Consequences of Atheism

[The Inglorious One]

I have tended to stay down here in the religious philosophy subsection and this section is, if taken against the forum as a whole, and taking in the forum owner's thrust (to the degree I understand it and I have not put that much energy into it), the notion of 'God', divinity, the 'importance' of religion, and the relevance of Christianity, these are simply no longer considered nor viewed as relevant or important topics. That is the general mood in academic circles these days. What may help you is to understand that I confine my reading to an older reading list. For example I tend to read people who were writing before WW2 certainly, and sometimes before WW1 or near that time. This is a deliberate choice on my part and fits with my idea that a great deal that is most relevant - in ideas and shifts in ideas - occurred between (roughly) 1880-1920. Modernism truly took form then, it seems.

I like the 'golden age' of American philosophy. Of course, the movement wasn't limited to American philosophy and some of it is too far out even for me.

...understanding will take one to an area little peopled. The more that one understands the more understanding separates one from 'mass view'. I know that you despise this aristocratic term - that is too bad really - but this is how I see it.

I'm not so 'aristocratic' about it. I'm more like an angry bull in a china shop.

I am interested only in people who gain the inner power to define themselves, and who then resist and countervail the movements of degeneration in the present. To understand my project, you'd have to hold this idea central.

...I have no intention of 'coming under your influence', Esteemed Mr Uwot, because you do not have and you have not (yet) defined an 'anchor' in your own being! The very terms are impossible for you!

To mutilate something Werner Heisenberg said, "Is it true, perhaps, that experiential situations that arise in nature cannot be expressed in mathematical formalism?” This is the main point of contention with atheists, at least in this forum: they think they can; they have no moral anchor and, in fact, label anyone who does as 'intolerant.'

Compare with The Matter of Mind with Mindwalk and this article from Wired.

I'm a bigot. Atheism is beneath my contempt and I think giving homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexuals is blasphemous. I will not compromise my values, apologize for them or plead for their acceptance because feigning acceptance of a particular mode of thinking and glossing over differences in order to be “politically correct” is something only moral cowards and the utterly wretched do. It's not that I dislike atheists and homosexuals personally, but if I have a change of heart with respect to either way of thinking, it will be because of personal growth and experience, not the product of policing by others.

I'm sure people find things about me that are abhorrent, too, and I'm okay with that.

[Arising_uk]

Even Jesus was unafraid of giving vent to righteous indignation.

Not a Samaritan eh!

Compassion is one thing; sentiment that leads to cultural suicide is tantamount to self-hate. We can be compassionate without surrendering our way of life. If a guest should come into my house and proceed to live by his or her own rules with no regard or respect for mine, I'd throw the ingrate out by his ear.

So you agree with radical Islam that all the Christians in their nations should convert?

You think all the Christians in Muslim countries should live by their way of life? Maybe. As Islam itself says that a muslim in a foreign country should obey its laws, does Christianity say the same?

What percentage of the population in the various western nations do you think are muslims?
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablo ... everything
Ironic that you appear to be a 'screeching jackdaw'.

Nobody has any business to use the word “progress” unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible — at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress.

I'm an atheist, a definite creed, I have a set of cast-iron morals, so I'm progressive no?

Do away with "theistic nonsense" and all religion in general and you do away with progress.

Define 'progress' as a fair part of Church history has been to deny progress, scientific at least.

Did I not say #3 is complicated?

No idea? I'll have to track back and see what this #3 refers to.

[The Inglorious One]

Not a Samaritan eh!

Do you even know what a Samaritan is? Why a Samaritan was used in the parable?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I thought this conversation - decidedly not a politically correct conversation - might interest you, Inglorious. Jonathan Bowden on 'The Homosexual Question'. It is a curious process that opens up for one when one has shattered the rather soupy and thin veneer of liberalism that all gets more difficult and strange - I have found - when one begins to explore the various forms of the radical right and attempt to locate the 'anchor' in metaphysics where to pin one's sense of metaphysical solidity. It is not easy territory and in many ways - according to some - Christianity of the protestant, liberal variety, is part of the problem.

One of the strangest discourses - yet fascinating - is Jonathan Bowden on Savitri Devi.

In my own view there is and has always been homosexuals and it is unavoidable. But the Gay Movement of our present, and of course the Gay marriage movement (some of the local crew here even had a celebratory thread going on it), are radical perversions of what (in my view) should simply remain the 'closeted variety'. To begin to speak of what motivates people in this area is not easy.

[The Inglorious One]

Thank you, but the homosexual question doesn't really interest me at all.

Yes, homosexuality and atheism will always be with us and I accept that, but that does not mean I have to condone them, recognize them as viable aspects of reality, or compromise my values in any way.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

In my own view the question is not so much homosexuality or deviation in sexual practice per se, but the predicates that form and which then shift behaviour and attitude. Since that is my general area of interest, and largely what I focus on, I feel duty-bound to follow-up by attempting to understand the thinking behind aspects of liberal redefinition, and certainly one of those areas is the sexual arena. It is hard to imagine behaviour that is more central to man, and that implying so much, as sexual choice and practice.

Also, in order to propose and make statements about 'metaphysical bedrock' (in quotes since I have little idea how to do that but a certain amount of feeling/idea about it, as is evident in what I write), and from that to justice in making any statement about any aspect of human behaviour, one has I think to understand how numerous modern movements are reactions to and establish themselves as rebellions against the old school moral and ethical definitions.

I am not exactly sure how much importance to give it except to say that it appears to me that homosexual liberation, total sexual liberation, and the legitimisation of any and all sexual expression, is a critical question for those interested - as I am - in defining 'metaphysical bedrock'. It is odd to think of a resistance movement to established social and cultural forms as being in numerous senses as spearheaded (an unfortunate metaphor perhaps) by radical forms of sexual expression, yet it appears to be the case.

If you had to write out your reasons for resisting homosexuality as an intrusion against your values, how would you do it?

[The Inglorious One]

Apparently, I edited my post just as you added yours.

Good question, though, and a fair one. Homosexuality as such is not an intrusion against my values because I do not recognize it as a viable aspect of reality. If it were an intrusion against my values, I'd have a hellava time visiting with my wife's extended family in the Philippines. There, it's just an amusing sideshow of no real importance. It's only an intrusion when it becomes a political movement to propagandize itself as a lifestyle that is on par with heterosexuality and deserving of the all the same privileges. Such behavior is not unlike a Muslim taking on a job knowing the conditions or immigrating to a different culture as a guest and then demanding special privileges -- which, as you know, is happening more and more as traditional Western values retreat under the 'leadership' of radical liberals.

Calling resistance to the 'gay movement' 'homophobic' or 'hate' comes right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It's only an intrusion when it becomes a political movement to propagandize itself as a lifestyle that is on par with heterosexuality and deserving of the all the same privileges.

To get a sense of the background I suggest this short read: The Overhauling of Straight America. Written by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen (Harvard educated both) it is an outline of a plan that was enacted, and which succeeded brilliantly.

Since you indicated that the issue is not that interesting to you you may not wish to look it over. But I would suggest that the strategy used to legitimise homosexual choices has a relationship which can be examined with numerous strains of what I have been calling 'radical liberalism'. I find that this is my primary intellectual enemy, to put it deliberately dramatically.

I have been reading Alain de Benoist's 'The Problem of Democracy' and though it has given me a bit of a headache (density of idea and footnotes!) I have found it interesting to better define 'liberalism' and to see how unfounded the idea of liberalism (and this distorted idea of liberty) is. Yet we have all been - and there is no doubt of this in my mind - infected by the false understanding that democratic freedom, or the freedoms of a free society, are those that allow us to do (to put it like this:) whatever the fuck we want. What I find interesting is the degree that this notion and attitude has penetrated our attitudes.

I would suggest, as I have been suggesting, that when we are faced with atheistic ideology - and it is an ideology though it claims to be the absence of one, and in a sense this is true - it comes in with a similar radical force and as an overturning of an old school platform.

[The Inglorious One]

The Overhauling of Straight America is straight out of Rules for Radicals.

On several occasions I said that egalitarianism is the biggest fraud perpetrated on man by man -- and I'll leave it to your imagination what kind of response that got!

FYI, although considered by most to be on-the-fringe nonsense by most and blasphemous by some, The Urania Book has some interesting insights with regards to true and false liberty, as well as the nature of religion. (If I were on my big computer I'd copy and paste, but you can easily download the whole book for free in several different languages.)

[Arising_uk]

Do you even know what a Samaritan is?

Yup.

Why a Samaritan was used in the parable?

Ah! Now that's a trickier question as which 'Bible' are you talking about?

Still, for me it's the KJV and my reading has the parable about helping one's neighbour even if one is not like them. You?

I think it applicable to you in your response to those fleeing war in search for a better life as you appear to not be a good neighbour.

You appear yet another selective reader and replier.

[The Inglorious One]

Do you even know what a Samaritan is?

Yup.

Why a Samaritan was used in the parable?

Ah! Now that's a trickier question as which 'Bible' are you talking about?

Still, for me it's the KJV and my reading has the parable about helping one's neighbour even if one is not like them. You?

I think it applicable to you in your response to those fleeing war in search for a better life as you appear to not be a good neighbour.

You appear yet another selective reader and replier.

I didn't think so.

[Arising_uk]

I didn't think so.

Not much of a reply from you but then like most of your flock you tend to ignore sentences with question marks. Anyhoo, pray tell, what interpretation do you put upon the parable, if you've read it that is. Oh! And which Bible you use? Just so we're on the same page.

[The Inglorious One]

Back at the big 'puter:

True liberty is the quest of the ages and the reward of evolutionary progress. False liberty is the subtle deception of the error of time and the evil of space. Enduring liberty is predicated on the reality of justice — intelligence, maturity, fraternity, and equity.

54:1.3 (613.5) Liberty is a self-destroying technique of cosmic existence when its motivation is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled. True liberty is progressively related to reality and is ever regardful of social equity, cosmic fairness, universe fraternity, and divine obligations.

54:1.4 (613.6) Liberty is suicidal when divorced from material justice, intellectual fairness, social forbearance, moral duty, and spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart from cosmic reality, and all personality reality is proportional to its divinity relationships.

54:1.5 (613.7) Unbridled self-will and unregulated self-expression equal unmitigated selfishness, the acme of ungodliness. Liberty without the associated and ever-increasing conquest of self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination. Self-motivated liberty is a conceptual illusion, a cruel deception. License masquerading in the garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage.

54:1.6 (614.1) True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.

54:1.7 (614.2) Even wisdom is divine and safe only when it is cosmic in scope and spiritual in motivation.

54:1.8 (614.3) There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness. Only true and genuine liberty is compatible with the reign of love and the ministry of mercy.

54:1.9 (614.4) How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.

54:1.10 (614.5) Evolutionary man may have to contend for his material liberties with tyrants and oppressors on a world of sin and iniquity or during the early times of a primitive evolving sphere, but not so on the morontia worlds or on the spirit spheres. War is the heritage of early evolutionary man, but on worlds of normal advancing civilization physical combat as a technique of adjusting racial misunderstandings has long since fallen into disrepute.

http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-sta ... s-religion

http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-sta ... experience

http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-sta ... e-religion

http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-sta ... ious-faith

http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-sta ... experience

You may not find them interesting or informative, but I certainly do.

[The Inglorious One]

I didn't think so.

Not much of a reply from you but then like most of your flock you tend to ignore sentences with question marks. Anyhoo, pray tell, what interpretation do you put upon the parable, if you've read it that is. Oh! And which Bible you use? Just so we're on the same page.

It was obvious from your response that you do not know what a Samaritan is or the cultural context of the parable.

Look it up, then we can talk (maybe).

[Arising_uk]

It was obvious from your response that you do not know what a Samaritan is or the cultural context of the parable.

Oh! The Bible is a cultural thing is it?

If so then my reading of it from my cultural context has it about being a good neighbour to the other. Something you appear not to be. So what do you take from the parable? Let me guess, you are the priest or levite.

Look it up, then we can talk (maybe).

Which bit of 'Yup' did you not get?