Greetings, everyone. First post, short-time lurker around these parts. I sing with David, and he (in the middle of pimping Ron Paul to me the other day) invited me to come around. So that’s that.
I want to make a comment on the uproariously funny atheism video posted by Geoff. The debate of religion/faith/mythology, and their place in the socio-politics of America is something I really get a thrill from. So congrats, you hit a nerve.
I want to call your attention to an old blog post by a really tremendous writer & media theorist named Douglas Rushkoff. He’s also a tremendously progressive Jewish thinker, and has made a lot of people in a lot of religious institutions very angry with his writings. I’ll likely be posting more stuff referring to his work in the future, but this will do for now.
The post is Faith = Illness. Why I’ve had it with religious tolerance. Excerpt:
I think it’s time to get serious about the role God plays in human affairs, and evaluate whether it’s appropriate to let everyone in on the bad news: God doesn’t exist, never did, and the closest thing we’ll ever see to God will emerge from our own collective efforts at making meaning.
<snip>
Right now, America’s true believers are locking down its laws along with its Bible. They are fighting the science of evolution because it accepts that things change over time - and such change is incompatible with static, everlasting truths. They are doing to today’s progressives the very same thing that the Bible’s Egyptians were doing to the Israelites. And they’re doing it in the name of a God who they believe they’ll meet when they die. This is the very mindset and behavior the Bible was written to stop.
It goes on, but I can’t really just post the entire thing here, can I? I’d love to solicit comments/debate on it, especially from anyone who finds it offensive.
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February 1st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Hi Justin, glad you came by. I’m fighting the flu, so can’t give the effort just now, but thanks for the post. It’s an interesting read. The degree to which religious beliefs hold sway over American politics didn’t hit home until I found myself in a discussion about Iraq with someone born and bred in the bible belt. I was advocating immediate withdrawal, and the response came “well, we have to be there. We have to fight for Israel. The Bible says…”
There are a whole lot of people whose only view of the world comes from FOX; people who hang on the prophetic biblical interpretations of Jack Van Impe (www.jvim.com). It’s disconcerting to make the point that our continued involvement in the Middle East will likely escalate into global conflict and have it countered with “Yes, it will. The Bible predicts that it will. It’s how it’s supposed to be.”
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:20 pm
OK, revisiting. Atheism as a philosophy rejects the notion of deities. Does this preclude the belief that the Universe is, in addition to its constituent parts, a single organism that is intelligent and self-aware?