" The godless society is unpleasant and uninspired."
he says, never mind that most people would find much more inspiration and cultural development in increasingly Godless and humanistic Europe than in the bigoted, gay hating Bible Belt. Most normal people that is, rather than failed people who find life so horrible and frightening that they have to invent another mystical one to mystically be transported to. Perhaps withdrawal from the opiate of the masses is indeed unpleasant for the addicted, but for others, like me, the flowering of humanism and liberty is to be preferred.
Freedom of belief is all well and good but if they would stop mocking and persecuting the sane for their efforts to improve the human condition and further the cause of secular liberty fewer of us would need that fantasy world they find so comforting.
"So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional God brings the world meaning, joy, liberty, and wonder."
Can it be that only someone trapped in the fictional world we call "conservative" could read this without sadness, pity and yes, horror? I find precisely those things in a meaningless and hostile universe. I love the more because of love's futility, I treasure life more for it's evanescence and meaninglessness. I wonder more at the spectacular and vast and complex universe of reality than at the childish little one born of ignorance and legend -- and most of all I'm free without Gods as no man could be with their jealous tempers and wrathful deeds, their narrow minded priests, preachers and divine retributions trapping him in a world of guilt, fear, original sin and self-loathing.
"Thus although Ricky Gervais has publicly said that his film takes an atheist position, it appears that even he cannot imagine a happy, emotionally fulfilling world that does not acknowledge a good many fundamentally religious thoughts, and in particular Christian ones."
What a smug and loathsome statement and how offensive to other religions -- as though love compassion, emotional fulfillment and the rest of the fuzzy fulsome package belonged exclusively to any form of extant Christianity other than the ad hoc and ephemeral chimera he puts together for this argument -- as though history, it's wars, persecutions, tyrannies, oppressions and inquisitions could be disregarded as anomalous and never anywhere was there a Buddha or an atheist willing to lay down his life for his family or his country.
Regardless of how I loath this man's precious, smug and egotistical disdain for non-believers and non-Christians, I have to smile a bit at how he claims Gervais' movie "undercuts" his atheist position, because if even a fictional God is as good, as he says, as a real God; if objective reality is less important than the noble lie, then truthfulness, objectivity and indeed honesty are unnecessary and perhaps dangerous in his happy world of fiction, a conclusion which undercuts everything that, in his conceit, he attempts to prove.
8 comments:
Great post...
So many have taken the nonsensical premises of christianity for truth that arguing with them is like arguing with a door stop.
All we can hope to do is educate our kids in a rational, scientific approach to life: where evidence and demonstrability rule. Of course, this is where the religious attack secular society... and where we have to meet them.
At least a door stop has a use.
Capt.F~
You may well not remember me: one of likely many that you've attempted to rip limb from proverbial limb @ Swashzone many months ago. (Nice, thanks.)
I've been reading a bit here & want to say (if you'll even post this) that you're a pretty solid writer. Of course, I disagree w/ almost every facet of your political position, but you articulate yourself nicely, even with some occasional humor. I like that. (Not that you're asking, or even care about my opinion - considering our one & only exchange was so ill-humored.)
It's hard to miss, however, the cantankerous tone which is so pervasive in your writing. Makes me wonder why; not that you would engage in such a discussion w/ me, but still...why so angry?
"never anywhere was there a Buddha or an atheist willing to lay down his life for his family or his country."
Yes, sir. Perhaps Buddha was willing, perhaps an atheist somewhere has been called on for such. I think, though, in your effort to dismiss & mock Christians you've missed the point.
Jesus said that He came to give life, abundant life. It's a point that many Christians miss, and I miss too many times. Thankfully, I know from Whom my abundance & freedom comes; an unlimited, infinite source of Joy & Freedom there. Life is too short to live angry.
I wish you that Source of abundant life. That's all.
Why, you ask, am I so angry? Well really, I'm no more angry than Jesus - and no less. I think I answered your question anyway when I referenced the smug, condescending and not too aware attitude of Mr. Breitbart; thinking his belief makes him better than people with other beliefs and wider knowledge. It's ignorant, it's untrue and it's dishonest. Do we defend such things when someone paints a cross on them?
Part of the foundational pretense of such people is the attitude of doctrinal superiority, which Mr. B has an abundance of. Not being able to, not knowing enough to be able to and not brave enough to understand how I can derive a surpassing joy from a more informed contemplation of existence and the essential meaninglessness thereof, is a poor platform from which to look down on other people.
I think Jesus would agree, but then I think Jesus would disagree with the vast -- and I do mean vast -- majority of self-styled Christians.
And sorry to say, you're indulging in a bit of it in this backhanded complement. You know this and that which makes you fell happy and quells the fear and I don't and so I must be unhappy and angry. Are you happy with such a fallacy? Really?
You should only be so unhappy as I am -- although I admit that living in a world where ignorance and self-delusion is the norm and the source of comfort for most, is annoying to me, if sometimes amusing.
Don't confuse ripping up an argument with ripping up a person, by the way, or my loathing of the convoluted fallacy and historical misrepresentation and egotistical posturing that are the foundations of religious professions with some constitutional irritability or bit of undigested cheese.
I don't know any Christians. I never hear from or of any Christians, but then I do make a connection between the teachings that remain to us after the millennia of editing and redaction and forgery and being a Christian. I'm not denouncing that religion by laughing at people who think they are immortal for having said some word or eaten some toast. So when you say I'm mocking Christians and imply that it's done from some kind of meanness you're wrong. Jesus was not about telling people he was better because of what he believed without evidence and because it felt good. That's what Breitbart was doing, and sad to say, that's what you're doing.
Am I angry now? Hardly, but I do feel unassailable and I have spend many, many decades studying comparative religions and religious history with some inspiring teachers -- and listening to countless volunteer evangelists all puffed up with belief and self-congratulation like one of those poisonous Japanese fish. It makes me embarrassed to be part of one of the few remaining societies where such things are so common.
Have you read the Upanishads, the Pali canon, the Mahayana Sutras? I've read everything, from Aquinas to Eusebius to Thomas to Zeno to the Popol Vuh. I read the Shayt en Duad in Egyptian likely before you were born. I've studied with Zen masters. Are you offering me Sunday School as a source of abundant life?
There's more wisdom in the night sky, more majesty in the sea, more abundant life through the microscope then is dreamt of in the revival tents and the store-front tabernacles and in Sunday schools and temples. The whole meaning of our lives is in the infinite oblivion we all face. We do not play any part in this universe and no better argument for compassion for life exists, nor is any form of it more pure.
1) Capt.F~ "Don't confuse ripping up an argument with ripping up a person, by the way"
Oh, is that what this was?
Capt.F~ "Oh and by the way, smug little sue - deleting my post has earned you the same treatment here...Rule this bitch."
(http://swashzone.blogspot.com/2009/05/citizens-united-against-democracy.html?showComment=1243634781060#c5731610196070656443)
Quite a skewed view of ripping an argument rather than a person.
2)CF~ "You know this and that which makes you fell happy and quells the fear and I don't and so I must be unhappy and angry."
Um, no. Your interpretation, not mine. My observation was of the "cantankerous tone which is so pervasive in your writing."
I wasn't nearly as scholarly as you in my approach.
3)CF~ "bit of undigested cheese"
Ha! I thought those dismissing God liked to refer to this as 'bits of undigested beef.' Perhaps cheese is a better analogy - curdling & all...
4)CF~ "Jesus was not about telling people he was better because of what he believed without evidence and because it felt good...that's what you're doing."
Really?
Sus~ "I wish you that Source of abundant life. That's all."
5)CF~ "Are you offering me Sunday School as a source of abundant life?"
Come on, now, CF; you're too smart for that, & (believe it or not) so am I.
6)CF~ "There's more wisdom in the night sky, more majesty in the sea, more abundant life through the microscope then is dreamt of in the revival tents and the store-front tabernacles and in Sunday schools and temples"
You are correct. The Majesty of God's hand, all. (I'm not a Creationist, btw, if that's where you'd like to go next.)
7)CF~ "The whole meaning of our lives is in the infinite oblivion we all face."
'Beg to differ. My life means something. And so does yours.
The Creator God created me for a purpose, as He/She did you. Makes no difference to me (or to God) how much you've read/studied/pontificated/theorized.
It's simple, really. I know there's a Creator, & I am His/Her beloved. And so are you.
8)CF~ "I don't know any Christians. I never hear from or of any Christians"
Now you know one.
Now you've heard from one.
Maybe you don't have anyone in your life who prays for you...?
Now you do.
Ah - I shouldn't have called you a bitch, but it came after a long exchange, a great deal of arrogant put-downs and smug, dismissive and peremptory proclamations from you and a deletion of one of my posts. . . the word just sprang to my keyboard as if by magic. You do believe in magic.
There's a name for the technique of doing everything you can to irritate someone and then dismiss his arguments because he's been irritable, but I can't recall it. I'm sure it's been around the grade school playgrounds since some kid stole Plato's lunch money, bot of course it also "proves" Jesus was wrong, so it's a bit dangerous, nicht wahr?
I'm sorry, there really are no Christians Jesus would recognize as such and Jesus wasn't about what you think he was about, which in part was being another guy pissed off about self-important people with empty authority. Hardly a conservative even by today's contrived definition. I know this as firmly as you think you know anything and it's based on having read more history, amongst other things, than you have.
God has no hands, God never created anything, nothing has meaning, including God, except we give it such and so shall it ever be, in secula saeculorum, or L'olom Vo-ed if you prefer. You have no evidence to the contrary save the arguments from comfort, from authority, from tradition, from intimidation and from ignorance - sorry, that's just the way it is and your beliefs give you no right to dictate to people - as you seem to love doing.
Can you really differentiate your beliefs from a "will to power?" I can't.
Now, back to my ire at Breitbart for dismissing anyone who doesn't swallow the approved version of the approved mythology. Argumentum ad lapidem - throwing stones without actually being able to prove falsehood -- it's arrogance as are your assertions, which I find absolutely baseless and nugatory. Is that Christian humility and meekness?
"Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" asked Paul -- and of course, for all the Christians in all the times, the answer has always been yes and so it remains.
I won't be able to convince you that the unremitting 2000 year war against objectivity, logic, freedom, democracy, science and demonstrable fact has been the unchristian realization of "Christian faith" and it's will to power. So what's the point of this? Was Jesus a bully? A murderous persecutor of heretics? a lover of priests and temples? Did atheists or Jews burn Giordano Bruno alive or throw Galileo in jail? Did he tell you to persecute homosexuals - or anyone else?
The inquisition persists, albeit with a great deal more condescension and less bloodshed since the secularization of law and the end of Church appointed rulers 200 hundred odd years ago.
Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation and so there is no point in trying to argue with the deluded, is there? You'll just continue to heap soritical solecism upon fallacy and insist it gives you the power to direct others and restrict others and mock others, like Brother Breitbart does.
Remember, when trying to explain away quantum mechanics and relativity and chemistry and physics and the like, that I'm the one with the facts and you're the one who has to deny the facts or squirm around them with mystical incantations and threats of damnation. Faith is no more than a disrespect for truth and the people who tell it.
So how soon will you sell everything you own and go out to help the poor and sick, like Jesus said? Until then, we really have nothing further to talk about.
CF!
You are formidable in your attempts to intimidate. You deserve 'heaps' of credit (I like the image that conjures; thanks for letting me borrow). But, see, when you've nothing to be defensive about, there's no need to defend. So, I'll not be bothered by the bluster. And I'm not easily intimidated.
"So how soon will you sell everything you own and go out to help the poor and sick, like Jesus said?"
Ah, the 'rich young ruler.' Yes, he had quite a conundrum, didn't he? And Jesus knows just how to get at the heart of things, doesn't He? And He looked on the young man with love, didn't He? THAT's more the point, I think - Jesus' demeanor & graceful nature, as opposed to the young man's inability to follow through.
Thank Heaven that He accepts/loves/receives me (& you) in spite of my utter & exquisite lack of ability to do/be even a fraction of what He would have me do/be. That's what Grace is, my friend. (Praise Him.)
"Until then, we really have nothing further to talk about."
Sure, that's fine. But know this, my friend, you'll still have one in this world who prays for you.
Intimidate? what an inappropriate word!
As you've evidently retreated into another religious fugue, I will re-iterate: we have nothing further to talk about.
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