Atheist!

[Pure]

would you accept this 'clarification,' cant

cant The western end of Eurasia is the birthplace of the holy-book monotheisms. In these traditions, the Truth comes out word for word, and people go to war with one another over the iota of difference. In the east, an understanding suffices, but in the west you need to pin it down.

P: Those of the great monotheistic religions of the Middle East often go to war--between themselves, or within themselves (sects)-- citing iotas of differences in the holy books or dogmatic formulations. Those in the east, e.g. Hindus and Buddhists do not go to war citing such differences; but they do go to war, and thy may cloak it in a number of types of 'garb', e.g. 'greater Japan' or "Japanese [or Mongol] empire."

Arguably the actual reasons for war are more or less the same; the 'greed' of countries/nations for land and resources. IF there is a difference in the bloodiness of the wars (and Genghiz and the WWII Japanese didn't do so bad), it's arguably because the West has a better killing technology.

 

[cantdog]

cant The western end of Eurasia is the birthplace of the holy-book monotheisms. In these traditions, the Truth comes out word for word, and people go to war with one another over the iota of difference. In the east, an understanding suffices, but in the west you need to pin it down.

P: Those of the great monotheistic religions of the Middle East often go to war--between themselves, or within themselves (sects)-- citing iotas of differences in the holy books or dogmatic formulations. Those in the east, e.g. Hindus and Buddhists do not go to war citing such differences; but they do go to war, and thy may cloak it in a number of types of 'garb', e.g. 'greater Japan' or "Japanese [or Mongol] empire."

Arguably the actual reasons for war are more or less the same; the 'greed' of countries/nations for land and resources. IF there is a difference in the bloodiness of the wars (and Genghiz and the WWII Japanese didn't do so bad), it's arguably because the West has a better killing technology.

You say arguably, and I admit it's impolite to denigrate with historical examples of religious warfare. I don't think it makes much difference whether the urge to power uses one excuse or the other, so I will allow your point.

Ken's question, though, concerned tolerance. That group of religions is, it seems to me, particularly concerned with heresies and word-for-word agreement, and so, on the whole, less tolerant intrinsically.

The first contact of Hindus with Islam was when muslim armies of conquest descended into the Indus valley. Muslims had to decide what to do about so many infidels, all clearly not 'people of the Book.' Only a special legal ruling about hindus enabled the conquerors to forgo forcible conversion, which had been the policy toward other animists and pagans. Hindus, on the other hand, merely insisted that the brahmanas be respected, because whoever did that was hindu enough for the purpose.

This was the position only of the respective religions, of course. Modern political terror and mob violence between the groups is self-stoking, and the result of mutual us/them enmities of more than two generations' standing. The religions have each become a label meaning ENEMY and have no deeper significance.

 

[Pure]

Probably you're familiar with this, cant, but

doesn't it sound awfully familiar:

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/greenway.html
ARTICLE: Volume XVIII, No 1, SPRING 2001
Hindu Nationalism Clouds the Face of India

H. D. S. Greenway

[...]
A Hindu Nation

The struggle between secularism and a Hindu-based sense of Indian exceptionalism is not new. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang (RSS), or National Volunteers Association, was founded as a militant Hindu organization in 1925, dedicated to the over-throw of the secular programs of the National Congress, which was led by Gandhi and then Nehru. The RSS late last year celebrated its seventy-fifth birthday with a military-like drill of 60,000 uniformed men and boys from 7,000 villages-all come to dedicate themselves to a Hindu nation.

In the years since its founding, the RSS has spawned other organizations such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, along with more secular coalition partners, rules India today.

The RSS holds that Christians and Muslims are basically converts from Hinduism and should be reintegrated into the mainstream of Indian Hindu culture. If they prefer not to integrate they should step aside. Christianity has had a toehold in India since the middle of the first century-far longer than in many parts of Europe-but Christians still represent less than 2 percent of the population. Muslims, although hardly more than 15 percent, number somewhere between 180 and 200 million, however, which makes India the second biggest Muslim country in the world after Indonesia. Pakistan, which was ripped from India by partition in 1947, has, according to the last census, roughly 135 million mostly Muslim people.

The biggest political change in India in the last decades has been the demise of the once all-powerful Congress Party and the rise of regional-based parties and the Hindu nationalists. Like all political parties that remain in power too long, Congress fell into corruption and cronyism. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi-no relation to the Mahatma-brought India as close as it has ever come to dictatorship in 1975 […]

The Congress Party's demise has seen the rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP. It is India's most powerful political force, but it rules through a coalition that has necessitated a softening of the party's more militant Hindu positions.

The prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has gone out of his way in recent weeks to stress the importance of secular politics. He told a recent gathering of foreign news executives in New Delhi that "ours is a multi-religious, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic nation. The rights of religious minorities are fully protected. We believe that India's demonstration of unity in diversity is, in many ways, useful to the entire world in the age of globalization." Later he said that that there could be no India without secularism. "As far as I am concerned, secularism means that the state should have no religion, and there should be no discrimination on the basis of religion."

But inclusiveness and the rights of minorities have not always fared well at the hand of the Hindu nationalists, and Vajpayee's remarks were made in the shadow of the most divisive issue in India today: Ayodhya.

Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, was until eight years ago, the site of a sixteenth-century mosque. It is believed by Hindus that the site is also the place where the god Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu, was born. Like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Ayodhya is one of those unending, god-inspired sources of communal friction.

There had been Hindu nationalist rallies at the site for several years previously, but in 1992, whipped up by BJP politicians, 200,000 militants shouting "Hindustan is for the Hindus" and "Death to the Muslims" stormed the mosque and using sledgehammers, picks, and bare hands literally reduced the mosque to rubble.

Unrest swept India. In the end some 1,400 people, most of them Muslims, were massacred under the eyes of the mostly Hindu police. Hindu nationalists want to build a temple for Ram on the rubble-strewn site. Muslims are incensed and want the mosque rebuilt. The matter is now in the hands of the Indian Courts.

 

[past_perfect]

It's a common misconception that hinduism is not monotheistic - early Christian explorers got confused by the meaning of devas, which are the personification of different aspects of God. See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism#Devas_.26_Dev.C4.ABs

( checked the link just in time - the one I originally copied would have lead to uhm... not quite so spiritual realms....)

In the higher forms of vedanta even the concept of God is meant to be a working hypothesis rather than the revered incarnation - that's where most "loftier" branches of religion meet. God becomes a "That", "The absolute", "That which is", or, even better "That from which words recoil in horror".
In Hinduism the realisation that you yourself are God is taken as a sign of progress, depending of course on which particular branch you are following your spiritual path.

Interestingly, they also have the model of the oscillating (expanding/contracting) universe, that became fashionable in recent years again.

 

[cantdog]

That's the coolest thing about hinduism, that is 'really' is everything.

 

[wmrs2]

Not the original. Congress added "under God" during the Cold War, I believe.

That's correct. The idea was to slap atheist USSR in the face.

 

[wmrs2]

That's correct. The idea was to slap atheist USSR in the face.

By the way, it worked.

 

[3113]

By the way, it worked.

LOL. Yeah, Russia shivered in their boots over that. It was the immediate cause of their collapse thirty years later...their bad economy had nothing to do with it.

 

[sadangel]

Why is "atheist" a pejorative term to most Americans?

I haven't read the thread...just responding to the first post.

I don't know why.

I know that when I say I am a Christian, I get eyes rolled, deep sighs or rude remarks from many. I get that there are some that have made "Christian" a bad thing to admit to being. I said not to long ago on a gay Christian site, that I had an easier time of telling people I'm gay (bisexual) than I have telling people I'm a Christian.

I have friends who are atheist. We have had some of the most interesting discussions. We agree to disagree agreeably. It works for us. I see nothing wrong with people believing different things. It makes the world more interesting.

Why do many American's consider athiesm to be wrong? Perhaps because it goes against what they believe personally and they haven't learned to allow others the right to their own beliefs. I don't really know.

 

[Hooper_X]

And the Pledge of Allegiance.

There was no mention of any deity in the original pledge of allegiance.

 

[Liar]

LOL. Yeah, Russia shivered in their boots over that. It was the immediate cause of their collapse thirty years later...their bad economy had nothing to do with it.

And why did they get bad economy? It's obviously because they didn't dedicate their Rubels to the good will of the Almighty. Duh.

 

[wmrs2]

Because an atheist is entirely too close to being a free thinker, and that makes the organized religions nervous. They depend on people letting others think for them.

A very logical thinker is not a free thinker. A logical thinker is bound by the premises of his thinking. All thinking is flawed if it does not have a stable premise. That is the major fault with communism. Communism rejects Aristotelian logic in favor of relativity. In relativity thinking, one does not need an absolute premise, such as God. This makes a person a "free thinker" to choose whatever seems sensible. Free thinking produced Hitler, Stalin, Killing Fields, etc., all examples of free thinking and moral relativity.

To me, it is better to view your morals and fairness to have come from an Absolute God rather than man's imagination of free thinking, which is vastly over-rated by people who think they are being intellectual by being free thinkers.There is no superiority in being illogical just to be free. Real freedoms are self evident, universal, in the Constitution of the USA. and come from God. Like it or not that is what the forefathers of the USA decided. In every other way, the USA is secular but in our logic, we are absolute, not free thinking.

 

[rgraham666]

Um, explain the Crusades, the Inquisition and all the other horrors that religions have inflicted on the world then.

 

[wmrs2]

I haven't read the thread...just responding to the first post.

I don't know why.

I know that when I say I am a Christian, I get eyes rolled, deep sighs or rude remarks from many. I get that there are some that have made "Christian" a bad thing to admit to being. I said not to long ago on a gay Christian site, that I had an easier time of telling people I'm gay (bisexual) than I have telling people I'm a Christian.

I have friends who are atheist. We have had some of the most interesting discussions. We agree to disagree agreeably. It works for us. I see nothing wrong with people believing different things. It makes the world more interesting.

Why do many American's consider athiesm to be wrong? Perhaps because it goes against what they believe personally and they haven't learned to allow others the right to their own beliefs. I don't really know.

The answer is really simple. Humans have been given the knowledge of correct inferences at birth. When something is not logical, they generally know it. Normal humans intuitively know that correct thinking requires stable and absolute premises. Atheism does not have or believe in absolute truth and therefore think differently than the majority of us.

 

[sadangel]

The answer is really simple. Humans have been given the knowledge of correct inferences at birth. When something is not logical, they generally know it. Normal humans intuitively know that correct thinking requires stable and absolute premises. Atheism does not have or believe in absolute truth and therefore think differently than the majority of us.

Perhaps I'm reading more into your answer than you meant, but are you saying that atheist are not normal because their thinking is not what you term correct?

If so, then I have to say that your entire answer is a crock. I don't believe that there is an absolute truth. Even as a Christian I don't believe that. So I guess I'm not normal either.

 

[sadangel]

Um, explain the Crusades, the Inquisition and all the other horrors that religions have inflicted on the world then.

If I recall correctly and I freely admit I may not be remembering right...each of those you listed were done in the name of "religion" in the name of "God" because those who began the Crusades, Inquistion and some of the others because people believed differently than them. They wanted all people to belive the same.

I've never agreed with that. Everyone has a right to their own opinion, their own belief. I just don't understand why that is so difficult for people to get, or to allow.

The truth is Rob--there is no good explanation for any of them. Not to make sense of why they happened in the first place.

 

[Hooper_X]

... Normal humans intuitively know that correct thinking requires stable and absolute premises. Atheism does not have or believe in absolute truth and therefore think differently than the majority of us.

Hogwash. You believe in magic and bronze age fairytales, both of which fly in the face of rational thought; end of story.

 

[wmrs2]

Um, explain the Crusades, the Inquisition and all the other horrors that religions have inflicted on the world then.

See, there you go with the blame game. It is a matter of logic. not a contest to see who is doing the most good or evil in the world. You don't find truth that way.

The point is the difference between an atheist and a theist is that a theist believes in absolute truth or an Absolute, called God. The truth is the only premise that makes sense of reasoning or correct inferences. It is possible to have the truth and make the incorrect deductions from the truth. This explains different religions, Puritans, the Inquisition, horrors of war, the Crusades, modern day fanatics, etc.

The point being, the misuse of the truth does not qualify as an argument against God's existence. It does light the fires for debate of good versus evil. But, again you are debating absolutes-good and evil.

Do you not understand that when you point to evils in the world, you are saying there is a good by which you judge evil? What is your standard of good. Here is where an atheist admits that there is a God, a good, or else he could never point out an evil thing like the In question. Get it?

 

[Stella_Omega]

What the fuck is a True Believer™ doing on a pr0n writers' forum?

 

[wmrs2]

Perhaps I'm reading more into your answer than you meant, but are you saying that atheist are not normal because their thinking is not what you term correct?

If so, then I have to say that your entire answer is a crock. I don't believe that there is an absolute truth. Even as a Christian I don't believe that. So I guess I'm not normal either.

I don't know if any one on this forum is normal. What is apparent is that you have not thought out your Christian faith very well. An atheist's thinking can not be logically correct because his ultimate premise for thinking does not exist.

To be a Christian by any definition I know is to believe in the Absolute, the Truth, Stable and Unchanging absolute. That is why you are a Christian and not an atheist.

An atheist can not by definition be correct ultimately in his logic. Get it? That is not intended to be an insult. People have a right to be atheist. Some are nice people. Some Christians are not nice but one thing that is required to make a believer is to believe in God the Absolute. To be a Christian does not mean that you are good or evil; it means you believe. By the way, I too am a Christian.

 

[slyc_willie]

I don't know if any one on this forum is normal. What is apparent is that you have not thought out your Christian faith very well. An atheist's thinking can not be logically correct because his ultimate premise for thinking does not exist.

So you say.

Hey, I believe in a god, but it's not the classic Christian YHWH or Jehovah or the father of Jesus Christ (whom I personally believe was probably the biggest well-intentioned charlatan of all time). The god I believe in is an abstract component of a greater, subconscious force to which all living things are connected.

And in that context, I can easily accept an atheist's point of view as rejecting the widely-held belief in some all-knowing, conscious entity that picks and chooses where and how it will be received. I find it hard to believe God would be a consciously thinking being.

But we all have our beliefs. I suppose we'll find out once we die who is right and who is nothing.

 

[past_perfect]

The answer is really simple. Humans have been given the knowledge of correct inferences at birth. When something is not logical, they generally know it. Normal humans intuitively know that correct thinking requires stable and absolute premises. Atheism does not have or believe in absolute truth and therefore think differently than the majority of us.

Um, no, sorry. Logical thinking and the knowledge of correct inference is not intuitive and not given at birth. It is a result of the formation of personality through emulating and the process of learning in general, in other words memory and its structuring. Intuition is an entirely different animal we know very little about as yet, however, it always draws from existing sources of information, in other words, memory.

There are quite a few atheist who believe in absolutes, so that isn't true either.

I don't think your definition of Christian is applicable to all Christians either.

 

[sadangel]

I don't know if any one on this forum is normal. What is apparent is that you have not thought out your Christian faith very well. An atheist's thinking can not be logically correct because his ultimate premise for thinking does not exist.

To be a Christian by any definition I know is to believe in the Absolute, the Truth, Stable and Unchanging absolute. That is why you are a Christian and not an atheist.

An atheist can not by definition be correct ultimately in his logic. Get it? That is not intended to be an insult. People have a right to be atheist. Some are nice people. Some Christians are not nice but one thing that is required to make a believer is to believe in God the Absolute. To be a Christian does not mean that you are good or evil; it means you believe. By the way, I too am a Christian.

You quite obviously don't me at all to make those statements regarding my faith or my beliefs.

Your statements tell me all I care to know.

 

[rengadeirishman]

the reason many people don't like atheists, in my opinion, is because there is a stereotype of the arrogant snobbish atheist who looks down on the savage masses as if they (the atheist) are superior to them (the believers).

I wouldn't say all atheists are arrogant snobs, but most of the ones i've had some communication with definitely seem to be.

amicus for one.

 

[Liar]

A very logical thinker is not a free thinker. A logical thinker is bound by the premises of his thinking. All thinking is flawed if it does not have a stable premise. That is the major fault with communism. Communism rejects Aristotelian logic in favor of relativity.

People who says this, haven't read Aritotele properly. It's only the ideologically tailored cliffnotes version if his legacy that leaves out the validity and practical implication of opposing premises.

I don't know if any one on this forum is normal. What is apparent is that you have not thought out your Christian faith very well. An atheist's thinking can not be logically correct because his ultimate premise for thinking does not exist.

Sounds to me like you're confusing atheists with agnostics. Atheism is based on an absoute and unchanging axiom.