Coyle wrote: "rgb said "We can just focus on the morality if you like... example two chapters further on."
I do wish I had more time to work through this (though it might be more appropriate on another thread, ..."

Always a pleasure to discuss/debate with you, Coyle. If you do have time (and I understand its lack as well as anyone, as my tasks are piling up at all times these days as well:-) feel free to join the "atheist moral system" thread on this group. We have one very passionate Christian there as well, who started the thread. I'm sure he'd appreciate the support...;-)

rgb

rgb said "We can just focus on the morality if you like... example two chapters further on."
I do wish I had more time to work through this (though it might be more appropriate on another thread, I don't want to monopolize you guys' discussion here). I would be particularly interested to know what you're using as a moral basis from which to judge. If the Bible is portraying "bad morality", what makes it bad? What would be a good morality? Where does this good morality come from?
Like I said, this probably isn't the place to get into these (and we've already discussed them to some extent other places), and I'm not sure I have time anyway (see my earlier post).

Anyway, thanks again for your indulgence of a theist on your thread...

"Many thanks for giving answers to my questions."
No problem- I just appreciate you guys letting me temporarily hijack your thread. Unfortunately, I've got to return to the real world today, so I probably won't have much of a chance to respond after this. Though, for what it's worth, I am flattered that you "anti-theists" seem to have let an avowed theist determine the answer to rgb's question a), at least practically if not in theory :)

"So you can see, with my fascination... based on no evidence."
I suppose it might be a "cop out," though I suspect it's just more a difference of taste. My freshmen year of college I said "fairwell" to the sciences in favor of the humanities, and really haven't looked back. It's not that I don't think science has it's place, and it's certainly not that I don't appreciate the wonderful technological benefits that have come from it (woo-hoo indoor plumbing!), it just that I am more interested in questions concerning the nature of the human heart. "Is man basically good or basically evil?", "how do we construct a good society?", "how do we keep a bad society from collapsing farther?", or even "what is the relationship between man, God, and the cosmos?" are just more interesting questions to me than "how many atoms are in the head of a pin?"

Now I suppose, that from the point of view of a strict naturalist (i.e. someone who doesn't believe in any form of transcendent reality, and who believes that the natural world is all there is), then it's a non-sequitor to say that I've chosen to study human beings rather than science. If there's nothing beyond what we can see and touch, then all fields of study would have to culminate in the natural sciences. Love would be explainable in terms of neurons firing in the brain, beauty would be nothing more than a social construct to be taken apart and analyzed, and the problems of society would be sovlable by a formula properly applied.
That is, if there were no transcendent...

Hi Coyle,

Many thanks for giving answers to my questions. Others here have picked up on what seems like mystical double talk with some of them (for instance your re-definition of ‘literal’) but I want to touch on another of your perspectives...

/"Young Earth or god set it in motion at the big bang?": I've been asked this one a few times (mostly by rgb, if I remember correctly) and have dodged answering it, largely because I really don't care./

This point of view I really don’t understand. Personally I’m fascinated by such questions as ‘where did I come from’, ‘where did the world come from’, ‘where does behaviour come from’, ‘what is the nature of time, of matter, of emotions, etc, etc, etc...

200 years ago I might well have agreed that god created us. But since then we’ve had science, and what a story it tells! Far more amazing and awe inspiring than any myth or fiction. The scientific method is really the best tool we have for investigating the universe. For instance, without our scientific understanding of how the brain works it would just seem like a magic black box.

So you can see, with my fascination of these questions and the amazing things science is finding out, I really can’t understand the perspective of “god did it all so that’s the answer and I don’t need to worry about that any more”. It seems such a cop out and, what’s more, based on no evidence.

You also need to carefully assess just how passionately people have defended the assertion that it is literal truth. You miss the real point of Bellarmine. At that time -- a mere 400 or so years ago -- Galileo risked his life to write that it was possible that the Bible was not literal truth.

All of the church fathers -- nay, nearly all of the people who lived in the west, with the exceptions being mostly foreigners -- believed that the Bible, in particular Genesis, was not "true" as in "contains some wisdom or insight worth knowing, once you strip away all of the falsehood and metaphor (once you know WHAT to strip away, since the Bible contains no recipe for arriving at actual scientific truths), it was true ad littorem -- to the last damn letter. You risked your immortal soul and (on a more mundane plane) being imprisoned, robbed, tortured, and murdered by the Church and secular authorities alike if you dared to say otherwise.

This is confirmation bias on a grand scale. Bellarmine states it clearly. Either Genesis is literally correct, or we cannot trust the Bible anywhere else. Maybe Isaiah was "speaking poetically" or just plain "making a living as a charlatan" when he prophecied. Reading Isaiah 7 without confirmation bias (and with the correct translation) and comparing it to Chronicles, it is pretty clear that he was a lousy prophet, given to telling Kings what they wanted to hear (which often turned out wrong and got them, their sons, and their entire families killed and their kingdoms conquered). No one who hadn't read Matthew would ever read Isaiah 7 in a correct translation and conclude that a) it referred in any way to Jesus, or to a Messiah; b) that the young woman in question was a virgin. In fact, even back then they knew perfectly well where babies came from, and knew that young women could not be virgins and have sons and name them Emmanuel (none of which happened with Jesus, who was of course never named Emmanuel, whose mother was almost certainly not a virgin, and who in any case had nothing to do with Isaiah, who was making a contemporary prediction of a contemporary sign for a frightened King, upon request).

We might as well doubt the number of sons that Abraham had, or that a flood of the entire world ever happened in which Noah preserved all of the species. Oh, wait, we know that never happened too.

And what, exactly, is the truth in the evil story of the garden of Eden and mankind's supposed "fall"? None of that ever happened. We are not creatures created perfect out of clay, handmade, set up in paradise, who then betrayed our maker in some ridiculous way and were thus condemned to sickness, old age, and death (although to claim otherwise was to merit immediate death for much of recorded history in Europe). We are animals that began highly imperfect and who evolved, slowly, to a more advanced stage of (still imperfect) development. We have never fallen. We were lifted up by nature until we got to where we could lift ourselves up.

That is to say, even if you take away the supposed "literal" truth of Genesis -- easily done, since it is a myth from front to back and side to side, since it contradicts science in every single place where it makes a statement about the world that can be contradicted by science -- I would cheerfully debate you on what's left. Genesis is a wicked story of an insane God committing horrible acts of vengeance and punishment on innocent people. If I treated my own sons the way God treated humans, I'd be put in jail, or even executed. Murder, genocide, speciecide, ecological disaster, rape, infanticide, rapine, -- all standard operating procedure for the OT deity. If Genesis and/or Exodus were "true", I'd be blasted by lightning where I sit for what I merely think of such a God.

So sure, let's forget the fact that the Bible is an inconsistent mish-mosh of stories that contradict facts far more often than they confirm them whenever those facts can be independently ascertained by relatively objective means. Forget creating the earth before the stars, the plants before the sun, the time sequence. Forget "the firmament" (that bowl that was the sky through which God poured rain at a rate that covered Mount Everest in a mere 40 days, which works out to roughly five inches of rain on every square foot of the planet per minute for forty days) upon which stars were hung so that earthquakes could shake them down, across which the moon, which glowed with its own light, would move, across which the sun would move (yes indeedy, from horizon to horizon across the firmament that bowed above the flat earth. Ignore the unicorns, the many "sons of Gods" that walked the earth in Genesis, the impossible genetics of reproducing a healthy species from only two individuals.

We can just focus on the morality if you like. I categorically deny that the Bible in general, but the first five books of the OT in particular, portray anything like "truth". They do not serve as an example of a good moral system. In most places they serve as a bad example of morality, present ways of living that we should not emulate. In many more they are at best neutral. Only in a very few places to they state decent moral precepts, and there often in bad language or with exceptions, they are contradicted by example two chapters further on.

rgb

Coyle,

You bring up the idea of intent in Biblical passages. Such and such a passage was not intended to be taken this way or that. But I wonder how you arrive at this conclusion. How do you know which passages were intended to be taken in what way?

From my end, it looks like a classic case of confirmation bias. You begin with the desired conclusion: the Bible is true. You then assess the evidence in a way that will confirm this presupposition.

Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that certain passages, which appear to be presented as literal, blow-by-blow, scientific truth, are actually intended to be taken allegorically. Throughout history, many people have interpreted Genesis as a blow-by-blow scientific account of the origin of the universe, and many still do. Throughout history, people have taken descriptions of the cosmos as literal, scientific descriptions. So, obviously, the Bible isn't being clear on how these passages are intended to be interpreted.

When you read a passage that describes, for example, the mechanics of the cosmos, there are a couple of options:

1. This passage is intended as an allegory.
2. This passage is intended literally, and it is mistaken.

The only way you can conclusively arrive at option 1 is to dismiss option 2 out of hand as impossible by beginning with the presupposition that the Bible cannot be mistaken.

"Welcome back, Coyle -- I think we left a number of conversations dangling when last we communicated." Unfortunately, it's only the flu that's brought me back, so it's probably a temporary return. This has been an insane semester- I'm teaching two (new) classes and preparing for a third for the Spring, working on my dissertation, working on two books, and trying to crank out a presentation for a conference. So I am sorry to have left the conversations dangling, but it's totally not you, it's me :)
For whatever it's worth, I have missed the conversations. It's not often I get such challenging and thoughtful responses from a point of view so radically different from my own, without it eventually devoling into screaming on someone's part (I do live in DC, after all...). I especially miss the posts whose length makes it impossible to respond to everything :)

"The meaning of the word "literal"...nothing at all, not even to yourself."
Well, if the word "literal" is what's hanging everything up, I'm quite happy to drop it, without of course dropping my "the Bible, including Genesis, is true" position.
I do think that we Christians are to blame for a lot of this confusion. We really do need to be much more clear that when we say Genesis is true, most of us (Bellarmine apparently excepted) don't mean that it's an absolutely chronological, blow-by-blow technical schematic of creation, given in rigid and "Point-A to Point-B to Point-C" order. If we were to do that, then God created the earth twice (Genesis 1:1-2:3, and again in 2:4-22). As a friend of mine writes (http://lovingchurch.blogspot.com/2009/09...)

I hope that every Christian believes that the bible is literally, true. That is absolutely and entirely truthful in everything it affirms. So, wherever the bible affirms something as scientific fact, then it is scientific fact. Wherever it affirms something as accurate history, it is accurate history. But, the Good Samaritan is not historically accurate (it is a parable). Ezekiel 1 is not scientific fact, it is a vision.

However, this doesn't mean that to truly understand the bible, one must take the most literal interpretation possible. It is always literally (in the sense of totally and utterly) true; the truth is not always literal (in a sense that excludes all metaphor, parable, poetic licence, verbal imagery etc.)

Obvious other examples of this in the realm of cosmology are found in Psalm 19:6

"[the sun:] rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat. "

Are we to believe that the sun literally moves from one end of the heavens to another? No! We don't have to believe in a geocentric universe in order to believe that Psalm 19 is utterly true. It is just not true in a literal sense. In fact, to try to understand it as a true scientific account of the orbit of the sun is to utterly misunderstand it; to miss its truth; to distort it. This is fairly easy to see, as Psalm 19 is undeniably poetic. The sun has already been described as a bridegroom, and champion. Are we to envisage a marriage to the moon, or a little horse that the sun rides on? No, it's poetry that teaches how this majestic sun, seen everywhere, giving heat and light shines for the glory of God. But the poetry is more than just those statements; as poetry it attaches an appropriate emotional response of awe and wonder and splendour to those truths. The poetry conveys the truths in exactly the inspired fashion that its divine author intended.

Is Psalm 19 made more problematic had many (or all) of the early readers would have believed in a geocentric universe, and thus, if read literally, understood it to correspond better to the cosmology they held than we would understand it to. No: for that is not the intention of the passage.

What then is the intention of Genesis 1? Is it true literalistically? Does it employ poetic imagery? Does it even employ culturally accepted views of the world in order to convey truths?

These are legitimate questions to ask in bible interpretation. Let's not assume that if we come to different conclusions as to the intention of a passage, and therefore a different conclusion as to which truths are being affirmed in a passage, that we therefore have a different understanding as to whether the text is truthful. Let's all agree to trust what the bible really teaches and then work jolly hard at trying to understand it on its own terms.

"We've also talked about the difficulty...elaborate but unsupported fantasies"
we have talked about this, and I don't think we're any closer to an answer. As you point out, this is just something that science can't speak to. Science is a wonderful tool for explaining how the cosmos functions, but a very poor one when it comes to teleological questions of why. Which is where we need philosophical and historical evidence not to fill the gaps (that implies that science, philosophy and history are all asking the same questions), but to give meaning and relevance to what science is doing.

"As for your assertion that "most Christians agree that Genesis is the "literal truth" immediately followed by a statement that it "gets fuzzy" (translation -- is not the literal truth)"
Totally not what I meant at all. What I meant was that the overarching statements of the passage are true (literally or otherwise), but that we either disagree on or don't understand the details. To use an example I vaguely remember from my biology course (please keep in mind it's been years since I've looked at this), there is or was disagreement amongst biologists over the question of whether evolution happens in quick leaps (punctuated equilibria- sp?), or constinuously and slowly over time (gradualism, I think is the term there), or perhaps some combination of both. All of these scientists agree with the overarching ideas behind evolution, where they disagree is in the various details of the process. The same idea applies to Genesis.

Welcome back, Coyle -- I think we left a number of conversations dangling when last we communicated.

I think the issue here is over what is meant by "literal." I believe absolutely that the first part of Genesis is literally true. But, to say that without taking into consideration genre and grammatical and historical context is to come up with a bent view of the text. So, certainly one thing the text is intended to do in a historical context is to set this creation story apart from other creation myths in vogue at the same time (of which we have many examples, see the Epic of Gilgamesh for one, or the Egyptian creation myths). Likewise, it's intended to give context and setting to the rest of Genesis, as well as Moses' other four books (and, Christians would argue, the rest of the Bible as well). From a grammatical perspective (and remembering that my Greek is very limited and Hebrew non-existant), certainly the main point of the creation story is the thing which is most emphasized: "...and God said..." God being the active agent in creation, intentionally, purposefully, and truth, not metaphor.

Funny thing about words, they have this thing called "meaning". The meaning of the word "literal" is "literal", as in "to the letter". As soon as you assign it a new meaning, say "not literal", and then begin to reason as if it means literal for one sentence in your argument and not literal in the next, you are reasoning from a contradiction and hence can prove anything you like and (of course) nothing at all, not even to yourself. The truth is that a problem with Genesis is a problem with the veracity of the Bible, and a problem with the veracity of the Bible is that it is contagious -- Jesus himself is quoted as referring to events in Genesis as if they were real events that actually happened, and if he indeed had preternatural knowledge (and Genesis is false) that makes him either a liar and a coward (knowing the truth but unwilling to speak it because it would interfere with his political aims and put him at risk with the prevailing powers) or mistaken, and hence not God. The problem is even more pernicious -- Saul/Paul similarly references Eden and Adam and Eve as if they were real people and places and uses them (as all of the JCM Abrahamic religions do) as an explicit reason to make women into second class citizens in the eyes of God, subject to their husbands where their husbands are subject to God, condemned to obedience to men, forbidden to become priests, and generally blamed for a nonexistent fall.

The failure of Genesis is therefore not only a problem for any literalist, it is the problem. The meaning of the word "literal" excludes any possibility that Genesis be false and the rest of the Bible be true, including the proposition that Jesus was a perfect being or that the New Testament was divinely inspired literal truth. Falsehood is contagious.

And Genesis is obviously, glaringly, false. Turning your intellect away from this and refusing to face it or pretending that it doesn't ultimately matter is simply a form of deliberate self-deception. We do not live in the middle ages. You do not need other people to tell you how to think or what to think. The evidence for the age of things like the visible cosmos and the Earth is, thanks to the Internet, available to each and every human with internet access who is older than perhaps twelve years of age. I think you qualify on both counts, so there is no excuse for refusing to look at it or relying on the deluded arguments of other people who don't want to face the contradictions squarely, like Collins.

This is especially true for you individually, as I have (you will recall) taken considerable time in other threads to make you aware on a case by case basis with a lot of the key evidence, things like the analysis of the distance to visible stars and galaxies, the abundances of nucleotides in visible matter, radiometric dating of rocks, and much more. I've even posted links such as this:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens....

which is written by a Christian geologist and which will walk you through the latter argument, step by step, at a level that you can understand at a single sitting if you can manage high school algebra and some simple arithmetic. I've also posted links to the lovely letter from Bellarmine to Galileo:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1615b...

where his second point is clearly stated:

Second. I say that, as you know, the Council [of Trent:] prohibits expounding the Scriptures contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers. And if Your Reverence would read not only the Fathers but also the commentaries of modern writers on Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Josue, you would find that all agree in explaining literally (ad litteram) that the sun is in the heavens and moves swiftly around the earth, and that the earth is far from the heavens and stands immobile in the center of the universe. Now consider whether in all prudence the Church could encourage giving to Scripture a sense contrary to the holy Fathers and all the Latin and Greek commentators. Nor may it be answered that this is not a matter of faith, for if it is not a matter of faith from the point of view of the subject matter, it is on the part of the ones who have spoken. It would be just as heretical to deny that Abraham had two sons and Jacob twelve, as it would be to deny the virgin birth of Christ, for both are declared by the Holy Ghost through the mouths of the prophets and apostles.

Note that Bellarmine fully understands the meaning of the word literal (ad litteram, to the letter) where you seem to wish to obfuscate. He also fully understands the consequences of a clear demonstration of its literal falsehood -- if Genesis is literally false, if we have to work hard to twist facts to make it even metaphorically true in places, we cannot trust the rest of the Bible to be literally true anywhere. The "magic cachet" of divine inspiration has been removed and it becomes a text written by men, full of legends, myths, superstition, lies, just like all other texts written by men back in the age before peer review and a common standard of probable truth.

If Genesis is wrong when it speaks of flowering plants being created before the Sun (and before bees) when evidence-based science and common sense tell us otherwise, how can we believe the Bible's tale of virgin birth? Especially when this tale is derived from other common mythologies, when Isaiah's so-called prophecy of Jesus's birth is (if you actually do read it in context) a failed prophecy to a minor King involving a birth to a young woman -- not a virgin -- that would signal the King's security against defeat at the hands of Israel and Samaria, a defeat that later occurred anyway (nobody pays attention when a prophet's prophecies fail badly do they?).

We've also talked about the difficulty with asserting that even the visible cosmos was "created" by God. You can assert it, sure, but there is simply no evidence that this is the case, there is an enormous amount of evidence that it is not the case (there is this evidence-based law called "The Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy" which pretty much states that we have never, ever, seen a single act of "creation" occur, only pre-existing stuff moving around and changing form), and there is hence no more reason to believe that it is true than there is any other completely arbitrary assertion that is disconnected from evidence. Why is it more reasonable to believe that this is true than it is to believe in Unicorns, or Dragons, or in the literal reality of Tolkein's Middle Earth? We cannot prove or disprove the existence of any of these things. We cannot say with certainty that any of them are false, but neither is there the slightest reason to think that they are true. We therefore properly should assign them a very, very low probability of being true, at least until some well-founded (empirical), concrete and direct reason to think otherwise emerges. At least if we want to do the best that we can in understanding the world about us by believing the most that which we can doubt the least, given the evidence instead of creating elaborate but unsupported fantasies.

As for your assertion that "most Christians agree that Genesis is the "literal truth" immediately followed by a statement that it "gets fuzzy" (translation -- is not the literal truth) -- if you can't even manage to write two consecutive sentences that maintain simply consistency in your usage of the words in your attempt to doublethink yourself into a state where your belief isn't immediately confounded by the evidence in the rocks and stars and genes of every living thing on the planet (evidence that you have to actively avoid thinking about to even be able to pretend to remain unaware of it, as it is taught in every worthwhile science class in the world and is on at least two or three readily available cable channels on television quite literally every day) -- why do you think that other Christians are all equally adept at deceiving themselves? Most of the Christians I know and am related to no longer believe in the literal truth of Genesis in any sense of the word literal. They think that it is what it is -- a myth. They take comfort and moral guidance from Christianity without, I suspect, having anything like the moral, literal certainty that anything like judgement or salvation exists or believing that the church fathers had anything like a lock on truth.

rgb

I thin I get your meaning, but to me it sounds like you're trying to have it both ways. It sounds like you want to be able to say that no matter how the Earth and all life came to be, that's what Genesis was describing.

But, again, I get your meaning that you at least believe that God was behind "creation," regardless of how it happened. It just seems to me that you're trying to say that even if it's a metaphor, it's literally true.

"When you read Genesis (or any other part of the Bible, for that matter), do you think explanations contained therein are intended literally or metaphorically, and if metaphorically, how do you figure out which, if any, are metaphors?"
Yeah, good question, and one which I'm hesistant to answer because, like I said above, this really isn't my field and I'm not sure that it matters in the end anyway, at least as far as Genesis is concerned. But, I'll do my best. (If you're interested, a friend of mine is a preacher in England and has been blogging on his sermons through Genesis 1: http://lovingchurch.blogspot.com/2009/09... Or, if you're really hardcore, his sermon on Genesis 1:1-2: http://www.twynholm.org/index.php/compon... )
I think the issue here is over what is meant by "literal." I believe absolutely that the first part of Genesis is literally true. But, to say that without taking into consideration genre and grammatical and historical context is to come up with a bent view of the text. So, certainly one thing the text is intended to do in a historical context is to set this creation story apart from other creation myths in vogue at the same time (of which we have many examples, see the Epic of Gilgamesh for one, or the Egyptian creation myths). Likewise, it's intended to give context and setting to the rest of Genesis, as well as Moses' other four books (and, Christians would argue, the rest of the Bible as well). From a grammatical perspective (and remembering that my Greek is very limited and Hebrew non-existant), certainly the main point of the creation story is the thing which is most emphasized: "...and God said..." God being the active agent in creation, intentionally, purposefully, and powerfully, is the key.
And I think to that point all Christians would agree that Genesis is literally true (there are probably a few things I'm missing, this is all off the top of my head). Where it gets fuzzy is when you start asking questions like "is 'day' intended to represent a twenty-four hour period, or an extended process?" That I don't have an answer to, and not having an answer doesn't cost me any sleep because it doesn't appear to be central to the text.

I don't know if that answers your question or not, but if you'd like me to clarify further I'll try my best.

I've been asked this one a few times (mostly by rgb, if I remember correctly) and have dodged answering it, largely because I really don't care.

This is strange to me. When you read Genesis (or any other part of the Bible, for that matter), do you think explanations contained therein are intended literally or metaphorically, and if metaphorically, how do you figure out which, if any, are metaphors? It seems odd that you claim to take the Bible more or less literally, but not seem to care whether or not this literal interpretation is correct.

Anyway, thanks for offering a BICC's opinion on if/how atheists should organize or proselytize. It's interesting to hear your take.

Interesting battery of questions, I'll try to give some quick anwers:
"what type of Christian are you"?: "Literal," depending on what you mean by "literal." No one takes a totally literal approach. i.e., when Jesus says "I am the door," no one thinks he's saying he has hinges and is made of wood. I take "literal" to mean "the clearest meaning of the passage given its historical and grammatical context, while considering the particular genre being used." So poetry gets treated as poetry, history as history, etc.

"Support the Pope telling Africans not to have sex?": Well, I'm pretty firmly not Catholic, and very definitely pro-sex (within the context of marriage). Having said that, do I support telling a region that struggles with AIDS like no other place on earth that it should consider abstinence? Of course I do, I want Africans to live (and to that end I do disagree with Catholicism's anti-contraception stance, especially in places where it's literally a matter of life and death).

"Young Earth or god set it in motion at the big bang?": I've been asked this one a few times (mostly by rgb, if I remember correctly) and have dodged answering it, largely because I really don't care. Two reasons for this 1) I'm neither a theologian nor a scientist, so I don't feel qualified to have a set opinion on this particular issue. I'm quite happy to let folks like Francis Collins and Hugo Ross deal with the issue from the Christian perspective. 2) In practical terms, the resolution of the issue affects neither the Gospel nor day-to-day life, so I'm quite happy to say variously "I don't know" and "I don't care."

"Do you speak to your invisible friend and ask him to set aside the laws of physics to carry out your requests?": As awesome as being given superpowers would be (maybe, it never seems to bring much happiness in the movies), my requests tend to be more mundane. Strength to resist sin, courage to confess it, knowing how to better serve friends, family, my students and employers, and so forth.

"Or is it just a warm fuzzy feeling you get when you think of love?": Really, have you ever tried love without the warm fuzzy feeling? It just sucks...

What religion is good at is perpetuating itself. Indoctrinating others, especially kids, in order to keep itself going.

By the way Coyle, what type of Christian are you, there are so many! Literal bible or pick and choose? Support the Pope telling Africans not to have sex? Young Earth or god set it in motion at the big bang? Do you speak to your invisible friend and ask him to set aside the laws of physics to carry out your requests? Or is it just a warm fuzzy feeling you get when you think of love?

Great questions, rgb.
If you guys are interested in the input of an avowed "Theist" (of what I assume most of you think is the worst kind- a BICC *ominous overtones here*), here are my answers:
a) Yes, absolutely. For at least two reasons:
1) I don't know of a better way to define and refine my own beliefs than by discussing them with others. I assume that the same is true with atheists, agnostics, and the rest (it certainly is with the ones I know personally). It's good for you to attempt to try to argue us out of our positions and to have your own challenged, and it's good for us to have to respond to thoughtful questions about our fundamental assumptions (or, in honor of rgb, "axioms").
2) If even half the things are true which are stated in the above posts about those evil religious people out to subvert the political order and impose their tyrannical will on the world (and I suspect that many of them are), then aren't you obligated to proselytize? Just as it is my duty as a Christian to encourage others to engage in social acts of kindness, charity, and self-sacrifice, wouldn't it also be your duty to "convert" those who you believe to be threatening the social order?

b) "should there be a sort of "ecumenical" view and tolerance of at least consistent non-theisms while being collectively anti-theistic..."
Speaking as a political scientist, I suggest that you focus on the first half of that. Figure out your positive common beliefs and try to put together a workable definition of "tolerance" (though I recommend using a different word- "tolerance" is a pretty terrible thing historically, maybe "respect"?). While "being collectively anti-theistic" will certainly be part of the program, if you let it be your foundation you'll find that your movement/philosophy runs out of steam pretty quickly. You can't hold people together around a giant negative for very long.

c) Yeah, (slipping into sarcasm) good luck with that. Actually, it would make it easier on us if you were to get organized. There could be atheist soup kitchens, agnostic "seminaries" (Theology 101: "Introduction to I Don't Know"), and panendeist potlucks. But what you really need is some kind of anti-theist pope, who by election, appointment, heredity or cage-fight has risen to the top of anti-theist society and releases the official proclamations on issues and ideas. That way, instead of having to muddle through the latest Dawkins rant, Harris letter or Hitchens speech in order to find the unifying ideas here and there, we can see them gathered all in one place and embodied in one person.
*end sarcasm*
Sorry, couldn't resist :)
Seriously, while you're right that Christians are somewhat effective at this kind of thing, it's usually only on a small scale and at the local level. The big flashy large scale things usually fizzle and die fairly quickly, or end up being so vague that there's nothing particularly "Christian" about them. Christians are good at running a soup kitchen, and bad at running a political party or a nation.
If you actually can organize along similar lines, power to you. But, given how poorly we fare at it despite 2,000 years of trial and error, if I were you I wouldn't get my hopes up...

And likewise, we need a cultural "rite of passage" for our young people. Studies show that children who go through rites of passages tend to be better adults.

Indeed, children unconsciously cling to structure. They depend upon adults to help shape their worldview (another reason I think some religions are actually a form of child abuse). Ritual is helpful in doing this - most religions have some form of "congratulations, you're an adult now!" ceremony of some kind, be it circumscision, baptism, communion, etc. The real question I have from your statement is: what constitutes a "better adult"? What is your measuring rod for determining a "better adult" from a "worse adult"? Isn't that relative? If so, relative to what?

Just curious.

A) Should they? Oh i really hate the word "should." Should, relative to whose notion of morality, ethics, and values?

From mine, I say yes, yes, a million times yes. The adults around you think that santa claus is real - if that doesn't motivate you to prosteltize for something, what will? Maybe when they try to convert your child to their religion, thus making it PERSONAL?

B)I think it's appropriate for their to be camps. I would encourage the groups to have camps, and to fight amongst each other, but to take to heart the old saying "Me against my brother; my brother and I against our parents; my family against my neighbor; my country against the world." Yeah, you disagree, but the people most like you are your ally against those least like you. And only good ideas should be allowed to continue.

C) I was in the hospital the other day and thought "Ya know what I need? An atheist priest. I need someone here to walk me through the dying process, to comfort me because I would be scared" etc. No such thing exists yet, but I think it's an eventuality.

And likewise, we need a cultural "rite of passage" for our young people. Studies show that children who go through rites of passages tend to be better adults. Well, why not have secular rites that focus on, and teach, what that family values and expects of the soon to be adult?

I'm typing in a hurry, haven't read the rest, but good questions and I look forward to reading everyone's input.

Dana. wrote: "the questions that arise though are the beneficials created by these groups, to that of the individual, as well as the schisms that could form between different groups of atheists (adeism, atheist,..."

I think that you should read what you just wrote and think of it in this way. Rules of society ARE agreed upon by individuals and are ALSO imposed. I don't agree with all of the laws that regulate my behavior, but I agree that we have to have law and give up some of my personal freedom in social contract, etc, to obtain the benefits of living in a lawful society where life is not so ugly, nasty, brutish, short etc. And besides, even if I strongly disagree with some of the laws, society has a long list of sanctions that they will impose upon me if I fail to live by its rules and laws anyway.

A successful society is one where the laws of the society are in close agreement with the accepted mores of that society, so that relatively few people strongly disagree with the laws and customs and can live in harmony with their neighbors living according to similar rules. It also helps for the society to have a successful economic model, to be strong against outside enemies etc but I'm just analyzing its internal social construct here.

Historically, there have been highly successful societies based on feudal structures, religious/feudal structures, imperial structures, tribal structures, democracies, republics, tyrannies, and more. As long as most of the members of the society drink the same kool-ade and know their place in the society and receive "enough" total benefit and protection, it works.

Note well that the basis of all of these societies is ultimately woo! It is the shared mythology that underlies their social ethic that unites them, whether it is a religious theistic mythology or a few resounding statements such as a mythical right to "Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" (all "rights" are pure woo, as in nature the only "right" an organism has is to do its best to survive in the context of its own real environment, whatever that environment might be).

One of the major problems with the world today is the lack of a common woo, a common social ethic or mythology. We are forming a global society, but are separated by language, by history, by local social and religious woo, by custom -- in addition to economically and politically. The world cannot even agree on whether or not e.g. women should have the same rights as men, whether there should be a right to reject the local religious woo, whether or not we should punish robbers by treating them for a medical/personality disorder or by chopping off only their hands for their first offense.

So yeah, it is a difficult task -- to build a common woo. But in order to succeed, it would really help if we deliberately tried to do just that. Identifying the problem is the first step in coming up with its solution. Right now the world is "fighting" its way to a common woo, and people are dying over it. We need to fix this and do better.

rgb

the questions that arise though are the beneficials created by these groups, to that of the individual, as well as the schisms that could form between different groups of atheists (adeism, atheist, agnostic). also, in what context would groups be forms? Social groups?Newspapers? Etc..

also, rgb i think it would be pretty difficult to build a woo as the basis for human society, as the rules of society are based on agreed upon individuals. unless of course one could get al individuals to agreed upon positions.

Amen, Stephen, amen.

Everything is woo, according to Buddhism and Hinduism both. I think that they are right. But I also think that the important thing is to build a tolerant, compassionate MUTUALLY AGREED ON set of woo as the basis for human society.

rgb

Continuing the 'us and them' theme, these memeplexes (religious or otherwise) are very powerful: joining a group, taking on their memes, gaining approval from the group and building antipathy towards outsiders.

Remember Germany in the war where ordinary people like you and me joined in with the persecution of the Jews. And it continues today, think of the racial conflicts in Africa.

This links back to the woo thread: what do you take for granted? So yes we should as atheists work together but, as I said before, carefully does it.

rgb wrote: "I'd go with both. There are the sociological studies of young males (that I think Bloom talks about the The Lucifer Principle if I'm remembering correctly) where if four males are placed in a room..."

I would have loved to have been a research assistant (or fly on the wall) in those studies. Or even a participant. I wonder where I'd end up.

I'll look for that book.

I'd go with both. There are the sociological studies of young males (that I think Bloom talks about the The Lucifer Principle if I'm remembering correctly) where if four males are placed in a room they immediately take on four roles -- the alpha, the clown, the bully, and the weakling. Take four alphas and put THEM in a room, and shortly you have -- alpha, clown, bully, weakling. Or something like that. Across societies, almost independent of age.

Invoking the alpha or bully in the sky seems perfectly logical in terms of controlling society. It pre-fills the role with a MALE in the sky who makes us all weaklings or clowns.

Bloom ties all this stuff together with biology and evolution into the superorganismal co-evolution of God-ideas. I love that book, actually.

rgb

Jake, you are probably correct about rgb's intent. I widened his warning on our biology to include our behaviour (which is neurological in origin too of course).

I stand by my point, however, which I think is very much on thread.

Stephen wrote: "rgb is right about our own biology. We have a natural tendency (for a number of very good evolutionary reasons) to form groups. And when we do so, this immediately creates a 'them and us' situation..."

Perhaps I was mistaken, but I thought RGB was referring more to the neurological predisposition of believing in the supernatural that Sam Harris writes frequently about, or perhaps even our natural pattern making instincts, but not so much our tribal instincts.

rgb is right about our own biology. We have a natural tendency (for a number of very good evolutionary reasons) to form groups. And when we do so, this immediately creates a 'them and us' situation, which of course helps to make the groups stronger. Religion exploits this to the full!

Yes we need to work together as atheists, mainly to ensure that the children get a good education. But we need, at the same time, to avoid the 'them and us' problem of antagonizing people. A difficult tight rope!

As an atheist, I don't proselytize unless I'm being proselytized to, but I freely and openly admit to being an atheist in any and all situations where the issue might come up. But I don't tend to bring it up in casual conversation, certainly not with strangers. But I like to wear my Flying Spaghetti Monster t-shirt with the catchy phrase I worship a higher pasta.

I would like to see a world where organized religion did not exist, and that people who felt the need to accommodate their biological impulses to believe in magic could do so on their own to the same extent that people satisfy other biological impulses without the need of belonging to a superorganized group.

I do however strongly support the efforts of atheist organizations that promote atheism, because the ultimate goal is to get people to start thinking critically, and reasonably. And while there may be a biological impulse to believe in gods and magic and stuff, humans have the capacity for using their minds to control their biological impulses. When it comes to the health of society, people even create laws to force others to control their biological impulses.

Imagine a set of laws to force people to keep their gods to themselves. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Then I shall continue merrily naive. I don't cotton to the idea of becoming what I hate. "[P:]olitics, and alliances, and deals" sounds far too shady for me. It also sounds like a recipe for coercion. You suggest that "...moderate "secularized theisms" are a good thing -- they are the part of our culture that is changing peacefully." I agree. I think it's all part of a natural evolution away from religion. Obviously, there will be no lack of conflict. We see conflict every day. Humans love conflict, we seek it out. What's slipping, and what will continue to diminish, is dogma. The world is increasingly frenetic. People don't have the ability to focus on Britney Spears, BOGO sales, season finales, 'the new black', the first black president, free internet porn, the South Beach diet, etc. and still take the time to reflect on whether this or that is copasetic with the dogma of their forebears. Patience Grasshopper. This shit is circling the bowl. I think "organization and deliberate activity" are great. I do think we need to keep it positive though. If you push, you get pushed back. If we, as atheists, try to provide a positive example of what life can be like without religion, folks will take notice. If we try to push an agenda of anti-theism, folks will take notice.

I don't disagree, Kinni, but I think we ignore our own biology at our peril. There have been a number of articles, some of them quite recent, on the biology of the religious impulse (so to speak). I think that trying to get humanity to go cold turkey on God a) won't work; and b) will only lead to a strong polarization with its attendant political struggles and potential for violence. In fact, I see a lot of the current American political scene as being the direct expression of this thesis.

Remember, it was in North Carolina (where I live) that Elizabeth Dole crossed an important line, a line that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Kay Hagan attended a fundraiser put on by an atheist activist (although she herself has the requisite solid record of being a good xtian etc -- fortunately). Dole turned this into a political attack ad that backfired big time. She would probably have lost the election anyway, but backfire kept it from even being close -- she was one of the first to concede on election day.

Laugh and cry. Laugh because the attempt to win re-election to a political office in a country based on separation of church and state by attempting to ideologically polarize the electorate on the basis of religious views and thereby maintain political power failed -- people have too much sense and those "moderate" xtians that are excoriated on another thread tend to respect the constitution and bill of rights as much as they do the bible. A small victory for religious freedom, as it were.

Cry because one reason that it was broadly rejected is that it came out that Hagan is indeed a highly active xtian, a teacher of sunday school in church, etc. One reason that the reaction was so overwhelming was not just that Hagan has a right to the support of an atheist without being branded an atheist herself -- and don't kid yourself, if this label had stuck the landslide might well have been the other way -- Dole's ad was perceived of as being an actual lie, an attempt to deceive and manipulate the electorate by creating the illusion that Hagan was a godless heathen when she was a god-fearing xtian just like they were.

We have just come off of 8 years of government by a man who is a pure ideologue who ran on an ideological basis and pushed his ideology his entire time in office. His political base was largely the Christian right -- the orthodox, BICC base. We saw McCain -- a man who has never pandered to that base -- select a running mate from hell for the sole purpose of solidifying the support of that base. To be honest, from the presidency of Ronald Reagan on, this polarization has dominated US politics. The Christians can see their values and political control (which have long dominated US law and policy) slip away as the Supreme Court has actually enforced the bill of rights, as scandal and war fomented by the Christian right have led to disaster, as an increasingly sophisticated populace have slipped from devout Christian to traditionally and culturally Christian to apostatic ex-Christian, with a healthy admixture of alternative faiths altogether from the never ending influx of immigrants.

The political struggle will continue indefinitely, because it is very likely driven by biology as much as culture. If and when the numbers in the many Christian variants and sects slip below the critical point so that they are actively dwindling and groups that have power now are losing their power and donations and recruitment no longer can sustain their long term existence, I predict that relatively few of those sects will slip gently into oblivion. If history is any guide, schism will occur with rapid memetic mutation and militant sects will emerge that preserve some set of core memes but that rely on strong polarization to create an us versus them mentality within its membership. This is the moral equivalent of a bacteria thickening its cell membrane and converting into a spore form to withstand a drought, except that the metaphor is strained and this particular bacteria will have spikes and toxins on its outer surface and will practice jihad to restore its status and ability to grow.

We see this all over the planet on a macro and micro scale now. What else is Al Queda? What else is the Jehovah's Witnesses? How else to explain the Kansas Board of Education?

IMO a passive defense against these "retooled for violence" sects will not be possible, is not really possible now. Hagan is an excellent example, a truly marvelous example -- there is no particular church that Dole was appealing to -- she was attempting to invoke an attack-dog killer meme that she knew perfectly well exists in all religious sects. If Hagan hadn't had the right metaphorical surface proteins that prevented the killer cells from sticking and tagging her for elimination, it would have worked, too! But instead, Hagan was able to turn the same killer cells back on Dole, as using them falsely consumes "energy" and weakens future immune responses.

Truthfully, on the evolutionary non-violent side of things I think the salvation of the world is to be found in a mix of affluence, influence, and education. Self-actualized people (with enough to eat, economic wealth and confidence in the future, with a share of the decision making power in their community, and with a really good education that leads them to a "global view" of things that is Maslow's self-actualization peak) will very likely continue to have a religious impulse and I think it would be very wise of the non-theists of the world to steal a meme or two and evolve a non-theistic way for those religious impulses to be accomodated. But with or without such a meme, the theisms themselves show a clear historical trend over the last 500 years away from theism.

This is something that I think this group is failing to recognize. Modern theisms -- those "moderate" churches -- are clear evidence that theism is itself rejecting scriptural theism. Only nut case extremist BICC Christians still believe in the literal truth of Genesis. Very few female Christians in this country believe that they are fundamentally unclean. Modern Christians come equipped with a pair of conceptual/mental "scissors" and simply snip out and ignore increasingly large blocks of their scriptural theistic roots.

Sure, they hold onto some fraction of their core mythology and belief system, they hold onto the thoroughly reworked and modernized expression of a supposed "Christian" ethos (most of which is backported from humanism, but who cares, a good meme is a good meme). And they retain the benefits of Church membership. Pretending that there aren't any is simply silly and a bad thing for rational atheists to do. That's part of the reason I started this thread -- to move it a bit from the eternal theoretical discussions of Why Theism is Stupid to So What are you going to Do About It.

That requires facing squarely what theism does for its members -- this functionality will need to be replaced in an envisioned atheistic future. It requires recognizing that there will be a struggle that could end up being an actual war (portrayed by SF and speculative novels in abundance) as this conversion will not happen passively or without conflict (it never has). It requires recognition that the moderate "secularized theisms" are a good thing -- they are the part of our culture that is changing peacefully.

I don't think a Velvet Revolution is at all likely. History and human self-interest and biology all three are solidly against it. To make it more likely requires not passivity, but a plan, not lassaiz faire but organization and deliberate activity. It require politics, and alliances, and deals. To think anything else is naive.

rgb

I'd love to see some atheistic social clubs. For reasons I can't rationally explain, the thought of one giant superorganism puts me right off. I wouldn't want to see atheists succumb to the temptation of using numbers to create political influence. I think smaller groups, a la Quakerism, would be just as effective at nullifying some of the theistic influences in government.
I think Dawkins and his ilk are superb, and I'd love to see more of them. They present information in an interesting and easily understandable way in books and interviews. They do not stand on street corners yelling at people, and I think this is also a good. If someone doesn't want to hear it, they can change the channel.
Personally, I don't volunteer the information that I'm an atheist unless someone asks, or invites me to church, or becomes too pushy with the praying. I think bringing up religious topics with strangers is rude, same goes for politics and your personal finances. I also live in the bible belt. When people who know me find out I'm an atheist, they're surprised. If they knew I was an atheist when they met me, they wouldn't bother getting to know me. They would immediately distrust me and I would not be getting the good deal on local, pastured pork or getting a stall at a private boarding stable.
One of the major functions of religious organizations is to remove the fear of dealing with new folks. Stupidly, they figure that a good, church going xtian will be a trustworthy and kind person. (Maybe this is why they have such a bleak view of humanity, they get burned too often.) This is where some grass roots atheistic organizations could really come in handy. If theists can see atheists being good human beings, maybe they'll lighten up a little. So far the "Humanists" groups I've seen spend their time having anti-theist meetings, not getting involved in the community. Of course, it'll be a hard sell convincing people to let their kids participate in the local atheist club's canned food fundraiser.
As for anti-theism, I got it bad. I'd love to see religion become a relic of the past, or at least relegated to a fringe activity. This isn't going to happen in my lifetime, however, and I'd rather enjoy my life than spend it fighting the tide. I think Stephen has a point in that the influence of religion on youth is fading. It's a Velvet Revolution of the mind. We just have to sit back and let it happen. I also think that the imminent colonization of space will deal a death blow to religion, and a whole host of self-inflicted torments.

Ha, Stephen, good idea. Only, it would be even more fun to claim to be an "anti-Christ".

Might as well maximize their discomfort, after all...;-)

rgb

I like Douglas Adams's idea: tell people that you are a 'radical atheist' because if you just say 'atheist' they often assume you mean 'agnostic' but if you say 'radical atheist' they will probably ask what you mean by that, and then you're off...

Should non-theists: atheists, deists, adeists, agnostics -- actively proselytize?

Sort of. What we need to do is be "out." I often am told that by being an admitted atheist I am somehow a hypocrite, because for many people simply acknowledging that you're an atheist is the same as telling people what (not) to believe, and since I'm an atheist I must not want to be told what to believe, so I must be a hypocrite. (Maybe before we educate people on atheism, we need to educate them on what the word "hypocrite" means.)

I don't think we need to be on the street corners with "There is No God" signs. What we need to do is respond. Religious claims are "supposed" to go unchallenged; we need to destroy this taboo. We're just as entitled to voice our beliefs as any bible-quoting, Jesus-fish-sporting, yours-in-Christ-writing Christian.

Just as attitudes on homosexuality changed after massive coming-out movements, when people realized that they knew someone who was gay, attitudes on atheism (and religion) will change when people realize that so-and-so is an atheist. I don't think we need to cross the proselytizing line to do this; in fact, I think we shouldn't, and should educate people on where the line is, and how we're not crossing it simply by being more vocal.

Should an atheist be an anti-theist?

That's a personal choice. You don't have to think the world would be a better place without religion in order to not believe in it.

should they proselytize on the basis of their sub-category

We should respond most to the loudest, most influential religious voices. Rgb is a deist and I am not, but I'm gladly his ally in the battle against Christianity. If deism held unreasonable sway over the U.S. government and was stripping me of personal freedoms, well, maybe I'd become more of an anti-deist.

Finally if one expects anti-theism to succeed, it seems likely (to me) that it will have to adopt at least some of the memes of a successful theism.

I see your point here. I'd like to think that atheism's superorganism could be, you know, human society, but we probably need a more specific superorganism. I think an atheistic group that does everything a church does except worship stuff is a good idea. An atheist charitable group is a good idea, but charity needs to be completely divorced from anything resembling proselytizing. Some sort of atheist social organization would be great. I know that there are some here and there, but it'd be nice if they were stronger and more unified.

I think the most important thing is to just be out. People need to realize that someone can be a perfectly wonderful person and an atheist all at once.

I'm more familiar with British society than American and it is obviously difficult to change things overnight but is it not possible that there will be a slow evolution of society towards non-theism.

We already have registry office (or other secular) marriages and non religious funerals. Also there are many non religious organisations or groups one can join to do good work in society.

The key is education, especially in the schools. Science is becoming more accepted now and most TV programs, including the news, portray stories as if the science is taken for granted. Yes we need to do more on getting evolution more accepted but it is the older folk where most of the resistance comes from (I know there are exceptions to every rule).

The future is with the young and I think the slow evolution towards non-theism is happening now in the developed countries. Rampant materialism is a concern but people, in general, are good and want to do good, and there are non-religious opportunities for this.

This might sound a bit 'pan-gloss' but I talking about the (lucky) richer nations. There are many other problems in the world: lack of food; lack of water; lack of sanitation; war etc. But to stay on thread (and in the west), education of the young is most important and non-theists of all varieties should not stop talking about evolution.

Here's a new topic I'm starting from another thread.

Let me assert that "religious" aspect of personal beliefs and worldview span a range from:

adeism (active belief that there is no God, period)

atheism (belief that there is no evidence for God and/or active disbelief in the many reigning scriptural theisms, but stops short of asserting that God definitely does not exist.)

agnosticism (refusal to worry about the question, or the recognition that evidence and the question of God are orthogonal and the question cannot be answered by experience so that the only rational answer to the question is "I don't know" without any bias either way -- what would the basis of such a bias be, given the observation that experience and reason either together or apart cannot prove the question in principle.)

(Scriptural) theism (Rigorous belief in God according to rules and precepts spelled out in one or more "authoritative" documents that are held to be "divinely inspired" and hence represent semi-direct communications from God to Man telling the latter (us) what we are supposed to believe. Theistic beliefs are generally mutually semi-orthogonal (ecumenical only to the degree that there is significant documentary overlap) and assert enormous penalties for disbelievers, none of which can be substantiated by objective assessment of evidence, and enormous advantages for believers, none of which can be substantiated by objective assessment of evidence.)

(Pan(en))Deism (belief in a non-theistic God with at least the minimal set of properties required for a "thing" in the natural world to be considered "God". This set of properties is debatable (especially with theists) but we can at least consider three of the four "omni's" as being common to most conceptions -- omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent -- and leave as optional omnibenevolent. Additional properties of Deity would have to include actual existence (silly as it may seem to have to directly assert it, there it is) and something one can argue is "awareness" (difficult as THIS is given a lack of a scientific theory of awareness at this time). Pandeism is a consistent version of deism that asserts that this spacetime continuum "is" God and that that we (including our awareness and thoughts) are God's thoughts in the sense of a mathematical identity of omniscience. Panendeism is an "open" version of pandeism that does not a priori restrict the domain of support of God to what we can, so far, "see" but rather acknowledges the possibility or even probability (according to one consistent form of estimation) that our spacetime continuum is embedded in a space of higher dimension, probably an infinitely higher dimension.)

This isn't really a continuum along a line, it is points in a weakly ordered space of higher dimension, but hopefully it is clear enough.

Adeism, atheism, agnosticism and deism all are "atheistic" in the broad sense of not being variants of scriptural theism in general, and absolutely not belonging to a specific scriptural theism in particular, on a personal scale.

Politically and socially, as superorganismal entities, scriptural theisms almost without exception rely on the recruitment and retention of human "members" in order to persist temporally over historically relevant time scales. New theistic cults pop up all the time, quite literally -- on a decadal time scale -- and "successful" ones historically replicate and mutate and either find fertile social conditions for growth or spiral to extinction in competition with other prevailing theisms. This "activism" is built right into successful theisms almost by definition as it appears to be an essential meme for growth following nucleation. God might reveal to me the perfect theistic truth of the Universe in person, but unless I actually tell people about it and tell them to tell still more, that perfect theistic truth has an expected lifetime of strictly less than 100 years.

It is almost entirely lacking from the non-theisms listed above. Few people write a "theistic statement" of atheism, and because theisms are extremely hostile to atheists (recognizing quite correctly that where other theisms are competition, atheisms are a threat) the few that do appear get little traction. There is also a lack of "superorganism" to recruit people to -- atheists are personal and individual -- they reject theism and then just live normally without it, but they don't form anything like an atheistic "church" (although e.g. Unitarian Universalists -- basically deists with a kind of "who cares" FSM church -- give it a try).

Now the question. Let us define antitheism as the politically active form of non-theisms. In this, a person who rejects theistic belief for any of the alternatives (including deism) doesn't just do it personally, they go into the public arena and actively campaign against it. Thomas Paine, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, and Richard Dawkins are all examples of anti-theists.

a) Should non-theists: atheists, deists, adeists, agnostics -- actively proselytize? Should an atheist be an anti-theist?

b) If so, should they proselytize on the basis of their sub-category (adeists fighting with both theists and deists and agnostics etc) or should there be a sort of "ecumenical" view and tolerance of at least consistent non-theisms while being collectively anti-theistic against the inconsistent and usually openly contradictory and myth-laden theisms?

c) Finally if one expects anti-theism to succeed, it seems likely (to me) that it will have to adopt at least some of the memes of a successful theism. In particular, it will need to put together a superorganism (or superorganisms) that meet the very real human need fulfilled by religions. Meeting places. Fellowship. A chance to hang out and socialize with people of similar beliefs. Community support for the major events in life -- birth and death, marrying and burying, providing human-network support for the ill and the ailing and the unfortunate. This is where theisms often blow atheisms away -- they may not always do the right thing, but the do things, and many of the things they do are good things. They may not teach a perfect morality but they very definitely teach a morality, and having an ethos is a good thing for a stable society. The atheistic school system has not proven terribly successful at teaching ethics, mostly because it isn't taught at all until it is far too late for developing young minds that lack critical thinking capabilities for close to two decades but are capable of hurting themselves and others for close to half of that time. SO, should anti-theists NOT just leave the burden for this on "the government" or expect it to be covered by secular organizations like the Sierra Club -- should they come up with a concrete, court recognized "non-theistic church" that can actually replace the important role theistic churches play in the lives of actual humans?

As I said in another post, in my own experience a lot of apostatic Christians and Jews have long since rejected the bulk of or all of the core theism they were born in, but stay in the church or synagogue and participate not because they believe in Jesus, but because their church lets them stay in touch with a community of friends, their church periodically "does something" -- hosts a community drive for food for the homeless, runs a small school that does teach ethics (sigh, with a dose of theism that my kids at least have no problem shrugging off:-), gets its members to think about others and not just rampant acquisitional materialism. IMO, until anti-theists offer not just a rejection of theism but a replacement that retains its benefits, it will not achieve real growth traction in human society.

rgb