Atheism

Yes. Preaching the view is another matter though. There is nothing to stop anybody believing anything so rights don't matter. The fact of the belief is all there is.

Atheists are as big a threat as climate change deniers
By - - CHORTLE.CO.UK
Added: Sunday, 18 September 2011 at 3:56 AM
Source: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643123-atheists-are-as-big-a-threat-as-climate-change-deniers

Frank Skinner has claimed that atheists are as big a threat to humanity as climate change deniers.

In a conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury last night, the Catholic comedian said: ‘Atheists we might see as people like those who deny global warming. You might defend their choice to believe that as freedom of speech – but if they are wrong and people are taken in, it could be disastrous for millions of people.’

Later in the event at Canterbury Cathedral, Skinner added that the world’s religions should unite to combat the threat, saying the beliefs they have in common are far greater than their differences.

‘At a time when secularism is a threat to the salvation of millions, believers should get together, find what we have in common, and sell that,’ he said. Skinner said that it was no longer fashionable to have faith. ‘On the comedy circuit, it’s incredibly cool to be an atheist.

‘I’ve just been to the Edinburgh Fringe and even if it was nothing to do with anything else they were saying, most comics would take three or four minutes to explain they were atheists, just to tick the box of “cool comic”. What you need for that is skinny jeans, hair like a chrysanthemum and to be an atheist.’ Turning to Dr Rowan Williams, he added: ‘You need to sort that out. It’s bad that atheism has got to be a cool position.’

Skinner added that atheists took an aloof intellectual standpoint and ‘looked down at’ the wisdom of believers.

‘It really gets on my nerves that atheists is all about sitting on leather chairs in gentlemen’s clubs with Dawkins and Bertrand Russell while I sit reading novels with Cliff Richard. I think we’re stuck with that.’

He added that his friend and former flatmate David Baddiel could never understand his faith, and would ask: ‘Doesn’t it ever worry you that everyone else who believes in what you believe is an idiot.’

Skinner said his response was to ask: ‘Doesn’t that bother you at Chelsea games?’

The comedian said he had doubts about his own belief, but said that was the definition of faith.

‘I have lots of arguments about religion,’ he said. ‘Most of my conversations are with atheists who want to know how can anyone with any kind of brain believe in a God in the 21st Century.

‘The thing is, I’m not sure. I see myself as a man of doubt. Doubt is at the centre of being human. I wonder about fundamentalists who don’t have doubt – or atheists who don’t have doubt… There are days when I think I’m wrong. I think it’s OK to think that.’

Dr Williams agreed, saying: ‘The opposite of faith is not doubt but certitude.’ Skinner said he read the God Delusion as it was important to hear all the arguments. ‘When I held it in my hands I worried that once I read it I might not believe in God any more,’ he said, before admitting: ‘There were a couple of moments when I thought, “that’s a good point”.’ But his faith remained intact.

He told the Archbishop religious people had given up too much ground to the rationalists. He said: ‘There’s too much apologising – and I’m afraid the English Anglicans are bad at this – for the magic in religion, making concessions on the virgin birth or the resurrection. Don’t give in to them! To applause from the audience, he said: ‘If you believe in God all bets are off. The Red Sea can part. There’s a temptation to give a bit of ground to rationality. But if you believe in God, why shouldn’t there be angels?’

That's infantile stuff imo hinge.

Scientific materialism, atheism, rationalism etc cannot help reducing human beings to utilitarian objects. They represent an attack on imagination and creativity.

How do they explain the capacity of some people to recite a text or perform a ritual in a manner which casts a spell over the audience while the same text or ritual performed by others leaves the audience cold? The former must partake of some form of personal magic because the text and the ritual are the same in both cases.

Why does one advertising agency sell a product better than others? The product is the same.

What is imagination if it does not partake of the sacred?

Sure, if you're going to believe in a dream world why not go all the way. It's the people who have faith and try to make sense of it that are confused. Those who have faith and don't question it are being the most consistent within their beliefs.

O'Reilly vs Dawkins

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1202819421001/oreilly-vs-richard-dawkins

The only aspect of disaster which would impinge if there were a god would be if the god were so petty and infantile as to punish people for not believing. What kind of an image of an omnipotent, omniscient deity is that? This allegedly supreme being is really that puerile? This clown didn't give any thought to the kind of deity he was describing. It just makes it more glaringly obvious that this alleged god is just the creation of the human mind, and a not very imaginative mind at that.

The concept of the absent deity, of a "supreme being" who creates, and then moves on, uninterested in the fate of the creation, is far, far more plausible. The image of some clown busily recording the fall of every sparrow is just too hilariously and obviously the product of an infantile, human mind. Me! Me! I'm important, i'm the center of the universe! God is totally focused on me!.

I thought Setanta actually thought that. He doesn't like the Christian God because everybody has their share of It. It's common. He wants his own and it's himself.

The fact that some people think their God will punish atheists or is counting the sparrow falls is irrelevant to the argument. It's a straw man. Most sensible Christians think that God doesn't count sparrow falls and will reward atheists by allowing them to have a room of their own and welcoming back those who can't stand it and apply properly.

Me, I have a weakness for the Olympian model of the ancient Greeks: In modern terminology, the world is a corporation, run by a board of gods, who do a crappy job at it because they'd rather spend most of their energy on cabals against each other.

The Norse had a wonderful outlook on the gods. They saw them as essentially corrupt individuals, most interested in the affairs of their fellows, but willing to take an interest in humans if one proved "worthy." Read: good entertainment. So, they might aid you on your way, or they might throw some stumbling blocks in your path, just to see how you dealt with that, and to have a good laugh. It sort of looks like an extrapolation from the common view of the aristocracy, except, of course, that there was no kind of restraint on the gods. Thor was the favorite, because it was generally believed that he would aid and reward the bold and courageous.

It is said that Thomas's Olympian gods held a summit meeting to debate UG resolution 1462 which was a proposal to eradicate the human race on account of what a low-down, mean, uncouth and nasty, disgusting mess they were. It was defeated because it was realised that without the human race they would have nobody to worship them and sacrifice in their honour.

It was decided to send out missionaries to **** 'em into being at least a passably agreeable race just as Cecil Rhodes was later to suggest in other less exalted circumstances.

It must be awful being a fundie atheist. Everything must seem banal, mundane, crass and devoid of intellectual interest.

What you see is what you get. Instead of "Oh my God!! Oh! Oh! My God! Oh! Don't stop! Oh my God! Oh! Don't stop! Don't ever stop!" you get "Pull mi nightie down when you've finished."

Which I must admit is efficient.

spriggin troll

Splendorous has a aim in life, a special place in his heaven a three storied pub built with diamond encrusted bricks, gold plated bar top and a team of atheists chained in the cellar to do his beck and call . With a day job sitting next to his god as a advisor on how not to convert Atheists

...the "sacred" is it, eh ? hehehe fairy´s are so graceful are n´t they, we can´t resist them can we ?

...hmmm, so that´s why you are so pissed off all the time...I finally get it...you are sort of a cursed idealist with your damn feet gridded in the ground against your will...when was it that intelligence, that lying bitchy wore, robbed you from that lovely spoiled aristocratic childhood that you so much miss Spendi ? you poor little orphan...
"...eat chocolates little one, eat chocolates...there´s no more metaphysics in the world then eating chocolates..."

You're a sensualist are you Fil?

A Cassius to my Brutus is your claim. It's easy said.

Surely your libertinage taught you more metaphysics than the joy of chocolate. T'was a pretty libertinage if it didn't. One might even say a Christian one. Safety straps nice and tight.

Is not the NASA project a protest about our feet being gridded in the ground? Even the musical accompaniments soar.

You bare forked brute of a Jacobin you.

I thought there was something worth fighting after I read 1984. And I'll take any ally I can find. Big Brother cannot be allowed to come to pass because of a few flip phrases of the smarty-pants variety and eyes that refuse their sight.

Speaking of Cleopatra's pussy Antony says--

"Let Rome in Tiber melt! and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall? here is my space."

The problem is Fil, as Dylan says, it's only a moment's glory as it is with chocolates unless you fancy being gross.

One cannot convert atheists tf. It is a faith. One can only attempt to convince them that it is not in their own interest to convert others. Which they admit every time they refuse to answer the question--"Do you want everyone to be an atheist?" And Kant's Categorical Imperitive demands they answer.

Is n´t the world sacred enough without God Spendi ? Triviality is in the eye of the beholder...we don´t need a new sort of colours to dream the dream old man...damn symbolism and its exorcistich hysteria !

...let me just ad that you and your Jacobin Christ friend are the revoltees against the mundane and the empire not me...I (most of the time) stand aside of such uninteresting conflicts...you are a waste in this kind of theme...

Best Regards>FILIPE DE ALBUQUERQUE

I don't think so. The Divine Marquis tried that line for a while, his romantic phase, but after some thought about the killing fields of nature he did a volte face and started calling it the wicked step-mother and giving it the Sadean treatment.

And the word "sacred" can only apply in the presence of God. The world as a fact, and linguistically, is mundane. Boring. Merely a sitting duck to be exploited by the idea that man has dominion over it. A Biblical proposition.

The view that the Manhattan socialite raves about affectedly on some Pacific island is never even noticed by those who live there. And they would be gobsmacked on 52nd Street.

I revolt from the mundane because it is revolting. We dress things up to tone them down.

Waste!! What is waste?

Veblen, that Prince of American literature, said that waste = status. The more waste you can produce the bigger the cheese you are. It looks a pretty good working principle to me.

Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list



http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/mason-crumpacker-and-the-hitchens-reading-list/

The first hand account of a tale involving a remarkable eight year old, her remarkable mother, and the remarkable Hitchens.

As one of the commenters said - makes even an old cynic smile.