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The most Atheist Atheist.

Mole

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I do think that many an Atheist is overconfident in their belief in their freedom of thought.

It's not freedom of thought. It is the testing of thought against reality. It is called the scientific method and has given us most of what we take for granted in the modern world.

The Ancient Greeks were the first to start using the scientific method, and when they applied the method to their religious beliefs, they found their supernatural beings were natural forces.

And it is the same today. Most of the things we attributed to supernatual beings, we have found to be the result of natural forces and processes.

What can I say? Just the other day two teachers in the USA were sacked because they refused to sign an agreement not to teach natural selection in class.

We now know with certainty that all of biology is based on natural selection and not on a supernatural being.

But not in the USA.
 

Qlip

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It's not freedom of thought.
...

If you read my post, I made that distinction. That's my concern, the people who don't know the distinction and the importance of recognizing it.
 

Avocado

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Atheism just means 'without God' as the other Magic Letter mentioned. Believing that there is no God and understanding the usefulness of the Scientific Method does *not* create a world view, it does not tell people how and why they should behave. It just gives tools to do whatever they feel is important more effectively. It's still all very subjective. I think it's highly dangerous to think otherwise. There's starting to be a feeling of 'One True Faith' in the Atheistic movement, regardless of professed denial of faith.

Hence my nihilism. I have tools but nothing to work on.
 

Avocado

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It's not freedom of thought. It is the testing of thought against reality. It is called the scientific method and has given us most of what we take for granted in the modern world.

The Ancient Greeks were the first to start using the scientific method, and when they applied the method to their religious beliefs, they found their supernatural beings were natural forces.

And it is the same today. Most of the things we attributed to supernatual beings, we have found to be the result of natural forces and processes.

What can I say? Just the other day two teachers in the USA were sacked because they refused to sign an agreement not to teach natural selection in class.

We now know with certainty that all of biology is based on natural selection and not on a supernatural being.

But not in the USA.

Stories like that scare me. Neil Degrasse tyson quoted some important guy from the ottoman empire saying ''mathematics is the philosophy of the devil'' and then everything going downhill.
 

Cygnus

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Bear with me, I'm nerding out on this right now...

I just watched this documentary, 'The Pervert's Guide to Ideology'. It attempts to expose and explain the frame work of ideology. The narrator had some very interesting things to say about Christianity.

He points out that the centerpiece of Christianity is the release from ideology. He doesn't claim that modern Christianity has no ideology, but he does claim that the message of Jesus on the Cross is the destruction of Judaic ideology.

He claims that every ideology has the idea of "the Big Other" that grants you *something* as long as you have an agreement, a contract. The ideological contract for Judaism is, which is illustrated in the story of Job is: "Do what you are told, though it may be unfathomable and you may suffer, you will be rewarded with being right."

Jesus was a symbolic negation of the Big Other, when he was made to suffer and not rewarded, thus him saying "My God, why have you forsaken me?". At this moment, the message is to no longer look to the requirements of the Big Other, because it does not exist. Instead look to the needs of community, which is a heavy theme in Christianity and the distinguishing characteristic of early Christianity.

The narrator says in this way, the early Christian was more Atheist than the modern Atheist born the Atheism. If I remember correctly, he also says that a Christian become Atheist is more Atheist than a born Atheist. Being more Atheist meaning being more free from ideology. The reason is, if you are born to being Atheist, you may never have the experience of seeing and breaking out of an ideology.

Your god, your 'Big Other', would be something else that you may not be capable of recognizing and are blinded to by the gift of being right, a function of the contract of your born to ideology. A Christian become Atheist knows that moment upon where there is no thing, where individual choice is the the only god, with no promise of gift or reward.


In other words, Jesus was a Communist.
And just like Communism, Christianity was mutilated from rebellion and humanitarianism into authoritarianism and misery.

Because in Rome, China and the USSR, huge revolutions attempted to start again with a clean, egalitarian slate. China had its cultural revolution. Rome saw its old statues of its old gods torn down.

But none of these revolutions ever managed to destroy the most vile outdated practice of all, and the one it had been most intended to destroy:
Hierarchy.

And it will be the hardest of all evils to destroy, for it spawns from the human’s natural fear of insecurity.
But there is no real security in this world, and those who try to be secure enslave themselves and others. So no one should be allowed to pursue security.


And as [MENTION=10984]Azure Flame[/MENTION] put it, the” Christians” and “Satanists” work together towards mankind’s advancement, the former by attempting to unite man under one set of beliefs and the other by hastening the apocalypse.
And if you join the “Christians” and serve a common, united cause, then you choose the side of security.
So the morally right thing to do would be to join the “Satanists.”
 

Mole

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Stories like that scare me. Neil Degrasse tyson quoted some important guy from the ottoman empire saying ''mathematics is the philosophy of the devil'' and then everything going downhill.

Yes, Islam gave us algebra but Islam turned away from discovery and learning and today Islam is a clear and present threat.
 

Qlip

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Yes, Islam gave us algebra but Islam turned away from discovery and learning and today Islam is a clear and present threat.

Ignorance is always bad. But the scientific progression is not always good. Of course, it all depends on what 'good' is exactly. No double-blind test can tell us that.

atomic-bomb.gif
 

Avocado

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Ignorance is always bad. But the scientific progression is not always good. Of course, it all depends on what 'good' is exactly. No double-blind test can tell us that.

atomic-bomb.gif

True, though everything has it's trade-offs.
 

Qlip

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True, though everything has it's trade-offs.

Hah, this is a very general statement and very difficult to discuss... but I have this dream that for every reaction there is an opposite and equally beneficial reaction, if things are done just right.
 

Magic Poriferan

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I don't remember if I posted in this thread once, but here are some thoughts...

What's being proposed here is a particular interpretation of Christianity. Everyone seems to have a different one. And from what I've studied of early Christian scholarship (more than I ever wanted to) it seems this was true all the way back to the beginning. In other words, I'm not convinced that we can generalize that early Christians were freer from ideology because I do not see compelling evidence that this truly was the fundamental point and early Christians understood it.

Regardless of what early Christians had in mind, that of course has little relevance to what modern Christians think. It has evolved to a great extent and in many different directions and I certainly don't believe that modern Christians have a belief that makes them more independent of ideology or without a Big Other.

So there's this idea that an apostate is more atheist because they have the experience of rejecting an ideology. This is not self-evident. There needs to be some serious arguments to validate the idea that rejecting one ideology makes your freer than not having it. I think of Ayn Rand, who fiercely rejected the ideology of the Soviets, and in doing so moved into a totally blind acceptance of a different ideology. I grant that an apostate may have more experience with applying critical thought to their world view than a born atheist, but in the conversation I've had with apostates it seems like some part of them still clings to religion in a way that I've not found lifelong atheists to do. One area where is pretty consistently comes up is arguing that god does not matter, that is, even god's existence is not fundamentally important and would not satisfy the toughest questions. I find life long atheists usually agree with this, while apostates usually do not.
 

Mole

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The Atheist and Rip Van Winkle

I don't remember if I posted in this thread once, but here are some thoughts...

What's being proposed here is a particular interpretation of Christianity. Everyone seems to have a different one. And from what I've studied of early Christian scholarship (more than I ever wanted to) it seems this was true all the way back to the beginning. In other words, I'm not convinced that we can generalize that early Christians were freer from ideology because I do not see compelling evidence that this truly was the fundamental point and early Christians understood it.

Regardless of what early Christians had in mind, that of course has little relevance to what modern Christians think. It has evolved to a great extent and in many different directions and I certainly don't believe that modern Christians have a belief that makes them more independent of ideology or without a Big Other.

So there's this idea that an apostate is more atheist because they have the experience of rejecting an ideology. This is not self-evident. There needs to be some serious arguments to validate the idea that rejecting one ideology makes your freer than not having it. I think of Ayn Rand, who fiercely rejected the ideology of the Soviets, and in doing so moved into a totally blind acceptance of a different ideology. I grant that an apostate may have more experience with applying critical thought to their world view than a born atheist, but in the conversation I've had with apostates it seems like some part of them still clings to religion in a way that I've not found lifelong atheists to do. One area where is pretty consistently comes up is arguing that god does not matter, that is, even god's existence is not fundamentally important and would not satisfy the toughest questions. I find life long atheists usually agree with this, while apostates usually do not.

The religion of Christianity was created not by ideology but by theology.

Theology has a very, very long history going right back 200,000 years to astrology, the first religion, and the ur-religion.

But quite recently the Western Enlightenment taught us critical thinking based on evidence and reason.

And critical thinking has the effect of waking us from our religious trance, of enlightening us.

So the modern atheist has just woken from a 200,000 year religious trance.

Indeed we might say the modern atheist is a Rip Van Winkle.
 

Kullervo

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I am the most athiestic person on the forum. I support any measures necessary to avoid living in a Islamic theocracy, or a god-king worshipping Communist state.

A liberal atheist is a contradiction in terms, practically speaking. Christians have more to gain from immigration than atheists do.
 

Magic Poriferan

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I am the most athiestic person on the forum. I support any measures necessary to avoid living in a Islamic theocracy, or a god-king worshipping Communist state.

A liberal atheist is a contradiction in terms, practically speaking. Christians have more to gain from immigration than atheists do.


tumblr_m0m0v7F0m21qc6c7xo1_500.gif
 

Mole

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I am the most athiestic person on the forum.

While you are silently musing you might like to consider that, what we worship we become.

So I would ask you, what do you worship, or what do you secretly worship, and what are you becoming?

What does our most atheist atheist worship?
 

Kullervo

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While you are silently musing you might like to consider that, what we worship we become.

So I would ask you, what do you worship, or what do you secretly worship, and what are you becoming?

What does our most atheist atheist worship?

I worship gorgeous women. However, the last time I looked I still had a penis.
 

Mole

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Animus and Anima

I worship gorgeous women. However, the last time I looked I still had a penis.

Let us continue musing: you worship gorgeous women, but you are not physically becoming a woman. So it is your psyche that is becoming your anima.

Naturally you are physically male and so your psyche has a male animus. But in order to relate to women your psyche needs to develop your anima.

So very cleverly your psyche gets you to worship gorgeous women.
 

Kullervo

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Let us continue musing: you worship gorgeous women, but you are not physically becoming a woman. So it is your psyche that is becoming your anima.

Naturally you are physically male and so your psyche has a male animus. But in order to relate to women your psyche needs to develop your anima.

So very cleverly your psyche gets you to worship gorgeous women.

You wouldn't know a joke if it danced naked in front of you.

And in the off chance it did, you wouldn't know what to do, either.
 
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