"Christianity has acquiesced in slavery and polygamy, has practically canonized war, has, in the name of the Lord, burnt heretics and devastated countries."
………………………… …….- Ludwig von Mises in his 1922 book Socialism [online here in PDF]
"Christianity has acquiesced in slavery and polygamy, has practically canonized war, has, in the name of the Lord, burnt heretics and devastated countries."
………………………… …….- Ludwig von Mises in his 1922 book Socialism [online here in PDF]
57 comments:
Christianity does have good traditions. For example, free-will is regarded to be important in Christianity. And so is the idea that there is an objective truth. If Christianity did not contain good traditions, then how does one explain America, where the majority of people are Christians?
How many atheists have a high regard for free-will and objective truth? I would say the majority do not. Mainstream atheism holds the door wide open for socialism and I think this needs to be strongly criticized.
"How many atheists have a high regard for free-will and objective truth?"
Many....far more than Christians.Most of the worlds top scientists are Atheists...they don't hold with spooky bullshit.
"I would say the majority do not. Mainstream atheism holds the door wide open for socialism and I think this needs to be strongly criticized."
Crap....its Christianity that paved the way for Socialism by upholding altruism as a virtue....Socialism picked up the baton and promised heaven on Earth instead of in an afterlife...which is the only real difference between the two dogmas...
James,
Searching atheist websites, I can find many examples of atheists downplaying the idea of free-will. Here's one example from the Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc:
"Free will is not as simple and absolute as it has been represented by the religious. We may possess a good deal of free will or we could have none. The truth may fall between those two extremes.
It has also to be seriously considered that along with every other life form; we owe our present position to evolutionary forces. Evolution is not the result of deterministic or random happening. It is the survival of the fittest. Even the way we think is the result of evolution and it therefore follows that free will choices are produced by the survival of the fittest idea at an individual level. At any given moment, our thinking is controlled by genetic make-up and outside influences working together in unison for the best outcome for personal survival.
With our genes dictating how we think and our immediate environment influencing those thoughts, it is not too difficult to comprehend that free will choices may indeed be an illusion created by evolution alone."
LOL. Notice here another mistake often made by atheists: the idea that genes control how we think.
As for objective truth, how many of the post-modernist school of thought are Christian and how many atheist?
LOL. Notice here another mistake often made by atheists: the idea that genes control how we think.
...
Those crazy atheists. Thinking that thoughts come from the brain and not the soul! LOL
Yes, I'm sure your faith based knowledge of genetics and psychology is far superior.
"How many atheists have a high regard for free-will and objective truth?"
You mean like the objective truth of basing their opinions on the available evidence rather than fairy tales? And the free will of being allowed to believe what they like rather than being persecuted for not following the official line like aetheists were for the vast majority of the last two thousand years?
Peter, I'm not sure how relevant it is to quote what Christians might have done in the past. These things are true of paractically every religion with the exception of classical Buddhism, so lets get over it.
Christianity today has largely reduced itself to a watered down version of its previous form and certainly the Anglican variety seems to be now headed more in the direction of eco-worship. One could, of course, argue that eco-worship is potentially more dangerous to human progress than all the above put together, so this is where the concerns should more properly lie.
Agreed, Dave.
Ok, what they're doing now is, for a start:
- persecuting people for aetheism in the US (see Dawkins' book)
- killing people in Africa by promoting condoms as evil
- killing people all round the world by opposing vaccinations such as the cervical cancer one.
- making their followers destitute in areas where they require a tithe to the church
- etc
DAVE: Worry not, Dave, I'm an equal-opportunity anti-religionist.
And it's precisely because these things things are true that they shouldn't be forgotten.
BRIAN: American was not founded on the ideas of religion. In every important sense, the ideas on whichb it was founded came not from religion but from its antipode -- from the Enlightenment.
Reason, freedom and individual rights -- the founding principles of America -- these were not religious notions, they were ideas produced by the application of reason to human affairs -- a wholly uncommon state of affairs for far too much of human history.
Says Leonard Peikoff, "Since the golden age of Greece, there has been only one era of reason in twenty-three centuries of Western philosophy. During the final decades of that era, the United States of America was created as an independent nation. This is the key to the country—to its nature, its development, and its uniqueness: the United States is the nation of the Enlightenment."
That America is now overrun by religionists is not a development of those founding principles, but a repudiation.
We are nothing but bipedal chimps aware of our mortality. When we die the worms eat us. Enjoy your one & only life and be nice to one-another. It’s fairly simple to grasp, and doesn’t require any airy-fairy supernatural explanations or holy-texts.
PC - The good things of Christian tradition are quite compatible with the Enlightenment. If it were truly the antipodes, as you say, then America would not be America. Yes, America was founded on the Enlightenment principles of reason, freedom, and individual rights but the Christian tradition - at least in America - places a lot of importance on these and this, in no small measure, helped America to flourish.
Lance - So thoughts coming from the brain = genes controlling how we think?
Brian, the religious retreat you describe in the face of the Enlightenment - which is what it was -- was not at all something produced out of religion, but in answer to it.
It was a retreat of centuries of darkness in the face of reason, one on on which America and the west have been coasting ever since.
The revival of religion in America is however not a sign that reason, freedom, and individual rights are flourishing, but of the opposite. The advance of the Enlightenment values of Reason, freedom, and individual was stopped and undercut before they acquired the full philosophical base which they hadn't yet been given, and which religion continues to undercut.
Susan and Dave are right that the likes of Anglicanism are so compromised that they've now been taken over largely by eco-mysticism, but one can't be so quiescent about religion in America.
Am I wrong in thinking that the Christians are changing tack as their religion withers and attacking atheists as if they were some form of movement, almost a competing religion, rather than simply being thinking people who question what they are told?
Atheism has no agenda, except perhaps the very benign one of encouraging others to think for themselves.
These Christians are funny chaps, aren't they?
It seems rather strange that vast numbers of chaps turn up to Church on a Sunday morning to watch a deranged man wearing a dress engage in medieval witchcraft.
Bizarre.
No, Steve, you're exactly right.
We are nothing but bipedal chimps aware of our mortality. When we die the worms eat us. Enjoy your one & only life and be nice to one-another. It’s fairly simple to grasp, and doesn’t require any airy-fairy supernatural explanations or holy-texts.
That sounds pretty boring, and who says we need to be nice to each other? I can see how it might be better for most people if we all did that but if you're strong and clever enough you don't actually need to worry about people being nice to you. I always felt that rules like that were too restrictive and nobody could ever give me a convincing reason why they had to apply to me in particular. Why should the strong and great sacrifice themselves for the mediocre? Sure a lot of people said I was evil but of course that was just their opinion. They would say that, the jealous bastards. True in the end those same people ended up hanging me from a lamppost but we all have to die in the end, don't we? I got laid more than Richard Dawkins would in 20 lifetimes, with all his silly rules. He might claim to be an atheist but he still has the habits of a Christian. I say if you're going to be an atheist at least climb a few fences and have some fun while you're alive!
Mussolini's Ghost is being amusing, but he makes a common error.
To put it in a nutshell, it's assumed that the primary rule of ethics has only two alternative: either to be nice to others, or (if you like Nietzsche and Mussolini and you prefer its bloodthirsty flipside), to cut their throats before they cut yours.
At least, those are the only alternatives set up by the still dominant Christian ethic of altruism: that if you don't believe in the religious ethic of sacrificing yourself to others, then you must believe in sacrificing others to yourself.
But this is a false alternative.
The primary ethical rule is neither to sacrifice yourself to others, nor to sacrifice others to yourself. It's to identify what reality requires for your survival and happiness, and to recognise that same right in others.
atheists tend to be, insert any one of the following: nihilists/subjectivists/skeptics
not any better than the altruists they criticize.
Odd statement there Mo...
How is scepticism (a good default position in my opinion) worse than the self (and therefore life) denying philosophy of altruism? If someone presents a fact to you, should you just blindly accept it as true, or should you be sceptical? If the former, I have some magic beans I'll sell you at a bargain rate mate! ;)
Altruists ARE subjectivists by default.
Nihilists are also self (and therefore life) denying, so yes, equally as bad as altruists.
Greig
skeptics are also advocates of subjectivism:epistemological subjectivism to be more precise.
My issue with skepticism is that it claims knowledge is impossible and denies the absolutism of reality.
I don't see how that is a healthy position to take.
Some of you are obviously victims of a state education.
Atheism is the absence of belief in a supernatural being (the one commonly referred to as God). It is a lack of belief- nothing more. It is not an ideological system or a philosophy or a belief. All the term refers to is the absence of a particuar belief.
LGM
"Altruists ARE subjectivists by default"
Sometimes intrincisists as well
Mo are you seriously of the view there is some chap with a long white beard and sceptre, sitting on a cloud, keeping tabs on the actions and thoughts of more than six billion people simultaneously?
Furthermore, are you of the belief he is actively determining the course of all six billion lives, along with wars, famines, blizzards, droughts, ethnic cleansing, the state of the sharemarket, who gets in a fight outside a nightclub, who crashes their car on a country road, which film will be the 'Summer Blockbuster', who won World War 2...etc.. etc?
(You may have ascertained by this point why I find a belief in God to be rather bizarre)
Atheists are simply people who are sensible enough to realise this sort of thing is nonsense.
My issue with skepticism is that it claims knowledge is impossible and denies the absolutism of reality.
Eh? A sceptic (no "k" in it here in NZ) is simply one who doubts an assertion or accepted belief. Doesn't deny it outright. Doesn't claim knowledge is impossible. Knowledge must be possible or there'd be no way to test the scepticism, would there?
So... do you want these magic beans or what?
PC,
Here are some good Christian traditions:
1. Love your neighbour
2. Do not kill
3. Tolerance
4. Ethical monotheism
Do you think the Enlightenment would have been possible without these traditions, particularly ethical monotheism?
Do you just want to discard religious traditions altogether? To throw Christianity out of the window? Traditions like Christianity and Judaism should not just be thrown out, they contain knowledge, lots of it inexplicit, and that knowledge has helped make the world a better place.
Rather than throwing traditions out, it is better to try to improve them through criticism, as indeed Christian and Jewish traditions have been. As a result, today it is possible to be a Jewish atheist. One day, it might be possible to be a Christian atheist.
PC: American was not founded on the ideas of religion.
The only thing one can quote after such a deliberate display of ignorance is Thomas Jefferson: Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Let's excuse Mises, the actions of atheists were still ahead of him.
Here are some good Christian traditions:
1. Love your neighbour
2. Do not kill
3. Tolerance
4. Ethical monotheism
Christians have practiced those over the centuries haven't they? That is the point Mises was trying to make.
What a laugh.
Yes, Berend, that may well be among the only things you can quote.
But a real understanding of history is not achieved simply by citing quotes -- it's done by a full examination of the evidence.
In any case, the answer to Jefferson's question is simple: Yes.
Whereas the answer to the converse is not so. That is, it's not at all clear that the liberties of a nation can be secure when the only intellectual defence of our liberties are that they are gifts of God.
You may not be aware of the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, and the battles of Enlightenment thinkers with religionists, or of the intellectual revolution that created the United States, but you should at least have noticed that as a bulwark of our liberties, the defence that 'God done it' has not proved wholly successful.
Yes, Ruth, they have, and they got better at it and they learned from their mistakes. Do you really equate a Christian soldier from WWII, who died protecting our freedom, with a crusader from the dark ages?
"Atheists are simply people who are sensible enough to realise this sort of thing is nonsense."
and indulge in other equally nonsensical phiolosophies. Not exactly sensible.
As you are quoting me, perhaps, Mo, you could answer my two questions? (or is intellectual honesty beyond you?)
Atheism is yet another belief system - a faith that everything in the universe is the result of an inconceivable number of random, consecutive, and ultimately constructive occurrences.
Atheists are quasi-religionists who are more often than not sneering progressives, who for a multitude of primarily self indulgent reasons, hate the CHRISTIAN religion.
I don't know the answers to the origins of the universe and mankind and neither does anybody else. I am purely agnostic. The only rational position to hold IMHO.
Atheism is yet another belief system - a faith that everything in the universe is the result of an inconceivable number of random, consecutive, and ultimately constructive occurrences.
No, it's not at all. A Theist. Sans-Theist. Without a default belief in theism. Not believing in a god or gods. There's no faith involved. If you prove that a god or gods exists using objective means, why would an atheist not accept that?
I get really tired of people trotting out the tired argument that "atheism is a faith too!". Absence of faith is not faith.
Anonymous, please consider signing in. It's cowardly not to. At least consider signing your comments so we know who we are addressing each time.
"I get really tired of people trotting out the tired argument that "atheism is a faith too!". Absence of faith is not faith."
So how do you believe the universe was created ?
Created?? You're assuming that before ‘it' there was nothing. The notion of creating the universe - i.e., something from nothing - is illogical - Zero doesn’t exist! However, in the context of the universe as we know it... I really don't know, although on the balance of probabilities would suggest the “Big Bang” theory is plausible by virtue of it being a scientific hypothesis, i.e. based on reality.
So how do you believe the universe was created ?
Let me guess - if we can't answer that question in detail including how many days it took and which day is sacred as a result, then your idea is automatically proven true? Bugger, that really stuffs up the whole "there is no God" theory for us.
twr
- I don't have the faintest idea how the universe was created (and neither do you for that matter)
Yes it was a response to you NCT and to your claim that atheists are "sensible"
I don't buy into any of that mystical nonsense about a supernatural human being on bit.
However when you adopt other equally nonsensical philosophies (choose your pick here) than you aren't sensible.
Being a skeptic, for example, is no different than being a mystic.
I don't have the faintest idea how the universe was created (and neither do you for that matter)
That sums up my position nicely. There are a ton of theories. I don't have the required scientific background to understand them in enough depth to decide which one seems more likely. This is stuff we don't know yet. Again, it requires no belief in anything supernatural.
If it turns out "god did it", and there's enough evidence to support that, it won't be a belief any more, it will be an established scientific theory. Until a bigger god comes along and says he created that god. ;)
Mo: What is it with you and scepticism? If I tell you my beans are magic, and you don't believe me, that makes you sceptical, no? Sheesh, how many times do I have to ask you this question? It doesn't make you "A Sceptic". I'm not even sure what that is in your world. Scepticism is a healthy thing. Outright blind denial or acceptance isn't. Are we clear there?
Anonymous said...
"I don't know the answers to the origins of the universe and mankind and neither does anybody else. I am purely agnostic. The only rational position to hold IMHO."
But all Agnostics ARE Atheists....they do not hold a belief in a God,which if they did would make them Theists, so by default are A-theists....those lacking a belief in a God.
You must feel a right dick now huh?
James, a sceptic thinks (1) knowledge is justified true belief and (2) justified true belief is unobtainable. Not really a good position if you are interested in knowledge creation.
Brian - I think you meant to address that to me.
Anyway...
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sceptic
Only that last definition, ie with a capital letter, agrees with you. As I've said repeatedly, being a sceptic does not make you a denier of knowledge. Being a Sceptic does. I never said I was a Sceptic, just sceptical. ;)
Hopefully that clears it up. Now about my beans...
Opps - sorry Greig. I think we agree that Skepticism with a cap S is bad. The central point here is that atheists by and large believe things that are just as batty as believing in some supernatural being. Which of the following is worse:
1. Believing in God and also in objective morality.
2. Not believing in God and also not believing in objective morality?
I think that might be a bit of a false choice you're trying to force Brian. Believing in God could be cancelled out, as it's objective morality that is important, so sure, the first option is preferable but requires no god belief to make it preferable.
Were I a more philosophically inclined soul, I might be tempted to argue that belief in a supreme deity might annul any form of objective morals anyway. Hell, I am tempted anyway. :)
Argument as follows: IF god exists, and we accept (as most Christians seem to) that your morals derive from that god, THEN your morals are not objective but subjective - subject to the choices/morals of that god, not self evident and self supporting (ie objective).
The central point here is that atheists by and large believe things that are just as batty as believing in some supernatural being.
What rot. Atheists, unlike you, don't just make stuff up and use it as an argument to support their point of view.
"The central point here is that atheists by and large believe things that are just as batty as believing in some supernatural being."
In fact, qua atheist, the only "core belief" shared by all atheists is not a belief at all. It's actually a non-belief -- a non-belief in gods.
There are many reasons for this non-belief, from the batty to the rational, but when yuu understand that atheism is simple a non-belief in gods you can see that everyone, even Christians and Islamists are atheists to a degree, since they're both a-some-god or other.
And let's address this idea that if a-theists don't have faith in a god's existence, that atheists have nonetheless a simple faith in existence. The idea that "Atheism is yet another belief system - a faith that everything in the universe is the result of an inconceivable number of random, consecutive, and ultimately constructive occurrences."
What rot.
Atheism -- rational atheism -- simply requires that you recognise existence exists. It doesn't matter, qua atheism, how the universe got here -- just that it is.
But whatever explanation there is, it looks a little ridiculous to try to explain existence by means of non-existence -- or the natural by means of the super-natural.
The existence of existence doesn't need proof, it's what proof is actually based on. The existence of the supernatural does.
twr - if I'm making stuff up, explain the quote I put up at the top of the thread from the Atheist Foundation of Australia. Is it necessary for you to be so rude?
"Is it necessary for you to be so rude?"
Y'know, I wouldn't normally, but when someone makes an outrageously incorrect claim with no attempt at supporting evidence, they've really earned any ridicule they get.
Let me try and explain this. Some dogs are poodles. Spot is a dog. Is Spot a poodle? Possibly, but not necessarily. "But", you say, "that other dog over there is a poodle, so Spot must be a poodle."
Some atheists believe silly things. Bob is an atheist. Does Bob believe silly things? Possibly, but not necessarily. "But", you say, "the Australian Atheist society says something I don't agree with, so Spot must be a poodle."
Out damn spot, out.
PC - Atheism is not just a common belief in lack of a god: It's a tradition that has evolved a whole set of memes, just as the Christian tradition has. The argument here is that these memes are in many cases worse than belief in God and that the Christian tradition has certain things in it that save it from these bad memes. Not all atheists subscribe to these memes, I agree, but do you think it is a coincidence that subjectivists, nihilists, moral-relativists, and socialists tend to be atheist?
Brian: You are redefining atheism to suit your argument. What it means to you, and what it means objectively are two different things. You can't project your meaning on to reality, no matter how much it might suit your argument to do so. Existence exists, I'm afraid.
You wouldn't expect to be tarred with the "Hitler was a Christian" brush, would you? So "well known socialist X was an atheist" is just another reference to Spot-the-possibly-poodle.
As I see it, Christianity, or any other form of mysticism, is just another roadblock on the path to objective thinking. The two just don't go together. I respect your freedom to believe what you like, I just can't see how you can ever justify it as a rational and objective belief. Unless you can "prove" a god or gods, I really don't see this conversation going anywhere, do you?
Greig, in case you couldn't infer it from my comments, I'm an atheist. I'm not trying to argue God exists, I'm pointing out that the atheist tradition - and, yes, there is an atheist tradition - contains bad memes that make the meme of belief in God look fairly innocuous. These memes need to be exposed and criticized so that the atheist tradition can be improved. It's no good pretending they don't exist and saying to Christians just drop your belief system and become atheist when Christians know full well that atheism has these memes.
Sorry Brian, I didn't infer that. I honestly thought you were a Christian.
Anyway, I take your point, and I see the validity of it. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in a deaity or deities. You're correct though, it has become associated with a lot of negative memes. I'm probably guilty of perpetuating some of these too. I get extremely frustrated with the illogical nature of "faith" and have frequently resorted to ridicule - usually as a tool to try to expose just how silly the belief system appears to one outside it. I guess that's the sort of thing you are talking about?
Memes?!
Yeah, meme. Analog of gene. From dictionary.com:
"meme [noun]: a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes."
The meme "meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins.
The meme "meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins.
Doesn't mean it's not bullshit. ;^)
Yes, the source of an idea has no bearing on its truthfulness. However, if you think memes are "bullshit" why don't you offer an argument?
Or substitute the word "idea" for "meme" and then offer a rebuttal to the argument that atheism is a tradition with more in it than non-belief in God.
PC said: "But a real understanding of history is not achieved simply by citing quotes -- it's done by a full examination of the evidence."
-I think that summs up your post quite well.
And you also still dont get altruism.
And the term meme is not "bulshit". It is a word used in biology. For example, if a wolf learns to hunt by coppying its parents, the hunting technique is a meme. Over generations, that techneque may stay the same, but it isn't gentetics, it is because it is learned. If you took that same wolf and put it with a pack that behaved differently, it would follow that other behaviour.
So "meme" jutst refers to socially passed down(or "inherited") traits, rather than genetically passed down ones.
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