Via Crooks and Liars, I just saw a bunch of clips of Fox News' treatment of a new Air America radio show called FreeThought Radio, geared towards atheists (hey, we got a radio show! We got a Congressman! Next stop, the world!). FoxNews was comically biased, with the anchors having a very snarky tone of voice, saying that it's a "stab in the dark" by Air America because they just filed Chapter 11 and are looking for anything to get listeners, deeming it a "War on God," and showing images of Al Franken (who has nothing to do with the show and is no longer on the network since he's running for Senate in Minnesota). However the Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green was surprisingly balanced, offering unsolicited corrections of the 10 second blurbs Fox had been showing throughout the day.
Also, some atheists are attempting to rebrand themselves as brights - basically someone who doesn't believe in supernatural stuff. Originally I thought this was kind of a dumb name, but Pat convinced me otherwise. And in terms of rebranding I think it's a good idea. The word "atheist" means literally "NOT someone who believes in god". The identity of brights rather than atheists creates a positive identity - a naturalistic, as opposed to supernatural, worldview, someone whose ethics are based on a naturalistic world view.
6 comments:
booya!
what sucks about this is how we have to resort to religious terms to talk about alot of it sometimes... ie, you're my first "convert"...
lucy's on board too!
cue "Pinky and the Brain" music. By the dawning of the sun, we will take over the world!
that's retarded, manifestly.
1) If belief is the basement of action, and indeed, as the kinda foolish Kant remarked correctly, conditioned by the pure a priori functions of logic, which support the fundament of all judgment itself pure and impure, we of necessity must BELIEVE {something] if we have an "opinion" on anything, including God. Therefore "I don't believe in God" becomes "I believe there's no god" rather necessarily [if not logically, than at least according to rules of belief, and indeed practical life and fact], and the classic cliche that one is distinct from the other---again, this is because of some belief that "skepticism" is a real thing and even possible, another plainly stupid idea--is indisputably absurd.
2) bright IS a dumb name, a dumb cause, a cause for dumb people, and Dennett is a moron, just read his dumb and arrogant books. And as I said, there is no need to refashion any purported negative definition into a positive one, for someone who believes there's no God: if you don't believe, you in effect disbelieve the related positive postulate. Must we dismiss the plebian, bluecollar intuition that this is true, for love of some unreasoned stupid sophisticate 'skeptical' idea, which is obviously false?
If you don't think there's a God, rest alone, goddamn it, like everyone else, on a plain, swift and casual refutation of Aquinas' 5 proofs, and get the hell outa my house. And then hear the crisp remark ring in your sultified ear as you walk out: He who experiences Atheism as a novel and terrifying illness is bound to convalesce eventually of his own ignorance, if not sooner of a depraved, but advisable-- for it hastens death, too, I can't dispute--egoism.
--EDH
Atheism hastens death? Hadn't heard that one before.
1) you've used a lot of big words, but haven't said anything of substance. if you believe yourself clever because we havent understood what you've said, i point you to this webcomic: http://xkcd.com/169/
2) here, you start with the assumption "assume i am correct", the procede to conclude "therefore, i am correct!". as for Aquinas, Dawkins dealt with him to my satisfaction.
as for your apparent anger, i simply don't understand. people who dont share your worldview are not allowed to congregate? we hasten our own deaths? ...huh?
Jeez, as a French major I thought I was pretty good at following people talking in circles, but I have no idea what that comment actually said.
if you dump the extra clauses, the run-on sentence in point one is a little more comprehensible. i read this as saying, "you can't turn an ideology based on disbelief into an ideology of belief just by changing the vocabulary."
my response is that the point, to me, seems to be the change of the vocabulary not the change of the ideology. same reason a religious type would define his doctrine as a "belief in divine creation" rather than a "disbelief that the world came to be through a naturalistic evolutionary process," for example. there is so much negativity associated with the fundamentals of atheism. why shouldn't they define themselves without the use of a negative?
Post a Comment