I’m construing your first sentence as meaning “there are people in a position of power who use it to (among other things) discourage Christianity.” I’d like confirmation of that reading.
That said, I for one would accept as a valid statement of your perceptions what such situation is and how you construe it as, to paraphrase, using a position of power to discourage Christianity.
I think that I’ve made a clear distinction between Christians speaking out in support of their beliefs and the need for others to share those beliefs, which I encourage and indeed participate in, and Christians seeking to impose expressions of their belief on the electorate at large – by which I mean things like posting the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, public school coaches expecting their team to join in “voluntary” prayer (where social coercion, teens being what they are, amounts to compulsion), publicly funded crêches to commemorate Christmas, and so on.
I encourage the posting of Jesus’s Summary of the Law where everybody can read it – at the private expense of a Christian philanthropist. I encourage any group of people who wish to pray to band together to do so. I encourage the downtown church with a public lawn, or the church lying along the main highway, to put up a crêche to remind people of why there’s a holiday named Christmas. But I don’t think my rights include expecting Joe Atheist or Pauline Pagan to underwrite those expressions of my beliefs with their taxes.
AZ Cowboy, I had a hunch your “Clause” was a typo – I simply used it as a jumping-off point to express a pet peeve – Old St. Nick is Santa Claus, no final -e, and Tim Allen’s movie has not helped extirpating that common mispelling one little bit!! No hard feelings?
Bryan, the Four Letter Name is yod-he-vau-he, or YHWH in English letters. YWHY and YHWY are probably radio stations in Yakutsk or Yugoslavia!
ouisey, there have been (at least) two defintions of atheism posted in this thread:
As opposed to:
And I don’t subscribe to MaxTheVool’s version. I am a weak atheist or a strict agnostic, depending on the definitions you apply. If you read the first four or five short paragraphs under each link, you will get my drift.
While I acknowledge that it is possible that God exists, and that it is possible that proving the existence of God is insoluble, I’m not “undecided about the issue”. I simply lack a belief in God. Which goes back to my “choice” comments. I didn’t choose to not believe in God.
Now, depending on how you define God, I suppose you could get me to admit I’m undecided if there is an ultimate “creator”. But that just breaks down at the limits. In that sense, I’m agnostic.
Which I think goes to the contentious point in Lilairen’s post, in that folks like myself don’t dismiss the concept of gods, it is just that we haven’t seen evidence that compels a belief. I hold no expectation that learning Norse mythology would compel belief, but I have no opinion on it, since I’ve never been exposed to it.
The point is, it is quite a stretch to suggest that I would proselytize a belief I don’t have. I could really care less if anyone else holds my views. I’m not trying to start a church, raise money, or seek eternal life. I don’t have an agenda. Even with the best of intentions, I have no reason to try and save your eternal soul. Seems to be a waste of time and effort to me.
PolyCarp, certainly no hard feelings. But I still feel like you haven’t addressed my question, which perhaps I can get at most directly by asking you this simple question: Could you choose to not believe in God?
Sorry! Unintentional lack of addressing your point.
Yeah, I could so choose – working from my definition.
For me, “believing in God” means putting my trust in Him. And the God in whom I believe is such a deity that I feel confident in putting my trust in Him. I could, of course, easily have formed the concept which many people have of a judgmental, hostile God of the sort parodied in the recent hilarious line I heard of what God will say at the Last Judgment: “Thou art the weakest link; goodbye!”
And I have nothing but respect for those on the opposite side of the Evidence Game that we regularly play over in GD – because I can see that the evidence of the common-consent physical Universe can be understood by the theist to demonstrate the existence and goodness of God but can as easily, by a different weighting of the evidence, demonstrate to the non-believer quite the opposite. So, yes, by giving different weight to the evidence that bolsters my faith, I could choose not to give intellectual assent to a proposition regarding the existence of such a god.
In point of fact, though, I don’t so choose. I’m aware of an element of this being that I am one of those people with a desire to believe; I try mightily to offset this in attempting objective reason about the question. I don’t always succeed.
Most atheists I know are almost entirely engaged in rejecting the concept of the god of Abraham, as if that is the only conceptualisation of the divine that exists.
To be specific, it’s been pointed out by an Asatruar of my acquaintance that the majority of people holding atheist positions are not formulating arguments that address his faith at all; they are rejecting the God of the Book. They may not believe in Thor either, but they don’t care about not believing in Thor. They care about not believing in Hashem/God/Allah. There’s much more invested in it.
Personally, I find that ironic. But I’m moderately familiar with being confronted with evangelical atheists who have arguments against God who can’t seem to deal with a theist who doesn’t accept the axioms they’re arguing against.
If one supposes that the affirmative rejection of a proposition or concept is done in response to a stimulus, there’s nothing mysterious or even particularly ironic about it.
F’rinstance: I don’t believe that teams that use a designated hitter instead of having the pitcher taking his place in the batting lineup are really playing baseball. However, in the absence a stimulus relevant to this belief (or lack thereof), such as, my neighbor inviting me to discuss the Angels’ performance in the recently-completed baseball season, I have no motivation to spend much time and energy on it.
Similarly, the atheists you encounter, Lilairen are likely not very often presented with the stimulus that would trigger the not-believing-in-Thor response. Feel free to post evidence in contradiction of this.
Meanwhile, consider the following quote: “Actually, we’re both atheists. I simply believe in one less god than you.”
BTW, the above is not my quote, nor does it succinctly reflect my spiritual inclinations.
Of course most athiests you know reject the christian god, we live in a christian country where some christians feel the need to make everyone worship as they themselves do.
how many times have you heard athiests rejecting Buddism? probably just as often as you have heard Buddists preaching on street corners.
Trust me, I was less than happy with the taliban before 9/11, I mean how do you feel about a government that treats all women as property and allows for female circumcisions to be performed at the whim of husband or father and does so in the name of religeon?
the only difference is the taliban wasn’t trying to gain power or push their beliefs here in america so naturally you dont hear about it much and you dont hear people speaking against it as much.
I don’t believe that christianity is responsible for the horrors or minor irritations that are attributed to it. the reliegeon does seem to have a rather strong appeal to people who want to force their own beliefs onto others though and its these lunatics that drive people away in droves.
if you want people to stop thinking so poorly about christianity then as someone suggested earlier, book to airtime following the 700 club and call those biggots out, pass out fliers at anti abortion rallies explaining that there are indeed a few rational christians wandrering around.
Well, many atheists don’t believe in Thor not because they reject the Norse legends as counter to logic…
They reject Thor because Thor is stupid. Big blond guy swinging his thunder-hammer? Puh-leeze, sell it to Midnight Gay Video Productions, inc.
As a stone-cold athest, myself (culturally Jewish), I don’t care enough about not believing in God to actually bother strangers with that view. I’ve yet to meet an atheist (of any culture) that behaved in such a manner.
I don’t buy into Buddhism or Shinto, either, but if we’re gonna talk atheism, we may as well be dismissive of Judeo-Christian theism, since most of the posters here will be familiar with it. I could discuss my unwillingness to worship Townhouzia, the diety of the Keebler Elves, but it could be construed as a tad irrelevant.
I am grateful that there are obstacles being placed in the way of getting Christian faith into the world. I love living in a country where all faiths are, theoretically, treated with equal respect. I want to make sure that continues, and that no one religion is given a more prominent place in our political landscape than any other.
Unfortunately, it’s too late for that, and the Christian church has insidiously inserted itself into all apects of culture and politics, to the point where any resistance to their efforts at dominionism is seen as repressive. What’s needed now is a return to the original values that this country was founded on; religious freedom. Including freedom from religion, for those who wish to be free from it.
Saying these things isn’t an attempt to shut down the debate; it’s stating my position on the debate. I don’t want to have a state religion, implied or otherwise; it’s simply not what this country is all about.
If you think people are being discouraged from going to church, you should first examine the churches and see if they’re to blame for the discouragement. Atheists don’t have to do much to cast religions in a bad light. When you’ve got folks like Falwell and Robertson and Bin Laden as your most visible spokespeople, all they’ve got to do is stand back and let them speak. People don’t respond well to hatred and bigotry, and that, I think, is what’s making religion less and less appealing to the masses.
On the other hand, if more churches would put more effort into manifesting the love that they claim to preach, and reached out to their communities to help the people most in need, you might find that there would be a religious revival of massive proportions. Just a thought, really.
Like probably most atheists, I’ve never been hassled on the street or by people knocking on the door of my home by people who feel the need to tell me I need to worship Thor. There’s aren’t organizations in my country that feel the need to reject the extremely well-established theory of evolution in public schools and teach the idea that humanity comes from ash and elm trees. As far as I know, no one wants to use my tax money to support faith-in-Odin based charities.
It doesn’t take much thought to realize why atheists don’t feel much need talk about how Thor doesn’t exist. Belief in the Norse myth ain’t the problem.
Just to clarify, I did not mean to disagree with the definition given by Max, and used “primarily” to bring this out. My point was that even if one recognizes the distinction between an abscence of belief and a belief of abscence, as a practical matter there will be a great degree of correlation between the two. And if you get to the point where people have an abscence of belief, a belief in abscence is not that far off.
In that context, my point was that having the prevailing social mores include a disaproval of any form of prosletizing would help bring about a situation much closer to atheism than religion, and is therefore more palatable to atheists than to many religious people. To the extent that accepted social norms are shaped by competing needs of the people, this distinction is significant.
IzzyR, but I doubt most religious people care to be proselytized to someone else’s religion. Atheism has no incentive for generating converts. Most religions include axioms for proselytizing, as it allows the beliefs to replicate, achieve critical mass, and survive. Without such axioms, religion may well be relegated to the history books.
Buddhism had its evangelical period as well, usually through the efforts of influential converts, such as Emperor [url=“http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/budhist/asoka.htm”]Ashoka (268-233 BCE), the founder of the Mauryan dynasty in India, who built stupas all over India and sent missionaries to foreign countries. Buddhism was also spread through the work of itinerant monks, like the monk Bodhidharma (470-543 CE) who spread Zen Buddhism through China.
Moreover, the same lust for worldly power that one finds in western religions can be found in eastern religions as well. The Buddhist clergy gained such a bad reputation for corruption as the state religion of the Koryo dynasty in Korea (918-1392) that Yi T’ae Jo, the general who overthrew the Koryo and established the Chosun dynasty, stripped the Buddhist establishment of its wealth and position and closed down its temples.
The Boy Scouts are not “promoting” morality with their attacks on gay people, they are promoting bigotry and evil, and throwing out the kids who need an accepting, caring organization, which is what the Scouts bill themselves as, the most. Some of the best, most active kids in my Troop, including 2/3 of my core leadership team when I was SPL, all turned out to be gay. There is nothing incompatible with being gay and being a Boy Scout – not one damn thing, except for in the minds of those supporting the bigotry that has taken root through the hard-right turn the organization has taken in the last 9 to 10 years.
I respect the BSA’s right to set its own standards for membership – it is, after all, a private institution – but this particular rule is vomitous bullshit, and untenable by anyone with a shred of dignity or decency. It’s bigotry, enshrined and codified, and set up idolatrously as some sort of standard “morality.”
I should also add that when I say “prosletyzing” I was not limiting it to accosting (or harrassing) total strangers on the street. The same basic principle would apply to handing down religious traditions to one’s children and family. Having religious messages sent through the public schools, government, and mass media would fall (loosely) into that category.
Izzy, if you try spelling it “proselytize” and look it up in the dictionary, I think you’ll agree that the harrassment on the street and religious messages sent through public schools, government, and mass media definitely fit that category.
But the passing down of religious beliefs to ones children would be better described as indoctrination (unless they happen to have other religious views from birth).
Not sure what you mean by this. My point was that people might want public schools (& media & government) to reflect some religion because of the influence on their own children, as opposed to being solely interested in influencing the children of others. (It would have that effect as well, but people’s attitudes are shaped - at least in part - by the consideration I’ve described). Makes no difference what word is used for this.
