1. Sam Harris at AAI 07

Comment #82178 by menoone on October 25, 2007 at 7:44 pm

I have to agree with alot of this as well. On one level I dont like the idea of running from a word because its been tarred and feathered. For one thing, it seems like a concession to people I would rather not concede anything too. For another, there is no word we could use that right wing reactionaries couldnt tar, feather and smear once they set themselves to the task.

However, a-theism being only a negation of theism is inherently unsatisfying. Not only do you get pasted with all the usual nonsense strawmen like Mao and Stalin, but it doesnt say what we are positively for or about.

My big A is for Agnostic, but that has issues too. Hmmmm...more thought required on this.

2. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81444 by menoone on October 24, 2007 at 6:19 pm

Not a single person in the whole of human history has ever been killed because of theism or atheism.

Theism is a single proposition on the existence of a divine being, and a-theism is the non-acceptence of that proposition. Nothing more. Neither one are are even capable of being the basis of murder or torture or tyranny or repression. For that, you need religion or some other ideology.

Relgion is a great deal more than theism. The latter is a single proposition shared by Wahabbi muslims, Episcopalians and the Amish. But what separates them is the former, as it includes an entire system of beliefs, rituals and practices.
It is one thing to believe that there is a god, but it is quite another to say that you know the mind of this being; that you know what it wants and expects, and, what awaits those who fail live up to its wants and expectations.

Nothing about being a Theist necessarily involves any one particular set of religous beliefs or practices. That Amish dress as they do, does not follow necessarily from being theists. No one could be persuaded by the notion that "since I believe that there is a god, I must therefore wear only the style of clothes worn by 17th Century Europeans". Yes, they are theists, but a very good deal more than theism is required for one to assume that God prefers his followers in straw hats and bonnets.

With a-theism or non-theism one has even less to work from. Being only a negation, it gives even less of a lead to its proponents. There is no such thing as an "atheist ideology" or an "atheist regime". Atheism does not even necessarily imply anti-theism, anti-religion or being anti-clerical. It is a personal statement about ones own npon-acceptence of theism.

Any regime that is anti-clerical or anti-religous is not so simply because its leaders are atheist. It does not follow that "Because I do not believe in God, I must therefore suppress and crush all relgious denominations". A very great deal more than simple non-theism is required for this strange and brutal notion to seem desirable.

Maoism and Stalinism (and it is these names that ought to be forever branded with the gigantic crimes committed, and not "atheism")were not ideologies of mere non-theism. Even if they were, no one would have died for that reason.

3. If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold

Comment #81396 by menoone on October 24, 2007 at 4:56 pm

It's precisely because I do not see life as depressing, meaningless and cold that I do not accept the supernatural. I freely admit that I might if I did, but thats only a matter of consolation.

Meaning is something that we as a species create for ourselves. To someone else an old crumpled napkin in a shoebox is an old napkin in a shoebox. But for the owner this little grubby restaurant napkin is a precious artifact of the night they proposed marriage to the love of their life decades before.

Is a ring only a piece of metal? Is the diamond just a pebble? Are objects only there shape and weight and chemical composition or can they be a very great deal more?

We make meaning for ourselves and always have. We all do it and we all do it all of the time. Nothing about empricism or inductive reasoning takes away the deep infusions of meaning that we make, nor the power of art, music, literature or even little personal artifacts to express them.

4. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #81386 by menoone on October 24, 2007 at 4:38 pm

If something cannot come from nothing, then it cannot come from nothing even if God waves his magic wand to do so.But then why is there a god and not no god? If god exists then she he or it is a "something" and thus very much a part of the very same question of the ultimate origin of existence.

If they say that god is eternally uncreated then why can't any of the other somethings be eternally uncreated?

All of this of course leaves aside the question of how this god could have created a universe or life in any case. What did this being do exactly? This is especially perplexing given the tendency of the theist to define god as "immaterial" rather than material; a being of "spirit" rather than of matter and energy. How an immaterial being could even interact with a material universe, to say nothing of creating one from complete nothingness, is entirely incomprehensible to me.

I dont know why there is something rather than nothing, and neither do theists. When asked any of the questions posed above, "I dont know" is also a popular answer among theists. They would have done better to have admitted that at the ourset, and not bent their brains in knots only to fall back in a heap at the same spot.

5. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81033 by menoone on October 23, 2007 at 11:36 pm

They never count the sum total of all human lives taken at the hands of Christians from the 4th Century to the 21st. The World Wars, the Sever Years War, the Thirty Years War or the Hundred Years War or any of dozens and dozes more, to say nothing of the global conquests of the European christian empires.

If you are going to say that anyone who died at the hands of atheists should count against atheism, as if atheism was the cause of their deaths rather than Maoism or Stlainism or Marxism-Leninism, then any death at the hands of a theist should be tallied as well.

The logical conclusion is that theism and a-theism are nothing more than stances on a single proposition, and are not responsible for any deaths. But religions and certain secular political ideologies certainly have killed a very great many.