doodad

Your last statement is well taken, but politics deals with the relationships between people having different interests, and differences of religious beliefs is only one of several preferences people have. In some countries religion has the nature of nationalism, as was the case with the ancient Jews, and apparently is the case with the Muslim world. They cite their religious principles in an effort to justify their errant behavior.

You seem to believe that people would have less strife and misery if religion didn't exist. Yes, life might be simpler, but what's to say that people wouldn't develop some equivalent method to treat their emotional needs. I'm not convinced that the practice of religion per se is the root of all evil, and we need to look in the mirror for that answer.

The WWII Japanese were very nationalistic, as were the Nazis and the Italians. Their religion may have been a contributing factor but was it the primary motivation for their aggression? I don't think so. Does Sadsack Hussein use religion to justify his behavior? It isn't obvious to me that he does. How about the various communist despots that have existed since the French Revolution? Most communist regimes are very anti-religious.

Americans are somewhat religious, and we have fought many times for the sake of justice and freedom. Was our actions motivated by religious zeal? Such actions may have helped to restore the freedom to worship but that wasn't the primary motivation for getting involved. If a religion promotes or espouses freedom and justice is there something inherently wrong with it just because it's a belief system? Should we have no defined or organized system of behavior or guidance? Maybe Texas rules would suit you better, you know, situational ethics, make something up as needed to justify your personal agenda.

I'll be the first to agree that religious bigotry and zealotry can hurt people, but your generalization that religion on the whole does more harm than good isn't shared by the majority of Americans.

Shake

42!

ekorczynski

Hello one and all.

I'm rather new to IIDB, having posted a few things to other threads in the last few days.

I wanted to add my perspective in to this discussion, as (until recently) I too was uncertain as to what camp I might belong to.

I was raised an agnostic, and always generally self-identify as such, but I've contemplated the distinction between agnostic and atheist for some time since many atheists accuse agnostics of being wimpy fence-sitters or just trying to avoid tough questions. This was unresolved for me until I happened across translations of some of the original Skeptic writings (~2000 years ago), and discovered that the original Skeptic perspective was founded on principled thought experiments and a great deal of intellectual discipline.

The key point is indeed, as mentioned in prior posts to this thread, that a statement of negation is a positive-assertion. That is, to say, "God is not" is a positive declaration that in turn does require proof. Just as "God is" requires proof.

IMHO, the Catholic church did such a great job of supressing the original Skeptic thought, that only a limited sub-set of the Skeptic perspective survived in mainstream consciousness through to our era, such that most folks who call themselves Skeptics seem to be fairly orthodox Atheists who have learned to use some of the Skeptic arguements against Theists. To distinquish myself from others who call themselves "Scientific Skeptics" or "Modern Skeptics", I choose the term "Transcendent Skeptic" since the transcendence of all beliefs derives from the original Skeptic perspective (as first attributed to Phyrrho, and recorded hundreds of years later by Sextus Empiricus).

So, IMHO, the original Transcendent Skeptic perspective is at the heart of what in our era is termed "Agnostic" thought. From this perspective, Atheists are just a dogmatically constrained (at least in principle) as are Theists. I think that many people who call themselves "Soft Atheists" may be principled (though perhaps not yet experiencing the transcendent) Agnostics.

Robert Anton Wilson (an excellent writer/philosopher/sage/fool) wrote that (paraphrasing) "All beliefs are reality-tunnels," that limit our experience of existence.

I get the experience in reading some folks posts, that they conceive of a belief spectrum in which Fundamentalist Theists are at one end, Hard Atheists are at the other end, and Soft Atheists and Agnostics are on the Atheists side but just not at the extreme end. From my principled Agnostic perspective, I place myself entirely off said hypothetical Theist:Atheist scale in a different dimension entirely where I look at the debate between the sides of the scale as all rather silly and pointless.

If you think that you're some "sort of an Atheist", but you refuse to state with conviction that you believe there is no God, then you're Agnostic. If you've convinced yourself that there "is no God" then you're an Atheist. If your perspective is based upon principled contemplation, then you have my respect regardless of whether our perspectives coincide in the moment.

In an attempt at disclosure, I would like to state that I have seen supposed evidence and argument both for and against the existence of "God(s)" in many forms, and that all evidence and argument that I have seen to date has been lacking in pursuasive power. All arguements seem to decay into either blatant assertions, circular logic, or some other logical error. So, I choose no belief, and remain a happy Agnostic. That said, based on "provisional probabilities" it seems clear that an "Abrahamic Interventionist Mono-Deity" concept grew out of bullshit tribal myths with no connection to reality as we like to consider it.

Your Transcendent Skeptic friend,
edo

ekorczynski

BTW,
What do you get when you multiply 6 by 8?