" The godless society is unpleasant and uninspired."
he says, never mind that most people would find much more inspiration and cultural development in increasingly Godless and humanistic Europe than in the bigoted, gay hating Bible Belt. Most normal people that is, rather than failed people who find life so horrible and frightening that they have to invent another mystical one to mystically be transported to. Perhaps withdrawal from the opiate of the masses is indeed unpleasant for the addicted, but for others, like me, the flowering of humanism and liberty is to be preferred.
Freedom of belief is all well and good but if they would stop mocking and persecuting the sane for their efforts to improve the human condition and further the cause of secular liberty fewer of us would need that fantasy world they find so comforting.
"So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional God brings the world meaning, joy, liberty, and wonder."
Can it be that only someone trapped in the fictional world we call "conservative" could read this without sadness, pity and yes, horror? I find precisely those things in a meaningless and hostile universe. I love the more because of love's futility, I treasure life more for it's evanescence and meaninglessness. I wonder more at the spectacular and vast and complex universe of reality than at the childish little one born of ignorance and legend -- and most of all I'm free without Gods as no man could be with their jealous tempers and wrathful deeds, their narrow minded priests, preachers and divine retributions trapping him in a world of guilt, fear, original sin and self-loathing.
"Thus although Ricky Gervais has publicly said that his film takes an atheist position, it appears that even he cannot imagine a happy, emotionally fulfilling world that does not acknowledge a good many fundamentally religious thoughts, and in particular Christian ones."
What a smug and loathsome statement and how offensive to other religions -- as though love compassion, emotional fulfillment and the rest of the fuzzy, fulsome package belonged exclusively to any form of extant Christianity other than the ad hoc and ephemeral chimera he puts together for this argument -- as though history, it's wars, persecutions, tyrannies, oppressions and inquisitions could be disregarded as anomalous and never anywhere was there a Buddha or an atheist willing to lay down his life for his family or his country.
Regardless of how I loath this man's precious, smug and egotistical disdain for non-believers and non-Christians, I have to smile a bit at how he claims Gervais' movie "undercuts" his atheist position, because if even a fictional God is as good, as he says, as a real God; if objective reality is less important than the noble lie, then truthfulness, objectivity and indeed honesty are unnecessary and perhaps dangerous in his happy world of fiction, a conclusion which undercuts everything that, in his conceit, he attempts to prove.
If you put God in the hands of the mean spirited and the ignorant and God and his teachings favor the vicious, angry God.
ReplyDeleteWhich explains the bible belt.
God is not loving or compassionate but rather demanding and mean spirited who has no patience for those who do not follow the scriptures. The scriptures in turn must be translated to the believers by a minister, who is very well versed in 'fire and brimstone' and thus FEAR becomes the over riding emotion tied to religion.
Thus the reactionary right can use FEAR quite well in politics to elicit the same servitude.
Its fun to go to homes for social engagements, where the Baptists show up early and stay till about 9pm. Once they leave then out comes the booze and the party begins!
Life in Kentucky...its a parallel universe...
"...it appears that even he cannot imagine a happy, emotionally fulfilling world that does not acknowledge a good many fundamentally religious thoughts, and in particular Christian ones."
ReplyDeleteIn fact, for me, and many, many, many more--in fact, increasingly more, the world makes infinitely MORE sense without the idea of a vengeful or even a loving god--for what kind of loving god would oversee disasters such as those that daily occur to his beloved creations?
And how could I be more merciful than this god/creature/myth? According to Catholic doctrine, if you are not baptised into that faith, you cannot ever, ever, ever be welcomed into the paradisiacal kingdom of this merciful god. Would I condemn, say, some human from a society that has never heard of Jesus Christ to eternal unhappiness? No. Never, and yet this is Catholic doctrine.
If you don't get the water, you don't get the paradise.
I gave up on this ages and ages ago.
Even at this time in my life when more than a few people would turn their sorrows and fears over to a higher power, I feel stronger and more confident in turning my sorrow and fears over to science.
And, to the best of my knowledge, no doctor will give a fig whether or not someone dropped water on my forehead when I was a baby before she or he strives to make me healthy again.
Thanks Captain for providing an introduction to TS Karnick. 'Great' doesn't begin to do this guy justice.
ReplyDeleteI've been laying around on the couch all day trying to come down with the flu and I have to tell you my visit to Karnick's website has breathed new life into this headachey, slightly feverish carcass. S.T. is amazing. An incredibly edumacated sort the likes of which one all too rarely encounters.
From his review of J. Y. Jones' 'Worship Not the Creature' (A discussion of the animal rights wing of the radical environmental movement)
Jones begins by establishing the authority of Scripture and the Creator's will regarding the animal kingdom. He continues with the Great Flood of Noah, focusing on the dietary consequences of that great cataclysm. (His fascinating observations on the impact of vitamin B-12 production and consumption and its relative scarcity after the Flood are something I had never considered before.)
S.T. and me both!
Thanks again. I've got a lot of kvetching up to do.
Thanks to all for the comments on my screed the other day.
ReplyDeleteHave commented much on religion so won’t go into it again at length – am just reminded that a problem several are identifying here is a failure to hold one’s god accountable to even the lowest standards of human decency. I recall making some remarks about Job a while back since I find the text magnificent in parts. But the troubling thing about that work is that while it seems inclined to posit a transcendent God far beyond all human frames of knowing or judging, “God’s” actual behavior in the story is by no means difficult to comprehend or judge: I think most would have little trouble identifying it as fundamentally wrong, and would not tolerate it for an instant coming from another human being. In other words, the book is a strange amalgam of the old pagan way of using the god-concept to explain why things are so chaotic and violent here below (call it the “crazy gods, crazy world” hypothesis) and the more recent, usually monotheistic way of positing a god infinitely beyond ourselves, a principle of excellence towards which we should strive. I have considerable regard for this latter approach, when it’s followed consistently. But I would agree that a fair amount of Bible-thumping-style Christianity amounts to positing a god-principle to justify worse conduct and sentiment than even thoroughly bad people might otherwise find justifiable. I don't believe religion must be that way, but it's a shame that it so often is.
Ironically, much of "increasingly Godless and humanistic Europe" actually has (or had until recently) state religions. Earlier this year I wrote about Norway, with its socialized medicine and government paid for abortions and gay marriage and all manner of Godlessness and licentious behavior (or whatever). Yet it's only been about a year and a half since the Norwegian constitution has been changed so that the Lutheran Church is not the state religion.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, until last year, every Norwegian born in the country was automatically born into the Lutheran Church. If you wanted your child born a Jew, Muslim, atheist, Druid, etc., you had to petition the government.
Amazing but it seems the closer the ties between a religion and the government, the weaker that religion's influence becomes. Seems the Founding Fathers knew that separation of church and state protects the church as much as it does the state.
Breitbart. Isn't that the guy who hosts the Victoria Jackson self-parody blog? Yep, that's the guy.
ReplyDelete"the Founding Fathers knew that separation of church and state protects the church as much as it does the state."
ReplyDeleteI've heard clergymen speak on that subject and I have little doubt that this is true -- as experience proves in many cases.
Does religion have to be this way? Perhaps, in the absence of God and the supernatural and in the presence of all these angry apes, it does. Humans will pervert anything, given time and opportunity.
My fellow Zoners, I much enjoy the recent posts and comments, but don't have anything to add -- and it does not help that I'm semi-seriously incapacitated after hurting my back (probably by lifting my old mutt on the sofa, yes -- things we do for dogs...)
ReplyDeleteBut I've thought you'd enjoy Frans de Waal's Morals Without God, especially in this thread.
Ohhh, Elizabeth, as a chronic bad back sufferer, I feel for you. You know the only way to recover is good drugs and rest, so get to the doctor and feel better soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rocky. Yes, good drugs, mmmm...
ReplyDelete