Something about integrity? Take a leap, Tinker. Take a flying leap.
Particularily, reguarding your view of atheism.
In all honesty, I've found that having a view of atheism whatsoever is fairly unique.
Firstly, I'd like to know what it when you mean "athiest objectivity". To me, the words are something of an oxymoron. Athiesm, a biased perception, placed in the same sentence as objectivity? Please explain, I'm not understanding this very well.
Atheism is generally supported by the assertion that no objective evidence of God exists. This demand for an objective resolution is the "atheist objectivity toward God".
I find it odd and ethically inconsistent that one should pull out a standard like that at random. It speaks to a slipshod perspective, one customized to be self-justifying. If objective demonstration is that important, it should be demanded of other concepts similarly vague, such as patriotism and nationalism, or perhaps love.
I would argue that you forgot to mention that it isn't just the wording of the phrase itself, it's the context that it's being placed in. Of course two different could take that phrase differently, but thats because they aren't always used in the same context.
That's a little nit-pickety.
To put it simply: while I like a woman that knows her way around a bed, I don't need her pretending to be a crack whore. This turns me off. This turns some people on. The same phrase in the same context will have a different value to me than it will to the next guy.
Of course, but Tiassa, how do we tell the differece? From what can you distinguish the the literal phrase and what we might derive from it, and some "hidden meaning" ??
Well, take the Inquisitors for example. One of the primary justifications for Christian inquisitory behavior through the centuries has been the "responsibility" of the faithful to show others the path to righteousness. Matthew 25 reads, for instance:
Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me." Then they will answer and say, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?" He will answer them, "Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me." And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (Matthew 25.41-46, NAB)
Now, if
thiis is all I'm reading, then sure I can use it to justify, oh, setting the unbelievers aflame in a desperate attempt to save their souls and my own.
There are only so many ways that the whole of the text can go together. If it is wrongly applied, the faults will stick out. You know how people will complain from time to time about the troubles of Christianity? Nobody makes the whole of the text go together; it's a nearly-impossible (if not utterly impossible) goal.
It's like saying, There is no spoon. Generally we are given to believe that it's a literal interpretation, but from what I gathered, you would argue that the statement could mean sometihng else entirely. My question is: HOW? How do you know the Virigin Birth was not meant to be taken literally, and rather as some metaphor in Freudian conscience?
Because, as even Christian apologists have been known to argue--taken literally, in its context, Mary was a virgin because she had not given birth before.
Sexual inexperience, such as the word implies today, doesn't work. I think of an Old Testament bit that I'm not up to finding right now in which a man who is unhappy with his wife may call on her father to produce the bridal sheets, which should be stained with the blood of their first mating. This test does not prove virginity as most today think of it. The first three times I had sex with my first girlfriend, she bled; and I was not the first person to have sex with her.
Literally, the virgin birth works. The Gnostics, for instance, found the early interpretations of sexual virginity as we know it today to be repugnant and even insulting to the necessities of God. How could the Logos become human except by human processes? (And the resolution of
that issue, for instance, can suddenly land us amid considerations of the legitimacy of the crucifixion.)
Haven't you ever accidentally scared the hell out of a person, not because they
heard you wrongly, but because they
interpreted what you said wrongly?
This is what I would call subjective theism
I define subjectively thiesm as the selective picking and choosing of core dogmatic beliefs, choosing those that suit you, and ignoring those that you disgaree with
The objection that I have to this is, I would submit Tiassa, is that it has no definable substence
If we're allowed to pick and choose the aspects of a religion, and define our own paradigm anyway, then why need the religion? Why not simply revise it into modern terms, while leaving behind the stuff we've already rejected? Isn't that what your doing anyway?
What
are you talking about?
• The criteria for Christian faith I included come from the very beginnings of Christianity, as indicated in my prior post in question.
• During the Inquisitions, murder was considered an act of compassion. Rape, torture, murder, holocaust: these were the manifestations of compassion. Kramer and Sprenger? Torquemada?
• And yes, it is somewhat subjective. It is also objectively determined, depending on how narrowly one would like to apply the terms.
• Think of this:
The principle that says it is ethically or morally wrong to have sexual relations with a child is subjective.
• In 1875 in Massachusetts, Lysander Spooner noted that, while the consumption of spirits was prohibited, the legal age of consent for a girl to give away her virtue was ten years of age, and, furthermore, that you could
buy her services with gifts and money.
What, by your argument, is the point of having ethics or morals? If we're allowed to pick and choose aspects of ethics and morals, and define our own paradigm anyway, then why need the ethical or moral standard?
It's reality. Each generation lends its priorities to
anything, be it religion, law, &c. During my lifetime, Senators of the United States of America could be heard to say that "Freedom of Speech is not without limits". If it upset a Christian, it shouldn't be said.
Now it's nearly a crime to suggest such a condition.
It's even become a literary principle:
Nothing ever begins. Read the first page of Clive Barker's
Weaveworld. I'll dig up the text again later.
But any self-identifying entity, be it an individual or a body politic and social, will interpret reality according to its own priorities. As such, why need reality? (Okay, that's damn near nihilistic, but the pattern runs deeply and broadly in people.)
Why not simply revise it into modern terms, while leaving behind the stuff we've already rejected?
This is happening every day. It's just not as apparent to people whose priorities incline them to look for more blatant identifications.
Isn't that what your doing anyway?
In my own life? Of course. It's my right and my duty.
With Christianity? No, I think I've pointed out both the fundamentals of faith and the process by which they become distorted, even if only in basic terms. Anything beyond that is a matter of interpretation.
There's a difference between deciding what someone's priorities are for them and listening to what they tell you and figuring it out that way.
The core dogmatic beliefs of Christianity are recorded in history.
I would argue that you did not, in fact, argue the flexibilty of religion, but rather the flexibilty of human ideas . And I would ask you: Exactly how has religion recounciled it's radical ideals with it's perpetual bias?
Well, radical ideas and perpetual bias go hand in hand. Should I try to salvage your question?
• The radical shifts take place within the tendency toward perpetuation of bias. The tendency toward bias is a natural result of the core dogmatic faith points. The radical shifts are the human variations. If the core dogmatic beliefs were not strong enough, a radical paradigm shift could break it. If the core dogmatic beliefs are too strong, a radical change in the human condition--e.g. new technology, natural cataclysm, &c.--can shatter the core.
Tell me Tiassa, how far along will we have to "translate" an idea, before it becomes something that no longer even resembles it's original foundation?
Quite a ways, by the look of it. Check out what people do with the ideas of "good" and "evil".
I would submit that such a process is not only unnessecary, but silly. If we can seperate the ideas from religion, without it being dependent from the religion it originated from, then why have religion at all?
Partially because religion is the height of subjectivity and speculation. If subjective ideas take a dive, humanity loses its ability to communicate creatively. Think of your favorite song. What happens when it becomes unethical to like that song because it isn't objectively the best? I can't imagine a life of such cold objectivity; trying to do so almost killed me once.
However, I've found that no human likes separating the idea from the religion, as such. Try it; when you start explaining human behavior as an objective result, people get pissed because it makes them sound like simpletons.
Listen to the news when there's a murder trial afoot. People will talk about the horrible crime, about this and that and how the bastard deserves to fry .... All of that is
nonsense, technically.
If we tried to remove religion without removing the rest of it, would it work? What is it that some people have so much against religion that they'll do away with it while maintaining equally silly and damaging assertions? It removes any sense of respectable logic from their choices and leaves their position resembling petulant spite.
If you would, please identify some of these ideas that we should separate from the religion, and we can start exploring how and why they are and work, and what they actually equal.
I think most people will be shocked when they take a hard look at their lives. I think very few people are aware of how much pretense and shite composes the tale of their passing. If they were, we wouldn't be having this discussion because the conditions we would be observing as basis for discussion would be severely different. Perhaps their core patterns would be similar, but their manifetations would be dramatically different.
Let me ask you something: If what people think of it is entirely different from it's founding dogma, Is it the same religion ?? and an even better follow-up, is it still a religion?.
Of course it's not the same religion. Nor will the next Dallas Cowboys team to win a Super Bowl be the same as the last. Is it still a team?
I don't understand the fundamental conservatism among those who oppose various religions. I live in the United States; is it still a country?
I'm sorry, future goal ??? Forgive me, but this sounds a little vague Tiassa. Also, why is the Sufi definition of God more valid than the Christianized-concept???
•
Future Goal: Once you figure out the riddle of God, then you can get cracking on the important things; something like that. As such, the attainment of the godly state is not an end point, but a starting point for a quest whose goal is not yet realized.
•
Validity: I think you're being presumptuous in your question. But I trust the Sufis more than I trust Chrstians because they are, by and far, less ridiculous than Christians. Sufism seeks to figure out the riddle of God so that one can move toward more important goals.
This definition is as about as helpful as saying " God is unie ". What's Unie? Unie is something you can't comprehend.
And what the hell is so hard to understand about that?
Also, this definition seems to remove it from the realm of discussion, as far as I can see. If God is something so vague, so ambigeous, then of course an athiest can't reject it: He has no coherent idea to reject!
Funny, it's never been the atheists you needed to worry about, as such. That's a fairly recent phenomenon.
YES! It is supposed to remove God from the realm of discussion.
And if it occurs to you to ask why, please be advised that Muslim mystics, at least, have known about the danger of letting stupid people talk about God since at least the ninth century, if not before. Buddhists have always been aware of this, Sufis are definitely aware of this, and the concept exists in Hinduism. Are the atheists really the last to figure it out? Oh, wait ... there's still the Christians.
Philos.
an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. Also called on'tolog'ical proof'.
That's why it's referred to as Anselm's Ontological Proof of God.
Now then, most of Anselm is shite. But from the stinking, rotting remains of the past we can, in fact, get diamonds. And if not diamonds, at least lots of petrol.
And the statement that God is that which is beyond our comprehension works because that's all there is to it.
God is happens to suffice for a good many people, to the point that I let its minor flaw pass: "God" as a word, given all that it encompasses in psychology, mythology, history, &c., also includes those things which are not. The concept of God exists; beyond that, it's all speculation.
I submit I point above: Of course you can't deny it, because God is an indefinable word.
That's the point of it. People do conceive of a condition which transcends their comprehension and definition. That idea becomes God.
I would strongly suggest you calm down before offering a reponse of that kind. I've read most of your hypocritical, condescending remarks, and I'm quite finished with them.
Obviously you're not, considering how much you're still prattling, so why don't you take words like "hypocritical" and shove them where you know they belong?
Secondly,
Tinker, I advise that you, yourself, calm down some and figure out just what kind of discussion you're irresponsibly inserting yourself into. Your tone has been unusually anxious throughout. What's up?
Raithere thought I was defensive. I just thought I was up on my soapbox.
Is there a problem with that?
If you want people to talk to you, don't talk to them like their fucking morons Tiassa.
Well,
Tinker, I've tried many, many ways of talking to people. Perhaps you should calm down and read some of
those posts,
Tinker. Call me out when I'm on this path if you will, but at least make some effort to disguise your blindness.
Not only does it make you look like a snide and pretentious, but you makes you look like a big hypocite, and that severely undermines your credibilty as a debater, in my eyes anyway. Not to mention that it kills my respect for you, if that matters to you.
My respect for you is decreasing daily. Perhaps sometime you should try debating issues with me, instead of just debating against me.
So tell me,
Tinker, who's snide and pretentious in, say, the American War on Terror? The hideous Muslims who are tired of dealing with a lying Western culture? Or the hideous Westerners who are tired of dealing with savage and evil Muslims?
The slings and arrows are unfortunate,
Tinker, but how snobby would I be if I spoke to you in a language you didn't understand? Every once in a while, you have to talk to children like children, adults like adults, people like people, and idiots like idiots. It's a living necessity that one should occasionally deal with people as they expect to be dealt with.
"Smarter" is another vague term, and one that I would like to avoid. "Smarter" could mean superior in some way, which I don't believe is true. Do athiests think they're "smarter" than religionists? Well, until you define "smarter" a little better, I can't say whether we are or we aren't. Now do we feel that we're "more reasonable" than thiests? I feel that I've reached my conclutions in a very reasonable way, and I haven't found the arguments thus far to be very "reasonable". But I could always be wrong, of course...
Thank you for that evidence that atheists are no smarter than theists.
I mean, you had a statistical truism on your side. Atheists score higher in aptitude tests, have higher educational experience, and also make more money than theists in the U.S.
Hello?! While I'm known for nitpicking my definitions, I'm not sure what's wrong with either that idea, or the statement that
atheism has higher intellectual potential than something that dogmatically limits its field of inquiry.
Hello?!
Anyone who thinks he's someone "superior" than another has better damn well be able to back that arrogant assumption up, or he's just another, as you so well put it, " a drop in the sea of idiocy ".
I'll see if I can shorten it into a bumper sticker for you. Would that be satisfactory?
And I agree, but it;s how we determine if it's an incorrect classification that is also, problamatic. Is theist A incorrectly classifying something, where as thiest B isn't? Or even better, is athiest A classifying something wrong, where as thiest A isn't???
I think you're being too specific, but that's debatable.
• A "black" man: This is a fine label, as far as I care. It describes a dark color of skin that is easier to say than a "cola-colored" man. In basic quantifications of people, it works. "What did the robber look like?" He was a black man ... okay, we've just eliminated a fair portion of the American population as suspects. That basic example makes sense, right?
• But people take it too far. "Black" in my lifetime has been held to represent all manner of things. Black describes a crime rate, a drug habit, a fashion sense, a political bloc ....
• Typically speaking, a person who is troubled by the presence of "black" people is more troubled by their own internal associations drawn between the presence of black skin and various attributes of significant priority to the beholder. Take the black crack-smoker as a stereotype: the majority of crackheads in the US are white.
Ahh, the classic " Your atheism is invalaid until you study all the religions of the world, and then, and only then can you rightfully say your an athiest. "
Well, if you were to make atheism a profession, yes.
In the meantime, though, think of this: your conception of what God is differs from the next guy. Therefore, when you say that "God doesn't exist," you're denying specifically your own idea of what God is.
Narrowing a discussion to relevant issues is one thing. But for an atheist, for instance, to assert what God is according to his or her own priorities designed to facilitate the knocking down of the archetype ... well? You might as well be selling snake oil.
1) If religion is an entirely human construct ( and given your rather vague definition of God, we could easily concede that point ), then, in theory, this proposition would demand that we chase around an infinite number of theories and ideas about what "God" is.
Doesn't demand it. To do so would be your choice. But there is generally a difference between the God that a Christian tells me about, the God that I interpret from Christianity, and the God that atheists identify against when arguing against Christianity. When I look at a person's actions and have cause to measure them against God (perhaps it was in the name of God that the person acted) I must consider first and foremost what I can understand about that person's idea of God. At such a point, it doesn't matter what you or I think about God, but rather what does that person we're watching think?
Nobody has to go chasing down Crazy P. Smith of Waxahampton, Idaho, just to find out what he thinks of God before speaking their mind. But I have to admit that I rarely recognize the deity any given atheist describes until I hear the name attributed to it, and furthermore that when I do recognize the deity, I often find the interpretation to be smaller than even the dumbest of Christian revivalists.
After all, some religions don't feel that god in some intangible notion, but something very matieral. Why are they wrong, your right? From what do you draw a base for a conclution?
There are some religions that are more right about things than I am. You'll notice I give them plenty of clearance.
If we look at people like Christians who I do believe are incorrect, it's partially because I've been a Christian. Nobody in sixteen years has put before me a Christian construct that didn't fall in on itself.
As to what I base it on?
• I grew up Christian, and am confirmed to the Lutheran Church
• I graduated from a Catholic high school
• I've studied religions and their ideas steadily for six or seven years now
• I take great comfort from knowing Harvard-educated theologians who don't generally argue with me on such points
• Everybody I know who has departed for other religions has come back to the same point
• The philosophers I know, at the various extremes of perspective, come to the same conclusions
• I'm looking at a fairly consistent paradigm if I define it broadly enough; at such a scale, though, the thing is incomprehensible due to any one human inherently lacking enough brain cells to process that much information at once.
• I know Christianity better than most Christians
• I know Satanism better than most Satanists
• I have applied atheism to its nihilistic end, subjecting it to the same extreme tests a religion is subject to; in other words, I have seen atheism fail to be of any use whatsoever, and I have seen atheism be a detriment
• How many religions do you study, Tinker? And to what degree? Ever read the 1000-page Answers to Objections responding to critics of the Seventh-Day Adventists? What's your take on the Apocalypse of Paul? What's your interpretation of the Story of the Impatient Man from among the Sufi Dervish tradition? What, to you is the significance of Abraham being rejected by a Sufi for impatience? Can you tell me why Chinua Achebe used a portion of Yeats' Second Coming for his novel Things Fall Apart? Do you laugh when you hear this obscure poem written wryly into a National Geographic Explorer episode on giant killer hornets? Would you even recognize the line?
I live daily amid human ideas; they are almost all that has value to me. Religious ideas are a mystery, not an insult, to me. Analogously, ever sit around and watch Dennis Miller, or Bill Maher, or other such comedians when they're on a roll? Ever been the only person in the room who gets the joke? Ever been the only person who knows a joke has been made?
That's every day. Maybe it sounds insulting to people, but I've been there, thought that, tried it out ...
But I've been a Christian, a Satanist, a Witch, an Atheist, and even a few custom-built religions along the way. I've studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, Islam proper, Judaism, and various tribal and shamanic systems in varying degrees.
What would you like me to base it on, Tinker? Why don't you tell me that?
Perhaps I should defecate and read the splatter like tea leaves?
I'm sorry, but until you can show logical evidence, rather than incomprehensbile definitions, I feel that your notion of God is just an assumption, and one I don't see any valid reason in holding it.
Reality is an assumption; do show me otherwise.
Stop looking for the worst in things. Try just looking at things as they are.
1) In what way was your horizons dimmed?
2) How did your knowledge and compassion "evaporate"?
3) And just what the fuck do you mean by "intregity?" ( Since you've taken the liberty of labeling me as a person without it )
(1) The atheistic presumption, necessitating the lack of belief in God at best, and a belief that there is no God, removed the functional credibility of other ways of thinking, so that I could not examine them objectively; their consideration came under the haze of prejudice.
(2) My knowledge of people and their ways is based in subjectivity; to each their own, from each accordingly. In the atheistic presumption is a demand for objective justification; neither my knowledge of people nor my compassion for them have necessarily objective roots. Furthermore, as a matter of integrity, I lost a good portion of the vocabulary I used in those situations. I have preserved human life before with that vocabulary and that compassion. And then I went and pissed it all away for a good run at objective nihilism. Oh, well.
(3) I find the tone of debate among our atheistic posters to be damn near religious. There's just flat-out something wrong there. The problem seems to be a lack of consistency, a lack of ideological cohesion, a lack of unbiased regard for the subjects at hand; in short, the problem seems to be a lack of integrity.
Fucking easy enough?
And I agree. But may I ask, from what is it that your implying here? That we're all capable of narrowing the topics that we debate? I'm just not sure if your trying to construct a critism for athiesm, or just making an observation based on everyone (including you) here.
I believe what I am implying is quite clear: (N)obody is willing to discuss the same topic. In other words, everyone has too narrow an idea of what is involved with the topic.
In case you hadn't noticed, Raithere and I have a few points of agreement and occasionally pause to discuss the side issues that prevent those points of agreement from being more valuable to either of us, as well as to our Sciforums neighbors.
1) You feel that athiesm is in the same mindset as "the religous folk". Might I ask how you derive that conclution?
Well, take a look at the debates. A snippet of scientific information is useless if it's treated like a religious assertion. Bad context, betrayal of objectivity, and a general failure of self-declared standards is fairly indicative. The condemning tone of my 10.27.2002 post ("This is disgraceful") pretty much explained it:
I think much of the topic's inquiry could be revised to recognize the facts of its own eleventh question. And the failure of our atheists to move the discussion to that vein speaks volumes about their frame of reference and their chosen priorities in the world.
This topic is six pages long and still people are running around like children thinking they've learned something important. Get off the stick, shake away the doldrums and realize that there's no reason to let the inquiry limit the response; one can write inquiries designed to avoid responses.
I mean, six pages of bickering and no atheist had yet called out the obvious point. The priorities seem quite religious: a matter of winning, losing, praise and condemnation rather than a quest for an answer. Like so many religious, I see in the atheistic response in this topic a certain lack of compassion: it the other person really that stupid? Then fucking help them, don't just stand there telling them how stupid they are.
That's the problem, Tinker: I have begged and groveled for a better intellectual standard, and it's just not coming. I even gave helpful suggestions in the "disgraceful" post. They didn't have much effect.
I had to laugh when I read this.
Then don't say I never did anything for you.
I'm not sure if your trying to insult me by telling me that my puny perception of reality is so frail to yours that I've yet to see the "truth" in the world (whatever that means), or if your trying to tell me that you feel that the discussions that go on here, or that you feel the discussions that go on here are so redundant that we're sqabbling at useless bits of information.
I would say both conditions are evident in a good many people here.
If the former, then maybe I should just add you to my ignore list, and let you keep comfy on your thundercloud, Zeus.
Goshy, Tinker, considering you're complaining about a post addressing Raithere's words that regard a post of mine which addresses a whole lot of people in the Sciforums community, aren't you being just a teensy bit self-centered here?
This isn't about you unless you choose by your actions to include yourself among those criticized. What, did you just need an excuse to argue with me?
If the latter, I would have to say, welcome to the Religion Forums
There's a certain amount of irony in that statement that I do appreciate. I won't say you never did anything for me.
where your always going to meet people of stagnant philosphies ( which I define as paradigms that leave no room for inquiry ).
You know, I'm pretty sure this is one of my stupid assumptions about people, but I thought that one of the benefits of atheism was that it was not supposed to stagnate and insured that there would be room for inquiry.
Silly me. I can't imagine what would ever have given me such an idea.
If this is the case, I'd suggest that you possible "dust off your sandals" and take it to another forums, cuz your always going to meet people of that sort, and thus, always have to deal with it.
And if that's the best you can come up with, Tinker, then there's no respect left for me lose in my regard for you.
I had thought you smarter than a twelve year-old seeing his first chance to mouth off righteously to his mother.
I guess that was another of my unfair, horrible assumptions. I shouldn't assume people are so smart.
When the hell did presuming you to be intelligent become an act of insult?
And anyone is welcome to field that.
Well, duhTiassa. You can't reject something that, by definition, HAS no definable descriptions! I might has well say I reject the H969876HIBHK
Well, don't you think a smart atheist, when dealing with God, would deal with one asserted instead of inventing one to deal with? It seeems so counterproductive to invent a God to knock down that it resembles a religious process.
I suppose I should point out Tiassa, that athiesm only pretains to God as is defined at this link.
One request? Next time, make your link go somewhere.
In the meantime, definition 1 from the website works for me: the supreme or ultimate reality.
But wow ... you're limiting your definitions of what God can be asserted to be.
Quite religious, that.
If the word "God" is transformed into an entirely different definition, then I'm not really an athiest then, am I?
Well, is that somehow problematic?
By your definition of God, I'm not an athiest.
Sounds like your own problem to deal with.
And I suppose nobody is a theist, then, since they can't believe in something that can't be comprehended. If you can't comprehend it, how can you believe in it Tiassa???)
I'm quite surprised it hasn't occurred to people that this is at least part of the point.
If your implying that this is what athiesm intails, then I would accuse you of misrepresenting athiesm, because this is NOT what it represents. Atheism is breaking away from traditional ideas of God, thats it. Anything we do further than that is not athiesm, but, I would argue, philosophy.
Okay, I'm going to go outside and smoke a cigarette. When I get back, I will read through this again and hope to figure out how you got from A to B.
. . . . Okay, it doesn't make any better sense the second time through, so I shall do my best:
• What atheism entails: What atheists seem to fail to consider is that in their ever-simple principle is contained a rejection of the things attached to it. For a religious person, the removal of God from the equation requires a full reconsideration of morality and ethics. What replaces the justification offered by the presence of God is an inherent consideration to the religious person facing the possibility of a world without God. The failure of so many atheists to realize this throughout my life has been a leading source of my frustration with atheism. If atheism is such a small concept, why do so many atheists have so much to say about it?
Also, I think your speaking for yourself in this matter. I for one feel that the world is moving FORWARD: New medicines, new technology, it's all moving forward as far as I can see.
What is the measure of progress? Technology can destroy us. Remember when we first came across each other? There were several theist/atheist arguments going on? Among those was one in which the "purpose" of life was debated.
The question thus becomes: If the world is moving forward, what is it moving forward toward?
Is it moving toward economy and baubles? What does that get us?
Steven Brust once wrote of a fictitious mafioso character called "Demon". Now, the Demon was a bigwig in the crime organization. The thing is that in the plot, the organization had suffered a huge setback; Brust's characters observe that the Demon did not so much make it to the top in the aftermath as he did make it somewhere and call that place the top.
Easy enough to grasp?
I once asked my mother if she was happy. She said yes. I asked her if she was truly happy, or if she merely called what she had happiness. She couldn't answer. Coincidentally, my father moved out shortly after. Neither one of them, I know, were happy.
Thus at the height of its financial, technological, and social power, my family like so many others, collapsed under the weight of its unhappiness. We are not unique, though.
Progress? What are we moving toward? Is it really good or is it something we call good? Even if humanity evolves out of the living scheme, it still evolves.
1) How do you know that an up and comming Mozart doesn't exist? He/she could be out there right now, and we wouldn't know it.
That Mozart may well exist at present. As Francis Ford Coppola said in his iMac commercial spot: "I'd like to buy three million of these, and give them to three million young people. Maybe we'll get another Mozart."
In the meantime, where is that Mozart? Working for six dollars an hour to go to college? Hoping to get a job with an insurance company afterward so he can eat? There was a time, unfortunately during the Middle Ages, when an artist's primary job was to create art.
2) If your suggesting that today's time period is entirely too stagnant, I would argue that it's a HELL of a lot more progressive than eariler time periods. Theres a crap load more you can do in this day-in-age than you could 600 years ago.
If I find that response shortsighted, it's only because that increase in things to do is merely an increase in the diversity of the same old. I belong to that GenX wave that is allegedly so resentful because we're worse off than our parents. That doesn't bother me in and of itself; that I'm expected to be happy about it is bothersome. With all our new technology, people are still caught up in the hand-to-mouth routine. For all our progress, the poor are getting worse off. For all our civility, our world is becoming more and more dangerous.
I wonder if you would be offended by this, but your statement is one of the corner-stones of Secular Humanism
Doesn't bother me at all. Unlike some people, I'm happy to take what I can get from any given paradigm.
And since when does the athiest "settle for something lesser".
Condition of the times. "People" are settling for less. Atheists are people, too.
Jesus, I would think that by rejecting stagnant methodoligies, we're taking a step forward.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul does not make you richer.
And if you serious think that the above routine is all the athiests feel....well, shit Tiassa, no wonder you have such a bad view of athiesm: Your either misunderstanding it, or misrepresenting it.
Go back and read my posts in this topic again. Your comprehension is intolerably poor.
• And when we start taking more time for the issues and items more important to us as human beings (as opposed to being important to us as persons, as opposed again to being important to us as people ... Yep . . . I'm an atheist.
• We raised temples to gods, we paid homage to our food, to our lusts . . . do you realize how much of the present generation pays tribute to labor and wealth and greed? Really, I'll take rainbows and muses over that, any day. Do you live to work or work to live? All sorts of simple sloganism works here. Definitely an atheist, aren't I?
• I just don't like the feeling that we're settling for something lesser, y'know? Yep . . . us atheists are settling for something lesser.
Methinks you are too presumptuous, Tinker. Do I ever get to write about human beings in general? Or do I always have to be addressing atheism exclusively?
I, for one, wake up every morning wondering what new, different thing life will present me. I don't ever want to settle for something less.
I know so many people who say that. I hope it's true for you.
And who knows.....maybe 100 some years from now, we'll look back at some of the things in this time, and look at with the same fascination that we do the great classics.... I don't know.
Perhaps. But if this becomes the foundation for "classic" philosophy, the human species is in serious trouble.
I find this to be a very ironic statement come from you Tiassa. Why do I find it ironic? Because your doing the exact thing that your condemning here!
You remind me of a kid I used to know in school. Once upon a time he was the class bully. Then one day someone got in a fight with him. Why did he get in a fight with the bully? Because he wasn't going to put up with it anymore. When the parents and the school officials and everyone gathered to discuss the problem, the kid who dropped the bully wondered what all the hubbub was about. This was the way things had been, this was the way endorsed and defended by the bully's parents: why now was the kid who was defending himself against the bully being accused of attacking someone?
The simple fact, Tinker, is that my patience is not infinite; I am not God, am not Jesus frickin' Christ. I have no codified word of God to force me to put up with the petty bullshit of undereducated propagandists whose only reason for participation is that they think they deserve to be able to treat someone as poorly as they would like.
I've seen a wonderful website run to shite by a bunch of petty twits. That's a disappointment on one level. I've put up with allegedly intelligent people defending that pettiness. Sorry, Tinker, but I've been patient. For three years, how about you?
Here you are, spouting some supposed philosophical mile-stone, when in infact, I would argue that your acting exactly in the same brand of "idioicy" that you would so vitriolically criticize in your peers. Your trying to sound intellegent, but I find your definition of God to be very, very lacking.
Well, that's to be expected. When you don't understand what you're looking at, I can't expect you to have a particularly accurate impression of what it is.
I mean, forgive me Tiassa, but is this what I've had to stomach all this time? Is this why I've had to put up with you constant postings on the "idiocy" of the other posters here? Is this why I've had to deal with all of the condenscending crap that I've had to flitter out of your posts? So that you could present this great idea ???
Tinker, get over yourself. Don't take things so personally. Can you imagine politics if people behaved the way you are? Oh, wait ... we don't have to imagine. We can just look. Who gives a rat's ass what poor little you has had to stomach? I mean, really? Who gives a rat's ass what I've had to stomach? Does anyone give a rat's ass what anyone has to stomach?
Or did it ever occur to you that if I get my way there's less shite to stomach? Perhaps if you weren't so full of it yourself, you would have thought of that.
I seriously hope your joking, or that I'm just completely mis-understanding what you've said.
The only joke here is the one you're playing on yourself.
Please please PLEASE correct me, I don't want this to be some bad joke on Tinker... I really don't...
I still don't know what this has to do with you directly.
The conversation's not exclusive. You're welcome to join in. Please have a reason, though, in the future. As it is, you remind me of someone very close to me. She happens to be the mother of my child. Unfortunately, I haven't a tremendous amount of respect for her. Like you, she decides what the content of any conversation she encounters is, and just starts babbling. It's kind of chilling. And, yes ... she was that way before she was pregnant.
thanx,
Tiassa 
