I want to ask something very different and something an atheist is yet to give a satisfactory answer.

What is your solution to world peace?

Christians, if you’re reading this, do not answer. I specifically want to ask non-believers this. A non-believer can speak for the entire atheism or just for himself, depending on the personal preference.

(Bonus question: why do people harm each other?)

Richard Dawkins on ZEITGEIST, Part 1
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=21425#p21425

It really looks like Dawkins stands to learn much from the work by Acharya S.

Zeitgeist Part 1 & the Supportive Evidence
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2997

The New ZEITGEIST Part 1 Sourcebook (2010)
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeistsourcebook.pdf

Simone Weil was a celebrated French Marxist and social activist who died a Christian mystic. Leon Trotsky admired her intelligence and she became an intellectual influence on Pope Paul V1.

Albert Camus wrotein 1951:

Simone Weil, I still know this now, is the only great mind of our times and I hope that those who realize this have enough modesty to not try to appropriate her overwhelming witnessing.

For my part, I would be satisfied if one could say that in my place, with the humble means at my disposal, I served to make known and disseminate her work whose full impact we have yet to measure.

She wrote:

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417

Do you have the humility to admit the possibility that you have a supernatural part that has not yet opened? This part if it exists is unnecessary for our daily lives described as within Plato’s cave but yet is what makes human conscious evolution into the “New Man” as described in the Gospels, a human potential?

But atheism is illogical when a person broadens their demands and seeks proof for the God of theism where theologians claim this proof is found—i.e., beyond a mathematical formula or a sensory experience to the why and how behind a mathematical formula or sensory experience.

Atheists make grandiose claims that they “understand the science” or are “critical thinkers”, when in reality they lack deeper understanding of the science and are skeptical thinkers. They simply avoid looking deeper into the “why” and the “how”.

A good example of this is seen in the modern thinker’s “understanding of” and subsequent “belief in” what the theories of evolution do and do not know.

Without going into the data that support where I am going with this, let me get there right off:

It is illogical and completely unproven to claim that the Earth evolved from a planet of only physical matter into a complex biosphere. And it is even more illogical and more unproven to claim that this biosphere evolved further into a human being with a conscious mind.

The limited parameters that the science of evolution demands the data fit into are simply not proven to be capable of providing adequate “proofs”, but only incomplete, and often irrational, “theories” about how the Earth of today evolved from the Earth of billions of years ago.

So, a true understanding of the science must also include a true skeptical inquiry into what science does not provide, for this will ensure that such an understanding is free from superstition and belief.

Modern atheism needs its own list of “Doctors of the Church”, so to speak, and must weed out heresy and, especially, heretics. It should start with Dawkins, as the much wiser Michael Ruse, a fellow atheist, has taken the first steps to do.

This is atheism’s only hope of becoming mainstream.

Following in the footsteps of former colleague Pete Stark, Rep. Mike Honda has spoken out on behalf of a National Day of Reason this Thursday, May 2, to counter the government-sponsored National Day of Prayer.

“The National Day of Reason celebrates the application of reason and the positive impact it has had on humanity,” Honda, D-San Jose, declared in the Congressional Record last Thursday. “It is also an opportunity to reaffirm the Constitutional separation of religion and government.”

. . .

The group says the National Day of Prayer Task Force’s stated purpose to represent “a Judeo-Christian expression of the national observance” is exclusionary.

Source

Anyways, I have noticed this issue tends to be framed in two extremes - both strawmen, of course. On the one hand you have people shaking their heads over the deranged left-wing liberals, absolutely drunk on sensitivity and multi-culturalism, and only getting more intoxicated by playing a beer pong version of excusing honor killings, female oppression, and death by stoning in the name of ‘diversity’. Um, no. On the other you have people shaking their heads at the nasty Islamophobes who eventually want all Muslims shipped off to the Gulag, although possibly the females will be forced into mandatory saving by heroic Western values first, as that was the whole base argument. Then they can go to the Gulag. Also bullshit, obviously. There may be a few extremists on either side, but mostly people seem to fear that “the other side” represents this extreme - and neither side seems inclined to reassure or find common ground with the other.

So my pondering is this - when does criticism of a religion, any religion, turn into something-ophobia? Conversely, when does accommodation of a religion, any religion, turn into harmful excusatory behavior? So this is what I came up with. Feel free to add to this list.

When I think people have the right to side-eye you for X-ophobia:

1. When you unfairly demonize or stigmatize an entire group based on the actions of a few. There is a lot of room for interpretation here, of course. You are not “unfairly” stigmatizing Christians by “stereotyping” them with the statement that they believe Christ rose from the dead. The vast majority of them do. But certainly, there is a line in the sand there. If you begin spreading propaganda about how most Christians secretly want to bomb abortion clinics, for example, then you’ve crossed it. So just what counts as unfair stereotyping or demonizing is up for debate, but I do think it’s ok to call people out on this as opposed to straight-forward criticism of religion (I don’t think Christ rose from the dead, I don’t think the Biblical position on homosexuality is valid, etc.)

2. When you use religious criticism as the basis for foreign policy or political positions. Again, I think this is a grey area. I don’t think you can say that the moment someone does this, she is an X-ophobe. There are times when this is valid. But it’s also a position that can stray into that territory, depending on what you’re proposing. At one end of the spectrum, you have “These people are deranged by bizarre beliefs so we are totally justified in bombing the heck out of them for no reason other than this one!” On the other you have “We need to pass a law saying that snake handlers do not have a legal right to endanger children with rattlesnakes and a lack of medical care.” There are times when this tie-in may be valid - but if people criticize because they think you’ve gone too far, I don’t think you can invoke “I was ‘just’ criticizing religion.” This is an add-on to that criticism.

3. When you use religion as an explanatory variable. If I said that people behave in X way because they are Irish, black, Jewish, Hindu, Indian, or little people, I would have a lot of explaining to do. Religion is a bit different in that it involves a belief system, but even so, when the brush becomes too broad, this is a grey area to me. Yes, beliefs matter. But on the other end of the spectrum is saying “Oh, that’s just what X do! They’re a violent peoples! Because of those beliefs and all.” and shutting down all conversation there, refusing to entertain the idea of other factors or variables at play, whether political, economic, sociological, etc. Again, I won’t say it’s a black and white issue, but I think there is room for legitimate criticism if you go too far here. You’re not “just” criticizing religion anymore.

So in all of the above cases I think there’s a case for legitimate criticism if a person has edged too far towards an extreme. On the other hand, I think you can criticize excusatory behavior when talking about religion if:

1. You hold any group of people to a different moral standard based on culture, beliefs, etc. This is not the same as identifying potential causes. Yes, X unfortunate situation might make something more likely, and understanding this may be helpful in solving the problem - but that’s not the same thing as saying there is no problem.

2.  You act as if beliefs are not really beliefs. This is not the same thing as refusing to recognize a spectrum of beliefs. But, if a moderate says they believe certain things, and a fundamentalist says they believe certain things - unless you’re saying they’re lying, they believe them, and it’s reasonable to assume they’ll act in accordance with those beliefs. (People often don’t, of course, act in accordance with beliefs - see LaPiere on attitudes and behavior - but it seems unfair to say someone is being discriminatory for assuming people will act in accordance with beliefs.)

3. You insist that any “bad behavior” that results from a doctrine is “bad religion”, practiced incorrectly by the foolish and misguided, and any “good behavior” is “true religion”. I protest when I hear people blame child rape on Catholicism, specifically because this is not in the doctrine - so this is not an example of incorrect beliefs ‘causing’ a behavior. Power structures, fearful followers, sure - but not doctrine. But the opposite is also true. Much as I enjoy reading Karen Armstrong, you can’t take your particular symbolic interpretation of a scripture that’s written literally and declare it’s correct. People who are following the literal doctrine are, realistically, following it in the most ‘correct’ way. Thankfully most moderates read love, peace, and harmony into all religious doctrines, but this doesn’t mean this is what they actually say, and that viewing scriptures in that way means they are right and fundamentalists are simply ‘wrong’ on interpretation.   

Ok. Rant complete. Now. I am off to go create my own cult religion, based on cats. Cats, as we all know, generate perfect love in humans - unless you are a dog person, in which case I plan on starting a centuries long war with you.