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LordofHats wrote:

The point of bringing him up was to illustrate that philosophy and science had been constantly ostracized by religion (or recuperated), ever since its birth.

This isn't true in the slightest. Relatively few scientists ever had problems with religious officials, even in Western Europe of the Medieval Middle East (hell Muslims made scientific strides that their European counterparts wouldn't be making for centuries, and they were more fundamental in their faith than any Christian of the period). You only got in trouble if you stepped on the churches toes. Otherwise, they might accuse you of questionable beliefs and disagree with you, but they typically didn't go out of their way to do anything about it.

That religions have long opposed scientific progress is one of the greatest myths of history, furthered primarily by extremely vocal scientists and atheists who cherry pick extreme cases that were not the norm, like Galileo.

Cool, I'm sure Gassendi, La Mothe Le Vayer, Cyrano de Bergerac (the philosopher, not the play) would like to know that they haven't been obfuscated from the philosophical curriculum because of their atheism.
Epicure would surely love to know that there hasn't been a dirty publicity campaign lead against him by the religious ever since he was alive. Spinoza would love to hear that he wasn't condemned for orthodoxical fault.
Cristovao Ferreira, responsible for the denunciation of the Jesuit's doubtful teachings, sure wasn't killed and tortured by japanese servants of the jesuits, then!

Hobbes was accused of atheism, but that was only because that was the only insult they could throw at him...

The 'toes' of the Church you refer to, were pretty damn long, even at recent times...

Some day, in the future, people will look back on history and wonder why there was ever religion in the first place. I am sad I wont live to see those days.

Religion didn't stop Leonardo Da Vinci, Issac Newton, or Descarte. Neither did it stop Copernicus (who was also a Catholic Cleric). Ibn Al-Haytham, the father of the scientific method and optics, was not only one of the greatest scientists in history, he was a graduate of a madrassa and a religious official at the court of Cairo. EDIT: And lets not forget all those Catholic monks, who slaved for centuries to preserve music, literature, and art when hardly anyone else was capable of doing so. Or our good friend Gregor Mendel, the friar who invented genetics at a monestary.

And these guys were talking about are just the famous ones. How many scientists and scholars never got their names into a history book?

If your claim is that the church was against atheists, well of course it was. I thought you were talking about scientists in general. Heck, its even more interesting that Atheists and Christians bicker with one another just like members of any other religion.

LordofHats wrote:So what you saying Dael is that it was Stalin who created the atheist systems of the later USSR? I mean, if Lenin isn't the one who did it (and if Lenin indeed intended to create a secular government instead) why are we even arguing about this?

Russia as a state was without religion under Lenin, he created atheist schools to educate the people without the "oppression" of religion. Stalin did not create an atheist(surely secular and atheist are synonymous when discussing a government? they are both fundementally "without religion") system, he inherited one, and once he had he decided to make life rather difficult for the religious in Russia because he realised that religious leaders would see him for what he was and had a power to bring people together against him. And rather ironically the original "oppressors" would have been people's best chance of freedom.

The crux of my argument is that Stalin is brought up as an example of what atheists do to the church, but his motives were not religious, nor were they Marxist, they were oppressive. Because he was an oppressive tyrant.

I did not need to be a Christian to pass a law against gay marriage anymore than I need to be an atheist to ban the church.

Well you'd need other reasons to do either, and none spring to mind, but no you don't.

No, they're not the same thing. Under Stalin rule, all religion was officially illegal (he brought the Eastern Orthodox Church back between 1941 and 1945, but then it went out again). It wasn't a secular system it was atheist (I say this to make the distinction in my usage of these terms clear).

The crux of my argument is that Stalin is brought up as an example of what atheists do to the church, but his motives were not religious, nor were they Marxist, they were oppressive. Because he was an oppressive tyrant.

We bring it up because of what he did not why he did it, as I've said several times.

Well you'd need other reasons to do either

Shrugs. Maybe I just think its weird, idk XD Maybe I'm a political dictator who fears the power of gay love will overthrow me

Descartes didn't publish one of his books because of the Church, and had to notice a request for another one. They are authorities, they don't need to burn people to hurt them, suffice to excommunicate them and you've already influenced 75-80% (okay made up number, but it could be higher, for all we know) of the population. In Quebec the Index was in effect until the mid 50s.As a Philosophy or History, you would get a prime on your paycheck if you had attended church that week. Those aren't measures put in by the Church, since they never had actual control over it. But it did happen...

The Church (and churches, my critic isn't precisely against catholicism) has been historically opposed to empirical rationality, and most rationalities they couldn't recuperate. Empirical rationality leads to atheism, or at least suspension of the resolution of the question. Hence why the historical figures of atheism are philosophers.

Kovnik Obama wrote:suffice to excommunicate them and you've already influenced 75-80% (okay made up number, but it could be higher, for all we know) of the population.

Its actually probably an accurate number say... 600CE to 1500CE (rough estimate). Its a hard thing to gagdue as there really aren't that many credible sources.

I'm not here to claim the church and other religions never did horrible things (they most certainly did). My claim is merely that these situations are horribly overblown in modern culture and heavily ignore, especially in scientific fields, the role of many lower religious officials and scholars in scientific advancement. I mean lets go to philosophy. Thomas Aquinas preserved reason as a concept, and Christian theologians kept it going through the middle ages in Europe.

LordofHats wrote:No, they're not the same thing. Under Stalin rule, all religion was officially illegal (he brought the Eastern Orthodox Church back between 1941 and 1945, but then it went out again). It wasn't a secular system it was atheist (I say this to make the distinction in my usage of these terms clear).

Surely it was anti-theist then, I mean atheism is without religion not against it.

The crux of my argument is that Stalin is brought up as an example of what atheists do to the church, but his motives were not religious, nor were they Marxist, they were oppressive. Because he was an oppressive tyrant.

We bring it up because of what he did not why he did it, as I've said several times.

But then surely it's no different from the religious discrimination the Nazis engaged in?

Well you'd need other reasons to do either

Shrugs. Maybe I just think its weird, idk XD

Fair enough. But what if I think it's weird that you think it's weird? What happens then :S

dæl wrote:Surely it was anti-theist then, I mean atheism is without religion not against it.

A political system against religion is a system without religion (ignoring of course the arguments that the Communists turned their system into their own religion).

But then surely it's no different from the religious discrimination the Nazis engaged in?

Different only as the situations dictate. Stalin and Hitler probably could have been best buddies... You Know. If they didn't hate each other.

Fair enough. But what if I think it's weird that you think it's weird? What happens then :S

My friend says the best way to break an awkward silence is the punch the other guy and run away...

With all this church prosecution of science and knowledge I am amazed that we even have an Internet where we can complain about it. Tool of the devil I tell you.

LordofHats wrote:I mean lets go to philosophy. Thomas Aquinas preserved reason as a concept, and Christian theologians kept it going through the middle ages in Europe.

Thomas Aquinas basically bastardized Aristotle's logic. And the Church recuperated him regardless of his views on prostitution and sexuality because he had produced an working adaptation of Aristotle's metaphysics. They didn't exactly hold in the same regard the other ancients.

I guess I can't really hold against him the fact that he recycled another's philosophy to make his own, that what all philosophers do, none works in a vacuum. But to say that he, as a representative of the Church, shows how well philosophy and religion relate to one another, that isn't the case.



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d-usa wrote:With all this church prosecution of science and knowledge I am amazed that we even have an Internet where we can complain about it. Tool of the devil I tell you.

Well, science did speed up ever since scientist have stopped asking the religious authorities to revise their texts.

LordofHats wrote:A political system against religion is a system without religion (ignoring of course the arguments that the Communists turned their system into their own religion).

But, a system without religion is not necessarily against it.

Different only as the situations dictate. Stalin and Hitler probably could have been best buddies... You Know. If they didn't hate each other.

Stalin had far more in common with Hitler than Lenin or Marx. Still, it's probably best they weren't friends.

My friend says the best way to break an awkward silence is the punch the other guy and run away...

I'm English, we need awkward silences like cold blooded animals need the sun, we must bask in them regularly.

LordofHats wrote:No, they're not the same thing. Under Stalin rule, all religion was officially illegal (he brought the Eastern Orthodox Church back between 1941 and 1945, but then it went out again). It wasn't a secular system it was atheist (I say this to make the distinction in my usage of these terms clear).

Point.

The Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin, and China under Maoism are good examples of the dangers of fundamentalist atheism and examples of why we should for the continuing sake of humanity consider atheism as subject to militant fundamentalism as any other faith choice.

While Stalin may have oppressed people because its what he did in the event of his oppression of religious people the tool to do so was most clearly the promotion of atheism. The oppression of people under the rhetoric of removing supposed oppression caused by religion is a good example of this. No religious choice need result in oppression, its always an political choice and almost always external to the core tenets of the doctrine, yet it can still occur. The very fact that in the 20th century, the first century when modern atheism really took root, it was part of a doctrinal bedrock of some of the most brutal regimes in human history, namely Soviet and Maoist Chinese communism; is evidence enough that allowing atheism to seperate itself from other faith choices and thereby evade even handed scrutiny of extremist factions within faith choices would be a mistake.

I think he's less a paragon pf philosophy and more a preserver of concept.

So, is the fact that you can be a fundamentalist atheist particularly relevant to the question has to why it's sometimes depicted as a religion?

@LordofHats : I don't think the first mover is compatible with the idea of a caring, loving, incarnating God that can judge and do miracles. It's closer to gnosticism, to a point...

Orlanth wrote:While Stalin may have oppressed people because its what he did in the event of his oppression of religious people the tool to do so was most clearly the promotion of atheism. The oppression of people under the rhetoric of removing supposed oppression caused by religion is a good example of this. No religious choice need result in oppression, its always an political choice and almost always external to the core tenets of the doctrine, yet it can still occur. The very fact that in the 20th century, the first century when modern atheism really took root, it was part of a doctrinal bedrock of some of the most brutal regimes in human history, namely Soviet and Maoist Chinese communism; is evidence enough that allowing atheism to seperate itself from other faith choices and thereby evade even handed scrutiny of extremist factions within faith choices would be a mistake.

Firstly, a tool to do so, one of many.

Secondly, should we watch out for Buddhist fundamentalists? Because Pol Pot wasn't the nicest of chaps.

Kovnik Obama wrote:So, is the fact that you can be a fundamentalist atheist particularly relevant to the question has to why it's sometimes depicted as a religion?

I don't think so. Any ideology, religious or otherwise, can be militant. I merely pointed out earlier a misuse of the term Evangelism and then we got here

Buddhist fundamentalists

Yes actually. The Buddhists have had some pretty militant sects in the past

@LordofHats : I don't think the first mover is compatible with the idea of a caring, loving, incarnating God that can judge and do miracles. It's closer to gnosticism, to a point...

I assume first mover is a concept of Aristotle or Aquinas. I'm a history man, not a philosopher I only know their historical significance, less their work in itself.

Oh cool. Well from an historical point of view, yes, he definitely had a role as a preserver. But the contemporary view on Aristotle's meaning holds that it wasn't well interpreted until the last century, even it's latest half. Religious influences in the choice of the translated terms are common, as well as advances in linguistics... The prime mover, I think the English term is, is basically Aristotle's idea of a God, or at least it holds to same role in the universe, it just lacks every human quality but 'intelligence'. The prime mover was the 'being' which initiated the universe and it's first movement, not by touching it, but by being so perfect that everything in the universe had a disposition to move toward it... So there was some vibes that pleased the religious mindset, that's true, but everything Aristotle did was to try to diminish the influence of metaphysical explanations on his science. His gods were the planets and the stars, and the Prime mover was his hypothesis of what made them all move in such a perfect (round) way.

And then Aquinas took all that, looked at the Bible, and decided to play at comparative 'science'.

dæl wrote:
Firstly, a tool to do so, one of many.

Secondly, should we watch out for Buddhist fundamentalists? Because Pol Pot wasn't the nicest of chaps.

Yes we should watch for all faith based fundamentalism, this is one reason why letting atheism escape definition as a faith group is unwise.

However Pol Pot to my knowledge didn't use Buddhism as a tool for oppression, didn't he kill lots of monks and close the temples in the name of 'progress' though?

Orlanth wrote:

dæl wrote:
Firstly, a tool to do so, one of many.

Secondly, should we watch out for Buddhist fundamentalists? Because Pol Pot wasn't the nicest of chaps.

Yes we should watch for all faith based fundamentalism, this is one reason why letting atheism escape definition as a faith group is unwise.

However Pol Pot to my knowledge didn't use Buddhism as a tool for oppression, didn't he kill lots of monks and close the temples in the name of 'progress' though?

But there is no faith to atheism, it is the absence of faith, and the belief in proof. I'm not saying it doesn't need to be watched, (well anti-theism should be watched, rather than atheism) but it's not a religion and shouldn't be treated as such.

Pol Pot killed anyone for pretty much any reason, hence how he managed to kill a quarter of the population of Cambodia. And I don't think he was that bothered about progress, what with killing off everyone intelligent.

Kovnik Obama wrote: Empirical rationality leads to atheism, or at least suspension of the resolution of the question. Hence why the historical figures of atheism are philosophers.

Technical atheism, which is to say weak atheism. Really it's closer to an amorphous sort of rationalism.

To get the discussion rolling elsewhere, I would suggest that rituals, in one form or another, would be a necessary component of a religion. I know the dictionary definition puts it as a 'often' but, at the very least, I would differentiate between people who believe in a religion (as in people who mostly acts according to the tenets of the religion) and people who say they believe in a religion. Believing something means you hold that thing to be true, and normally, such beliefs have a moral component, which implies action. Furthermore, beliefs, as all acts of consciousness, serves the fundamental role of orienting our active life of every moments.

Rituals as in 'acts done to please/not piss off/remain on the good side/respect God' would then also means all moral decisions done in accordance to that God. That would also differentiate the atheists.

Technical atheism, which is to say weak atheism. Really it's closer to an amorphous sort of rationalism.

Meh, you won't rustle my jimmies over that issue Amorphous describes well my non-faith.

Kovnik Obama wrote:To get the discussion rolling elsewhere, I would suggest that rituals, in one form or another, would be a necessary component of a religion. I know the dictionary definition puts it as a 'often' but, at the very least, I would differentiate between people who believe in a religion (as in people who mostly acts according to the tenets of the religion) and people who say they believe in a religion. Believing something means you hold that thing to be true, and normally, such beliefs have a moral component, which implies action. Furthermore, beliefs, as all acts of consciousness, serves the fundamental role of orienting our active life of every moments.

Rituals as in 'acts done to please/not piss off/remain on the good side/respect God' would then also means all moral decisions done in accordance to that God. That would also differentiate the atheists.

I suggest all atheists get the next 50 years off work to celebrate the Enlightenment. We can go round carrying some sort of light source or something.


Could there be an argument that society provides the doctrine for atheists, after all religion gets its morality from it's teachings, whereas atheists must build their moral compass from what they learn from society. After all we are not born with an understanding of ethics.

But atheism doesn't need a doctrine. Contrarily to what Michel Onfray says, we don't need chairs of atheology in our Universities.

As far as the morality by which atheist lives, yes, it's mostly 'empirical' morality. It could be argued that a large part of the morality of religions is also 'empirical', but only disguised has holy. The real contrast is that the moral filter of the atheist is whatever he was brought up with/chose to believe, while the religious filter is somewhat more definite (but still capable of changing, to a point)

Kovnik Obama wrote:The real contrast is that the moral filter of the atheist is whatever he was brought up with/chose to believe, while the religious filter is somewhat more definite (but still capable of changing, to a point)

Which like evolution can lead to some unforeseen and often strange consequences. Perhaps instead of teaching children religion we should be teaching them Utilitarianism.

Kovnik Obama wrote:Rituals as in 'acts done to please/not piss off/remain on the good side/respect God' would then also means all moral decisions done in accordance to that God. That would also differentiate the atheists.

One could suggest the scientific process by which an atheist examines the world and determines truth to be a ritual.

Though I reject ritual as necessary to religion (organized religion yes, all religion no). Take for example Daoism. It doesn't really have any rituals (of course its also debated whether Daoism is a religion or a philosophy). Buddhism (as taught by Buddha) inherently rejects ritual as a means of achieving enlightenment. Of course, a lot of Buddhists, mainly the stereotypical monks and nuns, have rituals anyway, but the typical Buddhist doesn't really have any.

Then of course is the problem that in the west we tend to think of theist religion as the only religion, when in fact theism is not the norm for religions in the world. Buddhists have no god (generally speaking), and Hindu's... Well. Brahman makes my head hurt so I won't go into it, but its debatable if Brahman constitutes a deity rather than a force or amorphous entity.

dæl wrote:Could there be an argument that society provides the doctrine for atheists, after all religion gets its morality from it's teachings, whereas atheists must build their moral compass from what they learn from society. After all we are not born with an understanding of ethics.

Humanism.

LordofHats wrote:Take for example Daoism. It doesn't really have any rituals (of course its also debated whether Daoism is a religion or a philosophy).

Taoists have meditation as a ritual, there are many festivals too.

I wouldn't consider meditation to be all that ritualistic. So someone sits down and thinks about the meaning of life. Most of us do that quite regularly.

LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't consider meditation to be all that ritualistic. So someone sits down and thinks about the meaning of life. Most of us do that quite regularly.

I was under the impression they used it to control chi. It seems they have other rituals too.

dæl wrote:Which like evolution can lead to some unforeseen and often strange consequences. Perhaps instead of teaching children religion we should be teaching them Utilitarianism.

Hell no. I don't want my doctor to chop me in parts to heal the 300 other patients. Best (I say) is normal exposure to all forms of belief, with no complete exclusions.


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LordofHats wrote:

Kovnik Obama wrote:Rituals as in 'acts done to please/not piss off/remain on the good side/respect God' would then also means all moral decisions done in accordance to that God. That would also differentiate the atheists.

One could suggest the scientific process by which an atheist examines the world and determines truth to be a ritual.

Hey hey I like that, I'll think about it.

Though I reject ritual as necessary to religion (organized religion yes, all religion no). Take for example Daoism. It doesn't really have any rituals (of course its also debated whether Daoism is a religion or a philosophy). Buddhism (as taught by Buddha) inherently rejects ritual as a means of achieving enlightenment. Of course, a lot of Buddhists, mainly the stereotypical monks and nuns, have rituals anyway, but the typical Buddhist doesn't really have any.

I don't know what Daoism is, honestly. Maybe it should be called a 'spirituality'? And 'meditating because that how I respect myself because my faith tells me to respect myself' would still fall under the type of small moral decisions we could include under 'religious rituals' as I mentioned. But I have no clue, is that what they do, and the reason they do it?