The Incomplete Cynic
Then: Obama says military action in Libya will last days.
Let’s be fair…weeks are made up of days.
Won’t you just give him a chance?!
(Source: antigovernmentextremist)
I’m going to wade into this under the impression that you were actually responding to anything I said, but I have my doubts…
It’s certainly no more unreasonable to kill in the name of reason than to kill in the name of a God who instructs his followers to be at peace with everyone (Ro 12:18).
Yeah you’re absolutely right it isn’t.
If a wolf was attacking me and I had a knife and the situation was I or the wolf will die here today - I have a calculated reason to kill it. If you told me to kill a wolf because you believed it will attack me based on a 2000 year old story written in a language that there exists no direct translation for - I have no quantifiable reason to kill it. (RL 101)
First, your analogy is unrelated. We’re not talking about using a reasonable explanation, but in the name of Reason, an entity functioning as a higher power. Second, there was originally no direct translation of the Bible (a series of hundreds of stories written over thousands of years) into English, because English didn’t exist. We do translate directly from the Greek, now, though.
Look, it’s fine that you’re an atheist. But at least be an honest one. Generally, atheists don’t kill in the name of anything, because they believe in nothing.
They don’t kill in the name of atheism ever. You can’t kill in the name of atheism. Atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods. It only has a name because of theists.
I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.
Not believing is the default position. Theism is a choice position. Theist is prerequisite to the term atheist.
Sorry, theism predates atheism by…well…it doesn’t really matter, does it?
If an atheist kills somebody and says it’s because that somebody is religious, then that atheist is religious too; they just happen not to believe in deities. They may believe all theistic religion should be purged, but it is not reasonable for them to believe all theistic people should be purged. That is solving X to solve Y - unreasonable.
Not sure where you’re going with this, but it looks reasonable.
Well, not in nothing, but they claim no higher power, so it’s impossible for them to be in service to it.
Atheists don’t claim no higher power. They just don’t believe in any of the gods that have been made up. Why be of service to something there is no evidence for? How can you be of service to something unknowable?
“No evidence” - What type of evidence is lacking? What would satisfy you? What type of record-keeping existed 2000 years ago that would satisfy you?
But Western Atheism in the last 150 years has elevated Science to religious status, suggesting that it is capable of providing us with all (relevant) knowledge, and that anything not explained through science is merely superstition.
Religion status? That’s brilliant. Scientific method at it’s inception was an unequivocal paradigm shift. Do you even know what the word science means?
I do, in fact, know. That’s why I capitalized “Science”. It’s not scientific method, not scientific study, not “hard sciences”; I’m talking about the mythical entity/enterprise that is effective arbiter of all relevant truth. You mean something different.
And please “anything not explained through science” - like what? Like god? Like a story you took seriously? What bit can’t be explained through science? That somebody would make it up, or that you believe them?
And who established that it’s a made up story? You did, because the things in it can’t be “explained by science.” You supported my point. Thanks.
Science gives cogent, lucid explanations to the world and your superstition. Yahweh does that for neither.
Again, you determined what’s “cogent” and “lucid”, based on…well, you get it.
That leads to other beliefs:
- No inherent human dignity, meaning we determine what is “human life”, which leaves no reason to oppose abortion
- Natural Selection as the means for evolutionary advancement, which leads to the practice of eugenics
There is plenty of reason to oppose abortion. It’s unpleasant, it presumes a foetus is guilty, it leaves parents laden with guilt. These things concern pro-choicers as much as they do pro-lifers.
Is it literary eugenics that more books are written than one person could ever read? No. Is it atheism’s fault pandas won’t fuck? No. Evolutionary fitness is infinitely more complex than I think you imagine. Eugenics is caused by a doctrine of misapprehended science - not the theory that beneficial adaptations succeed.
“Literary eugenics”? Who was talking about pandas? Yes, it’s complex. Yes it’s about “misapprehended science”. Next.
Atheists have no purely religious texts to justify their actions, but they do justify them through their atheism or its derivative beliefs.
Even if that was generally true, so what? You justify your actions with a story set in an alternate reality. It is however, not generally true. For a start, atheism isn’t a belief or beliefs. It’s the default position. It says nothing about the world or how we ought to behave.
What’s not generally true? Atheism is a position, and one that has derivative beliefs. It is not the default position, if there is one. And atheists say plenty about the world and how we ought to behave.
Tell me, do you not kill your enemies because of: god, a possible prison sentence, executive function, social expulsion, empathy… something else? When people kill one another on purpose, it’s because the force of their own survival value and all negative consequences is greater than the force of innate and learned behaviour that opposes excessive violence. All religion can do is pervert this equation with transient capricious ideas. If religiosity prevents a violent crime, that’s great - but what we should do is abstract and praise the principle that led to good. We should not need to entice adults toward desirable attitudes with allegory meant for children.
You have some grammatical issues in the first sentence…I have no idea what you’re saying. As for the rest, religious ideas are far from “transient and capricious”. Particularly when most of the principles you refer to have religious origins.
Darwin’s crises of faith and the hostility he received from the church isn’t relevant. Why can’t you “fault the Atheist” when someone takes the Origin of the Species to radical ends?
You fault the person when the person does anything. When philosophy is involved you revise it.
Wha…?
Darwin may have had faith when he wrote it, but it was one of the major vehicles for the expansion of atheism in the West. It was purely atheistic by the time it reached Stalin.
At the risk of repeating myself, atheism is the absence of a thing. Your issue is with an ill conceived philosophy that happened to have adherents who did not believe in gods. You can call that a religion, but you can’t call it a lack of faith - which is all atheism is.
At the risk of being pedantic, atheism is the presence of a belief that there is no god or gods. Agnosticism is the absence of a belief either way. My issue is with a philosophy championed by atheists and agnostics for more than a century as the death-blow to religious belief. Whatever you may say, atheism is a religious position, and one that has developing doctrine in the West. It is not simply a “lack of faith”, but faith in the belief that there is no God.
First, while the Pope is urging people not to use condoms, he’s also urging them not to have sex with people they’re not married to.
So essentially the Pope is:
- Belittling a responsible behaviour
- Inhibiting sexual predilection and encouraging dangerous behaviour
- Using sex to sell marriage
- No…he’s stating his church’s position on contraception.
- Inhibiting nonmarital sex, the cause of 97% of transmission in Africa (according to the WHO), thereby discouraging dangerous behavior
- Yes. Good idea, too.
I wonder how he feels about divorce?
Do you really? You’d have to be pretty far out of the loop to now know.
That would kill the spread of AIDS immediately and completely. Why not include that little factoid? (And why does no one seem to see that as the best and most viable solution?)
No it wouldn’t. AIDS is transmitted numerous ways, only one of which is sex and telling compos mentis adults how to behave intimately is an abject violation of human dignity. It’s not nearly a viable solution at all.
Again, WHO attributes the overwhelming majority of transmission to unprotected sex. And this isn’t “telling compos mentis adults how to behave intimately,” it’s recommending they not engage in activities that could kill them. They are free to choose for themselves. I think it’s more a violation of human dignity to suggest we are incapable of controlling our sexual impulses.
Appeal to man’s better nature and higher cognitive ability vs. ban the activity all his ancestors were good at? Decide carefully.
I’m pretty sure the Pope can’t ban anything outside of Vatican City. No choice to be made. And I think asking someone to restrain himself in his sexual activity for his and his countrymen’s health is appealing to his better nature and higher cognitive ability.
Second, some stats:
- Crusades: Estimated 1-9 million killed
- Inquisition: 1080 executed (from 1540-1700)
- 9/11: 2977 killed (excluding hijackers)
- Stalin: 14 million to the goulag, 7 million deported (about 50% mortality)
Stalin killed for a doctrine. He killed because he was an idiot. Blaming the disbelief in god for that is like blaming an apple for mammalian menstruation. Do you scorn at Eve because men are not giants?
Are you high?
For future reference, 9/11 is the cause of the War on Terror™
Stalin has an 8 million death cushion…I think his lead is safe.
So…yeah, I think Stalin pretty much destroys even the highest estimates of the most prominent religious injustices in history. You could say that it wasn’t based on his atheism, but because they resisted power, but that’s what the Crusades and Inquisition were really about, too; they were political conflicts with religious justification.
Exactly.
In fact, the 9/11 hijackers have the purest motivation out of anyone on the list - untainted by a desire for power - and so the only one’s that can be exclusively blamed on religious extremism.
The 9/11 hijackers were a component part of a weapon. You alluded to it yourself a second ago. I could train a dog religiously to kill an ideological foe - the witnesses will be divided over whether to blame the dog or blame my fostering. Foe eliminated; I can toss my religious goading aside. Do you blame the dog or blame the indoctrination? Do you seek the terrorists or seek to revise ideology?
Islamic extremists are not actually fighting Westerners for power…if they are they’re doing it poorly. I’m not sure what you mean by “seek to revise ideology”.
Politics and religion are practically inseparable. Choose an original higher power.
Sorry, religion predates the self by a damn long shot.
I look forward to your revised body count.
I look forward to you being coherent.
