New Atheism movement is using ATS as a mouthpiece

Originally posted by lambs to lions
reply to post by blackcube

 

This thread is about New Atheism, which is different than the absence of belief in God.

It is aggressive, combative, and has an agenda.

And your point is you don't like it when Christianity gets a taste of its own medicine?

Have you ever read the Bible?

Once you have members
Once you have websites
Once you have meetiings
Once you take donations
Once you are organized
Once you become anti religion
You become a religion

I do understand your point at S&F you for your post. With as much as you may disagree or have preconceived notions of other people's posting, the beauty of this site is that you may post your own. I like to hear what people themselves believe in their hearts as individuals. Differences among people is the greatest strength that humankind possesses.

Many anti-religious posts are not from atheists. In some cases, the person may be agnostic. In my case, I believe in a creator. If I had to chose, my religion would be Orthodox Christian partially due to Syrian ancestry. Neo-christianity religions subscribe to many questionable beliefs as influenced by the Romans. The trinity is not observed in orthodox christianity. While some people think this is a trivial argument over one aspect of beliefs, it is not. It basically paved the way for pagan idolatry, a hierarchical papalcy system, and the idea that some people are closer to god if not god themselves.

Altars and the Sabbath are occultic in origin. I am against all formalized religion. I'm for the belief only, and helping out others.

reply to post by celticdog


Yes I am Christian. I try to follow the path that has been laid before me, though I do misstep...a lot. I have my faith and I read from my Bible for strength and encouragement. I am not Catholic , but do take the time I spend at mass with my family to say my own prayers and hopefully learn something from the Gospel.

I could understand the agnostics complaining about New Atheists, I could even understand the regular atheists complaining about this subset of vocal and combative atheists, but Christians complaining, talk about irony - it's like the school bully telling teacher because the little kid decided he'd had enough, and hit back, or the crack dealer whining to the police because someone stole his stash.

Madness.

How is this for "combative"?

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 ESV

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

reply to post by humphreysjim


Lol, still reading it. You make a good point, religion does have blood on its hands. However, my OP was meant to make a point about an agenda that many people don't understand.

All Christians are not the same. Many varieties, but mainly split on neo-orthodox christianity and orthodox (the original).

Only orthodox churches in US are Ethiopian, Syrian (now Syriac), and Greek.

One of the big complaints is that people who put Jesus first do not say they are neo-christians.

Click here for more information.

reply to post by lambs to lions


I agree with the premise of this thread. After all, ATS was founded and is continually supported for the exact reason of discussing matter such as these. I don't see the point of complaining, however, because for every atheism thread that pops up, there's two or three threads warning us about judgment, sharing visions of imminent trials, and a slew of scripture reminding us to behave or our loving father will take out his belt of judgment and cast us into the flaming woodshed for all of eternity.

So really, it's coming from both side. As I see it, this thread is complaining chiefly because the OP doesn't agree with atheism. I'm fine with that. But don't make it a conspiracy when I see your half of the fence doing the exact same thing. If there's a conspiracy at all, it's because there's a middleman keeping the two distracted while he builds his own empire.

But that's just an idea I'm throwing out there. Bottom line, everyone gets to have their say. Why is that a problem for you? We have to deal with your views as well. And quite honestly, I enjoy the confrontations. They are educations and they expand my brain. Mind stretches, you know. So thank you for that, Christians.

And again, if we have to put up with you, you have to put up with us. You could always visit a Christians-only forum. That would solve your irritation issues. Absolutely no contradictory perspectives. Now THAT'S an educational forum!

reply to post by lambs to lions

Perception is in the eye of the beholder I suppose. I'm not saying that it hasn't happened, but I see the anti-religious threads time and time again. I don't see many threads spouting off about "the damn Atheists are holding us back"

Perception is key, and a lot of your OP rings true. Problem being, it's both sides, maybe you don't see the countless "athiests are the new nazis" type threads, the rest of us do. Hell, I'm not even an athiest, but I get called that a lot here, so I use it and apply it to myself.

Lets be clear.

Not believing in YOUR definition of GOD doesn't make someone an athiest. It makes them a human freaking being..

You don't like seeing your beliefs distorted and misused here? Neither to we. You feel you have the right to counter and argue? So do we.

If your belief system is hanging in the balance by such a small thread that a few people pointing out obvious inconsistencies with your religion would destroy your faith, it is YOU who needs to re-examine your world view.

As long as there is a group of religious people here who feel the need to beat us over the head with it (not implying you are one of them) we'll feel the need to counteract that.

We use science, you use mysticism. If ATS works as it was intended, we should see a great discussion develop.

But sadly, people on both sides take themselves too seriously. Do I believe in any incarnation of modern religion? Nope, doesn't appeal to me, and in fact, I find some of it insulting to my intelligence.

Does that give me the right to act like a douche a belittle those for whom religion serves a useful purpose? Hell no. I would just love to go a day or two without being reminded that I'm evil, and less of a human, and I will burn in eternal damnation for not taking Jesus as my savior.

what a wonderful, all inclusive, peaceful and non judgmental religion that is.

Originally posted by lambs to lions
reply to post by yourmaker

 

Conversation and debate concerning conspiracies is completely different from pushing an anti-religious agenda. So yeah, you are completely wrong on that one.

Sorry but I do not think anyone is "pushing an agenda". People here are simply stating what they believe, just as you have.

There is no "New Atheist" movement. It simply does not exist. What it is an excuse to dismiss the opinions of others who disagree. Fact is, it is easier to label people and dismiss what they say, rather than actually address the points they make.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


That's the truth of the matter right there. I couldn't agree more whether your christian, buddhist, muslim. jewish, athiest or "enlightened" it is good to have a forum where all sides can express their views and learn from each other. I have learned many things here and wouldn't have it any other way. We are are simply following our own path and our own experiences and the sharing of idea's is always a fabulous thing.

many blessings to all.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Yeah, I get where you are coming from. I think that I could have done a better job with presenting my thread. I'm not irritated by anyone, I just as comfortable peacefully discussing or a bloodbath battle. I don't get angry, I'm a professional.

Originally posted by trysts
I can't think of a good reason to respect the views of people who believe in angels, gods and demons. As a child one is subjected to the brainwashing done by the church, parents, television, and teachers. This brainwashing is not considered a crime, but it should be, in my view. So yes, if the religious folks are not criticized for promoting their silly and dangerous views to impressionable, young minds, then we're never going to see a society striving to be morally civilized.

I hope people realize that this perspective is very prevalent among what I like to call the crusading atheists. Basically, they have subconsciously held a grudge regarding their childhood, because they feel 'betrayed' that their environment brainwashed them, and as a way to make it right and to make themselves feel better, they feel it is their duty to fight with nails and teeth against those who propagate what hurt them as a child. Whether they know it or not, that's how it goes. Atheists that were raised as atheists are not as violent towards the religious, as atheists who rebelled against their childhood religions. It's always easy to look for an outside enemy instead of facing your own inner problems.

First yes I am christian.

You know... I do not mind when Athiests talk about god and religion. I've had many a good conversation with atheists on this very subject..

My problem is.. When Athiests are totally disrespectful of not only another persons belief system but the person themselves..

They often stoop to going straight for the jugular. IMHO all this does is make any person on the receiving end of this barrage shut down and become completely unreachable..

For example I once had someone call Jesus a name so inflammatory that you wouldn't even refer to a $3 hooker by this label. This ended up leading to a physical altercation.

Now, take this for what it is.. Not a logical argument to which people may forward their understanding of each other and perhaps form new ideas of the world around them. It was a personal attack and this practice is all to common of both sides.

Word to the wise for all you Athiests out there. I'm not saying don't' talk about it.

I'm asking that when you do you are respectful and considerate of the person you are talking to. You will probably make a lot more headway with people. Just saying..

Being of a religion/philosophy/thought system/discipline (whatever you want to call it) that is generally not targeted by antitheists for attack (Dawkins had only good things to say about Eastern systems like the Hindu and Buddhist traditions), I'm going to throw my two cents into this anyways because I -have- noticed curious things over the past few years in regards to the religion-vs-antireligion dichotomy.

First of all, to Christians: Atheism isn't your enemy. In fact, if you read your Bible, you have no enemies and shouldn't be fighting to defend your religion anyways. It's completely contradictory to what the "good book" says. There's no massive conspiracy of atheists to destroy religion, though there is an element within atheist (antitheism) that wants to eradicate religion and, in their words, "bring us into an age of logic and reasoning."

But that's the thing. There is no logic and reasoning in destroying religion. Why do these atheists feel the desire to be destructive? In wishing the destruction of religion, you have become no better than fundamentalist Christians who, say, want to revoke a woman's right to her body, or ban gay marriage.

Look at it this way: Religion has been richly and deeply intertwined within societies, and history, all over the world for as long as we have recorded history. Religion has brought us a lot of great things. Tremendous art and science are the result of religion throughout history, religious individuals have created groups and strive to help those less fortunate, and even some of the greatest critical thinkers in history were religious. Now, you could, I suppose, make the argument that "Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia also brought us a lot of good things" but that they were evil people who did evil things. To me, that's an absurd argument. They were inherently wicked and corrupt, and prone to doing bad things. Religion, on the other hand, is inherently pure but has the tendency to be used for wicked and corrupt purposes.

I can easily make the argument that the world needs more religion, not less, and certainly not a complete absence of it. Diversity and freedom of choice, to choose whatever you want to believe, and having an assortment of options that fit with your personal philosophy, your world view, is one of the greatest powers we as humans have. Or, if you don't want something to believe in, you can do that as well. Guess what? The very power that allows you to choose to become an atheist, is the same power that lets others choose to become Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Satanist, or Woo Wooist.

So where does this destructive mentality come from?

The same mentality that makes them tell us, "When you die, you go to sleep and never wake up again." It's the same mentality that makes them tell us, "There is no God. Jesus is a lie, Mohammed was evil, Buddha was a nutjob." This mentality comes from one all pervasive want: Somebody who tells you these things, is the same kind of person who would love to dictate to you what you can do, say, think, and what you can't in your life. They would be very happy in a high position of power, ruling the world.

Why are some atheists angry at religion? From their arguments, one may wrongly deduce that they hate, say, Christianity, because Christians believe in God, Jesus, the Bible, Creationism, and that these are "illogical" or "mythology". In my heart, I can't accept that reason. It seems to me the reason those atheists are angry at religion, and want to destroy it, is because of how they perceive the way religious people act.

Christians: Is it any wonder they hate your religion? You go around, screaming on street corners, banging people over the head with Bibles, force feeding your religious beliefs down their throats, and even worse, protesting and pressuring politicians and others into designing laws that are purposely favorable to you and nobody else.

Don't believe me? How many states allow gay marriage right now?

Exactly.

So, the conclusion I have to come to is a simple one: Stop complaining about one side of the other, and if you firmly believe in what you fight for, then do it, otherwise you should get out of the game. We need both sides, it's vital we have both sides pushing against one another, because who can imagine a world where Christianity or Islam controls all of society? Or, if atheists control society?

Neither one seems like a viable option, and they both seem like they would degenerate into an absurd nightmare. We've seen it before. Religious controlled societies, atheist controlled societies, have the tendency to do terrible things to innocent people. The Crusades killed Muslims, Stalin killed his own people, Hitler killed six million Jews.

Would you want to live in a world like that, in either case? No.

So it's important we have both polar opposites conflicting. When they do, we all win. (Unless it starts getting violent.)

reply to post by lifecitizen

Religion is hindering our evolution. Its pretty important stuff, that's why we take it so seriously.

Not really, we are going to evolve with or without religion, in fact, spiritual beliefs played and important role in evolution and survival.

Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived between four and six million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor. Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of "self" and a concept of continuity.[1][2][3] There is inconclusive evidence that Homo neanderthalensis may have buried their dead which is evidence of the use of ritual. The use of burial rituals is evidence of religious activity, but there is no other evidence that religion existed in human culture before humans reached behavioral modernity.[4]

Elephants are the only other species known to have any recognizable ritual surrounding death.

Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argues that many species grieve death and loss.[5]
Setting the stage for human religion
Increased brain size

In this set of theories, the religious mind is one consequence of a brain that is large enough to formulate religious and philosophical ideas.[6] During human evolution, the hominid brain tripled in size, peaking 500,000 years ago. Much of the brain's expansion took place in the neocortex. This part of the brain is involved in processing higher order cognitive functions that are connected with human religiosity. The neocortex is associated with self consciousness, language and emotion[citation needed]. According to Dunbar's theory, the relative neocortex size of any species correlates with the level of social complexity of the particular species. The neocortex size correlates with a number of social variables that include social group size and complexity of mating behaviors. In chimpanzees the neocortex occupies 50% of the brain, whereas in modern humans it occupies 80% of the brain.

Robin Dunbar argues that the critical event in the evolution of the neocortex took place at the speciation of archaic homo sapiens about 500,000 years ago. His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion. The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids.[7]
en.wikipedia.org...
Stephen Jay Gould suggests that religion may have grown out of evolutionary changes which favored larger brains as a means of cementing group coherence among savannah hunters, after that larger brain enabled reflection on the inevitability of personal mortality.[8]

If anything man is getting dumber

In a two-part paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, Stanford University researcher Gerald Crabtree suggests that evolution is, in fact, making us dumber — and that human intelligence may have actually peaked before our hunter-gatherer predecessors left Africa.



The reason? Life on the veldt was tough, and prehistoric humans’ genes were constantly subjected to selective pressure in an environment where the species’ survival depended on it. For humans, that meant getting smarter. ”The development of our intellectual abilities and the optimization of thousands of intelligence genes probably occurred in relatively non-verbal, dispersed groups of peoples before our ancestors emerged from Africa,” Crabtree said in a news release.

Read more: newsfeed.time.com...

Drop the term religion and replace it with spirituality.

There should not be a battle existing between science and faith, everything is connected, our curiosity and search for truth begins with who are we and why are we here, someday science will prove there was a creator.

Approximately two thirds of scientist believe in a god.

I'm not a "new atheist" by any stretch of the imagination; I find angry attempts to convert me annoying no matter who they come from.

That said -- I understand the impulse. After all -- the worldview of a true believer doesn't leave much room for doubt, and has a nasty history of persecuting any who do. This was true in the pre-Christian Roman era, towards Christians, and it was true during the dark ages, towards everyone else.

Frankly -- believers make assertions that grate: "Believe in this or burn in hell," and "Believe in hell and you are mentally challenged" are two sides of the same coin. My belief system is larger than either, and by definition -- contains both. Deal with it as you like, but leave me out of your struggle to come to terms with it.

Still -- I understand the frustration of the OP and others who feel they are being singled out by these "new atheists." Their belief system demands they share the "good news," often with people who have no interest or desire in walking down what they perceive to be a very old and very narrow "dead-end."

My advice: Render unto Ceaser, and -- if the people won't hear you, shake the dust off your boots and move on. If we all loved each other a little more, and worked to be far less judgmental, none of the rest of this would be necessary anyway.

reply to post by vasaga


Perpetuating a complete lie for centuries is fine with you? If you want to conform to, and accept lies then maybe you just have some inner problem with being honest?

Let us now look at the standard dogmatic atheist statements earlier presented in this essay and see how each is flawed and unscientific.

a) There is no scientific evidence for a Creator.

b) Science proves there is no Creator.

c) All things have naturalistic explanations.

THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR A CREATOR is a scientifically inept statement. Science assumes all things have naturalistic explanations in accord with Occam’s Razor. Claims that science has found no evidence for a Creator implies that scientists are engaged in research to prove or disprove a Creator. Dogmatic atheists peddling this slogan open themselves up to a simple question that exposes their ignorance and presumptions: What scientific research going on now is specifically looking for evidence of a Creator? (The answer is none.)

SCIENCE PROVES THERE IS NO CREATOR is not only scientifically inept but stupid. Since science is not attempting to prove or disprove a Creator and there is no scientific research being done based on such a hypothesis, then science is proving nothing that justifies such an outlandish statement. It is no surprise that the proponents of this particular slogan become extremely defensive when asked to share this “proof” that there is no Creator. Dogmatic atheists repeatedly fall back to claiming, like the cynics they are, that they have no Burden of Proof although they claimed they have proof. The irony here is that if they had such proof, then it would be easy to prove it, so why the defensive emotional anger? The answer is self-evident, the dogmatic atheist was called on his bluff, and like a poor card player cannot maintain his cool. The intellectual hypocrisy to claim on one hand that science proves something and to become defensive and not explain how science proves it is the product of an immature and emotional mind, and such people are the ones who give science a bad name in many circles. While the dogmatic theist will hide his own ignorance and intolerance behind largely misrepresented scripture, the same holds true for the dogmatic atheist who hides behind misrepresented science. Although the dogmatic atheist will claim they have no Burden of Proof because negatives cannot be proven, the opposite is true. An affirmative statement that something can be proven not to exist is workable. The statement that science proves there is no Creator can be demonstrated if the Creator is defined in a falsifiable way and the definition shown to be fundamentally flawed. This paper will now put forward just such a definition and an examination of the definition in light of modern scientific findings. If science proves the definition flawed, then that definition is invalid.

www.deism.com...