| Author |
Topic:
Atheism 3.0: - Unconversion experiences
|
Quixotic-Sith
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:02pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 2:06pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Quixotic-Sith
|
SuperWatto posted:
But that's so black and white... What if you just don't know?
Then you're agnostic. But that also gets into other issues of epistemology and how we define knowledge.
EDIT:
Bear in mind that the Greek prefix just means "without". Agnosticism means "without knowledge", just as atheism means "without a god concept".
EDIT 2:
I may have misinterpreted what you posted. If you mean "don't know" in a much broader sense (which seems likely), I'd suggest that you probably have some kind of belief in one direction or another (again, not knowledge). If you choose to live your life and act without a deity concept, that's a variation on agnostic atheism, otherwise its agnostic theism.
-----signature-----
A Pennsylvania Yankee in Queen Ida's Court
Ostrich_Stapler = Bling-Bling Thunder
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
SuperWatto
Registered:
Sep '00
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:07pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 2:11pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
SuperWatto
|
Cool. That mean I´ve been posting in the wrong thread all this time? 
EDIT AS WELL: Allow me to clarify. I don't know if there's anything trancendant. I don't know if there's any way to find out for us simple folk. I do think that if we were to ever find out, it would be through science, so it would be something that could be measured. Therefore, I think all world religions got it wrong; I don't believe ANYONE knows.... yet.
-----signature-----
TRACK THAT TRACK http://trackthattrack.blogspot.com frustrating you with sound
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:09pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
For shame, Jabba shame_on_you especially given your own high praise of the Baha'i Faith. For those unaware: a few core tenets of the Faith are that not only should everyone be educated, but that Baha'u'llah has some pretty harsh words for those religious people who denigrate science and reason. Similarly, all in the Baha'i Faith are charged with learning a vocation with which to contribute to society, in an effort to eliminate the extremes of wealth and poverty.
Just because a theistic religion promotes the value of education doesn't necessarily mean that educated people will be attracted to it. Despite its many charms the Baha'i Faith still relies on a core set of supernatural assertions. How well is the Bahai Faith really doing in the wealthy industrialized world?
-----signature-----
"There is a country out there where tens of millions
of white Christians, voting freely, selected as their
leader a black man of modest origin, the son
of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth - call it
America - where such a thing happens."
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:26pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
Vortigern99 posted:
In point of fact loving kindness, prevalent today even among atheists, was first introduced to the world by religious thinkers and godly philosophers as a way of honoring the Creator. Loving kindess, codified in the both New and Old Testaments as essential to religious life, did not arise among the atheistic community. Irreligious philosophers of the ancient world, such as Aristotle and Socrates, did not extoll the virtues of love as a cohesive force in society or as a necessary attitude for success in life.
To quote from wikipedia about Socrates and virtue
Wikipedia posted:
Socrates believed the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Quixotic-Sith
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:33pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
|
Vort, your source on Plato and Aristotle is remarkably wrong. Aristotle addresses the issue of love, friendship, charity, and other similar aspects *at length* in his Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. Plato wrote the Symposium on love as an expression of reverence for a transcendent reality. In point of fact, both Plato and Aristotle would *profoundly* shape how theologians and thinkers all three Abrahamic traditions viewed transcendent reality and human conduct therein. Christian ethicists balanced Aristotelian personalism with Ulpian physicalism in developing social and sexual ethics.
-----signature-----
A Pennsylvania Yankee in Queen Ida's Court
Ostrich_Stapler = Bling-Bling Thunder
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:36pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 2:37pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Jabbadabbado
|
|
Don't **** with the Aristotelian virtue ethicist on his home turf.
-----signature-----
"There is a country out there where tens of millions
of white Christians, voting freely, selected as their
leader a black man of modest origin, the son
of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth - call it
America - where such a thing happens."
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Quixotic-Sith
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:37pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
|
Boo-yah.
-----signature-----
A Pennsylvania Yankee in Queen Ida's Court
Ostrich_Stapler = Bling-Bling Thunder
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Vortigern99
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '00
|
Date Posted:
7/3 2:53pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 2:54pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Vortigern99
|
Quixotic-Sith posted:
Vort, your source on Plato and Aristotle is remarkably wrong. Aristotle addresses the issue of love, friendship, charity, and other similar aspects *at length* in his Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. Plato wrote the Symposium on love as an expression of reverence for a transcendent reality. In point of fact, both Plato and Aristotle would *profoundly* shape how theologians and thinkers all three Abrahamic traditions viewed transcendent reality and human conduct therein. Christian ethicists balanced Aristotelian personalism with Ulpian physicalism in developing social and sexual ethics.
Outstanding! I stand happily corrected. I'm always glad to learn new information. ... I knew I should have checked wiki while I was typing my (mis)statement of fact!
I do want to make it clear that while I am a pantheist (= "divinity is manifest in nature") with both Christian and Wiccan leanings, I am not in any way a biblical literalist. I believe in scripture as a helpful guide toward gaining a full measure of love and forgiveness for myself and for every person with whom I share this world. Where the Bible is in error, I readily concede its faultiness as a reliable account of history. Where any book or passage diverges from the message of loving-kindess I believe to be the Bible's underlying thrust, I attempt to reconcile these divergences with what I understand of the Bible's writing from a scholarly standpoint. The work is not perfect, nor can it be since it was written by human hands. So I have no hard and fast answers regarding the accounts of violence and atrocity against people of pagan faiths that are related in the Old Testament, except to say again that these are accounts written in most cases hundreds of years after the events themselves, if those events occurred at all, and given by their writers/compilers an overlay/subtext of divine providence in order to make the story instructive from a moral, legal, religious or social perspective. The stories are not meant to be taken literally, but as revealing some facet of the nature of the Judaic God.
-----signature-----
"I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction.
I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece,
a fairy tale."--George Lucas
My "Vader's Origins" thread:
http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
LostOnHoth
Registered:
Feb '00
|
Date Posted:
7/3 3:03pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 3:07pm (3 edits total)
Edited By:
LostOnHoth
|
Quixotic-Sith posted:
In point of fact, both Plato and Aristotle would *profoundly* shape how theologians and thinkers all three Abrahamic traditions viewed transcendent reality and human conduct therein. Christian ethicists balanced Aristotelian personalism with Ulpian physicalism in developing social and sexual ethics.
My emphasis. Are you able to elaborate on whether this was in fact the case - that it *did* profoundly shape those traditions rather than *would* have. I've always considered it convenient that the three Abrahamic traditions share certain core beliefs in terms of ethics - these core beliefs must have been inspired by pre-existing thought and literature. I'm interersted simply because atheists are often confronted with the proposition that there was no morality or codes of ethics before the advent of Christianity. Therefore, there is no morality but Christian morality.
Vortigern99 - I'm gald you made it to this thread. You're very welcome.
-----signature-----
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities - Voltaire
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Quixotic-Sith
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
|
Date Posted:
7/3 3:13pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 3:17pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Quixotic-Sith
|
My emphasis. Are you able to elaborate on whether this was in fact the case - that it *did* profoundly shape those traditions rather than *would* have. I've always considered it convenient that the three Abrahamic traditions share certain core beliefs in terms of ethics - these core beliefs must have been inspired by pre-existing thought and literature. I'm interersted simply because atheists are often confronted with the proposition that there was no morality or codes of ethics before the advent of Christianity. Therefore, there is no morality but Christian morality.
I used "would" not in the conditional sense, but in the sense of what followed as a consequence. The Greek philosophers were largely lost to Europe, and were reintroduced via Muslim scholars (ibn Rushd (Averroes)). Aquinas' Summa Theologiae for instance, reveres Aristotle (Aquinas simply calls him "The Philosopher" and ibn Rushd "The Commentator" - ibn Rushd provided a commentary on Aristotle that fundamentally shaped Aquinas), taking his arguments from the Metaphysics part and parcel (you can find all five "proofs" of God's existence in Book 10 of the Metaphysics). Additionally, Aquinas wrote a lengthy exegesis on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, in which he interpreted it in light of Christian thought. Karen Armstrong goes into more detail than I can (considering I'm posting from a Panera and don't have access to my library at the moment) in A History of God. The reconciliation of the "God of the Philosophers" with the personal God of the Abrahamic traditions is examined in the early chapters.
-----signature-----
A Pennsylvania Yankee in Queen Ida's Court
Ostrich_Stapler = Bling-Bling Thunder
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
JMJacenSolo
Registered:
May '06
|
Date Posted:
7/3 3:33pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
Quixotic-Sith posted:
Does this help?
Absolutely.
Is there anything substantive you base your position of theism on, or is it just intuition on your part?
-----signature-----
"What good would it do me to switch tests with the guy who got the lowest score in the quarry?"
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Quixotic-Sith
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
|
Date Posted:
7/3 3:39pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 3:45pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Quixotic-Sith
|
JMJacenSolo posted:
Quixotic-Sith posted:
Does this help?
Absolutely.
Is there anything substantive you base your position of theism on, or is it just intuition on your part?
I can't claim authorship of the idea, as I've been reading and studying along these lines for fourteen years, so I've lost track of some of sources that were seminal. Part of it is linguistic analysis, part of it is philosophical, part theological - I've lost track of what's my own analysis and understanding versus others. I can point you towards some of the sources. George Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God discusses the theism/atheism divide (and differences between strong atheism claims vs. weak atheism), for instance, among other meaningful differences. Part of it derives from my courses at Georgetown (The Problem of God, for instance, explicitly addressed whether agnosticism was intellectually tenable, but I no longer have the notes I took).
EDIT:
The best I can do at the moment is break it down (roughly) into different periods/locations of education.
Georgetown: Basic theology, theism/atheism, Biblical literature and interpretation, history of ancient and medieval philosophy
University of Vienna (Austria): epistemology
Duquesne University: Moral Theology, Core history of philosophy classes (Aquinas and other Church Fathers)
-----signature-----
A Pennsylvania Yankee in Queen Ida's Court
Ostrich_Stapler = Bling-Bling Thunder
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
dianethx
Registered:
Mar '02
|
Date Posted:
7/3 4:16pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
Since I couldn't find a link to my statement about ancient Greek religious sites increasing with civil strife, I'll retract....
I'm finding this conversation so far intensely interesting. I must admit I was studying chemistry and archaeology in college instead of religious philosophy.
When we get a chance, I'd like to know more about strong atheism claims vs. weak atheism that Quixotic-Sith mentioned.
-----signature-----
Betrayal - http://boards.theforce.net/s/b1/10935143 updated 9/22/08 Fragments of Illusion- http://boards.theforce.net/bts/b10475/28456473 updated 11/20/08 jedidas3's Master At last - Hope for our country
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Vortigern99
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '00
|
Date Posted:
7/3 4:22pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
- Date Edited:
7/3 4:25pm (3 edits total)
Edited By:
Vortigern99
|
Quixotic-Sith posted:
... Aquinas wrote a lengthy exegesis on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, in which he interpreted it in light of Christian thought. Karen Armstrong goes into more detail than I can (considering I'm posting from a Panera and don't have access to my library at the moment) in A History of God. The reconciliation of the "God of the Philosophers" with the personal God of the Abrahamic traditions is examined in the early chapters.
Having read Armstrong's excellent book a few years ago, I should have recalled her explication of Aristotelean ethics with regard to Judeo-Christian theology, but when I earlier posted on the topic, I erroneously attributed those passages to Plato (the phrase "platonic love" being my sole memory-link here). But of course Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy, so it follows that the teachings about love and friendship as a kind of societal bond would have influenced A's thinking.
Moreover, going back to my earlier point about the primacy of biblical wisdom in this regard, I apologize ahead of time for playing a kind of "my guy thought of it first" game, but I do want to point out that the concept of loving-kindness in Judaic thought pre-dates the ideas of Plato and Aristotle by some five or six hundred years. Biblical scholarism -- a science distinct from religious or faith-based concerns with the same material -- tends to date the writing of Exodus in the 9th century BCE; while Aristotle lived around 350 BCE and Plato, fifty years prior. The Book of Exodus represents the first use of the word translated as "loving-kindness" in English, and this word is repeated in Chronicles II, Psalms, Nehemiah and Isaiah, with regard to both God's love and mercy for "His" people and humanity's love and mercy for each other.
While Plato and Aris. might have arrived at their secular thinking on the subject independently of any influence from Judaic theistic philosophy, that is an impossible proposition to prove, and it is probably more reasonable and logical to conclude that Judaic thinking on loving-kindness, since it predates Greek thought on the matter by at least five centuries, most likely had some effect or degree of influence, via transmission across Mediterranean channels, on the later philosophers. What this indicates to me is that theistic thought first developed the concept of loving-kindness: that love among all members of a society, and not simply affection between paired partners or blood-relatives, derived from a perceived shared relationship with a creator god.
In a discussion such as this one, in which faith in a supernatural power is so often discussed as detrimental to human health and well-being, I believe this is an important idea to introduce.
-----signature-----
"I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction.
I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece,
a fairy tale."--George Lucas
My "Vader's Origins" thread:
http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
DarthPoojaNaberrie
Registered:
Jun '05
|
Date Posted:
7/3 4:37pm
Subject:
RE: Atheism 3.0: A new approach
|
Quixotic-Sith posted:
1. Agnostic atheist - We can't know, but I don't think there is something transcendent
2. Agnostic theist - We can't know, but I think there is something transcendent
3. Gnostic atheist - We can know, and I think there isn't something transcendent
4. Gnostic theist - We can know, and I think there is something transcendent
thanks for clearing this up. 3 is the one i don't get.
-----signature-----
*fart*
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
