New Atheist Billboards in California:"I Believe in Humanity, Not god"

[c.d.]

To be fair though, there is no reason to beat up exclusively on Christians for bad behavior based on religious beliefs. You have the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq trying to kill each other. You have the Taliban doing their thing and now those formerly peace loving Buddhist monks are getting into the act inciting bigotry and violence primarily against Muslims in several of Asia's Buddhist majority nations.

Hey those atheists are starting to look pretty good!

c.d.

[Errata]

I think that what this person is referring to is something a lot more fundamental than either faith or even charity. I think in part, she is referring to the idea that an atheist's motives for helping are more pure that a theist's motives. That religion makes charity an integral part of salvation, so that very few people of faith help solely out of the goodness of their heart. They help because it's helps them. They give sandwiches to homeless people, they go to heaven. So their motives are suspect.

Which is total crap because nobody does anything without some kind of reward attached. People get certain positive feelings from good works. They do those works to get those feelings. So even for people who don't have a god telling them what to do, they certainly have an ego performing the same function. There is no such thing as a truly selfless act.

But I think mostly she is referring to an unfortunate philosophy that a good many people of faith do have, which is that "god(s) will provide". That you don't have to help a homeless man because some all merciful deity is out there who will take up the slack. There are people out there who absolve their social guilt through prayer and not action. And while no prayer is ever wasted, no prayer is a substitute for action. If a woman's husband is molesting her daughter, and she decided to act by praying for it to stop, we would all want to physically shake some sense into that woman. We would all agree that she needs to act by getting her daughter away from that man.

But we get a little less pressured by the need to act when we are talking about nebulous problems like poverty, addiction, mental illness. We don't know what to do about those problems, and we certainly don't know what we can do that won't get us involved. It's messy, and it's not a guaranteed success, and we judge, and we feel less pity and righteousness and more disgust and unease. An atheist has to look at someone like that on the streets and know that if they don't help, likely no one else will help, and that person could die. A theist can tell themselves that some deity will take of them and walk on. Theists have an out that atheists don't have. Not all theists. Jews don't, Buddhists don't. An atheist has no choice but to confront the idea that their inaction may lead to death.

And personally, I think that's the way to go.

[c.d.]

Hello Errata,

How does that old expression go? -- "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

c.d.

[Robert]

There's something about this atheist campaign that smells bad. This desire to be reassured that there are others who think like you....it's the herd instinct.

Suppose someone were the only atheist in the world. So what?

[Errata]

There's something about this atheist campaign that smells bad. This desire to be reassured that there are others who think like you....it's the herd instinct.

Suppose someone were the only atheist in the world. So what?

I guess it matters to that person. The herd instinct is not some genetic relic from a bestial past. There is in fact safety in numbers. Not illusory safety, actual safety. The more conventional something is, the less a person gets attacked for it. It's why every religion had a hard time when it first started. People don't just need others who believe in their god, they need others who agree with their worldview, their philosophy, their interpretation of life and purpose. If some people find all of that in church, great. But atheists have the same needs.

I have heard it argued that a single Christian cannot be a Christian. Despite hearing the argument, I can't say whether or not that's true. A single Jew certainly has a tough time being a Jew. But a single anything is a tragedy.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Hello Robert,

Are you implying that Pol Pot did what he did because he was an atheist? Since there are atheists who are kind, caring people with high morals, I think the better conclusion is that Pol Pot did what he did simply because he was an extremely evil person.

c.d.

Clearly Pol Pot thought he was emulating those Western societies which advocated revolution as a means to political change. All revolutions end in people being killed as the inherent nature of revolution is coercion. He wasn't the first nor the last to kill people because he thought he knew best. Western societies, or nations, whatever you want to call them, did a fine trade in this line before Pol Pot's Great Grandfather was even thought of.

Atheists certainly think they have 'high morals'. If they had any principles or sense of objectivity they'd get down off their collective high horse and think about the danger of militancy in any guise.

[Tom_Wescott]

"No group in the last two hundred years has done more for humanity than the Christians..."

Native Americans and black slaves during the Civil War might have a different take on that. Just saying.

c.d.

I live in Oklahoma where there are a lot more Indians and American blacks than where you live, I'm sure. And guess what...most are Christian. In any event, America is what it is because we took over this land. That's what conquering nations do, you know. We didn't invent that. And slavery helped take us from upstart to world leader in comparitively little time. In hindsight we like to call it a human tragedy, mistake, etc. But that's rather backwards thinking, or 'hindsight' as Monty calls it. It apparently didn't seem so at the time to you Brits!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Robert]

Hi Tom

I think CD is himself American.

Hi Errata

Yes, I know there's a certain physical safety in joining a group, but in the end people should stand on their own beliefs, not lean on like-thinking people as a psychological crutch.

A single Christian or a single Jew is in a sense a contradiction in terms, because if the word "single" is taken literally, then we're talking of one person but no god. Nevertheless the morality of the religion could remain.

[Semper_Eadem]

Howdy folks,

Yes Errata, the herd instinct is a strong one which could affect your choice of nomination. Well for most young people perhaps. But I think most people would stick to their own denomination or faith. I think it depends on their nomination and how deep their faith runs. Perhaps their age too. Young People tend to be more open to changing their faith while older people tend to stick with what they are used to. Just human nature, I guess.

Speaking for myself, I was raised Episcopalian Lutheran, now I am agnostic. Perhaps that stems because are no Lutheran Churches near by, lots of Baptists but nary a Lutheran church but when all is said and done even if I was into church worship I would probably go to a Lutheran Church. Perhaps not. First, I would probably have to overcome my aversion to social hour which is what I think how a lot of churches operate. I think in my case it has to due with life experience, when I was 16 I had to go to church while staying with an Aunt, being force fed kind of turned me off of organized religion. listening to petty gossip and backbiting in the house of God pretty much finished that deal.

However, speaking for myself and my experience of life I do have to state that most of the cold blooded A**holes I have met in my life have been atheists. Now I have met other petty and sometimes selfish people who are of certain organized denominations from Methodists to Wiccans but it seems to me going by my experience that most cold blooded selfish back stabbing folks are atheists. Now this is just my experience so make of it what you will. Perhaps it is my location, I'm sure there are a lot of cold blooded backstabbing Christians out there, I just haven't' met them yet. I've heard of a few already mentioned though. First there were Christian abolitionists, who, surprisingly didn't like black people but hated slavery even more so they ended up becoming pit stops on the underground railroad, yes isn't that insane, yet it happened, and the said abolitionists gave out the most threadbare of charity to escaping slaves they hid. The Spanish Inquisition thought it was better to torture the flesh to save the soul, hence the burning to give the condemned a foretaste of what they could expect in hell unless they recanted their heresy, now they still would burn for being heretics but their soul was saved, which the inquisition viewed as their top priority, some priority but there you have it. Now to be fair this was a priority of the 16th century and not our secular 21st.. Seems we got atheists putting up billboards, along with right to lifers and free choice advocates and everyone else with a mission or product to sell. I usually don't look at billboards so I am not too worried about it.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Tom

I think CD is himself American.

Yes, but Oklahoma is Indian territory.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Roy Corduroy]

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas -

The billboards go up

Casebook has its Athiest Coffee Klatch special Holiday edition

You can set your clock to it

Roy

[Fleetwood Mac]

"No group in the last two hundred years has done more for humanity than the Christians..."

Native Americans and black slaves during the Civil War might have a different take on that. Just saying.

c.d.

I could be wrong here but I think Britain was at the forefront of ending slavery. We, as a nation, certainly profited from slavery at the expense of people's liberty - no argument there from me, so it's a shallow victory in a sense.

But, the point is that many of those at the forefront of ending slavery and lobbying Parliament to send ships to Africa to prevent it from happening long after Britain had outlawed slavery, were Christians; practicing Christians at that.

As far as I can tell, the whole idea of race and a natural order among the various races, was invented by a Swede in the 1700s and up until this idea began to spread it wasn't unusual for British and French colonists to marry the natives. Much of the exploitation was economic rather than anything to do with Christianity, although there certainly were Christian missionaries who aimed to spread the word; which is imperialism of a kind.

But, no, it would be unkind to lay the blame at the door of Christianity per se, unless of course you are going to argue that these were Christian nations and by default merchants were Christians, but then that would be in direct contradiction to your post on the other thread which stated the US is not and never was a Christian nation. Can't have it both ways, surely.

[Tom_Wescott]

Brilliant post, Fleets.

I love c.d. He's one of my favorite posters. But he turns into Mr. Hyde when it comes to religion and his rampant anger towards God takes him over. But yes, atheists have a difficult time when they try to argue that all the world's faults are due to Christianity, because they're arguing a false premise. Clearly, greed was behind slavery and not any religion. And slavery of course existed long before Christ was born, so it's not a recent concept. In any event, we pay the price for slavery every day in America now and none of us alive were around to reap the benefits, so I suppose its true that the sins of the father are visited on the son!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[c.d.]

Hello Tom,

First of all thanks for the compliment...well, sort of. I can't remember ever expressing anger towards God in any of my posts let alone rampant anger. Now I will admit to having a great dislike for people who spread evil in the world in the name of religion. And that is not limited to Christians (or more precisely to people who think they are practicing Christianity but who wouldn't know Christianity if it flew up their ass). All you have to do is look around the world and you will find all manner of evil being perpetrated in the name of religion. Does religion do good things? Absolutely. But I see no point in turning a blind eye to the bad that it also does.

You started this thread by bad mouthing atheists as though they were guilty of something simply by being atheists. I simply attempted to point out that atheists are not the ones behind so much of what is wrong with the world today. That is all I did.

c.d.

[Fleetwood Mac]

You started this thread by bad mouthing atheists as though they were guilty of something simply by being atheists. I simply attempted to point out that atheists are not the ones behind so much of what is wrong with the world today. That is all I did.

c.d.

The real issue I have with atheists, c.d., is that they miss one fundamental point. It is part of the human make-up to dream. We're not these logic, rational beings that walk this earth in a state of reason. Although to be fair, it is reasonable to believe in a God.

There will be no one on this board who is more of a humanist than me, by nature. I've never been interested in what is happening in the sky, be it aliens, God, the universe; I'm solely concerned with the here and now in my corner of the world, by nature.

The thread started to move into 'herd mentality', but I think there's a layer above that. People like order and hierarchy, and I'd accept that submission and belonging is a part of that, but it's the tool to a wider objective: order.

It would be an unbelievably dull world if we all looked to science for the answers, and an unachievable world as our experience tells us science certainly doesn't have all of the answers.

Like it or not, atheists do not have the one true path to salvation, nor does anybody else, and it's the arrogance of certainty in an uncertain world that causes consternation.

I would mention the left-wing types at this point, but Julie will be along within seconds to start a war with me (she has a bell that goes off when the words 'left-wing' are typed). Only pulling your leg Julie!