What is Aetheism 2.0?

[RootsBooster]

I think we're still at cross purposes a lot of the time six45ive. The 10 commandments business was a sidetrack (although it was me who brought them into the conversation, but not as a core part of the issue).

 

It was probably the only thing unique to religion that you mentioned, after introducing it as an example I would have thought you might use it to argue your case, but you kept refusing to and stuck with the morals and ideals NOT unique to religion !

[FairDooz]

Hah! He got me with than one too, the little trickster

 

... or should that be ? ... anyway, sorry you see it that way!

 

I had intended to frame the OP and the discussion on Atheism 2.0 as proposed by you know who ... and the Observer's leader, although not going as far as that, was in a very similar vein.

 

I apologise if I've incorrectly perceived others of "mixing gall with their inke" and hope that we've not been "void both of Christian charity and humane wisdom". (references to the first paragraph of the Observer's editorial).

[Ryedo40]

So we can engage with the practical aspects of church ceremony, but have nothing to do with those who maintain the churches on any other level?

 

And if they do become museums only, what will they be replaced with for births, deaths marriages, state occasions and services of remembrance for national tragedies?

 

Just to make a point here, but a lot of people now have civil or humanist weddings in castles and stately homes. To get married in those places, you don't have to be a king, queen or lord. If our old churches were to become museums - like our castles, etc - and if religion was no longer followed, I somehow suspect those old churches would still function as venues for marriages, etc but on a more secular level.

[six45ive]

I think we're still at cross purposes a lot of the time six45ive. The 10 commandments business was a sidetrack (although it was me who brought them into the conversation, but not as a core part of the issue).

 

I don't think we are at cross purposes. I understand you perfectly well because I've heard your arguments so many times before, it's nothing new and nothing more than rhetoric. It doesn't go anywhere. There's no practical information about what you would like to see that isn't already happening in one form or another with intereactions between atheists and theists.

I know it was you who originally brought the 10 commandments into the conversation but I'm specifically talking about the post below and asking you to start the dialogue that you've already started from the common ground of commandment number 9.

 

It's a very good checklist (set of commandments). And yes, number 8 is an excellent commandment, and yes, his criticism of the original 10 commandments will not be easy viewing for those Christians who do want to use the bible as their sole (only) guide (but I'm not sure there are many of those left). He did find common ground with the 9th commandment - that's maybe the start of a dialogue?

 

I'd like you to respond to Christopher Hitchen's interpretation of the original 10. What you agree with, what you don't and the reasons why. If you can't talk about specifics then your words are pretty meaningless hence my accusation of you being a rhetorician.

 

I do appreciate dialogue and particularly enjoyed our meeting last week, but it's also nice to come to a conclusion on matters and move on. I've bought a couple of books as a result of this thread and have a 900 pager on its way, so I'll be taking some time out now.

 

That's entirely your perogative but I hope you realise that I will keep challenging you on this issue if you keep bringing up the same rebutted points (mainly by other atheists who are better at it than me) to show other people who may be reading how your argument goes nowhere because of your inability/unwillingness to flesh out the bones of your rhetorical argument.

 

Will be around sometime soon and hope to meet up again.

 

Love to again sometime.

[redwhine]

The Archbishop earns 4 times the salary of a curate, but the average wage of a bank boss is more than 40 times that of the country’s average of £26,000 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033744/Bosses-banks-saved-taxpayer-earn-crisis.html Sep 2011)

Do bank bosses live in rent-free palaces? <serious question.

 

...and only work one day a week; Sunday? <flippant question.

[redwhine]

And if they do become museums only, what will they be replaced with for births, deaths marriages, state occasions and services of remembrance for national tragedies?

http://www.humanism.org.uk/ceremonies

 

Just saying.

[six45ive]

This article in the Times pretty much sums up my position on what we have to learn from religion.

 

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/645034-the-church-wins-the-award-for-intolerance

 

"Of course religion is central to our culture. It spent a thousand years stamping out rivals

 

For people who profess to be kind and tolerant, the defenders of Christianity can be remarkably unpleasant and intolerant. For all his frank and sometimes brusque bluster, I cannot think of anything that Richard Dawkins has said that is nearly as personally offensive as the insults that have been deluged upon his head in the past few days.

 

“Puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant,” snaps one commentator. Running a “Foundation for Enlightening People Stupider than Professor Richard Dawkins,” scoffs another. Descended from slave owners, smears a third, visiting the sins of a great-great-great-great-great- great-grandfather upon the son (who has made and given away far more money than he inherited).

 

In all the coverage of last week’s War of Dawkins Ear, there has been a consistent pattern of playing the man, not the ball: refusing to engage with his ideas but thinking only of how to find new ways to insult him. If this is Christian, frankly, you can keep it.

 

By contrast, where is the condemnation of Baroness Warsi’s extraordinary article last week claiming that “militant secularisation is ... deeply intolerant ... and demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes”, as if Dawkins had sent people to gas chambers? The closest things to a totalitarian society today (neo-religious North Korea apart) are theocracies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, places where it is not much fun to be gay or atheist or have two X chromosomes. For the religious to lecture the secular on tolerance is rich. Lady Warsi went on: “When we look at the deep distrust between some communities today, there is no doubt that faith has a key role to play in bridging these divides.” Excuse me, there is a great deal of doubt about that. Tell a persecuted Christian in Iran, a divided community in Ulster or a victim of Osama bin Laden that there is no doubt that faith plays a key role in bridging divides.

 

Sure, there have been atheist dictators such as Stalin, just as there have been vegetarian ones such as Hitler, and Catholic ones such as Franco (enthusiastically supported by the Church). But our own free and tolerant society became so only as it managed to throw off religious dogmatism. Tudor and Cromwellian England were the very archetype of a totalitarian society. My ancestral relation Nicholas Ridley was burned slowly to death, screaming in pain, as a spectator sport merely because he believed that the body of Christ was figuratively, but not literally, present at the communion. That’s all in the distant past, insist the Dawkins bashers, and today the Church is all about forgiveness and community. Largely true and wholly welcome. No doubt good Anglican vicars are too embarrassed to read from the chapters of the Bible where God advocates gang rape, genocide and murder, preferring the nice bits. But if some of the Bible can be ignored, what is so special about the rest?

 

Above all, why is it necessary to insist on the truth of an arbitrary fairytale from a particular pastoral society in order to teach morality? Might it not actually hinder the spread of virtue to insist that the only reason you should be kind is because somebody says a supernatural entity told you to, two millennia ago? The Church and its rituals are central to all the things that are good about modern communities, say the religious. But that is because society tamed the Church, at least much as vice versa.

 

To say that religion is part of our culture, therefore we should cherish it, is a circular argument. The Church spent a thousand years intolerantly stamping out rival strands of culture, insisting that every ritual from birth to death be celebrated in its halls. So yes, it is part of my culture.

 

Last year I stood in wonder before the extraordinary 15th-century carved wooden altarpiece of St Mary’s Basilica in Cracow, fascinated by the story that each of the apostles is actually a portrait of a Cracow merchant. Such art, you will sometimes hear, would never have been created without religion. Bunk. The only way that Veit Stoss could do his brilliant portraiture was by dressing it up as yet another portrayal of 12 boring old Palestinians. Think how much more variety we eventually got from artists once they were not confined to doing saints.

 

Some years ago, a colleague snapped: “I don’t force my views on Dawkins, why should he force his on me?” I held my tongue, but what ran through my mind was a memory of being forced, yes forced, to attend church every day at my school, preached at from the pulpit without right of reply, and my delight when the school allowed daily attendance at a secular alternative instead.

 

Occasionally, after that, I still went to chapel rather than the secular version, because it was no longer compulsory."

[redwhine]

If all churches and places of worship became museums only, it would probably mean that organised religion has come to an end, which means that those of faith would be happy to worship/pray to their God wherever they want. I would imagine a beautiful garden or woodland walk would be the best place (IMO).

(My bold.)

 

Matthew

 

6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

[redwhine]

I never said that they should become museums only. St George's church is a university lecture theatre for example.

Another good example...

 

http://www.stmarys-church.co.uk/

[redwhine]

The 10 commandments business was a sidetrack (although it was me who brought them into the conversation, but not as a core part of the issue).

The Golden Rule (...do unto others as you would be done by...) and the Silver Rule (...don't do unto others as you would not be done by...) have been around a lot longer than the 10Cs. They're still more relevant than not coveting thy neighbour's ox.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-RGN21TSGk