There are terrible essays, then there is this by J Maren. He says in an interview with a Ferguson, he (Ferguson) said atheism is a religious faith that he was brought up in. He went on to say it is as much a faith as Christianity or Islam. And finished by making the observation that
atheism, particularly in its militant forms, is really a very dangerous metaphysical framework for a society
And at this point, I have questions. Creeds such as Christianity or Islam have books, or tenets of beliefs, they often have founders and a lot of other requirements. Now what could be the similarities between atheism and Islam or Judaism? How, in its militant form, whatever that means, is it a danger to society? Do they kill believers?
What else had Ferguson to say?
I know I can’t achieve religious faith,” he went on, “but I do think we should go to church. We don’t have, I don’t think, an evolved ethical system. I don’t buy the idea that evolution alone gets us to be moral. It can modify behavior, but there’s just too much evidence that in the raw, when the constraints of civilization fall away, we behave in the most savage way to one another. I’m a big believer that with the inherited wisdom of a two-millennia old religion, we’ve got a pretty good framework to work with.
This is interesting. For thousands of years, our loving and merciful father forgot about his creation. Left men without a religion. Without morals and remembered to send this information much later and topped it up with a suicide or is it a deicide.
If Maren is right, we must believe that before Christianity there was no forgiveness. Maren tells us, in part
What we do know is that he thought Christianity was in many ways the soul of Western civilization, and that the uniquely Christian concept of forgiveness was utterly indispensable to its survival.
I don’t know about you, but I know I am have not
My fear is that the Church is not doing what so many of us on the outside want it to do, which is preaching its gospel, asserting its truths and its claims
wanted the church to do anything except that believers keep their faith private.
Maren then tells of an interview with D MUrray who
believes that Christianity is essential because secularists have been thus far totally incapable of creating an ethic of equality that matches the concept that all human beings are created in the image of God
Which is interesting from where I stand. It appears there has been a difference between belief and practice. But the less said about this the better. Reminds me of when Haitians revolted following the French declaration of Freedom, Liberty and Fraternity, there were locked in a revolt with the French for 12 years until the defeat of Napoleon’s army.
In his conclusion, Maren writes that the west and Christianity are tied at the hip. The west will not long survive without Christianity. The sooner you all start joining the church nearest to you, the longer the western civilization will last. It is all up to you.
Or maybe I am wrong.
It has been apparent for centuries; none of the old or the new religions is willing to implement reformist drives that offer adjustments paralleling the modern societies progressions. All that they so far have managed are temporary band-aid solutions. In the current climate of rising consciousness and rejection of outdated dogmatic religious structures, the new battleground arguments from the sides of the atheist are more than well come, helping to redefine previously unattainable positions and providing their uninspired “troops” with a new enemy to fight against.
In response to the ensuing chaos following the dismemberment of the religious structures worldwide, our psychological unbalanced and overburdened members of society are increasingly opting for a chemically induced solution (religion?) to escape from the increasing tightening grip of the inescapable political systems presented to us in diverse forms.
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Well, once again, a Christian infidel fails to speak truth to power! There is NO God but Allah and NO Holy Book of rules to follow but the Quran. Without this, regardless of how much this writer thinks he himself may be “moral” because he touts Christianity, he is an immoral, shameless, infidel worshiping false gods and will burn forever in Hell for this sin upon his death. HAAAAAA!!! Christians! HAAAAA! Fools!!!! They, themselves are atheists of another name but lack the faith and moral compass to see it. HAAAAAAA!! Poor, poor fools.
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Difference god, same delusions; the fires of hell! Do any of you religious have anything else other than threats of the fires of hell? i mean, does that still sell 2,000 years later?
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HAHAHAHA!!! Yet another infidel who doesn’t understand irony!!! HAHAHAHA!!! Hell awaits you, my infidelic friend! (Oh, make sure to bring burgers and hot dogs! I hear their stock down there is running low.) $Allahu Akabar$
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Cant they just kidnap atheists from heaven?
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Silly boy! Atheists don’t ever get to Heaven! They’re sent right to Hell by Allah with the hotdogs and burgers they have on them!
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Allah should choose a side
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Infidelic! I love it. Reminds me of “psychedelic”. Which your posts always inspire in me!
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Well, some people make a living off it
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I do! I do!
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Hahaha. Are you living in a church😀
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One day someone will believe you are a profit after Mo’s own heart
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Plus, Christianity doesn’t allow one to marry 9 year olds! Checkmate, Christianity!
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I know, right?! What a bunch of idjits those Christian heathens are!
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All destined for damnation
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Or marry many wives😀
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Of course what else is left to us, but to treat the current times with irony and cynicism if not with contempt. We just passed a century where the most well-known personalities had been Micky Mouse and Donald Duck! Now the surreal is increasingly “trumping” the real and instead of reality, we choose illusions as to the preferable mood of being.
However, in times of strife, and the jester started to produce repetitive banalities, it was his head that came off first.
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Allahu Akbar
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How very open-minded of you. Great example of the poisonous nature of religious exclusiveness. Keep talking; you’re creating atheists by the dozen.
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Don’t be misled mate.
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You heathen, you!
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yep, sounds like a typical Christian making up nonsense.
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It looks legit by quoting agnostics and atheists like the post you did recently where someone truncated a quote
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I guess he’s never read about the Crusades. And he must not pay much attention to the Israel/Palestine problems. .sigh. . .
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No, i doubt it. How is Nova Scotia? I have missed you bigly
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Things are good here, Mak! Hubby and I have both vaccines; we are back to looking after the grandchildren again. .. things are opening up and we are hiking Cape Split tomorrow. It is looking like you are keeping busy and fit; good on you!!
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With the Europe and North America are hoarding vaccines, yours truly may be vaccinated next year.
Hope you get to enjoy the hike. Talking of hiking, I hope to be sharing photos of my next hike next week so keep it here😀.
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We NEED ALL of the vaccines, Maka. Haven’t you heard that The Great Usurper, Joe “Lucifer” Biden is planning on bombing the Christian red states with weaponized vaccine pellets to FORCE them to ingest the number of the beast. Only the glorious return of Our Lord and Savior Donald Trump in August will foil his dastardly plan. Thus, we need the vaccines for Sleepy Joe’s bombing runs! Be patient, once the vaccinated populations have all dropped dead you in Africa can have the United States for yourselves.
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This is a good plan and makes sense. Been wondering why we don’t get vials here
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Yes, it’s a terrible essay, but worth reading just to laugh at it.
This is how conservatives see the world.
Much like Marx, he sees religion as the opiate of the masses. Unlike Marx, he thinks that’s a good thing.
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Such a narrow vision of the world must be limiting
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Not sure how you can bear to read this claptrap, Maka. Taking one for the team, lol.
This screed shows a total ignorance of 90% of human history, the pre-history that predates settled hierarchical societies. Early hunting and gathering bands certainly had morality…we are a communal species and by definition there will be rules. Well before any weird monotheism appeared.
However: “How, in its militant form, whatever that means, is it a danger to society? Do they kill believers?” one might note that there is a history of militant atheist politics which has been murderous. Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea, Maoist Cultural Revolutions, even the fiercely anti-clerical French Revolution did kill people.
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Was Pol Pot’s killing spree motivated by non belief or totalitarianism? Or the soviet gulag?
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Well, that is always the question. What motivates policy, action, etc. Are most of the actions taken, for example, during the Crusades (mentioned above) mostly about “religion” or about politics, power, economics/greed, nationalist/ethnic fervor? The soldiers inspired by sermons at the local cathedral might give a different answer than the kings and knights templar leaders who see an opportunity for more power and wealth.
One cannot deny that many totalitarian states and movements did move very strongly against religious institutions and leaders. In many cases, again, it is a grab for power and wealth-or, as in the case of China’s brutality against Islam in the far west or against Falun Gong, it is an attempt to either homogenize the country or to destroy a potentially competing power center. As with fundamentalist Christianity, the Chinese Communist Power is totalitarian and cannot bear competition.
But yes, Pol Pot’s killing spree was at least partly motivated by a fervid dislike of religion. But most of the people he killed were not killed for religious reasons at all. The French Revolutions’s anticlerical actions were more explicitly “atheistic”. heck, they tried to create a new calendar that eliminated the traditional AD and BC nomenclature.
The French Revolution is fascinating to me. I can see it as a warning about where the “Woke” movement could go if it becomes even more radicalized and sure of its own purity and virtue.
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This is a fairly balanced observation.
The case of the crusades is interesting. Pope Urban iii(?) promised absolution of all sins for anyone who would take arms to fight for holy land.
The CCP is trying to be omnipresent in the lives of the Chinese and I think that explains its repression of the Muslims in the far west. Heck, I think all religion in China is regulated.
The woke movement, because of its lack of coherence and opening too many battle fronts will not go far, I think.
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I don’t remember who said it, and I’ll paraphrase anyway, but something like “Militant Muslims blow up buildings. Militant Christians blow up clinics. Militant Atheists write books.”
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Well….the Cultural Revolutionaries under Mao did a little more than “write books”. Plus, the distinction is not always as clearcut. Stalin was a seminarian.
Off topic, but people who are members of neoconfederate groups in the United States are rightfully panned and vilified. Why, however, is it considered legitimate, even praiseworthy, to be a member of the “Portland Maoist Society”?
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On your first point, I said militant atheists. I didn’t say communist revolutionaries, and I certainly never said Maoism.
You may be confused by what I mean there, so I’ll clarify. “Militant atheism” is a term that is given to atheists in contemporary society to mean any atheist that actively works to educate people about the stupidity of religion, or toward church/state separation.
Obviously, this has not always been the case. But if you call Richard Dawkins a “militant atheist”, then the term has zero meaning.
Secondly, and this should be obvious but seemingly is not, atheism doesn’t tell anyone to revolution. It doesn’t inform any action at all. Atheism is disbelief in gods, period. Pointing out Russian or Communist atheism is merely a nod to the fact that atheists can be assholes. Yeah, we know. But they aren’t assholes because they are atheists, any more than they are assholes for not believing in unicorns. It is what they DO believe in that determines their actions. And really, the only reason Mao and Lenin wanted atheism was because religious people follow like drones and they wanted a revolution. Once the revolution was over, they created themselves as deities for worship.
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The earlier post SEEMED to imply that violence is not typically associated with those interested in “militantly promoting atheism”. I guess I have a broader definition of militant atheist. But can’t disagree with much of what else you say.
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I have seen this quote somewhere
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Some people never really graduated from cartoons, did they?
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Cartoons can be awesome. “Jesus and Mo” pretty much sums it up with few panels and a handful of words. 🙂
How are you doing, John? I follow a site called Insight Crime which focuses on Latin America, and it doesn’t sound too good in Brazil these days. 😦 Bolsonaro makes Trump look like a benevolent Democrat, and even at their worst our police don’t form gangs of paramilitary thugs that compete with the drug armies for control. Ugh. (And Covid. Which the Big Bad B sayu doesn’t really exist!!!!)
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I love Jesus and Mo. They are pretty well done and usually straight to the point.
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Doing OK — You fine?
The militias have been around for a while, but it’s really only in Rio, which is a failed state. I have no idea what can be done about that place. It’s a mess. And yeah, Bolsonaro is a cretin unto himself. I really try not to watch much domestic news. It’s too hard on the brain.
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I don’t think he watched any cartoons
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How dare you criticise terrible essays! I’m a terrible essay!
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I am sorry. You are an interesting essay.
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Have you ever felt like God stop speaking? Check out my most recent blog post which has been shared 100’s of times around the world here!
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O People of the Scripture. do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul [created at a command] from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers. And do not say, “Three”; desist – it is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allah as Disposer of affairs.
— Quran 4 (An-Nisa), ayat 171
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The reason why I do not believe in Allah has a lot to do with chapter 9 go and read chapter 9 and explain why he says to kill the infidel. God of the Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself. Not kill your neighbor so you will have a holy war! Do you research!
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And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, “O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah ?'” He will say, “Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen. I said not to them except what You commanded me – to worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. And I was a witness over them as long as I was among them; but when You took me up, You were the Observer over them, and You are, over all things, Witness. If You should punish them – indeed they are Your servants; but if You forgive them – indeed it is You who is the Exalted in Might, the Wise.
— Quran 5 (Al-Ma’ida), ayat 116-118[6]
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Was god of the bible involved in the book of Numbers? There is much smiting going on there.
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100’s of times, huh? If you were a famous blogger I might take your boast seriously, but as it is …
P.S. I noted that you only had SIX “likes” to this post. Hmmm.
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I like the part where he says it’s been shared around the world but he still feels it important to include the link.
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Austin I am not about to go on a wild goose chase.
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But to answer your question, first I will point out that you commit a fallacy of false dilemma. Whichever way someone answers your question, the existence of a god (s) is assumed to be a given.
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This Ferguson guy is quite elegant in his misrepresentation of complex ideas; he’s better than me, I’d submit – and I am the prince of lies.
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This made me laugh
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