Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Opera Nut · 09-03-2002, 08:25 PM

I watched it and thought it was quite good.

There were some excellent points made. Rabbi Brad Hirschberg said Xtians, Jews & Muslims had to all face up to their violence against others. He also said that somebody who would tell a person who lsot a relative at the WTC that it was God's will, that 1)it gets God off the hook 2) it gets the believer off the hook 3)It's ultimately senseless 4)That's not the God that he worships.

Also Margot Adler said that in an interview Vladimir Putin did for NPR that they asked him if he knew evil and he said Osama was beyond the description of evil in words. Then he told her, "You have to understand that we are AS DUST to them". Chilling.

The guy from the MOMA was excellent.

At tne end a guy was talking about people jumping hand in hand, reaching out to each other to meet the abyss in their last moments, and how that if there is anything beyond or permanent in our human existence, it is love. I think that's secular humanism at its finest. After all, when people are saying good bye in illness or death to someone, what do they say?
"I love you". That's the ultimate core of life -- human relationships. Not begging a sky-daddy to save you. They also showed picsd of the workers at the site comforting each other, saluting the dead bodies carried out, and working connected emotionally.

I don't think God caused any of it since he can't be bothered, even if he/she/it exists, which I highly doubt. But it was caused by religious maniacs who are evil. America has done and does its share of evil (CIA drug wars/propping up fascist dicatators etc.) so we are not innocent either.

I was torn up over that verbal image of two people jumping. I wish they had shown a picture of two people actually jumping hand in hand at the end. Instead they showed the towers of light memorial.

At the end they played the Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings and the slow movement of the Schubert String Quintet, the last thing he wrote in his very short life. I also heard some other chamber music that sounded like Schubert.

I think if the US media had any guts they would show people splattering and bouncing off the concrete, the horror and the suffering those terrorist bombers caused.

And if we had a competent president, he would use those emotional images to justify a war with the real enemy, whoever that is -- probably the Saudis, but he has to be a suckbutt because of their oil and oil is the great American drug.

Opera Nut · 09-03-2002, 08:33 PM

That Lutheran minister better find himself a more liberal denomination. I bet the Anglicans or the Presbyterians might welcome him. Missouri Synod is real fundie. Martin Luther was an intolerant asshole as we all know.
That is sad that the fellow clergy are mad at him for joining with other faiths at a memorial service for such an incomprehensible tragedy.

WHen I was in high school I knew a couple of preacher's kids named Miriam and Rebecca.
Their dad was a Missouri Synod preacher at the local Lutheran church.
They were German and the girls did all the housework and the boys sat on their butts.

The older girl went to Rice and Washington U. and became a physicist. The younger one was smart too. They were both in orchestra with me.

Miriam, the younger one, was working at a steakhouse as a part time job in high school. She married a guy that worked there, probably to get out of the house. He was a Baptist.

So what was her Lutheran daddy's reaction in Christian love? He banned her from ever setting foot in their house again. I don't know if she ever did again, this was 30 years ago.

I have no idea what the other group, the ELCA is like.

The Other Michael · 09-04-2002, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Starboy:
What has me perplexed is why do people wonder where god is only when bad things happen to our side? Why don't people wonder where god is when we rain death and destruction on our enemies?

Starboy

Obviously, He's on OUR side then.

cheers,
Michael

stryder2112 · 09-04-2002, 06:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Opera Nut:
I have no idea what the other group, the ELCA is like.

The ELCA Lutherans are the complete opposite in nearly every way imaginable. They have women ministers, gasp! And are currently struggling with the issue of homosexuality/same sex marriage/etc - much like the Methodists and Episcopalians.

In fact, I predict that the Missouri Synod minister will probably move over to the ELCA instead of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church.

:

ff topic story time::
My parents are ELCA Lutheran and I grew up in the ELCA Lutheran church. The Missouri Synod Lutherans are completely fundamentalist especially related to the "worshiping with others" thing that got that minister in trouble. Muslims and Hindus, nothing, the Missouri Synod Lutherans in my small town refuse to participate in interdenominational services with the ELCA Lutherans, Methodists, and United Church of Christers. In fact, the reason the Missouri Synod Lutheran church even exists is because of the fundamentalist/liberal Christian split in the denomination. The liberals all joined together and formed the ELCA, the Missouri Synod (much like a RC diocese) refused to join and all the Lutheran fundies rushed to join them in forming a separate denomination.

Stryder

eldar1011 · 09-04-2002, 06:07 AM

Time and time again, I watched as various theists discussed how people came together on 9/11, how people helped rescue other people, how people are connected through a common humanity, how people provide comfort and solace to other people...and that it was all because of *God*.

My mind boggled at how the theists can still believe.

There were no good answers to the question "Where was God on 9/11". The only "answers" were along the lines of this is not God's will, it was all part of his ineffable plan, it was the will of EVIL and think of how many people didn't die. What kind of answer is that?

But, no one asks where was humanity on 9/11. Everyone knows the answer there. Humanity was running up the towers to rescue others, humanity was dying trapped in an inferno, humanity was driving the planes into the building and humanity was grieving over the tremendous loss.

No God. No evil. Only us.

Why isn't that enough? Why do some of us need more than that?

This program showed me that those who believe have no better answers. They are just as lost. They are just as bewildered. They hurt as much as anyone else.

The program also showed me they are human. As much as I rail against the increasing religious hysteria in America, as much as I dislike the actions of some theists...I never forget that they are also human.

I believe this to be the strength of my atheism; call it secular humanism, if you will.

Atheism is the greater belief for it includes all of us. Every last one of us, from victim to hijacker to survivor to witness. Religion is exclusionary and sets up a mentality of absolutism and antagonism.

It is clear to me which belief system is better able to handle the true nature of our world...or at the ver least, not serve to make things worse. If only the rest of humanity could see the same.

Ab_Normal · 09-04-2002, 07:29 AM

Quote:

eldar1011 said:
Why isn't that enough? Why do some of us need more than that?

I liken religious belief to a teddy bear or a comfort blanket. The woman who spoke of returning to the Catholic Church after her mother was killed did so specifically for comfort. I can understand why. I realized I was an atheist when my father was dying. I thought, "I can turn to Jesus for support or I can do this on my own," and I realized that I didn't believe in Jesus or God or any of that. (Kinda tricky, having great spiritual revelations going down the highway at 70 mph.) But lots of people are going to come down the other way, because it's a lot more comfortable for them.

Quote:

OperaNut said:
At the end a guy was talking about people jumping hand in hand, reaching out to each other to meet the abyss in their last moments, and how that if there is anything beyond or permanent in our human existence, it is love. I think that's secular humanism at its finest. After all, when people are saying good bye in illness or death to someone, what do they say? "I love you". That's the ultimate core of life -- human relationships. Not begging a sky-daddy to save you.

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> You have said exactly what I was thinking last night. Thank you!

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: Ab_Normal ]

Mageth · 09-04-2002, 07:35 AM

Kanan Makiya's perspective <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/questions/god.html" target="_blank">here</a> were words I needed to hear and ponder:

Quote:

When you see human behavior like this, for me, it just reconfirms my atheism. It doesn't make me militant about it at all. I'm not proud of it. It's just a view of the world. It's just the way I am. I can't make meaning of the world otherwise. But I certainly couldn't make meaning of the world through some notion of God after a horror like that. ... It just affirms that hopelessness.

An emotional moment for me was the Rabbi, in the morning, before his window singing the last words of victims.

eldar1011 · 09-04-2002, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Opera Nut:
 At tne end a guy was talking about people jumping hand in hand, reaching out to each other to meet the abyss in their last moments, and how that if there is anything beyond or permanent in our human existence, it is love. I think that's secular humanism at its finest. After all, when people are saying good bye in illness or death to someone, what do they say?
"I love you". That's the ultimate core of life -- human relationships. Not begging a sky-daddy to save you.

I was somewhat taken aback by that segment. I agreed with the acknowledgement of humanity, but then the speaker goes on to say:

"It's what makes me believe that we're not fools to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them, like seeds that open only under great fire, to believe that who we are persists past what we were, to believe, against evil evidenced hourly, that love is why we are here."

I resented that statement. The greatness and "holiness" of humanity is just fine without having it sullied by God.

As for love, I direct you to this portion of the extended interview with Ian McEwan (an atheist):

<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/mcewan.html" target="_blank">Extended Interview</a>

Quote:

The mobile phone has inserted itself into every crevice of our daily lives. Now in catastrophe, if there is time enough, it is there in our dying moments. All through Thursday, we heard from the bereaved how they took those last calls. Whatever the immediate circumstances, what was striking was what they had in common -- a new technology has shown us an ancient human universal.

A San Francisco husband slept through his wife's call from the World Trade Center. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again. We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her; the building was on fire; there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs in movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen: 'I love you.'

She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones -- from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There was only love and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.

Last words placed in the public domain were once the prerogative of the mighty and vain and venerable -- Henry James, Nelson, Goethe, recorded and sometimes edited for posterity by relatives at the bedside. The effect was often consolatory, showing acceptance or even transcendence in the face of death. They set us an example. That these last words, spoken down mobile phones, reported to us by the bereaved, are both more haunting and true.

They compel us to imagine ourselves into that moment. What would we say? Now we know." ...

Opera Nut · 09-04-2002, 12:40 PM

Thanks, Ab. My first "I'm not worthy bow 'n' scrape" here!

There is nothing real but nature. Nothing lives on past us but our love, our values, our actions and memories of us by our survivors and descendants. As we say there is no proof of God, we elevate humans. Why? Because of the innate goodness and decency that we tend to possesss. Not being a doormat for God means we can recognize our abilities to do what we can for our fellow humans. To join together in love, in compassion, and fighting the darkness.

---Putting Carl Sagan in my own words.

Opera Nut · 09-04-2002, 12:49 PM

I thought the rabbi singing the last words of the victims at his window was terribly touching. And it was so artistically creative and noble, it left me mentally slack-jawed.

Stuart Wilde says:HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMETHING SACRED??

You look at it, or do it, and you say, "This is sacred to me. I honor it."

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09-03-2002, 08:25 PM	#11
Opera Nut Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Houston TX Posts: 1,671	I watched it and thought it was quite good. There were some excellent points made. Rabbi Brad Hirschberg said Xtians, Jews & Muslims had to all face up to their violence against others. He also said that somebody who would tell a person who lsot a relative at the WTC that it was God's will, that 1)it gets God off the hook 2) it gets the believer off the hook 3)It's ultimately senseless 4)That's not the God that he worships. Also Margot Adler said that in an interview Vladimir Putin did for NPR that they asked him if he knew evil and he said Osama was beyond the description of evil in words. Then he told her, "You have to understand that we are AS DUST to them". Chilling. The guy from the MOMA was excellent. At tne end a guy was talking about people jumping hand in hand, reaching out to each other to meet the abyss in their last moments, and how that if there is anything beyond or permanent in our human existence, it is love. I think that's secular humanism at its finest. After all, when people are saying good bye in illness or death to someone, what do they say? "I love you". That's the ultimate core of life -- human relationships. Not begging a sky-daddy to save you. They also showed picsd of the workers at the site comforting each other, saluting the dead bodies carried out, and working connected emotionally. I don't think God caused any of it since he can't be bothered, even if he/she/it exists, which I highly doubt. But it was caused by religious maniacs who are evil. America has done and does its share of evil (CIA drug wars/propping up fascist dicatators etc.) so we are not innocent either. I was torn up over that verbal image of two people jumping. I wish they had shown a picture of two people actually jumping hand in hand at the end. Instead they showed the towers of light memorial. At the end they played the Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings and the slow movement of the Schubert String Quintet, the last thing he wrote in his very short life. I also heard some other chamber music that sounded like Schubert. I think if the US media had any guts they would show people splattering and bouncing off the concrete, the horror and the suffering those terrorist bombers caused. And if we had a competent president, he would use those emotional images to justify a war with the real enemy, whoever that is -- probably the Saudis, but he has to be a suckbutt because of their oil and oil is the great American drug.

09-03-2002, 08:33 PM	#12
Opera Nut Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Houston TX Posts: 1,671	That Lutheran minister better find himself a more liberal denomination. I bet the Anglicans or the Presbyterians might welcome him. Missouri Synod is real fundie. Martin Luther was an intolerant asshole as we all know. That is sad that the fellow clergy are mad at him for joining with other faiths at a memorial service for such an incomprehensible tragedy. WHen I was in high school I knew a couple of preacher's kids named Miriam and Rebecca. Their dad was a Missouri Synod preacher at the local Lutheran church. They were German and the girls did all the housework and the boys sat on their butts. The older girl went to Rice and Washington U. and became a physicist. The younger one was smart too. They were both in orchestra with me. Miriam, the younger one, was working at a steakhouse as a part time job in high school. She married a guy that worked there, probably to get out of the house. He was a Baptist. So what was her Lutheran daddy's reaction in Christian love? He banned her from ever setting foot in their house again. I don't know if she ever did again, this was 30 years ago. I have no idea what the other group, the ELCA is like.

09-04-2002, 06:07 AM	#15
eldar1011 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 1,074	Time and time again, I watched as various theists discussed how people came together on 9/11, how people helped rescue other people, how people are connected through a common humanity, how people provide comfort and solace to other people...and that it was all because of God. My mind boggled at how the theists can still believe. There were no good answers to the question "Where was God on 9/11". The only "answers" were along the lines of this is not God's will, it was all part of his ineffable plan, it was the will of EVIL and think of how many people didn't die. What kind of answer is that? But, no one asks where was humanity on 9/11. Everyone knows the answer there. Humanity was running up the towers to rescue others, humanity was dying trapped in an inferno, humanity was driving the planes into the building and humanity was grieving over the tremendous loss. No God. No evil. Only us. Why isn't that enough? Why do some of us need more than that? This program showed me that those who believe have no better answers. They are just as lost. They are just as bewildered. They hurt as much as anyone else. The program also showed me they are human. As much as I rail against the increasing religious hysteria in America, as much as I dislike the actions of some theists...I never forget that they are also human. I believe this to be the strength of my atheism; call it secular humanism, if you will. Atheism is the greater belief for it includes all of us. Every last one of us, from victim to hijacker to survivor to witness. Religion is exclusionary and sets up a mentality of absolutism and antagonism. It is clear to me which belief system is better able to handle the true nature of our world...or at the ver least, not serve to make things worse. If only the rest of humanity could see the same.

09-04-2002, 12:40 PM	#19
Opera Nut Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Houston TX Posts: 1,671	Thanks, Ab. My first "I'm not worthy bow 'n' scrape" here! There is nothing real but nature. Nothing lives on past us but our love, our values, our actions and memories of us by our survivors and descendants. As we say there is no proof of God, we elevate humans. Why? Because of the innate goodness and decency that we tend to possesss. Not being a doormat for God means we can recognize our abilities to do what we can for our fellow humans. To join together in love, in compassion, and fighting the darkness. ---Putting Carl Sagan in my own words.

09-04-2002, 12:49 PM	#20
Opera Nut Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Houston TX Posts: 1,671	I thought the rabbi singing the last words of the victims at his window was terribly touching. And it was so artistically creative and noble, it left me mentally slack-jawed. Stuart Wilde says:HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMETHING SACRED?? You look at it, or do it, and you say, "This is sacred to me. I honor it."

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