Atheism

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Quote:
SAN ANTONIO -- A group of atheist students at the University of Texas at San Antonio is swapping pornography for religious texts other students trade in.

Actually that sounds like a good system - everyone gets exposed to a little bit of everything encouraging discovery and openmindedness.

I think they are just kids being wise-asses, but it does help to illustrate the point why atheists forming groups may not work.

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It is my experience that militant atheists, who get in the public's face about it, are anything but open-minded.

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@Setanta,

I agree with you there. Madelyn O'Hare acted very much like the system she was fighting.

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@edgarblythe,

Quote:

SAN ANTONIO -- A group of atheist students at the University of Texas at San Antonio is swapping pornography for religious texts other students trade in.

It would help the understanding of readers here if the type of "porn" distributed was made clear by some description.

It is probably reasonable to assume that it is puritan porn featuring idealised examples of American manhood and womanhood, shot in a pink light, engaging in a limited range of actions which would hardly raise an eyebrow at a vicarage tea-party. If such an assumption is correct, and science demands that Ed goes out to research the matter, then the Christian sensibilities are demonstrated to be strongly in play in the minds of the clever-clogs who thought up this very original ruse to get their minds off their studies and attract attention to themselves.

I don't suppose the porn goes as far as the Song of Songs in the Bible. If that were to be the case I would expect the ecclesiastical authorities to round them all up and have the controllers of the Posts prosecute them.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

the best reason for being an atheist, which is to think for one's self.

It is quite obvious from that specious remark that Setanta has no idea of how carefully crafted his mind has been. It is actually a quite extreme case of the care and attention given to the art that it embraces a belief that one can think for oneself in any scientific sense.

301 million Americans thinking for themselves is not a prospect I would be keen to attempt a description of.

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@spendius,

Quote:

301 million Americans thinking for themselves is not a prospect I would be keen to attempt a description of.

I really do appreciate you, spendius

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@Pemerson,

Within all the verbiage, sometimes is found a good turn of a phrase from ol' spendi

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@Pemerson,

You should know Pem that Setanta has me on Ignore and you quoting me like that will probably have caused him to read my remark.

It's a bit like writing dirty words on a blackboard in a children's classroom while the kiddies are out on playtime.

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@panzade,

Quote:

Within all the verbiage, sometimes is found a good turn of a phrase from ol' spendi

I'm very keen pan to avoid any wasted words. Would you be so kind as to take the trouble to point out to me where you think I have used any?

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There exists a man calling himself The Arrogant Atheist. He merchandises atheist directed products, such as tee shirts. He also organizes conventions. I took this off his facebook page:

The Arrogant Atheist
How awesome are atheist conventions? The answer is exceedingly awesome. Huge thanks to everyone who came, chatted, said nice things and bought stuff.
Also, seeing people show up to the convention in our clothes? Mind-blowing.
In addition to meeting a horde of delightful atheists (and a few grumpy bastard atheists), we got the chance to meet Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett! Check out some of the photos we took while we were there:

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@edgarblythe,

A balloon head or a plant.

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@ossobuco,

A google search reveals he is out there, making contacts and peddling merchandise.

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Compared to the bible thumpers who enrich themselves from people's gullibility, he's small potatoes . . . more power to him . . .

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@Setanta,

I have him for a friend on myspace.

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@edgarblythe,

When is he having an atheist's fair? A swap meet sort of thing with stalls and programmes and momentos. Something for the weekend Sir? A Meaninglessness Vortex ride for the kiddies. Free parking. No smoaking.

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Today, at my bookstore, I ran across Daniel Dennett's essay Thank Goodness! again. Four years ago, Dennett had a heart problem that nearly killed him. During his nine-hour surgery, he came as close to death as any human ever came without actually dying. This triggered an epiphany in Dennett, as near-death experiences often do. But it wasn't the deathbed conversion theists like to tell us tales about ....

Daniel Dennett wrote:

Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.

Read about the full epiphany here.

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@Thomas,

I cannot resist the temptation to quote two more passages from Dennett's essay. The first demonstrates the difficulty of speaking clearly without causing unnecessary offense. Dennett's compromise here is as good as it can get, restricting himself to necessary offense.

Daniel Dennett wrote:

What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. [...] But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?"

The second passage suggests yet another possibility of answering the the good-without-god question believers have asked in this thread.

Daniel Dennet wrote:

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness"by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.

Or you can thank God"but the very idea of repaying God is ludicrous. What could an omniscient, omnipotent Being (the Man Who has Everything?) do with any paltry repayments from you?

Once again, the full article lives here.

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@Thomas,

Mr Dennett is writing about a present world which has not arrived out of nowhere. It is a result of Christianity. Before Christianity, and even during a large part of its development, none of his expressions of goodness were possible. I'm not sure that the concept of goodness existed. And it is impossible to imagine atheism delivering them from those starting points.

A familiarity with the pre-Christian literature will quickly disabuse anyone of the facile notions he presents. In those worlds he was a dead man.

He sounds a lot like those society ladies whose moral superiority is feeding on the residues of their robber-baron great grandfather whose memory is preserved by an oil painting showing him looking gentlemanly.

And the jury is still out on whether science and medicine are the wonderful things for mankind he assumes them to be.

Even the preservation of recordings of the music of a previous era, especially that of the Beatles and Randy Newman, might not the an unalloyed blessing he asserts it to be.

Fair elections and truthful journalism must be a joke.

So I'm grateful to Thomas for pointing me in the opposite direction and saving me money and precious time. I consider reading emotionally driven stuff of that nature to be not dissimilar to being anaesthetised.

As for his "religious friends" I can only think they discuss superficialities when he is socialising with them.

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@spendius,

By the same argument, "goodness" in all its manifestations, could no doubt be re-traced via Paul to Ancient Greece should one have the incentive to do so. Insosfar as "atheism" is a reaction against "theism", it is simplistic to argue that it is a reaction against "goodness", whose roots preceded them both. The fact that "atheism" is a term adopted by some forms of institutionalized despotism is merely an aspect of the rejection of traditional "devine authority" from moral codes., only to be replaced by the dictated codes of some new demi-god. It is "theism" by another name.

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@fresco,

I read a great deal about these matters fresco and I think they are far, far too complex ( a gross understatement) to be dealt with in a few lines of prose. They do not lend themselves to be definitivly pronounced upon in soundbites.

And that might be the explanation of why my posts are full of bilge.

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