RE: Thanks for creating a forum with real debate!
March 12, 2013 at 1:43 pm
(This post was last modified: March 12, 2013 at 1:48 pm by jstrodel.)
Quote:You're right here: atheism has no statement for anything other than as a response to the question on belief in theistic propositions.
How can atheism's critique of religion proceed out of the information contained in this? Atheism could be defined as an absence of theistic belief, but that definition does not actually defend the belief in atheism.
Practically, atheism requires not only a rejection of theism, but all of the tools and methods required to defend this rejection, which encompasses hundreds of years of history and many, many different ideologies and movements working together towards the goal of eliminating religion.
(March 12, 2013 at 1:09 pm)Ryantology Wrote: But, you can't define atheism by any of those traits. Atheism neither demands any of those behaviors, nor does it in any way lead to them, passively. The same cannot be said of Christianity, a religion which derives from a God who revels in bloodshed, rape, misery, and torture, who commands people to murder, loot, and enslave, who will condemn a person for not believing in him. God embodies every one of humanity's worst behavioral traits and almost none of its best, and your religion, your dogma, your very faith, comes from that.
This is a good example of the role that ideologies non-central to atheism play in defining atheism's rejection of God. Consider the many reference of the words used and how they point back to different philosophical notions. For an atheist critique of religion to be successful, it is necessary not only to demonstrate that atheistic beliefs critiques of Christian morality are true, but that the atheist morality that underlies these critiques is an authoritative understanding of morality.
As a side note, the Christian life consists in the believer in some ways imitating God but it is not required that there be a direct correspondents between the ethics that God follows and the ethics of Christianity. Christianity does not teach this, so for Christianity to be contradictory, it must be shown that this is required in some other way.
