptural routes, if followed through religiously (the adverb is used in its metaphoric sense but with an eye to its origin), encourage a system of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would find -- I can put it no more gently -- obnoxious.
To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of our morals and rules for living. Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, in The Sins of Scripture, rightly observed."
__________
The chapter then continues with stories from the Bible, to show just how 'weird' they are. He begins with Noah and the Ark, but his analysis includes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is the basis of religious morality on subjects of concern to us, such as the "sin" of homosexuality.
If there's any interest, I'll excerpt that analysis in a separate post.
--- End quote ---
He put it very succinctly during his interview on Point of Inquiry (I'm hooked on that podcast thanx to you Imp) that if our morality still came from the Bible, we'd still be stoning people for adultery and cutting people's hands off for stealing. We don't do those things any more because we know that the Bible is not a good basis for morality.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version