(May 4, 2011 at 3:31 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Interesting post TDOA, thanks for actually adding to the discussion. I think you kind of addressed the issue incorrectly though. Of course you can sit here and argue that the seven dimensions of religion do not apply to atheism, just as I have argued that they do. The point is that it is far easier to apply the seven dimensions to atheism than it is even established religions like Buddhism and Jainism. I could sit here and make a pretty good case that Christianity is not a religion because not all seven dimensions apply to it and the ones that do also apply to sports and Dragonball Z. The fact is that many courts are starting to lean towards classifying the new atheism as a religion and many of the dimensions of religion do apply to atheism.
That's a poor arguement for atheism being a religion and you know it and completely missing several of my key points.
The only reason you were able to apply the seven dimensions at all is because you broadened the "fits" of the dimensions so much that just about anything could potentially be a religion. Realistically, it would be the only way could could call atheism a religion but doing so is exceptionally dishonest.
The courts might be starting to treat atheists with the same rights as the religious folk in terms of religious allowances, but that doesn't make atheism a religion.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
