Read Jane Smiley’s full article from the Huffington Post linked to the title of this posting. I found it to be a rational response to the lack of respect that we atheists have for all religions.
It seems obvious to me that globalization and religion are on a collision course. The world we live in is the thirteen colonies writ large, but our leaders don’t have the good sense that the founders had. Fundamentalists of all religions keep announcing to the rest of us that they want to attain more and more earthly power–the Pope wants to re-Christianize Europe; Islamic clerics want to Islamicize Europe; American Evangelical missionaries were busy immediately after the the first phase of the Iraq war attempting to convert Muslims, Anglican prelates in Africa think they can get rid of more liberal American Episcopalians.
Enjoy.
Peter Nuhn
[quote]When I am asked to respect other people’s faith, I actually cannot do that, because I can have no idea of what they are talking about[/quote]
Couldn’t agree more.
[quote]When the US was founded, there was a reason that the framers of the Constitution declared that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. They were not talking about faith–they had, however, seen what religious wars did to Europe, and they also knew that they themselves held a variety of faiths.To wed the government to a particular religion was, I suspect, simply too dangerous and unwise given the passion of faith and the power of churches[/quote]
A good lesson for all kids to learn about US history. I do like Huffington’s distinction between faith(individual) and religion(collective).
Maybe with all of this conversion and reconversion going on, things will keep getting lodt in translation and they’ll eventually neutralize themselves into one religion whose main principle is “Don’t overfeed the cat.”
They’d be so docile we could take them out with a butter knife or even a pair of nail clippers.
But would we even need to worry about Skinny-Cat-ism, or can we coexist with them?
I say we let them convert and reconvert the masses all they want to… maybe they’ll become useless like a tape that’s been recorded over too many times and is just a blue screen and a loud beep.
Blue, beeping Judeo-Christ-Muslim-ists.
lost in translation*
anyone here know what “hacked” means. i was on the “church of reality” discussion board & got hacked. or so it says when i try to log in. don’t know if it was the administration unhappy with my conversation or someone hacking the whole website. my subject is world peace and ways & means of achieving it, plus the (to me)infinite potential of human intelligence. if or when it is directed to improvement of the human condition as opposed to the machines of our endless wars. hard to find anyone to even accept the possibility of a world without war or maybe even death. to far out?? maybe. it’s just i got this crazy idea that anything that can be imagined by the human mind can be achieved. so even if no one here can help me with the hacking thing maybe there’s someone interested in discussing world peace??
bud
Can’t stay and talk right now; I’m out the door to an appt.
But I tried the church of reality discussion board and also got the hacked message. I would guess someone has got into their system. There was a message that they should have updated. I assume that means their security protection.
Anyway, peace is cool. Good message, hard to get past the $$$ war machine.
Well no wonder Jane Smiley gets attacked when she writes about religion. She’s being calm, clear, rational, and persuasive. Good gawd, Jane, don’t you know there’s a war on?
Those “in the faith” aren’t able to distinguish between their faith and their religion. To them their religion is the natural outgrowth of their faith; their faith is pure ergo their religion is pure, all instances of their religion engaging in inhumane acts notwithstanding. It’s classic cognitive dissonance — you deal with it by making believe the bad part isn’t true.
Atheists have the advantage in this sense. Lacking faith in the religious sense we are able to see the distinction between personal faith and religious affiliation, and therefore are quite justified in saying “I can’t respect your faith because I can’t know what it is, and I can’t respect your religion because I DO know what it is: it’s a money-grubbing scam.
We atheists can, however, respect their right to believe such nonsense, but even theists don’t respect others when they act out nonsense as defined by the theists themselves. And that’s all we atheists are saying: believe in any old nonsense you want, but you want me to “respect” you when you behave nonsensically? I don’t think so.
**** OFF TOPIC ****
Since no one is responding here…
I’m sure this won’t make the headlines…
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152766396&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
***OFF TOPIC***
Hey did you guys know Kurt Vonnigut died? damn it, one less bright light of free thinkking in the world…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070412/ap_on_re_us/obit_vonnegut
very good article, I’ll be forewarding it to some of my friends.
I pulled one gem from the article (IMO).
It’s difficult at times to separate these two concepts. I like the way that the author managed to do so so explicitly.
Jane Smiley is undoubtedly correct when she says globalization and religion are on a collision course. Unfortunately innocent bystanders, such as we atheists, are not safe when those of whatever faith break out on every side. So heaven help us . . . oh wait, guess there won’t be much help there. As usual we’re on our own.
This is truly sad news.
I am a great fan of Vonnegut. I will miss his style and humor. So it goes.
atheiststatic,
Yes, I found out last night about Vonnegut and almost cried. He was the only living one of my favorite authors and I always secretly hoped to meet him. I have to figure out some way to celebrate his life this weekend.
shame about Vonnegut.
? does everyone have a god.that is to say is god for some liberty or love, etc.a ideal that we are confident in concept of god versus the middle east version of god as a being.
have we evolved into two races of human one whose brains are hardwired for supernatural belief and one that is not.