For your daily dose of rage
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=d2n7vSPwhSU

You guys already know how I feel about scum like this.

I was thinking about creating a thread to post stuff about the demise of churches just to make you happy again.

Well... fuck.

Oh now. I appreciate you being so thoughtful. :)

I'll be honest. I'm not really mad about this shit as much anymore. These are death throws. Atheism is inevitable.

I don't necessarily agree, I think church hierarchies are definitely in their death throws. In the States alone you got Catholics saying fuck off and leave the nuns alone after accusations of them being radical feminists from a bishop who covered for **********. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/religio...can/55117584/1)

Or most of Baptist University's staff quit over anti-gay pledge: http://www.democraticunderground.com/121827885

People don't seem to stop being religious when they have problems with the church, they just tend to go out on their own.

Gah....just...gah.

Is this real?

I would love for this to not be real.

Of course. I still hold the religious moderates' feet to the fire. Their faith is informed by the same dogma as the nutcases; therefore there's an inadvertent piece of responsibility on their part for things such as this.

You know Saya, beyond what religion is capable of, beyond all notions of spiritual callings and moderate exceptionalism, I was always curious as to why you seem to feel that religion must prevail above reason at all times.

I've always been bothered by this sort of evasiveness you employ that truth takes a back seat to what people WANT or even NEED to be true. As if some kind of world wide agnosticism is some kind of terrible tragedy that we must protect spiritual conviction from.


I've always wondered why you want religious faith to prevail over reason at every turn. I understand the pragmatism of belief. It's useful and I wont deny that. But you seem to be afraid of asking the toughest question: Despite the usefulness, despite the good that it does; is it empirically true and is it not worth honestly marching forward or is it always better to march on half truths?

It may just be that Saya realizes that some people, in their ignorance, will cling to religion. Despite medical fact or how many times their beliefs are ripped to shreds and all of the magic is removed. People are stubborn when it comes to their religious beliefs. They have been so terrified of this fictitious 'hell' all of their lives that they will shut their minds off to reason to avoid it. From what I've seen of religion(and being raised southern baptist) they use fear very well to control the flock.

I long for a day when religion will be cast down. People should realize that their destiny lies in their own hands and not some deity sitting in the clouds. I feel that religion oppresses people all their lives.

Oh, mercy! People like him crack me the fuck up, these days!

If he really wanted to solve the 'problem' of 'queers & homosexuals' he should ban sex between heterosexual couples. :p He's absolutely right! Gay people don't create babies! Ban 'straight' sex!

Is it just me....or did anyone else notice how long and hard he was thinking about two men kissing?

I want you to thoroughly examine what Hell means to every religion, past and present, and tell me again that fear and avoidance of it is the primary motivator for anyone to maintain their faith.

I'm not doing that much homework tonight, Peaches! Studying religion harshes my buzz! :(

If I come back with the argument that it is fear are you going to argue that love is the true motivator?

Ok, maybe I need to clear up that it's not ALL religion that I am talking about. I am, again speaking from my own limited experience with christianity that I grew up with.

You're also speaking from a south American perspective. You can't assume that Christianity in the American southeast is anything like it is in South Africa or the middle east, or Latin America, or western Europe.

Its not really that I want religious faith to prevail over reason, its just that I'm pretty sure it usually will. I don't think anybody is capable of being absolutely objective at all times on every topic. I think a lot of people are capable of having a spiritual life that's separate from their every day dealings with people (like, a lot of people who are Christian but don't identify as strongly religious or give it much thought beyond holidays and the occassional service). In places where religion was oppressed, like Vietnam or China, religion made a come back when it was legal for them to do so. And here when faced with something terrible in the church, a lot of people go their own way, join another church, try to change their church or even convert to other religions. I don't think either that if a communist/anarchist or some kind of collectivist society be established religion would go away on its own, after all collectivists society existed before with their own belief systems.

I think religions can change dramatically or lose popularity, but I don't think RELIGION as a whole will ever go away.

I apologize for putting it in such generalized terms. I guess christianity would be different in different regions of the globe.

You see, that's a very interesting thing you bring up. I appreciate your clarification. I was always under the impression that you were white knighting for faith because you somehow felt it dangerous that skepticism became meaningfully prevalent. You kind of always sounded like faith must endure less humanity be damned, hence the reason I got the notion that you kept moving the goal post.

But you see, this doesn't exactly negate the notion that atheism is inevitable. Granted, humanity will always have to deal with dualistic thinking, which I think permits us to somehow allow assumption to be more important than meaningful revelation. But the fact of the matter is, atheism doesn't HAVE to dominate in a way that perhaps I depict my arguments and my tactics. All that's really required is the idea that humanity comes before faith. It's not unreasonable to look at the polls and see that countries around the world are becoming more and more humanist and more and more non-religious.

That is why I think what we're seeing is the death throws of faith in a very meaningful kind of way. Obviously for our generation, faith is something different. It's not exactly this total thing that the previous generations are gnashing their teeth over. Perhaps in our lifetime, being an atheist wont really be an important thing. I'm confident that it'll come to that.

Oh, I'm optimistic that in our lifetime more and more people will get chill and religion will recede from politics. Churches actually get quite a bit of backlash from becoming political and tend to lose members if they do, depending on what their stance is (fighting against poverty tends not to lose members, but becoming vehemently against lets say birth control will).

There are also more humanist religious movements now, like in Buddhism there's the Engaged Buddhism movement where monastics realized they should help change the world for the better instead of hide in seclusion, or the Catholic Worker Movement in the states, Social Gospel Movement, Liberation Theology, etc.

I think optimistically religion will evolve into something more spiritual and individualistic rather than dogmatic, perhaps not entirely unlike the structure of aboriginal religions before colonialism.

You have a kind of point with religion becoming more lateral instead of hierarchical. Depending on how you want to see that, you can write it off as an evolution of something that wont ever really go away OR you can see that it's a progressive moving of the goal posts; in a sense, agnostic theists who aren't quite ready to accept perhaps the finality of their own death but recognize how irrational a belief in a god actually is without empirical evidence to back it up. It really depends on where the discussion goes from there. Perhaps there comes a point where arguing for atheism isn't really worth it anymore.

It'd be a very funny time in the future when people start sincerely believing in the flying spaghetti monster.

I don't think its a fear of finality per se, for example the Old Testament doesn't mention an afterlife and there are Jews who don't believe in an afterlife. There are definitely people who distress over death and find it weird not to believe in an afterlife, calling it pessimistic, but I think that attitude comes from pessimism. There's a really good book called The Passion Of The Western Mind by Richard Tarnas that talks a lot about this, but Christianity came from a world affirming religion, Judaism, which by the time of Jesus was often dogmatic, but was moving towards valuing justice and liberty, and didn't necessitate an afterlife. This is all we have, and we should try to make it the best life we can and make sure generations to come inherit that. On the other hand, Neoplatonism holds that this is a world of shadows and we should seek unification with The One. That kind of attitude was heavily influential on Christianity, which held that this world is a world of sin and evil and the Kingdom of God is where we really belong.

What we've been seeing in the last century is theologians like von Harnack trying to use historic criticism to read the Bible and seperate the "authentic" Jewish tradition in the New Testament and reject the Greek influence, and Christians moving towards an attitude that while there may be a next life, the Kingdom of God will be here and we need to work towards it. That's a fundamentally huge shift from the medieval way of thinking, and even the Catholic Church, which fought tooth and nail to resist modernization eventually embraced it in Vatican II. Attitudes towards other religions became more pluralistic or inclusive and spirituality seems to be what most people seek. One of my philosophy profs argued for example that psychology is the site of spirituality now, with self help gurus like Eckart Tolle gaining popularity, or people practicing things like yoga without any of the pesky Asian mumbo jumbo attached. Spirituality is becoming more secular but also commodified. I don't think ultimately its a fear of death and finality that makes people turn to religion, I think its also a desire of bringing meaning and self improvement to one's life, and that can be done in a nontheistic way.

Well that's kind of the reason as to why I think atheism is inevitable.

While it's true that atheism is a lack of belief, this secularization of spirituality is going to get to a point where the idea of a god wont even matter.

And that's what I find curious. What is a theist who doesn't even think that their assumption of a god is really all that important? What reason do I as an atheist have to care about people who wont put their god before humanity? It's benign.

Hell, atheists can even believe in spirits. But I'm finding a trend of the very idea of a god becoming less and less important.

Secularized spirituality may be what's happening now, but I'm confident that that kind of spirituality will indeed be the kind of spirituality that is harmless. I mean, you're talking about people who is cool with the advancements of science, medicine, philosophy, ect. I mean, the WORST you could probably get from these kinds of believers is the idea that drinking your tea is a legitimate substitute for taking your meds and that can be amended with a good reasonable conversation.

People find meaning in all sorts of things, from the destructive to the humanistic. I can completely understand that some would find it in the non-sensical.

Dude has nothing on Martin Ssempa

Oh, I wouldn't say everyone is on board with ALL of "the advancements of science." Still totally not okay with billions being pumped into creating new wonderful ways of killing each other, and I think there's a problem with blind faith in science. There was a politician once who said it doesn't matter if we cut down the rain forest, science will come up with a replacement so we won't need the rainforests anymore. Creating a mechanical heart was a huge costly achievement but we don't want to bother with making sure everyone has access to healthy diets and exercise.

Oh now. That's ridiculous. Anyone who automatically assumes that because science can do something permits them to be cavalier with the environment is ludicrous.

What I'm saying is science and technology isn't a value free monolith.

I'd also make the point that science isn't very accessible, in a capitalist system it mostly benefits those who can afford it, and the knowledge of lets say astrophysics or theoretical physics get more complicated and abstract and requires an education many of us do not pursue. Like a lot of lay people get the idea of space foam or string theory, but we don't totally understand the math that leads us to it.

Now Saya, while I agree that that knowledge is rather privileged; does not mean that noble lies are a suitable alternative to meaningful knowledge.

o_0