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Post by Al Moritz on Nov 8, 2009 13:34:16 GMT
Here from an interview with Victor Stenger, posted at Debunking Christianity: tinyurl.com/yfuajmjReading that interview, I came across these two statements by Stenger: "..... for the good of society irrational faith should not be tolerated .....""Atheists have higher moral standards than believers, who do not hesitate to force their beliefs on others. Freedom of thought is the easiest aspect of atheism to embrace."Is it only me, or do you find a slight inconsistency there? No, UnkleE, you are not the only one, now that you pointed it out -- good catch! I think you should post that in the comments section there, I'd be curious as to how people react. By the way, here is a devastating (and at times amusing) review of Stenger's God -- The Failed Hypothesis by eminent cosmologist George Ellis: physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/27736
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Post by unkleE on Nov 9, 2009 7:27:05 GMT
No, UnkleE, you are not the only one, now that you pointed it out -- good catch! I think you should post that in the comments section there, I'd be curious as to how people react. I did post it there (as you now know, because I see you've been there as well), but no-one's picked up on it. I also posted it on the Internet Infidels forum, and received a good response. No-one got nasty at me, some thought Stenger was indeed out of line, others thought he may have only meant "conversational intolerance" and thus excused him.
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Post by Al Moritz on Nov 26, 2009 18:38:41 GMT
I should correct or clarify what I said here. Atheists often claim that atheism is "simply being lack of belief". Defined as such, atheism itself would indeed not be a positive belief. However, most of the time it results in beliefs that make positive claims.
I have formulated it in my cosmological article as:
Experience shows that the vast majority of atheists (though not all) are convinced naturalists, or choose naturalism as their default position – while atheism is often defined as simply just "lack of belief", mostly it results in worldviews that do make positive claims, just like theism does.
Therefore, even though atheism itself is not necessarily a positive belief, the "lack of belief" stance does not let atheists off the hook. The "burden of proof" is not just on theists.
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Post by jamierobertson on Nov 26, 2009 19:53:55 GMT
...which is why I try to argue against "humanism" rather than atheism.
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Post by perplexedseeker on Nov 26, 2009 20:12:21 GMT
But surely a theist can also be a humanist? As I understand it, this was the original meaning of the word.
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Nov 29, 2009 16:58:58 GMT
It was exactly this sort of thing which made me realise I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with contemporary atheism (back when I was leaning that way myself). The way the celebrity unbelievers pile in on sensible people like Ruse and Andrew Brown who are capable of having strong but respectful differences of opinion is, frankly, disgusting. Do you suppose they genuinely believe that any form of religion is so dangerous that even those who suggest talking about reconciliation and cooperation become irreversibly contaminated by it? Or is it all rhetoric? I sincerely hope it's the latter. Sadly there ARE atheists who believe exactly that, and naively believe that the abolition of religion would make the world a better, safer place to live in. They simply won't have it that there is a difference between "fundamentalist" and "non fundamentalist" religion. Many atheists consider that the fundamentalists represent the true spirit of religion, and that non fundamentalists are not really believers but only pretending to be. Trouble is that there is no clear demarcation between "fundamentalist" and "non fundamentalist". Which is what one should expect given that religion is a fairly complex phenomenon. Atheists of a certain hue don't acknowledge this though. Ironically, the new brand of militant atheism has come to mirror the very negative characteristics that it deplores.
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Nov 29, 2009 17:09:20 GMT
But surely a theist can also be a humanist? As I understand it, this was the original meaning of the word. The first humanists were believers. It was a term given to a general scholastic trend during the Renaissance and applied to scholars like Erasmus. The movement focussed on what it meant to be human, and drew on newly discovered works from the classical period (Romans and Greeks). Montaigne could be described as a humanist, as could Shakespeare. Used in this sense, humanism was not in conflict with religious belief, but rather augmented it. It is only later, during the so called 18th century "Enlightenement", that humanism became consciously secular, and of course by the 19th century, humanism had become synonymous with atheism. That as I understand it, was the general trend anyway.
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Nov 29, 2009 17:15:02 GMT
I should correct or clarify what I said here. Atheists often claim that atheism is "simply being lack of belief". Defined as such, atheism itself would indeed not be a positive belief. However, most of the time it results in beliefs that make positive claims. I have formulated it in my cosmological article as: Experience shows that the vast majority of atheists (though not all) are convinced naturalists, or choose naturalism as their default position – while atheism is often defined as simply just "lack of belief", mostly it results in worldviews that do make positive claims, just like theism does.Therefore, even though atheism itself is not necessarily a positive belief, the "lack of belief" stance does not let atheists off the hook. The "burden of proof" is not just on theists. Nicely put. Atheism logically entails some kind of naturalism, like two sides of the same coin really. I wish atheists would be a little more frank about this.
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Post by James Hannam on Nov 29, 2009 19:15:52 GMT
I think, hawk, the original meaning of humanist was a bit narrower than that. It simply meant someone who studied the humanities, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries really classical literature, as you say. It didn't have any connotations towards studying man or any religious element at all.
So Erasmus, as a Greek and Latin scholar was a humanist. So was Thomas More. But Shakespere certainly was not as he only knew "little Latin and less Greek" according to Ben Jonson.
Best wishes
James
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Post by jamierobertson on Nov 30, 2009 11:41:17 GMT
Sorry, I meant "humanist" as is commonly used today in, for example, the Humanist Manifesto. It is a positive worldview/belief & behavioural system that is a logical outworking of atheism, and the majority of atheists in Britain would (I reckon) fit the "humanist" bracket.
I'm open to correction, though...
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Nov 30, 2009 21:27:23 GMT
I think, hawk, the original meaning of humanist was a bit narrower than that. It simply meant someone who studied the humanities, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries really classical literature, as you say. It didn't have any connotations towards studying man or any religious element at all. So Erasmus, as a Greek and Latin scholar was a humanist. So was Thomas More. But Shakespere certainly was not as he only knew "little Latin and less Greek" according to Ben Jonson. Best wishes James Renaissance humanism was certainly inspired by the rediscovery of the ancient classics, but it was the way these were studied and applied that gave Renaissance Humanism it's distinctive quality. The writings of Renaissance scholars show an interest in the historical context of the classics. They also show that the humanists were interested in the moral ideas of the earlier writers and how these ideas might be used as a guide to living in their own turbulent times. This is certainly the case in the works of someone like Montaigne, the writer from this period with whose work I am most familiar. It applied to others too, like Petrarch. The humanists were also interested in knowledge as a human activity and it's limits. The writers of the Renaissance promoted and fleshed out the idea of the human being not as a member of a collective, but as a self reflective individual. This was influenced also by political factors such as the fracture of the hegemony of the Catholic church for instance and the rise of Pietistic movements. Little is known about the historical Shakespeare, but the evidence of the plays suggest that he was alert to the new ideas of his time, and influenced by them, and was familiar with some of the classical writers as well as more recent ones. Interestingly, this is one of the arguments used by the anti Stratfordians to show that Shakespeare could not have possibly written the plays ascribed to him, such was the breadth of learning that the plays reveal. His themes certainly reflect the concern with the individual, and it can be argued that in Shakespeare's plays we see the origin in literature of the individual as a truly subjective and self questioning being, rather than as representing a type or an idea. This is all intrinsic to Renaissance humanism. Of course, this exploration of what it meant to be an individual human being was carried out against the background of an overall religious view of the world.
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