The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: We can save atheism from the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins ...

Re: We can save atheism from the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins ...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Monday, November 30 2015, 19:26:58 (UTC)
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...this is a disturbing article. I agree with his critiques of Hitchens and the rest of course, but I don't think there is anything to be gained by "understanding people's religious beliefs", except to debunk them.

...Your peculiar superstitions may well be very pleasing to you, even give your life its core meaning and value, but you happen to vote so as to please or reflect your superstitions, and this planet and the people and animals on it can no longer afford to have our lives ruled by your superstitions. It was the mistake of the Fundamentalists that they entered politics and tried to rule the rest of us based on their superstitions...it was THEIR mistake.,.,we are simply reacting as any sane person would, by at least showing that your "beliefs" are based on nonsense...stay in your church and believe whatever you want...but come into the voting booth with your god in tow and the rest of us have problems...after all, we rejected your god in our lives, so why should we have to accept him on a ballot?

...What Hitchens and the rest do is make the ridiculousness of Islam, and it is as ridiculous as the rest, the REASON Muslims are fighting back. It is assumed that if not for Islam, the people in the MidEast would tolerate whatever we do to them. THAT is the error here, not slamming religion.

..it is as absurd as claiming the only reason we declared war on Japan was because of our Christian religion. It's true, we happened to be a mostly Christian nation...and Christian nations have gone to war many times...but our religion was not the reason this time...this time we declared war because we had been attacked.

...the dishonesty in Hitchens' and the rest is that they completely ignore or refuse to credit ANY possible reason Muslims have for wanting to fight us, except to point to the silliness of Islam...a religion of which they are almost proud to be totally ignorant of.

But the criticism that the new atheism goes too far and attacking religion is bogus and misplaced. One thing these discussions never dwell on or even mention is that religion is forced onto young children on pain of serious punishment or parental fury or neglect. The way in which people "get" their religion has to be examined as much as what those religions preach.

Of course there will always be adults who seek out or jump from religion to religion...they are "seeking"...let them. But hardly any three year-old is seeking religion...or "something to believe in".

Fortunately no one punishes a child for not believing in Goldilocks or The Three Pigs...but you CAN get punished for classing Jonah and the Whale as just another fairy tale....

If it were left to a person's adult years to select a religion we might think twice about "attacking" religion....but that isn't how it happens...children are FORCED into their parents' religion (Dawkins does mention this)...and so liberating them might also require some force, but force in the form of argument and even ridicule....

...it is necessary work and I will always be grateful to Hitchens and the rest for their attacks on religion and wish there was more....but it is not Islam which is the problem where "terror" is concerned....Islam has been around for 1400 years yet never mounted the kinds of counter-attacks it has in the past few years...that's because Muslim nations were never ATTACKED by Christians as they have been in these same few years....never like this.

...a scientific mind would understand what is really at play here and not slam a Muslim, who fights for his home and family, for his religion, as if that was the only reason he took offense, and then action, when his family and nation is raped.

..nothing in Christianity told those blow-dried kids in "Red Dawn" to go underground and murder Russian paratroopers who'd landed in Idaho...they did it because their country had been invaded and their liberty and families, were at risk. They could have been of any religion, even their religion of "Peace" and "Turn the Cheek", and they STILL would have fought...just like any Muslim or Jew or Buddhist.



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