I think the notion of being responsible is very questionable. In a world in which atheism is true, what is the atheist thinker responsible to do? Responsible to provide for self and probably avoid breaking the law. But what is the responsibility atheists have? Noam Chomsky talks about the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and challenge power, how can intellectuals carry this out if they are atheists? It is like they feel they have this responsibility to challenge power, but they have no established authority of exactly how to do that. I think it is different for each intellectual. They all have their own ethics and epistemology, and each sort of does whatever they want, obeying the law when it agrees with their ethics, starting revolutions when their beliefs tell them violence is justified.

(March 14, 2013 at 10:05 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I think the notion of being responsible is very questionable.

Wow...you're off to a great start...

(March 14, 2013 at 10:05 pm)jstrodel Wrote: In a world in which atheism is true, what is the atheist thinker responsible to do? Responsible to provide for self and probably avoid breaking the law. But what is the responsibility atheists have?

You say "atheist thinker". Do you mean to say what responsibilities pertain to the thinker aspect? If you simpy mean what responsibilities in general, you needn't quantify "thinker".

(March 14, 2013 at 10:05 pm)jstrodel Wrote: Noam Chomsky talks about the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and challenge power, how can intellectuals carry this out if they are atheists?

????????
Non-sequiter. Or are you saying they can't speak the truth because you pressupose theism to be correct? And why not challenge power? I thought it was the theists* who were suposed to be obedient always. (May or may not apply to non-Abrahamic religions)

(March 14, 2013 at 10:05 pm)jstrodel Wrote: It is like they feel they have this responsibility to challenge power, but they have no established authority of exactly how to do that.

What do you mean by this? Do you suppose that the church is the "established authority" by which theists can challenge power? Does it matter if this power is legitimate? Ironically, I would think that the church was itself a form of power to be challenged.

(March 14, 2013 at 10:05 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I think it is different for each intellectual. They all have their own ethics and epistemology, and each sort of does whatever they want, obeying the law when it agrees with their ethics, starting revolutions when their beliefs tell them violence is justified.

Hey...that's actually the closest to correct you've come. The only thing I think you may have been mistaken about (unless I draw the wrong conclusion about an assumption you may or may not have made, just that you have assumed this in every post up until now)is "sort of does whatever they want" does not mean hedonism and immorality.

There is a quote out there somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me. It goes something like this:

People say that in a world with no god you could kill all the people you want. But I already kill all the people I want. None, because I don't want to kill people.

An atheist with morals is not the abberation you make it out to be. People can be responsible without specific rules being laid out for them. Those are only required for those incapable of being responsible without them.

(March 14, 2013 at 10:22 pm)Darkstar Wrote: There is a quote out there somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me. It goes something like this:

People say that in a world with no god you could kill all the people you want. But I already kill all the people I want. None, because I don't want to kill people.

I believe that's Penn Jillette, and there's a thread referencing those comments here someplace. (But don't quote me on that.)

(March 15, 2013 at 12:03 am)apophenia Wrote: I believe that's Penn Jillette, and there's a thread referencing those comments here someplace. (But don't quote me on that.)

The liberal hegemony in the U.S. and its causes cannot be separated from the effects of the so-called , which, to the best of my knowledge, was not a Marxist plot. (Nam might have played an imperceptible role as well.)

Second, in tracing the roots of the secularization of public school education one can hardly ignore the important role played by the sectarian conflict between Protestants (who controlled the content of religious instruction in public schools) and Irish Catholic immigrants (who were being discriminated against) in the 19th century. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" tells it fairly well, though not completely. If nothing else, it demonstrates that desire for religious neutrality in the public schools was not solely, or even primarily, a liberal, atheist plot.

Quote:The unsuccessful attempt of Father Richard of Detroit in 1808 to obtain for the Catholic schools of that city a share of the public funds, was followed in 1830 by a more successful plan at Lowell, Mass. At that time the population of Lowell included many Irish Catholic immigrants. In 1830 at the annual town meeting a committee was appointed to consider the expediency of "establishing a separate school for the benefit of the Irish population", and the following year the sum of fifty dollars annually was appropriate for that purpose. In 1855 there were two Catholic schools at Lowell; both were recognized as part of the school system of the town, and both were supported out of the public funds. After sixteen years of successful trial the arrangement was discontinued in 1852, owing to the wave of bigotry known as the Knownothing Movement that swept over New England. In New York, as early as 1806, St. Peter's School applied for and received State aid. A similar arrangement was made for St. Patrick's School in 1816. In 1824 this support was withdrawn by the State, owing to the activity of the Public School Society. To this society was committed the entire school fund for distribution, and, as we learn from the protests of New York Catholics, the activity of the society was directed towards making the public schools not strictly non-sectarian but offensively Protestant. In 1840 the School Controversy in New York was precipitated by the petition of the Catholics to be allowed a share of the public funds for their schools. The petition was rejected by the Common Council; but the fight was not, on that account, discontinued. With remarkable zeal, eloquence, and erudition, Bishop Hughes, supported not only by all his Catholic people, but also by some of the non-Catholic congregations of the city, urged the claims of religious education. He laid stress on the contention that Catholics have a right to "a fair and just proportion of the funds appropriated for the common schools, provided the Catholics will do with it the same thing that is done in the common schools". He claimed no special privilege, but contended for the "constitutional rights" of his people. He was opposed, not only by the Public School Society, but also by representatives of the Methodist, Episcopal, and Presbyterian Churches. The claims of the Catholics went before the legislature; but there also sectarian hatred was injected into the discussion and bigotry gained the day. The controversy, however, had one good result. It showed the imminent danger to faith and morals existing in the public school system as influenced by the so-called non-sectarians of that day, and as a consequence Catholics set to work to build up, at a tremendous cost, a system of parochial schools unsupported by the State.

—

If I recall correctly, Bishop Hughes was nearly lynched in rioting over the controversy.

Darkstar I will respond to your criticisms with this. I think you missed the point of what I am saying. I am not arguing that all atheists commit some specific act of lowest common denominator morality, such as murder, I am arguing that atheist political philosophy is self defeating.


4. The ground of atheism varies person to person with no common non-coincidental agreement
5. If the ground of ethics varies person to person with no common non-coincidental agreement, ethical statements are incommensurable
6. Ethical statements are incommensurable for atheists (MP 6,7)
7. If ethical statements are incommensurable, they cannot have a ground higher than them-self
8. Ethical statements between atheists cannot have a higher ground than them-self (MP 6,7)
9. There must be a ground for the will to rule and ethical statements between atheists cannot have a higher ground then themselves
10. If ethical statements are incommensurable, there is no way to know whether they are true or not
11. There is no way to know whether atheist ethical statements are true or not (MP 5 entails 10a, 10)
12. If there is no way to know whether a statement is true or not and the statement cannot have a higher ground than itself, it lacks authority
13. Atheist ethical statements lack authority (MP (10 & 7,12)

14. [Where governments are organized by atheists or politics is conducted by atheists ], if ethical statements do not have authority, people do not have to obey them
15. Where governments are organized by atheists or politics is conducted by atheists, people do not have to obey it (MP 14,13)

Please respond in a syllogism or some other form of logic, that will be much more interesting.

The crux of the argument is that atheist ethics are highly subjective and individual, that atheist approaches to ethics become incommensurable, meaning they cannot be compared, that when the condition of incommensurable is reached, there is no way to know whether atheist ethical beliefs are true or not and if there is no way to know if they are true, people do not have to obey them. There can be no culture that people are bound ethically to accept from atheism, and no law that can proceed, other than the law of the force of one will, as in the Soviet Union.

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(March 15, 2013 at 12:47 am)Darkstar Wrote:

(March 15, 2013 at 12:03 am)apophenia Wrote: I believe that's Penn Jillette, and there's a thread referencing those comments here someplace. (But don't quote me on that.)

You are arguing that desire is a suitable ground for morality? Do you have any evidence for that? That is an extremely huge claim that goes contrary to what virtually every society in history has taught, that people are selfish, that they need to be governed, that power is necessary to restrain evil. Even the Communists had a Puritanical side.

(March 15, 2013 at 1:20 am)jstrodel Wrote: There can be no culture that people are bound ethically to accept from atheism, and no law that can proceed, other than the law of the force of one will, as in the Soviet Union.

This is a rather odd comment coming from someone who thinks the universe runs all hunkie-dorie because it is subject to the singular will of one individual, Jehovah.

(March 14, 2013 at 8:46 pm)jstrodel Wrote:

(March 14, 2013 at 4:08 pm)Creed of Heresy Wrote: So, Strodel, you just said that left wing politics were destructive and then went on to say that left wing agendas brought forth some of the greatest scientists and thinkers of our time, influence much of the motivation behind scientific progress, and were largely responsible for the opening of sexuality.

So...what was destructive about them, again...?

Well, the people who are teaching you history are liberals and left wing people. How well can you rate achievements? The left has only been in existence for 200-250 years, something like that, maybe earlier. Liberals want to mention the fact that Einstein was a socialist, of course, to boost their movement. What is the relationship between Einstein's achievements and the rest of mankind's deepest thinkers? There have been plenty that havn't been socialists.

I would not say that science traces back to the atheist movement, it traces back to people like Locke and Bacon and Newton and Gallileo and Copernicus. Most of the early scientists were Christian. The left was like a movement to kick the Christians out of the universities. Harvard used to be Christian. Jonathan Edwards was president at Princeton at one time. Oxford has a long Christian history.

Basically what happened was that in the 19th century massive numbers of people starting following people like Freud (arguably, offered very few lasting contributions), Marx (mostly discredited), Nietzsche (argued essentially that pride was a virtue, unsurprising that he was popular) etc instead of following God. The modern atheist movement traces back to this.

As for the opening of sexuality, are you referring to the devaluing of children, the acceptance of promiscuity and the mass sexual objectification of woman in popular culture?

I'm hearing a lot of what sounds like the Sobbing Sovereign. "We were once in power, we had it all! And then the lefties took it ALL AWAY FROM US! That means they're BAD! They're all BAD because WE were in power and now we're NOT! WAHHHH!" First of all, everything you just attempted was little more than a poison-the-well attempt, secondly; devaluing of children? Uh, buddy, your religion is the one that has a very gruesome history involved with crusaders spearing and hanging and torturing and enslaving children all throughout the crusades with wanton abandon. It also has a very bloody history with a fixation on stories involving the raping, enslaving, and murder of children just for the crime of not being of your religion, stories your religion relived in history. And same with the women; women are objectified in the bible far more than in society. They're literally described as if they're property to be bought and paid for and sold off on a whim. The bible sounds like a guide to prostitution of your daughter or wife more than it does anything else. And what is wrong with promiscuity? That's kind of human nature. We weren't created to stick with one person and produce offspring with just them, we, like all animals, were meant to fuck and fuck and fuck as much as we could. That's kind of the ultimate goal of life is to spread its genes and diversify the population. And what, you think that being chaste and "pure" and "faithful" is REALLY so god-damn good? Well what about those SUPER chaste nuns and bishops and cardinals, raping each other [in the case of the nuns] or the choir boys [bishops, cardinals]? Considering that they live a very LIFE, vowed upon chastity, you'd think that'd be GOOD and they'd be strong and wholesome, if we follow your logic but OH LOOK there's a huge number of them who are child molesting pedophiles! It's ALMOST LIKE IF YOU REPRESS YOUR SEXUAL URGES FOR TOO LONG IT TURNS TO DEVIANCY BECAUSE HUMAN BEINGS WEREN'T MADE TO BE CHASTE VIRGINS WHILE SURROUNDED BY THINGS TO FUCK! You nimrod. Christianity had a domination over everything for 1700 years; are you REALLY trying to call Liberal Educational Elitism here for them having the universities for the last hundred or so? Cuz buddy, I gotta tell ya...that makes you an irredeemable twat.

How many different mountains of turd can be built in one damn thread? Really?

How are people even entertaining this asshat.

(March 15, 2013 at 5:57 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: I'm hearing a lot of what sounds like the Sobbing Sovereign. "We were once in power, we had it all! And then the lefties took it ALL AWAY FROM US! That means they're BAD! They're all BAD because WE were in power and now we're NOT! WAHHHH!"

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First of all, everything you just attempted was little more than a poison-the-well attempt, secondly; devaluing of children? Uh, buddy, your religion is the one that has a very gruesome history involved with crusaders spearing and hanging and torturing and enslaving children all throughout the crusades with wanton abandon. It also has a very bloody history with a fixation on stories involving the raping, enslaving, and murder of children just for the crime of not being of your religion, stories your religion relived in history. And same with the women; women are objectified in the bible far more than in society. They're literally described as if they're property to be bought and paid for and sold off on a whim. The bible sounds like a guide to prostitution of your daughter or wife more than it does anything else. And what is wrong with promiscuity? That's kind of human nature. We weren't created to stick with one person and produce offspring with just them, we, like all animals, were meant to fuck and fuck and fuck as much as we could. That's kind of the ultimate goal of life is to spread its genes and diversify the population. And what, you think that being chaste and "pure" and "faithful" is REALLY so god-damn good? Well what about those SUPER chaste nuns and bishops and cardinals, raping each other [in the case of the nuns] or the choir boys [bishops, cardinals]? Considering that they live a very LIFE, vowed upon chastity, you'd think that'd be GOOD and they'd be strong and wholesome, if we follow your logic but OH LOOK there's a huge number of them who are child molesting pedophiles! It's ALMOST LIKE IF YOU REPRESS YOUR SEXUAL URGES FOR TOO LONG IT TURNS TO DEVIANCY BECAUSE HUMAN BEINGS WEREN'T MADE TO BE CHASTE VIRGINS WHILE SURROUNDED BY THINGS TO FUCK! You nimrod.

---

Christianity had a domination over everything for 1700 years; are you REALLY trying to call Liberal Educational Elitism here for them having the universities for the last hundred or so? Cuz buddy, I gotta tell ya...that makes you an irredeemable twat.

Why can't you make arguments instead of vomiting up atheistic apologetic every-time I talk to you? What does any of that have to do with what I said? What you said proves my point anyways, that atheism is a political movement, and that atheists use atheist arguments against Christianity that are related to secular control of social services and education. Your post proves that atheism is a political movement.