I actually know very few preachers, priests, or rabbis who go out among the masses and attempt to actively convert people to their views. How many of them are publishing books declaring that the “other side” is wrong and should change their lives or their views? There are certainly militant theists, but they are militant if their actions make them miltant. Gould and, (probably) Sagan were not militant atheists. They expressed their views without making an issue that theists needed to stop believing in God.
Dawkins and Harris have not merely said that they see no reason why they should believe, they have published books declaring other people should not believe. Pope JP II and Pope Benny have both been pretty militant. Ian Paiseley is militant. Falwell and Wildom are militant. Pope Paul VI and Billy Graham, not so much.
I really don’t see the point of the outrage, here. An atheist notes that two specific atheists have expressed themselves militantly and this is supposed to be some sort of insult?
Now, I did not see the NYT editorial and that piece may have deserved your scorn, but I just do not see it in the case of Rosenbaum’s article.
Goodness gracious, dear! Missionaries? Faith-based initiatives? In God We Trust? Prayers before congress? Tax-free status? Those are only a few examples off the top of my head of things religion gets away with that, if proposed for atheism, would set off a second Civil war!
Somehow, just suggesting that people should not believe in religion is “militant,” whereas insisting everyone live according to the Old/New Testament isn’t?
What makes you say that it is not considered “militant” (or, at least, burdened seriously by bad logic), to make that claim. Yes, we get one or two posters a year who attempt to make the “morality all comes from God” argument, but I do not ever recall them getting any support from the rest of the board, atheist, theist, or otherwise.
Missionaries are considered militant. (Check out comments on JWs, LDS missionaries, or missionaries to the Third World on this board.) Few religious folks are actually missionaries.
Faith based initiatives were proposed by a guy who is considered militant (and a loon).
In God we Trust was originally proposed by militants and now is, unfortunately, simply accepted as status quo.
You could probably get a tax free status if you organized yourselves into a body of unbelievers, but since one of the biggest refrains I see on this board is that atheism is not a religion, that might be difficult to accomplish.
And neither Dawkins nor Harris are “just suggesting” anything. Sagan just suggested that we should probably abandon the god thing; these two gentlemen have made quite direct claims that religion is bad and should be eliminated.
I am not arguing that there is not unfair bias directed against non-believers in this country; I only note that using the term “militant” for the two specific persons named in the article to which the OP linked is not a sign of that bias or oppression.
Eve, it sounds to me like you have a warped view of what preachers, priests, and rabbis actually do. The examples you mention may be the ones that make themselves most noticed by atheists, but they do not constitute a respresentative sample. To say that the average minister, priest, or rabbi is militant in the same sense as Dawkins or Harris is ridiculous.
Now, now, Eve and Tom. You both have a point. There are clearly atheists and theists who are militant and atheists and theists who are non-militant. Dawkins strikes me as pretty militant, and your average preacher or rabbi is more or less non-militant, as Tom and Thudlow pointed out.
But a quick Google search shows about 56,200 hits for “militant atheist” and only about 39,460 combined hits for “militant christian”, “militant jew”, and “militant jewish”. So it seems that although there are undeniably many militant Christians and Jews, they are somewhat less likely to be labeled as such than an atheist. This matches my experience, and I suspect that Christians and Jews are unlikely to be referred to as militant unless they are somewhat more militant than Dawkins. (On the other hand, except for Marxists, there really aren’t very many atheists more militant than Dawkins.)
Just to put things in perspective, however, there are 138,000 hits for “militant muslim”. There, don’t you both feel better, now?
I’ve described myself as anti-theist before, with similiar reasoning behind it. It is one of the things that appealed to me about Buddhism, which can arguably be called anti-theist. Essentially, whether gods exist or not (hence my user name also), our purpose is separate from their existence. Like Apos mentioned with the old Norse gods, the last thing you are supposed to do is worship those guys. More like just stay out of their way. The gods got their reasons for sticking around. We have our reasons for sticking around. A correlation between the two is necessary. I’d say most secular humanist philosophies tend to be anti-theist also.
[sarcasm]Yeah, militant Christians are really rare, aren’t they?[/sarcasm]
It didn’t take much time for someone to make the “atheist = satanist” link. By the way, thanks ever so much for “allowing” us to oppose Christianity.
Who made that claim? I made the claim that in Christianity anti-theist falls under Theistic Satanism. That is the belief in the Christian God, but willing opposition to Him.
So if one believes that there is a god but, because the only written records we have of such a god leads one to believe that such a god is not worthy of worship, one is a Satanist? Where in the links already provided in this thread do you find evidence that anti-theists believe that Satan exists, let alone that they worship him?
Another misquote, I did say in Christainity, and (though the grammer is wrong):
Which means if you believe that you believe in the Christian God, and hence the Christian theology, but choose to actually oppose God, you side with Satan, siding with Satan has a name, Satanism.
Now Atheism OTOH in Christianity is ‘straddling the fence’, you are not opposing God nor accepting Him. There are consequences to this too but does not fall under Satanism.
From that link it references the Book of Revelation, which I’m pretty good at, and I’m sure I can find scripture to accommodate your question if you want, but it will have to wait till later.
Correction, that quote seems to be talking about revelations in the common sense, not as in the book. I did see numerous references to Revelation in looking at different satanic aspects and can pull one up for you if you want, but it does not appear in that entry.
Yes, well, people tend to lose much sense of subtlety in this debate. There seems to be a tendency to describe atheists as militant when one would not be so described who held the equivalent theistic position. OTOH, I recently read a post which claimed
Clearly, that isn’t the case, and what the poster should have written is
or something similar. What it is about this topic that causes people on both sides to state things in absolutes baffles this militantly anti-militant atheist.
This doesn’t necessarily mean what you’re saying it does. Militant Christians are often also called “fundamentalist”, “evangelical”, and “ultra-conservative”, or simply by their precise sect, all with the same meaning as “militant”. Jews have “ultra-orthodox”.
The fact that the construction “militant Christian” is less popular than “militant atheist” could just as easily mean that people choose other labels for that concept, not that they don’t recognize and condemn militant Christians.
