My feeling is that we must use the global appeal of pop/rock music to help get our message across. Although my songs get a lot of ‘hits’ I’m seeking to promote them beyond myspace. Can anyone help?
“Does anyone think or claim that Israel is trying to take over any Arab country? Or that Israel aspires to destroy Arabs, Muslims, or any non-Jews generally? That’s a laughable suggestion, isn’t it?”
No.
Israel did take over an Arab country [Palestine] by war, & by the terrorism that is inevitable in war, and has destroyed, and is continuing to destroy [on the West Bank and in Lebanon and elsewhere] those Arabs, Muslims and non-Jews who object to these actions.
Defend this by all means, but don’t degrade the Enlightenment commitment to truth by claiming that it is not the case.
Your New Humanism is disgusting. Just when atheists such as Richard Dawkins have boldly pointed out the harmful effects of religion on humans and human societies, you want to wimpify us and blur our distinction from theists by proposing that we not even have a name to give us a way of identifying and distinguishing ourselves.
And what’s wrong with having a name to call ourselves? I affirm myself as an atheist because statements that do not have any evidence either for or against them do not have a 50% probability of being true. Their probability is far, far less than 50%. Just postulate a given type of object existing at a certain location when you have no evidence either for or against, go to that location, and see how often yor are right!
However, it you really think a God esisting has an equal probability of being true or false, then call yourself an agnostic for that is what you are. And if humanist or secularist is the best description of your position, call yourself that.
Saying that your New Humanism has gotten beyond contradiction is replacing the rational approach to reality with mysticism for the mystics claim to perceive reality as one, subsuming both is and is not, large and small, etc. If that is your position, you are not even humanists but mystics
You say that if someone asks what your positions is, just ask them why they want to know. I want to know your position, for instance, on stem cell research because I want to know if you are an ally or opponent in lobbying for a type of medical research that can be of great benefit to both of us and the rest of humanity as well.
Your advocating that we not distinguish ourselves with a name or mak negative statements about other views gains its semblance of plausibility from its being brought forward in a culture that attrbutes magical power to “positive thinking.” Just look at the popular appeal of Norman Vincent Peale and his THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING.
And truth is not merely a matter of narative. A statement is true if and only if it corresponds to reality. If the statement “There are 15 apples on the tree” is true, it is true because there actually are 15 apples on the tree, not 10 or 20.
Humanism that is actually mysticism is not humanism.
“Does anyone think or claim that Israel is trying to take over any Arab country? Or that Israel aspires to destroy Arabs, Muslims, or any non-Jews generally? That’s a laughable suggestion, isn’t it?”
well know, it is the standard tactic of “moral equivalence”. You see, Pope and bin Laden are just the same, also Bush and Hitler.
Muslims all over the world (Ahamdinejad’s Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan, and so on) are obsessed with destroying the Israeli state for the
religious reason that it was once controlled by Islam.
That is was part of dar-el-Islam ( as opposed to “dar-el-harb”, “the land of war” which has to be conquered in the future through Jihad and brought to “dar-el-islam”)
In their own words :
On August 19, 2005, Palestinian Clerics Association Deputy Director Sheikh Muhammad Ali was interviewed by Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV :
Sheikh Muhammad Ali: “Any land, any piece of land, over which flies the banner of ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger,’ and which at a certain point belonged to the Muslims – as far as we are concerned, plundering and occupying such land is forbidden, and it is the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate this land, wherever it may be. True, many precious Muslim lands are under occupation today. They have been forgotten, and Andalusia [Spain] is one example. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the Muslims to liberate them. But since we are discussing Palestine, Gaza, and so on, let us focus on this precious piece of Muslim land, especially since Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque belong to all Muslims, and have become a part of the Muslim faith…
Messers or Msss Sider and Torontow: Please for homework go and read Jonathan Swift’s Meditation on a Broomstick. Then re-read the article with your tongue planted in your cheek. It will all make snese then.
BASRA, Iraq — Women in Basra have become the targets of a violent campaign by religious extremists, who leave more than 15 female bodies scattered around the city each month, police officers say.
Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf, the commander of Basra’s police, said Thursday that self-styled enforcers of religious law threatened, beat and sometimes shot women who they believed weren’t sufficiently Muslim.
He had no regrets about his impending death: “There is nothing stronger than my love for God and seeking martyrdom,” he said brightly…
“These are what I call the ‘violent intellectuals’,” said Professor Bruce Hoffman.“They are well educated and highly motivated, two important attributes that ensured success in their education and then business and which will also be useful in ensuring their success as suicide bombers.”
if you need additonal stimulus to do it read first :
Deutsche Presse Agentur
AMSTERDAM (dpa) – The Dutch intelligence and security service AIVD published a report on Tuesday indicating the number of radical Dutch Muslims is on the rise.
The reports speaks about an “extremely intolerant and anti-democratic” movement [..] The chance that violence will eventually be used is not to be excluded.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, immigration, civil liberties, and the fate of the West.–November 2007
Reason: Are you concerned about the efficacy of your message? Do you worry that, at least in the short term, you have exacerbated the miserable treatment of women under much of mainstream Islam by prompting moderate Muslims to turn inward to their religion because they really don’t want to follow the path of the apostate
Hirsi Ali: Young men now want to become terrorists in response to something I’ve written, that sort of thing? I don’t think that is the case. If we continue that reasoning, we’ll never scrutinize anything. Can we ever write? Can we ever criticize anything?
I do not think we serve the cause of rationality by adopting the tactics of party politics. I feel that the atmosphere of current theist-atheist controversies is poisoned. I have strongly opposed all dogmatism and all institutionalized religion; yet the moment I mention spiritual values, my atheist friends see that as a betrayal. If I say that great thinkers, Schleiermacher say or Whitehead, have used the term religion in a special sense that we have to take into consideration, that is high treason. I say that the atoms of Lucretius needed something, not from outside but from within, to make them tumble; if I ask myself questions about that something, it is as if I had started preaching the Nicene Creed.
All ism is constricting and if we continue to carry out our polemics as we have been doing, we will end up with an atheistic culture as inimical to free thinking as the worst of theocratical regimes.
Thanks to Paul Kurtz for his article on the Harris speech.
I agree with Kurtz that dropping labels eliminates the ability for the secular movement to organize in any meaningful way, which is important for us at this point. As Kurtz says, few of us can make a difference without working with others. We can’t all write bestselling books.
I lament, however, the fact that nobody seems to agree on a name. At the latest meeting of my own secular group, we managed to come up with between 5 and 10 labels (you all know the ones – atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, bright, etc). We also seem to waste a lot of time in circular discussions over the subtleties of these labels. It would be nice if we could decide on one that includes atheists, agnostics, deists – anyone who doesn’t believe in supernatural events – and stick to it. I think “bright” tried to fill this niche, but it didn’t work because few people can say it out loud without feeling obnoxious. (I’m not one of those few.)
>I lament, however, the fact that nobody seems to agree on a name.>
In my experience the believers have little inhibition to instantly brand you as ‘godless’ or ‘atheist’ if you have failed to stop thinking, if you don’t follow some known faith.
They may disagree on
Jesus vs. Mo “revelations” but they agree well on what you are when dealing with you. Common sense perhaps ?
..a particular conception of knowledge, one in which knowledge not only serves the ends of those in power, but is defined by power.
But to define truth in terms of power is to reveal the bankruptcy, irrationality, and above all, danger, of the whole enterprise… Inherent in such a view of knowledge is both a deep-seated nihilism and an urge to tyranny.
People will always be labeled, categorized somewhere. And there will always be different people belonging to different categories.
As for atheists, Freud was one of them. What he did -and we should respect him for it- is that he offered arguments for his beliefs. If one does so, that should be respected.
I’m a huge fan of Sam Harris. He fired the first shot in the current ‘war’ between reason and unreason, and his bravery, wit and clarity must be applauded . However, I totally agree with you about the ‘atheist’ label. It puts us in a position where we are forced to reveal that we’re not depraved red eyed monsters who have no moral compass, and to expalin why we’re atheists. Anyway, I think he has no chance at all of reversing this label in terms of himself. As far as the media is concerned, Sam Harris will always be an atheist.
“The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life”
“Write something critical of Islam (or Christianity or Hinduism) and there is a good chance that you may be attacked, threatened, your name and details put on some Redwatch equivalent somewhere.”
So tell me, how many people were killed in the worldwide rioting when Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin” (including elephant dung and pictures of female genitalia) was put on display? What happened when the NY Times printed a picture of it in the same column explaining why they wouldn’t print the Muhammed cartoons?
For you to include Christianity with Islam in your statement is blatantly dishonest. For anyone to claim equivalence between the possible dangers of Christianity or Islam is also blatantly dishonest.
While I certainly agree with the point in “Prejudicial Concerns” that a person accepting a job needs to accept all that goes with it and not cry for religious exemption, I am also remided that sometimes the religion vs state cuts the other way.
A while back when US Congress was coming close to criminalizing the providing of even humanitarian help to ‘illegal aliens’ it was a number of Catholic bishops who openly declared determination to defy that law, claiming their duty to the poor transcended the will of the state.
>a number of Catholic bishops who openly declared determination to defy that law, claiming their duty to the poor transcended the will of the state.>
That’s fine if not confused with the demand that the state has somehow a duty to respect (not to punish) such “transcendeces” just because they are done on religious grounds.
In fact this applies to just anything (religious or not).
Laws don’t physically stop people doing, say, “honour killings” if that’s what they want to, the state-law only punishes them afterwards.
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
General Sir Charles James Napier (August 10, 1782 – August 29, 1853) British general and Commander-in-Chief in India reply to a a delegation of Hindu locals approaching him and complaining about prohibition of “Sati–the burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands– by the British authorities.
I’ts funny how easy it is to criticize; isn’t it? You speak of this as if you know it personally. I am not sure about the other people involved in your story but I will stand up for one of those people; Anerae Brown(X-Raided). A song is a song…Just as a movie is a movie. Is Martin Scorseesee a killer? A mobster? I happen to write rap music. That doesn’t mean I kill. People who write about poverty, things that they have seen or been a part of and it is rejected by idiots who have always lived the good life. It’s entertainment. Is it wrong for a man to make money off of the struggle that he has lived? It is criticized and patronized because it is misunderstood.
My point was to show that not everything is perfect in Europe. Everyone does as one wishes anyway, and I for one couldn’t care less for those who don’t want to study. I have better things to worry about.
This was just an example. Not all is great and perfect in the civilized world. So before you start ironising Persia, just think that maybe we are not the perfect ones to start judging other people. There is no universal recipe for ‘the’ way of a civilisation to be like; everyone does their best.
>Not all is great and perfect in the civilized world.>
The question is what is best amongst the real, not what is perfect.
The ideal is fictional, it serves only as goal to focus one’s energies (the dream to be pursued) and as standard to judge the relative worth of the choices.
As for Iran, everybody tries to immigrate there you know.
The bell rings, it means the symbol of different things. When the door bell rings, someone is there.
All things became new but the gods whom we believe are same.
Nepal is that type of country whose education sector is so poor.The culture and nature is valuable but the sense of neplease people is like Mt. Everest but they don’t know the height of that peak. They were brave at that time but now a days they have to do more. Thanks ravi, u have write little things for there are many more ….
Concerning the article about intercessory prayer, I wish to make several observations. First, I don’t understand why a perfect deity must make perfect plans: why can’t he make stupid ones, too?–after all, isn’t this all-powerful dude free to do as he pleases? Didn’t he create mankind, get pissed off at us, and wash most of us away in a big flood? Also, not all believers say that god is outside of the universe–some believe he is everywhere and everything. Paul Tillich, the noted theologian, said that god is the “ground of being.” I guess that means that he can be found in my ice cream. Last, and perhaps most important, even if some stiff regrows a leg while Gil Gaudia and I are praying for him, this doesn’t necessarily mean that our prayers worked. Don’t concede victory so readily to the irrationalists. As Anatole France remarked in his Garden of Epicurus, for an amputated leg to regrow it would mean that “the science of animal physiology must be reconstituted.”
NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs.
The program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism.
The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that :
“[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
The fashionable publishing successes of evolutionary biologists and atheists such as Dr. Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and friends has been considerable all the way to the bank, but their impact on religion is superficial at best. These intellectual suicide bombers go bang, but their target is unperturbed and they achieve little; yet the unquestioned veracity of their criticism is a timely reminder of the contradictions and unresolved questions and doubts inhabiting the ‘religious’ milieu.
The real argument is unfolding on the web right now as the first ever viable religious conception leading faith to observable consequences which can be tested and judged; a teaching able to demonstrate its own efficacy; the first ever religious claim of knowledge that meets the criteria of verifiable, evidence based truth embodied in action. As such this teaching enters the public domain as a ‘religious’ reality entirely new to human history.
If this material is authenticated as fact. Can Christian’ history ands tradition as we know it survive? Three essays on the Future of Christianity, with introduction and download links.
Bigmo :Islam is peace. Words don’t lie.
‘salam’ is ‘peace’, as is “el salam aleikum” -“peace be upon you”
‘islam’ is ‘submission’, the creed of slaves lacking reason and manhood
they don’t lie indeed, granted that you know what they mean
Re: Humanist manifesto. I’ve been writing a song cycle which can be heard on myspace @
http://www.myspace.com/theatheistsuk
My feeling is that we must use the global appeal of pop/rock music to help get our message across. Although my songs get a lot of ‘hits’ I’m seeking to promote them beyond myspace. Can anyone help?
“Does anyone think or claim that Israel is trying to take over any Arab country? Or that Israel aspires to destroy Arabs, Muslims, or any non-Jews generally? That’s a laughable suggestion, isn’t it?”
No.
Israel did take over an Arab country [Palestine] by war, & by the terrorism that is inevitable in war, and has destroyed, and is continuing to destroy [on the West Bank and in Lebanon and elsewhere] those Arabs, Muslims and non-Jews who object to these actions.
Defend this by all means, but don’t degrade the Enlightenment commitment to truth by claiming that it is not the case.
Your New Humanism is disgusting. Just when atheists such as Richard Dawkins have boldly pointed out the harmful effects of religion on humans and human societies, you want to wimpify us and blur our distinction from theists by proposing that we not even have a name to give us a way of identifying and distinguishing ourselves.
And what’s wrong with having a name to call ourselves? I affirm myself as an atheist because statements that do not have any evidence either for or against them do not have a 50% probability of being true. Their probability is far, far less than 50%. Just postulate a given type of object existing at a certain location when you have no evidence either for or against, go to that location, and see how often yor are right!
However, it you really think a God esisting has an equal probability of being true or false, then call yourself an agnostic for that is what you are. And if humanist or secularist is the best description of your position, call yourself that.
Saying that your New Humanism has gotten beyond contradiction is replacing the rational approach to reality with mysticism for the mystics claim to perceive reality as one, subsuming both is and is not, large and small, etc. If that is your position, you are not even humanists but mystics
You say that if someone asks what your positions is, just ask them why they want to know. I want to know your position, for instance, on stem cell research because I want to know if you are an ally or opponent in lobbying for a type of medical research that can be of great benefit to both of us and the rest of humanity as well.
Your advocating that we not distinguish ourselves with a name or mak negative statements about other views gains its semblance of plausibility from its being brought forward in a culture that attrbutes magical power to “positive thinking.” Just look at the popular appeal of Norman Vincent Peale and his THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING.
And truth is not merely a matter of narative. A statement is true if and only if it corresponds to reality. If the statement “There are 15 apples on the tree” is true, it is true because there actually are 15 apples on the tree, not 10 or 20.
Humanism that is actually mysticism is not humanism.
“Does anyone think or claim that Israel is trying to take over any Arab country? Or that Israel aspires to destroy Arabs, Muslims, or any non-Jews generally? That’s a laughable suggestion, isn’t it?”
well know, it is the standard tactic of “moral equivalence”. You see, Pope and bin Laden are just the same, also Bush and Hitler.
Muslims all over the world (Ahamdinejad’s Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan, and so on) are obsessed with destroying the Israeli state for the
religious reason that it was once controlled by Islam.
That is was part of dar-el-Islam ( as opposed to “dar-el-harb”, “the land of war” which has to be conquered in the future through Jihad and brought to “dar-el-islam”)
In their own words :
On August 19, 2005, Palestinian Clerics Association Deputy Director Sheikh Muhammad Ali was interviewed by Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV :
Sheikh Muhammad Ali: “Any land, any piece of land, over which flies the banner of ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger,’ and which at a certain point belonged to the Muslims – as far as we are concerned, plundering and occupying such land is forbidden, and it is the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate this land, wherever it may be. True, many precious Muslim lands are under occupation today. They have been forgotten, and Andalusia [Spain] is one example. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the Muslims to liberate them. But since we are discussing Palestine, Gaza, and so on, let us focus on this precious piece of Muslim land, especially since Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque belong to all Muslims, and have become a part of the Muslim faith…
11. “We believe that there is no God, and that Jews are his chosen people.”
I ain’t no grammar major, but I really don’t think that the grammar is correct in the above statement.
Don’t you really mean?
We believe that (1) there is no god, and (2) that Jews are NOT god’s chosen people.
Don’t you really mean? We believe that (1) there is no god, and (2) that Jews are NOT god’s chosen people.
If there is no Holy Ghost could have Mary given birth and yet be virgin ?
Messers or Msss Sider and Torontow: Please for homework go and read Jonathan Swift’s Meditation on a Broomstick. Then re-read the article with your tongue planted in your cheek. It will all make snese then.
Feel the love
BASRA, Iraq — Women in Basra have become the targets of a violent campaign by religious extremists, who leave more than 15 female bodies scattered around the city each month, police officers say.
Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf, the commander of Basra’s police, said Thursday that self-styled enforcers of religious law threatened, beat and sometimes shot women who they believed weren’t sufficiently Muslim.
http://www.thestate.com/nation/story/193306.html
If I made Greg Epstein voodoo dolls, would R. Joseph Hoffmann and Brian Flemming buy one?
Your comment = nail + head, Tom.
Maybe we should procure some garlic cloves that we may be inured to Greg Epstein’s soft humanism. Oogie boogie!
violent intellectuals
He had no regrets about his impending death: “There is nothing stronger than my love for God and seeking martyrdom,” he said brightly…
“These are what I call the ‘violent intellectuals’,” said Professor Bruce Hoffman.“They are well educated and highly motivated, two important attributes that ensured success in their education and then business and which will also be useful in ensuring their success as suicide bombers.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2604119.ece
An online petition to US Congress to protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been started. You can sign it at :
http://www.petitiononline.com/hirsiali/
if you need additonal stimulus to do it read first :
Deutsche Presse Agentur
AMSTERDAM (dpa) – The Dutch intelligence and security service AIVD published a report on Tuesday indicating the number of radical Dutch Muslims is on the rise.
The reports speaks about an “extremely intolerant and anti-democratic” movement [..] The chance that violence will eventually be used is not to be excluded.
at
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=44755
>Can we ever criticize anything?
The complete Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview is up at Reasononline.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122457.html
‘The Trouble Is the West’
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, immigration, civil liberties, and the fate of the West.–November 2007
Reason: Are you concerned about the efficacy of your message? Do you worry that, at least in the short term, you have exacerbated the miserable treatment of women under much of mainstream Islam by prompting moderate Muslims to turn inward to their religion because they really don’t want to follow the path of the apostate
Hirsi Ali: Young men now want to become terrorists in response to something I’ve written, that sort of thing? I don’t think that is the case. If we continue that reasoning, we’ll never scrutinize anything. Can we ever write? Can we ever criticize anything?
PODCAST AND REVIEW OF THE IBN WARRAQ -TARIQ RAMADAN DEBATE
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/247836/intelligence2.thtml
And here is the link to the podcast of the debate:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/intelligence/242761/we-should-not-be-reluctant-to-assert-the-superiority-of-western-values.thtml
> An online petition to US Congress to
> protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been
> started
It’s good to see that so many people from everywhere in the world have signed the online petition.
I do hope it will be for good in this world.
Re: What Label for People Like Us? by Paul Kurtz
I do not think we serve the cause of rationality by adopting the tactics of party politics. I feel that the atmosphere of current theist-atheist controversies is poisoned. I have strongly opposed all dogmatism and all institutionalized religion; yet the moment I mention spiritual values, my atheist friends see that as a betrayal. If I say that great thinkers, Schleiermacher say or Whitehead, have used the term religion in a special sense that we have to take into consideration, that is high treason. I say that the atoms of Lucretius needed something, not from outside but from within, to make them tumble; if I ask myself questions about that something, it is as if I had started preaching the Nicene Creed.
All ism is constricting and if we continue to carry out our polemics as we have been doing, we will end up with an atheistic culture as inimical to free thinking as the worst of theocratical regimes.
D. R. Khashaba
http://khashaba.blogspot.com
http://www.Back-to-Socrates.com
>I do not think we serve the cause of rationality by adopting the tactics of party politics.>
Of course but you miss the point, it is not God’s existence which is at sake in most of those deabtes.
If it were not for the political (State’s law) and ethical implications of the religious beliefs no atheist would care of arguing.
Thanks to Paul Kurtz for his article on the Harris speech.
I agree with Kurtz that dropping labels eliminates the ability for the secular movement to organize in any meaningful way, which is important for us at this point. As Kurtz says, few of us can make a difference without working with others. We can’t all write bestselling books.
I lament, however, the fact that nobody seems to agree on a name. At the latest meeting of my own secular group, we managed to come up with between 5 and 10 labels (you all know the ones – atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, bright, etc). We also seem to waste a lot of time in circular discussions over the subtleties of these labels. It would be nice if we could decide on one that includes atheists, agnostics, deists – anyone who doesn’t believe in supernatural events – and stick to it. I think “bright” tried to fill this niche, but it didn’t work because few people can say it out loud without feeling obnoxious. (I’m not one of those few.)
>I lament, however, the fact that nobody seems to agree on a name.>
In my experience the believers have little inhibition to instantly brand you as ‘godless’ or ‘atheist’ if you have failed to stop thinking, if you don’t follow some known faith.
They may disagree on
Jesus vs. Mo “revelations” but they agree well on what you are when dealing with you. Common sense perhaps ?
The ethics, politics and psychology (inclusive freudian) of denial.
“Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide”
by Robert Jay Lifton himself.
http://users.ids.net/%7Egregan/ethics.html
or
hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/9/1/1.pdf
and a quote for “postmodernists”
..a particular conception of knowledge, one in which knowledge not only serves the ends of those in power, but is defined by power.
But to define truth in terms of power is to reveal the bankruptcy, irrationality, and above all, danger, of the whole enterprise… Inherent in such a view of knowledge is both a deep-seated nihilism and an urge to tyranny.
Daniel Abineri,
People will always be labeled, categorized somewhere. And there will always be different people belonging to different categories.
As for atheists, Freud was one of them. What he did -and we should respect him for it- is that he offered arguments for his beliefs. If one does so, that should be respected.
I’m a huge fan of Sam Harris. He fired the first shot in the current ‘war’ between reason and unreason, and his bravery, wit and clarity must be applauded . However, I totally agree with you about the ‘atheist’ label. It puts us in a position where we are forced to reveal that we’re not depraved red eyed monsters who have no moral compass, and to expalin why we’re atheists. Anyway, I think he has no chance at all of reversing this label in terms of himself. As far as the media is concerned, Sam Harris will always be an atheist.
>As for atheists, Freud was one of them..
and how :
“The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life”
S.Freud, “Civilization and its Discontents”, 1930
Iran–Public Executions Signal New Wave of Suppression
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2956.cfm
“Do you think that execution can purify you?” the Iranian television reporter asked the young convict.
“I don’t know,” murmured the twenty-something ..
Welcome to The Bloody Islamic-Republic
of Iran. (aka Persia).
Nowadays known mostly for its retarded, Middle Ages, people and for its nuclear hopes to Israel the Persians were in fact once a great nation.
However they were defeated, circumcized and Islamized by Arabs in the 7th century and from then on..oh well.
“Write something critical of Islam (or Christianity or Hinduism) and there is a good chance that you may be attacked, threatened, your name and details put on some Redwatch equivalent somewhere.”
So tell me, how many people were killed in the worldwide rioting when Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin” (including elephant dung and pictures of female genitalia) was put on display? What happened when the NY Times printed a picture of it in the same column explaining why they wouldn’t print the Muhammed cartoons?
For you to include Christianity with Islam in your statement is blatantly dishonest. For anyone to claim equivalence between the possible dangers of Christianity or Islam is also blatantly dishonest.
While I certainly agree with the point in “Prejudicial Concerns” that a person accepting a job needs to accept all that goes with it and not cry for religious exemption, I am also remided that sometimes the religion vs state cuts the other way.
A while back when US Congress was coming close to criminalizing the providing of even humanitarian help to ‘illegal aliens’ it was a number of Catholic bishops who openly declared determination to defy that law, claiming their duty to the poor transcended the will of the state.
I cheered them on this.
>a number of Catholic bishops who openly declared determination to defy that law, claiming their duty to the poor transcended the will of the state.>
That’s fine if not confused with the demand that the state has somehow a duty to respect (not to punish) such “transcendeces” just because they are done on religious grounds.
In fact this applies to just anything (religious or not).
Laws don’t physically stop people doing, say, “honour killings” if that’s what they want to, the state-law only punishes them afterwards.
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
General Sir Charles James Napier (August 10, 1782 – August 29, 1853) British general and Commander-in-Chief in India reply to a a delegation of Hindu locals approaching him and complaining about prohibition of “Sati–the burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands– by the British authorities.
>21st century Europe. A land where so few now care for education.>
It is not a crime. Let them do and live as they want. Most people neither can nor care being a scholar.
>Allow me to introduce you to violence in schools, total lack of discipline>
Set them free. Beyond elementary school (learn to write and count) mandatory schooling is infringement of individual freedom.
Beyond 12-13 yr-old schools are in fact prisons to keep unruly and resentful kids busy and supervised during the time their parents are at work.
>Low wages for teachers and professors.
Their choice to become supervisers of kids.
There are jobs in the private sector for those willing to use their high-IQ.
A sector where wages are dictated by the law of demand/supply of the labor-market, not by the whims of Gov’t.
in response to Arman B.:
May the Bloody Islamic-Republic
of Iran (aka Persia) execute thee.
I’ts funny how easy it is to criticize; isn’t it? You speak of this as if you know it personally. I am not sure about the other people involved in your story but I will stand up for one of those people; Anerae Brown(X-Raided). A song is a song…Just as a movie is a movie. Is Martin Scorseesee a killer? A mobster? I happen to write rap music. That doesn’t mean I kill. People who write about poverty, things that they have seen or been a part of and it is rejected by idiots who have always lived the good life. It’s entertainment. Is it wrong for a man to make money off of the struggle that he has lived? It is criticized and patronized because it is misunderstood.
Francis Poole HD86
to Arman B.:
My point was to show that not everything is perfect in Europe. Everyone does as one wishes anyway, and I for one couldn’t care less for those who don’t want to study. I have better things to worry about.
This was just an example. Not all is great and perfect in the civilized world. So before you start ironising Persia, just think that maybe we are not the perfect ones to start judging other people. There is no universal recipe for ‘the’ way of a civilisation to be like; everyone does their best.
>Not all is great and perfect in the civilized world.>
The question is what is best amongst the real, not what is perfect.
The ideal is fictional, it serves only as goal to focus one’s energies (the dream to be pursued) and as standard to judge the relative worth of the choices.
As for Iran, everybody tries to immigrate there you know.
The Echoes of the Bell
The bell rings, it means the symbol of different things. When the door bell rings, someone is there.
All things became new but the gods whom we believe are same.
Nepal is that type of country whose education sector is so poor.The culture and nature is valuable but the sense of neplease people is like Mt. Everest but they don’t know the height of that peak. They were brave at that time but now a days they have to do more. Thanks ravi, u have write little things for there are many more ….
Concerning the article about intercessory prayer, I wish to make several observations. First, I don’t understand why a perfect deity must make perfect plans: why can’t he make stupid ones, too?–after all, isn’t this all-powerful dude free to do as he pleases? Didn’t he create mankind, get pissed off at us, and wash most of us away in a big flood? Also, not all believers say that god is outside of the universe–some believe he is everywhere and everything. Paul Tillich, the noted theologian, said that god is the “ground of being.” I guess that means that he can be found in my ice cream. Last, and perhaps most important, even if some stiff regrows a leg while Gil Gaudia and I are praying for him, this doesn’t necessarily mean that our prayers worked. Don’t concede victory so readily to the irrationalists. As Anatole France remarked in his Garden of Epicurus, for an amputated leg to regrow it would mean that “the science of animal physiology must be reconstituted.”
Sohgra story at B&W
http://www.ikwro.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=247&Itemid=26
Disheartening life-story from the Zombie’s Republic of Iran.
They are doing their best of course.
guess who is racist
NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs.
The program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism.
The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that :
“[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8555.html?PHPSESSID=d70ca3f91ec83715e89696d61f88ff7e
The fashionable publishing successes of evolutionary biologists and atheists such as Dr. Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and friends has been considerable all the way to the bank, but their impact on religion is superficial at best. These intellectual suicide bombers go bang, but their target is unperturbed and they achieve little; yet the unquestioned veracity of their criticism is a timely reminder of the contradictions and unresolved questions and doubts inhabiting the ‘religious’ milieu.
The real argument is unfolding on the web right now as the first ever viable religious conception leading faith to observable consequences which can be tested and judged; a teaching able to demonstrate its own efficacy; the first ever religious claim of knowledge that meets the criteria of verifiable, evidence based truth embodied in action. As such this teaching enters the public domain as a ‘religious’ reality entirely new to human history.
If this material is authenticated as fact. Can Christian’ history ands tradition as we know it survive? Three essays on the Future of Christianity, with introduction and download links.
http://thefinalfreedoms.blogspot.com/
http://goliah.wordpress.com/