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Post by annie on Mar 9, 2018 15:34:18 GMT
From a utilitarian point of view, I can't see any reason to object. If you don't have a Christian (or other religious, or even non-religious) reverence for the human body, then why not? Incidentally, I think the logic should extend to such things as public nudity. I wonder if Dawkins would defend that. In terms of consequentialism, I don't know how public nudity can be opposed. It just seems like Dawkins is scrabbling to be controversial these days. People have grown tired of his usual stuff. This is why Planned Parenthood see nothing wrong in selling the body parts of aborted infants to universities and drug companies for experiments on and why others think surrogacy, IVF etc can be ok but the end does not justify the means.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 29, 2018 22:26:54 GMT
The philosopher John Gray is an example of an atheist who attacks many atheist commentators as superficial, as being unconsciously influenced by the religious beliefs which they reject, and as failing to grasp the full implications of a truly random universe. Peter Hitchens has an interesting review in which he summarises Gray's views while noting that Gray does not argue for the non-existence of a loving God;he simply dismisses it out of hand without considering it even as a possibility. home.isi.org/john-gray-spinoza-today
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Post by hibernicus on May 11, 2019 15:46:14 GMT
Peter Hitchens links to an interesting compare and contrast piece by another writer on his own THE RAGE AGAINST GOD and his brother Christopher's GOD IS NOT GREAT. Not having read Christopher Hitchens' book I must say I had not realised how deeply and openly it was driven by hatred of God, seen as an external and arbitrary authority. (He quite spectacularly misunderstands the point of happiness in Heaven; it's like saying water is tyrannical because it arbitrarily forces you not to be thirsty.) Peter's book seems much more directly an answer to Christopher's than I realised - and the commentator also notes that Peter's version of Anglicanism has a strong air of civic religion about it and is definitely doctrinally muddled. hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/04/an-interesting-comparison-between-god-is-not-great-and-the-rage-against-god-.html
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 7, 2019 21:28:03 GMT
The latest issue of the British highbrow monthly PROSPECT has a debate between the commentator Oliver Kamm, who is a hard-shell atheist, and a TABLET contributor, who also writes for the hard-left JACOBIN magazine about whether prayer works. One point that struck me immediately is that Kamm really goes to the core of the issue in that he says that prayer is meaningless if not addressed to a God who is expected to hear and answer it, and how evasive the Tabletista is - she talks about prayer as an expression of solidarity and as a form of therapy (Kamm reasonably suggests Cognitive Behavioural Therapy achieves this; interesting that he singles out CBT as he appears to be the sort of atheist who is a pure materialist and is suspicious of the idea that mental states exist in their own right) but she never addresses the question of where her prayers are addressed. Kamm has his own characteristically New Atheist crudities - he declares that prayer doesn't get you the things you ask for whereas they can be achieved through thought and work, as if prayer claimed to be guaranteed to get what you want - as if it was technology or magic. The idea that it involves submission to the will of God, who may well refuse what you ask and have His reasons for doing so, never enters his head. It's also interesting that neither disputer addresses contemplative as distinct from petitionary prayer - they both treat "working" in straightforward material/utilitarian terms. This BTW is an interesting example of the pitfalls of apologetics - it's possible and I would say quite common to focus so much on the real or alleged utilitarian benefits of belief that you forget the wider implications of faith being true. This is one point where integrists often have a point against liberals (taking the latter term in the broadest sense), though they in turn often succumb to fatalism.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 8, 2019 22:52:16 GMT
The latest issue of the British highbrow monthly PROSPECT has a debate between the commentator Oliver Kamm, who is a hard-shell atheist, and a TABLET contributor, who also writes for the hard-left JACOBIN magazine about whether prayer works. One point that struck me immediately is that Kamm really goes to the core of the issue in that he says that prayer is meaningless if not addressed to a God who is expected to hear and answer it, and how evasive the Tabletista is - she talks about prayer as an expression of solidarity and as a form of therapy (Kamm reasonably suggests Cognitive Behavioural Therapy achieves this; interesting that he singles out CBT as he appears to be the sort of atheist who is a pure materialist and is suspicious of the idea that mental states exist in their own right) but she never addresses the question of where her prayers are addressed. Kamm has his own characteristically New Atheist crudities - he declares that prayer doesn't get you the things you ask for whereas they can be achieved through thought and work, as if prayer claimed to be guaranteed to get what you want - as if it was technology or magic. The idea that it involves submission to the will of God, who may well refuse what you ask and have His reasons for doing so, never enters his head. It's also interesting that neither disputer addresses contemplative as distinct from petitionary prayer - they both treat "working" in straightforward material/utilitarian terms. This BTW is an interesting example of the pitfalls of apologetics - it's possible and I would say quite common to focus so much on the real or alleged utilitarian benefits of belief that you forget the wider implications of faith being true. This is one point where integrists often have a point against liberals (taking the latter term in the broadest sense), though they in turn often succumb to fatalism. I'm not sure what you mean by the last paragraph. Integralists strike me as generally uninterested in apologetics on the actual truth of the Catholic faith, being more concerned with debates with fellow Catholics.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 10, 2019 19:34:06 GMT
What I meant was that integrists have a point when they say that concentrating on outreach to unbelievers often leads to turning everything into a proposition to be argued over, when what is needed is to live the faith (this in the integrist view means living in a society where faith is taken for granted, be that a Catholic state or a deliberately constructed subculture). One ultra-traditionalist summed this up in the phrase "It Takes a Christendom".
Some problems with the integrist view: (a) If the liberal view turns everything into a proposition, integrists tend to turn everything into a command which is not to be reasoned out or questioned, but simply obeyed. This tempts the superior to equate every crotchet which enters his brain with the will of God, and breeds resentment and eventual rebellion in the subordinate. There was much more vice and unbelief than this view admits in the confessional states of "Old Christendom". (b) We don't have a Christendom available, and pretending that we do is simply an escape into fantasy. (c) Unbelievers exist, and pretending they don't exist,or are all fiends in human form, won't make them go away.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 11, 2019 10:42:29 GMT
What I meant was that integrists have a point when they say that concentrating on outreach to unbelievers often leads to turning everything into a proposition to be argued over, when what is needed is to live the faith (this in the integrist view means living in a society where faith is taken for granted, be that a Catholic state or a deliberately constructed subculture). One ultra-traditionalist summed this up in the phrase "It Takes a Christendom". Some problems with the integrist view: (a) If the liberal view turns everything into a proposition, integrists tend to turn everything into a command which is not to be reasoned out or questioned, but simply obeyed. This tempts the superior to equate every crotchet which enters his brain with the will of God, and breeds resentment and eventual rebellion in the subordinate. There was much more vice and unbelief than this view admits in the confessional states of "Old Christendom". (b) We don't have a Christendom available, and pretending that we do is simply an escape into fantasy. (c) Unbelievers exist, and pretending they don't exist,or are all fiends in human form, won't make them go away. The New Testament seems to envisage a situation where believers are in a minority, anyway. I'm not falling into the fallacy of primitivism, but I often wonder how integrists square this with their views.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 19, 2019 22:29:19 GMT
The Bible can be quoted in different ways. Integrists would emphasise (say) the portrayal of heaven as a royal court, the elaborate provisions for governance in the Old Testament and the role of righteous kings (while glossing over the unrighteous). As a Church of Ireland hymnist put it when ten of their bishops were consecrated simultaneously after the restoration of Charles II: Angels look down, and joy to see Like that above, a monarchy. Angels look down, and joy to see Like that above, a hierarchy. One of their strongest arguments is that the Gospel needs to be practised and embodied, and that to confine it to the mind and the supernatural sphere is to try to make Flesh become Word. One of the strongest arguments against them is that they tend towards idolatry, as if paradise could be created on earth and an earthly ruler could be equated with the King of Kings. The German philosopher Eric Vogelin warned about the temptation to turn religion into a political programme and "immanentise the eschaton" - try to create the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. He was thinking mainly of Nazis and Communists, but I can think of forms of Catholic and Protestant integrism which embody the same temptation.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 4, 2019 21:36:35 GMT
A few weeks ago the SUNDAY BUSINESS POST had an interview with Richard Dawkins in which he claimed that Boris Johnson's attitude to Brexit (which Dawkins opposes) was fundamentally religious. I would have thought Johnson's attitude to Brexit is fundamentally opportunist and based on what Boris Johnson can get out of it, but apart from that what does Dawkins mean? (1) One possibility is that he sees Johnson's "full steam ahead" approach to Brexit as a form of fanaticism; but it could just as easily be interpreted as a rational calculation that if Brexit is going to happen the sooner it is resolved and the uncertainty is over the better. (2) Perhaps the most likely one is that the wild expectations of benefits from Brexit are a form of religious millennialism, but they could also be overoptimism and cynical demagoguery (in what proportions I leave it to you to decide). (3) A third possibility is that Dawkins takes it for granted that utilitarianism is the only rational approach to life and cannot face the possibility of genuinely competing values (e.g. the Brexiteer who is willing to be poorer for the sake of national sovereignty). Perhaps the simplest explanation might be that for Richard Dawkins "religious" means "anything Richard Dawkins doesn't like". Any thoughts?
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 22, 2021 23:17:26 GMT
There is a rift within the lute that soon will make the music mute... Dawkins has been "excommunicated" by an American atheist group because he asked why if it's legitimate for people's sex to be determined by self-definition, the same is not true of people's race. The same group gave the same award for a different year to the novelist Alice Walker, who has subsequently devoted most of her time to chasing after the supposed anti-gentile conspiracies of the Elders of Zion and propagating David Icke's claims that many of the world's governing classes are anthropophagous giant space lizards disguised as human beings. No talk of revoking HER award. These are the devotees of Reason and Science? Spinoza, thou shouldst be living at this hour. unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on-richard-dawkins/
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 28, 2021 18:59:13 GMT
There is a rift within the lute that soon will make the music mute... Dawkins has been "excommunicated" by an American atheist group because he asked why if it's legitimate for people's sex to be determined by self-definition, the same is not true of people's race. The same group gave the same award for a different year to the novelist Alice Walker, who has subsequently devoted most of her time to chasing after the supposed anti-gentile conspiracies of the Elders of Zion and propagating David Icke's claims that many of the world's governing classes are anthropophagous giant space lizards disguised as human beings. No talk of revoking HER award. These are the devotees of Reason and Science? Spinoza, thou shouldst be living at this hour. unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on-richard-dawkins/I think there might be something to the giant lizard thing.
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2021 20:57:02 GMT
Here's another interesting conspiracy theory I've just come across - a search on the Net turns up enough references to show this theory actually exists but I'm not clear how seriously it is being put forward or what subtext if any lies behind it. It may even be a satire developed by fans of pre-modernist architecture. Basically the claim is that the difference in style between post-1945 International Style Modernist buildings and earlier edifices is that the latter were built by a civilisation called the Tartarian Empire, which has been written out of history: unherd.com/thepost/long-live-the-tartarian-empire/ This can be useful in moderation as a joke or an intellectual exercise, but be careful: overindulgence rots the imagination.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 12, 2021 22:50:56 GMT
The current PHOENIX, in its profile of Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, gives an interesting description of the internal rows and shenanigans of the most prominent organisation seeking to represent atheists internationally. Mr Nugent, it seems, is establishing a rival body. Here's an interesting thought - how many of the members of these bodies have used at one time or other the trite debating-point that atheism is not a belief system but simply an absence of belief? If it's not a belief system, how can it have organised representative bodies (complete, it seems, with schisms and heresy hunts)?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 14, 2021 14:37:56 GMT
I think it is simply because a lot of atheists only want to disbelieve in God without bothering to grapple with the consequences of the absence of God. In other words, that Atheism is a much more complete belief system than they want to admit.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Sept 14, 2021 15:11:03 GMT
I think it is simply because a lot of atheists only want to disbelieve in God without bothering to grapple with the consequences of the absence of God. In other words, that Atheism is a much more complete belief system than they want to admit. Surely agnosticism would be the lack of a belief when it comes to religion. If you believe there is no God you believe at least one particular claim.
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