Flaimbating? I doubt it. I thought the initial thread proved a good point. And the quotes were kinda neat, too!

Mark

Well I guess I am the fool. The post in question did not come from here but from Pandemonium: http://pandemonium.phpwebhosting.com...=8;t=2483;st=0 . To quote:

"Personally I would rather have a president who did believe in God and had moral convictions to having an atheist who had none. Believing that there is no higher power than yourself is a rather dangerous thing for a leader to have."

And,

"because by definition an Athiest sets him self up as the final arbiter of right and wrong. Without the concept of a "higher power" someone or thing you may be answerable to/for you set up an environment just ready for megalomania. Im not saying all athiests are, I am jsut saying I don't trust anyone who doesnt think that there is any power greater than his own."

I apologize to Magik for implied accusations of what he said here, which are untrue and to everyone else for causing such a stir.

Perhaps this thread should be removed.

I also publicly apologize to MagiK for a PM I sent asking if he deleted any posts here. I was wrong.

Mark

Morality is solely dependent on the individual, not their religious structure. For instance I am what could be termed by some an 'athiest'. I still believe in and always follow the golden rule. "Do onto others as you would have done on to you." Honestly unless you are some kind of sicko, if you use that general golden rule to guide your actions, you can easily live a life as moral as any religious zealot. I know there is the whole 'well what if somone has me at gunpoint and I need to escape' type of scenario. At that point they have infringed on your life so you can do what you need to to escape the situation and still live morally IMHO, but that issue is another debate entirely. Just because atheist are not presented with the reward of an euphoric afterlife, doesn't mean that they will not live a moral life. Maybe some people don't need a reward to live a moral life. Some people do live morally just for morality's sake. Maybe some people are more focused on the present and know that living a moral life they make things better for themselves and those around them. Maybe an athiest would live a moral life strictly because they fear the repurcussions of the law. There are countless reasons that athiests live moral lives. Not only is it reasonable to assume an athiest can live a moral life, but it is evident that there are many benefits for them to.

Sorry about the kind of rant here, just a couple pennies worth of my thoughts :D

[ 10-24-2002, 08:07 PM: Message edited by: AzRaeL StoRmBlaDe ]

FOLKS! READ MY KEYBOARD. YOU CAN BE RELIGIOUS AND/OR BE PART OF AN ORGANIZED RELIGION WITHOUT BELIEVING IN GOD.

I'm just curious. What do you think of deism? I just want to know how you all interpret this specific belief into society (much life we're doing with atheism here)

Mark! DO NOT DELETE THIS THREAD!!!

Deleting a thread is the highest insult to people who contribute to a thread! It's the online equivalent to book burning IMO. What happened happend. You've apologised, so move on. Don't attempt to erase.

Part of the joys in reading threads is seeing the evolution of understanding, reconciliation and communication.

Just like part of the joys of life.

Cheers. [img]smile.gif[/img]

But of course you can. Buddhism is a prime example. So is African ancestor worship, Emperor worship during various times during the Roman Empire and Japanese history. Nature worship is another example.

It's also been a common reoccurence within Christianity. When a new denomination births there's often a return to the realisation that knowing Jesus is a relationship, not a set of religious rules controlled or monitored by a heirachy.

Our 'modern individuality driven times' are things I'd argue have been around for millenia. Australia and America were both largely formed by "rugged individualists." Consequently individualism is deified. Contrast that to the deification of conformity in say Singapore, which was built on the country pulling together in the face of expulsion from Malaysia.

The collective psychology of a nation can determine how highly regarded individuality or conformity is.

I'm sure the Athenian philosphers highly regarded individuality, whilst the Roman Generals highly regarded conformity. ;)

Look at Tribalism - inherant in, and the seed of undoing for Celtic societies in France and Britain, and later on, African societies. Conforming to a smaller group, yet that group maintaining independence.

We can see it today in Europe. As the continent has been unifying, smaller cultural groups (Flanders, Corsica, Basques, Scots) have been voicing calls for independence and/or greater autonomy.

[ 10-25-2002, 02:59 AM: Message edited by: Yorick ]

Strange that Cerek the Gentle Barbarian should have been absent from this thread...

I should like to know how you folks define atheism in your discussions. Do you merely mean the rejection of God in the sense in which He is understood in the Abrahamic tradition, or do you mean the total rejection of absolutely any conception of a Higher Power or raison d'etre for human existence, even what you find outside of the Judaeo-Christian tradition? If you mean the latter, BTW, then Einstein is emphatically not an atheist, but a deeply religious person indeed. He had a very good opinion of Buddhism, too.

Many of the European Existentialist philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, were atheists of the second variety. And many Christians seem to believe that Nietzsche's insanity near the end of his life was none other than God's punishment. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Skywalker should have included Nietzsche's all-too-famous quote: "God is dead." I once saw this joke, BTW:

Nietzsche: God is dead.
God: Nietzsche is dead. :D

[ 10-25-2002, 03:26 AM: Message edited by: K T Ong ]