Comments | teenonfire4evil: I thought this was pretty good

teenonfire4evil

I thought this was pretty good

Jun 11, 2007 01:55

Ive always tried to avoid philosophical or religious discussions on this thing... I am more or less a reluctant agnostic with vague transcendentalist overtones. I was brought up catholic, and enjoy learning more about rational logic and phenomenology... I don't necessarily believe that good science and good religion are incompatible (many will ( Read more... )

Comments 4

awatchfuleye June 12 2007, 16:41:45 UTC

I appreciate this post. As a scientist myself I have a hard time conceiving of blindly accepting and believing in anecdotal mysticisms as factual events. I am not one who takes stories from any bible and believes them to be verbatim reiterations of a sequence of events, but I believe that there is some "supernatural" in the universe ( ... )

My response to your comments (not the review) chron_job June 14 2007, 16:56:49 UTC

> parsimony is a good tool for selecting the most appropriate hypothesis, it does not necessarily reflect objective truth in itself ( ... )

Re: My response to your comments (not the review) teenonfire4evil June 15 2007, 14:47:06 UTC

Heres the thing, man... and im sure pretty much the only person that is ever gonna read this is you, but hey... its a good discussion... and really, my original post was not aimed at you at all ( ... )

Re: My response to your comments (not the review) chron_job June 15 2007, 19:36:53 UTC

Part of what you're saying seems to boil down to "Be nice".

Being nice is fine. But cultural movements also need invective. Often they need a fire brand. They need the person holding the cattle-prod. The civil rights movements needed Malcolm X as much as it needed MLK.

Couldn't Malcolm X have just.... been.... nicer!!!???

I don't ask Dawkins to be all things, all the time. His set of mind fits and suits the firebrand. For the touchy-feely side of Atheism, look to Carl Sagan.

> You dont see that many athiests reaching out to the masses with positive, compromising, compassionate, understanding messages.

They certainly don't sell as well... but part of our misconception here. Atheism is a critique of Theism. It is not itself a "way of life" or a belief system. It's not it's part or place to offer replacements for the presumed social function of religion. Lots of Atheists happen to be Humanists, or Existentialists, or various other sorts of Ists... but that's not Atheism.