OP/ED.........

Often online I run into this attitude. Those long term members here know how I feel about all religions and god claims. But even with that I do not give atheists a pass either. There is no virtue of the oppressed. It is easy to get caught in the moment as a minority and think you would never do that yourself. That misses the point that power shifts and you will not be around in the future regardless, and those future generations will not be subject to the same conditions that may lead a current minority to say things like this.

Our evolution as a species has always set up social pecking orders and power has shifted as well in that time. But what has not changed is our species ability to be cruel or compassionate. That ratio would still be there no matter who the majority is. I do rail against the comic book morality and magical claims of religions and the horrible divisions it creates in the world. But even atheists cannot sit there and claim that we are above what humans have always displayed and will always display.

Yes I do rail against the magical claims and superstitions of religion. I do rail against all claims of immovable beings who are Orwellian in nature. But that is a matter of claims, not human rights. Atheists are still part of an imperfect reality and we cannot think ourselves that because we are on the right side of education and science, that we are always going to automatically be moral ourselves.

Scientific reality is that life and the universe is not perfect. In a very litteral sense energy transfer demonstrates this. You will never have 100% input create 100% output. Religious ideology political ideology, national ideology and even business models can be worshiped on a very dogmatic scale. There has never been anything such as a utopia and when atheists do this it shows a failure to see that we can be just as flawed in our perceptions. When we say well intended things like this that is our evolutionary empathy talking, but it is not a given in the future, especially after we are gone and cannot be arround to remind our fellow humans of the past.

In agreeing with Hitchens railing against religion and calling it poison, that still does not put any human being regardless of the same behaviors our species have always displayed. Our species ability to be cruel or compassion are in our evolution, not our labels.

The only way humans in general can treat each other better is to accept the imperfect reality we all live in.

(December 30, 2014 at 8:00 am)Brian37 Wrote: Yes I do rail against the magical claims and superstitions of religion. I do rail against all claims of immovable beings who are Orwellian in nature. But that is a matter of claims, not human rights. Atheists are still part of an imperfect reality and we cannot think ourselves that because we are on the right side of education and science, that we are always going to automatically be moral ourselves.

From my perspective, very few are doing this. I'm not a missionary going around to tell everyone about how great it would be to have no religion at all. In fact, my frm believe is, that once religion is gone, it would only be replaced by some other ideologies for people to rally behind. So I'm not for fighting religion to the death in hopes of creating a better world.

What I stand for is for religion to keep out of public life. A secular world where everyone should be free to live according to their own values without trying to shove them down everyone else's throats.

I am on a mission to challenge people to scrap religion because it is not a good tool to view reality. But that is a matter of claims and evidence, not human rights. I do not like it however, when anyone gets stuck into thinking utopias exist and talk like that says they do not see they are falling into that same trap.

It is one thing to challenge absurd claims, but how future generations treat each other especially after we are gone is not a given. The only way to prevent the horrors of the past is to remember evolution really is a process and not a moral code and none of us are above that process.

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(December 30, 2014 at 8:10 am)abaris Wrote:

(December 30, 2014 at 8:00 am)Brian37 Wrote: Yes I do rail against the magical claims and superstitions of religion. I do rail against all claims of immovable beings who are Orwellian in nature. But that is a matter of claims, not human rights. Atheists are still part of an imperfect reality and we cannot think ourselves that because we are on the right side of education and science, that we are always going to automatically be moral ourselves.

From my perspective, very few are doing this. I'm not a missionary going around to tell everyone about how great it would be to have no religion at all. In fact, my frm believe is, that once religion is gone, it would only be replaced by some other ideologies for people to rally behind. So I'm not for fighting religion to the death in hopes of creating a better world.

What I stand for is for religion to keep out of public life. A secular world where everyone should be free to live according to their own values without trying to shove them down everyone else's throats.

Um out of public life? In what context? I agree with fighting laws that are religious based, I also agree with keeping government neutral. But we certainly cannot stop people from building churches we can see from public roads that are on private property. We cannot stop them from making their claims in privately owned media such as TV, newspapers, internet and social media. Nor should we.

Secular also applies to us as well. "Atheist" does not mean we agree on economics. I know of Ayn Rand atheists I do not agree with, and I also know of Che supporter atheists I do not agree with.

Secular means neutral and that also applies the diversity in atheists as well. Secular means neutral, not playing favorites. Being on the right side of education and science does not mean the label "atheist" will automatically make the individual atheist moral either.

I've lost that illusion somewhere between here and 2007.

I have never believed that scrapping religion will somehow remove all evil from the world. Neither do I think that religion is the sole cause of evil. Without religion, evil people will still do evil things.

I don't even believe, contrary to the old saying, that religion is the only way to get good people to do evil things. There are economic and political ideologies that will do nicely.

Neither will a religion-free world be a completely rational one. Irrationality comes in many forms. I've met atheists who are government conspiracy theorists. I've met atheists who deny certain sciences like climate change. I've met atheists who are homophobes. I've met atheists that are sexist. Atheism does not preclude other forms of prejudice, such as racism, or irrationality, such as a belief in UFO abduction stories. I've met more than a few who are libertarians.

All that said, scraping religion will be a big step forward in both rationality and humanity. While you can get people to believe crazy things without it, religion does make it relatively easy. It's simple to get people to think immoral acts are moral if "God wills it". Belief that you're fighting a devil makes it possible to rationalize cruelty. Religion sanitizes inhumanity.

Religion also has no reality check the way political or economic ideologies do. Communism was abandoned when people realized the worker's paradise failed to materialize. Religion makes promises about what reward you'll get after you're dead.

Of the three most homophobic people I've known, one was a Christian and the other two were atheists. The Christian had it easy. "Oh, it's not me, it's God". The atheists had a harder job when confronted with their bigotry. One chose to go the backpedaling route, "um, not that there's anything wrong with that of course" after every gay joke or slur. The other chose to own it, which is a lot less persuasive than the when you have some celestial agent supposedly embodying all that is good prescribing the prejudice.

Abandoning religion will be a good step in the right direction.

(December 30, 2014 at 10:07 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: I have never believed that scrapping religion will somehow remove all evil from the world. Neither do I think that religion is the sole cause of evil. Without religion, evil people will still do evil things.

I don't even believe, contrary to the old saying, that religion is the only way to get good people to do evil things. There are economic and political ideologies that will do nicely.

Neither will a religion-free world be a completely rational one. Irrationality comes in many forms. I've met atheists who are government conspiracy theorists. I've met atheists who deny certain sciences like climate change. I've met atheists who are homophobes. I've met atheists that are sexist. Atheism does not preclude other forms of prejudice, such as racism, or irrationality, such as a belief in UFO abduction stories. I've met more than a few who are libertarians.

All that said, scraping religion will be a big step forward in both rationality and humanity. While you can get people to believe crazy things without it, religion does make it relatively easy. It's simple to get people to think immoral acts are moral if "God wills it". Belief that you're fighting a devil makes it possible to rationalize cruelty. Religion sanitizes inhumanity.

Religion also has no reality check the way political or economic ideologies do. Communism was abandoned when people realized the worker's paradise failed to materialize. Religion makes promises about what reward you'll get after you're dead.

Of the three most homophobic people I've known, one was a Christian and the other two were atheists. The Christian had it easy. "Oh, it's not me, it's God". The atheists had a harder job when confronted with their bigotry. One chose to go the backpedaling route, "um, not that there's anything wrong with that of course" after every gay joke or slur. The other chose to own it, which is a lot less persuasive than the when you have some celestial agent supposedly embodying all that is good prescribing the prejudice.

Abandoning religion will be a good step in the right direction.

Yes people will still do evil things, but that still does not make religion a valid way of viewing the nature of reality.

(December 30, 2014 at 8:19 am)Brian37 Wrote: Um out of public life? In what context?

Out of politics in the broadest sense. The French model seems to be a step in the right direction.

(December 30, 2014 at 10:14 am)Brian37 Wrote: ...that still does not make religion a valid way of viewing the nature of reality.

Totally agreed. I'm just saying that there are other ways one can be irrational, bigoted or inhumane.

Religion isn't the only way to get good people to do evil things but it is, in my opinion, the fastest and surest way to make that happen.

(December 30, 2014 at 11:32 am)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(December 30, 2014 at 10:14 am)Brian37 Wrote: ...that still does not make religion a valid way of viewing the nature of reality.

Totally agreed. I'm just saying that there are other ways one can be irrational, bigoted or inhumane.

Religion isn't the only way to get good people to do evil things but it is, in my opinion, the fastest and surest way to make that happen.

It still needs to be kept on a leash and it should never be given taboo status. Just as with everything else in an open society it must be subject to scrutiny and challenge.

Religion didn't create evil or the power divide, rather it was our own greed and the need for power which led to the formation of religions. Religion is just a tool to suppress and control.

However I do have hopes for a future utopia, cause what we term as evil isn't something supernatural but is rather an inherent quality of our own genetic code. Maybe in future we will be able to find a way to fix it, both biologically and philosophically. On the other hand, if we continue our current rate of , umm, 'progress', I am pretty sure we will eradicate ourselves within the next few centuries. That would also lead to an utopia I guess, cause without us, nature would finally have a chance of survival.