Scholarly Hypatia Was Murdered by a Degenerate Clique of Christian Fundamentalists

[Pompey Bum]

I´m sure there will be an explanation, Pompey.

Well, I'm dying to hear it Danik.

And I don't even want to get started about atheists. They gross me out the most.

However, there is one general religious form that I think should be abandoned because its idolatry is self-destructively dehumanistic. That religious form is atheism...Atheism is the most violent religion out there both in the physical damage it has caused to other human beings (Khmer Rouge, Maoism, Naziism) and in the bedeviling trance state in which it leaves its adherents.

If you are an atheist, I need an explanation justifying the genocide of the Khmer Rouge--for a start. I don't accept arguments that the Khmer Rouge did not kill "in the name of" atheism so atheism is excused from the dehumanization it has caused throughout history. Those are atheist dogmas, not mine. I am not aligned with your religion..

Then the atheists try a counter missionary move and say, "Oh! We dislike bigotry! We are so good and superior and rational and scientific!" But when you challenge them about genocide they whine just like the OP and say stuff like, "We are so superior we don't have to justify ourselves to anyone!"

[YesNo]

I didn´t quite grasp this idea of "viral meme" Yes/No probably because I don´t go in the social nets.

The "viral meme" is a view of religious belief as a harmful "meme". A "meme" would be the way some hope to model our cultural interactions. It is similar to a gene viewed as an unconscious and random object that tries to "selfishly" propagate itself.

I don't actually believe in the meme model. It is based on too much unconsciousness. I also don't believe in the hell concept as a place to put people who don't believe according to some orthodoxy. That is not to say that there are no hellish afterlife experiences. People have reported them in near death experiences and so I have to take that into account.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks, Yes/No,
I may be wrong but I see it as an attempt to addapt discussions about religion to the current internet pattern of interactions.

[YesNo]

Well, I'm dying to hear it Danik.

I am glad to see that you are still reading my posts, Pompey Bum.

I am interested in religious expression based on three aspects: (1) imperialism, (2) dehumanization and (3) idolatry. Although I consider atheism a religion, it is not the only religion that has problems with those three aspects.

[Red Terror]

I am glad to see that you are still reading my posts, Pompey Bum.

I am interested in religious expression based on three aspects: (1) imperialism, (2) dehumanization and (3) idolatry. Although I consider atheism a religion, it is not the only religion that has problems with those three aspects.

How on earth can you classify atheism as a religion since there is no deity to genuflect to???

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
---- Tom Paine The Age of Reason

[tailor STATELY]

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Religion: (other than the obvious) Google - a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Atheist have their gods: Themselves (first and foremost), Dawkins, Tom Paine, etc. of whom they quote and espouse as voraciously as any Bible thumper I've known, or as Dorothy Rowe eloquently said: "Many people believe that, because they hold certain ideas, they are morally superior to those who do not hold these ideas. In believing this they commit the deadliest of the deadly sins, namely pride, but they do this willingly because they believe that their moral superiority entitles them to patronise, proselytise, and, under certain conditions, maim and kill those they despise." I think YesNo has covered the last quite well in this and other posts. Theists and non-theists have the same divine potential; we are equal in that respect. My faith's Article of Faith #11: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."... I would hope that ideal would be a universal clarion call.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[mortalterror]

Atheism is religion without God. All of the defects, none of the benefits.

[Clopin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjr_7mxH3Rs

(litnet teaches a course on atheism)

[desiresjab]

Agnostics are some of the finest folk on the planet. Atheists are our radical brothers, theists are our radical brothers.

I will say this for atheists, very few atheists are robbers and burgulars. Their jobs as mathematical physicists and chemists allow them very little time to be militant about something as silly as religious beliefs. Still, they purport to know something which they do not.

When christians and moslems and hindus are acting like monkeys, blowing things up, throwing acid on women or insisting the world is only 8,000 years old, atheists are there to point out that the whole spectacle is silly, without seeing themselves as part of that spectacle, of course.

Atheism is the only doctrine I can think of that overtly challenges the ancient claims and nonsense of religionists.

I do not wish to stamp out atheism or religion. I am allowed to hope they will eventually stamp themselves out in favor of true rationalism, which is agnosticism.

If religionists were not so dogmatically certain, I have a suspicion most atheists would show their true colors. I believe most atheists are merely fed up, reactive agnostics!

[YesNo]

How on earth can you classify atheism as a religion since there is no deity to genuflect to???

I think tailor STATELY answered the question. Also mortalterror brought up a good point about atheism having all the defects but none of the benefits of a religion.

[desiresjab]

I think tailor STATELY answered the question. Also mortalterror brought up a good point about atheism having all the defects but none of the benefits of a religion.

They did? I heard the word benefits, but I didn't hear what they were. Apparently, though, they are benefits which atheists can never hope to harvest from their beliefs. Just what are these big benefits which an atheist simply cannot get, pray tell?

[Drkshadow03]

While we're on a forum and topics do drift, the original claim was that Hypatia was murdered due to her scientific contributions being an offense to Christians (while he doesn't directly state this, the idea is implied by the last sentence of the quote which follows).

Scholarly and saintly Hypatia of Alexandria Was Murdered by a Degenerate Clique of Christian Fundamentalists. How many people remember her contributions to science? Religion and science do not mix.

The actual issue is confusing historical fiction (in this case a film) with the study of actual history. We can remove religion from the equation entirely. The only evidence provided for this claim was a modern film. A rebuttal to the accuracy of this film was offered in a link in my previous post.

However, to address the second problem: atheism is NOT a religion. There is too much variety. Some atheists simply don't believe in God and otherwise have no interest in religion, some are staunch proponents of Secular Humanism, some are anti-Theists and can't see anything good in religion. It seems to me another problem is that nobody bothered to define religion. What does one mean by religion?

[mortalterror]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjr_7mxH3Rs

(litnet teaches a course on atheism)

I guess atheists just totally get religion and understand it better than the people who practice it, but we religious don't understand you guys at all. It's probably because you're all so much smarter.

Agnostics are some of the finest folk on the planet. Atheists are our radical brothers, theists are our radical brothers.

I will say this for atheists, very few atheists are robbers and burgulars. Their jobs as mathematical physicists and chemists allow them very little time to be militant about something as silly as religious beliefs. Still, they purport to know something which they do not.

When christians and moslems and hindus are acting like monkeys, blowing things up, throwing acid on women or insisting the world is only 8,000 years old, atheists are there to point out that the whole spectacle is silly, without seeing themselves as part of that spectacle, of course.

Atheism is the only doctrine I can think of that overtly challenges the ancient claims and nonsense of religionists.

I do not wish to stamp out atheism or religion. I am allowed to hope they will eventually stamp themselves out in favor of true rationalism, which is agnosticism.

If religionists were not so dogmatically certain, I have a suspicion most atheists would show their true colors. I believe most atheists are merely fed up, reactive agnostics!

Please, most atheists are mouth breathing troglodytes. They aren't mathematicians and physicists any more than the majority of Christians are teachers, priests, and doctors. As for atheists not committing crimes, that's simply not true. There are many atheist murderers like Christopher Harper Mercer who kill because of their atheist beliefs, or who are atheists but perpetrate crimes for other reasons. However, cases of people doing horrible things for the sake of atheism are under reported like certain other crime categories (rape, Islamophobic hate crime).

As for the report that said there are few atheists in prison (which I assume you were referencing), that can be explained when you factor in how atheists are often discouraged from reporting their actual beliefs in such settings and criminals are encouraged to over report strong religious convictions in hopes of attaining parole. Ie they are lying criminals and that masks their true numbers and beliefs.

I feel that here I should remind you that for about a century until relatively recently it was atheistic anarchists and communists who had a reputation for blowing things up, arson, sending dynamite in the mail, and assassinating leaders, or rounding up believers for re-education in gulags. Atheists also cling to their own pseudo-history pretending that either Jesus didn't exist, that until Columbus Europeans thought the world was flat, dissections were outlawed by the church in the middle ages, Christianity caused the fall of the Roman Empire and the dark ages, Giordano Bruno was a wise astronomer burned at the stake for religion's hatred of science, or more apropos of this thread that Christians burned down the library of Alexandria and killed Hypatia because they hate science. Their past objections to the Big Bang theory in Physics, the existence of fossils in Geology, and Mendel's theories of inheritance in Biology, are also a matter of public record.

And religion is the only doctrine I can think of that overtly challenges the ancient claims and nonsense of atheists.

Perhaps, truly rational individuals are religious like Descartes, Newton, Aquinus, Pascal, Leibniz, Kant, Plantinga, and when you look at the world objectively the only conclusion that a rational mind could come to is that there is a God.

I don't believe religious people are at all responsible for the antagonism of atheists. I believe that atheists are often errant, misguided, petulant children and are acting out because of some personal dysfunction.

[mortalterror]

However, to address the second problem: atheism is NOT a religion. There is too much variety. Some atheists simply don't believe in God and otherwise have no interest in religion, some are staunch proponents of Secular Humanism, some are anti-Theists and can't see anything good in religion. It seems to me another problem is that nobody bothered to define religion. What does one mean by religion?

Really, you think there's a lot of variety in atheism? The studies I've read on the demographics and beliefs of atheists really don't bear that out. There's just not that much diversity there. The overwhelming majority are white, middle class, male, liberal, etc. And their beliefs tend to fall into a relatively small number of predictable categories. You're going to see a lot more diversity in Judaism for example. As much as atheists like to claim to be self-made men and free thinkers who've made up their own minds, they almost all fall into a few noticeable strands or denominations showing clear influences, behaviors, and convergences of thought. You can usually trace the lineage of their beliefs back to specific individuals like Dawkins or Marx, as opposed to really original thinkers like YesNo who I have no idea where he gets his ideas.

[YesNo]

They did? I heard the word benefits, but I didn't hear what they were. Apparently, though, they are benefits which atheists can never hope to harvest from their beliefs. Just what are these big benefits which an atheist simply cannot get, pray tell?

I have been trying to look at the problems of religion (including atheism) by considering those problems from the perspectives of imperialism, dehumanization and idolatry. The benefits would be in the opposite directions from those. So the benefits would be diversity, humanization and subjectivity.

Current science describes a default theism for our species. You can get a summary of the research in Justin Barrett's "Born Believers: the science of children's religious belief". Also I linked earlier to a YouTube video by Inspiring Philosophy, "Is Atheism a Delusion?", which surveys this science as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ii-bsrHB0o

Assuming this research is true, and there are people who call themselves atheists who acknowledge it, there is a default human theistic framework upon which one can define religion as those cultural expressions (texts, organizations, projections into theologies or atheologies) that are based on that default position trying to enhance it or diminish it or change it in some way.

Seen in this perspective atheism is a religion since it attempts to change that default theistic position.

The default position itself is not cultural. It comes first. before culture, before education, before indoctrination. In other words religion is not based on a cultural expression of God so much as this default theistic position of our species. Religion (including atheism which is a religion by this definition) is a study of our reality as members of homo sapiens.

The most atheists can hope for is to argue that that default theistic position is a delusion. But that default position will not go away. And given other scientific evidence regarding the big bang and indeterminism in quantum physics, it looks to me like a safer scientific bet to say that that default theistic position is true.