Saturday, August 06, 2011
There is a Positive Content to Atheism, but WHERE?
One person created a circle called "Atheists" and then began to post mocking cartoons (e.g. scumbag church) and I thought to myself how sad it is that Atheists would not have some positive and constructive topics which have nothing to do with religion or myth or the supernatural.
Barbara: No one can say how someone else should feel without risking ridicule for being mistaken; feelings are personal and only those with the feelings can understand them.
William:
I just wonder why Atheists would want Religions to define them. If tomorrow everyone in the world became Atheist then what would Atheists talk about?
Barbara: For an Atheist to say that there IS NO GOD, which is the definition of Atheism, automatically assumes and prefaces all the mention of religion in argument against the belief in a GOD. You are asking for Atheists to be something other than what they are. And, they are being positive about science explaining everything and all belief outside of that being superstition and therefore silly. That *is* positive for Atheism.
What is positive for one belief system, of which Atheism is one, is automatically negative for all other belief systems that disagree!
William: by your own argument, no one can say how someone else should feel, and what I have posted is how I feel, yet you some how seem to be telling me how to feel. I think Atheists should strive to have some positive and constructive platform and the optimism to anticipate triumph over all religiosity and have the substance to stand for something important (and more than diatribe against superstition) in that post-religion world.
Barbara: No, what you said is Atheists *should*.... That is what I addressed. Bill, you are extremely judgmental of anyone who does not agree with your very limited viewpoint and that boxes in ONLY YOU... not me.
William: Atheists SHOULD try to have some constructive and positive content which will identify them independent of diatribe and mockery against religion. Fools should not be foolish but if that is not possible for them then at lease they should become aware of their foolishness. People are certainly free to abstain from the practice of brushing and flossing but they should adopt such a good practice otherwise they will suffer from periodontal disease and tooth loss.
Barbara: and people not hired to give shoulds SHOULD protect themselves better from alienating everyone around them by telling all those others what they should do without being invited to do so.... especially where belief is concerned. The Judgemental think themselves gods and have no higher power of their own -- how sad.
William: I encourage Atheists to be Atheists but I simply advise them to be more creative about it.
Barbara: None of the Atheists I know would consider what you write to be advise and most if not all would not appreciate it anyway.
William: Is it not sad to think that Atheists devote their lives to attacking religions and if religion disappeared they would have no positive substance?
Barbara: You devote your life to attacking them; why shouldn't they defend themselves from all the Christians who think they have the right to attack everyone who isn't Christian?
William: You point goes right back to my original point that INDIFFERENCE is the opposite of love. Any Atheist worth their salt would have equanimity and would not care what others think or say. If you KNOW you are right you do not feel the compulsion to PROVE you are right and seek agreement from others.
I myself am an Agnostic for the simple reason that one can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a God or gods. I personally reject participation in organized religion.
Barbara: Who says Atheism is the opposite anyway? You? Not them. You make your point from within your own head without regard for what Atheists or anyone else really thinks at all.
William: the fact that you have buttons which I inadvertently pushed with my post PROVES that Atheists lack indifference, equanimity and self-confidence. I think my observations here are very important realizations for serious Atheists.
The fact that Atheists fail to recognize the truth of my observation simply means that they are in denial.
Barbara: During my transition from the belief system that was taught to me growing up and the belief system I have now (which took decades,) I often had the opportunity to argue with some really good theologians and debaters in their own right. One extremely devout Catholic, stood abruptly from the table where we were having coffee, called me the devil and stormed out of the restaurant after realizing that he couldn't convince me of what he was sure (in his own head) had to be the truth for *ALL* without exception. Take heed. I am of the blood of an atheist whose funeral was attended by tons of priests who had debated him for years in life and respected him immensely for all *they* were able to learn from *him* (I know that he appreciated all he learned from them also, but I am not sure they knew that.) I can't be boxed into a space smaller than that which grants full access to all ... you can't convert me no matter how good you are at twisting the words. I am JEWISH, not atheist and I never said that Atheists are indifferent at all... they are NOT indifferent at all. *You* assume they are indifferent because you assume they are the opposite of believers and you have decided that indifference is the opposite of belief. But, indifference is not the only alternate feeling that is out there. Atheists are *believers* in a different belief system. They are NOT indifferent at all.
You've painted yourself into a very small box, Bill, with your intolerance of the beliefs of others. That can be difficult to live with throughout life since not everything else will fit into that very small box no matter how hard you try to squeeze it in.
William: I am trying to HELP the Atheists. I am not intolerant of them. Anyone with common sense (if indeed sense is common) whether Atheist, Agnostic or Theist will quickly realize that there is a problem if Atheism is defined solely as hostility towards all religion with no positive content or message which stands apart from the messages of organized religions.
Barbara: Who says Atheists want your help???? How do you feel when someone says that people with YOUR faith SHOULD not have that faith but SHOULD have another faith. How do you suppose that Jews feel when they are bombarded with all that *helpful* advise about what they SHOULD and SHOULD NOT do? No one wants that sort of help. Heal thy self.
William: who said that you speak for all Atheists? How can you even prove to us that you correctly understand what Atheism is? Do you see yourself as the Pope of Atheism? Why is rancor and diatribe and intolerance (and NOTHING else) at the heart of Atheism?
Barbara: And, that is your definition of Atheism, not the Atheist's. Atheism is actually defined as the belief that there IS NO GOD and the further belief that the Atheist can prove that there IS NO GOD. You are being hostile to that belief when you redefine it to fuel your own denial of the fact that you are intolerant.
Who says you speak for all right thinkers, or as you so caustically put it, all people with common sense. I don't think you have any common sense at all.
I am merely tired of seeing your tirades against all who do not think the way you do... but I assume you don't care about that and will merely twist my words into justifications for your own thoughts as you so often do with all others who have the misfortune to respond to your posts. You berate people for their opinions. It is very tiring to read.
William: For a long time I have felt that if there IS no God (and that may well be true) then that makes human beings the only God there is and therefore there are certain moral/ethical duties upon humans as the only stewards of the universe endowed with thinking consciousness.
So, for example, if there IS NO Christ then even more so it behooves us to be Christ-like since the fate of the world is in the hands of our agendas and technology.
Are you not equally intolerant? Do you not desire that all should adopt your opinions? I am not tired at all. I am glad you came here. I like a challenge. I look forward to seeing the comments of others. I want to be like Voltaire and fight to the death for you to say your beliefs even if they are critical of mine.
We should all silo ourselves to be only with like-minded people who patronize us with their agreement and then we will always be happy, complacent and will never question or test our values. More dangerous than the unanswered question is the unquestioned answer.
Barbara: As much fun as this is (and yes, there is a lot that I am intolerant of but pointing out the other person's equal faults is not an adequate response to an observation/response/etc., it is obfuscation and something political debaters are often very good at doing in order to avoid actually saying anything at all) I have to leave you because of more pressing work here right now opening more big presents from Fed Ex that just arrived to the wailing of my wannabe vicious hounds. Talk later.
One last thought, I dearly love preaching to the choir. The opposite gets my blood boiling too easily and among the choir, I am the informer -- the one who fuels their abilities to meet the opposition -- that works well for me. So, don't expect me to start bringing in opposers to my fold anytime soon. The few that I tolerate right now are all by blood pressure can stand.
William: The best retort and refutation would be to present all the positive content of the Atheist position which makes no reference to religions or believers and then I would be defeated. I feel certain that there ARE Atheists somewhere who do have positive content but those in the world that we identify as Atheists are pseudo-wannabe-Atheists who attract our attention with their anger and insults. The real Atheists possess equanimity and are under the radar of public notice or notoriety.
Barbara:
One of the first things I learned in Philosophy is that EVERY belief system (or Art movement) answers the one that came before it. Therefore, ALL belief systems are partly defined by what thinking they oppose. Check it out if you doubt me. The writings of each and every one includes "appropriate" definitions of the others outside of itself and why this belief system is *better* (or at least different and therefore necessary. None would be necessary if they did not differ in some way from the one before.
William: So, if it is impossible for anyone to say anything original and independent but everything is somehow the opposite of something else then why do we become furious when someone says something which conflicts with our own views, for I should think that it matters little what anyone says since it must all be a reversal of some previously held position?
Barbara: I didn't say opposite. I said different or opposing in some way. Opposing is not necessarily opposite. Study art history and see how each movement *answers* the one before... it may oppose the one before in some ways, but in some ways it will not, so it is not a complete "reversal." Each belief system *answers* the needs of a particular culture or understanding, answers questions that a particular person or group might have with the previous... then over time, both the previous AND the new will change as their respective followers grow into them and when another new one comes along, it will take issue with one or two or more parts of each of those others and create itself in a new image that is similar but a little different. Art History is the best way to see all of this on display.
William: IS your argument that Atheists do not have any positive content beyond the hatred of all religions and that is their right.... or are you saying that there is some positive content to Atheism? My criticism/advice is addressed to those pseudo-wannabe-Atheists who mistake Atheism for the simple hatred of all religion.
The Historian: I'm bored by talk of god. So atheism makes a convenient default setting.
William: surely Atheism should have some positive platform if only for the sake of marketing. Didn't the Nihilists lose steam because they had no positive content or platform and so they became "rebels without a cause" much like the Teabaggers may become if they are defined by their criticism of the Democrats.
The Historian: Nope. It can simply be an absence of theism. That's what the word means.
William: what would you say of an "historian" whose sole task is to refute all historians and claim that the concept of history itself is impossible. Are you saying that denial of all gods (Atheism) is something that is worthy of study. Why not be like Berkeley and say that nothing has any real existence and all is mind/illusion or be like Plato's Parmenides and argue that once cannot say "that which is not." http://www.greece.com/library/plato/parmenides_12.html
I meant to write http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley Berkeley Berkeley's contribution to philosophy is his thorough substantiation of the so-called "new principle" esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived).
“ This is the claim, most often presented negatively, as the thesis that matter does not exist, with which Berkeley is most closely associated.”According to the "esse is percipi" thesis, all the things surrounding us are nothing but our ideas. Sensible things have no other existence distinct from their being perceived by us. This also applies to human bodies. When we see our bodies or move our limbs, we perceive only certain sensations in our consciousness.When identifying the sensuously perceived world with ideas of the knowing subject, Berkeley did not maintain that ideas exhausted the content of reality. There is perceiving, active being, or mental substance (mind, spirit, soul), in which ideas exist.
According to Berkeley there are only two kinds of things: spirits and ideas. Spirits are simple, active beings which produce and perceive ideas; ideas are passive beings which are produced and perceived.Hence, it follows that human knowledge is reduced to two heads: that of ideas and that of spirits (Principles #86). In contrast to ideas, spiritual substance cannot be perceived. A man's soul perceiving ideas is to be comprehended by inward feeling or reflection (Principles #89). Unlike John Locke, Berkeley refused to use the term "idea" with regards to objects of reflection. Whereas Locke called them ideas, Berkeley restricted the meaning of the term "idea" to passive objects of perception. It being so, Berkeley introduced the word "notion" to account for discourse about spiritual substance and its operations (Principles ##89, 142). For Berkeley, we have no idea of spirits albeit we have a "notion" of them.
“ This is the claim, most often presented negatively, as the thesis that matter does not exist, with which Berkeley is most closely associated.”According to the "esse is percipi" thesis, all the things surrounding us are nothing but our ideas. Sensible things have no other existence distinct from their being perceived by us. This also applies to human bodies. When we see our bodies or move our limbs, we perceive only certain sensations in our consciousness.When identifying the sensuously perceived world with ideas of the knowing subject, Berkeley did not maintain that ideas exhausted the content of reality. There is perceiving, active being, or mental substance (mind, spirit, soul), in which ideas exist.
According to Berkeley there are only two kinds of things: spirits and ideas. Spirits are simple, active beings which produce and perceive ideas; ideas are passive beings which are produced and perceived.Hence, it follows that human knowledge is reduced to two heads: that of ideas and that of spirits (Principles #86). In contrast to ideas, spiritual substance cannot be perceived. A man's soul perceiving ideas is to be comprehended by inward feeling or reflection (Principles #89). Unlike John Locke, Berkeley refused to use the term "idea" with regards to objects of reflection. Whereas Locke called them ideas, Berkeley restricted the meaning of the term "idea" to passive objects of perception. It being so, Berkeley introduced the word "notion" to account for discourse about spiritual substance and its operations (Principles ##89, 142). For Berkeley, we have no idea of spirits albeit we have a "notion" of them.
The Historian: Um, I'm afraid that the conversation has moved beyond my pay grade. History is no god; it's just some stuff that happened. I don't exactly know how the two relate (ahistoricism, is that a term?) and atheism. But I'm not offended either.
William:
It should be the duty of an intellectual to rely on more than mere word games or sophistry or casuistry to engage in dialogue. By the way, I knew a certain tutor at SJC in the 1960s with a button on his head labeled HISTORICITY and all one had to do is push it and he went into gyrations and jeremiads quoting Leo Strauss at length.
