How to reawaken the religion debate?

Dave!

My post from the Richard Dawkins thread...

I'm in agreeance with whoever said that they hope it generates some debate. If it gets enough publicity then maybe more people will start to discuss this sort of stuff, and realise once and for all that religion = poo-poo! >.<

I really think that this should be our next evolutionary step (as a society) -- total secularism.

I really don't understand how people can't see the pattern in history of gods and deities. It's upsetting.

We atheists need to unite! But seriously, some time in the near future secular groups need to get together and organise mass demonstrations, debates, documentaries, articles, etc., to reawaken the whole religion debate. Surely logic will prevail!

Don't take this the wrong way and report me to the Gardai;), but I wonder what would happen if tomorrow, all of the major monuments, temples, churches, etc., sacred to each religion, were to be destroyed.
I've dreamt about that before, as some sort of symbolic action that would represent humankind moving on from this crap.

I've incriminated myself now, so it doesn't look like I'll be doing it -- any volunteers?
I'm kinda digressing here (that couldn't happen til the debate is reawoken and religion shown to be the farce that it is, anyway).

I'm serious about this being our next evolutionary step! We've got opposing thumbs, now we've to make the move towards secularism

The debate seems to be dead about atheism vs. theism, and discussions seem to be more about which religion is right -- christianity or islam, scientology or kaballah, whatever. If there's gonna be any chance of the role of religion in society being diminished, then there really needs to be alot more publicity brought to the subject.
At the moment the only famous atheist I can think of (as in someone who actively promotes it -- I'm sure there's plenty who don't even mention it) is Richard Dawkins, and most people have never heard of him! So he's not THAT famous. What if Britney Spears turned around tomorrow and said she's an atheist? Wouldn't that take things in a positive direction? I don't mean that kids should be brainwashed into atheism because BS is one (although it's better than being brainwashed into catholicism!!!), but it would arouse debate again.

Likewise, what if a bunch of different anti-religion groups got together, started an advertising campaign, and then organised a mass rally of thousands, with the purpose being to reawaken debate? It'd be on the news, the thoughts would be going around in people's heads, etc.
Although I could see the headline in the Star being "SATANISTS MARCH DOWN O'CONNELL STREET" :rolleyes:

What if a bunch of public debates were organised, with guest speakers. University societies could start SecularSoc, or somethin more catchy

For how many more decades or centuries is religion going to dominate societies? I'm saddened when I see how strictly people follow this crap.
Okay I'm done, sorry for the incoherent ramblings, it's late

Sangre

If it hasn't left us in an odd 20,000 years of development, I can't see it leaving any time soon.

Also DaveMcG, you were looking to start up a UCD society, the secular/humanist one sounds like a great idea. Although probably a risk of a bunch of people gathering to talk about how superior they are about their reasoning.

Dave!

Aye, but I'm takin a year out now , so if there's none set up in a year's time then I'll look into it, good idea, thanks!

UU

Although I'm anti-theist, I don't think one should forcebly remove all religious places from a society and force people into atheism. That's what happened in the Soviet Bloc, no? The whole purpose behing secularism is to separate church and state by keeping religions out of civil, social and political affairs, by making religion a purely private matter. That is by having all public schools, hospitals, etc. secular, non-denominational and if religious organisations want to have schools and hospitals, they should be only private and carefully monitered.

One has to remember that even though we're atheist/agnostic/secular, no everyone is and religion gives them hope and meaning and I totally respect that. I respect how some people do follow a particular religion and others don't but I can't tolerate the fundamentalist and fanatical varieties which must be fought against and criminalised. Of course, I think some atheists can be very fanatic also.

Beruthiel

DaveMcG wrote:

but I wonder what would happen if tomorrow, all of the major monuments, temples, churches, etc., sacred to each religion, were to be destroyed.

That's a step too far imo - they should be turned into hotels, bed and breakfasts and the smaller ones changed into private homes.
I always thought a church would make a great home, the acoustics when you put on your music or surround sound cinema system would be the biz.

I also agree that once religion and bigotery are removed from the planet it will be a much better place to live. I don't think that's going to happen though for at least a few more centuries - round about the time when jean luc becomes the captain of the enterprise.

Dave!

Well that's for another thread, but I'm sure you can agree that reawakening debate would be the best thing for society. Rather than everyone doing what their parents did, or doing what society deems normal (baptism, communion, confirmation, church wedding, church funeral). If more people were talking about it, then they'd realise how illogical religion really is, and secularism would gain more support. Stifling religious debate is only beneficial to religious institutions.

Beruthiel wrote:

That's a step too far imo - they should be turned into hotels, bed and breakfasts and the smaller ones changed into private homes.
I always thought a church would make a great home, the acoustics when you put on your music or surround sound cinema system would be the biz.

Turning them all into cinemas doesn't have the same symbolic effect as them all crumbling to the ground at the same time But yeah, at least we'd get some use out of them!

SimpleSam06

Beruthiel wrote:

That's a step too far imo - they should be turned into hotels, bed and breakfasts and the smaller ones changed into private homes.
I always thought a church would make a great home, the acoustics when you put on your music or surround sound cinema system would be the biz.

True, it would be a criminal shame to destroy the often immensely beautiful old relics of many cultures. These are monuments to the aspirations of people to become something greater than they are, in a roundabout fashion I'll grant you.

Beruthiel wrote:

I also agree that once religion and bigotery are removed from the planet it will be a much better place to live. I don't think that's going to happen though for at least a few more centuries - round about the time when jean luc becomes the captain of the enterprise.

Why? Religion isn't like a mountain you need to demolish one rock at a time; its all in people's minds. And people can change their minds on a whim. Essentially the entire human race could step beyond it in the time it takes to finish reading this sentence, should they feel the need to.

Beruthiel

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Why? Religion isn't like a mountain you need to demolish one rock at a time; its all in people's minds. And people can change their minds on a whim. Essentially the entire human race could step beyond it in the time it takes to finish reading this sentence, should they feel the need to.

In reality, do you see that happening anytime soon?

Schuhart

However a secular agenda is pursued, both it’s methods and object would have to be clearly different to religions. Where they use fear to gain and keep adherents, our agenda would have to be reason. So no Church burning, which in any case only makes people identify more with their religion of birth.

I’ve sometimes thought there’s a need for a sort of Atheist bible, containing a positive statement of the secular outlook, but at the same time something that was the very opposite of scripture. Where scripture is generally a block of text that cannot be changed, the model for an Atheist source book would be wikipedia. It would start just with such understanding as any average non-believer might have, and accrete and change as knowledge changes.

I’d see it’s as starting with acknowledging that giving credence to the senses is the first step of any attempt to make sense of reality. There should also be acknowledgement of how human ideas are formed, and hidden assumptions and gaps in perception. Where religion seeks to find a fictional certainty, the secular view needs to be all grown up and borrow some of Johnson’s attitude.

The object would be a simple, coherent statement of what we know about Life the Universe and Everything, relating in non-technical language that relates the statement to the proof i.e. ‘We know the universe is expanding, because astronomers can see that galaxies are moving away from each other. That suggests at one stage everything was closer together. We know from the distances travelled that the time taken for the Universe to travel out this far is billions of years.’

It would also attempt to set out some kind of ethical conception – in one sense the most difficult part, but at the same time I’d start with the UN Declaration of Human Rights and see where people took it.

There would need to be an absolute limit set on the length of the text - say 100 pages. Otherwise, we could just point in the direction of your nearest University library and say ‘there’s the Atheist Bible’ because that's what we'll end up with.

I’d see that as the start of a coherent movement – conscious that reason is the basis of the movement, and how it will spread, but also conscious of the need to not be a religion of non-belief, and conscious of the need to avoid nailing doctrines to the ground and having schisms over how many atheists can dance on the head of a Bishop.

That’s a dreadfully long post. Please put the word ‘Marmalade’ into any subsequent post if you got to the end.

SimpleSam06

Beruthiel wrote:

In reality, do you see that happening anytime soon?

Its really just a question of marketing, they have been changing people's minds for decades. Witness the gargantuan advertising vehicle that is MTV; not only did it succeed at making young people sit and listen to advertising, it is largely responsible for a lot of the "youth culture" we have in the west today. Religion versus television, all bets are off.

SimpleSam06

Schuhart wrote:

I’ve sometimes thought there’s a need for a sort of Atheist bible, containing a positive statement of the secular outlook, but at the same time something that was the very opposite of scripture. Where scripture is generally a block of text that cannot be changed, the model for an Atheist source book would be wikipedia. It would start just with such understanding as any average non-believer might have, and accrete and change as knowledge changes.

The idea of a book that is not a book is a very interesting one. I found this essay on Lovecraft's Necronomicon (a fictional book) recently, and it seems to be along the lines you are discussing, although the author is apparently a "practising magician". If you can get past all that, he has some very good points to make. Warning, its lengthier than your marmalade.

This is not the kind of answer that many people want to hear however so I have made the more satisfactory argument that the Necronomicon hinted at from the contextual framework of Lovecraft’s fiction is not a book that could have existed in the ancient world. It is an outcome of Lovecraft’s modern consciousness of the universe. It has attained a powerful mythic credibility precisely because it squares the circle: in a modern world where no grimoire has authority, the Necronomicon has this awe-inspiring authority while still being a grimoire.

It is like the Cretan who stated that all Cretans are liars. An essential aspect of its authority is that it is content free - had Lovecraft provided any substantial content other than the vague hints we have, we would tear it to pieces like any other supposed work of authority.

Schuhart

Interesting link, and I did have that feeling of someone approaching the same issue from a different starting point. I liked the sense of 'evolution' in his thought that in the past it would be impossible to have a book that explained our place in the cosmos, but it could be envisaged at some stage in the future.

SimpleSam06

Schuhart wrote:

Interesting link, and I did have that feeling of someone approaching the same issue from a different starting point. I liked the sense of 'evolution' in his thought that in the past it would be impossible to have a book that explained our place in the cosmos, but it could be envisaged at some stage in the future.

Yes, I find it helpful to look at issues from as many angles as possible. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it, as Aristotle put it.

5uspect

Saw this quote on A Rough History of Disbelief (part 2) the other day:
"Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest!"
-- Émile Zola

Its an interesting idea but very naive, religion probably will never disappear, we can only hope that it is generally recognised as the fiction that it is.

The art and architecture that is seen as part of organisied religion doesn't belong to religion, it is part of humanity.

robindch

> "Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest!"

A reworking of the rather goulish "Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest":

http://www.bartleby.com/73/965.html

attributed to Diderot, or maybe somebody else:

http://crookedtimber.org/2006/03/25/a-shameful-confession/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Meslier

.