491 replies to this topic

[Anoushik]

American Atheism

"Whether or not the Bible is pornographic literature is only a side issue. Let us see what the Idealist camp features. The church teaches a contempt for earthly life and that to reach some imagined "heaven" is the main goal of life.

And, significantly, the church teaches that this goal can be achieved only as the reward for obedience and meekness. The church threatens the wrath of God and the torment of hell for those who dare to oppose its teaching. But Materialism liberates us, teaches us not to hope for happiness beyond the grave but to prize life on earth and strive always to improve it. Materialism restores to man his dignity and his intellectual integrity. Man is not a worm condemned to crawl in the dust, but a human being capable of mastering the forces of nature and making them serve him. Materialism compels faith in the human intellect, in the power of knowledge in man's ability to fathom all the secrets of nature and to create a social system based upon reason and justice. Materialism's faith is in man and his ability to transform the world by his own efforts. It is a philosophy in every essence optimistic, life-asserting, and radiant. It considers the struggle for progress as a moral obligation, and impossible without noble ideals that inspire men to struggle, to perform bold, creative work."

[Nakharar]

That's a brilliant description of materialism and I couldn't agree more. Though there is a catch. You don't need a metaphysic entity to have a belief system. There are always secular alternatives to religion, but for some reason people don't want to recognize it as such. The only way for Materialism to be viable is that it shouldn't degenerate into postmodernism that would take away its existential reason or the opposite a narrow and dogmatic positivism.

[THOTH]

Nice Anoushik - I like it..and thanks for the link...

[axel]

"This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

(...)

One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorship; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. (This is typical of the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century and of Marxism). Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

(...)

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness. To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. "


excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address

[Sasun]

Anoushik, are you sure that there is nothing else than the material world?

[THOTH]

So not all men are good or nice...what else is new...and if you think that a finger can be pointed just at Atheists (and I don't include communists in this really - as they have their religion - Communisim - and it is not at allthe same as Materialism - even if it has its roots there) - well you have another thing comming - as the greatest atrocities in the histly of man have been commited by those in the name of religion. Even Hitler claimed himself a devout believer and tied his (ugly) beliefs to religon.

To say that one requred God for a moral foundation is just false - period. As man has created God and all gods - so obviously we are fully capable of creating morality - whatever we tie it to...

[DominO]

American Atheism

"Whether or not the Bible is pornographic literature is only a side issue. Let us see what the Idealist camp features. The church teaches a contempt for earthly life and that to reach some imagined "heaven" is the main goal of life.

And, significantly, the church teaches that this goal can be achieved only as the reward for obedience and meekness. The church threatens the wrath of God and the torment of hell for those who dare to oppose its teaching. But Materialism liberates us, teaches us not to hope for happiness beyond the grave but to prize life on earth and strive always to improve it. Materialism restores to man his dignity and his intellectual integrity. Man is not a worm condemned to crawl in the dust, but a human being capable of mastering the forces of nature and making them serve him. Materialism compels faith in the human intellect, in the power of knowledge in man's ability to fathom all the secrets of nature and to create a social system based upon reason and justice. Materialism's faith is in man and his ability to transform the world by his own efforts. It is a philosophy in every essence optimistic, life-asserting, and radiant. It considers the struggle for progress as a moral obligation, and impossible without noble ideals that inspire men to struggle, to perform bold, creative work."

This is wishful thinking that atheists try to make people believe. What is pictured in this text is not a general view of what materialism is, but rather what humanism is, which does not include every type of materialism. Materialism is often associated with reductionism, and the vision that men is condemned in the reductionist way.

In somme this definition of atheism and materialism is highly innacurate and ABSOLUTLY false, what you read here is what humanists are. Humanists can be materialists(are the majority of times), but atheist materialists are not always humanists, they can be nihilists etc...

Edited by Fadix, 08 January 2004 - 02:34 PM.

[DominO]

So not all men are good or nice...what else is new...and if you think that a finger can be pointed just at Atheists (and I don't include communists in this really - as they have their religion - Communisim - and it is not at allthe same as Materialism - even if it has its roots there) - well you have another thing comming - as the greatest atrocities in the histly of man have been commited by those in the name of religion. Even Hitler claimed himself a devout believer and tied his (ugly) beliefs to religon.

To say that one requred God for a moral foundation is just false - period. As man has created God and all gods - so obviously we are fully capable of creating morality - whatever we tie it to...

This is untrue, atheism in this sense is not different then a religion, because it profess a belief as well.

Only Fadixism don't profess belief.

[DominO]

so obviously we are fully capable of creating morality - whatever we tie it to...

We do not creat morality, morality is a consequences of our evolution and is not a creation.

[THOTH]

This is untrue, atheism in this sense is not different then a religion, because it profess a belief as well.

Only Fadixism don't profess belief.

Thats BS. How can one say that Athesim is a religion - it has no rituals, no common elements, no heirchy or structure, no spiritual element, no authority figures, no common explanation for how and what are the things around us...etc etc. Its not like any two Atheists can or will agreee on any of this - so how can it be a religion?

Please consider:

http://www.darc.org/.../religion1.html

Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses.

etc (the wholepresentation is quite good)

Atheism is only a rejection of what other people claim in terms of religion and the devine - and the assertion that in fact there is no proof or reason to beleive whatsoever in such...after that its all open - there are no doctrines or prescribed beliefs - so no - Atheism is in no way a religion of any sort.

Additionaly - many Anthropologists conclude that religion must have a supernatural element (like Fadiism): Such as i found in this definition -

Religion is "a behaviour, process or structure whose orientation is at least partially supernatural."

And speaking of Mencken - in another thread here on Hye (a true American genius if there ever was one!)

from the second page of H.L. Mencken,
_Treatise on the Gods_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, revised 1946):

Nevertheless, it [religion] is quite simple at bottom. There is nothing really secret or complex about it, no matter what its professors may allege to the contrary. Whether it happens to show itself in the artless mumbo-jumbo of a Winnebago Indian or in the elaborately refined and metaphysical rites of a a Christian archbishop, its single function is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny, and its single purpose is to induce those powers to be friendly to him. That function and that purpose are common to all relgioins, ancient or modern, savage or civilized, and they are the only common characters that all of them show. Nothing else is essential. Religion may repudiate every sort of moral aim or idea, and still be authentically religion. It may confine itself to the welfare of the votary in this world, rejecting immortality and even the concept of the soul, and yet hold its character and its name. It may reduce its practices to hollow formulae, without immediate logical content. It may imagine its gods as beings of unknown and unknowable nature and faculties, or it may imagine them as creatures but slightly different from men. It may identify them with animals, natural forces, or innanimate objects, on the earth or in the vague skies. It may credit them with virtues which, in man, would be inconceivable, or lay to them vices and weaknesses which, in man, would be unendurable. It may think of them as numerous or solitary, as mortal or immortal. It may elect them and depose them, choose between them, rotate them in office, arrange them in hierarchies, punish them, kill them. But so long as it believes them to be able at their will to condition the fate of man, whether on this earth or elsewhere, and so long as it professes to be capable of influencing that will to his benefit, that long it is religion, and as truly deserving of the name as the most highly wrought theological system ever heard of.

Mencken also noted (in the end of the introduction to the revised
edition (1946)(some sentences omitted)):

It would be folly to underestimate the power of religion upon the unhappy Simidiiae known as man, even today. That its grip is lessening I show by plain evidence, but this lessening is to be seen only in relatively small minorities, admittedly damned. The great masses of people still follow theologicans as they follow politicians, and seem doomed to be bamboozled and squeezed by both for many long ages to come. Having been born without any capacity for moral indignation, I can only record this fact in a scientific spirit, letting others, if they choose, deplore it--or rejoice in it. Religion itself is commonly thought of as a moral engine, but I am convinced that that aspect of it is largely fortuitous. (I have dealt with the subject of ethics at some length in a companion volume called "Treatise on the Gods".) Men do not derive their ethical ideas from the powers and principalities of the air; they simply credit those powers with whatever laws they evolve out of their own wisdom or lack of it. Religion, in its essence, is thus not a scheme of conduct, but a theory of causes. What brought it into the world in the remote days I try to conjure up by hypotheses in Section I were man's eternal wonder and his eternal hope. It represents one of his boldest efforts to penetrate the unknowable, to put down the intolerable, to refashion the universe nearer to his heart's desire. My belief is that it is a poor device to that end--that when it is examined objectively it testifies to his lack of sense quite as much as to his high striving. But that belief is just a belief. The immense interest and importance of the thing itself remains.

[THOTH]

We do not creat morality, morality is a consequences of our evolution and is not a creation.

OK - I can agree with you on this one. Perhaps I should have more refrred to codifying such....

[Stormig]

Even Hitler claimed himself a devout believer and tied his (ugly) beliefs to religon.

Yes, he was a devout Roman Catholic - and that he professed such is not all, for the Ustase had the blessing of Catholic clergy in their slaughter of Serbs during WWII...

[DominO]

Thoth, atheism is a belief, the belief of the non-existance of a God... there are atheists that belief of supernatural stuff etc... atheism just like any religion is a structured belief that could imply spiritualism. There is philosophy behind atheism, there is many types of atheisms, some existentialists could consider themselves as atheists, nihilists could as well, Buddhists as well, many Buddhists are atheists, still have a very spiritual life.

As of what has become atheism is very similair to religion, they now under the desgise of so-called skepticism publish magazines, journals and run web-sites(James Randhi is a Gourou of the atheists, just like a Gourou of a sect).

There is as well, Panteists that could consider themselves as atheists while they believe that nature is spiritual.

If we were to apply the used definition to say what is a religion, we will end up that present materialism could be considered as a form of religion, with Gourous and even supernatural beliefs, the difference is that while they believe in supernatural they refuse to name it supernatural... and I can give you a lot of examples here, personal experiance where people that claim to be atheists ended up being more supernatural than religious people I know.

Edited by Fadix, 08 January 2004 - 12:48 PM.

[DominO]

Yes, he was a devout Roman Catholic - and that he professed such is not all, for the Ustase had the blessing of Catholic clergy in their slaughter of Serbs during WWII...

Hitlers megalomany had nothing to do with Christianism but rather Germanic myths and beliefs... he was in a sect... i may post about this, or if i can find sites, it would be easier.

[Sasun]

Yes, he was a devout Roman Catholic - and that he professed such is not all, for the Ustase had the blessing of Catholic clergy in their slaughter of Serbs during WWII...

Someone could claim to be a devout follower of Christ and go on and slaughter people, so does it mean Jesus Christ teaches murder? I find the Hitler excuse of religion bashing most unjustified. Catholicism is against murder, period. Hitler, this and that, are irrelevant.

[THOTH]

I think that it is a big exercise in semantics that gets us no where. It is clear to me that Atheisim in not a religion adn does not specify any specific beliefs. It is a rejection of some imposed upon soltuion - the idea of a creative mind - that we might at all comprhend and be beholden too - etc etc. If it is a belief - it is only the belief that others have it wrong. It is certainly not a religion.

[DominO]

"It is clear to me" and you end up with "It is certainly not."

If it were to be certain, no one could have the view that atheism is a religion, unless he's a dumb.

ozoneasylum.com/Forum17/HTML/000532.html

I know we should not post other forums, but I think this one doesn't make any harm posting it.

Read and tell me if it is so "certain" as you seem to view it. And that comming from someone that doesn't believe that something could be "certain."

Edited by Fadix, 08 January 2004 - 01:39 PM.

[THOTH]

Domino - very nice arguments by these guys - quite enjoyable - but no one has proven to me that Atheism is a religion. They never really define what is a religon - they just say that it is so 9or that they believe it to be so)..and i, well, reject this...so is the rejection of Atheism a religon? Which religion is it?

[Stormig]

Sasun, I'm not sure that the Vatican isn't being and hasn't been a political entity itself. If not the Vatican, whom to trust with Roman Catholicism? It was the Holy See that operated the "rat line" for the expatriation of Nazis and the Ustashe, and the cardinal Stepinac the Vatican beatified recently for "standing up for Jews" was actually a person the Serbs knew for his being a chaplain to the regime that annihilated hundreds of thousands of Serbs. The "rat line" that the Ustase escaped with, the Vatican argues, was "only" run by a Croatian priest in it - right, it's run right through a seminary in the Vatican, and the Vatican is not to blame. In the case of Nazis, it's even worse, because the Vatican can't wriggle out of it with "it was a German priest right out of one of our seminaries"... And what about the Inquisition? If you really want to tell me that Christianity has nothing to do with these, then please do not defend Catholicism and the Vatican, OK? I however have to look to the Vatican for Christianity and I have no choice other than to look not at what Christianity was meant to be but what it has become, much in the same way as I do for Islam - none of the "it was originally a religion of peace" is going to take away the fact that Islam is what it is today, save for a bunch of well-intentioned but questionable characters.

BTW, the way I look at it is - atheism is lack of belief - period.

[DominO]

Domino - very nice arguments by these guys - quite enjoyable - but no one has proven to me that Atheism is a religion. They never really define what is a religon - they just say that it is so 9or that they believe it to be so)..and i, well, reject this...so is the rejection of Atheism a religon? Which religion is it?

Thoth, have you read the same thing as me? They have provided dictionary definitions and showed that when applied to atheism it could be considered as a religion.

As for "proven" you can not prove what something is, when it is a definition of a word, you can bring evidences that could convince you, but not prove. If proving would be possible, the topic will not be open to discussion.