When I opened my inbox this morning I saw an e-mail that was sent to this website’s contact address. Like usual, whenever we receive e-mail or answer questions directed at us in a collaboration post. This post may be updated with the added comments of a different ACP member.
Greetings,
My name is [...]. I’m a 23 year old Christian from Arkansas, and I would like to go ahead and get it out on the table that this letter holds no hostility to whoever reads it or your movement. It’s simply a question that I would like to have your opinion on…
I understand that many horrible things are carried out supposedly in God’s name. I agree with you that it’s wrong. However, every religious group has its “bad apples”. In my opinion, there is no room for extremists in any religion, Christian or other. My question to you is why direct your entire organization towards Christians or any other Abraham based religions?
Waldheri: Allow me to dive right into it. The people who actively participate in this group all come from countries in which Christianity is the predominant religion. It is part of our daily lives, whether we want to or not. Even though a lot of a things we write about are applicable to other religions, is it that surprising that it is mostly centered on Christianity when you realize it is the religion that we come most into contact with? I do not think Christianity is worse than the other Abrahamic religions, if that is what you’re actually trying to ask.
Anath: I generally do not direct my efforts towards extremists but rather towards the good ol’ average Joe churchgoer. The extremists are entrenched too deeply in their own delusions to be swayed either way, but when someone is a reasonable person, they are more open to seeing from another person’s point of view. Also, the moderates quietly support the extremists by their sheer presence, and the fact that they do NOT decry the behavior publicly or otherwise. There are more moderates attending and funding the megachurches than extremists! There are more moderates quietly going along with extremist organiztions such as NOM, putting their votes in to legislate their beliefs by attempting to ban gay marriage, abortion, teach intelligent design and abstinence-only education in schools, and so on. THIS is deplorable. It is the moderates, who nod their heads and baa contentedly that we need to shake awake. Extremists will always be extremists, but the moderates have the ability to either support or condemn their actions.
In this nation, we all have a constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Waldheri: Your right to freedom of religion is certainly extant, and I would never try to take away that freedom. However, being a secularist, I will do my best to pry religion apart from governance. In itself, I do not think religion is a valid reason for passing or obstructing legislation.
Anath: And WE have that right as well. As I stated above, the attempt to legislate BELIEF is one thing I stand firmly against. I am an American as well, and I do not want the Church dictating what me or my (potential, future) children do with their bodies, mind, or how our tax money gets spent. Don’t think this is happening? Watch more closely, it is. There’s a saying out there: “Freedom of religion means ALL religion”… including secularism.
Now I’m not saying that there aren’t extremist Christian groups that would lash out, sometimes even violently, against your group or any other like it. That’s a cold hard fact, and it’s gravely unfortunate. But my concern is that you’re attacking the foundation of life as we know it against mostly everyday good people. There are going to be conflicts between groups like ours, and that’s inevitable. However instead of going for the throat, we should be trying to calmly discuss our differences. Most Christians (and all true Christians) don’t believe in hating anyone for any reason. We hate the sin, not the sinner. You also hold a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but with that does it also mean that there is no such thing as common decency between our fellow people anymore? If both of our missions are to promote peace and harmony between all people, than why are we being so ruthless towards one another?
Waldheri: I’m not sure what you mean by the “foundation of life as we know it”, but it is important to remember that people simply might not agree with you on those foundations. To me, the freedom of speech is one of the most important freedoms we have. My ideas may sound controversial or even offensive to Christians, but frankly that’s not my problem. I don’t think I’ve ever directly attacked Christians as persons in my posts (and if I have, I apologize) – I have always attacked Christianity. I think its metaphysical ideas (souls, heaven, hell) are ridiculous, its moral character (Old Testament divinely sanctioned bloodshed) deeply dubious, some of its virtues (faith, piety) naive and worthless and its god a spiteful, arrogant tyrant that I would not want to serve even if I did believe he existed. I am honest in my posts and I realize it may offend Christians, but they can’t expect me to simply shut up. Must I keep my deeply held beliefs locked up so that others’ deeply held beliefs can roam free without dissidence? Furthermore, you must understand that some of Christian beliefs are deeply offensive to me. Examples are the idea that when we are born, we already bear the guilt of some crime committed by our forebears; the idea that we are worthless and inherently bad (“sinful”) and need saving; the idea that our actions in a finite time frame are enough to judge us to a fate of infinite timespan.
Anath: I’m going to assume that by “the foundation of life as we know it”, you mean the basic tenents of Christianity; the existence God, the divinity of Jesus, a “plan” for us all, an after life, etc. Let me turn this around–Christianity is attacking the foundation of life as WE know it. By that “attacking that foundation”, I mean inserting causation where none can be proved, denying the reality of evolution and what it entails, attempting to undermine science on the basis of a 6000 year old book written by patriarchal desert nomads, claiming we have “freedom of choice”–then defining that “freedom” as “choose God or GO TO HELL!”, claiming that we are condemned before we were born for the sins of our greatest ancestors… that there is a strict, black and white dichotomy of “good” and “evil”, and every single action, motivation, person, and so on in this world can be judged by that dichotomy… and so on. Your belief system attacks the foundation of my reality. By insisting that your belief system is the only correct one, and asserting the “God or Hell / Good and Evil” dichotomies, you assert that I am Evil and Hellbound. If that is not an attack, I don’t know what is. Think about it from the other side of the fence for a while. You may “hate the sin, not the sinner”, but that doesn’t change where we stand in your worldview. You dont’ have to “hate” us to condemn us.
Based on your “freedom of speech” bit, I question whether you actually engaged the CONTENT of this site, or became squeamish based on our name alone. Read some of the articles, we are not overtly hostile and “going for the throat”. My recent debate with Aelnathan demonstrates that we are willing to be patient and engage Christians and Christian thought. Our recent “10 Answers from an Antichristian” posts demonstrate what we DO believe, and why we do not follow Christianity, in a very approachable way. Cleric’s recent “Reasonable vs. Unreasonable Christians” demonstrates that we ARE willing to engage Christians as long as they are reasonable, Lea and Waldheri’s recent posts engage Christian thought and bring up important questions and observations about Christianity in the modern world. I fail to see how we are “going for the throat”, but if you can bring up a specific example to back up this statement, we will explain the intent, and how you may have potentially misunderstood the content.
Like I said before, I don’t mean any of this offensively, it just had been on my heart. I don’t expect you to censor any of your authors or anything like that. This is just a simple conversation between anyone in your group interested and myself. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
[...]
Waldheri: Nor is my opinion meant to be offensive, but it can be. You need not apologize.
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It seems that its Wednesday again! I hardly noticed the week pass… here is another installment. Beware, from this point on, posts are Epic in length.
If you would like to read the debate for yourself directly on Amazon you can go to his review here. The content I am posting starts on page 3.
If you’re new to this series, here’s The Prelude, Part 1, and Part 2. Read the rest of this entry »
I got a bit carried away with something yesterday and totally forgot to make my post.
Anyway, now that it is Wednesday, new posts are overdue!
If you remember in our last episode, Aelnathan asked us to go to HIS review if we wanted to continue commenting, as he just can’t keep up with posts on someone else’s review. Whatever. I did it. Previously, Cleric had gone to his review and continued a discussion that was already in the comments section, but we will start with my post, as there is a gap in time and the old debate (The bible promotes genocide! No it doesn’t, there are wars but wars aren’t genocide! Yes it does, God asks them to kill all living beings in a city…! BUT BUT BUT TEH WERE TEH EVULS…) Kind of died. If you would like to read it for yourself you can go to his review here. The content I am posting starts on page 2. There’s also another person who steps in and gives similar arguments to the ones I presented, but all of the previous debates were months old by the time I got there.
Anyway, on with the debate. I will keep it short, 2 posts, because from here on out, the posts become… EPIC.
Quick note: Scott Pruett has started answering the initial refutations to his 10 questions and in his latest post he has started including answers from the ACP. Unfortunately I’m on vacation at the moment and can’t answer but feel free to take a shot at it.
Very shortly: This time he is tackling the answers to the ‘Order’ question. Unfortunately his answers can be simply surmised as him falling back onto his ‘Creation’ question. He turned the question from “How can the universe be finely tuned to human life” to “Why have a universe that can sustain any kind of life rather than no life” this is aking to saying “Why is there a universe”.
It turns out, All-Access Customer really did run away, only to be replaced by another. This turns out to be Aelnathan, who had been in and out sporadically during the All-Access affair. I mentioned him in my last article by the name he posts under, but he requested I use Aelnathan as a pseudonym so I have edited that, and will continue to refer to him under the pseudonym. A LOT has transpired in the debate since then and it may potentially continue, though Aelnathan claims to be getting too busy to continue to reply (right…), so instead of posting a single entry with all the comments, I’ll make small weekly installments until we catch up to the end, and then I’ll only post as 2-5 replies accumulate.
This article records everything from Aelnathan’s first comment up to the time All-Access left for good and Aelnathan got serious and stopped waiting a month between posts. Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote this in Kriegsphilosophie in relation to my views about marriage:
Ultimately I don’t believe in love, I believe in intelligence. For me, it is not the love that makes me love a person so to speak, it’s the intelligence found inside. A majority of Westerners still focus on that love is required to love in a relationship. That I happened to love someone is more of a side-effect of what I found inside a person, rather than love itself.
I guess what I really want to say is that I am aiming a social critique against the notion of how we view love. A lot of people say, “it’s nice to love”, but is it really the love we should be living for? Love, just like marriage, is just a symbol given a meaning, but I think a human being can be meaningful without symbols.
And I thought I could challenge some Christians with their view about love as a symbol as well, if you really read what I said carefully.
So, are you as a Christian just living for love, not the humans?
Doesn’t that make the humans you claim to love rather secondary if it’s love itself you are actually after?
And does it require a human or inhuman subject for you to fulfill this need?
Love has no meaning outside a cultural context. Humans give it an instrinsic meaning because we believe in its meaning. For an animal, love is equal to air, simply because an animal cannot understand the symbolic meaning humans attach to love in their respective cultures.
If we also look at how Christians actually behave to their countrymen, it also turns out that the person they are projecting their love to is rather secondary. It rather seems to be the communal notion of love that is important than actually loving people, where the persons to whom you are projecting the love to are more important then the love you are projecting. That means that love itself becomes redundant as a symbolic carrier, and it would furthermore mean that you are more genuinely interested to those you are talking to instead of “spreading love”, and telling people how much “you love”. Because it seems what you are really after are just people who too, share this view inside a community, so in reality, it at least feels like you don’t really care about the people at all as long you have an agreement about the “love” itself.
This also holds very true in regards of what I have previously experienced. Remember, this is a challenge, not necessarily a claim I made to attack anyone or anyone’s beliefs.
Just because I write and support the AntiChristian Phenomenon doesn’t mean I’m not aware that there are reasonable Christians out there. There are Christians out there that see this world in the murky grey that we do. Alas, half the ones I wind up talking to see this in only Black in White.They only view things in the blinding “Light” of Biblical verse. This is the primary reason I support and joined the ACP. In a recent discussion I had on a Christian forum I ran into some of these reasonable fellows. I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone here what a fairly reasonable discussion looks like and prove that it can take place every now and again. I’ve also included an unreasonable discussion at the end to show that for some there really is no hope and show that our work is surely not done. I hope you enjoy some of the points that are made in the following. I’ve endeavored to keep everyone anonymous except for myself. I have also adjusted and fixed typos so I can present these conversations in a much more professional fashion. Read the rest of this entry »
I will quote some things quickly and reply, not all of it.
“In light of the troubling evidence for a beginning, and that we may not even be able to find a natural cause in principle, what explanation is given to the questions, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “Where did it all come from?”
I am more interested in why this bugs people as a whole. I am a follower of the Big Bounce theory, just like db0. In such a case, one can argue there was no real beginning since it’s cyclical. It’s like watching a snake biting it’s own tail, you cannot tell where it begins and where it ends because they are interconnected. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really bug me at all that we cannot fully tell the creation of our universe. It is an interesting field of research but it will not change my life if we would find testifiable proof whether a creator exists or not.
“What hope for an explanation do you have? Are you satisfied to have problems like this that are unanswered, or even unanswerable?”
Once again, I am fine with not knowing even though I know some people are working on it. I think there is a major difference in being “satisfied finding an answer” in any answer given than actually trying to find a REAL answer. Obviously most religious people belong to the former, scientists to the latter.
“What is the source of math and logic? The existence of this remarkably fine-tuned universe aside, how is it that we have these “languages of reality” to so elegantly describe and interact with it?”
Over time our brain simply developed to manage more abstractions; with that we could develop a better sense of logic and in addition to that mathematical skills, since both require abstract thinking. So at this point it’s all about evolution and humans being finely tuned as db0 said to just simply work this way, because it turned out it was the best method for us to survive in our current evironment (maybe too good, I should add).
“Do you deny objective morality; that the difference between Mother Teresa and Hitler is not just a matter of preference, like chocolate vs. vanilla ice cream? If not, then how do you ground morality; how do you explain where it came from and why we ought to be moral tomorrow?”
I do, since your so called “objective morals” are all based within the society you happened to currently live in. So Muslims living in extremist Muslim parts of the world might consider an eye for an eye a better moral method while a second generation Muslim living in Sweden might be propagating for women’s rights and that it does not impede on their rights wearing a veil. A Westerner in general might shudder at the idea that we should cut off the hand who has committed theft, as clearly stated in the Quran, but lest not forget that there are quite a few atrocious comments within the Old Testament that Christians are equally good at denying (moral laws written in a society existing 2000 years ago), such as beating your children if they don’t obey their parents, moral laws that simply don’t fit into today’s modern humanitarian views. So no, objective morals do not exist, simply put, since all your moral stems stem from the society you live in.
“Skeptics often bring up the “problem of evil” as evidence against God, i.e., if there is a good and all-powerful God, then why is there evil in the world.
Do you think that this is a valid objection? If so, are you admitting that there is evil in the world? What is “evil,” and do you not admit its opposite: “good?”
The problem of evil objection only makes sense if such things as good and evil are objectively real, not just preference statements.”
Of course it’s a good counterargument since the Bible explicitly said that God is x of this, one including being omni-benevolent. If God then is all good, then there is a logical paradox if evil still exists, as originally outlined by Epicurus (I will not bother quoting since it’s probably overquoted as it is).
So then it basically rounds down to whether you believe evil exists at all, and it doesn’t. Referring back to the previous argumentation about objective morals, evil is very interconnected. 1500 years ago Catholic Romans found it very justifiable to treat pagans and heathens like trash; even their own slaves who may be fellow Christians. This is something most Christians today would still look upon as an evil act since the Bible speaks for turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbor. So our very idea of what is evil has changed throughout history itself; it was once not an evil or immoral act to treat women badly but it is today, and now Christian women in particular are even speaking for the equality of the genders as proposed by the Bible, which is utter complete bullshit if someone has actually studied the issue a little bit further than the statements that “god loves everyone” (such as a woman being stoned to death if she is found to commit aldultery, yet the man in a similar situation “gets away with it”). It is evident there is a major difference in treatment between women and men both in the Old and the New Testament, and that women are in general of lesser worth, less spiritually pure, indirectly pointing to the cause of this “taint” lies in their monthly periods.
I don’t find it evil if a majority of the human race would be killed off, would you? The fact we may hold different moral views about this matter evidently speaks for that objective evil does not exist, and when you turn my argument against me and says that I am evil, you are very much projecting a subjective point of view, and your argument thus fails.
“Does life really have no point other than what you pretend for your own sake? Will you say, like atheist philosopher Albert Camus, that the only serious question is “suicide?” What values and purpose will you instill in your children? Will you be honest with them, or will you borrow ideas from some non-atheistic belief system so as not to disappoint?”
I don’t live for my own sake, I live for enjoyment, purely. If I don’t enjoy my life, of course suicide is the other option. I don’t have a reason at all for existing or living. I will live as long there is great food to eat, great friends to meet and what other physical or mental pleasure you can imagine. Yes, I live for pleasure, don’t we all? If we don’t enjoy our lives we generally don’t want to continue living. I will not instill any child with a purpose if I now would have children (at this point in my life I find it very doubtful), so the question itself is a non-issue. I will not direct, but I will be there as a GUIDE, when this person is looking for answers I will answer them in my way but still leave the question open. Better to keep up with the possibilities than rejecting the alternatives. Of course I will be honest; anything else is intellectual dishonest from my regard and if that happens I will shoot myself in the foot. When I was a kid my father indirectly encouraged me to study facts and the world itself and even at a young age I had a thirst for wisdom and I preferred watching a documentary about animals or nature over a cartoon movie. If anything, this is a mentality I hope to instill, that no answer is given until we search for one.
“Are you prepared to accept the idea that no one is really morally responsible for their bad behavior and, conversely, that virtuous behavior is not commendable? In what way will you seek to convince me that I am really not a conscious and self-aware being; that it is just a complex biochemical illusion? Can you accept that computer programs may one day be just as much “persons” as you, yourself?”
Of course I am, and many things which may be considered virtuous are for me despisable ideas of how to lead a human life. How about this person trying to present such an exeggerated ethos? What exactly would make you a better person because you happen to take care of a lot of kids? Nothing. It’s all just a silly cultural idea that taking care of children and in general being a caretaker makes you a better person, especially if you are a woman. As for you not being a self-aware and conscious being, that’s rediculous. What has it got to do with ideas of virtue vs bad behavior? Of course you are self-aware and conscious about your existence, or you wouldn’t ask that question to begin with. You already have your set of morals and ideas of what is being virtuous behavior and what isn’t. Some of it is instilled from our parents and other people from your environment, some of it is instilled by general culture by itself. I inherently believe that we can make personal choices, but the issue is rather whether you are willing to do so. As for AI, there’s still a long way to go. Maybe some day in the future we will have such a complex computer mechanism that allows it to behave just like a human, but we don’t today. I am open for the possibility but I find it pointless to talk about it before we are there.
“Every known time and culture is rich with stories of near death experiences, ghosts, angels, demons, prophetic dreams and visions, and miraculous healings. While some of these are certainly spurious or not
well documented, others have reasonable experimental support. In addition to this, humans seem to be incurably religious; the idea of God and the spiritual is deeply entrenched in the human psyche, if not in its actual experience.
What are we to make of all this? If man is simply an adapted biological organism, then how is it that we did not manage to adapt to our natural environment in this area – why are we not “naturalists” rather than theists? Can’t any of this be a hint toward reality, or must we think that the bulk of humanity flirts with insanity?”
Pretty sure this man can answer that question better than I can.
The Antichristian Phenomenon
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