Should Atheists be Evangelical…
… by which I mean should Athiests actively seek to convert God believers to non-belief?
I have recently read two books that were quite evangelical on this issue. They were in order of reading:-
“The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.
“Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Both authors discuss the ways in which religious indoctrination creates a condition in which the mind is not free to pursue rational thought.
Dawkins characterises this in terms of child abuse in which the blind faith that characterises childrens thinking is used to install beliefs that then actively bind them to particular notions of blind faith. In fact he argues that human children have evolved to have blind faith because blindly following what your parents say frequently confers increased survival odds. Religion is in Dawkins view merely a an infectious idea that takes advantage of an otherwise efficient means of survival.
Ali talks about Islam demanding unquestioning submission from it’s followers. She does not argue in favour of athiesm in the way Dawkins does but she does not retreat from her own athiesm and her view that it represents an enlightened outlook. She appears to argue that faith based schools should not receive government funding.
Nobody can survive without faith. Faith is what convinces us that the sun will rise tomorrow and that we should include tomorrow in our plans. However blind faith is faith that will not yield in the face of contrary reason and evidence or persists despite a complete lack of cooberating evidence.
It seems to me that in a post 911 world people are much more interested in what other people believe. It is as if the belief memes have all suddenly taken up arms and are now on the march looking for receptive minds. Suddenly everybody is evangelical.
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I think everyone should believe that the world would be a better place if people adopted their ideology.
I think religious issues should be debated.
But how effective are some people’s approaches to evangelical preaching? That crazy guy on the street corner with the microphone shouting religious catch phrases. I doubt he’d be converting anyone.
I find Dawkins opinions to be similar to Carl Sagans. Both discuss (but do not explore fully in my opinion) how even small levels of religion can harm your ability to think rationally. When I converted to atheism it was when I decided faith type thinking was harmful to me. Before this, I thought, you might as well believe just in case it is all true. I used to think I had nothing to lose.
The only thing lacking in Carl Sagan’s and Dawkin’s (popular academic based atheists) approach is a deeper discussion on morality. Another reason I became atheist was because after researching the issue, I could no longer believe “God” was actually good. Dawkins investigates the sexisim, racism etc of the old testament, he also has a good line questioning the need for God to kill his own son in order to forgive us. I liked this because like many objectivists, I think the “suffering being good” idea is taken out of context in religion. But I think the questioning of the implications of religious based ethics needs to be expanded. For example, the authoritarian nature of religion and the God figure himself. To me, Satan is actually more moral than God because he stood up to God who orders that everyone must blindly worship him for eternity. How could I keep believing that meglomanic type behaviour was such a good thing?
Dawkins’ documentary “The root of evil?” is not perfectly worded but it is very good.
However, his crusade against “child abuse” is ridiculous in my opinion. Parents should be allowed to indoctrinate their kids if that’s what they think is best. When kids grow up they can then make their own decisions.
However seen as we live in a world with state schools, then I do agree creationism shouldn’t be taught at these schools.
My favourite part of “Root of all evil?” are the lines he states at the very end. But I won’t spoil it for anyone that wants to watch.
Everyone should have the freedom to preach to all other people, but not to use force to ‘convert’ them. And the preaching should either be done at the preacher’s home, or place of business, or at a public space. ‘Free Speech’ means that the government doesn’t vet your speech before you say it, but it doesn’t mean their won’t be consequences from what you say.
That said, I am an esoteric Christian, and I will preach such to all who ask. I have coined the term ‘Cabbalian’, meaning ‘Cabbalistic Christian’. The C/K/Qabbalah is esoteric Jewish thinking, and embraces the concept of reincarnation. This is how God rectifies injustice- I agree that otherwise the world seems unjust. As the book of Hebrews says, ‘Jesus attained perfection through the things which he suffered’. In Hebrew usage, the term ’son’ can also mean ‘follower’. A ‘Son of God’ is anyone who follows God’s laws.
So long as atheists don’t try to enforce atheism on people, as they tried in Russia and China, then we have nothing to worry about.
Perhaps. However some belief systems are not evangelical. The Jews don’t generally try to convert non-Jews to the faith. I have never met a Jew who thought I should be a Jew also.
Some religions like the Zoroastrians you can only be born into! I think their days are numbered.
There are plenty of people who do convert to Judaism.
I agree that some belief systems place far more emphasis on conversion than others. But my statement wasn’t saying that some religions aren’t evangelical. I was saying if they aren’t, logically they should be.
Logically, if you think you’re belief system is the best at promoting quality of life, wellbeing, peace etc wouldn’t you think the world would be a better place if more people adopted it. Even if you are strongly relativistic, wouldn’t you think everyone should adopt this ideology? Ie: even if you think everyone should have their own personal ideology, this idea is in itself a form of ideology that you would want others to adopt. You’ve got to get the message out there somehow. The only alternative is to believe it is impossible to improve the current situation on earth.
Jews probably know that suicide bombing or shouting at people in the street doesn’t work very well, hence their version of evangelical behaviour is to set a good example and debate religious issues if invited to.
I personally believe historically Judaism has been a more rational religion than early Christianity or post 1200 AD Islam. For example, they didn’t have money hang ups like Christians or another example is that they place emphasis on different old testament stories compared to Christians. I have been told that Jewish teaching tends to gloss over the racist destruction of the ancient trading hub Jericho for example whereas I as a Christian child was taught this story in Sunday school.
Anyone see the South Park episode “Go God go?” If you remove God as something to argue about we will just find something else. We always think we’re right and the other bloke is crazy.
I think fundamentalist atheists are just as awful as fundamentalist religious types. Marxism is an atheistic philosophy.
I think Dawkins, Hitchens et al are playing the Man and not the ball. They think it’s a belief in God that causes people to act so damned crazy. But when I look at Nazism or Communism I see just as much crazy. I think the real problem is ignorance in general, coupled with a conviction that you are adamantly correct. So adamantly correct that you feel that violence is justifiable to enforce your beliefs. No one has done that better than Godless commies.
I think the best course of action for humanity is not less religion but less taking yourself too seriously. The only thing that could be worse than Jehova’s Witnesses knocking on my door at 8am Sunday when I have a pounding hangover would be Darwin’s Witnesses.
In what sense is Dawkins a fundamentalist? I think you need to be clear about your defintion of the word “fundamentalist”.
Should atheists be evangelical?
Not a very interesting question. Atheists can choose to promote atheism is they choose; others can choose whether to heed them. The only obvious point is that it has nothing to do with the government.
The better question is, how secular should we make society? Parliament offers prayers, the government gives funds to church run schools, a business run by a religious organisation (Sanitarium) pays no tax while competing with businesses that do; religious charities dominate the not-for-profit sector.
The Turks are very strong on keeping religion out of politics, with the military threatening a coup if an Islamist party takes office. Australia and even more the US are increasingly bringing religion into politics, with creationist teaching one of the outcomes. Both the ALP and Coalition are inclined to wear their religion as a badge, notwithstanding their objections to the exhortations of Archbishop Pell.
Most Australians view religion as a private matter. I share that view. However, it is clearly more than a private matter when the State is involved.
I’d be happy to see the religions and atheism competing for my beliefs provided they were on the same tax rates.
p.s. Nazism had Christian underpinnings. Adolf Hitler may not have been a Christian but many times he said publicly that he was. So the Christian card was definitely being used by the Nazis.
And what about the agnostics? Shouldn’t they be allowed to preach about the uncertain benefits of uncertainty? Can anyone point to an agnostic mass-murderer?
Sure, the use of initiating force is wrong as in Communisit atheism. Russia was highly religious before and after communism. In a way, communism was another form of religion with one authority replacing another.
Most of the Nazis were actually Christian. The Nazi party had full support of the Catholic church. Eg/ Concordant agreement of 1933. And the protestant churches were in general support by about mid 1930s. The Vatican received donations from the Nazi party in return for full support. The fact is that in general, (there are some minor exceptions) Christian churches in Germany did little to persuade the public against their overwhelming support of the Nazi party. Germany was a highly Christian country.
Jehova’s Witnesses’ are not sucessful. Their door knocking is largely a waste of time and therefore you probably don’t have to worry about Darwin’s witnesses popping up.
Science has much less chance of taking itself too seriously compared to religion. The scientific method involves continual questioning of hypotheses, continual review and knowledge accumulation.
If you watch the Sth Park episode, you will notice they state that irrational people will be funadmentalist no matter what. The problem is irrationality. Faith to me is a form of irrationality and in general irrational thinking is more likely in religious people.
I’d highly recommend this link, a short video defending atheism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdVucvo-kDU
Tim,
The fact that Germany was Christian when the Nazis were in power is not the reason they tried to exterminate Jews. It’s incidental to the irrationality of their belief, which wasn’t particularly religious.
I don’t find faith per se to be irrational. To bring up the SP ep again they said: Can’t God be the answer to Why and not How?
I agree that Nazism is not in keeping with the obvious general Chrisitan message (except for a few old testament passages).
But I strongly dislike the way some Christian leaders these days imply the Nazis were atheists or that racism is more likely in atheists. The concordant of 1933 between the Vatican and the Nazi party is constantly glossed over. To me, it seems they are trying to re-write the history books and are preaching false information.
As long as a belief system isn’t forced on people, I’m happy. I also think western Christianity is today, far superior to Islamic nations.
Incidentally, Terje, Why do you say thinking the sun will rise tomorrow is an act of faith? I’ve heard this before but I don’t get it. The probability that some catastrophic astronomical event would occur without any warning would be minute.
“Nobody can survive without faith. Faith is what convinces us that the sun will rise tomorrow and that we should include tomorrow in our plans.”
I would argue that this is not accurate. People can and do survive without faith. Some even survive without hope (apparently). Faith does not convince us that the sun will rise tomorrow, experience convinces us that it will rise tomorrow and practicality demands that we plan for tomorrow.
Faith represents belief in something for which there is no evidence, however we have substantial evidence that barring physical intervention on a cataclysmic scale, the earth will continue to rotate at its current velocity in time for the sun to once again appear on the horizon.
So you have faith in evidence?
You don’t need faith in evidence. To accept evidence all you need to know is Aristotle’s identity principle. It’s self evident that reality is real, existence exists, A = A and reality is independent of our perceptions or beliefs (faith).
If you get in a plane and it flies, it really does fly. Faith doesn’t come into it. You don’t need faith in the laws of aerodynamics, or faith in the fact that you landed in a different position to where you started.
The alternative leads to ridiculous self defeating logical conclusions. To deny the identity principle involves using the identity principle which is a contradiction. To say A = B then you have to say B = B.
At the present time A = A. This is self evident. The past had a present moment and the future will have a present moment. The future will be the present because the test that in a few seconds time the future becomes the present is self evident. Therefore A equaled A yesterday, now and will tomorrow. Therefore, if you know all the details or have overwhelming evidence, you can know something that hasn’t happened yet to extremely high probability. Such as the sun rising tomorrow.
There is no element of faith involved in knowing the sun will rise tomorrow. There is an element of probability. However the probability is so high that there is no need to quote it. It’s like needing to know Pi to one million decimal places. This probability is due to the fact that you cannot know every little detail about everything. You do not need faith to understand probability mathematics. This is vastly different to the context of religious faith where people believe in God because they are told to, or their culture does, or parents did, or because of the bible etc etc.
I’d be happy to hear comments on this because I realise you guys are not objectivists but are libertarians. I happen to be both although but I don’t claim to be an expert in either field.
Tim, you don’t get it. The faith comes in the belief that the laws of physics are unchanging- that just because they have stayed the same for as long as I can remember, I have faith, based on past evidence, that they will continue to do so.
My libertarian beliefs complement my Cabbalian beliefs, since I tend to think that we ultimately DO get our just deserts, but we may need to wait for another body for this to bear fruit. A few years ago, I read of an english boy who had an uncanny knack for finding antiques. If you read the story, you might have thought, ‘just Luck’. I thought, ‘Perhaps a dedicated Archaeologist has come back with all his skills.’
Whenever I see an actor, I don’t feel much envy of their looks, because that could be me, next time around. Thus I don’t feel like enforcing equality on an ‘unjust’ Universe, since I am improving my writing skills all the time, and hope that when I come back, I’ll be one of the fluky ‘naturals’.
My beliefs keep me off the streets at night.
But you don’t need faith to know the laws of physics are unchanging within a context. You can test them, that’s how they go from hypothesis, to theory to law over years of testing.
According to Dictionary.com,
Faith: “Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence”.
Laws of physics and the sun rising satisfy the requirments of logic and evidence.
I agree that religion is perfectly compatible in a libertarian society. I have no wish to ban religion.
In regards to re-incarnation. Doesn’t it worry you that you could be held accountable for something a past version of you did without your knowledge? If you were hit by lightning, would you say you were responsible for this in some way? Personaly I believe you can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time sometimes.
I think you should look into the “Pastor” of the outrageously offensive Westboro Baptist Church (www.godhatesfags.com)
His family say he isn’t really religious, he just likes hating people and things (i.e, he suffers from paraphilia).
Religion, sports and indeed politics would seem to attract these sorts of people.
Go God Go indeed.
I don’t think that people should go around asking others “Are you an Atheist”, and if the person isn’t, “preach” to them.
If someone comes out and tells me they believe in God though or expresses it through their actions in some way that effects me, they should be prepared for a discussion about their beliefs.
But if someone tries to impose their God belief on me through making me sit through a prayer, or telling me I should/shouldn’t do something, or especially if they use that belief in enacting government legislation, they’d better be prepared for a full attack on their beliefs and they’d better have some damn good evidence (not “Faith”) to prove they’re right.
Ben, on the topic of South Park, I reckon it’s one of the best shows on TV. And I did like the episode “Go God Go”. However just because something appears on South Park doesn’t make it true. When religion is gone, there will be less dogmatism in the world, and that’s a very good thing. People abandoning religion won’t all swap it for another dogma.
As you say Ben, the problem is the “conviction that you are adamantly correct”, which is dogmatism. Religion is the biggest source of it at the moment. But there will still be some left if religion disappears, and there is still plenty of it currently in China and North Korea.
Nicholas, you say “So long as atheists don’t try to enforce atheism on people, as they tried in Russia and China, then we have nothing to worry about.”
Unfortunately at present, religious people are trying to enforce religion on people, in the USA especially, but in Australia and the UK too (to say nothing of Muslim countries). We do have something to worry about.
“Should atheists be evangelical?” In a free, laissez-faire society the answer should be a definite yes, everyone should be able to preach anything they believe in, providing the preaching is done in a peaceful and lawful manner. But how did we get from this seemingly inept (in the libertarian context) question to, quote “…creationism shouldn’t be taught at [state, ed] schools”? State schools, as I’m sure all would agree, are *not* funded by evolutionists only. Hence, children should be given at least an option to investigate whose claims, as far as origins of life are concerned, make sense and whose are pure propaganda, no?
I have noticed over the years that no well informed person would ever mention Hitler when attacking Christianity as opposed to common mass media/infidels.org parroting connecting the two as if related in some way. A well informed, clear thinking person would know that just because Hitler claimed to be a Christian (btw, can anybody provide a quote where he claimed that?) doesn’t mean he was one nor does it mean he represented Christian world view in his life or actions. A well informed person would know that Christianity not only opposed to all sorts of persecutions, murder etc, but it is also opposed to socialism of all forms, including communism and fascism of course (not to mention nazism).
Similarly, it is a sign of being misinformed or, more likely, mislead by mass media/[mis]education propaganda to use Christianity and Vatican interchangeably as if these were one and the same (e.g. “The concordant of 1933 between the Vatican and the Nazi party is constantly glossed over.”). If Christianity is a teaching of the 66 books of the Bible and their logical implications, then Christianity and Vatican are hostile to each other more than anything.
Again, claiming that Germany was Christian at the time the Nazis took over and supported the regime raises several questions. For example, what does “Christian” mean? Roman Catholics, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Mennonite, Amish or what? These are all different “Christianities”. Would anybody agree that because Russia was Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Orthodoxy supported Russian socialism? And what does it mean Germans supported Nazis? Were they forced into submission or were they cheering at the sight of fuming gas chambers and rejoiced when their Jewish neighbors were led away?
Gib wrote:
“Unfortunately at present, religious people are trying to enforce religion on people, in the USA especially, but in Australia and the UK too (to say nothing of Muslim countries). We do have something to worry about.”
Gib, can you please give examples of how religion is enforced in Australia? As far as I’m aware, atheism enjoys unchallenged support in public as well as in some private education. God is banished from all government institutions, in fact, in Victoria you will be procecuted if you preach moral values contrary to those determined by the atheist government, and you are worried about religion being enforced on the people? You joking? Shouldn’t you rather worry about freedom of speech, beliefs etc instead?
Nikolai — what is an “atheist government”? Most leaders of major parties in Australia and all Australian leaders have been christian… and institutions (like government or a cricket club) can’t have a religion because they’re not people.
It is certainly true to say that some religious people want the government to promote their religion. The west is lucky to have some concept of separation of church and state. However, that is less strong in some muslim countries and there is definitely a faction of christiandom that proudly reject church-state separation. These people are dangerous.
As for views on atheism in the general public, an interesting survey in America showed that 94% of people would support a Catholic President, 92% would support a Jewish President, 92% would support a black President, 79% would support a Mormon President and 79% would support a gay President. In contrast, only 49% would support an atheist President. I would like to think that Australians are more tolerant of athiesm… but it is scary to think that a majority of Americans would reject a leader because they didn’t believe in fairies and fluffy sky-gods.
We had an openly athiest PM. His name was Bob Hawke.
it is scary to think that a majority of Americans would reject a leader because they didn’t believe in fairies and fluffy sky-gods
Not as scary as if a majority believes a leader should favour their notion of fairies and sky-gods over the minority’s, including through state funding.
Majorities and minorities can believe what they like, and vote for who they like, but religion and the state must be kept separate.
John, an atheist government is a government based or operating on atheist principles, i.e. on the belief that there is no God. This would be an Australian government. For example, if the operating principle of a government was based, for instance, on a belief in the God of the Bible, the state funded schools would be teaching creation, not evolution, as they did in Switzerland, Germany, Holland and other European countries at the time of Reformation. Likewise, a Bible beliving government wouldn’t sanction a military attack on a foreign nation or try to abolish free market and impose socialism on its citizens.
And once again, what does it matter if all our leaders, or most of them, claimed to be Christians? I’m sure the Pope of Rome believes he is a Christian too but what he does or what his church-state teaches doesn’t correlate with what we find on the pages of the Bible. So is with our leaders. It’s hard to accept a Bible believing Christian would sanction a military strike, for example, on Iraq or fail to even attempt to reverse the tide of socialism slowly consuming our nation and turning it into a “yes fuhrer” herd.
Nikolai, the situation in Australia isn’t as bad the USA with religious people trying to enforce religion, particulary they haven’t been as successful, but they’re trying, and here’s some examples :
1. Prayers in the official Anzac day ceremonies.
2. The PM telling people they should pray for rain.
3. The PM saying immigrants who don’t share Christian values should leave.
4. Trying to stop stem cell research.
5. Trying to get creation (intelligent design) taught in public schools.
6. Churches have tax free status.
7. The Family First party attempting to ban abortion and change sex education classes to be less useful, particularly promoting abstinence and talking less about the use of condoms.
Nikolai, you claim that the Pope isn’t a “real” Christian. Infering that you are interpreting the bible in the correct way, and other people aren’t. There are two main problems with this. The first is that there is no god, and so there is no correct interpretation. The second is that even if there were a god, and a correct interpretation, your chances of having it right aren’t much better than anyone elses.
In fact, I think your chances are worse. If you think the bible doesn’t sanction military conquests, or that it favours the attainment of personal wealth, I’m sorry, but I really doubt you’ve read the whole thing.
And Nikolai, there’s a difference between an atheist government and one that respects the separation of church and state and allows people to believe what they want. The fact that science classes in public schools actually teach science (including evolution) isn’t a sign of being “atheist”. The fact that some religious people have a problem reconciling their creation myth with the findings of scientists doesn’t mean the government is atheist. Let the people learn science in school, and choose to go to the church of their choosing on the weekend to hear whatever else they want. Or pay for a private school so they don’t have to hear that nasty theory that says we’re related to monkeys..
Nikolai, we aren’t interested in your strange sect of anti-reason sky-gypsy mumbo-jumbo here.
Your talk of “atheist principles” (there is no such thing) or a “bible-believing government” (only people believe, not institutions) makes no sense. And your claim that you are a real christian but the Pope isn’t shows how pointless faith based arguments are as there is no rational basis by which to arbitrate.
You are a good example of the dangerous new bread of christian taliban who wants to abolish the separation of church & state and who has only a passing grasp on reason and reality. I don’t care what you believe in… but when you try to link your sky-fairy fantasies in with the government (and therefore force it on other people) you are an immoral person.
I knew a girl named Faith and a girl called Hope once, I could live without Faith, but man, Hope made me want to get up in the morning…
Nikolai, you say “in Victoria you will be procecuted if you preach moral values contrary to those determined by the atheist government, and you are worried about religion being enforced on the people? You joking? Shouldn’t you rather worry about freedom of speech, beliefs etc instead?”
I’d be very interested in hearing specific examples of prosecutions in Victoria along the lines you describe. Can you show me some ? I suspect that the morals being preached were pretty dodgy by any standards, and/or there was some level of forcing this preaching onto people who hadn’t chosen to listen to it.
I’m prepared to be wrong though….
And, I am worried about freedom of speech and beliefs. The more that religion gets its hooks into government, the less those two freedoms are permitted.
I’m back! The storms didn’t get me! It was merely mildly inconvenient for us sydneysiders.
Tim- No, I don’t think that people should get off scot-free because they have, or claim to have, forgotten all about their crimes. What sort of precedent would that set? And amnesia is a blessing!
Roles are often reversed in following lives, so that a husband could be a wife, or a soul that had been a son becomes a mother. The subconscious remembers, but imagine how hard would be life with a memory stretching back millennia! I have memory troubles now- storage of memories is essential!
And amnesia allows you to improve, instead of staying stuck in old patterns of addiction. I don’t smoke, and only drink in moderation, because I was taught moderation when growing up, and I heeded the lesson. It would have been harder to be moderate if I’d come back with a memory of various addictive habits. Amnesia means I can improve myself.
GB- I think Nikolai meant that case in Victoria where a Christian Minister was charged with defamation, by quoting the Koran in his sermons in his Church. I have forgotten all the details, but it happened recently.
Thanks Nicholas, I looked up the case you’re talking about, and found “The judge ruled in December that Christian group Catch the Fire and pastors Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot vilified Muslims at a seminar in March 2002, and in a newsletter and website article. Scot told the seminar, among other things, that Muslims were terrorists who wanted to take over Australia, and that those who didn’t weren’t true Muslims.”
It’s a case where they used the dodgy “Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001″ to get them. The Christians read from the Koran, and the Muslims claimed it was defaming Islam! So funny.
That law is an abomination. In this case, it’s two religious groups arguing, which is always fun, but Nikolas was complaining about the government’s “atheist moral values” so I’d be surprised if that’s the one he meant.
Also, that law is I think even more troubling for atheists, who are even more likely to say things that would be defined as intolerant under the act.
Hi. I just found this thread. I hang out on 2+2 poker forums and specifically post on the Science, Math, Philosophy subforum a lot. I’m an evangelical atheist on there.
I think it is more important to be evangelical about atheism in a social democracy than it would be in a more libertarian society. This is because religion is the progenitor of an awful lot of bad policy. The most obvious examples are stem cell research and abortion laws, as well as various moral panics about drugs, alcohol etc and also certain aspects of foreign policy.
The best book on atheism (and I’ve read a number of them) is “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. Incidentally, in this book he responds to the point that the Nazis and communists were atheists, saying that nobody could charge that what those groups suffered from was an excess of rationality. In other words, Harris sees religion as a subset of anti-rationalism in general, all of which is to be opposed. (In an essay, Harris wrote that “Atheism is not a philosophy. It is simply the noises made by rational human beings when confronted with religious dogma”).
By the way, there are some pretty jaw dropping statements that have been made in this thread. Stuff like “Marxism is an atheistic philosophy”, but especially “It’s hard to accept a Bible believing Christian would sanction a military strike, for example, on Iraq”. Really? Who do you think the red-staters in the States who were cheering the attack on in 2002-3? Scientologists? No doubt you’ll disown those people as “real” Christians, just as you did the Pope, even though there exists no means to determine who is correct and who incorrect.
“drugs, alcohol etc” should have read “drugs, gambling etc”.
Nobody wants to ban gambling. They just want to licence, regulate and tax it. It’s to protect the children.
It is against the law to bet money on a poker game in a pub or house in Queensland (though not in NSW). It’s against the law to play 2-up on any day except anzac day.
2-up should be permitted on Australia day, the Queens Birthday, Boxing day and about 360 other prominant days of the year.
It’s also illegal to have raffles in many places. Bought any spelling-contest tickets lately?
Chris V
Are you saying that marxism is NOT an atheist philosophy? It acts like a religion, but it has a core atheist belief structure. So does Objectivism, as I recall, so atheism doesn’t automatically lead to a super-state.
A Bible-basher is someone who uses the Bible by cherry-picking parts from it, whilst a Bible-believer would have a stronger inclination to practice a Bible code. I think of Bush more as a basher than a believer, though he has beliefs as well.
Nicholas, the only way to get any consistent “code” of practice from the bible is to cherry-pick the parts you like and live by those, and throw away the unseemly parts. There just isn’t a single code that’s consistent with the whole thing.
So, the only difference I see between a “bible basher” and a “bible believer” is that one forces their beliefs on others, and the other just keeps their beliefs to themselves…
Wrong, Gb! Jesus said that he fulfilled the Law, all 613 commandments (which would mean that Jesus must have had a prior existence as a woman at one time, as some of the commandments relate only to women).
Jesus summed up the whole bible code in “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy mind, and all thy soul, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”, even if thy neighbour is a Samaritan, or any other socially undesireable type.
To make it even simpler, you can use the Golden Rule- treat other people first as you would like them to treat you. No cherry-picking here! This is a distillation of the essence of the code of the Bible.
I have to catch a plane, but briefly, there is nothing in the tenets of Marxism (ie the economic system) that requires any specific kind of religious belief system. Marx’s ruminations on religion are moot. Also, the idea that the Bible can be distilled down to the Golden Rule could only be suggested by someone who has not read it.
Are you suggesting that Jesus, who gave us the Golden Rule, had not read the Bible?
A Bible-believer would be someone who believes what Jesus said, as we have the words in whatever bible he or she reads. Therefore, a Bible-believer cannot cherry-pick, but should try to obey the words of Jesus. A non-believer might go through the Bible to pick the best or worst bits out of it, according to their own beliefs about right/wrong, best/worst. Believers have much less discretion.
Given that there is no written historical document, artical, passage or phrase that was authored by Jesus I think it highly likely that the man was illiterate. As such I doubt he ever read the bible but instead relied on it’s oral heritage.
Christians obviously do pick and choose from the Bible. Thankfully, they have given up slavery, genocide, gang-rape and other unfortunate parts of the old testament.
And of course Jesus didn’t read the Bible. It didn’t exist back then. In reality, we know very little about the “real” Jesus, almost to the point where you could discount the biblical Jesus as potential a work of fiction… or at least blind speculation.
On one point I will stand corrected- Jesus did not read what we now know as the Bible, but I still think he must have read what we call the Old Testament, because he is often quoted by the writers as reciting various psalms as prophecies, and he repudiates the Sadducies with the quote of God saying to Moses, “I AM the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob”, NOT, “I WAS the God…etcetera”. As for the existence of Jesus, Bishop Spong (Author of “Christianity must change or die!”), recently wrote that the existence of Jesus can be deduced from the embarrassment of the authors of the Gospels that he came from such an obscure and unimportant town like Nazareth, just as real people do. If he had been pure myth, his birth and upbringing would probably have been written as having occurred in Jerusalem, the son of one of the priests, if not the High Priest.
So he most likely did exist, so he probably did speak, and we probably do have his own words in the gospels.
Whilst it’s true that Bible-Bashers take quotes out of context so they can use them on other people, Bible-believers use them on themselves.
Yes, there’s a good little doco “The God Who Wasn’t There” that does a good job of showing Jesus very likely didn’t exist. But, forgetting that for the moment…
Nicholas, in one bit, Jesus says he hasn’t come to change one bit of the old testament (I can look up the verse if necessary). The summary that you give of the “code” is nice, and I’m happy that you summarised that part, and threw away the parts that say slavery is fine, that it’s ok to slaughter entire races and rape their virgins, that you should take unruly kids to the edge of town and stone them, that you should give away all your money to the poor, that you should never speak to your parents again if they aren’t Christians….
I’ve no problem with the bits you believe in, but you can’t claim you don’t cherry-pick.
By saying “This is a distillation of the essence of the code of the Bible”, you’ve decided that all the rapes and genocide aren’t the “essence”. That’s cherry-picking.
I personally think the essence of the bible is “the lord thy god is a jealous god”, but I don’t live by that. I live by the golden rule, which is older than religion….
Nicholas, the reason that Jesus is said to come from an “obscure and unimportant town like Nazareth” is because the authors of the New testament wanted to fit the character of Jesus into prophecies from the old testament. The whole bit about the census, and Mary having to travel from Nazareth to Bethlahem is due to the prophecy-fitting.
I’ll post some evidence for this later today.
It is not my summary, or the summary of Jesus. In Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18 (of the Old Testament) you will find “…thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”
Leviticus is one of the five books of the Law, supposedly written by Moses. Ergo, this summary has simply been ignored for hundreds of years.
Yes, you can find gang-rapes, incest, sodomy, adultery and concubinage- why do you think it’s a best-seller? But that is simply history, not the message.
Nicholas, in a previous comment I mentioned the “prophecy” about Jesus’ birth.
Go here:
http://www.godonthe.net/evidence/messiah.htm
and search for “BETHLEHEM” and “NAZARETH”.
And also see here :
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/birthplace.html
Nicholas, if the “gang-rapes, incest, sodomy, adultery and concubinage” were just the history of some random group of people, and then along came Jesus to tell everybody to stop that sort of thing, then that’d be fine.
But, the people doing all the rapes and slaughter and slave-keeping were the chosen people of God, who were doing it in most cases with the blessing of God, many times under God’s direct instruction, and sometimes God was lending a helping hand in the killing!
It’s a bit of a stretch to say that’s “simply history”.. It goes directly to the character of God, and sits right along those 613 commandments you mentioned, many of which themselves are quite disturbing, including for their treatment of women and slavery.
My understanding is that the written version of the old testament was compiled and solidified around 100 BC. And the new testament was compiled and solidified in about 300 AD. Whilst such attempts to close the system of thought have prevaled to a large extent both the Jewish and Christian oral traditions have continued to evolve. Today good Christians and good Jews don’t advocate or support slavery because unlike their prefered book their oral traditions have evolved.
nicholas gray:
Jesus’ familiarity with the scriptures was a little shaky. On at least one occasion (John 7:38) he quoted nonexistent scripture:
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
The scripture hath said no such thing.
Why hath thy lord continued to speak old english in spite of it’s demise?
For the same reason Hamlet is in Shakesperean English, because the people who translated the bible to English spoke like that and no editor has seen a need to change it.
Because everybody speaketh English if thou yellest loudlike enough at them! Ye Bible is written like that bycauseth that be how ye Hebrews do speaketh. Ynglish have alwayth been ye international language, howbeit with unusual spellings.
The word ‘Scripture’ means ‘writings’, not necessarily recognised books from the Bible. I cannot find any text from the Old Testament, nor in the Catholic Old Testament, to link to John 7v38, but they are not the only scriptures!
Go to Jude, 1 verses 14 to 15. These verses are quotes from the Book of Enoch (which I have at home), an Essene text! Nowadays you can go to Adyar bookshop and buy it, and St.Jude seems to think that his readers will recognise his quote, but it is not in the standard books of the Bible! Therefore, Jesus was probably quoting from a popular book of the time, which his crowd was expected to know, but which we don’t know.
Even the word “lord” was inserted into the bible during translation to English. It essentially allowed the new English version to be used to confirm notions of pre-ordained social hierarchy.
Ironically the King James version of the Bible came after a period during which people were routinely imprisoned for trying to translate the Bible into English or for importing Bibles printed abroad in English. It was all considered very subversive. And of course it ultimately was.
There’s quite a few modern english translations of the bible, such as the “Good News Bible” which I recall using at some point in my youth. There’s a wikipedia page with a heap of info on the modern translations.
I think the main reason the old version with the “ye”s is still widely used is because it adds gravitas to the thing. It’s meant to have been written 2000 years ago, so having it sound old seems “authentic”. If they used the modern English bibles in surmons and studies, it’d be much easier for people to read, and comprehend. And nothing turns someone into an atheist faster than actual comprehension of the bible.
As terje said, they tried to stop people from being able to read the bible in English, because when the common person can read it, the religious authorities lose their control on the people.
nicholas, ok. so wait. is that book the word of God or not? If so, why is it not in the current Bible? How much of the word of God are we not seeing? If not, why is Jesus quoting it?
The Original Hebrew Bible has some Books that the King James Protestant Bible left out, because Jesus never referred to them in the Gospels. These are called the Apocryphal Books. Catholic Bibles still have them.
The Essenes had additional books, which they regarded as equally holy as the other books. Jude seems to have been aware of some of these books.
When John talks about Jesus quoting the scriptures, we might have here the final clue to prove that Jesus was an Essene- not just influenced by them, but one of them! As an esoteric Christian, I am fascinated by the idea! John might have been writing to fellow-Essenes, assuming that they would know the quote.
So we don’t know how much of the word of God we are not seeing, but Jesus is quoting what he thinks is scripture.
And getting back to the original comment- if atheists got me to join them, I might decide to abandon the side of Libertarianism! Since I think the universe is just, thanks to Karma, a Godless universe would be random and unjust, so why not try social engineering, and thus a strong central governing power?
Nicholas, a godless universe fundamentally has no concept of “just” or “unjust”. Humans invented that.
And, being human, we all react to our own ideas of the importance of “just” and “unjust”. It’s good that enough of us want to live in a world that is reasonably “just”. (There’s also evolutionary reasons for it).
Why not try a strong central governing power ? Because unless you’re part of the governing power, history shows you’re unlikely to be better off. You’re welcome to try to create such a society and put yourself on top. Please don’t try it anywhere I’m planning on going however….
“Karma” is not a human invention, anymore than “gravity” is. If I were an atheist, I might decide that we need a strong government to enforce (my version of) justice, a justice system which I would feel free to invent. I think that my versions of “Justice” would all require me to be running things, and to be able to control the world, since I wouldn’t want anyone to escape justice.
An athiest and a Christian telling each other what they believe?
???
Nicholas,
Your atheist alter-ego wouldn’t be alone in his desire to control the world. There have been such people throughout history, who have had various successes.
If you did manage to get yourself in such a position of power, it’s unlikely that you’d still have such lofty ambitions of justice.
Life is unfair. Deal with it. Be nice to people, enjoy your short time on this rock, and think about whether the morals you hold now you actually got from your religion, or whether you chose your religion from your morals.
Oh, and “karma” vs “gravity” ?? Do I need to talk about faith not being in quite the same league as mountains of scientific evidence ?
I haven’t personally seen all the mountains of scientific evidence that sits behind most scientific concensus but I generally have faith that it is there.
Life is fair, in the long run. Get used to it. Karma is action-reaction across time. Like Terje, I have faith in the evidence. The scientists who investigate rebirth are as honest and upright as the physicists you have faith in.
In any case, this is not the right blog for a battle over each other’s beliefs. I will simply repeat that my religious and my political beliefs are entwined and complementary, and that a change in one would change the other.
Nicholas, I agree it’s not the place, but I’m make a parting comment….
The people investigating rebirth are probably honest and upright. There are honest people who believe in, and investigate psychic phenomena, UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts…. For all of these, what’s telling is their lack of published peer reviewed papers, or experimental evidence for their hypothesis.
When they have testable claims, and a falsifiable hypothesis, get back to me. When they do repeatable experiments that agree with their hypothesis, also let me know.
I chose my religion, esoteric Christianity, because of the evidence. Some Psychics, like Edgar Cayce, seemed to have medical knowledge unknown to their contemporaries. Aluminium as a poison for Alzheimer was first mentioned by him over 60 years ago, and touted recently as a new discovery by scientists. I have also met a woman who said that she had a condition that caused infertility, and that doctors couldn’t cure her, so she looked up her condition in one of the books about Cayce, took his cure, and now has two children, both of whom I have met.
And people in Sydney will still recall the case of the old man who was lost on his farm, and a psychic was able to lead them right to him, and save his life. It was on page 13 of the Sunday Telegraph, May 14 last year. I believe that Tony Poboka is still alive, and clairvoyant Lena McGregor is still in business. And, so far, I have not heard of any sceptical rebuttal of the evidence of what is a well-publicised case.
These claims have been tested in the real world, and they work.
You’re free to believe in stones, just make sure you don’t throw them at me!
Nicholas,
There are many scientific studies showing psychics to have no increased chances of solving mysteries. When police have used psychics they have often been wrong and have hindered the case. I know it’s popular on TV but it’s not reality. Psychics work on probabilities. They become extremely dangerous when they actually believe they are psychic.
If you are interested look up Harry Houdini’s famous quest to find a genuine medium.
Most sceptic organisations offer to test psychics including Australian sceptic organisations. These offers are available on their websites.
I have researched the issue and have never seen a psychic be able to tell someone something specific or of value.
If psychics existed, then they’d make a lot of money gambling instead of preying on the guillable and mentally ill. (I don’t mean mentally ill as an insult, many people who suffer auditory hallucinations such as schizophrenics haved suffered massive financial losses to so called psychics).
Where’s the headline, “Psychic wins lottery”. It doesn’t happen.
You may also be interested in the technique of “cold reading”. It’s very interesting and is featured on a South Park episode.
Religious healings are very rare and usually at the same level of frequency to spontaneous remission rates in the general population. Millions of people get sucked in, one or two are “cured”. None of it is at all convincing statistically. In fact a lot of supposed healing sites have a lower rate of recovery than seen in the general population.
Ask yourself, why doesn’t God cure amputees?
I realise that people are desperate to believe in miraculous cures. But they probably haven’t considered the harm this does to their minds, and of course their wallets.
I notice that Tim R. never addressed the points I raised, nor the evidence I presented. If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll know I think that reincarnation is a fact. In that belief, the essential ‘you’ is a soul that can grow a new body. Here is another revelation- ‘miracles’ are not interruptions to natural laws, but applications of laws not yet widely known.
Here is another belief- God generally leaves us alone so we can grow as souls, and learn wisdom. Any miracle would be the result of people applying whatever psychokinetic energy they could pool together to the problem- hence Jesus saying energy went out of him at one time.
Thus amputees are not de-amputeed because the law of conservation of energy and matter is in place, and those souls will get new bodies later. The miracles in the bible were all real, but also, to some degree, staged, in that Jesus only needed to apply minimal energy to systems already primed. If you’re not esoteric, you might choose to rubbish this, but I told you to show that I have an answer to that question. My position is well-thought-out.
Nicholas it was clear that you were claiming that psychics are indeed psychic. I rebutted this because I think it’s a dangerous belief. So I think I did indeed “address a point you raised” using factual data.
If you agree that miracles aren’t miracles, well that’s what I think. But you’ll find that Christianity claims miracles are miracles. It’s one of the requirments for Saint hood within the Catholic church.
You claim that your ideas are based on evidence but you haven’t given any evidence for reincarnation or psychic powers.
Tim, if saving Tony Poboka’s life is not evidence, when the police had tried and given up hope, then I don’t know what you would accept as evidence.
Miracles are miracles, the result of little-understood natural laws. The Catholic Church may think that miracles break the laws of nature, but I don’t.
As for evidence of psychic powers, next time you have a detailed dream that accurately predicts the future, just keep telling yourself that it’s a fantastic coincidence. After a while, like any underused skill, it will go away.
As Gib stated, a psychic leading searchers to find a grandfather is not a falsifiable experiment since if she had failed to find the old man, the psychic would not be held accountable for failing (the energy flows were wrong or some such) and the family wouldn’t have been willing to publicise their use of unconventional methods. Rather than not seeing headlines of “Psychic wins lotto”, you don’t see headlines “Psychic wasted police time leading to death of old man”. Psychic’s failures are lost from the record and their coincidental “successes” are not.
If I predicted a coin toss accurately 100 times in a row, I too might make the headlines, but it would make me no more a psychic but rather someone who was extraordinarily lucky.
Believe it all you like, it is no skin off of my nose, and for the majority of the time their is litte danger or cost in believing in superstition or the supernatural. However, when such beliefs conflict with more serious situations such as whether to seek medical treatment, or even less serious situations such as your future spouse or career, these decisions can have far reaching consequences.
To be honest, I don’t generally have a problem with any religious or spiritual belief, so long as the limits of those beliefs don’t conflict with rational decision making. Life has many highs and lows, and for many religion provides a structure to those events and formalises the celebration and commemoration of life and provides comfort at times of personal upheaval. In this way, organised religion merely provides a service that some humans demand, and will contibue to demand even in a purely secular world.
I understand what you mean Nicholas but when you use the word miracle, but the generally accepted meaning is: (dictionary.com)
1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.
2. such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God.
And yes I am saying that Tony Poboka’s life is not evidence of psychic ability. The fact that Lena Mcgregor is still in business is also not evidence and it is not surprising to me at all. I’m sure she based her discovery on probabilities. She may even make a good detective and be of far more value to the community.
I am stating that there is no such thing as true psychic ability, because there is no case of a psychic passing a controlled test.
The sceptic societies offer those who claim to be psychic to conduct the test of their choice. The terms are quite generous. Wouldn’t a psychic who is obviously in the business of making money from their profession want to show to the world they had passed a test from a sceptic society? Considering a large proportion of the public and media wish psychic ability were real, a scientifically proven case of psychic ability would be a huge news story.
The only time a psychic has ever successfully predicted the future is when they avoid psychic tests because they KNOW they will fail. Spooky.
Nicholas, the saving of the life of Tony Poboka, if accurately reported (they say she walked straight to where he was, which we only have the self serving word of a couple of poeple to go on), is indeed significant, and further investigation can be done on this to determine if it’s a fluke, or she can do it again a few times, more than probability dictates.
People get lost like this often in the world, and “phsycics” sometiems offer help. The laws of chance say they’re bound to get one right eventually. And remember that just because someone said they found someone, doesn’t mean they did. The number of times an independant check of phsycic claims are shown to be fabrications or extreme exagerations is surprisingly large.
If Lena McGregor really has some powers, it will be easy for her to win the 1 million US dollar prize from James Randi.
Nobody has won it yet…
As for having detailed dreams that accurately predicts the future….. Please write down all dreams, when you wake up. Tally how many come true, weighted to how significant the “true”ness was, and weighted to how likely it was to happen anyway.. Compare to a magic 8 ball….
Nicholas I’m sure we can agree to disagree on some of the issues raised during these discussions, but scepticism is a very interesting topic to me. I enjoy understanding why why people believe in the supernatural eg/ alien abductions, crop circles or even why people used to burn witches at stakes etc.
But I promise this will be my last comment.
If Lena Mcgregor can truly locate missing people, can she explain why she has only found one? (found on his own farm). Why wouldn’t she help out with all the other missing Australians?
What about the hundreds of people with warrants out for their arrest?
I’m sure she does have an explanation for the limits of her claimed abilities. This explanation itself would make her claimed abilities fairly useless (even if they were real) and not worth worrying about.
The left side of the brain shuts down during sleep allowing the subconcious brain and right side of the brain to dominate. It doesn’t surprise me that every now and then you will subconsciously generally predict a future situation. Afterall you do this consciously all the time. But do you ever dream specific quantifiable future predictions?
Investigating dreams can be an interesting scientific pursuit and can create wonder, excitement, knowledge and satisfaction. For example, I am convinced the brain responds to physical stimulus during dreams.
But scientific investigation takes hard work.
And that’s the difference, the psychic or future teller has the hook of easy answers. Easy is appealing. Like a gambler looking for easy money.
Tim, maybe Lena is asked to find people. Maybe she even has success. The Police do use psychics, though they don’t publicise the fact.
As for earning money, psychics would be people who accept that physical life is not the end of existence. By definition, good psychics would constantly be honing their talents. A psychic who was a materialist would be a contradiction in terms.
Nicholas, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far, the evidence for phsycics has been rather unextraordinary. “maybe Lena is asked to find people. Maybe she even has success” does not inspire me with any particular confidence.
As for the inference that phsycics aren’t materialistic, and hence don’t need to win the Randi $1 million, there’s a couple of points here. The first is that they can donate the money to good causes. The second is that if they feel their talents are real and helpful, they should want to show the world that they’re real, so more people go to phsycics and are helped. Winning the million would be a great aid to this. And what’s more, it’s not as if people haven’t tried to win the prize. They’ve tried, and they’ve been shown to have no supernatural abilities (of course it could be a coincidence that their abilities were on the blink that day, every time, every one of them..).
I first mentioned Edgar Cayce, because his cures are still working. That is a good track record. I am aware that James Randi tries to discredit his record in ‘Flim-Flam’, but I wondered then, and I wonder now, why he never interviewed people who knew Cayce, or were cured by him? Even today, there are some people alive who would have met the man. And Cayce would have been a big news-item to successfully discredit, if he could have shown that the cures were pure chance.
And, as I said earlier, i have met and talked to two children who’s mother was only able to have them after trying one of Cayce’s cures- modern medicine had done nothing for her. If this is the placebo effect, why didn’t modern medicine cure her?
In any case, whilst everyone should have the right to try to convert others to their point of view, I am not sure that Atheism versus Theisms is a valid part of a libertarian blog, which should be chiefly political.
And by the way, Gib and Tim R.-
If you want to see a reliable psychic in action, helping the police, see your TV on Wednesdays. ‘Medium’ is the message. The show is based on a real person, and shows the limitations of such talents, as well as their potentials. (As an aside, it makes sense that a person who specialises in reading minds would not have any luck in seeing the future, or which Lotto numbers will come up- no mind to read. Having one talent does not mean you have them all.)
‘Stranger Than Fiction’, a British show, once managed to interview Ms. Yatarian, a reclusive psychic. She had once been very forthcoming in helping solve crimes with the police, so organised crime put a contract out on her life. she barely escaped with her life, despite her talent, and she has since been far more discreet in her contacts with the police.
So Lena probably does help the police, but she would be very quiet about it, and with good reason.
Nicholas,
You said that a libertarian blog should be chiefly political. Perhaps. However the title of the blog is also “Thoughts about Freedom” so I don’t mind drifting off of politics from time to time. I’m sure I’ll get a smack over the nuckles by the audience or the administrators if I do it too much. And given the number of comments on this particular topic it seems to have passed muster with the audience.
Regards,
Terje.
Just so Terje doesn’t have the last word-
Q. How many New Zealanders does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Don’t bother- they look much better in the dark!
And we’ve all been arguing over something that doesn’t exist! There are no such things as athiests!
Atheists would be a different matter, called antimatter.
Just because the advertisement to a program says “based on a real person”, doesn’t make the stories any more true.
Allison Dubois, the person supposedly behind the show “Medium” is a liar about her supposed assistance with law agencies. She makes all sorts of claims, that are proven wrong when speaking to the agencies supposedly involved.
That woman is nearly as bad as that Silvia Browne conwoman.
Here’s one page to start at, about Allison Dubois.
http://www.twopercentco.com/rants/allison_dubois_week.html
I was going to smite you sinners heel and toe with cogent argument and inescapable facts, but I can’t find the book I was looking for. I often give good books to friends and libraries, so I must have donated the one I wanted. It is called ‘The Paranormal File’, by the Australian journalist John Pinkney.
In the book are numerous people who had lucky dreams, including an English journalist who consistently had dreams of next day’s horse race winners for several years- then his talent dried up, and never came back. In the 1990s, a Melbourne disc jockey had a dream that told him the first three horses in the Melbourne Cup- he told his audience, and they all had some money because of it.
There were other examples that make me believe that dreams are not all just chance memories.
As a child I dreamt of a terrifying car crash and woke my parents up to tell them about it. The next day we were involved in a head on collision although nobody was seriously hurt.
My sister woke up one moring and told my Mum that she felt she would break her leg that day. Foolish girl then went horse riding and whilst on her horse a friends horse kicker her in the leg and busted the bone.
I once stood on the road near our home and told a large tree (that was creaking in the breeze) to shut up. Within about 5 seconds the tree then fell towards me and I had to run to avoid being hit. The tree blocked the road for about half an hour after that whilst somebody fetched a chainsaw.
There have been other bizzar happenings and strange dreams that have come to pass, however I don’t discount mere coincidence. The memory has a way of recalling apparent patterns and forgeting seemingly unconnected sequences.
Does anybody here actually study psychology properly?
From what i know, in the case of Nicholas, i would say it is more likely that the the horse racers etc had learnt to program the sub-conscious mind to analyse information and provide the result, in the same way that brilliant mathematic experts can do calculations faster than a computer, It all has to do with the training of the mind. And the sub conscious mind is pretty much only active when you are sleeping, hence people getting answers to problems that had been annoying them for days after they have slept, and information that is taken in before sleeping has a much higher recall rate, although i dont think that has much to do with the sub conscious mind.
Terje, Your sister breaking her leg sounds more like internal variables, If i think im going to have a bad day then i most likely will, if i think im going to get into a fight when i go out to the pub then i will approach situations with that in mind and hence make it much more likely of occurring.
Perry – certainly possible. Although I don’t know how you get your friends horse to spontaneously take fright and then kick your leg whilst you sit on your own horse.
Yeah, that happens.
It’s kind of like “target fixation” the “phenomenon” where thinking about something guarantees it happening. A good example is football players who kick for the goal and in their head they’re going “between the posts, the posts, the posts, the posts”. So they hit the posts.
terje, I’ve had similar things happen, but a lot of them are pretty dismissable. For example, the tree was creaking because it was damaged internally. And the wind was blowing, which made it break. It’s no coincidental, because there’s a linking factor.
Secondly, considering the amount of “stuff” we think, dream, and do, it’s only logical that a proportion of those will be “hits” matching actual events. The ones that don’t we discard, but the ones we do we attach excess significance to.
Still, I DO think there’s more to it than that. I think sometimes people have… intuition. Nothing psychic or testable, just the ability to get a hint now and then.
Back to the topic at hand! Should Athiests be Evangelical?
Religion is a major interest of mine: http://mattburgess.com/articles/would-the-world-be-better-without-religion/
I wrote that before reading The God Delusion, so it’s nice to see a lot of his views parallel there.
Regardless, evangelism is a loaded word. I believe in people having the right to freedom of religious worship. They can believe whatever crazy nonsense they believe. I believe all athiests should be informed and intelligent about what they believe/don’t believe, and why. Only by knowledge can we counter ignorance. But that information should only be needed in discussion or under challenge (BELIEVE IN JEEESUS!). Not for pestering random people on the train. “Did you know that Jesus didn’t die for your sins so that you may not be reborn into the kingdom of Ungod?”
People have the right to believe what they want. And as soon as that same right is extended to ME I’ll be happy.
Religious views of other people are so entrenched and formative in our culture that perhaps it will take a level of evangelism just to get them out? While religion is dictating policy we have a right and responsibility to fight it emphatically.
I’m not referring to concepts like murder. “Thou Shalt Not Kill” should really be unnecessary as a commandment. Anyone who “doesn’t kill” purely because the bible says not to is more of a threat to me than an athiest who doesn’t kill because they have no interest in doing so.
I’m referring in particular to sexual morality. When we have easy abortion, blameless divorce, true sexual freedom, same sex marriages, voluntary euthenasia, etc, then we have a religion free government.
But the government represents society, and society still has views based on religious (and fake) values.
Perhaps a degree of evangelism is in order?
I think that once you adjust for a more correct translation the commandment was more specifically “thou shalt not murder”. You could still kill people so long as they were not fellow Jews. And it was your civic duty to stone people that commited adultery, blasphemy or apostasy.
From my experience with loopy horses, the injury doesn’t surprise me, wasn’t a thoroughbred by any chance? Horses are easily spooked by other horses, plastic bags, cars etc and will also test people out who they sense are uncomfortable or nervous. My partner knows of several people who have been permanently disabled or are dead. She herself has a part of the bone missing from her shin. Horse injuries can be very nasty.
Nicholas you said materialistic psychics were a “contradiction in terms” but now you are saying there was some guy predicting horse racing wins in the UK to make money.
This could easily have been tested by an outside observer. So was a controlled experiment ever done? Did this guy always win or did he just always gamble and only report the wins?
Also US police forces have statistically evaluated the sucess rates of psychics and found them to be below average. I’ll look up some references if you want.
There are scientists who try to determine whether the power of thought can have effects on matter. Some of them hypothesize mental energy levels below those described by quantum mechanics. It’s not an area I know much about but no experiment has been accepted by the scientific community.
In addition, there have been plenty controlled tests on ESP ability. You’ve probably seen the simple test where a person behind a screen is asked to say what card is being held up from a regular deck of cards. Ever heard of someone scoring 100%?
There’s an interesting story about Houdini tricking Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (sherlock holmes author) into believing he was able to channel a medium. Houdini repeatedly told him it was just an elaborate trick but even then, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t believe him.
As far as I’m concerned mystical beliefs are disadvantageous and harmful to the way your brain processes reality and your decision making ability. But if people want to believe in witches, aliens, lucky charms, psychics, rune stones, ouija boards etc, good on them. It’s disconcerting when people suffer in a major way at the hands of con artists. But at least now we don’t burn people at the stake if we think they’re a witch.
No, Matt, just because athEIsts should have freedom to preach, it doesn’t follow that they are correct, merely tolerated.
In fact, since democracies make their own moral codes, and the majority of people seem to believe in something other than atheism, therefore atheism must be incorrect! Who doesn’t believe in democracy? Name them!
It is important to teach religious people the burden of proof. The nature of reality and science.
For example, if abortion is indeed murder it’s not a matter of being “pro choice”. Choosing to murder doesn’t make it OK.
The religious person needs to prove that aborting a small bundle of cells lesser developed than most low order animals is indeed murder.
Or they need to prove that the existence of a soul and the point in time when the soul appears.
Or they need to prove that the unborn child belongs to God and not to the mother. (presumably by proving the existence of God).
If they cannot do this, they shouldn’t impose their beliefs into the legal system. But unfortunately there are many religious people who would do just this.
There are also many religious people who recognise some of their relgious dogma are beliefs based on faith and not facts and this is how it should be.
Thanks for the correction of my spelling, nicolas. I’ve been writing that one wrong for a LONG time.
A glance up at the title bar shows I’m not alone in that mistake either. 
As to the rest:
a) wtf
b) seriously, wtf
Taken from the top:
“just because atheists should have freedom to preach, it doesn’t follow that they are correct, merely tolerated.”
I never claimed my beliefs and views are unfallably true. That is the province of religion. I’m not trying to preach, just level the playing field, or at least establish that it’s not level.
“In fact, since democracies make their own moral codes, ”
Democracies make their own moral code based on established frameworks. But my issue is that the foundation of that moral code, one that is based on the notion of “sin” and “impurity” rather than doing nice things. Also we’re not just talking about moral codes but LEGAL codes.
“and the majority of people seem to believe in something other than atheism, therefore atheism must be incorrect! ”
One of the worst things I’ve ever read by someone who should know better.
The more people believe something the more it must be true? You seen how many people watch Big Brother? The Majority does not make right.
Let’s also be clear: You don’t vote for the truth. It’s true whether it’s popular or unpopular.
“Who doesn’t believe in democracy? Name them!”
“Democracy is the tyranny of the majority” – Thomas Jefferson.
Done. Next? Also… wtf? What’s the relevance of that? We’re not talking about democracy. As libertarians all isn’t our view one of freedom and independence? Does that not count for religious views as well as government, and ESPECIALLY from religious laws? Or do we not care about the rights of gays because we’re not gay?
Apologies, I accidentally attributed that quote to Thomas Jefferson, when it was in fact John Stuart Mill.
Terje, true about “thou shalt not kill”. I just didn’t want to complicate things. Also while we’re on the subject, the stuff about slavery is exaggerated. The lifelong ownership of a people as slaves is NOT what is referred to in the bible. It actually was referring to slavery as “debt slavery” a punishment and repayment for unpaid debts. The terms were relatively short (1 – 5 years) and conditions not harsh (strike a slave and he is instantly free of his bonds). This should NOT be considered like it’s the same as the slavery of africans to plantations in north america.
Tim R – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was quite a mystical whacko. Very strong believer in all sorts of nonsense, and a member of several “secret occult societies”. For an intelligent man he was apparently very gullible.
I was having a dig at democracy.
Q. How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb?
A. They’ll decide that at their next Annual General Meeting!
Sorry, Nicholas, I misjudged you horribly
Ah! That’s the quote I was looking for:
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – Thomas Jefferson
Tim, as an esoteric Christian, I oppose abortion, though I don’t think of it as murder. Whilst you might not place too much reliance on hypnosis, the past-life recollections to which I have paid attention talk about the soul hovering above the new-born babies, trying to decide which ‘model’ will most suit their hopes for the next incarnation. I oppose abortion because it is part of the no-consequences mind-set of our culture. Modern society is too concerned with perpetual pleasure, whilst trying to pretend that there is no cost. Since I believe in karma, I believe that everything has a price.
Abortion, which has been mentioned above is a complex issue as has been shown above. Sorry I am coming into this a bit late, but I have been tied up a bit by other issues.
The real problem with this issue is that the various views held on the issue are genuinely held beliefs, from those where the first few cells are a human life, right through to those who accept the idea of late term abortion. In some cases those arguments probably represent ‘beliefs of convenience’, however we have no way of assessing this with any certainty.
My personal opinion, which I will put on the record, is that the foetus is a living human being at the point at which in the case of premature birth, with reasonable medical care, the child can be expected to live, therefore life starts at some undetermined point prior to this. This is of course not relevant to the issue, but clears up where I am coming from.
As has been stated above there is no conclusive evidence as yet on where life begins, and as such, the whole debate on this subject is based on personal opinions.
It is therefore clear that this subject has to remain a moral issue and should not be the concern of the state.
Ps Terje;
Don’t worry about what these guys say about going blind, I am much older than you and still only need glasses for reading, it’s a myth mate.
Nicholas;
I believe in karma too. When someone criticises me I kind of look forward to the next morning when he opens his paper and sees his name being linked romantically to Bronwyn Bishop. It hasn’t happened yet but I know it will happen.
Qualification;
My sense of humour is classified as a disability.
Jim, is there a pension to go with the disability? Could be an affirmative action case there!
Jim, I support abortion too. However, I believe it should be performed retrospectively at times. There’s no way nature intended some people to be born. I mean, just look at John Howard – a missed toilet flush if ever I saw one.
I nominate David Leyonhjelm for the first post-birth retrospective abortion! you can tell us what it is like!
As for the rest of you-
I know there must be a God, because science tells me so!
One of the many anti-God statements regularly uttered is- “If God made the world, who made God?”
The basic assumption built into this question is that Causality is an absolute. Causality is a function of time. Space and time, einstein tells us, are mixed up together, and come together. In short, time was created when the Universe was created, as part of the package deal. How can you claim that causality exists ‘outside’ the Universe?
Indeed, when scientists speculate about these matters, they think that everything was Chaos. Chaos means everything can, and does, happen. Chaos, in fact could never choose to not express something, or it isn’t Chaos. Chaos randomly generated the Universe, and thus time and causality, simply to be true to itself.
A randomly-generated pattern which could propagate itself in Chaos, like life randomly colonising Earth, would become the allpowerful being that we mean by God. Just like Microsoft domination of software, initial Chaos becomes one BEING.
Since there is no time in Chaos, and everything is happening all at once, God already did/does/will exist.
Thus Chaos MUST create A God, who could then control Chaos, in the same way that we control the planet from which we arose.
This is not the same as the cosy creator god, but it is the God who exists.
That is why I could never be an Atheist- it would be against science.
Reality update.
A small item in a newspaper now claims thst some scientists think that our universe was preceded by a universe which formed and then crunched itself together and went on to form our universe. However, before we go off to Pheonix Universe land, our scientists have already claimed that our universe will expand at a faster and faster rate, without end. So no BIG CRUNCH for us.
None of this mitigates what I said in 104 about Chaos.
And Tim R., I mentioned the dreamer in Pinkney’s book as an example of a man who had a money-making talent, simply to show that it is possible. The general rule is still that you need to be interested in nonmaterial matters to develop nonmaterial latent talents. Perhaps his talent left him because he concentrated only on the money-making side. Good psychics stay psychic all their lives. Certainly Edgar Cayce did!
My personal theory is that the universe cycles between expanding, then condensing then big bang and over and over. But it’s just my theory. Theoretical physics is pretty out there in general.
Nicholas if Edgar Cayce was psychic, why did he claim to channel those in the lost city of Atlantis. There is no scientific evidence for Atlantis. If psychics could channel Atlantians, then why don’t they ask them how to find the city’s remains?
From reading A Brief History of Time, i thought the common theory was that everything was speeding away from each other but it would eventually loose mometum due to the force of gravity acting upon it, then it will stop, and start travelling back in on itself?
And then the big crunch?
Perry,
Some time ago, I read about the Casimir effect. Two metal plates were in close alignment with each other, but were not touching. A modern belief of physicists was that we are surrounded by virtual particles, which don’t last long. They can only manifest in gaps between ‘real’ particles, the stuff of our universe. (This is an offshoot of the Uncertainty principle.) So where you have a small gap, only a small range of ‘virtual’ particles can appear. This is treated like a ‘real’ vacuum, and the plates felt a pull towards each other that could not otherwise be explained. (See also ‘Zero-point energy’)
When I thought about the vast spaces between Galaxies, I thought that here would be wavelengths that couldn’t exist inside galaxies- here would be virtual particle high pressure points, trying to squeeze galaxies into small shapes, and push galaxies further apart. I should have made it a prediction, because cosmologists now think that the cosmos is expanding at a faster and faster rate. My own belief is that the Casimir effect is to blame for the expansion, overcoming gravity by expanding space.
Tim R., Cayce’s cures still work, as i related above. And Atlantis was an island. Geologists doing research on the floor of the Atlantic routinely come across geological anomalies that they try to fit into their theory of plate tectonics. The Azores islands are full of such anomalies.
However, the best scientific confirmation of Cayce is coming from research into blood types. Cayce once claimed that Atlanteans fleeing the sinking of their home went to five new settlements- the Gobi area (then fertile), Egypt, Peru, the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and the northern Appalachean mountains. This last area houses the Iriquoi Indians, who had ten federated tribes (just like Plato’s Atlantis.) Scientists have discovered that there are five areas of the world with a bloodtype that matches each other, but is unique to their areas. Guess which five? They are the only places to have this matching type.
Post 104:
There is the argument that given enough time a universe such as ours could create every conceivable thing and moreso. Thus I once used that argument for the creation of God, it was inevitable. The argument contains a logical flaw: just because probability theory anticipates that something should happen does not mean it will happen. I’m not even sure one should invoke probability theory as evidence for anything. “Given enough time” is a belief statement, not a scientific one. How much time is “enough time?” Some number crunching exercises indicate that for evolution as we currently understand it to occur the universe would have to be many times older than we currently believe it to be.
Is there one archeological artifact that fits in with the Atlantis theory? ie: carbon dates to pre-Babylonian/Egyptian and shows evidence of advanced language, art, astronomy etc?
The human (homo sapien) genome is its most diverse in Africa. All human populations around the world come from one genome type that left Africa and eventually populated the whole world. So I don’t see how it’s surprising that the same blood types exist in different places. And I also don’t see how these blood types are classed as “unique” if they exist in five totally different places.
If ex-Atlanteans did populate these places then why weren’t these places more advanced? And why weren’t there other links beyond blood type?
eg/ Why did these 5 places adopt totally different languages? And why were the languages primitive, pictorial types that are mainly a series of nouns as opposed to modern languages that are rich in introspective devices, and ways of describing emotions and thoughts?
I thought that Zero Point Energy was the process of getting a huge amount of energy from basically nothing, How does that relate to magnetity and gravity?
Dead Soul, the version of that theory that I have heard is, that in an infinite amount of time, everything that can possibly happen will happen an infinite amount of times.
However this theory still requires events to be possible in the first place.
And I think this theory mis-understands the nature of reality assuming more randomness that actually exists. Your probabiliy explanation is also reasonable in my opinion.
Tim R. and friends, Chaos doesn’t choose which universe to create, because choices are made by living things, and Chaos is never depicted as living. Life is an order which perpetuates itself. Chaos is disorder.
Ergo, Chaos must be manifesting ALL possibilities simultaneously, if it can’t choose one. All possible universes are parallel to each other, like pages in a book. Even small possibilities are there. A book called the Omega Point was written by a physicist (at a time when the universe was believed to collapse in on itself), who believed that our universe would grow into Godhood, a self-aware entity comprising everything we can see. Since our Universe seems likely to expand, such an option is not likely… for OUR universe. Universes with different rules would have different outcomes.
Tim, I finally found the reference I was looking for. Whilst not directly relating to Atlantis, it touches on a similar theme. The Indians announced the discovery of buildings under water (120 feet) in the Gulf of Cambray, in January of 2002. These buildings have now been dated to 7500 BC. They have been there for thousands of years, but have only been found now.
Atlantean cities would be under 300 to 400 feet of water, at least, since Cayce said that it was the end of the Ice Age (rising seas) as well as volcanism that destroyed it. Since no-one is in the Azores, looking for lava-covered ruins, that could be why they haven’t yet found any remains.
Tim, re blood types. The evidence for Cayce was in these types only turning up where he said to look, and going back as far as he said to look, and no further. Haplo X has not turned up anywhere else. Carbon-dating of the remains conforms to Cayce’s outline of history, and no fact contradicts it.
As for languages, I read a book by an American author, discussing the languages of the North American Indians, who found that the further back in time you went, the more they resembled each other. The records were patchy, but did support the idea of either one language, or one dominant language, being common. (Dominant means that it was widely used, just like English is the world language now, though England did not conquer the whole world.) He was thinking in terms of Clovis man, the now-extinct idea that humans only settled in America after the Ice Age, but his concept could also apply to atlantean settlers bringing their language with them.
Nicholas I got around to doing a quick search on Cayce.
I compiled a quick list of some known incorrect predictions.
1) He predicted that in 1958 the U.S. would discover some sort of death ray used on Atlantis.
2) Is one of the main people responsible for the idea that the Atlantaeans had some sort of Great Crystal
3) He predicted that China would be converted to Christianity by 1968
4) He predicted that 1933 would be a good year concerning the Great Depression.
5) Dr. J.B. Rhine, famous for his ESP experiments at Duke University, was not impressed with Cayce. Rhine felt that a psychic reading done for his daughter didn’t fit the facts.
6) Cayce and a famous dowser named Henry Gross set out together to discover buried treasure along the seashore and found nothing
7) Cayce was knowledgeable of homeopathy and naturopathy. He was the first to recommend laetrile as a cancer cure. (Laetrile contains cyanide and is known to be ineffective for cancer.) He also recommended “oil of smoke” for a leg sore; “peach-tree poultice” for convulsions; “bedbug juice” for dropsy; and “fumes of apple brandy from a charred keg” for tuberculosis.
“It is the volume and alleged accuracy of his “cures” that seem to provide the main basis for belief in Cayce as a psychic. In fact, however, the support for his accuracy consists of little more than anecdotes and testimonials. There is no way to demonstrate that Cayce used psychic powers even on those cases where there is no dispute that he was instrumental in the cure”.
You can’t be surprised that people like me are not overly impressed by Cayce especially considering this guy is one of the world’s most famous ever psychics.
Nicholas at 133:
The author of the The Omega Point is Frank Tipler. His arguments seem to draw from the notion put forward some earlier physicists that the universe can be understood as a great thought.
What is the universe doing? They can’t changing their mind every generation so don’t bother … .
1) The first working masers, forerunners to the laser, were developed and working in Bell labs in the year (wait for it) 1958.
2) The basic unit of a laser is a crystal. The power sources were supposed to be called Great crystals.
3) I am aware that he claimed that China would be a Christian country, but there was no date attached to the prophecy (“It is far off as men judge time.”)
4) In 1933, President Roosevelt came to office, and started the New Deal, and Democrats think it started America on the road to recovery.
5) Dr. Rhine is an interesting choice for a character reference. Do you accept Rhine’s other claims about proving clairvoyance? About psychokinetic gamblers? Do you regularly play with Zener cards? If not, why not? Do you know why the first book about Cayce (There is a River) was even published? Because Cayce was able to give a very accurate reading about the health of a relative of the publisher, and only because of that. I think that is a character reference.
6) Never heard of this case, but one or two failures wouldn’t shock me. Psychic talent is a human talent, which means it can sometimes be wrong.
7) All these names, like ‘Oil of smoke’, were either names of products that existed then, or were things which he told them how to make. As for ‘Laetrile’, I’ll look it up later.
I don’t know who the quote is from, but it doesn’t impress me.
And tim, as I keep saying, I have met and talked to two people who are only here because their mother took one of Cayce’s cures when medicine said that nothing could be done. That seems impressive to me.
Nicholas, everything that you just said proves nothing to me.
When these kinds of predictions are wrong, people just try to link the nearest events to them. “Some democrats thing it started America on the road to recovery”.
And those cures you are talking about just sound like associative placebo.
” I am wearing a red jumper today so it will be a good day.”
They were used all the time in medieval times and witchcraft.
Perry,
You might be interested to know that Cayce was not above correcting his own prophecies, or updating them. He once said (in 1933) that L.A. would be hit by a big earthquake in three years time. A year later he said, when asked about this, ‘This will not now happen’. However, no-one asked him what had changed. L.A. was not hit by an earthquake that year.
As for you climate sceptics and deniers, the show on Thursday night has a fascinating graph, which shows that solar activity, which the presenter claims is the real driving force behind climate changes, peaked in the year 1998. This exactly matches one of the Cayce predictions, where 1998 was predicted to be a pivotal moment in the Earth’s affairs. So a scientist, who I presume has never heard of Edgar Cayce, confirms one of Cayce’s predictions.
As for his cures being placebos, how come people weren’t cured by the placebo of the day- the medicines which doctors give to them? If it’s all due to blind faith, why didn’t they work? And how come Cayce was never sued for malpractice by any of his patients?
Admittedly i have never heard of Cayce either. But it is a common placebo use when the patient associates the placebo with the body combatting the virus or whatever the problem maybe.
I am highly sceptic about such things as they seem to me to be just, dodgy.
However, i will go and read about him more.
The reason he hasnt been sued for malpractice? Probably because he deals with very desperate people, and desperate people will try anything. And hold the risk on their shoulders.
I think we’ve answered the question.
Should Atheists be evangelists for atheism?
NO!!!
If I were converted to atheism, then the underpinnings of my libertarian beliefs, such as the Universe already being a place of karmic justice so we don’t need governments creating utopias, would be fatally wounded, and I would join another movement.
As libertarians, we should promote Liberty and Libertarianism.
I’ll try again getting my comments up today.
Nicholas,
1) Masers were discovered in 1953 not 1958, and they are nothing like a death ray. Lasers are used in medical work.
2) Crystals are used in many things. Are you saying the power source for lasers was supposed to be called a “great crystal”. Where do you get that idea?
3) Obviously Cayce was wrong about China. Christianity is dropping in terms of percentage population. Atheism is rising, see Australian census for the last 20+ years.
4) Libertarians should know that Roosevelt’s deal actually worsened the US. I think Milton Friedman writes about this. Anyhow, Cayce said “good year”, not “road to recovery”
5) One anectode against another.
6) If psychics can be frequently wrong, what’s the point?
7) Naturapathy is different to psychic ability. And in the cases I’ve pointed out it wasn’t very good naturapathy.
Basically if people were more rational, the world would be a better place. Increased rationality leads to decreased need for authorities which for example means less suicide bombers.
Tim, do you think Dr. Rhine is a good authority on psychic matters, or not? And will you keep a lookout tonight on ‘The great greenhouse warming swindle’, when the presenter will display a graph highlighting the year 1998, the very year Cayce said would be a peak of activity?
Arguments from authority are not logically correct so I apologise but I’m not concerned about Dr Rhine’s credentials. As far as I am concerned, it’s just his opinion or his experience that happened to be recorded.
I used the example to illustrate that the only supporting evidence I’ve seen for Cayce is anecdotal evidence.
I don’t know very much about Dr Rhine or Cayce but it took me a whole 10 sec to find a sceptical article about Cayce on the net.
Cayce said “1998 would be a pivotal moment in Earth’s affairs”. I don’t think you can link this to solar activity.
The placebo effect does exist, clinical trials have shown this. Approx 30% of people given a placebo will report some or a lot of improvement in medical symptoms. This “power of suggestion” is an interesting, largely unexplained phenomenon that you may be interested in. Investigating the causes of the placebo effect would be interesting and valuable scientific inquiry quite different to accepting anectodal evidence about mediums or psychics.
Incidentally, are you a fan of Nostradamus?
Also, the underpinning of my libertarianism is due to a principle defined as “non-initiation of force”. As humans, we are the only animals that have the mental ability of choice. Choice is necessary for our survival and obviously a natural part of us. So I therefore think we need rights to protect our choices. The underlying principle that expresses these rights in one “equation” is “non-initiation of force”. ie: Any application of initiating force is a violation of human rights. And in our current society of democracy and governments, this rights protection is the job of the government. That’s why I get mad when paternalistic legislation is passed, I literally think it’s a crime, unnatural and can only have bad consequences.
So you can see, that atheism has very little to do with whether or not someone accepts this principle.