The true, unsung hero of the Bible.... (page 24)

soft+gentle

how is aguest doing these days? please give her my love if you are in contact with her tec.

sab, the I ching sounds fascinating. looked it up on wiki and am going to put it on my must read list.

soft+gentle

picking up on the interesting discussion between sab and lowkeysmith (btw atheists seem to love rephrasing sentences to obfuscate and deflect as much as they can from the issue at stake)

lawlessess and the part it plays in atheism and science is often conveniently ignored by fundamentlist atheists like richard dawkings who himself believes in the very magical thinking he condemns in religions - his version is - Progress and the human ability to improve themselves without limit- I have just been re-reading the god delusion). this sort of magical thinking ignores the lawlessnesses committed by science and the secular state. Don't get me wrong - I am not against science and secularity - but when a scientist promotes one sided ideas then is he any different from the religious fundies he condemns?

An honest look at science and secularity reveals its underbelly- biological weapons, mass destruction, hatred and demonisation of other people (the religious particularly) our inability to feed ourselves etc. Magical thinking cannot tolerate its own other face and what it gives birth to.

Religion has also caused war, misery and hatred but to focus exclusively on this without giving credit for the good that it has also done smacks of fundamentalism imo. Non fundamentalist religion can and often does hold a mirror up to itsself keeping suffering and injustice in a direct interface and this has spawned numerous breakthroughs that have been beneficial for all kinds of life.

NewChapter

Nobody ever kills for atheism---there is no reason to. They kill for other ideologies, and sometimes that means atheists. But they never get to credit, or blame a god for their actions. An atheist is under no mandate to do good or bad----

Atheists misbehave. That is true. But for the sake of atheism? That doesn't even make sense. There is no god to sacrifice to. No holy writings glorifying genocide, stonings and slavery. The atheist is on his/her own when they choose to be monsters.

soft+gentle

I want to clarify - who and what are you replying to newchapter? If you are replying to me and not someone else then what you are promoting sounds like magical thinking. although I don't mind so long as you are aware it is not that different from what you condemn in others

NewChapter

I don't think magical thinking means what you think it means.

Humans are motivated by many things. There is nothing about atheism that motivates one to do good or bad. It is the absence of a belief. There are no rules---it is neutral. It is simply a statement of fact. If I say the cup is red---does that motivate one to do good or evil? No. It's simply a statement of fact. If I say, there is no evidence for a god, does that motivate one to do good or bad? No. It is a neutral statement of fact.

What motivates a nonbeliver to commit crimes is not an adherence to the notion that there is no evidence for a god. They may have other ideologies---but you can't blame a neutral statement.

Now if a person believes they must burn witches, kill infidels, stone adulterers, take back the holy land for their god---then they are actuallly motivated by their belief in god and their understanding of their god's requirements. It is not a simply statement of fact: there is a god, but it brings with it obligation.

Nobody is obligated to do anything for the sake of there not being a god. There is no reason too. It is not a moral code--it is a simple statement.

soft+gentle

this sounds like an article of faith NC

There is nothing about atheism that motivates one to do good or bad

Also the way you depict believers sounds quite superstitious and demonising - as if you are coming from a position of ignorance or feigned ignorance. (hope you don't mind me saying so)

edit: I vote for barbequed atheist this weekend

NewChapter

this sounds like an article of faith NC

That is because you try to define atheists by your own experience. It seems to be quite hard for a believer to fully understand the absence of faith in a god. It's just like when they insist that atheism is a religion. It is a fundamental misunderstanding.

I don't depict believers in any way in particular. Most that I know won't stone adulterers. But to deny that much atrocity has been done for the sake of belief is just not being honest---perhaps you are feigning a bit of ignorance. And frankly, there is a great deal of support for a religious person to do horrible things---the bible.

So faith in a god is not neutral. It means there is a personality. If some people understand this personality as one that demands that homosexuals be stoned, they will stone homosexuals. They would be religiously motivated. If some people reject such an understanding, they won't stone homosexuals.

There is no personality behind atheism. There is nobody to please, or displease. Atheism in itself does not motivate one to do---well anything. That is not faith, it is a statement of the obvious.

I don't believe in unicorns either. Do you? Probably not. Does that knowledge motivate you to do good or bad? No. Of course not. It's just a statment of fact with no obligation attached to it.

Now if you decide there are no unicorns and you must kill anyone that believes in unicorns, that is an entirely different thing. The fact that their are no unicorns will not cause you to act, but perhaps that you are a demented monster would cause you to act. Or me. I could also be a demented monster. But the point is, nonbelief requires no action.

NC

soft+gentle

lol - NC

please see my post above - 596 Paras 1 & 4. (cut and paste is being temperamental today)

NewChapter

Again, science is neutral. It is a quest for information. Technology is an application of science. How people apply science is directed by their motivation. If they apply it to biological weapons--that is an indictment of the people that use science in such a way. Science does not require that its research be used in anyway in particular. Science does not demonize or cause one to hate. What a person does with the knowledge is up to them. Funny you should accuse a process of so much---let's look at the humans that use the information in good and bad ways.

If scientists figure out how to split an atom, one person thinks --great, energy for all---another person thinks, great we can make a bomb. Whatever that information is applied to is technology. Science is not the culprit, it is merely a collection of data.

Religion is NOT neutral. It has a lot to say about many things. Sometimes it says to do good things. Sometimes it says to do horrible things.

Since science is neutral---and bad people do bad things with science---then your argument is the sharing of information leads to lawlessness. If you hold science accountable for what people do with knowledge, then the only remedy would be to cut off knowledge and science. Which doesn't make sense. Science does not come with a set of morals.

ziddina

So, Sabastious, you're back to worshipping the god of the bible again???

Wasn't it the "sun" you were worshipping, a week or so ago???

And then there was your worship of - infatuation with - the I Ching - about which, apparently, you were unaware that it was frequently used as a tool for divination?

"The I Ching (Wade-Giles) or "Yì Jing" (pinyin), also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system; in Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.

Traditionally, the I Ching and its hexagrams were thought to pre-date recorded history, and based on traditional Chinese accounts, its origins trace back to the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BC. Modern scholarship suggests that the earliest layer of the text may date from the end of the 2nd millennium BC, but place doubts on the mythological aspects in the traditional accounts. Some consider the I Ching' as the oldest extant book of divination, dating from 1,000 BC and before. ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching

"Among the many forms of divination is a bibliomancy method using the I Ching (??) or Book of Changes. The book is structured as 32 pairs of hexagrams, divided in half after the first 30. The text was a subject for civil service exams in Imperial China. To aid in learning these 64 hexagrams, an 8x8 matrix of the 64 hexagrams in terms of all the hexagrams having the same top three lines, called a trigram. Throughout China's region of cultural influence (including Korea, Japan and Vietnam), scholars have added comments and interpretation to this work, one of the most important in ancient Chinese culture; it has also attracted the interest of many thinkers in the West. (See the I Ching main article for historical and philosophical information).

The process of consulting the book as an oracle involves determining the hexagram by a method of random generation and then reading the text associated with that hexagram, and is a form of bibliomancy. Confucius said that one should not consult the Oracle for divination until over the age of 40.[citation needed]. This work discourages compulsion (i.e., asking the same question over and over in hopes of either a different/better answer or some kind of enlightenment as to the meaning of the answers one gets). The Hexagram 4 description talks about the problems with "the youthful and inexperienced" asking the same question three or more times. ..." [bold and hi-liting mine...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching_divination

I spotted that a LONG time ago, when I first read the I Ching.

Mixing up a world-fusion religious cocktail again, eh?

The true, unsung hero of the Bible....

Share this