I would say that you are really lucky if you tell them that the
discussion is off limits and they never bother you again. In my
experience that would just make them double down on the harassment.
---
Carl Sagan
“ The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be
counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be
consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not
determine what's true. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 3/28/2019 5:34 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I, also, have had people attempt to convince me to believe as they do. I
suppose you might call it bullying. I just never engaged with them. I simply
made it clear that the discussion was off limits, and they never bothered me
again. Perhaps it's a male thing, the need to stand up for oneself and to fight
back. If you think about it, it's men who tend to get into more physical
fights with each other than women do.
Anyway, there are people who write very aggressive articles about Atheism.
Those articles, (and I've read some of them), are very similar to articles that
spread a particular religious faith. They are trying to convince people of the
author's point of view which happens to be that there is no proof of the
existence of God.
As for Ethical Culture or Ethical Humanism being a "pseudo church", as you
phrase it, that's an interesting point. The Ethical Culture movement was built by the son
of a rabbi who went to Germany to be trained to be a rabbi in the Reformed Jewish
Movement, and he was supposed to join his father at a large synagogue on Fifth Avenue in
Manhattan when he returned. However, after his rabbinical education, he determined that
the only worthwhile part of the Jewish religion was its ethical values. He wanted to get
rid of all the rituals and the stuff regarding God.
So he decided to build a religious movement based on Jewish ethical beliefs,
and he founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture on that basis. He and
his followers did want to have the trappings of a church or synagogue, the
fellowship of others who believed as they did, a platform where people could
speak each week about their beliefs, a Sunday School to teach children ethics
and the history of religion, the ability to provide help to those who needed
it, etc. The Secular Humanists, on the other hand, don't want anything like
that, and I don't know anything about their history. Carl and I both joined
their listserv for a while, at Marsha's suggestion. It was a fascinating
listserv, but we both found it to be much too busy. I was sorry to leave them.
They had some really interesting stuff on their.
One of the things that really annoys me is that religious people believe that
one has to believe in God and be part of an institutional religion in order to
be concerned about right and wrong. That's obviously nonsense. Yes, religious
belief can motivate acts of love and caring. But it can also motivate acts of
war. Actually, human beings are adept at using just about anything to justify
their behavior.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2019 3:58 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Atheism, Labels, Faith
Atheism is a really simple concept. It is simply the lack of belief in the
existence of a deity. As far as I know, there are only three kinds.
One is hard atheism. That is the assertion that there is no god as a positive
proposition. It is a logical fallacy because it puts the atheist in the
position of providing evidence for that positive assertion and there is
actually no evidence one way or another. The second kind of atheist is the
agnostic. Agnosticism is also a logical fallacy because it gives equal weight
to both the negative and positive forms of the god proposition when there is no
evidence one way or another. The third kind of atheism is the kind that I
adhere to. That is, when there is no evidence one way or another the logical
assumption is the negative assumption. With that said, atheism is not, by any
means, an ideology. That is like trying to say that the lack of belief in a
purple unicorn orbiting the star arcturus is an ideology and that people who
happen to not believe that proposition exist in some kind of brotherhood.
Atheism may be incorporated into various ideologies, but it is not an ideology
itself. If it was then I would have to count the followers of Ayn Rand as my
co-thinkers and I decidedly do not. I do consider myself a secular humanist,
but I do not belong to that pseudo-church, the ethical humanist society.
Secular humanism can be called an ideology, but it is a very broad ideology.
There are numerous movements and mutually exclusive ideologies that claim to be
secular humanist. But you make a good point that there are a lot of more
important things to worry about other than what fairy tale characters may be
believed in or not believed in by different people. However, that is beside the
point of discussions of the matter on this list. I do think that religion, in
general, is a great evil, but my debunking it will not destroy it. A lot of
other people have spent a lot of time debunking it and they have never been
able to destroy it. If religion can be destroyed it will have to be done by
concentrating on those other issues that are more important and thereby
changing the social and economic order so that there will be no function for
religion to perform. And then steps should be taken to ensure that everyone
gets the best education possible. That is, if you want to abolish something you
need to change the conditions that allow it to continue to exist. But putting
aside all of that, I have a personal problem with some of the purveyors of
religion. If religious people will simply go ahead and be religious and leave
other people alone about it I have no problem with them as individuals. If I
did I would have to be in constant battle and hostility with the large majority
of people I meet on a daily basis.
That would be a really good way to make myself unpopular and to make myself
miserable too. If I ever decided to become a masochist that might be a good way
to start. My personal problem with certain purveyors of religion is with the
religious bullies. I have told the story of the first one I came across back
when I was twelve years old. There was no way to get him to leave me alone. He
was a relentless pest and what he was pestering me about was something that I
had sense enough to realize was complete nonsense. I felt like he was insulting
my intelligence then and every one of that kind of religious pest who has done
the same thing since has been insulting my intelligence too. And I have been
encountering these bullies all my life since I was twelve years old. I got sick
and tired of them very quickly and have stayed sick and tired of them. And now
we have one of them on this list. We have someone who has made it his mission
in life to harass people with his religion. If he would just go ahead and
believe his superstitions and leave other people alone about it then I would
leave him alone about it. But I stand up to bullies. As long as he keeps on
bullying me and others with his religion I am available to show what nonsense
it is and to expose him as an irrational harasser. I give him back a bit of
what he gives.
---
Carl Sagan
“ The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be
counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be
consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not
determine what's true. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 3/28/2019 12:47 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
There apparently are different kinds of Atheism. The kind that people
keep writing about on this list, seems to be a dominant thread in the
thoughts and speeches and writings of its proponents. And it seems to
be unrelated to any value system or philosophy of life. It is, in its
essence, a logical negation of a spiritual overlord. At least, that's what I
think it is.
But then there are the members of the Ethical Culture or Ethical
Humanist Movement, and the Secular Humanists. That's where I seem to
fit in. They don't spend time and concern on the existence of a God,
however that God might be defined. For them, what is important is how
people behave toward each other, toward other living things, and
toward the natural world in which they live. Why spend time and
energy arguing about the existence of God or which is the best way to
worship, when people are dying of famine and disease, when they are
fighting each other over resources that should be shared among us all,
when droughts and floods are threatening to put an end to life? Why
not focus on how to most efficiently and painlessly change our systems
of power and finance so that humankind will be better served, rather than
quibble about which one of us is more logical or more righteous?
Miriam
