Mountaineer wrote:
Don't take this wrong guys, but your comments are even more general than those presented the article - which in my opinion was heavy on satire but you would have to probably be a Christian to get it fully. It would be helpful in understanding your beliefs, if you could specifically refute the points in the article rather than just load on the general poo-poo. You are sounding like MSNBC re. the Repubs or Fox re. the Dems.
A blessed Holy Week to all.
... M
No you're right, I'm completely aware I just made a blanket assertion without substantiating it at all... just didn't seem like it was worth taking the time to pick it apart. So it
was intended as satire you think? (btw, I was a Christian once upon a time, which perhaps isn't the same as being one now, but I am fairly well-educated when it comes to the bible and Christian doctrine)
murphy_p_t wrote:
Libertarian666 wrote:
Namely, that he is assuming that all the claims about Jesus made by Christianity are true.
Where do you find this assumption?
Even so, how does said assumption address the central point of the column, which is to dismantle the claim that all religions are the same...a claim which is not dependent upon the teachings of Christianity being true or false?
There were a number of tangential arguments sprinkled throughout that were atrociously fallacious. From the writing, it wasn't even clear to me that there was a central point. But if we take what you've said as the central point, even if we grant that the author succeeded in dismantling that claim, why is that significant? Is this some kind of strawman? I guess I can't speak on behalf of all atheists, but I certainly don't think that all religions are the same. There are
profound differences. My go-to heuristic for understanding a religion is to start by examining its origins through the lens of Nietzsche's dichotomy of master and slave moralities.
Onto the article:
Did the ancient Greeks ask Zeus to “forgive us as we forgive others”?
No, of course not. The ancient Greeks espoused a prototypical master morality, while Christianity is the prototypical slave morality.
And many other religious figures, we are told, have performed miracles every bit as impressive as those attributed to Jesus. Really?
Uh, yeah. Probably a lot more impressive actually. Has this guy even read texts from other traditions? Curing blind men or turning water into wine seems like child's play compared to Shiva DESTROYING THE UNIVERSE or Atlas HOLDING UP THE SKY. But Libertarian666's point stands: even if the stories of Jesus had him performing the most impressive miracles in all the land, who cares? I can write some shit down right now about my buddy's magic powers, stick it in a mason jar, and bury it. When they dig it up centuries later and a secularly commissioned committee of guys in funny hats cherry picks the bits they like, does the fact that I wrote it down and convinced a lot of people to believe it (and subsequently blow themselves up to honor the memory of my buddy) make it true?
Religions are a lot alike, they can’t all be true, so isn’t it probable that they are all false? By that kind of reasoning, you can prove not only that we don’t know who wrote Hamlet, but that it was never written at all.
Seriously, what the fuck? There's no logical connection between the first and second sentences.
How many other religions command their votaries to rejoice, be of good cheer, have no fear?
Again, totally irrelevant. But let's pick a fun example, from Aleister Crowley's The Book of the Law: "Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this. [...] Fear not at all; fear neither men nor Fates, nor gods, nor anything. Money fear not, nor laughter of the folk folly, nor any other power in heaven or upon the earth or under the earth. Nu is your refuge as Hadit your light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms."
Come to think of it, the atheists could strengthen their case somewhat by producing the prayers of other religions to show how much they resemble, or even surpass, Christian prayers. Why don’t they? Just asking. But I have my suspicions.
Could someone please explain what it means for the prayers of other religions to 'surpass' Christian prayers?
How can God be both good and omnipotent, when there is so much evil in the world?
This is only one of many contradictions in Christian metaphysics. He, like many other Christians, just labels it "The Problem of Evil" and deems it a profound mystery to be contemplated. So I guess that solves the problem?
To wit: how can I both love my (hypothetical future) wife and beat her constantly? I'm sure if I explain to the judge that this is "The Problem of Domestic Violence" and it collectively escapes our capacity as imperfect humans to understand, everyone will have their mind blown and I'll be released so I can contemplate this mystery further.
If Hitler and Stalin believed in Darwinism, that doesn’t count against Darwinism, because they “abused” it.
Godwin's law at work. Ok, so Hitler was a fan of eugenics (which actually we were doing in the US way before Hitler even knew who he was mad at) which isn't Darwinism per se, but rather a dubious normative extension thereof to the problem of social engineering. But is there any reputable source that suggests Stalin "believed in Darwinism"? This is my first legitimate question, seeing as I'm not an expert on Soviet history. But the entire purported ideological underpinning of Soviet Russia, communism, is about as antithetical to this interpretation of Darwinism as it gets.
And anyway, if we're going to invoke historical atrocities, we all know that religious groups have an equally (if not more) colorful record.
I take issue with Dawkins on a number of points, but one of his quips seems appropriate to conclude with: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
