Oh I see. Yeah you again.. lol You did see that I was responding to someone who said 'it's SELF evident', right? I was asking if he was sure of what he was saying, and pointing out that it was NOT for the purpose of saying 'AHA!' like so many people take pleasure in doing, but merely to clarify, as I specifically stated. The person I was addressing the question to has yet to answer it, but now that you have stepped in to save the day as arbiter of epic fails, everyone can rest easy. As for what the 'guys' who wrote the Constitution believed, I believe they believed what they wrote. Nothing more, nothing less. One of the things those 'guys' wrote was the bit at the beginning of the DoI. It was very specifically spelled out. Maybe it's just me being naive, but it never occurred to me to separate those two documents as though one has nothing to do with the other. Thank you for informing me such an idea is 'half baked'. In any case, I have always felt that it is the fact that the Founding Fathers unambiguously believed en masse that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights. The reason this is important to me is NOT because they used the phrase 'by our Creator', but because it was the reason they crafted a Constitution which was designed to DENY the government the position of 'ultimate power' over the lives of the citizens. To me, the Bill of Rights actually MEANS something, and each Bill really means '(Because every man has unalienable rights,) The government shall not.. etc etc etc'. The idea being, a higher authority than the government had placed those rights upon every human being - which then becomes the same authority from which the Founders deliberately limit and prevent the government from doing certain things, from infringing upon those rights. Now whether anyone believes the 'by our creator' part, or in the higher authority part, the fact remains that the belief that all men have unalienable rights is a core factor in the concept of the 'limited government' they created. Ordinarily I wouldn't be here in the D&D in the first place, but when I saw the thread, I was genuinely curious how atheists felt about the notion that we all have 'certain unalienable rights'. Either we have those rights or we don't, but if we do have them, and yet at the same time find the notion of a 'creator' absurd, then how do we reconcile the two? We have unalienable rights.. 'just cuz'? You're clearly far smarter than I am Sam, you have never felt the slightest hesitation in making sure anyone who differs from you in some way is never in doubt of it, but while you think I was hatching some 'half baked plot' or something, I was just asking an honest question. So, if a person is not allowed to ask such a question in the D&D, where might a person ask such a thing?
Is there a tl; dr version? Human rights were created as a concept by other humans. These guys were humans too - a fact you seem to doubt. They borrowed/built off of ideas of other humans and fellow atheists like Voltaire. They are no more dependent on a supernatural creator than babies are from coming from storks.
This is a pretty narrow view of all religions. There are many religions and religious who also accept the findings of science. Originally there was no difference between religion, science, history and politics. So it wasn't necessarily that religion had sway for 5,000 years to the detriment of science but that there wasn't the differentiation we have now. While a lot of religions still hold onto the ancient world views most don't. To varying degrees almost all religious have embraced science. If not then everyone who was religions would be Amish or Taliban.
Show me a religion not predicated on myth (I assume that that is an exclusive question because the myth of the supernatural is what separates religion form philosophy)
Hi, texxx. That you calling to praise my effort to defend you? No thanks needed. I'm just that kind of guy.
I've always loved that quote. He would have made a great president, in my humble opinion, and we wouldn't have had to sit through Tricky Dick, along with a host of other lousy people who have plagued this country politically since the 1968 election.
Myths are a part of all cultures, and a necessary part. Democracy has the French Revolution and the Founding Fathers. Marxism has the Paris Commune. Even so-called rationalists have the story of Galileo. What is most important of all in a story is less its actual accuracy and more whether it inspires or awakens man's emotions. The myth is a necessary part of cultural dogma, ESPECIALLY revolutionary dogma. Reason cannot inspire people. Reason cannot make people become something greater then themselves. You need something beyond that, something irrational which makes men men and not robots. For many people, that inspirational source is religion. I don't like that it's religion, I want it to be something else other then religion. But that's how it is. If you want to dismantle religion, something needs to take its place - and materialistic rationality is not an answer.
Well, evidently the hereafter isn't all that exciting itself... Otherworldly beings are so bored they're looking to the real world for entertainment... Boy, I tell ya... the grass is always greener on the other side.... <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1XWGi34PF-k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
For many Buddhist we don't consider the Buddha a divine being and in the Dharma the Buddha isn't someone to be worshipped but as an example to be emulated. Many of the legendary and miraculous tales of the Buddha came about long after the Buddha had died. Many Christians also don't consider the divinity of Jesus as important as the message. Thomas Jefferson edited The Bible to remove what he considered the miraculous portions of it to focus on the message.
I think you miss the point of spirituality. It isn't that human life is so boring, in many religious traditions human life is considered to be full of distractions that take people's attention away. It is that as rational beings who are aware of our own mortality it is only logical that we question the nature of existence and whether there is more to it than just what can be physically perceived.
I'm not sure why 95% of the people that ever lived can't just take human life at face value. We are evolved animals on a tiny, specialized spot in an infinitely large universe, we reproduce and die. We perceive and function until we don't. Our individual time is short. Seems like people would make better use of their lives if they just accepted that. (not that I do, it would sort of need to be a whole civilization thing)
Are you sure you're an Atheist because frankly the more you post, the more you sound like you worship yourself.
Hardly, I am a lowly creature even among the human species. I can't go to my left, and I can't do calculus. And I'm not even an atheist, because I know I don't know. I just know what I can perceive and I don't see anything supernatural. And I'm not a religion hata, I see how it helps, I just don't think a strict adherence to dogma that is continually proven wrong by science, the exclusion of "the best information", is a positive choice for the advancement of civilization.
You really do not know that, until you die, or your body die. Whether or not people accepted that or not, people would make better use of their lives if they live it in a way that doesn't harm and do good for themselves and for others.
Totally agree. But until we have some conclusive evidence that it is true or not, the default position should be "I don't know" - not make up answers
