RE: Heartless Humanism?
January 2, 2014 at 2:39 am
(This post was last modified: January 2, 2014 at 2:41 am by pineapplebunnybounce.)
The thing is, atheism is the absence of belief in a god. If you want to add things to it, it takes on some sort of ideology and you're going to have to call it something else other than atheism.
I've seen some of the talk, I don't quite agree with it but I will concede that some of what he said may be necessary in our society today. Not just to atheists or to people who do not have access to religion, but to everyone. Here's my problem with it: sermons and repetitions. (I didn't watch all of it) It sounds like brainwashing. In my home country, we had moral classes since primary school and more of these types of moral teachings in high school. I hated it, it was basically this is right and that is wrong and that's that, no need for them to explain themselves. They even taught that women are subservient to men, these are secular teachings. That's the problem you run into when you start creating dogma, things are no longer moral because of a valid reason, they're moral because you said so. So if you say well ok, we won't create dogma, then you don't achieve the "cohesive groups" you talked about.
Personally, I get my morals from reading a lot of books, as weird as that sounds. The more you expose yourself to the lives of others, imagined or otherwise, the more you know what to do. The more knowledge you have, the better you are at actually achieving what you set out to do. Most religious people these days have good intentions, but all the wrong methods, because they believed in the wrong things. I would argue that they are more in need of guidance than atheists.
Oh and, one more thing. Atheism doesn't say anything about emotions. That doesn't mean atheists do not value emotions. Atheism doesn't say anything about fashion either but that's not the same as saying atheists all have a bad sense of fashion.
I've seen some of the talk, I don't quite agree with it but I will concede that some of what he said may be necessary in our society today. Not just to atheists or to people who do not have access to religion, but to everyone. Here's my problem with it: sermons and repetitions. (I didn't watch all of it) It sounds like brainwashing. In my home country, we had moral classes since primary school and more of these types of moral teachings in high school. I hated it, it was basically this is right and that is wrong and that's that, no need for them to explain themselves. They even taught that women are subservient to men, these are secular teachings. That's the problem you run into when you start creating dogma, things are no longer moral because of a valid reason, they're moral because you said so. So if you say well ok, we won't create dogma, then you don't achieve the "cohesive groups" you talked about.
Personally, I get my morals from reading a lot of books, as weird as that sounds. The more you expose yourself to the lives of others, imagined or otherwise, the more you know what to do. The more knowledge you have, the better you are at actually achieving what you set out to do. Most religious people these days have good intentions, but all the wrong methods, because they believed in the wrong things. I would argue that they are more in need of guidance than atheists.
Oh and, one more thing. Atheism doesn't say anything about emotions. That doesn't mean atheists do not value emotions. Atheism doesn't say anything about fashion either but that's not the same as saying atheists all have a bad sense of fashion.
