John Page

Yea. Now we can have atheist saints as paragons of tolerance. Maybe we can outsource the evaluation tasks to the catholic church, they've got a lot of experience (like Arthur Anderson LLP) in this kind of thing.

My point? Tolerance is relative. Would I tolerate someone calling me unchristian, yes (I am an atheist, honest to god). Would I tolerate a christian that supports the death penalty - that's heresy and hypocrisy which I am intolerant of.

Am a hipocrite? Sure, sometimes, but I try not to be.

luvluv

I did not hold them up as paragons of virtue, I held them up as being people who did great good to great numbers of people. Maybe Mother Theresa did not do as good as she could have. Has anyone done as much good as they could have? Would India be a better place if Mother Theresa had never been born? I declined to mention that one of the reasons I distrust Hitchens on the point is that I know him to be an anti-theist (not an atheist, an anti-theist), and hardly an objective journalist.

To me, the fact that you keep links at the ready to be prepared to smear Martin Luther King (!) should the opportunity present itself makes me physically ill. That is an exact replica of the sort of silly, mean-spirited intolerance that I expect of organized religion. I have respect for you folks' arguments and your intelligence. But the fact that you folks have these articles at the ready... I find that physically repugnant. You remind me of the local church gossip in that regard. I don't mean to insult you, but I do believe that sort of practice to be beneath logic and reason. It's just mean and intolerant: you seem to believe that for your position to be true all religious people must be bad. You seem to believe that atheism is the One True Faith and for that reason all other religious leaders must be humiliated and discredited. That's the very definition of intolerance.

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

ex-preacher

And tell us, luvluv, what would you call someone who comes to an atheist forum and loudly proclaims that atheists are incapable of doing great deeds of good?

luvluv

I presented it as an argument, and asked to be challenged about it. We had a debate about it. I think my point stood. I didn't come in and start going through the personal lives of great atheists, though I could have easily done so dozens of times in retalliation. I even adjusted my position on the thread not to say that atheism cannot produce great moral men, but that it does so less often and with less effectiveness. I stand by that point, but it is movable by argument. That is a far cry from mere slander, which is what a lot of folks on that thread engaged in.

bonduca

luvluv, I'm sorry you're upset at what you feel is slander of people you deeply admire. However, we must remember that others have a right to their opinions (even if we hate them), just as you have a right to yours (even if others hate it). If you aren't willing to make a coherent rebuttal of their points, aren't you really saying these posters should refrain simply because you're annoyed by it? And how is that not in itself intolerant? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Vorkosigan

Maybe Mother Theresa did not do as good as she could have. Has anyone done as much good as they could have? Would India be a better place if Mother Theresa had never been born? I declined to mention that one of the reasons I distrust Hitchens on the point is that I know him to be an anti-theist (not an atheist, an anti-theist), and hardly an objective journalist.

Hitchens' biases are well-known and he is up front about them. Your problem is that MT's behavior is in the realm of objective fact. Does she re-use needles? Yes. Did she publicly praise the Albanian Dictator Enver Hoxha? Yes. Is she opposed by many Indians? Yes. Does she keep her money outside India to avoid disclosing how much she has? Yes. All of the issues Hitchens' raises are matters of public knowledge.

So as for your question, would India have been better off without her? My answer would be "yes." It's not a question of whether she could have done "more good." It's a question of whether she did "any good."

You brought up the people you admire, and held them up as examples of saints. I don't agree that MT is a saint. I take your position on MLK, that his private life is of no account in assessing his public one, but you did not originally announce that you were only referring to their public lives. I take the same position on Gandhi, who was a great man (and an atheist who later became religious), but was a real SOB towards women, as I understand.

To what extent are the failings of saints relevant? In MT's case, she's nothing but failure. She doesn't save lives. In case you missed it, it's a matter of public record that Mother Teresa does not give treatment. Because of her, people die who otherwise might have lived. That is not precisely the case with MLK or Gandhi, despite their failings in other ethical areas.

Further, Luv, you put forth that list of heroes as part of evidence for an argument, not as a personal revelation which we were bound to respect. As evidence for an argument, your idea of a saint is thus up for grabs. And will be grabbed, believe me.

If you want a list of my personal heroes just to be fair, I would list people like Wang Chung, Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Elizur Wright, Lincoln, Jefferson, Grant, Yeats, Du Fu, Ernest Evans, Joshua Chamberlain, Saburo Ienaga, Chen Shui-bian, Lin Yi-hsiung, Joseph Needham, Noam Chomsky, Galileo, Gould, Einstein, Darwin, Emperor Norton...it's a long list. And all of them are fallible. And I don't consider any saints. I just, for various, or even one reason, admire them.

Michael

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

ohwilleke

Atheists who admit that they are atheists, are by and large, people who think that there is one physical reality that can be ascertained emperically. We are people, by and large, who think that the truth is out there and are determined to follow truth where it leads us, no matter what the cost.

We are atheists because the evidence before us points to the non-existence of God, and because we are not willing to twist that evidence to say something else, or deny that evidence. We are not willing to be hypocritical. We are so unwilling to be hypocritical that those of us who are "out" speak what we believe to be the truth, even though more than 80% of the population disagrees with us, even though it can be a social disadvantage, even though it can cause people to think poorly of us.

We really aren't so different from the first disciples of Jesus, as the New Testament account reads, who for a different belief in what was true, endured a great deal of scorn. (We are doing nothing more than following the Biblical injunction" "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phillippians 4:8; For scorn see e.g. Acts 16 and Act 22 in which disciples were arrested and examined).

We differ from them, of course, in what we believe the truth to be.

We are not what the Bible called "respecters of persons". See Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Colossians 3:25. In other words, we rely not on a person's reputation or authority, but on the merits of their arguments, on the fact, in evaluating those arguments. If you cast aside your username and revealed that you were in fact the highest IQ person on earth, we could care less. We demand that anyone who makes a point back it up with the knowledge of the best of us. Faith alone does not hack it with us.

If intolerance means that we have little respect for ideas we find factually unsupported, then atheists ARE particularly intolerant. If intolerance means that we lack respect for the humanity of others, then, we have as much or more tolerance as any other. Lurk in the Secular Lifestyles forum and you will see the efforts we go to in supporting each other through quitting smoking, considering career choices, difficult family problems, and more.

We are unwilling to do good things for the wrong reasons (i.e. belief in the supernatural), because if you do good things for the wrong reasons, you can also do bad things. Compare 1 Corinthians 8

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Brian K.

I am not writing this to defend any point of view or to please anyone here. I would like to start off stating that stating facts is not slander. But presenting a one sided argument with fabricated facts is. I personally think to state only bad things about great people is a bit intolerable, but on the other hand, to state only good thing and not recognize all derogatory facts is also intolerable. We have the good versus the bad here and I think Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa obviously did great things throughout their lives to gain their enormous pulicity, not noteriety. But they were only human and of course they made mistakes. The one thing that I ask is to look at the good and bad deeds of each of these people and ask yourself if it had a lasting effect up until today or if it was a deed that didn't have a lasting impression or impact.

Thanks, Brian

Jayhawker Soule

Superstition is not typically a 'good' thing. Intolerance is not always a 'bad' thing.

Actually, your stance seems to be one of peppering the site with rhetorical threads and imperiously commanding us to "Discuss".

If you believe you Bible, rather than cherry-picking the soft and cuddly phrases, it was much more than a desire. It was a genocidal blood-thirst.

Vorkosigan

On MLK I have no quarrel. But Brian, Mother Teresa is a highly objectionable figure. Have you read the Hitchens' book? The works of her Indian critics? I doubt it. Most Americans are simply unaware of the criticism of MT overseas; they live in planet America, insulated from the world at large. Have you been to Calcutta? There are indian NGOs that do not re-use needles, and that do provide treatment. MT re-uses needles, and does not provide treatment.

I beg you, if you consider yourself a thinking human, look up Hitchen's book and read it. MT is a very sick woman who has defrauded the world.

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000066" target="_blank">Read this thread here</a> where the issues are discussed. Mother Teresa is a fraud. That the Nobel Committee bought it is not surprising, they gave one to another fake, Rigoberta Menchu, and of course, one to Henry Kissinger.

Also, Brian, you used the word "fabricated." Please demonstrate that anything I wrote is "fabricated," or issue an apology.

Michael