By Inherit The Wind, February 18: “I do not have faith there is God. I do not have faith there is no God.  I do not have faith...

The Marxists are old hat (I mean black shirts, uhh) and Atheism is hardly a faith as it is a form of desire for non-existence as a means of relieving oneself of the human condition or its true origins.

Of course, it is not possible as there is a god whether you call IT a g-o-d or not. There was once a radio program on which it was not permitted to mention the ‘G’ word. But that is as unnecessary anyway now as it was then anyway.

There is a creator of the Universe. The scientists accept that with their ‘big bang theories’. Obviously, that is not a human creator and therein lies the dilemma for most people. Being able to think outside of our human existence is not really possible.

What is more, we are the mere product of some form of supposed evolution on this Earth which is, in itself, a microscopic speck in the Universe. To say that we motes who/which crawl on Its back have any decisive opinion is thus ludicrous - and always was.

So, I do agree that is is not wise to be either an aethiest or a Marxist. Neither lead anywhere beneficial and are superseded or irrelevant constructs anyway. Reality is the great Truth and Truth is the great religion.

I hope you are feeling better in the last few days, Inherit The Wind. LOL

There is an incerdible amount of semantics going on here.  Let’s look at some basics.

“Atheism.” Literally, a-theism, or non-belief in “theism,” which is “the belief in the existence of a god or gods.”

“Religion.” Primary definition: “The service and worship of God or the supernatural.”

Thus, atheism is NOT a “religion,” but rather the ABSENCE of religion.

Indeed, even the tertiary definition of “religion” - “a cause, principle or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith” - would not give rise to “atheism” being a “religion,” since atheism is not a “cause” or a “principle” or a “system” of beliefs.

In this regard, psychology/psychoanalysis is only a “religion” in the broadest sense of the tertiary definition of “religion,” if we accept psychology as a “system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.”

Peace.

A person who believes in delusions is considered to be insane.  A person who does not believe in same delusions of the deluded individual, cannot be declared insane except by the deluded one.  Many people who believe in a delusion and call themselves religions, does not make the fact any less deluded.  Atheists do not believe in the delusions of the religious, Tony Witcher so why when you say atheism is the same as religion, is your argument any different than an insane person? 

In your case, calling someone a close-minded bigot for not agreeing with a deluded sense of self rightness is stretching it.  You should know of all the delusions out their Buddhism seems to have the most enlightenment.  Unlike you who speak for Buddhists, I speak from not knowing myself ignorance with mild amusement.

Must agree with you though, it does appear some atheists do use their non beliefs like religion, I part company with them, when they get their tax exemptions.

Another sober piece by a super intellectual and a fine first-rate humanist!

Certainly, “three stooges of the Christian right,” “frauds,"con artists,"ignorant," “scum,” “racist,” and “deadly” are all appropriate words to describe the three individuals mentioned in Chris Hedges’ article. However, when he describes them as “three jokers,” I beg to disagree. Far from being jokers, those three, along with the movement they represent, are not to be taken lightly or dismissed as “jokers;” they are part of a big, well-financed and highly connected dangerous movement of home-grown would-be international terrorists, whose aim is to hasten and bring about the fictitious Biblical battle of Armageddon.

In a recent international interfaith dialogue, I had the honor of sharing a panel with a very fine British Christian scholar by the name of Stephen Sizer. He recently published a book entitled, “Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon.” A very well-documented history about this dangerous movement and their unholy work to marry their religious chauvinism and fanaticism to politics. If you need to know the enemy from within, then this book is a must read.

Re By WriterOnTheStorm, February 14 at 2:07 pm #
(45 comments total)

“With equal respect, your ‘logic’ contains the same flaws of most conservative arguments in this debate. Claiming that criticism of intolerance is itself intolerant is dishonest. And I think you know this. It’s like calling an executioner a murderer. It’s the same shabby rhetorical trick calling atheism a religion.  A cheap play on words that will convince few except the most disingenuous among us.”
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I’m having trouble with your logic. I agree with the first thing you said. Tolerance is absolutely necessary for a democracy to work. Intolerance is the enemy of democracy. The intolerant deserve not to be tolerated in a democracy. It is their just desert.

On the other hand, you call saying atheism is a religion “the same shabby rhetorical trick”. I may be among the “most disingenuous among us” that you speak of, but I find this way of looking at theology very useful sometimes. If one’s religion is defined as one’s belief system, then atheism is a religion. Like all religions, it is liable to intolerance of other religions, and some atheists are among the most intolerant people I know.

Thus atheism is a belief system and people who have such a belief system act very much like adherents of other beliefs systems that we do call religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. So why not call atheism a kind of religion? 

Tolerance is to live and let live, believe whatever we believe, and allow others to believe whatever they believe.

Buddha tells us that whatever we believe, it is only a modification of our essence of mind. Meditation on this fact may enlighten the mind past the limitations of belief.

Maani,

From your reply to Cyrena:

“Religious extremism in the form of violence is relatively new to Islam. It’s formed the foundation of Christianity, and those are just the facts.”

No, that is not the fact.  The “foundation” of Christianity existed peacefully for almost 300 years before it was co-opted by Constantine at the Council of Nicea.”

The primitive christianity was less less idyllic than your description.  The Pauline doctrines were being discussed and taken seriously throughout christendom.  Specificaly I refer to the misogyny which carried over from the OT.

I agree with your assessment that christianity began settling around a core dogma circa 300 CE.  Interestingly enough after Constantine recognized christians as having a legitimate cultus they provided him with extra military fodder.  Constantine remained of follower of Sol Invictus until his death bed.

The christians and other cultus had been content to worship virtually side by side until 300 CE.  Having been recognized by the state, given the support of the state they used their new found powers to destroy libraries, temples and books moving the European peoples into the dark ages.  That which was not doctrinaire to their cultus was not tolerated.  We have seen this patten repeated when ever members of the abramic traditions gain power.  Look a Colonial history of these United States.  Theocracy abounded with the usual dismal results.  How about those witch hunts in Germany, and the Spanish Inquisition?

As a matter of personal thoughts:  I find all these cultus based in the stone age and before.  There seems to be a growing amount of evidence that our morality is shared throughout all primates to a great extent.  This is probably a matter of the shared DNA.

I am wondering why we are having this discussion of who and what makes one a christian.  We live in a secular democratic republic.  This was settled in the mid 18th century by people who very aware of the excesses of the preceding centuries.  The were individuals who were living in and products of the Age of Reason/Enlightenment and wished to insure that this country never fall into the hands of kings or theocrats.

This particular cartoon proves beyond a doubt that Jews are fearless and wantonly explicit in their hatred of our European-American heritage and our people and they are not scared in the least to say it openly because there will NEVER be consequences for them. Of course if this cartoon taught someone how to cook a Jew, careers would end, death threats would commence and fines or imprisonment would follow. Jews are the most hateful people on the face of the earth.

The magazine was not bought at a Zionist meeting or AIPAC meeting, no, far more insidiously it’s sold openly on the shelves of Barnes and Noble.

A pdf of the cartoon has been uploaded here, check it out, be outraged, these Jews have some serious explaining to do as to what makes this “funny.”

More trash passing off as Jewish entertainment can be seen at Heeb Magazines website.

How to contact Barnes and Noble and get this garbage off of store shelves? Contact customer support and share a piece of your mind.

http://newsfromthewest.blogspot.com/2008/02/jewish-mag azine-shows-how-to-cook.html

Think CNN’s Wolf Blitzer will cover this story?  Or maybe FOX’s Britt Hume will give it some air time.

Don’t hold your breath for this atrocious cartoon to ever see the light of day in the Zionist owned MSM.  In that Never-Never Land of disinformation and propaganda, news anchors get a pat on the back and pay raises anytime they slander, malign or distort anything Muslim/Arabic.

But woe to the fool who dare question anything about Israel/Zionism, for their reward is to be fired, threatened with violence, possibly even tossed in prison, all for asking honest questions about the descendants of the Khazars.

Here’s a link to the original story in Heeb Magazine

http://www.heebmagazine.com/articles/view/125

By cyrena, February 13: “Maani writes: It was only AFTER that that Christianity was “spread by the sword” and came to be “used” for violent purposes via the Crusades, etc.”...”

Isn’t following the Golden Rule all you need to be a Christian?

Well, I’ll graciously accept that Barack Obama should offer a correction about his inappropriate assertation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount being adversarial to the wellbeing of the US Department of Defense. 

And he shouldn’t have been so careless with his language in referring to the Civil War as “the crucible of the sword” as if shedding the blood of a million white men to free a few black slaves was desirable or even commendable.

I don’t know what you and your friends of The Ring care to imagine, my response was actually that Christianity should not be equated with the cult like Islam in that BO “doesn’t oppose all wars”.

Frankly, I find some of your statements to be offensive but Christianity is not the Catholic Church or the current Neocon pope. Nor is Islam any less of a religion of peace in actual fact.

In reality, the great warmonger is the USA. The rest like Rome and the states of France and Britain are merely hangers-on seeking to vicariously relive their own past ‘glorious’ iniquites.

ITW:

How people react in a crisis is trained into them.  There is no “in the moment” without preparedness.  Your example is NO different. Not a bit.  Which do you value more? The child’s life and future or your own? Perhaps, in that split second, you know you value the child more-- you dive in front of the car to toss him/her out of the way. Or, you know you value YOUR life more. You don’t dive, the child is killed, you are sorry but “What could I do?”

But we were not talking about “training” per se; we were talking about logic.  You can also be “trained” via morals, ethics and values, but that is not the same as “logic.” Logic is defined in Webster’s as “an interrelation or sequence of facts or events when seen as inevitable or predictable.” Thus, logic is a mental process or applying knowledge and reason.  However, when one acts “in the moment,” asd with the child and the car, knowledge and reason go out the window, and sheer emotion - concern, compassion, etc. - come into play.

“We saw, on tape, on 9/11, that our President, when told of an emergency, froze like a deer in the headlights for an agonizing 7 1/5 minutes.  He was unprepared to do even the obvious: 1) “Kids, sorry, but I have to go! Bye!” and walk out. 2) On the way out “What do we know and when did we know it?”
3) “What assets do we have?” 4) “Who is on the scene? Who is the best person to counter this?”

Obviously, you are not a 9/11 “truther” or you would understand that Bush’s non-reaction was calculated, and was not the result of either a lack of logic or a lack of emotion.  In this regard, you need to provide a very different example.

Peace.

Re By Friends Of Liberty, February 13 at 4:41 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Re: Who is a good Christian?
A Christian is someone who, first of all, believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and second, follows the teachings of Christ through his good works and his faith in all that Christ said.  Atheists who care about the poor are good people, but they are not Christians.  There are non-Christians who are good people, and that goes without saying.
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Isn’t following the Golden Rule all you need to be a Christian? Doesn’t Jesus say somewhere that this is the whole of the law? I don’t know what the words “Jesus Christ is the son of God” means. Apparently you do. They just never made any sense to me. It is not part of my native language. Nobody ever read me the Bible when I was growing up. My father was a rationalist who equated religion with superstition. So I guess according to your definition I’m not a Christian. I very much doubt that there was any such person as “Jesus” who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and I regard the whole thing as a myth. I furthermore believe that Paul of Tarsus, who brought the Gospel to the gentiles, is the real originator of “Christianity”. Before that I think it was a Jewish sect that had existed for hundreds of years, and that continued to exist for hundreds of years more. I suspect that most of the Gospels are the product of his fertile imagination.

That said, there is something special for me about the book of Matthew. I get a very different feeling from it than the other Gospels. The teachings presented there have great meaning and tremendous spiritual power for me. I do not know where these words came from, but there is great wisdom in them and in I try to live by them as best I can.

So, for me the teachings of Jesus are important, but not whether “Jesus Christ is the son of God”, whatever that means. That part, for me, is Pauline dogma. That’s the part of Christianity I can do without.

Cyrena:

“Religious extremism in the form of violence is relatively new to Islam. It’s formed the foundation of Christianity, and those are just the facts.”

No, that is not the fact.  The “foundation” of Christianity existed peacefully for almost 300 years before it was co-opted by Constantine at the Council of Nicea.  It was only AFTER that that Christianity was “spread by the sword” and came to be “used” for violent purposes via the Crusades, etc.

What I believe Friends of Liberty (with whom I agree whole-heartedly) was referring to when he spoke of “true” Christians is what some call “primitive Christianity”: living Christianity as it was understood by the earliest (pre-Nicea) Christians; i.e., practicing one’s faith quietly and privately, sharing it with others but forebearing if they expressed non-interest (i.e., not ramming it down their throats), and trying as best as possible in the temporal world to live the main precepts of Jesus’ ministry: love, peace, forgiveness, compassion, humility, patience, charity, selflessness, service, justice, truth.

If all self-proclaimed Christians practiced this type of Christianity, they would remove Christianity from many of the accusations (some legitimate, some not) that are made against faith and religion in general.

Peace.

Jackpine:

“If the definition of a true Christian is taken as that suggested by Friends of Liberty, then it is possible to be a true Christian without believing or going to church.  Moreover, if i read Christ correctly, a non believer who acts well will be as welcome into heaven as the regular church goer.”

Please tell me where in the NT or Jesus’ ministry He suggests that “a non-believer who acts well will be as welcome into heaven as the regular church goer.”

In fact, I find this statement prima facie strange.

First, Jesus actually said that there were self-proclaimed believers who would NOT get into heaven: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Second, the concept of “church-goer” was not yet known, since there were no churches in Jesus’ time.

Third, Jesus made it quite clear who He was and what it took to be “saved”:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” A few scholars interpret “but by me” broadly to mean “by living as I have lived, and following the precepts I have given you.” However, most scholars interpret it more narrowly to mean literally “through” Jesus; i.e., only by believing that Jesus was Himself the “image” of God: “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” Meaning, if you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father as well.  Thus, to NOT worship Jesus is to NOT worship the Father.

And Paul adds to this when he notes that, “[I]f thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

That is where “salvation” comes from: “confessing” Jesus and believing in His resurrection.

Note that I am simply providing the Scriptural underpinnings for “salvation” and “getting into heaven” from the Christian viewpoint.

Peace.

ITW:

“The very concept of faith is to deny your fundamental human qualities: Observation, Connection, Logic, Premise-Forming, Hypothesis, Repeatability, Conclusions, Concept-Building and, finally, Transference to Others.”

I quibble with this in two regards.

First, while it is true that far too many people follow faith and religion “blindly” - and do “deny” some or all of those qualities - it is not NECESSARY to deny those qualities in order to be a person of faith.  I could put you in a room with ten of my colleagues, and if you didn’t know that they were all believers (and ministers), you would not be able to tell which were which in discussions from astronomy to zoology, from philosophy to psychology, from history to politics.  It is a canard that the “tension” between faith and science (or faith and “rationality” or “empiricism") is inherently NECESSARY.  It is not.

Second, I’m not sure I agree that the qualities you mention are THE “fundamental” human qualities.  They may well be AMONG them, but they are not the sum total.  And many “fundamental” human qualities have nothing to do with rationality or empiricism; in fact, ALL of the qualities you mention are “intellectual” (i.e., “brain") qualities.  You have forgotten that we also have hearts.  Indeed, among the qualities almost unique to humans is altruism.  I would also include among “essential” human qualities some level of goodness, compassion and, of course, love.

Peace.

I just love shocking their sanctimony. It’s so ridiculously easy.

A man amongst men. Will be missed.

But look on the bright side: Tom Lantos is dead.

By definition, religion is the province of “faith.” That is: belief in something which is not objectively demonstrable. That is: it is the province of arbitrary assertions, requiring no proof. All that is required of religion is faith and feelings.

Having said this, I have no problem with people having a faith, so long as they accept it as a personal choice, and not something to be shoved down the throats of everyone who chooses not to believe their arbitrary assertions.

Despite the arbitrariness inherent in religion, many religions have a long and proud history of tolerance and intellectual accomplishments. Interestingly, Islam is one of them [though, to be intellectually precise, Islamic Civilizations have often endorsed cruel and barbaric practices, just as have Christians and Jews]. When most Europeans were living in hovels kept warm by farm animals, Muslim civilization was translating Aristotle and studying higher mathematics.

Thus, I am immediately skeptical of anyone who wants to bash a particular religion in favor of another. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all have practiced violence, and continue to do so, based on religious bigotry. The fact that Christian nations practice their bigotry by dropping bombs from a safe distance of fifty thousand feet, does not make them morally superior. Ditto for the one Jewish nation. No, I don’t exempt Muslims, either--their persecution of other religions, in theocratic countries, is truly execrable.

Religion, to be tolerable, must be personal, not political. A believer needs to be able to understand that his/her beliefs are, at a fundamental level, arbitrary assertions based on feelings. Thus, you cannot punish someone who does not buy into your arbitrary assertions.

that equate Christianity with Islam don’t have a clue
what Christianity is. I suggest you read the Bible and learn. To say Christianity is beheading people Like Islam is just ridiculus. Don’t put religion in the same class as Christianity. Islam and religion is nothing but a cult. I will pray for you all.
May you all be blessed by God.

beerdoctor, just to clarify: I have no “desert god” or gods of any kind. Call me a freethinker, naturalist, skeptic, atheist, godless heathen, or whatever you prefer. Though I was raised in a protestant home, my childhood indoctrination just didn’t ‘take’ as it did with my siblings and childhood peers. I consider all deity-based religions to be fictions. I consider religion itself to be akin to a virus of the mind that exploits certain neurological and psychological characteristics of humans, which evolution has left us with. I am glad to have apparently been born with a natural resistance to this ‘virus’.  This is by no means an original concept of mine, and before you attribute it to my being “quite confused”, you may want to consider the roster of scientists and psychologists who have said the same thing. I first heard it from Richard Dawkins. Try Googling “religion virus of the mind” for a primer.