Reading my posts again, I used the word “Christians” as that is the faith group I am most familiar with. In no way did I mean to exclude other religious groups, and wish to acknowledge that they also do wonderful things for other people who are less well off. So apologies if that sounded like I was excluding other faiths. I didn’t mean to.
Second:
My charity tangent was in response to Klopptimist saying,
“If we stop considering this life to be like dirty rags before the after show party, we might try to do a little better, be a little better and love a little more in the only life we know to exist.”
The do a little better, be a little better, love a little more is the part I’m responding to, as the people I know of a religious persuasion massively outstrip the irreligious people I know on this stuff.
You like to read. I suggest C.G. Jung, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, and far from someone who makes up random shit.
A good introduction to his work is his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, published shortly after his death in 1962. Easy to read, but very intriguing. I can only recommend it most warmly.
I agree with the point that was made about people of faith: they give more to charity, vote more, volunteer more and help more. I agree with the general point being made that having faith makes a tremendous difference in all these outcomes.
That’s not to say that the irreligious are incapable of charity, as that would be untrue. Hitchens cited an example in the clip where he and Dawkins set up a charity to help in light of a Haiti earthquake. Good on them for that.
I disagree with Hitchens that charity is proselytizing. It’s obvious that he would say that, but it’s not really true. True Christian charity is to give with no strings attached.
probably most important was his relationship with Freud, whose own theories were diametrically opposed to his own. they could not sustain a friendship, so deeply were their own opinions entrenched.
This exact scenario replays itself over and over in society when it comes to religion. the irony should not be lost on this.
‘I know’ is doing a hell of a lot of work there. My experience is that when you believe that the idea of an other eternal life is taken away, and you get used to the idea that you are a flicker of light between eternities off darkness, you take the whole thing a bit more seriously.
Also, Love a little more? Only if it’s the kind of love we approve of, right? If you happen to exercise the kind of love we dislike, you’re going to hell. Let’s not forget it’s very recently that the head of the Anglican Church and the moral leader for millions of people yet again refused to consider homosexuality anything other than a sin against god.
For this reason I say any Christian (and it’s the say with catholics as it is Protestants) talking about love can fuck right off, unless they are doing everything they can to wake their church up from this medieval bigotry that blights the lives of millions of people round the globe.
There you go again with you ‘that’s not true Christianity’ stuff. The fact is that many Christian charities use suffering and poverty as a means of spreading their religious message. They seek out the most vulnerable and desperate people and use their suffering as means of indoctrinating them into the faith.
It’s great that religious people do engage in charity, but I wish it could be a bit less conditional of having to listen to a sermon.
And as Hitchins says in the clip, there is a subset of Christian charity that is also deeply unpleasant. The ones who turn up to the victims of natural disasters with aid in one hand and a judgement of the moral defencies that led to gods wrath in the other. That’s all too common and it’s sickening.
There is plenty of stuff to disagree with Hitchins about. I didn’t like some of his opinions on women, which were patronising and sexist.
But here is the thing that differentiates atheists relationships with people like Hitchins or Dawkins, and the religious with their leaders.
To us it doesn’t matter who the messenger is. What matters of whether whether what they say has any merit or not. I can think Hitchins was totally misguided in his support for the Iraq war and still think he talks loads of sense about other stuff. Arguments can be judged on their merits, and nobody is compelled to agrees with Hitchins, or Dawkins or Russell just because he said it.
Contrast with religious leaders, where their authority within their religion is absolute and if they say mad shit their followers have to believe them. Consider the Pope, who sets catholic dogma and could say something diametrically opposite to a previous pope and it would still be considered not only the gospel truth, but Catholic’s would be compelled to believe this new decree had always been the case.
Or consider the Archbishop of Canterbury, mentioned above, who could - if he wasn’t such a fucking coward - simply make homosexuality not a sin anymore. With a wave of his hand, similarly to Pope, hundreds of years of oppression and persecution of gay people could be over and Christian dogma retconned in an instant.
Authority centred with an individual person is of critical importance in faith (I understand less so in Islam, but I don’t really know my way around that faith) to the point where people have to believe what a religious leader tells them, and if they something as evil as, say, condoms are a sin against god, that is seen as the infallible word of god.
It’s really interesting that religious apologists tend to want to pick holes in things said by people like Hitchins - like @RedOverTheWater going on about him smoking - as if a flaw in their character damages the whole package. He isn’t an authority in that way. Is it because they are so used to the idea of infallible authority that they can’t understand that the fallibility of prominent atheists is entirely irrelevant?
I don’t hold any person to be an infallible authority. That would be ridiculous. But again, keep giving us your take on faith, and putting us all in a comfortable box, from an outsider’s perspective.
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Here’s the thing. I know that I saw something but I can’t possibly tell you what they actually were as I have no idea. I don’t believe the spirits / souls (if such things even exist) continue after death.
And yet you saw them, which suggests exactly what you suspect they were , and the fact you state you cannot say what they were is confusing as you stated on the other thread that they were two women and a large man…pretty specific description for something you cannot explain.
Sorry for this, but to use the logic that has been used here , the truth is you saw nothing 100% fact as you cannot provide proof, and ask us to accept it as fact based on what ? Your BELIEF, that you saw something?
I actually disagree with this, because while you, and certainly many others, do not care who the messenger is, there are still many out there who do. That is one of the bigger ironies of atheism out there, although it certainly isn’t a criticism against atheism per se.
Again I agree with the examples you have used in this post (re the pope and archbishop etc). But it’s these broad brush strokes that you don’t seem to be self-aware of. There are many religious traditions that don’t see their leaders as infallible, many Christian’s that don’t see the bible as literal, don’t believe hell is a physical place etc.
As someone with a little more, he’s not a joke. His ideas have been incredibly influential and pervade many aspects of modern psychology.
As with the above reflections on religious leaders and prominent athiests, we don’t have to agree with everything they said. We can critique, build upon, leave behind, modernise, contextualise…while still finding some truth and meaning
