(July 19, 2017 at 8:27 am)Die Atheistin Wrote:(July 19, 2017 at 8:00 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Calling atheism a 'religion' is like calling bald a hair colour.
Boru
I didn't say that atheism itself is a religion. Theism is the idea that one or more Gods or Godesses exist, while atheism is the denial of this belief. Religion is a system of ideas and practices. Neither theism nor atheism are religions themselves, though they may be ideas of a religion .
There are some religions that don't require belief in a God.
Buddist authorities and canonical texts don't affirm, and sometimes even deny the existence of a God. Gautama Buddha himself denied that he was a god or divine.
Some forms of Confucianism and Taoism don't affirm the faith in a higher being.
LaVeyan Satanism is atheistic. Church of Satan High Priest Peter H. Gilmore once declared in an interwiev: "Satanism begins with atheism".
No sorry, saying "Buddha said he wasn't" is the same to me as saying "Jesus said", it depends on what sect of Buddhism and what part of the world, and the individual interpreting it. In some sects Buddha IS most certainly viewed as divine. And his early mythology paints him as being born of Queen Maya who was told by the divine world that she would give a gift to the world. Even the first Buddha mythology has him avoiding the birth canal. This trend to view Buddhism without the superstition is new and mainly viewed that way in the west. Asia and China and Japan are very superstitious.
And "Satanism" is to me just another attempt to co opt old names of old religions to market a a new club. I don't need the word "Satan" or to belong to a club called "Satanism" regardless if someone wants to call it god free or moral.
Our species behaviors are not in a club, they are in the individual, in our evolution. We don't need to write up new moral lists and call them clubs. The problem with continually try to re invent the wheel, is that power shifts over long periods of time, and what can seem harmless politically can in the future become dogmatic and rigid.
We already have secular common law that protects everyone, or to say, it can and will if more participate. I see no need for humans to create new clubs to try to compete with old woo. A label will not automatically make the individual only do good. Our species ability to be cruel or compassionate is in the individual and in our genes, not a club label.
