Baloo

If I may toss my own shovel-full onto the heap... it seems that it has been largely overlooked that even if Luvluv's premises held water, i.e.
The apparent conclusions:
simply does not follow. Allow me to demonstrate:

Or,
Essentially, it seems that luvluv has gotten everyone so mired in the details of her premises, that it almost makes it seem as though the lack of Atheist Saints should be worrisome, or indicative of a lack of moral character of atheists at large, when in fact it is at best a correlation with no causative predictive value whatsoever.

ohwilleke

Paul -- encouraged women to submit to husbands, encouraged slaves to submit to their masters, robbed churches, twisted tolerant and humanitarian message of Jesus into an intolerant and apocolyptic message.

This is an example of moral virtue?

Buddha -- Gave up family position to hang out and find meaning of life. Sat under tree and contemplated his naval. Had visions. Taught lots of young monks.

This is the front lines?

Confucius -- Served as senior bureacrat in one or two minor aristocratic courts. Hung out in bars with students who wrote down what he said. Died a quiet death surrounded by students who loved him.

This is the front lines?

Ten Saints, minus three who don't seem to make the cut, equals seven Saints. One is secular. Not that different from the religious make up of 21st century United States, better than the historical average. It sounds like atheists are over representated as Saints.

Alternately accept all ten Saints as definitional of the class. Two out of ten Saints are atheists. This is 20%. Far exceeds percentage of all people in history who were atheists. Again, sounds like atheists are over represented as Saint.

luvluv

Zac:

"Socrates was condemned to death for impiety and corrupting the youth. There are examples of atheists who risked their lives and their safety by simply not believing in God. And these beliefs were most certainly socially unacceptable. So it's unclear how the cases of the atheists are different than the cases of the religious."

Socrates is in my list.

"If you consider an airing of the facts of MLK's life to constitute "kicking dirt," tough luck. To claim that revealing the facts of Martin
Luther's life constitutes an insult to you "as an African American" seems an insult to African Americans. I'm an Irish American, and I can find no way in which an airing of the facts of Charles Parnell's marital infidelity constitutes a personal insult to me. This ad hominem against turtonm is a particularly dirty trick, and that you have employed such a tactic makes your arguments seem dishonest."

Sorry, but you don't get to pick what insults me. If you think, as an African American, I am an anomally at being insulted with MLK being dragged through the mud, I welcome you to test this hypothesis. Go to a black church, or a black barbershop, or a black fraternity, or just any group of black people you know and start to talk about what a womanizing fake MLK was. Then, when they get insulted by it, tell them the fact that they are insulted is a dirty trick. By the way, I apologized to Michael at the begining of the last post. I'm assuming you didn't read it.

"As I look over these three instances (Luther, Mother Teresa, MLK), I notice that they have something in common. Each of them involves some piece of information that is detrimental to your contention that only the religious are capable of a certain level of moral goodness, and in each instance you wish to somehow prevent that piece of information from being entered into the conversation."

I am not applying a double standard here. I've stated from the time that this conversation started that personal failings do not count against Sainthood, which involves helping all of mankind turn a moral corner. The Saints were human beings, they were not going to be sinless. You could very easily discount all religion at all times simply because of the fallibility of human beings. No human is perfect. And sinlessness is not a requirement of Christianity. We are required to pursue a holy life, but are told expressly that we will often fail. Like scientist sometimes fail at their math, Christians will sometimes fail at their virtue. Like scientists, Christians will try to make up for their mistakes and keep going. If a mistake disqualified someone from any endeavor, none of us would be able to do anything. We have all on this board made mistakes. As far as I'm concerned, everyone on this board still has the potential to be a Saint. I will not disqualify someone from doing great in life for having made errors. That is putting the cart before the horse. If any of you go on to do great things, risking not just your own safety but that of your spouse, family, and friends... if you surrender your liveliehood and your popularity... if you are hounded day and night by threats on your life and the lives of your loved ones... if you endure all of this to make men love each other more... when your name is brought up after you have passed from this place I will certainly not mention if you have cheated on your girlfriend when you were in your 20's. If that makes me a bad person I guess I'll just have to cop to that.

"science gets away as cleanly as does religion in your interpretation."

Exactly. That was my whole point. Neither religion nor science caused slavery, but both of them to their shame supported it.

JL:

"You say that a saint must advance mankind morally. Advancement requires movement towards some sort of goal. Towards what are we progressing, and how do you arrive at this?"

Look at the list and ask yourself what each of these men contributed to human thought and human relations. They are all advances. Towards what? I suppose towards a society that "treats others as they would be treated."

"Also, how much good must we do to overshadow our sins enough that we may be considered good or a saint? And does our allowance of sins increase in proportion to the amount of good we bring to the world?"

If you fulfill the criteria in my last post, you are a Saint. I actually cannot believe I am saying this to you again, but personal flaws do not enter into it. If personal flaws eliminated a person from Sainthood, no one would have ever been a Saint.

ohwillke:

"Paul -- encouraged women to submit to husbands, encouraged slaves to submit to their masters, robbed churches, twisted tolerant and humanitarian message of Jesus into an intolerant and apocolyptic message.

This is an example of moral virtue?"

Paul also said this:

1 Corinthians 13:1

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,

love does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails;

And by the way, Jesus said more things about the apoclapyse than Paul. And it was Paul who spread Christianity to Gentiles, and got rid of the ancient Hebrew traditions (animal sacrifice, circumcission) and made it an accessible religion. He also founded the doctrine of salvation through faith, and not by works. I can't say I'm overjoyed at everything Paul said (I don't believe in Biblical innerrancy) but I'm sure glad he said a lot of the things he did say.

Both Buddha and Confucious make the list because of the massive influence they have had on the moral influence of men. And yes, inasmuch as they were out teaching they were on the frontlines, as opposed to writing texts that are inaccesible to the masses in the towers of academia. Saints have to reach the common man. Nearly every man alive has heard of the Saints I mentioned. That's part of the requirement. A Saint has to change something where the rubber meets the road, he has to change people on street corners.

I think the folks I mentioned all helped mankind turn a moral corner. They led mankind away from some pit and towards a new plain. I think this is definitely a type of man that is so distinct from the masses that they deserve seperate classification. The fact is the bulk of men have been unaffected by the works and writings of many of the people you have mentioned. Only academics and intellectuals are aware of the contributions of philosophers and political theorists. Saints change the lives of everyone. There has been a long catalogue of such men, and most of them have been religious. This does not mean that atheism cannot produce such a man, it just means it does so less often and with less effect. You folks seem very intelligent and very nice, but you are letting yourselves get awfully worked up over one man's opinion.

luvluv

And I'm a he.

Don't let the smooth taste fool you.

Baloo

I.e. Paul founded the doctrine that salvation depends on what you believe, not on how you treat other people.

Please reconcile your definition of "Saint" with the inclusion of a person who introduced a doctrine that emphasizes ones beliefs OVER the importance of treating one's fellow man as he or she would be treated.

Pomp

Baloo,

I.e. Paul founded the doctrine that salvation depends on what you believe, not on how you treat other people....Please reconcile your definition of "Saint" with the inclusion of a person who introduced a doctrine that emphasizes ones beliefs OVER the importance of treating one's fellow man as he or she would be treated.

Nice catch.

luvluv

Actually, that is not quite how the doctrine works. Paul knew that salvation through grace might leave that impression, so he wrote this:


Romans 6:15
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!

Romans 6:16
Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

Romans 6:17
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,

Romans 6:18
and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

Romans 6:19
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

Romans 6:20
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Romans 6:21
Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.

Romans 6:22
But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Salvation through grace is supposed to be a liberating concept. It just means you are accepted despite your faults. My pastor always explained it to me as being like being the son of a loving parent. No matter what you do, you're still his child. You are "safe" in that house, I.E. he is not going to throw you out of that house (i.e. heaven, or salvation) because of anything you do. However, that is a far cry from saying that what you do does not matter, or that there are no consequences to what you do. For those of us who grew up in a loving home, we know that feeling of acceptance, yet we also know that what we do definitely does have consequences. Most of the modern day Christian Church is based on salvation through grace.

James went on to explain this later:

James 2:17
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

James 2:18
Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

James 2:19
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

James 2:20
But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

James 2:21
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

James 2:22
Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?

James 2:23
And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.

James 2:24
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

So the Bible in general, and Paul in particular, never intended the assumption that works do not count. What he meant was that our relationship to God is not dependant on keeping Jewish (or any other) rituals or laws. We get a relationship with God by believing in Him and asking for one. What he was trying to do was to keep Christianity from being an offshoot of Judaism. He wanted to open it up to be availiable to all men. (as Yahweh Himself said would happen several times throughout the Old Testament. Yahweh predicted that He would be worshipped by Gentiles) Paul just said justification through faith not to keep people from trying to treat people well, but to keep them from going through rituals like circumcission, animal sacrifice, Passover, etc.

[ March 12, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]

[ March 12, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

ohwilleke

Tai Solarin, another candidate for atheist Saint, quoting the words of Richard Carrier (abridged here with copeious references omitted) regarding him:

[QUOTE]
Life
Tai Solarin was famous in Nigeria as both a social critic and an educator. Affectionately known as "Uncle Tai" by his admirers, he was usually found wearing sneakers, shorts, and a khaki hunting cap, inspiring some to remark that he looked more like a "village eccentric" than a great intellectual. Although there are several people and organizations in Nigeria and Ghana attempting to educate the public about secular humanism and its ideals, Tai Solarin is by far the most interesting of them all.
Tai Solarin was born in 1922 and had a long and interesting history. A native Nigerian, he was educated in a Nigerian missionary school, served in Britain's Royal Air Force during World War II, and finished a bachelor's degree in history and geography at the University of Manchester, Great Britain, in 1952. Tai returned to Western Nigeria to become Principal of Molusi College from 1952 to 1955. Because Molusi's governing board forced him to open each school day with hymns and prayers, and march his students to church every Sunday, he protested and eventually quit. He wasted no time. He started his own school in 1956, calling it the Mayflower School, followed by the Mayflower Junior School in 1959, both located in Ikenne, southwestern Nigeria, where Tai lived for the remainder of his life. He eventually returned to England to complete his Ph.D. at the University of London sometime before 1970. Then, in 1976, he turned the original Mayflower school over to the government, though it was still run under Tai's direct guidance and innovative principles until his death. Dr. Solarin also became chairman of the People's Bank of Nigeria in 1989, a position he held until his death.

Tai Solarin married Sheila Mary Tuer in 1951 (who remained with him until his death) and they had two children, a son and a daughter. His mother was a devout Christian, a member of the Church Missionary Society, but he always maintained a loving relationship with her and all of his family, loyally fulfilling his brother's wishes by personally overseeing his religious burial in 1965 in spite of Tai's personal atheism. Dr. Solarin died in his home on July 27, 1994. According to Tim Madigan, executive editor of Free Inquiry magazine, Tai Solarin and Kofi Mensah, now the leading secular humanist in Africa, were good friends and were trying to set up an organization together, but Tai's death and the increasing unrest in Nigeria have halted those plans for now.

Accomplishments
Tai Solarin wrote consistently for the Daily Times since 1958 and the Nigerian Tribune since 1967, and he has contributed to numerous other papers in Nigeria like The Guardian. He is the only known Nigerian columnist to have a continuously running column lasting over twenty years, and he routinely wrote well over thirty articles a year. Tai himself could proudly say that there are people in Nigeria who have eagerly read his column for ten straight years or more. Besides his writing, which included several books, Dr. Solarin often joined in public talks and symposia at schools and colleges all throughout Nigeria.
As a columnist, Tai was a relentless critic of Nigerian military rule, as well as of corruption in the government and church, and this had a tendency to get him into no end of trouble. Tai was marked for assassination in 1966 by the corrupt civilian government left in place by the British in 1960, but his life was saved by the January 15 military coup. Tai was often jailed for his public remarks, the worst being in Jos in 1984. Lasting seventeen months, Jos was the longest detention he had ever suffered in his life, all for simply suggesting that the military should surrender rule to the public within six months. He was detained regularly again by the government in 1990 for similar upsetting remarks.

The government is not the only one that Tai's fierce remarks have upset, and he had many enemies in Nigeria and beyond. Some have publicly heaped scorn on him, including the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, who once called him "an unfeeling, dry-as-dust logic-chopper with no capacity at all for respecting human anguish." (all for merely suggesting that English replace all the native languages of the country). Nevertheless, despite Tai's renown as an outspoken atheist, even some religious leaders have had kind words to say of him. Professor Sam Aluko, a Christian consultant and participant in the World Council of Churches, remarks that although he disagreed with Tai on religion, he was nevertheless his best of friends, and often agreed with many of Tai's criticisms of both the government and the religious excesses of many groups in Nigeria. Loved or hated, there can be no mistake that Tai was among the best known citizens of Nigeria. He was so well known that a friend, Segun Oyebade, retells a story where an Englishman mailed a letter addressed only as "Tai Solarin, Ikenne, Nigeria," and it quickly found its way to Tai's house.

For nearly forty years, Dr. Solarin has persistently fought for free and compulsory education (from first grade through high school) for all Nigerian children. He established the Mayflower School on January 27, 1956, and seventy students attended that year. By 1992, the attendance at Mayflower had expanded to 1,900, including over 800 girls. The Mayflower Junior School had 1,300 resident students as well as 300 day students by 1992, and both schools are so much in demand that parents petition the Nigerian minister of education to get their children in. Tai chose "Mayflower" as the name for his school after the name of the ship sailed by the Pilgrims in 1620, because it evoked images of escaping persecution for a new life of freedom. "It was to be a school for all children," Tai said, "discriminating against none."

The original Mayflower is a full high school (junior and senior grades). In Ogun state, there are over five hundred comparable schools, and Mayflower has ranked first among them all for the past fifteen years. Some have suggested that it may be among the top ten high schools in all of Nigeria. The parents of attending students love the school so much that they raised their own funds to build new classrooms and purchase desks and chairs to fill them. American humanist Norm Allen, Jr., in 1995 the Executive Director of African-Americans for Humanism and Public Relations Director for Free Inquiry magazine, visited Tai's school in 1991, and was very impressed with what he saw there. He later wrote of the experience: "I was immediately impressed by the seriousness and dedication of the students. Secular messages stressing the importance of education and self-reliance were posted all over the walls of the school. Everyone seemed inquisitive and eager to learn."

Dr. Solarin was from the very beginning opposed to "white collar" education, believing that children should learn to get their hands dirty by mastering practical crafts, alongside their regular education. "We go all out to tackle the problems of life," Tai explains, "instead of spending several hours of the week explaining the significance of the deity." Only recently has the Nigerian government accepted the fact that primary and secondary education must include technical skills in order for their nation to be truly industrialized. Tai had been telling this to the public for nearly thirty years. True to his own words, he made agricultural science a compulsory aspect of Mayflower education. Boys and girls once built their own dormitories, and continue to make cocoa from home-grown beans, and breed their own pigs. As a lesson in technique and industry, students harvest three seasons of their own corn every year, instead of the usual two seasons harvested by most local farmers.

So successful has the Mayflower School been that employers actively recruit from its graduates, because they have earned a wide reputation for hard work and honesty that is not matched by any religious school in the region. In fact, Mayflower produced Nigeria's first female engineer, and continues to encourage students to pursue badly needed technical expertise that will benefit Nigeria. Mayflower students who are accepted into foreign universities are urged to take Summer jobs in technical roles such as plumbers, electricians, or tractor drivers, so they can bring that expertise back with them along with their university degrees.

Above all, Dr. Solarin teaches self-reliance as well as a commitment to Nigeria as a nation. Tai has made every Mayflower student memorize a poem by William Ernest Henley that ends "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." He makes that the center of his school's curricula, and he points out that such a phrase amounts to blasphemy in Islamic states like Kano, Sokoto, or Borno. Furthermore, as far as Tai knows, Mayflower is the only school that does not teach a particular religion or lead the students in hymns and prayers. He has actively opposed church ownership of the schools since 1952, yet they still remain almost entirely sectarian. Tai remarks that if national devotion to religion is what makes a country great, then Spain and Portugal should have become the greatest nations on earth. Nevertheless, he allowed his Christian students to build their own chapel on the school grounds, as long as no school money went into its construction or maintenance, and no time was lost from their studies. Tai also blames the many sectarian schools for dividing his nation. Because of their innate competitiveness, they undermine any chance of teaching a common Nigerian nationalism. The result is that, rather than rallying behind Nigeria in a national crisis, people rally behind the banner of their particular creed, and that leads to ethnic violence (and has almost led to the brink of civil war). Because of this conviction, Tai's Mayflower students are not taught to give their first allegiance to any god or church, but to Nigeria "first and foremost."


Ideals
As an atheist and vehement critic of irrationality and hypocrisy, Tai Solarin has few kind words for religion in his country. "Nigeria is dying today of religion," Tai proclaims, "outrageous religious beliefs." Africans, says Tai, are taught by religion and superstition to fear too many things. "Witches, angels, the Devil or Satan, thunder, lightning, nocturnal birds are all objects that generate fear." He tells the tale of a magistrate in Lagos who refused to decide a case because he believed "juju" men were casting spells on him, and his successor, Kofi Mensah, recounts tales of taboos and superstitions that have thwarted attempts at halting the spread of disease, the feeding of starving regions, or the controlling of population growth, as well as prevented progress in industry, education, and human rights (especially for women). "The worst bane of African nondevelopment," Tai insists, "is chronic dependence on the deity to solve all earthly problems."
Dr. Solarin says that "blacks hold onto their God just as the drunken man holds on to the street lamp post--for physical support only." He paints an interesting analogy from a childhood memory. He made a long journey with his mother once, who gave him a "bicycle" to help him finish the journey--which was really just a wheel he had to hit with a stick to keep it going. He says that without the "bicycle" he would never have made the forty mile walk, but upon reflection he realized that he had really carried himself and the bicycle all along. Religion is like that bicycle, Tai says. We only need it when we lack the confidence and determination to face the world alone. "To get the young Africans weaned from their almost congenital reliance on fate," Tai says, "they must be educated to stand on their feet." And the best way to accomplish that is for the government to copy the Mayflower School throughout Nigeria.

When Tai writes about his own moral and philosophical ideals, his true humanism is well revealed. "I believe in man," Tai declares, "by 'man' I mean man, woman and child. I believe that my duty to man is total service....outside man I owe none else any duties." He asserts that "anything that man wants to do must be done by man himself. Anywhere he wants to go, he must, himself, aggressively propel himself in that direction." These are true humanist ideals, echoed by secular humanists the world over. Tai teaches that prayer is useless, and that it is better to teach people how to solve their problems, and to give them the power and freedom to act. "I do not want to be seen giving alms to the poor," Tai once wrote, "I want to be seen teaching the poor how to live creatively by making use of his hands and feet."

His humanism had led him to express a fondness for the governments of China and the U.S.S.R., because of their socialist guarantees of free medicine and education for all. But he still upholds the ideals of freedom and democracy. One of Tai's favorite freethinkers is Robert G. Ingersoll, whose writings gave him the courage to accept his doubts and speak out against what he believed was harmful or untrue. Tai says of Ingersoll: "He tore off the dingy curtains across my mind's eye, and let me stand, unafraid, to wend my way through life." He recommends Ingersoll as a necessary addition to anyone's library, alongside Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian, Margaret Knight's Worlds Without Religion, and Thomas Paine's Age of Reason.

Many have tried to criticize secular humanism, and atheism in particular, for leaving people unhappy and lost without a moral compass to guide them. Dr. Tai Solarin says that is all rubbish. "I maintain great comfort and infinite happiness living as a humanist." Although he has always taught open defiance of conservatism and "deadly orthodoxy," he has also taught that people can become, and should become, whatever they choose to be. "Morality," says Tai, "is a question of leadership." He cites great atheist humanitarians who reformed their countries, whom he admires, including Jewaharlal Nehru (first Prime Minister of independent India) and Kemal Ataturk (who led the formation of the secular republic in Turkey). Tai believes wholeheartedly in the Golden Rule, and ensures that it is the basis of his students' moral education. He teaches morals to his students by telling the stories of famous people who have done good through virtues such as determination or honesty. Most of all, Tai stresses that the purpose of morality should never be forgotten, and that its purpose is not to gain salvation in another life, but to attain a good life here and now, within a peaceful, cooperative society. "A man is morally good," Tai instructs his students, "when he lives a happy, and symbiotic existence with other men." As a message to us all, Dr. Tai Solarin declares that "morality has to do with life and only in its mundane and down to earth consideration."

When we see religious violence in Nigeria, from the religiously-inspired Kano riots of December 1980 (when four thousand people were killed and millions of dollars of property was destroyed) to the attempted coup in 1991 (when Major Gideon Ockar attempted to seize the government, declaring that "true Nigeria" is the Christian South), it would do well to pay attention to Tai Solarin. Not only Muslim-Christian conflict, but inter-Moslem violence, often in the form of anti-Sufism, has added to the rampages of anti-academic Christian groups who burn cars, destroy laboratories and other school and college property, to prove that religion in Nigeria has forgotten the purpose of morality: to help men and women live in peace. Unfortunately, the Nigerian people no longer have Tai Solarin to remind them.

JL

Why then has such an explicit and basic goal been so hard to follow?

So I can be a pedophile but do some spectacular good for morality and still be a saint? You seem to think I'm simply trying to sling mud. I'm not out to ruin the name of the individuals you apply the label of saint to but it is the absurd conclusions that derive from the nature of the label itself that I wish to point out.

So, moving on a little, since a saint represents a defineable moment in history when human relations improve, and religion is ultimately responsible for that change, how do you account for institutionalized, self-professed religious resistance to that improvement? I know, humans are fallible. That's fine. But with such a portrayal I can only identify what religion is in retrospect.

It is irrational, is essentially the no true Scottsman fallacy and derives from the same fear of self-scrutiny.

luvluv

I do not think you can be a consistent and unrepentant pedophile and be a Saint. But if you were once a pedophile, and have since repented, and then go on to bring about world peace, I have no problem with you being a Saint.

The premise of Christianity is the second chance. The new begining. I think it is this clearing of the accounts, the fact that God allows you to start anew, that produces the hope that makes Christianity so endurable throughout the ages.

I also think you are quibbling over a very small part of my argument. For my money, neither Socrates nor Confucious were pure, true, atheists. Anyone saying otherwise is just saying it from a standpoint of atheistic chauvanism. Instead of trying to tear down the theist saints, you should be asking yourself if there is anything inherent in religion that makes it superior in producing such men, and whether there is anything in atheism that makes it defficient in that regard.

And again, this is simply my definition.