Say what? Can you explain “It has been done before for neo-nazis and the KKK”? What was done, and who did it?
Sailboat
I think it’s stuff like saying things.
The idea was to avoid putting on myself the need to defend whatever fringe loon is hiding out there. I barely know the big 5 religions and some of the minor ones.
Suicide bombing is not something that any of the major religions asks of its members. Someone who does so is doing it as an idividual initiative, even if he starts from a misreading of an established religious text.
Again, defending every loon out there is beyond my abilities. I can make out a “establishment benchmark” on the spot, if I must. Let’s say that if I go around the world and ask 1000 random people, at least one person must “think he remembers hearing something about something like that”, even if he can’t quote the books for that religion.
Those are good. What I wouldn’t count as a religious war is, for example, the Iraqi insurgence. Religious as they might be, they are defending their land from foreign invasion.
Argumentativeness is welcome. It wouldn’t be a debate otherwise. In general, I try to narrow down my GD OPs as much as possible to prevent them from scattering into a dozen sub-conversations that talk over each other. Some arguments I am tired of hearing, some others I know I can’t refute but still want to discuss the issue around that particular ojection. Feel free to bring to the table whatever it is, though. We will try to find a way.
any flavour of nazism is banned throughout most of Europe. KKK has been seriously toned down in the US. Ditto for neo-nazis. They can meet and talk all they want (and not even) but they are very limited into what they can do on the street.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html
This is the article that prompted me to start this thread. It pretty much does or relates a call-to-arms for atheists to fight religion. I found it very curious.
I am not sure if one can argue that religion is pushing itself MORE into daily life in the USA. Arguably, there is LESS influence today than there was 100 years ago.
What APPEARS to be happening is that atheists are willing to fight more, and have the support of other organizations (specifically the ACLU) in their fight.
Specifically: The Pledge of Allegiance court battles, The fight for the Mt. Soledad Cross in San Diego, The Ten Commandments in various locations, Nativity scenes on public property.
Those existed for many years, but now it is athiests who are arguing that this is an intrusion in their life.
The hard core militant athiests provide a tempting target, as do the hard core militant protestant Christians. There was a grand debate on Firing Line in the 90s about the Religion with Pat Robertson & Bill Buckley squaring off against Ira Glasser, et al.
My memory of it included this paraphrase:
Pat Robertson: Ira, how much money do you raise using me as a bogeyman?
Ira Glasser: Surely not as much as you raise using me.
Much as progressive Christians are beginning to raise their voices so that society understands that there is more to the Christian church than the 700 club, so should (IMHO) some athiests raise their voices so that the general public might see that not all athiests want the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution removed from the public square as they both mention God.
The kooks on both sides hurt the silent majority.
And which wars, exactly, would those be?
Just a question, but was that “firm in his beliefs” remark intentionally annoying, or was that unintentional?
Tell me: if I’m black, and CNN has an all-white panel on a story about how a black family got harassed and death-threatened out of town, and the panel basically says that black people should shut up and stop supporting desegregation, what sort of “black” beliefs must I be firm in to find that sort of thing revolting?
The problem is that they DO discuss it, and in fact repeat these key claims all the time, it’s just that they hold themselves immune from criticism. That is, homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to have kids because they are sinful and it says so right in the Bible, but it’s rude to debate back and say that the Bible isn’t a very useful guide on morality.
Again, I want to see some evidence that atheists are charging into these peoples lives and demanding that they stop this. I see no evidence of that whatsoever.
I have to say, I find a lot your attitudes towards atheists to fall into the “why are you atheists so ANGRY” trope. As part of that trope, atheists are accused of all wanting religion attacked at every corner. I think this characterization is unfair. Even the most prominent atheists have very specific fields and purposes to their criticisms of religion. They aren’t just launching themselves at it out of the blue: they generally are responding directly to claims and charges made by others, political movements, or acting as commentators on large social issues.
It’s very EASY for people to misrepresent this, and misrepresent they do, quite liberally. I can’t tell you how many times any sort of public discussion that has in any way involved atheists turns quickly to bashing the usual anti-atheist straw mans out of the blue (often non-sequitur) or answering arguments that atheists never made.
I’m going to open myself up to what i’m sure will be a strong rebuttal and say “What about the Crusades?”.
Yes, I get that, and I agree. I think you are, however, conflating fault and cause. It is not Jodie Foster’s fault that John Lennon was assassinated; Jodie Foster was, however, a cause of the killing. She of course has no blame for it; as you say, the blame lies with the person who twisted reality.
What my point is, though, is more like saying that if Jodie Foster hadn’t existed, John Lennon wouldn’t have been killed. Obviously i’m not saying she should have been killed to prevent it (even if it could be predicted); the downsides would consierably overweigh the upsides. And we can’t even say that the assassin wouldn’t have fixated on some other star. In the case of religion, however, I believe that it not existing would have more upsides than down, and I think we can say more directly that religion is a cause of some of these horrible acts. Not to blame, but a cause.
I would argue (or debate, since this is, after all, Great Debates!) that absent of religion, another philosophy and identifying characteristic would be used to justify the various horrors of our history, present, and future.
The Crusades worked well towards trying to secure certain trade routes. The religious aspect helped rally the troops, but I don’t know if the leaders really cared as much about the holy land as they did about the real estate.
Hitler may have used the crooked cross and the faith of the Jews, but he was also happy going after other easily identifiable targets such as Gypsies and Communists.
Pol Pot did not need religion to justify his works to my knowledge.
My point is that while religion HAS been used to justify many an evil, the evil itself would exist whether or not we had religion. We would find other ways to make it us vs. them (cue blue eyes / brown eyes references or Zimbardo and his prisoners).
Since I am not sure I am capturing the full nuance of your question, I am going to go for unintentional. I just meant an atheist that doesn’t belong to the “indifferent” camp (which I believe is as much of a majority of the atheists as the indifferent theists are of the religious camp).
Well, this is not a theocracy. The book of one of the religious persuasions (even if they are a majority) should not be a guide to law. I my religion believes that only blonde Namibians should adopt, that’s fine. Government should protect my right to think so and everybody else’s right to not be subject to it.
I have said this already but I think it bears saying again: if a religious lobby is weighing too much on the governemnt, that is the government’s fault, not the religion.
My OP was not about atheism, it was about militance. If you feel misrepresented by the extremists among your ranks, welcome to my world. I often feel like putting a paper bag over my head when I hear some jerk dragging the name of God through the mud with their uneducated fundamentalist rants. What we gonna do?
Best we can do is just carry on with a moderate but non-yielding position argued from reason and tolerance. And hope for the best.
I think I have been fairly clear in differentiating extreme, militant, moderate and indifferent atheists when I post. If I have missed one, please accept my apologies. I have nothing against atheism or atheists. My problem is with militants and extremists on BOTH sides of the divide.
True, and one step beyond that, I would like to put some time limit to this. Even if we take the Crusades as religious war (which I think is not without merit, as much as a good argument can be made against it), that was a long time ago by a church that was not what it is today. We no longer judge Germany for the Holocaust, the USA for slavery, or Spain for the genocide of Native Americans. Let bygones be bygones.
As phrased, your statement pushes the idea that merely acknowledging that you are an atheist, and thus getting pissed when people attack and smear you, is like some sort of strongly held set of beliefs. I don’t even know what you mean by the “indifferent camp” thing. Am I in that camp or not? Does merely being mildly aware that you are not religious make you not indifferent? Does not speaking up when someone spits on you make you acceptable?
Uh, what? What does this have to do with anything I said or even your own OP? Yes, I agree with you: the particular supernatural beliefs of some people are not a good basis, on their own, for law. What does that have to do with the problem of how religious claims are both made and used to justify things, but are then turned around and declared sacred which was being discussed?
True Scotsman fallacy, and in fact, a pretty good example of the sort of goofy double standard that always gets applied in these sorts of discussions. Apparently, it’s simply impossible, by definition, for anything to be a religion’s fault. Of course, everything good that’s ever happened: that’s religion for you!
Again, this is an evasive, glancing reply. I asked you to provide some evidence of this supposed militancy. As far as I can tell, most of it seems to involve “talking” and “writing books” and “lobbying for more SoCaS” none of which seems particularly “militant” in any sense. The worst anyone seems to be able to come up with are some people being obnoxious on message boards.
I think in many cases, atheists who speak up are called militant merely because that’s a good and effective emotional slander not because it’s a particularly apt or well thought out criticism. And as I said, I think you are in part just playing into the idea that merely being publicly critical of religious claims is somehow intemperate or extreme.
Not the original poster, but the examples I personally think of in regards to atheist militancy typically revolve around removing religious symbols from the public square:
No pledge of allegiance
No prayer at graduation
Remove the Mt. Soledad Cross in San Diego
Remove the 10 Commandments from the Court House
Change the seal of the City of Los Angeles
If you mean the removal of the words “under God,” you should note that (1) they contradict the Constitution of the United States, and (2) weren’t in the original pledge to begin with.
This is not, AFAIK, strictly an atheist issue; I can imagine non-Christian students feeling bothered if they had to sit through a Christian prayer during their graduation ceremonies.
Again, separation of church and state.
Speaking as an atheist and an Angelino, I think this is sheer nitpickery.
In any event, I think the main reason some atheists are “militaristic” is simply because we’re tired of theists trying to force religion into the public sphere when it’s a direct violation of the laws of the land (cf: the Constitution). I think there’s a substantial difference between putting a monument to the Ten Commandments on your front lawn vs. the garden in front of the public courthouse.
To an extent I agree, Algher. I’m certainly not saying that without religion it’d all be gumdrops and puppydogs. There’s no doubt in my mind that there would still be wars, and disagreements, and all the fun things that people do because, well, we’re people.
However, I don’t think these things would happen to the same extent. Certainly there can be discrimination based on as little as eye colour; but war? Things like that don’t seem like all that huge reasons, while religion is definetly a huge reason. I don’t think we can say that people who do bad things because they’re religious would do those same bad things as athiests for some other reason. In some cases, yes, because people are jerks. But not all.
On preview; I don’t recall if graduation ceremonies are deemed to be public affairs, but court houses definetly aren’t. They’re an extension of law and government, and so it would violate the First Amendment.
God is referenced in both the Preamble and the Declaration. I am suprised that some “militant atheists” don’t want to have those two documents removed from the public square as well. In terms of Constitutionality, this is a separate Great Debate (“Separation of Church and State” does NOT appear in the Constitution. It is in a letter written to help explain the role of religion in America). However, it is amusing to note that many of these lawsuits are brought by self-identified atheists aka the Militant Atheists of this thread.
I am not sure what you mean by nit picking in regards to the LA Seal. Are you saying that I am nit picking or the atheists are nit picking?
Perhaps rather than being surprised, you could see this as evidence that “militant atheists” do not want to get rid of all references to God.
I hadn’t heard about this before, so I looked it up; what’s religious about the Seal of Los Angeles?
Separate note, then I will check in again tomorrow.
Those monuments have been in the public square for many years (Mt. Soledad Cross since the beginning of last century). Our “militant atheists” are trying to force them OUT. Religious militants are trying to keep them IN.
Every single one of those regards the idea that the government shouldn’t sponsor or endorse one particular religious view or iconography. These are all examples of SoCaS challenges, none of which are inherently atheist (in fact, as with virtually anything else, most likely atheists are a minority of those who support them), and not all of which outspoken atheists agree with a worthwhile pursuits.
However, I’d hesitate to call someone militant just because they don’t think the government should become or continue to be entangled with religion even if I do think they are sometimes, as it were, needlessly nitpicky.
It is also referenced in the Bible, so? None of these things are the Constitution.
Again, you’re just misrepresenting the nature and scope of the push for SoCaS as a principle. It isn’t a particularly difficult rhetorical move to pull, but it’s not very sporting in a debate, either.
Neither does “separation of powers” but I don’t hear you whining about people referencing that concept as being part of our Constitution. SoCaS is a summary description of what the protections of the 1st actually effectively entail in our jurisprudence. It’s perfectly legitimate, and very apt in describing the actual debated intent of the amendment as well as how its chief architect, Madison, thought it meant (in fact, his interpretation of SoCaS was even more strict than most SoCaS interpretations today, and he wasn’t even an atheist! How does THAT fit into your black/white worldview?)
Maddy O’Hair certainly was something of a militant atheist in her rhetoric… but she was 100% right in her court case. Do you disagree? Nuedow, on the other hand, is not an advocate of pushing the idea that people must be stopped from believing in god that I’m aware. So who else are you talking about? Are you even aware that the vast majority of SoCaS cases and jurisprudence was established by RELIGIOUS minorities suing, voted in by almost universally religious judges, and supported and generally agreed upon by, again, religious people?