Should atheism be an organized movement?

The first part of your post makes no sense as written, you might want to define your question better.
Your post tells me you are not a history reader. Let’s start with the WW II atomic bomb issue. The causes of WW II were wide spread from the economic conditions to the religious prejudice in Europe. That prejudice was and to some extent still is reflected in the strong tradition of Christian hatred toward Jews in Europe. In the case of Germany and Hitler specifically the heavy influenced by Martin Luther's anti-Semitism was an contributing cause of WW II, and thus the development of the atomic weapons which ended the war in the pacific.

If you further looked at the science you slander you will see the Evolution followed by Germany was not Darwin’s, but rather Lamarckia’s who used prejudice to distorted racial lines.
I will agree a hand full of priests and nuns protested Hitler’s atrocities—and suffered for it at the hands of both Germany, and the Church, but the Vatican as well as the Catholic Church and its army of clergy gave either active or tacit support to the Nazi tyranny, which they regarded as a bulwark against the advance of world Communism.

Pope Pius XII let the Holocaust on the Jews and the cruel persecutions of Jehovah’s Witnesses and others proceed un-criticized. What were the other thousands of the Catholic clergy doing during Hitler’s reign of terror?
A pastoral letter issued by the German Catholic bishops in September 1939 at the outbreak of World War II provides enlightenment on this point. It reads in part: “In this decisive hour we admonish our Catholic soldiers to do their duty in obedience to the Fuehrer and to be ready to sacrifice their whole individuality. We appeal to the Faithful to join in ardent prayers that Divine Providence may lead this war to blessed success.”

Such Catholic diplomacy illustrates the kind of harlotry that religion has engaged in over the past 2,000 years in wooing the political State in order to gain power and advantage. Religious-political relationships have fostered warfare, persecutions, and human misery on a vast scale beyond WW II, but without question was a major influence and thus shares the responsibility for the atomic age as much as any government or science (if science holds any blame at all).



I will address this before the onslaught of protest. Yes, Hitler was a Christian, even though he doesn't exemplify what you would like Christians to be. He was still a card carrying Christian accepted at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church as such. No need to try the old ploy of he was an Atheist, or not a good Christian. Just face the fact he qualified by all the rules in your faith as a good christian.

How many people did one church feed? At what cost? The price of food from many religious organizations comes with the enslavement by an organization, or the killing off any who don’t believe their myths. When they feed without asking for conversions than come ask me again. A secular system is much better at saving lives than your churches are.
Last of your question:
Once again if you don’t know the violence in the Bible than you have not read it! Take a break and educate yourself than come back to debate its virtues if you can.

 

If you mean the first line. How many people have survived past the age of one hundred and eighteen in the last two thousand years? The answer is zero. Considering all the mortality statistics your numbers concerning those killed in the bible or by the christian conversion do not indicate a meaningful trend. I understand that such devices, (death statistics), are offered to suggest the phenomena in question as being fraught with human peril and if you aren't truly considerate it is an effective ploy. It is not so indicative of malfeasance considering that mortality remains a one hundred percent.

This comment tells me that you don't understand that history is always told in the present and villains and heroes change roles depending on the sentimental affiliations of the historian.

Widespread and not confined to those two issues. When you say "religious" prejudice you deflect in association the deeper cause, prejudice. Prejudice is a cultural affectation that can be seen in the guise of class, race, religion, or those things we identify with in general.

I made no slander of science. I suggested that it is much more overtly effective at altering the status quo. That is so across the entire range of phenomena.

The first thought that comes to my my mind is so what? What you are describing are the relations of social institutions and the search for political advantage. When you say, religious -political relationships, you deflect in association from the universally endemic political relationships of mankind.

In the neighborhoods I have lived in it involves spaghetti or something like that.

If you ever come over for dinner, I won't tell you to keep your mouth shut, I would be interested in what you had to say.

Nobody saves lives. Death may be postponed and that effect has to do with meeting needs in the moment and nothing to do with politics.

Again the question is, what christian values do you object to. A story in a book is not a value. You sound like those people who say, "that is not what the bible says"!

 

1- How is this relevant to anything? It sounds like you are saying we have such a short life span it did not make any difference that religion killed so many millions.


2- Let’s try to get through to you once more. The number killed is between 250,000,000 and 800,000,000 human lives. These are people who got up every day, laughed, smiled, cried and wanted to live another day. I suspect like you do. They were killed in wars, or purges due to believing in a different myth than the Christian myth. There is no excuse, in a truly civilized world the organizations would be shut down and their leaders jailed. Your babbling if it is meant to be an excuse is not even understandable.


3- Widespread and not confined to those two issues. When you say "religious" prejudice you deflect in association the deeper cause, prejudice. Prejudice is a cultural affectation that can be seen in the guise of class, race, religion, or those things we identify with in general.
4- I said widespread which covered many causes, I listed the two big issues of the period which matched this discussion. The hate of the Jewish faith by Christians was a continuing issue in Europe, and had been for 2000 years. I am not sure if it has abated in todays Europe.
5- You did slander science, and blamed it for the Atomic age.
6- You can only think of “So What” 800,000,000 lives, millions more enslaved, thousands abused, burned, imprisoned, while your religion collects wealth, power, and control. Yep you are what I have seen in the Christian faith. A prime example!




7- I won’t do you basic research for you. Go read your bible. If you are going to follow a faith than you damn sure need to read what they are asking you to do.

 

No, I am saying everybody dies and your numbers could be perhaps meaningful if that were not the case. What were the total number of people who lived during the period of the bible and christian conversion?

And let's respond again. Are you suggesting that all those people would be alive today if it were not for religion?

War is a human endeavor not confined to religious motives but war is always founded on the principle, my good is more important than your good and I will fight you to have it. It doesn't matter and hasn't mattered the specific, "good cause".

How many were killed by the roman empire? How many were killed by movements of "civilization" before the christian era?

At the level of civilization we have, it is difficult to apprehend and convict the murderer of even one person. You are making a moral argument about what should or shouldn't be while ignoring what is. Not only that you are using a scapegoat and claiming the end of some measure of human suffering if we could only get over this one thing.

Yes you did and you are right to be suspicious of today's a far as prejudice goes but my point is, it does not address cause to pick out causes.

Why do you say blamed? Nuclear technology is an artifact of scientific endeavor. The uses of nuclear technology are of a human interest. I used an example of science in the very same way you use an example of religion. I do not abide by the point made by either example. I did not slander science. I think you are mildly hysterical around the edges. For one you are stereotyping me and therefor my responses. I can assure you my perspective is different from what you may have been used to dealing with.

This statement is a prime example of what I just pointed out above.
"So what", is not all I said, while it may be true that it is all you could glean from your prejudicial perspective.

I am consistent with my own model of good. The only one asking me to believe anything is you.
The fact is that you haven't done your own research and are posing that you have. You have yet to speak of one christian value.
You don't know the difference between your unreasoned visceral aversions and actually knowing something.

 

thedope:

Here we go again. :-D

Why do you say that when you ain't everybody? Surely it's not because you ain't everybody?

cncracer is not suggesting that people who were killed because of religion would be alive today were it not for religion. Only that they would not have been killed because of it.

Yes, the religious have dibs on values. They simply aren't human enough to share them about in the breeze of their own beauty? Or did I get that the wrong way around? lol

I'll name one for the sake of disgust..er...discussion. "Long-suffering".

 

deja deja vu vu vu

I mean to say every body.

His point is they would not have been killed, period. I mean that is the calculus that ends with someone or something being guilty, otherwise it is just the phenomena of life. I would make the argument to cnracer that you made to olderwaterbrother, of what consequence is it to the deceased, the manner in which they died or for what cause?

I don't know why or if you have a bone to pick. The religious obviously do not have dibs on values. I am not religious, I am studious, and I would help the religious as well as the atheist be more so in their own right. If I am indeed spreading shit then I would expect to have to account for the stink of it and not the stink of someones interpretation of the bible or a stereotype of the religious minded.

I am sorry. That does not register in my inventory of christian values.

Long suffering is valuable to those who believe suffering is valuable and as such is not in fact a christian value. The christian value regarding suffering is that we must uproot it daily and carry on in the truth, take up your cross daily and follow me.

 

Everybody, every body, what's the difference? You say as long as any body will do. When has any body not done? You waiting for godot?

I disagree.

Not a bone to pick, or point. In your study, where does your focus end? For instance, your saying that everybody dies, I mean, what sort of an account are you keeping?!

No need to apologize. Carry on in what truth? Suffering? Why not uproot suffering altogether and lay your cross aside? Are you cross?

 

I don't know what godot is. I am not waiting for anyone. When we say everybody, it is a pronoun, when we say every body we are talking about distinct biological units.

To me it is no different to say that someone must die for the sake of mankind
than it is to insist that many must have died for the sake of religion. In either case a guilty party, sinner on one hand, or superstitious barbarian on the other hand, must account or pay for any seemingly untimely demise. All forms of energy are in flux

With the removal of cause for prejudice.

It is an observation of conditions.

As I have told you I can be in pain and when I am in pain it is more challenging for me to keep a pleasant demeanor. People often see me as cross simply for the lines on my face. I am neither cross nor am I pollyannish, as in overly joyful even though my joy is full.

Each day of our life has troubles of it's own. Maybe you rent is due today or you are running fatigued from your life's work, or what ever, many of us find cause to dispirit ourselves and in turn, cast suspicion on one another. The christ teaching is that we daily overcome in good stead the propensity to suffer over one thing or another and we remain in light spirit by sharing a positive tilt rather than engaging in critical or grave thinking. All anxiety is caused by the misapprehension of what is so. Christian practice is to rescind decisions you have made, forgiveness, that cause anxiety and seek the real proportions of what you behold. All ways the response is some form of peace.

 

thedope:

No. Everybody, every body, no difference, unless you want to introduce a corpse.

Then you are mistaken. Insistence has nothing to do with the fact that many have died because of religion. Intent is not retroactive. Guns do kill people.

And that is done by everybody dying?

Decay is not observable overall, only change.

I'm ever so glad. But do you have difficulty with the overjoyed? I don't see why you should, since they would have you free of your pain.

What kind of teaching would have critical thinking apart from light-spiritedness?

Comforting platitude, no doubt. Go to sleep my baby, close your pretty eyes.

I don't hold anything against those who cannot forgive without forgetting. Peace, however, is always a terminable plateau where the response is not love itself.

 

Everybody is one word, a pronoun, used to identify persons. Every body is two words, an adjective and a noun, and means without exception any distinguishable physical object.

And I didn't say no one had died, I said that the insistence is that they died because of religion, or, a man had to die to satisfy the requirements of a religion, are both similar and incorrect statements. You yourself have said that you have never found any reason for death. Is this cause of death the discovery of another that you have latched onto?

No. It is done by realizing no one is responsible for death. We live in a world of phenomenal dynamic processes for which no human being is responsible for. A human being is not responsible for the fact that the sun shines but we are liable to it. We are not responsible for the fact that bodies
are in a state of flux, that they do not stand still and are constantly changing.

Exactly, but specifically it is. Integrity is consistent presentation. Our bodies do not consistently present themselves. Our infant body contains no part that is the same as the elderly body. It's cells have experienced disintegration and regeneration time and again.

No.

Critical as in not approving.

Damning retort. You would find good reason for discomfort?

What is love? Talk about platitudes. Love does not prohibit peace and peace does not prohibit love. Remembering is selective forgetting. Let he who is blameless, cast the first stone.

 

thedope:

No, it means every body, not any. And anyway, you still haven't made sense of your saying that everybody/every body dies.

Who is insisting? And besides, we are talking about people killed because of religion. People need not have died because of religion, but they did. What do you think religion is? Devotion? It really has only ever been a sort of stupefaction of the senses, a kind of shut-down mechanism for the mind afraid of its wandering, - which is not to say it need be harmful.

Of course no-one is responsible for death. But murder? Sure, we're not responsible for killing eachother, it's the bloody stars.

No joke.

They do. Consistent presentation is change.

No. But then I never find good reason in error.

Love is the height of engagement. Yes, it does not prohibit peace, and peace does not prohibit love, but love alone requites itself. Remembering is not any sort of forgetting except in retrospect, and even then it isn't! lol

Let he who is blameless cast the last stone.

 

No, in the word formula I presented, every is synonymous to without exception, and the definition of body is, any distinguishable physical object. The earth is a celestial body an asteroid is considered a rocky body and our correspondence a body of literature. So from the perspective of this definition how do I not make sense. If you want purpose then expansion or extension is the purpose. How does an igneous rock extend itself? For one it has a durable present or presence and another way is that it is worn by erosion, changing to scattered particulates that are again accumulated and melded into a larger whole becoming a sedimentary or metamorphic rock.

You are, by saying people were killed because of religion. It is like saying people were killed because of guns. Why can't we get past guilt? Phenomena do not preform to the taste of everyone but that is not to say that anything is inherently distasteful. People kill other people because they are convinced that the other is not me or mine and thus undeserving of common attention.
That is true whether they identify with a particular religion, family, nation, neighborhood, or secular creed.

1. beliefs and worship: people's beliefs and opinions concerning the existence, nature, and worship of a deity or deities, and divine involvement in the universe and human life
2. system: an institutionalized or personal system of beliefs and practices relating to the divine
3. personal beliefs or values: a set of strongly-held beliefs, values, and attitudes that somebody lives by
4. obsession: an object, practice, cause, or activity that somebody is completely devoted to or obsessed by
The danger is that you start to make fitness a religion.

5. christianity monk's or nun's life: life as a monk or a nun, especially in the Roman Catholic Church


[12th century. Via French < Latin religion- "obligation, reverence"]
Reverence is respect gained or felt.

There are three types of religious practice.
Devotion is one or the way of the monk.
Refinement of thinking processes is another, the way of the yogi.
Taming of physical impulses to gain control of the physical apparatus, is another, the way of the aesthetic or fakir.
All three practices exist for the edification of self.

You know this from your practice of it no doubt. There is no accounting for taste, we must make sense of it.

No, it is the result of uneven heating, a storm of consciousness brought about by special concerns. No one is responsible for murder by reason of insanity.

There are no idle thoughts, we are always at the height of engagement and all expressions of love are maximal.

Memory is retrospection and yes remembering is selective forgetting in this instance as there are two voices in any persons head, point and counterpoint. One voice you forget to remember always. A point well taken abrogates the need for counter reinforcement or negative coercion.

 

thedope:

No, every is not any without exception, but every without exception. You have before admitted the possibility that consciousness could evolve to hold matter to itself indefinitely/definitely etc. yet always go on to throw up the "argument" that things fall apart! I don't get it.

I thought we were talking about murder weapons, though why we can't get past guilt is a good question. Do you see me calling for the prohibition of religion? Knowing it isn't necessary to life, why would I? You are right about why people kill eachother, and as insidious as religion can be, it is not inherently so. It is perceived, however erroneously, that the sword thirsts for blood. People don't put bullets in eachother without guns.

It has been said there is not enough religion in the world to get rid of it.

And you say you're not religious? :-D You don't believe in 'God' after all?

LOL :-D Actually we needn't make sense of it at all. Not even in the negative. I'd have 'got' religion if I had.

You and I may agree it is insane to kill eachother, but we are not the only arbiters of the equatable mind. Yes, advancing guilt is futile, and no, we need not leave anyone insane by degrees.

Perhaps joy is our "idle" thought. lol Perhaps, as the feeling that wants no other, it settles so subtly into our conception, so far beyond our reverence, that all who mistake love for being without condition are overtaken with it after all. :-D

:-D Speak for yourself! I know the conscientious mind. The music of the spheres appears there in no short order... the logician always tries to silence the seducer! lol A point well taken?! How well? Minds are lovers, and any "abrogation" is beside the point, there being no need for it to begin with. Reinforcement entails counterparts. The difference between a creator and a commander, a composer and a conductor, may not be much, but why deny it? Remembering is not forgetting. Why not celebrate it?

 

No, every is without exception. A body is any distinguishable physical object.

It is not my argument that things fall apart but that they rise and fall indefinitely/definitely. Life is not put to the bodies uses but the other way round. A salmon is born from the combination of egg and milt incubated in oxygen rich water. It swims downstream to the ocean to live there for a few years and returns to it's natal stream to lay eggs and then die. Not one adult salmon survives spawning. Turns out that the glut of rotting carcases in the watershed fertilizes the forest far away from the waters edge. This is life putting the body to it's uses.

There is this, Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation. Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish "alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell". In this process the medusa of the immortal jellyfish is transformed into the polyps of a new polyp colony. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal, although in nature, most Turritopsis, like other medusae, are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the plankton stage, without reverting to the polyp form. No single specimen has been observed for any extended period, so it is not currently possible to estimate the age of an individual, and so even if this species has the potential for immortality, there is no laboratory evidence of many generations surviving from any individual.

I cannot succinctly define what you mean by god.
I find myself progeny of creation that I did not create. I find myself in relationship to that creation and it has a claim on me. There are beings who care for me and I for them.

You're right. There is no harm in cultivating every sensation to it's ultimate conclusion like in the case of rape for example.

I don't find joy idle but I find anything but joy to be vain. How could you mistake your life for the conditions you establish in life?

I never touched your diaphragm. Let's not confuse your objection with my obtuseness.

If you see one, point it out.

Fire is hot. I need not probe it extensively with my flesh to appreciate that. The slightest taste is enough.

 

lol What do you mean "No"? That's what I said. Every is every without exception, not any without exception.

I was wondering if you'd read about the immortal jellyfish. About your "argument" though, that things rise and fall indefinitely/definitely, do you include selves as things?

Can you succinctly define what you mean by it? I can't see how you think creation has a claim on you, unless you believe in an underlying, or overruling order of creation. Some might say that as a creator it is quite irresponsible of you to believe yourself liable to the past. lol

I'm trying here to see that you're not saying that cultivating rape is harmless, but I'm having trouble. Can you expand? What do you imagine its 'ultimate' conclusion is? If you're only being sarcastic, then you should at least go on and try to push your point, ie. that you think we need to "make sense of religion".

I couldn't, but that is precisely why my life is its condition. I expect you to understand this. Maybe right now! :-D

lol

So as below as above? Your mind is quite fine now to remember it forgot it had but one voice? :-D

 

I mean no in the way you mean no.

You could have introduced me instead. There is no differentiated self which is demonstrated by transdifferentiation.

By it has a claim on me, I mean possession is whether prized or demonic.
I also mean that when I pose a question, an answer comes.

I cannot escape the effects of my own thinking.

I was being sarcastic. I didn't know that my point was we need to make sense of religion, my point was we have a sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomous nervous system that is suitable to our needs but we must learn to master it. Potty training is a significant milestone in human development, allowing us to populate and live densely.

I imagine you could speak yourself into all kinds of conditional relations but those too shall pass, whether or not you transcend those is not up to you, but only when.

The sun is hot and my campfire is hot. They concur. There are left and right hemispheres of the brain, and there is what some will tell and your empirical evidence and those do not always match.

 

thedope:

lol Then why not admit that every body is every body, not any body.

I could have. I now wonder if you'd have taken it as an 'argument' for the truth that not everybody dies. lol I'm still waiting for you to make sense of your saying that everybody dies.

It doesn't say much for your self-possession! Even with the posing of your always answered questions! ;-D Owned by the universe. What presumption. :-D I'd like the universe to possess me. My modesty has a way of exceeding my vanity. Which reminds me of your saying you find anything but joy to be vain. You also said you were joyful, but not overjoyed. Very picky. lol Are you going to get around to saying what you mean by god?

We'll be living 'densely' alright if we fail to imagine a more significant one. lol

Sure, but we were talking about the so-called claim that creation has on you. You count the past as your effects? Do you hold memory itself as so much baggage?
Nothing wrong with a little self-forgetfulness, but to insist that remembering is selective forgetting? Too rich. You don't need to lie to kick it. Let me taste some of that fire you were talking about.

Love is condition through and through. Love doesn't transcend life. I don't call it unloving to maintain it is without condition, but I definitely call it mistaken.

Tell me why you call your "inventory" of values 'christian'. What makes them so? Are they not thedopeian?

You care and are cared for. But you still seem cold to me. Do you feel you have something to teach me?

 

Because any body will do to fulfill the cast of every body.

To make sense of it you would have to share my distinction that every body dies, not everybody.

I didn't say owned by the universe, I said creation had a claim on me and that it amounted to I cannot escape the effects of my own thinking and I must as well from time to time respond to the thoughts shared by others.

Would it be picky to suggest that modesty and pride are the same vanity?

I do say what I mean by god!

If we had not imagined this particular one I am sure everyone would make a stink.

There is no past, only current emergence.

Memory exists to organize your effects but it does not represent, effects.

Unless you fail to remember.

You can only entertain one consciously specific thought at any one time.
When you remember one you certainly don't recall another.

And so you establish conditions for yourself and me, but not for love.

They are synthesized by and large from sayings attributed to jesus and the empirical reflection of their application. I can expand and extend because I learn as I teach. Officially I am a yoga teacher which is a different cultural tradition all together. It is however the same esoteric lesson of joining. Yoga meaning to join. My yoke, (joining) is easy and my burden light,(the light of knowing).

It could be that you don't recognize warmth because of your conditional love.

 

No, any body is not every body. The inherency of any body does not make it every body, only any of every.

The distinction didn't hold up. Every body is every body, not any body.

Joint ownership? You and the universe. I see. ;-D

No, as long as you're not so picky as to have it be more than a suggestion. They're only related. :-D

You say what you mean by yourself. (Even though you still think creation has you by the balls lol )

Sure, no mean realization to make, but let's go the extra mile all the same.

I'll grant you, emergence is not restricted by its passage.
But you are forgetting the self as self-reflection? Remember! lol Memory serves the imagination.

That's right. Remember! :-D

You're admitting now then that not all anxiety is the misapprehension of what is? lol

Nor do you selectively forget another in recall. As I've said, remembering is not forgetting, let alone selective forgetting.

We are not all love?

By and large. That's a good one! lol :-D You once said I stand for joining and I joined you in the thought. I see no reason not to stand for ourselves when we can't help but stand for eachother.

lol Now that's really cold! Your "unconditional" love is like ice! It doesn't free love for life, and thankfully it doesn't free it from life. lol It's like peace at any price: not worth it. You know this, knowing peace to be free.

We are never hung up on words if we love our meaning.

 

From the definition of any


2. adj , pron
every: every person or thing of a particular category or description, no matter who or what
Any financial adviser would agree.

As any, as in every, financial adviser would agree, every body is every body but every body is not everybody. Words take on greater nuance of conjugation in combinations. Combinations modify or extend and your treatment of this word formula could benefit from a conjugal visit.

You characterize but you do not see. My claim on you is that I love you, would you have me disown myself?

All being degrees of special consideration it is of course for you to determine

(if you think nuts on your cock makes you a man)

Well if you are going to spread out you don't need to be so dainty with your toilet habits. Are you not recognizing the toxic potential if this solution were not brought forward? If I might be so cold and only as a point of discussion, not faith, you seem to poo poo the effort and I think the sliding scale of what you consider worthy can't be counted on to recognize love under all conditions. All expressions of love are maximal.

The reflection of an object is not the object. Current emergence equals emerging current and is not dependent on reflection for qualification.

Imagination is image making, not creation.

No, are you trying to scare me?

Someday you will remember what I have said without recalling everything I have said. This figure of speech is an exercise in perspective, a doorway into a corridor of refraction and not a scientific measurement.

Yes and conditions change whereas love does not.

The joining I would teach is the unification of disparate selves.

Your conditional love would allow me no warmth at all?