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toward a clearer understanding of reality
the rev’s faves
The Age of Reason
Thomas Paine
Some Mistakes of Moses
Robert Ingersoll
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
The Demon Haunted World
Carl Sagan
Awareness
Thomas Paine
Some Mistakes of Moses
Robert Ingersoll
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
The Demon Haunted World
Carl Sagan
Awareness
Anthony deMello
Breaking the Spell
Daniel C. Dennett
Freethought Across the Centuries
Gerald A. Larue
The Sins of Scripture
John Spong
Jesus for the Non Religious
Daniel C. Dennett
Freethought Across the Centuries
Gerald A. Larue
The Sins of Scripture
John Spong
Jesus for the Non Religious
John Spong
Doubt
Jennifer Michael Hecht
The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without Gods
Jennifer Michael Hecht
The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without Gods
Eric Maisel
Atheist Universe
David Mills
Atheism: The Case Against God
George H. Smith
Natural Atheism
David Eller
David Mills
Atheism: The Case Against God
George H. Smith
Natural Atheism
David Eller
Atheist Manifesto
Michel Onfray
A History of God
Karen Armstrong
A History of God
Karen Armstrong
The Spiral Staircase
Karen Armstrong
The End of Faith
Sam Harris
Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris
Ishmael
Daniel Quinn
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power
Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad
God is Not Great
Christopher Hitchens
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in God
The End of Faith
Sam Harris
Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris
Ishmael
Daniel Quinn
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power
Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad
God is Not Great
Christopher Hitchens
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in God
Guy P. Harrison
Being Peace
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Reason Driven Life
Robert Price
The Conquest of Happiness
Bertrand Russell
Ken’s Guide to the Bible
Ken Smith
Losing Faith in Faith
Dan Barker
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Reason Driven Life
Robert Price
The Conquest of Happiness
Bertrand Russell
Ken’s Guide to the Bible
Ken Smith
Losing Faith in Faith
Dan Barker
Godless
Dan Barker
Pagan Christs
J.M. Robertson
Treatise on the Gods
H.L. Mencken
The Christ Conspiracy
Acharya S.
The Jesus Mysteries Was the original Jesus a Pagan God?
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
The Road Less Traveled
Scott Peck
Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant
Edited by Preston Jones
Godless (age 12 and up)
Pete Hautman
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig
How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science
Michael Shermer
Religion Explained
Pascal Boyer
The Hero’s Journey
Joseph Campbell
The True Believer
Eric Hoffer
Holy Horrors
James Haught
Pagan Christs
J.M. Robertson
Treatise on the Gods
H.L. Mencken
The Christ Conspiracy
Acharya S.
The Jesus Mysteries Was the original Jesus a Pagan God?
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
The Road Less Traveled
Scott Peck
Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant
Edited by Preston Jones
Godless (age 12 and up)
Pete Hautman
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig
How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science
Michael Shermer
Religion Explained
Pascal Boyer
The Hero’s Journey
Joseph Campbell
The True Believer
Eric Hoffer
Holy Horrors
James Haught
Crazy for God
Frank Schaeffer
Your Inner Fish
Neil Shubin
A Guide to the Good Life:
the ancient art of stoic joy
William B. Irvine
This is Water
David Foster Wallace
Nickel and Dimed
Barbara Ehrenreich
links to enlightenment
10 reasons christianity is toxic
10 reasons Christianity is toxic
1. Christianity is INHERENTLY DIVISIVE as believers are promised eternal bliss and nonbelievers eternal torture.
2. Christianity INDUCES UNWARRANTED GUILT AND FEAR by asserting that a Cosmic Judge watches one’s every move and knows one’s every thought.
3. Christianity OBSCURES TRUTH AND PROMOTES FALSEHOODS by diverting focus from the natural (real) to the supernatural (unreal).
4. Christianity DEBASES HUMANITY by condemning us as sinners worthy of eternal damnation.
5. Christianity BREEDS A FALSE SENSE OF IMPORTANCE by asserting that The King of the Universe knew each of us intimately before we were born, knows the numbers of hairs on our head, has a special plan for us, loves us, watches us, listens to our every word, desperately wants a personal relationship with us and even promises to give us anything we ask for (Mt 21.22).
6. Christianity’s assertion that the Devil is real ALLOWS FOR THE LITERAL DEMONIZING of others.
7. Christianity PROVIDES THE ULTIMATE JUSTIFICATION FOR EVILS of all kinds (such as the vilifying of homosexuals and the subjection of women).
8. Christianity’s THREAT OF HELL HARDENS HEARTS and causes others mental anguish.
9. Christianity PROVIDES COVER FOR ABUSES OF ALL KINDS as evidenced by thousands of sexual abuse cases in the last few years alone.
10. Christianity LEGITIMIZES FRAUD as evidenced by countless insincere televangelists and church leaders.
1. Christianity is INHERENTLY DIVISIVE as believers are promised eternal bliss and nonbelievers eternal torture.
2. Christianity INDUCES UNWARRANTED GUILT AND FEAR by asserting that a Cosmic Judge watches one’s every move and knows one’s every thought.
3. Christianity OBSCURES TRUTH AND PROMOTES FALSEHOODS by diverting focus from the natural (real) to the supernatural (unreal).
4. Christianity DEBASES HUMANITY by condemning us as sinners worthy of eternal damnation.
5. Christianity BREEDS A FALSE SENSE OF IMPORTANCE by asserting that The King of the Universe knew each of us intimately before we were born, knows the numbers of hairs on our head, has a special plan for us, loves us, watches us, listens to our every word, desperately wants a personal relationship with us and even promises to give us anything we ask for (Mt 21.22).
6. Christianity’s assertion that the Devil is real ALLOWS FOR THE LITERAL DEMONIZING of others.
7. Christianity PROVIDES THE ULTIMATE JUSTIFICATION FOR EVILS of all kinds (such as the vilifying of homosexuals and the subjection of women).
8. Christianity’s THREAT OF HELL HARDENS HEARTS and causes others mental anguish.
9. Christianity PROVIDES COVER FOR ABUSES OF ALL KINDS as evidenced by thousands of sexual abuse cases in the last few years alone.
10. Christianity LEGITIMIZES FRAUD as evidenced by countless insincere televangelists and church leaders.
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About Me
- john evans
- See evidence that strongly suggests that the Jesus of the bible was a character fabricated from Old Testament stories! jesusisamyth.blogspot.com
Many men without morals have attacked religion because it was contrary to their inclinations. Many wise men have despised it because it seemed to them ridiculous. Many persons have regarded it with indifference, because they have never felt its true disadvantages. But it is as a citizen that I attack it, because it seems to me harmful to the happiness of the state, hostile to the march of the mind of man, and contrary to sound morality, from which the interests of state policy can never be separated.
~ Baron d'Holbach
~ Baron d'Holbach
13 comments:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
By Dinesh D'Souza
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. – In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."
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In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
Blindly blaming religion for conflict
Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of ... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.
Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.
Atheist hubris
The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."
Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.
It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
• Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new book, "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," will be published in January.
D’Souza makes too many dishonest and misleading half-truths to respond to here but I will make a couple of points.
1. Religions are inherently divisive which leads to conflict and suffering. Atheism is not divisive.
2. Every single day newspapers around the world are full of stories about religious people killing each other. Never do you see a story about atheists killing agnostics. Certainly atheists have done horrible things but it is not in the name of atheism that they do these things. In contrast, believers who do horrible things always believe they are doing God’s will.
1. What's wrong with being divisive? I would agree with your point that religions are divisive. Atheism is a religion (or belief system) as well. What I don't understand is why divisiveness is considered a bad thing. Explain please.
Within the non-Christian scientific community divisions exist in a number of areas. Is science evil because scientists disagree?
2. For every ad hominem fallacy against Christians, there is an ad hominem argument against atheists or any other religious practitioner for that matter. Can it really be said that global warming doesn't exist because of the size of Al Gore's carbon footprint? Case in point!
1. What's wrong with being divisive?
Nothing is necessarily wrong with being divisive. The Abolutionists were divisive and clearly in the right to be so.
2. I would agree with your point that religions are divisive.
Progress! :)
3. Atheism is a religion (or belief system) as well.
False. Atheism is a LACK of belief system. the only thing atheists necessarily have in common is a lack of belief in a god or gods.
4. What I don't understand is why divisiveness is considered a bad thing. Explain please.
If we are talking about divisiveness caused by religious belief we could consider the Middle East for most of the last 2,000 years. If Jews had no notions of being especially chosen by God they would have had no problem intermarrying with other peoples. If Muslims did not think non-muslims were headed to Muslim hell they might marry a nice Jewish or Christian girl or boy. If Christians did not think Muslims and Jews were going to Christian hell they might do the same. But religion kept these groups divided and untold number of wars and all kinds of suffering has been the result.
5. Within the non-Christian scientific community divisions exist in a number of areas. Is science evil because scientists disagree?
As noted in 1., divisiveness is not necessarily bad.
6. For every ad hominem fallacy against Christians, there is an ad hominem argument against atheists or any other religious practitioner for that matter. Can it really be said that global warming doesn't exist because of the size of Al Gore's carbon footprint? Case in point!
I agree ad hominem attacks prove little. Thats why I argue that the bible itself, and the three headed author, not the believer, is immoral.
1. So division is only wrong if caused by a religion?
3. One of the definitions of religion as defined by Merriam-Webster is a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Sorry, but atheism qualifies as a religion under this definition.
I have one question if you believe atheism is a lack of a belief system. Do you believe this to true? That rule you believe in becomes your system. Welcome to religion.
5. So divisiveness is only bad if you say it’s bad?
6. There are quite a few ad hominem fallacies in this blog. Based on what I have read, I would have assumed this blog puts much stock in such logic.
This is trademark of new atheism and shows a lack of intellectual integrity by many proponents of new atheism. Let’s talk about the issues, not failures of individuals or groups to try and discredit the their system of belief.
I am glad you agree ad hominem arguments prove little.
Progress!
Many of the arguments espoused by new atheists are a smorgasbord of fallacious thinking. Linguistic tricks, rhetorical ruses, rabbit trails and red herrings. Name your fallacy.
Most people can't spot fallacies in our day and age thanks to John Dewey and others who opted for progressive over classical education in America. Logic was a primary component in America's educational system before it became progressive.
Division is wrong when it leads to needless suffering. religious division is a perfect example of this. Clearly all religions cannot be true and so the divisiveness and suffering caused is needless.
Division (and any accompanying suffering) is acceptable and even laudable if it is a product of changing mind sets such as abolishing slavery, granting women equal rights, protecting animals and children etc.
You really need to let go of the idea that atheism is a religion or system of belief. It is not. You tell me what the system is. You can’t because there is none. Atheists may not have one single thought in common with another other than lack of belief in a god or gods. Atheism has been likened to belief like bald is a hair color. If atheism is a religion than you are a member of a countless number of religions that share your lack of belief in invisible unicorns, moon monkeys, Zeus and all the gods of history.
You are defining religion in extremely relative terms. If relativism lives here then I guess I can call atheism whatever I want. Your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth.
The system is naturalism!
1. Can atheists believe that God exists?
2. Can atheists believe there is a spiritual realm or something that transcends matter?
3. Can atheists believe there is life after death?
4. Can atheists say that the universe exists in an open system?
5. Can an atheists claim that knowledge about truth is possible outside the realm of science or empiricism?
The religious system known as atheism demands that its adherents believe a certain doctrine and that they hold to it dogmatically.
Again, see the creed offered by the Humanist Manifesto.
http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/manifesto1.html
There is many beliefs that atheists have in common, thus my reason for calling it religion.
To believe certain propositions of atheism demand that you believe other proposition. Otherwise you end up holding mutually exclusive propositions.
I finally checked out the humanist manifesto you seem to think all atheists adhere to. The fact that likely more atheists than not have even read this manifesto should be evidence enough to refute your claim that all atheists believe such things in a dogmatic way.
Another fundamental point you seem to have missed is that the introduction to the humanist manifesto presents it as 'a developing point of view not a new creed'.
What is a creed? I wonder why they had to make it a point to say it's not a creed.
If it looks like a creed, smells like a creed . . . .
I'm interested to know what you would have problems with in the Humanist Manifesto?
I imagine since the word creed is associated with religion they wanted to distance themselves from that don’t you think?
As far as my opinion of it? It’s nice. Nothing terribly groundbreaking, just common sense.
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