Slashdot Mirror

What is an athiest precept??? Athiests don't have a precept. They are categorized by their LACK of the precept of theism. a-theism. Without theism. Learn about those with whom you argue.

Wrong - Athiesm is ANTI-theism. It is the belief that there are NOT deities, spirits, etc. It is an unproovable faith no different than that of any other religion.

Simply not believing in something is just not believing in it. There are only two logical positions on religion:
Agnosticism - "I don't know", and
Apathy - "I don't care".

Any other position is pure faith, a matter of unsubstantiated and unprovable beliefs.

That is why I started with "for example", and not with "the only example".

What is "religion as a whole" in context of this discussion? Is it belief in omnipotent God? Is it worship of a deity (i.e. theism)? Is it belief in supernatural? Charitable and context-sensitive interpretation of my words is that I was speaking about organized religions.

To simplify original argument, Organized Religions have a holy book that contains a set of rules. These rules are followed to various degrees by adherents of such religion. So in that sense other religions are more consistent than SJW, that don't have an agreed-on set of rules and what rules exist are not followed by adherents of SJW.

As a mystic I'm well aware of:

* The Ignorance of Atheism
* The Arrogance of Theism

=== The Lies of Buddhism ===

1. Life is suffering.
This is a half-truth. The correct phrase is: Life CONTAINS Dukkha.
i.e. Life ALSO contains Love. The WHOLE POINT of life is TO BE Unconditional Love.

2. The Origin Of Suffering Is Attachment.
The correct phrase is: The secret to happiness is to release FALSE Expectations.
EVERYTHING is divine and has an attachment to The Source. You have a connection to The All Parent whether you are aware of it or not. A mother has an attachment to her children. A husband has an attachment to his wife, and a wife for her husband. Pretending not to have any attachments doesn't change that.

If attachment is wrong then WHY do Buddhists have an attachment to their beliefs ???

3. The Fallacy of Duality: Attachment is bad, therefore Detachment is good.
The correct phrase is: Emotions are NOT the problem -- it is the MISUSE of them that is.

e.g. When you are hungry you desire food. This desire for food is not bad in and of itself. It is the ACTION of over-eating (gluttony) that IS the problem. One does not overcome something by denying it (or pretending it doesn't exist) -- instead you embrace it and remain in control by not giving your power away. True mastery of others is mastery of self.

Ignoring your emotions does not make them go away.

4. Everything is empty.
The correct phrase is: You are NOT a divine nothing.
Buddhists do not understand the difference between the False Ego and the True Self because they are cowards -- they are running away from themselves trying to be something they are not.

Buddhism teaches the lie that:

* 1+1=0

When a spouse makes love to their partner they have the ability to transcend reality and become ONE. This is becoming FULL of our innate divine nature. That is:

* 1+1=1

We have a relationship with with our parents, with our spouse(s), with our children, with our friends, with our co-workers, with strangers, with Mother Gaia, and most importantly: with our Selves, with our Soul, and with the Creator. EACH of those relationships are most productive when they are FULL. When they are empty we are empty.

Lastly, you would do well to pay attention to the following truth: You are a spiritual being in a human body having a physical experience / life. As spiritual beings we each have a part of the divine inside us -- for NO thing can exist APART from The All Parent -- BY definition. God is NOT empty and neither are ANY of the life forms in this universe. We can be empty of morals or be full of hate. We are TO BE full of Love.

== The Truth of Buddhism ==

Buddhism has been called "The Middle Way." Living a balanced life is indeed helpful! Most would do well to practice and be aware of The Eightfold Path.

== The Higher Perspective ==

There are 4 paths or Journeys of Enlightenment one can take -- Buddhism is not one of them due to blind dogma of being in denial about reality.

* The Fakir
* The Monk
* The Yogi
* Spiritual Marriage / Gnosis

In this modern world the first three Way are usually not practical anymore. The 4th is ALWAYS available.

Until you learn to have a multi-dimensional perspective and understand how BOTH of these statements in this paradox are simultaneously true ...

* Q. Which religion is correct? A. All of them.
* Q. Which religion is correct? A. None of them.

... you will NEVER understand religion, spirituality, nor the Journey of Enlightenment to any degree.

Since it is obvious you do not know how to learn experiential Knowledge (gnosis) directly from your Soul and would rather cling to the spiritual kindergarten of intellectual Beliefs (theism / atheism) from children instead then I would suggest med

> They supported both Clinton and Trump.

The summary states the exact opposite. I'm not sure where you got this from. At best there were a handful of example supporting Hilary to create division compared to hundreds of thousands in support of Trump.

> Trump's popularity on the other hand doesn't drop for a very simple reason. Political smear jobs based on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and lies have to take out their target quickly.

This doesn't make sense as most of the attacks on Trump (such as his rapey comments) were factual, whilst the attacks on Hillary and the Dems (PizzaGate) were lies, so it doesn't explain how Trump survives, but Hillary didn't. If what you said was true then Hillary would be in the whitehouse because the smears against her were often lies, whereas those against Trump were factual (and continuously prove to be so).

> it's genuinely hard at this point to take any critique of Trump without reacting "ok, show me the full context of this claim you have".

Right, but that's not because of the reason you give, that's simply because you're a well known Trump supporter on Slashdot and are incredibly partisan. You won't believe negative news about Trump because you'll support him regardless. You're one of those supporters that would support him if, in his own words "I could shoot somebody and I wouldnâ(TM)t lose any voters".

> Which is why you should be genuinely afraid of Trump if you're against his agenda. Not because of the contents of his agenda, or because of any of the smears. You should be afraid of him because there's one thing on which Bannon was completely correct in that Munk debate. Trump is the paradigm shift, where disenfranchised people actually found franchise, and where there are now too many people who have been disenfranchised by the globalist trend. To the point where it's not limited to the continent - Yellow Jackets was a part of the exact same paradigm shift in a country that is about as different as a country could be to US while still remaining a part of "Western" umbrella. Utterly different court system, literal codification of anti-theism into all government functions, very socialist policies. And yet, France had protests that literally showed that Trump's paradigm shift clearly happened in France too, and it reached a point where it cannot be simply dismissed as "those deplorable people that are beneath us that we will call names and dismiss as if they're irrelevant".

An alternative world view is that we should be scared of Putin, because we thought we'd won the cold war in the early 90s and turned our backs and started to focus on sideshows like the Taliban and ISIS. Meanwhile, Putin spent 20+ years building up his intelligence apparatus to infiltrate Western society left and right, hence why people like Arron Banks in the UK have a wife who was exposed as a Russian spy, and who is also the person who illegally funded Brexit way beyond campaign spending laws with money that can't be traced back to his actual business because it comes from Russia. We saw the St Petersberg convention, where Russia hosted all of Europe's far right, and they all came away with millions of pounds in funding, some of it overt (France's NF) and some of it covert but now exposed (UKIP). In the UK we're seeing the same pattern repeat now with Tommy Robinson having Russian propaganda support on social media, and we've seen it across Europe with Hungary's Jobbik, Italy's Five Star, Greece's Golden Dawn, Germany's AfD, and so on. That's not to say it's restricted to the far right, though that's Russia's preference as it's the orthodoxy it now follows at home, but if no convenient far right actor exists, or is unlikely to succeed Russia will support the far left too (Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece for example).

It's not some weird coincidence that Russia hosted all these parties and/or their key figures, and that clear links to Russia keep getting exposed to their financing and online propaganda support. It's not some conspi

The obvious problem being that this support was bipartisan, as several pieces of evidence now clearly showed. The "social media ads"?

They supported both Clinton and Trump. The aim was clearly polarisation of the extremes of the supporting bases of each candidate, not supporting either of the candidates.

Polarization was an objective, but so was Trump. To say the Russian interference "supported both Clinton and Trump" is to ignore overwhelming evidence to contrary.

Trump's popularity on the other hand doesn't drop for a very simple reason. Political smear jobs based on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and lies have to take out their target quickly. If they don't, the audience of the target sees one lie, than another lie, and then they simply assume that everything else coming out of those sources is probably a lie.

Virtually none of the attacks against Trump are "smear jobs", "misunderstandings", "misrepresentations", or "lies". The reason they don't hurt Trump's popularity is that virtually everyone except his base has abandoned him. And his base doesn't care about the attacks because they don't care if he's a corrupt businessman who colluded with Russia. They probably wouldn't even care if he was a literal Russian asset, at this point they're in it for the culture war, and no one goes after liberals with as much vitriol as Trump.

Yellow Jackets was a part of the exact same paradigm shift in a country that is about as different as a country could be to US while still remaining a part of "Western" umbrella. Utterly different court system, literal codification of anti-theism into all government functions, very socialist policies. And yet, France had protests that literally showed that Trump's paradigm shift clearly happened in France too, and it reached a point where it cannot be simply dismissed as "those deplorable people that are beneath us that we will call names and dismiss as if they're irrelevant".

The Yellow Vests in France have more to do with Marcon's centre-right economics than immigration and anti-globalism. It's just the US framing that makes it look Trumpy.

Hell, the entire point that leadership adhering to the will of the populace, "populism" is now considered a bad word in upper echelons of society shows just how badly fractured the political elite and ordinary people are becoming.

It's a dirty word because it's almost always used to justify policies that sound good as a slogan but have terrible consequences. The rise of populism is usually a sign that media institutions that help regulate the public debate and stop dump slogans from becoming policy are broken.

Mostly because I find that when they make points of failures of globalist aspects of policy, I find myself forced to agree with them because of my social democratic principles. I believe that those most disenfranchised in the nation, the workers, the farmers, should have a clear and loud voice in how country is run.

This has nothing to do with globalism. Globalism is just robust international trade and institutions. There's no reason why you can't have a boatload of those while still empowering the people to control their government. In fact if you look at the most "globalized" countries and the most democratic countries you have a really strong relationship.

And so, like so many people on the centre left, I find myself without a political home. Without even being an American. All because of Trump showing the world the ugliness that was allowed to fester for so long in the Western political systems as globalism co-opted the democratic republics.

The thing you actually hate is corporatism and oligarchy, corruption and rule by the rich. And that's exactly what Trump brings. Russia is probably the best example of the Trump model, and that's pretty much the definition of corruption and mass disenfranchisement.

The obvious problem being that this support was bipartisan, as several pieces of evidence now clearly showed. The "social media ads"?

They supported both Clinton and Trump. The aim was clearly polarisation of the extremes of the supporting bases of each candidate, not supporting either of the candidates. You can see this in pretty much everything publicly released so far, from the facebook ads to the various reports.

Trump's popularity on the other hand doesn't drop for a very simple reason. Political smear jobs based on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and lies have to take out their target quickly. If they don't, the audience of the target sees one lie, than another lie, and then they simply assume that everything else coming out of those sources is probably a lie. Which isn't helped by the fact that to maintain the narrative for the audience of those doing the smearing, the narrative has to become even more extreme. And we have seen so many lies about Trump and his purported actions that were just patently false on the face of it, it's genuinely hard at this point to take any critique of Trump without reacting "ok, show me the full context of this claim you have".

And context usually ends up like that infamous statement about "migrants", which actually referred to one of the most violent gangs on the planet when viewed in context. And so, the actors actually generating the smear jobs have very little chance of being taken seriously any more beyond their own audience. Too many failures. All they can do at this point is preach to the slowly shrinking choir.

Which is why you should be genuinely afraid of Trump if you're against his agenda. Not because of the contents of his agenda, or because of any of the smears. You should be afraid of him because there's one thing on which Bannon was completely correct in that Munk debate. Trump is the paradigm shift, where disenfranchised people actually found franchise, and where there are now too many people who have been disenfranchised by the globalist trend. To the point where it's not limited to the continent - Yellow Jackets was a part of the exact same paradigm shift in a country that is about as different as a country could be to US while still remaining a part of "Western" umbrella. Utterly different court system, literal codification of anti-theism into all government functions, very socialist policies. And yet, France had protests that literally showed that Trump's paradigm shift clearly happened in France too, and it reached a point where it cannot be simply dismissed as "those deplorable people that are beneath us that we will call names and dismiss as if they're irrelevant".

Hell, the entire point that leadership adhering to the will of the populace, "populism" is now considered a bad word in upper echelons of society shows just how badly fractured the political elite and ordinary people are becoming. All it takes is a capable person who genuinely cares for their plight, and you get Salvini.

These people are not irrelevant any more. They're starting to organise. And as a traditional leftie who voted social democrats in a Nordic country his whole life, it scares the shit out of me. Mostly because I find that when they make points of failures of globalist aspects of policy, I find myself forced to agree with them because of my social democratic principles. I believe that those most disenfranchised in the nation, the workers, the farmers, should have a clear and loud voice in how country is run. And then I look at the party I voted for my entire life, and many among them are parroting the anti-populist narrative and singing praises of policy that is pointedly ignoring and even aggressively dismissing the disenfranchised. And when you're a social democratic party, you do not get to do that and get away with it. That is against the very core principles your party stands for. You are supposed to stand for the disenfranchised. That's why I voted for you my entire life.

And so, like so many people on the centre left, I find myself without a political home. Without even being an American. All because of Trump showing the world the ugliness that was allowed to fester for so long in the Western political systems as globalism co-opted the democratic republics.

But if you're going to argue that God doesn't exist

*If*

Atheists don't argue that God doesn't exist. You're confusing atheism with anti-theism at best, trying to bash a strawman at worse.

The definition of a God is an uncaused cause.

No. That's one characteristic attributed to God. God has a lot of other attributes claimed by theists.

Natural law is an uncaused cause

That's the theological natural law. That's not what most scientists talk about when they speak of "laws of nature"

When scientists speak of "laws of nature", they are usually talking about the scientific laws describing nature. These scientific laws don't claim to be uncaused causes. There might be a cause to why nature works the way it does, we just don't know it yet.

and thus, just another name

That's a logical fallacy. Your logic is basically this:

Definition of humans is they are mammals with two eyes a nose and a mouth
Definition of dogs is they are mammals with two eyes a nose and a mouth
Therefore, humans are dogs

If you're genuinely trying to promote theism or bash scientists (*ahem* god knows why on the latter... what have scientists done to you?), know that you're actually doing your cause a disfavor when you present such weak and illogical arguments.

This is mostly a problem of semantics. If you are agnostic but don't believe in an intervening, omnipotent god (Theism, as it as commonly practiced) then you're effectively an a-theist. Many of use reject theism on the basis of a suggested divine revelation and could care less about the Deistic part of the equation.

Atheism/theism is about the belief whether a god exists or not. Agnosticism/gnosticism is about the idea that one can have knowledge about the existence of gods. e.g. As such an agnostic only state he does not think knowledge whether gods exists or not can be gained. It tells *NOTHING* about whether they believe gods exists or not (the faith part). But the reality is that most agnostic are agnostic atheist : they don't believe existence of gods can be knowledged, but they also don't pray, don't believe, don't pay a dime about faith in their life. As such they are atheist even if they don't explicitly accept or profess it. basically I am an agnostic atheist. I think the existence of gods is unknowable, but I also act my life like (& have the belief) that they don't exists.

TL;DR (a)theism is about whetehr you believe gods exists or not and act upon it. Agnosticism is about whether the existence of gods are unknowable. They are perpandicular. one does not exclude the other. Heck you can be a theist agnostic.

Atheist, noun, a spiritual blind man arguing there is no such thing as color.

Some of the most spiritual people that I know are Atheists.

An Atheist follows Atheism (meaning without theism; without theology).
Or, to put it conversationally: That book might be nice, but I don't necessarily believe some/any/all of what is written in it.

Truly, everyone is an Atheist, but they usually don't realize it.

Neither of us believe in the ancient Egyptian gods or their religious texts.
Neither of us believe in the ancient Roman gods or their religious texts.
Neither of us believe in the ancient Greek gods or their religious texts.
Neither of us believe in the ancient Norse gods or their religious texts.
...

So, the stack of holy books you don't believe in is 99 tall, and the stack of holy books I don't believe in is 100 tall.

So, I'm 100% Atheist and you're 99% atheist.

Now let's talk about this one special book you think you've found...

I laughed the laugh of helpless agreement, recognition, and irony at your post. Much appreciated! It reminded me of one my favorite sayings: "To have a perfect utopia all we have to do is kill all of the violent people."

It also brought up another thought. At some point in my life I was given a functional definition of religion, and a contrasting definition of spirituality. These definitions have been very helpful for me to reconcile how humans who "recognize" a higher power can manifest that same belief on a spectrum from brutal atrocity to beatific transcendence.

Religion: Humans attempting, through actions and thought, to make themselves acceptable to their higher power.

Religions require constant activity by the adherent in order to appease and succor their deity. Combine with the natural human propensity toward self-righteousness and you get a whole cascade of societal problems, starting with segregation and ostracism, and ending with religious states and extremist violence. If a pious devotee is convinced their deity constantly judges them, threatens them with punishment if they are not good enough, and is vengeful and destructive to those who transgress, is it any wonder that those beliefs will manifest in the world and result in behaviors that mimic that deity?

Spirituality: Knowing that your higher power accepts and loves you unconditionally.

This is the ace trump of religion. It destroys the notion that God needs your help, and kills at the root the fear motivation to perform ever greater acts of piety and devotion. As a viewpoint overlaid on the myriad of data points of human experience, it provides an example for those predisposed to theism which results in acceptance of others (i.e., be godlike, your god loves and accepts you, you should love and accept others) rather than condemnation and judgement.

The entire movement isn't rendered obsolete because several vocal sub-communities are taking extreme views. Any small community basically becomes more extreme in its views over time if it isn't exposed to reality. The problem is systemic in various causes ranging from feminism to atheism, various theisms (fundamental Christianity/Islam/Judaism/etc.), charitable organisations, environment-conscious groups, animal welfare (PETA), etc. This doesn't render any of the causes lost, it simply means they need to fight harder to drown out the voices of those more extreme sects.

You should never yield a movement because extreme people come in every so often. You also may want to reconsider automatic judgement of someone based on a particular view (such as a perceived gender pay gap) as in their case they might be right, even if they might be wrongly attempting to generalise.

Theism = A belief that a god (or gods) exists
Atheism = A non-belief that a god (or gods) exists meaning a belief that there is no god and therefore, atheism is not a religion.

In Europe, in the late 17th century and 18th century there was the period called the "Age of Enlightenment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... In this period, philosophers such as Sir Isaac Newton attempted to document how God made the Universe work by studying natural phenomena. In this time leading into the Industrial Revolution, science overthrew some religious views and in the 19th century the term Scientist was first used.

I wonder whether going to Mars will bring about "the 2nd Age of Enlightenment" which will tend towards atheism resulting in secular societies for the common goal of surviving on Mars ?

Will new Mars specific Bibles need to be written ? Such as will "Heaven and Earth" become "Heaven and Mars" ?

Why would it? It's not as if atheism is any more scientific than any other religion. "Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby".

Atheism is not a religion in the same way collecting newspaper editorials that complain about people collecting things is not a hobby.

Why would it? It's not as if atheism is any more scientific than any other religion.

"Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby".

A Mars society is going to be science based otherwise they won't last very long. Will this cause atheism to be dominate on Mars?

Why would it? It's not as if atheism is any more scientific than any other religion.

A Mars society is going to be science based otherwise they won't last very long. Will this cause atheism to be dominate on Mars?

It's been a while since I taught in kindergarten.

I already demonstrated how religion and theism are independent. Further :

1. Anything one is devoted to, could be a religion . http://www.dictionary.com/brow..., definition 6.

2. spiritual : definition 2 from http://www.dictionary.com/brow..., to some extent definition 1 too :
An attitude that one's body, or the physical reality is not as important as one's spirit, in, say, fighting a serious disease. Since one may not be devoted to this attitude , it may or may not be religious.