Wednesday, August 03, 2005

USNews.com: Culture: Atheists claim discrimination (8/2/05)

USNews.com: Culture: Atheists claim discrimination (8/2/05): "'We should not be tolerant of people who exercise such intolerance.'"

I am about >this< close to being an atheist, and though it may be pissing in the wind, I support the Brights and the Universists. I've met some great people through their meetings and in their online fora.

I have also met many great people of genuine faith with whom I could coexist in cooperation and harmony or even be friends. I understand that world views are as varied as the people who hold them.

The problem is that some religious people assume they are under orders from the one true god, and that people who think otherwise are somehow ... wrong. Well, if you have people of different faiths all claiming the authority of the one true god, then if follows that most of them are wrong. It is impossible for all of them to be right, right?

Well, actually, I see one out, which is that an omnipotent god can be all things to all people. But that clashes head on with the dogma most such people adhere to. These people, in effect, imply that their omnipotent god is not omnipotent because it cannot be all things to all people.

In other words, they are full of shit.

Having said that, and since humanity is seemingly hard-wired for belief so that the faithless will forever be a minority, I'd prefer to live in a relatively secular society with a Western-style god in the wings than in, say, an Islamic theocracy. The former may tolerate secularism and even encourage it out of self interest, but the latter will kill me if I tell them my truth.

Here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, very well-spoken.

I haven't had a chance to use your Stephen Roberts quote yet, but it's a good one.

Anonymous said...

When I say I don’t believe in god(s), it does not imply that I do believe there are no god(s). I don’t believe there are god(s) and, by the same token, I don’t believe there are no god(s).

The operative word is “belief”. What is “belief” other than opinion. I believe in truth. And the truth is – there may be god(s) or there may not be god(s). It is one or the other and I have no way of knowing which is true.

Agnostics are not sad, lonely, hopeless people. They are freed to consider possibilities beyond the dogma of organized religion and some of those possibilities are much more appealing than the biblical notion of heaven versus hell fire.

One possibility is you had countless lives before (of which you have no memory and probably on other planets) and after this life, you just might go off to your next great adventure! All things are possible. No one knows for sure. (Who said non-believers are without hope?)