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| Re: Atheist Billboard At Lincoln Tunnel Approach (703610) | |||
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Re: Atheist Billboard At Lincoln Tunnel Approach |
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Posted by JayMan on Fri Dec 3 18:26:53 2010, in response to Re: Atheist Billboard At Lincoln Tunnel Approach, posted by Henry R32 #3730 on Fri Dec 3 17:06:45 2010. The weak definition of "atheist" has all but disappeared from usage.Really? Why then do Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris still use it? For all intents and purposes, the current meaning of atheist is to deny the existence of god, and the current meaning of agnostic is to suspend one's thinking regarding it. Anyone who believes the two words are synonyms is desperately trying to increase the population of their camp, for some reason. I admit the language is rather cumbersome on this issue; it has served to create ambivalence on the issue of the existence of God when there in fact should be none. Atheism, in the correct form as espoused by rational people is the natural conclusion of processes that examine the world and evidence in it. “Agnosticism” is not some form of “sub-atheism”, as the reasoning of agnosticism, which of course means withholding belief in God until there is evidence, is identical to rational atheism. Unlike pink unicorns and the boogie man, there *is* evidence of a God/creator/originator. If that evidence could be definitively refuted, our current religions would have disappeared a long time ago, like the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. And what exactly is that evidence? >>>>>What your basically saying is that humans need religion for morality, which is patently untrue. Morality is not based on religion but instead based on the social contract, which basically states that in order to get the benefits of living in a social group one needs to adhere to certain rules. The development of morality and an innate moral sense was necessary for the evolution of a social species, and what allows humans to live harmoniously in a group. Oh really? The Romans were cool with raping of servants on a whim and fucking your siblings for the purpose of having children by them. Religious law is what put an end to that, if not we'd have diluted our gene pool to have even more blithering idiots out there than we have right now. The Romans had religion, pre-Christianity (those gods and goddesses you mentioned). And why then did this “religious law” not stop the Christians from raping, enslaving, torturing or slaughtering whole ethnic groups of people? People can *very easily* have their concept "morality" twisted and inverted; all you need is a charismatic leader. Religion is useful for stopping that (just as easily as it can cause it). Oh you mean like Osama bin Laden? And numerous popes? And David Koresh? And Mohammed? Right, religion does a great job of stopping charismatic leaders from twisting people’s morality. Seems you got things ass-backwards my friend; religion has been an excellent tool that charismatic leaders have used to inflict all manner of evil upon the world. Its record of stopping such abuses has not been as stellar… |
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