Come talk to me about Hitchens?

[ICBINEG]

How did I not know about Hitchens?

How do I not stay up all night trawling youtube....

Seriously..I have been a kinda quiet atheist...don't poke me with your religion and I won't poke you with how stupid it all sounds to me.

I feel like someone stuck a fire cracker up my back side.

What if there is a moral imperative that atheists get out there and attempt to rid the world of the evil that is religion?

I am all confused now.

[ICBINEG]

I think that if children grew up in the vacuum away from societal and parental influence (a thought experiment - not something that could ever be achieved) they would fall onto a spectrum from feeling alone in an uncaring universe to feeling deeply loved by a spirit larger than their own.

But nowhere on that spectrum would anything approximating Islam or catholicism etc. exist.

Can you imagine such children spontaneously deciding that sex was evil, or that only men could represent that spirit? Or that one persons interpretation was more important than another's? Or that certain specific words must be said in a certain order to avoid hell?

Basically I think that while faith or lack of it may be inherent in the human brain, organised religion is a pathological self-perpetuating virus like entity that the human race would be well shot of.

[NicholasTeakozy]

Ellie, I guess you're shying away from another of his most quotable lines, 'religion poisons everything'.

What puzzles me is why women, especially women who identify themselves as feminists, would admit to being a follower of any of the Abrahamic faiths, given the misogynist nature of their scriptures and practices. It all seems to me a bit Mr Cholmondely-Warner, Women, know your place.

[cjel]

I prefer his brother Peter!!!!

[PedroYoniLikesCrisps]

how many people on that list? out of 1.6 billion people who are muslim that 'lengthy' list wouldnt even make 0.01%. to get to even 1 per cent you would need a list of 16 million names.

Did I say large proportion? No I did not. I said lengthy. So I don't know what on earth you are going on about.

It only takes one fundamentalist with a nuke to be a problem.

[EllieArroway]

Ellie, I guess you're shying away from another of his most quotable lines, 'religion poisons everything

Not shying away, just didn't think about it in that moment - but yes, I agree completely with that too.

[EllieArroway]

I think that if children grew up in the vacuum away from societal and parental influence (a thought experiment - not something that could ever be achieved) they would fall onto a spectrum from feeling alone in an uncaring universe to feeling deeply loved by a spirit larger than their own

See, this is interesting and something I've pondered a lot. There is a tendency within all of us, I think, to "look up" for answers. I don't mean into the sky necessarily, but to refer upwards for answers to difficult questions - your parents, then the priests, then the leaders of the tribes, then the emperor or king - and further up to God/s.

Every civilization (I think) establishes a hierarchy of some description - even democratic societies like ours. We don't want to feel alone, so we look for authority - the ultimate and usurping authority being God. And since God never manages to speak to us himself, it's pathetically easy for people with an agenda to put words in his mouth.

So, I think you're probably right - that looking for "love" or authority seems a natural inclination. But that doesn't demonstrate that a god exists (as CS Lewis suggested with his hunger analogy), it just demonstrates that we all feel individually feeble and alone and want to believe that we're not.

[Snorbs]

I think Hitchens had a wonderful ability, when he was on form, to cut through the societal pressure to acquiesce to religious faith and instead to strike at the real heart of the issue. There's a clip on youtube from a discussion where a genial rabbi was talking about circumcision. Hitchens did a magnificent job of making it clear that what the rabbi was cracking jokes about was non-consensual genital mutilation and how inappropriate that was.

That being said, I wasn't particularly impressed by "God is Not Great" and some of the things he said I flat-out don't agree with. But that's ok. He's not a prophet, no-one is expected to go along with everything he said.

[Isabeller]

So glad your thread took off, will catch up properly but (harking back) are you saying the religious group I belong to is evil (polite question ?

[CheerfulYank]

Nick for me it's easy because I'm a Red Letter Christian, who follows what we believe are the actual recorded words of Jesus. As far as I know (I'll have to reread) he didn't have much to say that was anti-feminist.

[EllieArroway]

As far as I know (I'll have to reread) he didn't have much to say that was anti-feminist

No, he was too busy being pro-slavery and supporting the laws that say we should kill cheeky children and homosexuals. He didn't mention lesbians, which was nice of him.

[CheerfulYank]

Okay. :)

[PedroYoniLikesCrisps]

'it takes one type of fundamentalist...'

what type of fundamentalist? religious? we dont see that but we see a fundamentalism about 'the market' and about 'capital' that has and still can overcome any democracy, human rights, protection of society etc.

I never used the word 'type', you are misquoting me. That changes the sentence quite a bit. I said it only takes one fundamentalist.

But to suggest that you don't see religious extremists causing problems..... well, I'm not really sure what to say to that.

I'll start with 9/11 but if you really want a big long list, I'll dig one up for you.

[sieglinde]

Pedro said
"sieglinde you seem to be suggesting that children are born as theists. This is simply not true. If a child grew up in a world where there was no religion at all, it's pretty unlikely they'd ever be religious."

Not what I said. Just that there's some neurological evidence that human beings are wired to seek a universal explanation that makes sense of things. This might just as well be an atheist as a theist argument, as Ellie has pointed out. All I really wanted to say is that human children go through neural phases, only some of which predispose to theism/atheism - so really it's not entirely relevant. left to themselves, without the notorious men in frocks that seem to trouble ellie so much, they might for all we know evolve their own religion - say, worshipping a dead pig... or they might bypass religion. we can't ever find out, because our own society is - in all ways - the product of religion.

Interesting that some here don't seem to know what 'shallow' means. It's not a judgement about truth and falsity. The point is that Hitchens was a slick, sleazy and simplistic thinker, exactly the kind of thinker for the 21st century - soundbites and no nuances. Sorry, but he's not a martyr because he volunteered to be waterboarded. Anyone with two neurones to make a synapse didn't NEED to experience it personally to know it was horrible. It's part of his huge eogtism to turn it into the Hitch Show. FFS. Whty not do some work, people? Read some Ferber. Read some Kant.

Religion, you all say, is bad for the planet - can someone explain to me why it is worse than militant atheism? Let's not argue Hitler all over again. Let's stick to Stalin and Mao. Let's just start with a glance at their combined death tolls - somewhere near 100 million or more. Now tell me again why the RC church is to blame for desertification in China and pollution in Russia.

[PedroYoniLikesCrisps]

and you said a fundamentalist WITH A NUKE. you mean iran i suppose? those weapons of mas destruction that iraq was supposed to have? that was used as a pretext to attack the iraqis? im watching the news and feeling dejavu about it all - nothing the iranians as the iraqis can change course.

You make a lot of assumptions. Did I say anything about Iraq? No I did not.

You like to think that you know what I'm talking about when clearly you don't.

What I said was that it only takes one fundamentalist with a nuke. I didn't say religious. In fact you brought religion into it and suggested that we don't see religious extremists truing to blow stuff up. I pointed out that you were wrong.

As for North Korea, if Kim Jong Un really is completely atheist, then I can say with much confidence that he is not doing whatever it is he's doing because he's an atheist. However, the religious attacks are carried out precisely because of the religious beliefs of those who plan and carry out the attacks.

[PedroYoniLikesCrisps]

Religion, you all say, is bad for the planet - can someone explain to me why it is worse than militant atheism?

Militant atheism is not a thing. It doesn't exist. People don't perform atrocious acts because they are atheists. There are always other reasons because atheism doesn't propose a way of doing things, a moral code or a list of people to hate, it's just a word. What can't you grasp about that?

[juule]

"Religion, you all say, is bad for the planet - can someone explain to me why it is worse than militant atheism"

Saying that atheism is bad doesn't make religion good.
This type of argument reminds me of my children. Tell one off for doing something and that child will then claim that a sibling did something wrong earlier in an attempt. It's an attempt to divert the attention and it doesn't make a wrong deed any better that someone one else did the equivalent or worse.

[nailak]

It only takes one fundamentalist with a nuke, does this mean military action against all groups which have one fundamentalist in them is justified and should be carried out?

[MasterOfTheYoniverse]

I can tell you at the moment in Asia many of us think it would be justified to teach the spoilt brat in North Korea a lesson.

[PedroYoniLikesCrisps]

It only takes one fundamentalist with a nuke, does this mean military action against all groups which have one fundamentalist in them is justified and should be carried out?

No. And I never suggested it was.

[ICBINEG]

hmm militant atheism...

Would we define that as the attempt to promote atheism through use of arms/violence?

Has that actually ever happened?

Both theist and atheist may be accused of using violence to expand their countries/resources/money etc but I think only the theists are guilty of using arms/violence in order to promote their religious view point?

Basically I think there is no such thing as militant atheism...while I am struggling to think of a religion that isn't a militant religion....even the buddhists seem to be having a crack at genocide at the moment.

This may be a selection problem...any religion not willing to use violence to expand it's membership has not survived to this era....

isabella well if your religious group has used violence, oppression, and torture simply for the end of expansion then yes I would suggest the religion is both militant and evil. Again this is far from saying that you are evil.

By analogy, for those of us living in the UK it is obvious that the British empire was evil, vast amount of violence was done for no reason other than expansion of the British meme, but that doesn't mean that all British people are evil....

[MasterOfTheYoniverse]

Well the cultural revolution and the works of the khmer had a strong component militant atheism