Dislike and distrust of atheists?

[dgirl1986]

why do theists need to be pampered while they attack us non-believers? if theists left us alone and stopped try to convert us, then we would not need to kill them with kindness. having not experienced any kindness from the god-fearing masses, i don't see why i need to rise above anything. religious people should start living up to their lofty standards instead of holding everyone else to them or expect people who disagree with them to live up to even higher ones they themselves do not attempt to live by. it's strange to me that the bible bangers talk about christian morals, yet rarely if ever actually display them.

Pampering is one thing. Not sinking to their level is another. We are entitled to defend ourselves, but I wouldn't want to be just as bad as them if you get my meaning. No one should have to preached at about any belief system, but some religious groups insist on it.

I agree with you on the christian morals. I only know 2 Christians who show christian love and morals, and have read their bible more than once. The ones that complain about us the loudest seem to be the ones that don't look at their own text in context.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Distrusting an atheist is hypocritical

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Actually, you are correct. Many agnostics I have known however have made a decision, the decision being they can never have enough evidence to make a decision. They can never know. Therefore, they are perpetually stuck in the middle, though logic dictates the law of the excluded middle. So then, are these types of agnostics illogical ?

Agnosticism is the only reasonable position to take regarding an unanswered question.

And if we're talking about the matter of gods, we are all agnostic whether we say so or not.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

While I don't think its as bad as you state their is a prejudice against atheism. While some of it is caused by religious beliefs some of it is being caused by atheist themselves. Constantly criticizing and challenging even the slightest believed right is making more enemies then friends.

There is such a thing as atheophobia. It's a form of bigotry, by which I mean irrational and destructive ideas about every member of a law abiding class.

A lot of people have been taught to see atheists as morally defective, not trustworthy, and outside of acceptable social standards. They're still pretty unelectable, and until recently, atheists were considered unfit to adopt, teach, coach, serve as witnesses in court, or serve on juries.

In 2006, atheists finished last on a survey of kinds of law abiding people you would want your children to marry:

"Researchers concluded: “Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in ‘sharing their vision of American society.’ Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.” Disturbingly, Atheists are “seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public,” despite being only 3% of the U.S. population" Freethought Association eNews

Do you blame atheists for that? I think it's pretty obvious what the root source of those sentiments is.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So you would agree that his argument has something to do with Christianity?

To the extent that his ideas reproduce ideas in the Christian scripture, they can be said to be of Christian origin.

That's never been at issue. I've been calling that which derives from the Bible Christian from the start.

What I have been discussing is ideas that came since. I believe we began discussing where the Christian church got the idea that slavery was immoral.

Humanism only makes sense if you have certain concepts already in existence.

Regarding the Greeks it would have made no sense due to their lack of a concept of Humanity, no sense of being born equal, lack of a progressive view of history, etc.

The combination of ideas that go into Humanism are very rare in historical societies, which is why Humanism still is largely a Western European cultural phenomenon.

As to why I keep mentioning that Christianity was influenced by Greek philosophy, it's because it is important in the development of Christian theology, which adopted many of the techniques and principles of reasoning. Had it adopted a purely literalist hermeneutical framework or a tradition based framework it might have developed very differently, it wouldn't have been such a malleable tradition and you likely wouldn't have had people reasoning from Genesis that slavery is evil.

You seem to have an ultra narrow concept of what can be considered to be influenced by Christianity which appears unconnected to the reality.

The extent to which Christian theology has its roots in ancient Greek culture is of relatively little interest to me.

Speaking of connecting to reality, you haven't connected your claim about the relationship between Christianity to humanism to evidence. That's how I assess reality, not by how reality appears to you.

And unless you have dome so in your words ahead that I haven't read, you've also never actually clarified what that claim is. There are several that I could suggest.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

It Aint Necessarily So said: "You simply keep inviting and making a place at the table for Christianity. Yet you don't provide these core Christian concepts that humanism was waiting for. Which do you think are foundational ideas in humanism?"

I mentioned some of these re:Buddhism but you ignored them.

What is the relevance of Buddhism to this discussion?

With all due respect and gratitude for your effort and good cheer, I think that we've gone as far as we can assessing the relationship between Christianity and secular humanism. We've basically been repeating ourselves with no forward motion. You say that secular humanism is an outgrowth of Christianity rather than just merely following it onto the world stage, I say that I can't see the connection unless you call one being a reaction to the other a connection, and you insist again there is one. I ask you again to produce some, and you give me the kind of answer you just did again.

I gave you multiple examples where Christianity and secular humanism are antithetical. I showed you how different they are. You still haven't shown me where humanism is indebted to Christianity. The church remains humanism's chief critic and detractor.

Do you have any idea of the context of that quote? It's meaningless on its own.

Augustine was a former Manichaen, deeply influenced by Neoplatonist philosophy and one of the most influential theologians and philosophers in the Western tradition. He obviously didn't believe it was unnecessary to think.



It also say 'renders unto Caesar...'

The term religion itself based on Christianity and is not even necessarily accurate in terms of other belief systems. That religion can be abstracted from the rest of politics, culture and society and pushed to one side or kept in a box is also something very rare across cultures.

A tangible split between the Church and European political institutions can be dated back to at least Pope Gregory VII and his disputes with Emperor Henry IV (11th C). Religious groups such as the Anabaptists believed that politics corrupts religion and they must remain separate. The Enlightenment split was just the final step in a long process, not something ingeniously radical and earth shattering.

Had it happened in the 18th C Islamic world then it would have been radically different.



You miss the point.

There is no such thing as empathy outside of a cultural context. Empathy is really doing what you think is best for someone else, what you think is best for them is a product of your culture.

In most cases, the same applies to Reason. Neither exists in a vacuum.

Again, I don't see the relevance to the topic at hand.

We have humanism. We owe no debt to Christianity for that, whereas Christianity could not have progressed without humanist methods and values. The modern Christian would likely tell you he opposes stoning adulterers to death, burning witches, or owning slaves, and consider those biblical values. He'd be wrong.

Muslims will still stone and burn you to death for religious crimes, and their many of their governments either approve or turn a blind eye. Those are regions that have not had the civilizing benefit of centuries of conditioning under a humanist constitution and the humanist vision for government and daily life. Neither holy book calls such actions wrong.

The ideas that distinguish the two come from elsewhere - from outside of both of them

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I'll keep this bit separate because you keep misrepresenting this point.

What was necessary was certain precursor concepts (Humanity, equality, progress, etc). It doesn't matter if they came from Christianity or Martian Xylopsism, it only matters that they were present in the same society.

Every human can use empathy and reason. The reason the Humanism didn't appear in every society is because these precursors were not present in most societies. They were not present in every society because they are just made up mythical constructs that developed out of a certain mythological framework.

You keep missing my point. You don't explicitly connect Christianity to secular humanism. You simply keep repeating some version of "They were both there in the West's Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, therefore Christianity played a critical and causative role in the development of humanism." That's a non sequitur. You'll need to demonstrate that role. You'll need to show me ideas essential to humanism for which it was dependent on Christianity.

And as we already discussed, I don't see reality the same way you do. Reason and empathy are not mythical. They are modes of human thought.

Incidentally, I happen to be aware of the Christian contribution to the concepts of humanity, equality, and progress.

Humanity, for example, is an incompetent race of beings born morally defective and worthy of perdition and suffering unless given a pardon for worshiping a particular god, upon which he is utterly dependent for all things. Humanism offers a different vision of humanity.

Humanism dispenses with all of that. Humanism celebrates the human spirit and the human potential. That's pretty much the opposite idea.

As for equality, the Christian vision of society is superior god / inferior created beings, superior king / inferior subject, superior master / inferior slave, and superior husband / inferior wife.

Once again, I can go on for a long time contrasting the Christian and humanist systems of thought. They are radically different.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Apart from empathy and reason, do you consider there are any precursors that are necessary for Humanism to develop in a society?

The secular humanist worldview is a metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical system that encompasses more than reason and empathy. Two other cardinal, bedrock concepts are skepticism and empiricism. From those flow ideas like justice, democracy, citizenship, autonomy, and personal freedoms.

Which of those derive from Christianity? How about justice? Is that a Christian value? What was justice like in the Age of Faith, the Middle Ages? It seems to be limited to punishment and compensation.

The following from RF poster 9/10ths Penguin summarizes the humanist vision of justice and fairness.

• proportionality: the punishment should be proportional to the offense. Worse and lesser offenses are punished more or less harshly, and no punishment is so out-of-keeping with the severity of the offense that it qualifies as cruel.

• usefulness: the punishment serves a valid purpose (e.g. deterrence or rehabilitation). It isn't just inflicting suffering for suffering's sake.

• necessity: not only the punishment needs to be justified, but so does the law itself. Any law needs a legitimate purpose. Arbitrary laws are unfair, even if the punishment for breaking them is light.

Now relate that to Christian doctrine, where a god will sentence you to eternal gratuitous suffering without hope of mercy or parole for a thought crime.

We can treat each of those topics separately and find a striking contrast between the Christian worldview and that of secular humanism. That is my case. These are radically different worldviews, not mother and daughter.

Frankly, I can't find a single useful idea that comes from Christianity. Christianity's best ideas are variations on the Golden Rule, a concept that antedates the time of Christ by a half millennium. It's basically the original tap on empathy's shoulder:

• "Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself." - Confucius (c. 551-479 BCE)

• "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." - Siddhartha Gautama,(c. 563-483 BCE)

I'd say that humanism has much more in common with Eastern worldviews than with the Christian one.

Thse are beliefs with which I entered this discussion. Nothing you have said gives me cause to modify them. I still see no necessary or constructive role for Christianity in the evolution of the modern humanist worldview.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

it's strange to me that the bible bangers talk about christian morals, yet rarely if ever actually display them.

Christian morals, as what's in the book, or the morals of Christians, as in what we see on the street and in the news? Christianity is what it is. It generates the kinds of people that call themselves Christians. This is a wide assortment of types, but the spectrum not only doesn't outshine that of their chief competitor system, secular humanism, I'd say that humanist values are superior wherever they differ from Christian ones, and that humanists embody them more faithfully as well.

Who was following the Golden Rule in the social struggle to legalize same sex marriage? Who was treating others as they would like to be treated, and who was representing an irrational, bigoted position that could hurt a lot of loving couples and benefit no Christian?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I agree with you on the christian morals. I only know 2 Christians who show christian love and morals, and have read their bible more than once. The ones that complain about us the loudest seem to be the ones that don't look at their own text in context.

I'd bet the farm that they'd be equally good people if raised secular humanists.

 

[Augustus]

To the extent that his ideas reproduce ideas in the Christian scripture, they can be said to be of Christian origin.

That's never been at issue. I've been calling that which derives from the Bible Christian from the start.

What I have been discussing is ideas that came since. I believe we began discussing where the Christian church got the idea that slavery was immoral.

Does that mean 'to the extent that it reflects a literal reading of the Bible'?

It was probably specific Christians that we started with rather than the Church as the abolitionist movement was driven by Quakers and Evangelicals, not the Church.

They got in in the same way as Gregory: reasoning based on principles derived from Christian scripture.

You keep missing my point. You don't explicitly connect Christianity to secular humanism. You simply keep repeating some version of "They were both there in the West's Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, therefore Christianity played a critical and causative role in the development of humanism." That's a non sequitur. You'll need to demonstrate that role. You'll need to show me ideas essential to humanism for which it was dependent on Christianity.

I've mentioned them more than 10 times, but can't remember you actually addressing them.

Humanism depends on (from the Amsterdam Declaration):

1. The concept of a singular Humanity ( Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity)
2. The idea that 'all men are created equal' (It affirms the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being)
3. The idea of a directional history (we have confidence that we have the means to solve the problems that confront us all.)
4. Universalism (Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere.)
5. Human exceptionalism

1 & 2 relate to Gregory of Nyssa's arguments from Genesis (5 is based on Genesis also)
3. The eschaton
4. Christianity is universal

So we have direct parallels for these aspects of Humanism in Christian thought and based on reasoning from points of scripture (popularity is irrelevant to my arguments).

But aren't all these ideas found in many traditions? No. They are a very unusual combination, despite the fact that some are found in other traditions.

Add some Greek philosophy to the mix and it's pretty easy to arrive at Humanism. Humanism relies on both.

What is the relevance of Buddhism to this discussion?

I was a reply to your question: why would these ideas not just appear out of Buddhism? You ignored the answer.

Reason and empathy are not mythical. They are modes of human thought.

I didn't say they were mythical, I said they were culturally dependent.

It is the cultural values that are mythical. Culture is based on subjective narratives not scientific principles.

Two other cardinal, bedrock concepts are skepticism and empiricism.

1. Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity
2. We have confidence that we have the means to solve the problems that confront us all
3. Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere

These points are the opposite of scepticism and empiricism.

They are myths that fly in the face of science, reason and human experience.

1. Our identity is as much defined by who we are not as by who we are.
2. We make the same mistakes over and over as we are a selfish, irrational and violent species (just as we can be reasonable, altruistic and cooperative species).
3. There are few things that have more evidence against them than the idea that any belief is or can be universal.

 

[dgirl1986]

I'd bet the farm that they'd be equally good people if raised secular humanists.

I would not doubt it. They have very good hearts. I think they just pay more attention to their own text then some of their sisters and brothers in christ.

 

[VioletVortex]

As Varg Vikernes put it, atheists have "Thrown the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak. I think that is a very valid statement, especially regarding the psychology behind why so many atheists are produced in today's society. I see atheists as those who have awoken and expunged the bad, but without keeping the good. I find most atheists to be very intelligent, therefore, I like them.

 

[Pudding]

I see atheists as those who have awoken and expunged the bad, but without keeping the good.

You mean all atheists or most atheists?

By "expunged the bad", you mean they completely erase/remove the bad?

What do you mean by "without keeping the good"?

Please elaborate "bad" and "good" which appear in your statement.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

It was probably specific Christians that we started with rather than the Church as the abolitionist movement was driven by Quakers and Evangelicals, not the Church.

And where did they get the idea that slavery was immoral? Jehovah, Jesus, or man participating in rational ethics, a method alien to the scriptures. That method, a cardinal feature of the humanist worldview, is not Christian, and the West had to wait for the church to lose its grip on how moral issues are to be decided before this rationalist and empathetic method of making such judgments began to supplant it.

Sorry, but if we continued to take our advice from Jehovah and Jesus - i.e., scriptural commandments - you'd still be hearing the whips cracking and human beings screaming

Somehow, you still want to credit Christianity because Christians were involved. Non sequitur. Christians do things that have nothing to do with their Christianity. Recognizing the immorality of slavery is one of them.

They got in in the same way as Gregory: reasoning based on principles derived from Christian scripture.

The humanist method has wide appeal, and has had a civilizing effect on the rendering of scripture.

I've mentioned them more than 10 times, but can't remember you actually addressing them.

Humanism depends on (from the Amsterdam Declaration):

1. The concept of a singular Humanity ( Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity)
2. The idea that 'all men are created equal' (It affirms the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being)
3. The idea of a directional history (we have confidence that we have the means to solve the problems that confront us all.)
4. Universalism (Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere.)
5. Human exceptionalism

1 & 2 relate to Gregory of Nyssa's arguments from Genesis (5 is based on Genesis also)
3. The eschaton
4. Christianity is universal

So we have direct parallels for these aspects of Humanism in Christian thought and based on reasoning from points of scripture (popularity is irrelevant to my arguments).

But aren't all these ideas found in many traditions? No. They are a very unusual combination, despite the fact that some are found in other traditions.

Sorry, but I don't recognize Christianity in that.

The concept of "humanity," for example, is not connection enough. I already reviewed the deep divide between the Christian concept of humanity and the humanist counterpart. They're radically antithetical.

"Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere." Is that being offered as an example of a core concept of humanism derived from Christinity?

"The eschaton" Do you think that such thinking plays a pivotal role in humanist thought? That somehow, a story about a fiery apocalypse ending life, earth, and material reality leads to a sense of human potential, progress, and the forward march of time? You give Christianity far to much credit for far too little contribution.

And did also want to credit ideas like, "the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being." Christian doctrine is all about how wretched and undeserving man is, that no man is autonomous. How often have you heard Christians call that trying to be one's own god? And oh how they lament free will. There is an implied threat throughout the scriptures to those intending to use it.

You don't find rights in the scriptures. You find commandments. Instead of freedom of speech, there are commandments to not blaspheme. Instead of freedom of religion, there is the commandment to wo rship a particular god.

What is the dignity of man if he was created to be a cheerleader for an entity that requires endless praise?

And once again: If people like Gregory of Nyssa or the Quakers came up with good ideas using the methods of secular humanism - and that's what it mean to realize one century after centuries of Christianity that man has dignity and deserves rights including freedom from slavery - then they made contributions to improving the human condition, something that will never come from biblical scripture. This are not Christian ideas.

My position remains: Whatever ideas you consider essential to humanism and its emergence as an ideology, Christianity was not their source, nor was it necessary that the West be Christian for humanism to have arisen there first.

It is the cultural values that are mythical. Culture is based on subjective narratives not scientific principles.



1. Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity
2. We have confidence that we have the means to solve the problems that confront us all
3. Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere

These points are the opposite of scepticism and empiricism.

They are myths that fly in the face of science, reason and human experience.

1. Our identity is as much defined by who we are not as by who we are.
2. We make the same mistakes over and over as we are a selfish, irrational and violent species (just as we can be reasonable, altruistic and cooperative species).
3. There are few things that have more evidence against them than the idea that any belief is or can be universal.

I still don't see mythology there. Is any narrative mythological to you? If you are using the word to apply to the theory of biological evolution, for example, then you are using it much more loosely than I would. The word become interchangeable with ideas like worldview, historical account, and physical law:

"The gravitational force attracting two masses together is proportional to the product of those masses in inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating their centers"

Is that a mythological narrative in your schema of what constitutes mythology?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

As Varg Vikernes put it, atheists have "Thrown the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak. I think that is a very valid statement, especially regarding the psychology behind why so many atheists are produced in today's society. I see atheists as those who have awoken and expunged the bad, but without keeping the good. I find most atheists to be very intelligent, therefore, I like them.

What do you think that unbelievers are throwing out - the baby in your metaphor - that has value?

 

[1robin]

Is that right? My high school friends and I were part of that generation. We protested the war, and our protests eventually brought it to a halt. We cheered when Nixon was run out of town. We supported the Civil rights movements and the Women's movement.

Is that an argument?

But rather than follow the path you charted for us, we went to university and all became professional with gentle dispositions. We have lived ethical lives, taking responsibility for those we love and our communities, and trying to make the world a better place.

You know nothing about me nor do you have enough statistical data to make any of the conclusions you made. Your not arguing, your yelling declarations at traffic.

We are what those hippies became.

Not an argument.

I have never heard Saul Alinski's name except from a conservative, and the first time was a few years ago.

Not an argument.

Trump just promised you that you'd win so much under him that you'd be tired of winning by now. And he promised to take things away from people, like the Affordable Care Act.

Not an argument.

Do you know how debates are supposed to work?

Thank Bush for your credit rating. Clinton left the store in good shape.

Clinton saw he was going to loose his re-election so he become a conservative hybrid which adopted Newt Gingrich's monetary policy when he had some down time in between rapes and bombing aspirin factories. Our credit rating going down took place 3 years into Obama's term.

And what secular revolution of the late fifties? That was in the late eighteenth century, when the colonies rejected theocracy and instituted secular democracy. No more witch burnings, thank-you-very-much.

We have never been a democracy, we are a representative republic. King George did not burn any witches.

I know where the debt came from and why. It was run up deliberately to serve a variety of interests themselves of no interest to the American people. I watched it explode beginning in 2001 due to tax cuts for the wealthy, endless and needless war, and irresponsible fiscal policy leading to bailouts and recession. The momentum of that has carried through the last 16 years into an even deeper hole that will continue t be dug through the next 4 years.

Under Truman (the president previous to the secular revolution) the deficit was $5 billion, under Obama it was $6.57 trillion. This trajectory only has one possible conclusion. Obama borrowed almost twice the amount of money as the previous 43 presidents combined.
Which President Added Most to the U.S. Debt?
Reality Check: Has the U.S. borrowed more under Obama than all other presidents combined?

And it seems 2001 is not the year our debt spiked either, as you claimed.
Dueling Debt Deceptions - FactCheck.org

That's America, and it wasn't done by hippies.

The secular hippies of the 60s and 70s grew up to become the politicians of the 90s - 2000s, committing national monetary and moral suicide.

And none of it helped either of us. It helped rich white conservative men. They've been concentrating wealth at the expense of the middle class at a rapid rate since while trying to erode away at government investment in its human resources.

I was never offered a job from a poor person.

And feel free to keep all of the Medicare deductions I paid into the system. I won't be using them. Consider them your entitlement from this hippie. Now excuse me while I go out and throw molatov cocktails at the man.

You keep making declarations instead of arguments.

Your supposed to post premise 1, premise 2, premise 3, etc...... then supply the evidence, then give a rational conclusion. Not yell out unsubstantiated mantras.

What's fiscal denial? Disagreeing with you?

Not understanding that our debt is at this point lethal.

Non-Christians routinely know more about Christianity than Christians. We have a more objective view of it. We have no need of sanitizing it. I'm more than happy to tell you how vague most scripture is, how much of it contradicts itself, enumerate the moral and intellectual errors of its deity as well as its failed prophecies and unkept promises, not to mention its errors in science and history. I don't need to make any of that go away like the Christian does.

I don't need to use the phrase "true Christian," and I don't need to call all of the Christians in open defiance of their scriptures non-Christian. If you believe Jesus is a god and a few other things about sin and salvation, you're a Christian. If you are also a person that claims to live by the Golden Rule, but doesn't make much of an effort to do so, then you are still a Christian even if your own disavow you.

I'd say that that makes be the better judge of Christianity.

That is the final absurdity I allow to waste my time for now, I am done with this conversation.

 

[Simurgh]

As Varg Vikernes put it, atheists have "Thrown the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak. I think that is a very valid statement, especially regarding the psychology behind why so many atheists are produced in today's society. I see atheists as those who have awoken and expunged the bad, but without keeping the good. I find most atheists to be very intelligent, therefore, I like them.

what is the good we were supposed to keep? once you understand that atheism is simply not believing in god, then that statement makes little sense. if there was anything that would make religion a valid thing to blindly follow, than the dichotomy good/bad would be meaningless, seeing that the religious have found a way or ten to justify just about anything. so no, we don't expunge anything, we just dismiss the whole lot of it as irrelevant to our lives. there might be religious people who keep to the good side of things--that's a fraught judgement in itself--and try to not indulge in the "bad" but how that plays out is questionable at best.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Is that an argument?

You know nothing about me nor do you have enough statistical data to make any of the conclusions you made. Your not arguing, your yelling declarations at traffic.

Not an argument.

Not an argument.


Not an argument.

Do you know how debates are supposed to work?

Clinton saw he was going to loose his re-election so he become a conservative hybrid which adopted Newt Gingrich's monetary policy when he had some down time in between rapes and bombing aspirin factories. Our credit rating going down took place 3 years into Obama's term.

We have never been a democracy, we are a representative republic. King George did not burn any witches.

Under Truman (the president previous to the secular revolution) the deficit was $5 billion, under Obama it was $6.57 trillion. This trajectory only has one possible conclusion. Obama borrowed almost twice the amount of money as the previous 43 presidents combined.
Which President Added Most to the U.S. Debt?
Reality Check: Has the U.S. borrowed more under Obama than all other presidents combined?

And it seems 2001 is not the year our debt spiked either, as you claimed.
Dueling Debt Deceptions - FactCheck.org





The secular hippies of the 60s and 70s grew up to become the politicians of the 90s - 2000s, committing national monetary and moral suicide.

I was never offered a job from a poor person.

You keep making declarations instead of arguments.

Your supposed to post premise 1, premise 2, premise 3, etc...... then supply the evidence, then give a rational conclusion. Not yell out unsubstantiated mantras.

Not understanding that our debt is at this point lethal.

That is the final absurdity I allow to waste my time for now, I am done with this conversation.

Adios. Thanks for playing.

My liberal, atheistic life has been excellent. I found the world to be a good and receptive place, peopled with far more good people than the kind you describe.

But you have made your choice - religion - and have submitted to Christian dogma, which includes a deep misanthropy. Sorry. I see trees of green and clouds of white. You see mushroom clouds.

And good luck with what you call national suicide. Maybe you should consider a change.

 

[Augustus]

I still don't see mythology there. Is any narrative mythological to you? If you are using the word to apply to the theory of biological evolution, for example, then you are using it much more loosely than I would. The word become interchangeable with ideas like worldview, historical account, and physical law:

"The gravitational force attracting two masses together is proportional to the product of those masses in inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating their centers"

Is that a mythological narrative in your schema of what constitutes mythology?

Standard usage of the term myth/mythos - A narrative, story or set of stories relevant to or having a significant truth or meaning for a particular culture, religion, society, or other group (despite not being objectively true).

Ideologies are myths as they are how people explain to themselves the nature of the world they live in. They just lack the aesthetic qualities of traditional 'literary' mythology.

Scientific theories are not myths although it is possible that someone could develop myths from ideas derived from scientific theories.

Somehow, you still want to credit Christianity because Christians were involved. Non sequitur. Christians do things that have nothing to do with their Christianity. Recognizing the immorality of slavery is one of them.

I believe that a Christian theologian carrying out Biblical exegesis via reasoning from specific points of scripture, and specific documenting his thought process with recourse to God and various Biblical concepts can fairly be described as 'something to do with Christianity'. This is especially true if he is presenting remarkably novel ideas that are almost unheard of in any society. This is where we disagree.

That it was dependent on an uncommon cultural 'spark' explains why it took 10,000 years to develop as an idea despite all humans being born with empathy and reason. As a sceptic, I can't believe in the silver bullet of 'rational ethics' which explains everything like magic. I find it hard to dismiss as purely 'rational ethics' a Greek theologian making arguments based on scripture that starts from a fundamentally different philosophical axiom because of this, the 'rational' Greeks couldn't even conceive a world without slavery and they had absolutely no concept of Humans being born with fundamental rights.

Why would they after all? Their mythos had no room for such concepts, as did their empiricism and scepticism. It took someone irrational to believe in something that is obviously untrue: we don't say all pigs are created equal and born with innate rights. Humans are not exceptional from any scientific perspective, we are just animals.

What is exceptional about us is our ability to create myths, stories and narratives that explain the world we live in. These myths affect all aspects of the way we interact with the world we live in for better or for worse.

These myths develop into cultures and world views which make people behave and think differently (as you see when you travel the world), and become internalised to the extent that people are not even aware of where many fundamental ideas in their society came from (and often think they are universal or simply 'common sense').

These beliefs make certain things possible and certain things impossible. For example, there is no concept of 'honour killing' in contemporary Northern European culture as they are not an honour based society. Self effacing humour in public is not really possible in societies that place a high values on 'face'.

Would you agree that culture and worldview make certain beliefs and ideologies possible, and others impossible (or at least highly unlikely)?

Do you believe that 'inside we are all pretty much the same', or that across times and cultures there is a wide diversity of ways of thinking? For example would you see the pre-modern mind as being very different to the modern one in how it sees the world?

DO you believe reason and empathy when governing human behaviour and morals depend on the myths we tell ourselves (i.e the ideologies we hold)?

The humanist method has wide appeal, and has had a civilizing effect on the rendering of scripture.

It actually has a very narrow appeal throughout history though, pretty much limited to the modern West.

Go back in time and try to explain it in most societies and it would make no sense.

"Mr Caesar sir, don't you realise you have a duty of care to the barbarians?"
"Why is that?"
"We are all part of a common Humanity and are born with inalienable rights that you shouldn't violate"
""

"Mr Aurelius sir, if we all work together we can solve humanity's problems through our collective reason. Our world will keep on gradually getting better and better for ever"
"Hubris is neither wise nor virtuous my dear chap, one cannot conquer fate. One must have the moral courage to live knowing the world is beyond their control and understanding. That is what it means to be a man."

My position remains: Whatever ideas you consider essential to humanism and its emergence as an ideology, Christianity was not their source, nor was it necessary that the West be Christian for humanism to have arisen there first.

You are consistently making the mistake of choosing how you think Christianity ought to be defined and conceptualised in a normative sense, rather than looking at how specific people interpreted it in the past in a positive sense. You are also saying that because Christian A believes X, then Christian B can't believe Y.

Seeing as you are unwilling to accept a Christian theologian reasoning directly from scripture and explicitly stating his reasoning as being evidence for even a quantum of Christian influence though, it is unlikely you will consider the more subtle influences as having any impact whatsoever. I believe that culture has a big impact on ways people think though and that European culture cannot be neatly abstracted from its Christian (and Greek and Roman, etc.) influences.

Even if the influences were 'anything but Christianity', would you at least agree that: Universalism, Humanity, Progressive history & Rights that derive simply from existence are necessary for Humanism to exist and that they are not found in the vast majority of human societies throughout history?

Like I mentioned before, you can't have a concept of honour killing without an honour based society. If you are anything like me you can't even imagine how people who carry out honour killings must think and reason. I certainly can't empathise with them in any way or put myself in their shoes. Their actions are 'rational' according to their own worldview though, and can be motivated by empathy (for the family rather than the victim of course).

Would you also agree that just as honour killing makes no conceptual sense to you, many of the ideas on which Humanism is based would make no conceptual sense to people in most historical societies?