The Thinker, Atheism, Freethought, Heresy, Reason, Logic, Existentialism, Humanism. Options

[Brainiac]

THE THINKER

[Brainiac]

Thanks to Ibn Warraq's book, I am learning a lot more than I thought I knew. I had thought that the furthest limits of Islamic thinking were in Sufi mysticism, where the rejection of mandatory practices (Hajj pilgrimages, 5 x daily prayers, etc) were suggested or encouraged when achieving an elevated height of heart-to-heart communion with God was attained. Sort of like an Islamic version of raganuga-bhakti that eschewed the 'vaidhi' practices of mainstream Islam. I was also aware of the homosexual poetry of Abu Nuwas and similar things but I thought they were just libertine exceptions that slipped through the net of censorship. However, it seems like there was an extraordinary tradition of atheism and freethought in perhaps the most fundamentalist of world religions which has received scant attention. Perhaps the best known of the Islamic freethinkers was Abu `L-ala Ahmad ibn Abdallah al-Ma'arri (what a tongue-twister!).

Al-Ma'arri (973-1057) was born near Aleppo (Syria). An attack of smallpox in childhood led to his permanent blindness, but he became well known for his poetry and people flocked to hear his lectures on poetry and grammar.

Here follow some selections from his work. In this stanza he appears to deny the doctrine of ressurection:

We laugh, but inept is our laughter;
We should weep and weep sore,
Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter
Re-molded no more.

His poetry generally has a pessimistic flavour:

Better for Adam and all who issued forth from his loins
That he and they, yet unborn, created never had been!
For whilst his body was dust and rotten bones in the earth
Ah, did he feel what his children saw and suffered of woe.

His feelings on religion were that they were little more than "ancient fables", only worth something to exploiters of the masses:

So, too, the creeds of man: the one prevails
Until the other comes; and this one fails
When that one triumphs; ay, the lonesome world
Will always want the latest fairy-tales.

I find all of this quite amazing to read, and there is plenty more besides. It has inspired me to look to other traditions and consider if they also had threads of dissidence or freethought. In our favourite Vedic tradition the (in)famous works of Carvaka Muni fit the bill.

[evakurvan]

I did not read this post yet but the first thing I saw was this verse:

We laugh, but inept is our laughter;
We should weep and weep sore,
Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter
Re-molded no more.

Which reminded me of this verse from the poem Buried Life by Matthew Arnold, in the tone and on inept laughter and tears:

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne

which is in full here http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold...buriedlife.html though I tend to confusion at line 37.

[Brainiac]

That was wonderful, Eva! I especially enjoyed paragraphs 2 and 6.

[evakurvan]

Okay now that I've read the post, to link it to it, this same poet laments in another poem how not even religious Faith is any longer a solace or anodyne to him:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

The talk of full and round and bright girdles furling is sweet and reminiscent of gopi lilic tales - but in the sudden turn of phrases that follow - rings cloy and sounds in retrospect like hack toy fairytales.

oops Edit: Glad you liked it Brainiac!

[Brainiac]

Eva that second poem was also wonderful. Very resonant.

More from Al-Ma'arri:

Hanifs [Muslims] are stumbling, Christians all astray
Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools.

But I've read a more cleaner-cut version elsewhere:

The Jews, the Muslims, and the Christians, they've got it all wrong.
The people of the world only divide into two kinds: one sort with brains
who hold no religion; the other with religion and no brain.

Another one:

What is religion? A maid kept close that no eye may view her;
The price of her wedding-gifts and dowry baffles the wooer.
Of all the goodly doctrine that I from the pulpit heard
My heart has never accepted so much as a single word

Something interesting I find in al-Ma'arri is his views on death. In one poem he admires the Indian ideal of cremation and yet seems not to mind the custom of burial:

The holy fights by Moslem heroes fought,
The saintly works by Christian hermits wrought
And those of Jewry or Sabian creed --
Their valour reaches not the Indian's deed
Whom zeal and awe religiously inspire
To cast his body on the flaming pyre.
Yet is man's death a long, long sleep of lead
And all his life a waking. O'er our dead
The prayers are chanted, hopeless farewells ta'en;
And there we lie, never to stir again.
Shall I so fear in mother earth to rest?
How soft a cradle is thy mother's breast!
When once the viewless spirit from me is gone,
By rains unfreshed let my bones rot on!

And in another goes forward to praise the practice of cremation and preferring it over burial:

And like the dead of Ind I do not fear
To go to thee in flames; the most austere
Angel of fire a softer tooth and tongue
Hath he than dreadful Munker and Nakir.

The reference to Munker and Nakir refers to the Islamic belief that two angels of those names will open the graves of the dead on Judgement Day and cross-examine the occupant on their religious faith and beliefs. If they are found wanting, they are shoved back into the grave to await hell. Another aspect of (controversial) Islamic doctrine relates to the "torment of the grave", the idea that people who deliberately reject religion inspite of being exposed to it's teachings will be tortured endlessly after death in the grave until Judgement Day. Little surprise that al-Ma'arri prefers cremation!

[Brainiac]

D. S. Margoliouth, a reputed orientalist and editor/translator, combined the following sentiments from al-Ma'arri's poems:

Do not suppose the statements of the Prophets to be true; they are all fabrications. Men lived comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The "sacred books" are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce. What inconsistency that God should forbid the taking of life, and himself send two angels to take each man's! And as for the promise of a second life - the soul could well have dispensed with both existences.

A further thought on prophets (and by extension, clergy in other systems) from al-Ma'arri is very close to my heart as it perfectly and concisely sums up an early thought I had, the essence of the neverending existential crisis that man faces:

The Prophets, too, among us come to teach,
Are one with those who from the pulpit preach;
They pray, and slay, and pass away, and yet
Our ills are as the pebbles on the beach.

Islam certainly holds no monopoly on truth, according to al-Ma'arri:

Mohammed or Messiah! Here thou me,
The truth entire nor here nor there can be;
How should our God who made the sun and the moon
Give all his light to One, I cannot see.

His opinions on the hypocrisies of clergy are expectedly low:

I take God to witness that the souls of men are without
intelligence, like the souls of moths.
They said, "A divine!" but the divine is an untruthful
disputatious person, and words are wounds.

For his own sordid ends
The pulpit he ascends
And though he disbelieves in resurrection,
Makes all his hearers quail
Whilst he unfolds a tale
Of Last Day scenes that stun the recollection.

They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me
that these are a fiction from first to last.
O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth.
Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them!

Reading this stuff, it constantly amazes me how the keen observations of a 9th-Century thinker can find strong parallels with today's experiences in GV of tired old men ranting or gasping from the vyasasana, what to speak of (especially hypocritical) clergical experiences in other religions.

[Brainiac]

Like many other things, atheistic ideas can be traced to the Ancient Greeks. The Greek term 'atheos' (ἄθεος) simply means "without god". The a means "without" and theos refers to god, and from this (Greek) standpoint an atheist is a person without a belief in God. According to The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, this definition, quite rightly, doesn't apply to a modern interpretation of the term 'atheist' because it doesn't incorporate the arguably more popular notion of atheists that deny the existence of God.

This has given rise to two types: positive atheism and negative atheism. Given that definitions of God vary with culture and tradition, a general conception exists of a personal God who gets intimately involved with human affairs and occasionally grants some special revelation is defined as theism. This is contrasted with the deistic viewpoint of a God who is remote and not at all interested or intefering in human affairs, the polytheistic view (many gods) and panentheistic view (identification with nature). Negative atheism, then, in the broad sense refers to the absense of belief in a God or gods, not just the absence of belief in a personal theistic God, and in a narrow sense is an absence of belief in a theistic God. Positive atheism is, broadly, disbelief in all gods and, narrowly, disbelief in a theistic God. These categories are still insufficient in defining the various shades of positions that atheists can hold because it is often the case that an individual observes different God-conceptions differently. A person may suppose that there is no reason to believe that anthropomorphic gods like Zeus exist and will therefore be a positive atheist with regards to Zeus and similar gods. That person could still be a negative athesit with regards to Paul Tillich's God. People can and do hold differing conceptions of theistic Gods; one can also be a positive atheist where Aquinas' God is concerned, yet be a negative atheist with Mother Teresa's God.

And as far as agnosticism is concerned (neither believing nor disbelieving in God) it is often contrasted with atheism, which would be misleading. Agnosticism and positive atheism are incompatible: if atheism is true, agnosticism is false and vice-versa. Agnosticism is, however, compatible with negative atheism. This doesn't mean that agnosticism entails negative atheism, but that since agnostics do not believe in a God, they are by definition negative atheists. Neither does negative atheism entail agnosticism, as a negative atheist may disbelieve in God but need not. An agnostic, supposedly, is sceptical that good grounds exist for God's existence whereas an atheist is not. Agnostics may also be sceptical about God's existence but also believe good grounds exist for God's existence. These opposing reasons offset each other with the result that it leaves no overall positive reason to believe or disbelieve.

If we call the view that there are no good grounds for belief in God's existence and none for believing God's existence as sceptical agnosticism, and the view that there are equally good reasons for believing that both atheism and theism offset one another as cancellation agnosticism, we see that arguments intended to establish both negative and positive atheism refute both sceptical and cancellation agnosticism. If one postulates that negative atheism is justified, it undermines cancellation agnosticsm as it assumes that both atheism and theism have good grounds that cancel each other out, and negative atheism entails that there are no good grounds for theistic belief. Similarly, arguments showing good grounds for the nonexistence of God undermines sceptical agnosticism, as sceptical agnosticism assumes the lack of no good grounds for either atheism or theism.

Atheism in Ancient Greece can be traced to at least the second half of the 5th Century BC although the first "atheist" was not an Athenian. The first prominent philosopher to be termed as such was Protagoras (ca. 490-420BC), who became famous for perhaps the opening sentence of his work "Concerning the Gods":

"Concerning the gods I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form;
for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life,"

This quote shows Protagoras as an agnostic rather than atheist, as noted by Cicero in his De natura deorum and Galen in his De propriis placitus. During his lifetime he was regarded as a man of high repute (quite usual for respected philosophers) but research reveals that attitudes changed in the Hellenistic period and notices started appearing about his being condemned to death and this work was burned in the marketplace. It is unknown if these reports were true, but what is known is that he soon faced accusations of outright atheism. The situation became somewhat inflamed with the contributions of Anaxagoras (ca. 500-428BC) who declared that the sun was "a red-hot mass of metal". This isn't a big deal to us, but for the Athenians the sun was a god, Helios, and Anaxagoras' observation stripped the sun of its divine nature. With the usual paucity of information that befuddles the chronology of events in Ancient Greece, one can usually tell the reactions of Greek society to these sorts of claims in the mockery enwritten in their plays. Aristophanes in his Clouds portrays Socrates as "walking the air and contemplating the sun." Cratinus mocks the philosopher Hippon in his Panoptai as impious for stating that the sky was a baking-cover. Eupolis implicates Protagoras in his Flatterers as pontificating "about the heavens" while again Aristophanes allows the chorus of his Birds to portray people as needing to pay attention to the snoots so that "you may hear correctly from us all about the things on high". Euripides, who later ended up musing atheistic thoughts himself, initially exhibited his resentment by having a chorus recite: "who, seeing this, does not teach beforehand that his soul is considered a god, and does not hurl far from him the crooked deceits of talkers about the heavens, whose mad tongues make random throws about what is hidden, devoid of understanding."

This all seems to have worried Plato, who 'dialogued' the following as per the words of Socrates:

"There is a wise man called Socrates who has theories about the heavens and has investigated everything below the earth, and can
make the weaker argument defeat the stronger. It is these people, gentlemen of the jury, the disseminators of these rumours, who
are my dangerous accusers, because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters must be an atheist."

This is a rather valuable dialogue of Plato's, as it shows that simply speculating about the nature of the world led to accusations of atheism among the Greek 'bhadraloka'. There are many more instances of this and other traces of atheistic thought in Greek history. I may write more about it some other time, but what are the take-home lessons from all this thus far?

• Atheism/rationalism/critical thinking is old as the hills.
• It has about as many different shades as religion does, or even specific religious traditions (e.g. the hundreds of denominations within Protestant Christianity).
• Almost as soon as it was created, the term 'atheist' was used as a label of mockery and a tool to oppress and harass those who dared to think differently than the norm.

It is probably for that last reason that I don't consider myself an atheist.

[Dhyana]

Good text clarifying the terms (Socrates: The beginning of wisdom is definition of terms) and interesting conclusion.

[Brainiac]

I like this article.
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Atheists and believers can get along

My atheist 'sermon' in Westminster Abbey seems incongruous, but it shows good faith is more important than the right beliefs

o Julian Baggini
o guardian.co.uk, Sunday 17 October 2010 11.00 BST

Last Monday, I delivered an atheist "sermon" from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. It was surprising enough that the chaplain of Westminster School had invited me to give a "thought for the day" to the assembled students, even more so when he suggested I talked about why I was an atheist.

The fact that this sounds strange, shocking even, tells us something important about how atheism is now perceived, and its relationship to faith. The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than "not-theist", it seems that for many, "a" stands for anti.

Of course, in one sense, anyone who believes anything can be described as being anti what they don't believe. But, for instance, we would not usually call a Christian an anti-Jew, or a Muslim an anti-Hindu. Why not? Because being anti suggests more than just disagreement; it suggests hostility, active dislike, the desire to eliminate the thing one is against. That's why anti-capitalists are rightly called, because they don't just disagree with capitalism, they want to destroy it.

If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith. Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.

Of course, there are plenty of atheists who do think that all religion is harmful, and that every person who believes in God is being hampered by a terrible illusion. Plenty of atheists are anti-theists. What is more, this breed of atheist tends to attract more attention, so for many, this is just what atheism seems to be.

But there are also lots of atheists like me. We simply do not believe in God because we see no good reason to do so. To invite us into the citadels of faith and ask us to explain what we believe is therefore not to bring the enemy though the gate, simply because we are not the enemy.

I would suggest that a far greater enemy to the kind of liberal Anglicanism that has prevailed in the Church of England, custodian of Westminster Abbey, would be a biblical literalist. But I do not imagine that the decision to allow such a person to talk in Westminster Abbey would raise as many eyebrows as the decision to let an atheist do so. Somehow, it has become received wisdom that the most important division is between people of faith and people of none. This is not only false, it is unchristian. Time and again in the gospels, Jesus argues that it is better to be a good gentile than a bad Jew. The Samaritan is more of a friend to the Christian that the Pharisee who walks by on the other side. What matters more than having the right faith is acting in good faith.

Dividing the world up into believers and non-believers, while accurate in many ways, doesn't draw the distinction between friends and foes. I see my allies as being the community of the reasonable, and my enemies as the community of blind faith and dogmatism. Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should likewise recognise that it has a kinship with atheists who hold those same values. And it should realise that it has more to fear from other people of faith who deny those values than it does from reasonable atheists like myself.

So my time in the pulpit is not so incongruous after all. That it seems that way to many simply reflects two sad facts: that atheism has come to be seen as anti-theism, and that, perhaps partly in response, we expect people of faith to forge not-that-holy alliances with each other rather than far better unholy alliances with kindred non-believers. We should challenge both those assumptions, for the sake of values that good believers and good atheists alike hold dear.

[Brainiac]

I have the deepest admiration for Baggini's writings and have read his book. He is the proverbial sensible voice crying in the wilderness. But in this supposedly conciliatory article he doesn't seem to be addressing the matter of the cultural war between theism and unbelief that is taking place at this time. I don't think he is ignorant of it so he must be ignoring it. He won't talk about it in Westminster Abbey anyway.

The fact of the matter is that there is a cultural war going on that is extremely serious in the way that serious opposition and obstacles are being constructed against progress by those of evangelical fervour. In some places (America) it may be quite vocal, and in other places (UK) it is quiet and rumbling on, and it is the latter that I find more insidious and sinister as it has the possibility to creep into almost every corner of society almost undetected, with a veneer of respectability. The new Tory govt. (sorry, Tory-Lib Dem "coalition") won't help matters by taking a decidedly conservative view of issues. For example, they seem to look back to the Thatcherite agenda when they recently unveiled a tax break for married couples in their recent spending review aimed to get the economy back on track.

In any case, a generally good article which would have been much better if it addressed current issues. It seems funny to me that adherents of Gaudiya Vaishnavism spend a lot of time arguing the niceties and subtle nuances of theology. To be fair, GV [is] a complex, rich and sophisticated system that deserves discussion. Yet they don't seem to have the slightest grasp of unbelief and ancillary concepts, as outlined in Baggini's piece. Very often they fall into the trap of misunderstanding, generalisation, or open hostility at perceiving a supposed threat ("'a' must necessarily mean 'anti'."). Peculiarly this trend continues with former adherents too. So you need thought=provoking pieces like this sometimes that educate. It's funny how possibly the most admired GV scholar in recent years is Jagat, yet in my discussions with him he revealed that he also is one of those who haven't the faintest grasp on unbelief. He is an admirer of Karen Armstrong though, so what can you expect?

[ePiTau]

That was an interesting and well-expressed article by Baggini. Perhaps just a tiny bit too schmoozy for my taste, though. But then again, what can a poor boy do when he is called to speak from the chancel in a respectable cathedral? I for one am an atheist who likes to be in churches, especially the more ancient ones. I hope there will always be churches, even if there is no religion.

[Kalisurfer]

He is an admirer of Karen Armstrong though, so what can you expect?

Are you speaking of Jagat or Baggini as being an admirer of Armstrong? Why would being an admirer of Karen Armstrong make one be questioned or suspect?

I have found her books a great read, while though a person of faith, she is by all means fighting against fundamentalism and the hardened strict interpretation of scripture that bleeds into the world politics, questioning science and stopping the progress of intellectual freedom to explore and experience.

I liked the Baggini article a lot, thanks for posting.

[Brainiac]

Are you speaking of Jagat or Baggini as being an admirer of Armstrong? Why would being an admirer of Karen Armstrong make one be questioned or suspect?

I was speaking of Jagat as an admirer of Armstrong. He said as much on his Facebook page a while ago, and repeats her arguments in discussion when called for.

The reason why Armstrong has little or no credibility in certain circles is because her works have been strongly criticised by professors of philosophy and literature in high-end publishing publications. (I can't seem to find a good link right now but this one does a good job at summarising.) To be honest I haven't read any of her books, so I only go by the reviews I read. Aside from indulging in blatant revisionism of religious historical matters, she also appears to have hijacked anthropological/neuroscientific understandings of religion as the brain's "default state" to favour her point that religion fulfils some human need.

I know what she's trying to get at, though, and I like the points she is trying to make about religious fundamentalism etc. (which are more or less geared to interfaith understandings), but historical revisionism and capitalising on scientific findings isn't the best way to go about it.

[Kalisurfer]

Are you speaking of Jagat or Baggini as being an admirer of Armstrong? Why would being an admirer of Karen Armstrong make one be questioned or suspect?

I was speaking of Jagat as an admirer of Armstrong. He said as much on his Facebook page a while ago, and repeats her arguments in discussion when called for.

The reason why Armstrong has little or no credibility in certain circles is because her works have been strongly criticised by professors of philosophy and literature in high-end publishing publications. (I can't seem to find a good link right now but this one does a good job at summarising.) To be honest I haven't read any of her books, so I only go by the reviews I read. Aside from indulging in blatant revisionism of religious historical matters, she also appears to have hijacked anthropological/neuroscientific understandings of religion as the brain's "default state" to favour her point that religion fulfils some human need.

I know what she's trying to get at, though, and I like the points she is trying to make about religious fundamentalism etc. (which are more or less geared to interfaith understandings), but historical revisionism and capitalising on scientific findings isn't the best way to go about it.

I see what you mean, though I don't think Armstrong considers herself an academic historian or someone who writes for the annals of theoretical academia . As a former nun and a woman who has dealt with epilepsy, she has found a voice in a very male dominated territory, seemingly building bridges in an ecumenical sense through a historical review of religion and its impact on the world we live in. She creates her writing for the public at large with the hope of engaging thought and discussion outside the ivory walls of higher learning, religious institutions and the domain of what you term "high-end publishing publications." She obviously has made some historical mistakes, but those mistake do not take away from her central message of finding a sense of unity among world religions, attempting to tone down the heated rhetoric of warring factions, especially toward the fundamentalist wingnuts out there. I don't think any one author is capable of highjacking any anthropological/neuroscientific understandings, but of course she can come to conclusions that many would disagree with and wish to correct.

Thanks for the link to the English Review, it was a good read and counter point to Armstrongs point of view.

[Brainiac]

The latest Jesus & Mo coincidentally parodies the views of Armstrong/Jagat:

[Brainiac]

The cartoon is a parody of a popular style of argument that takes place in current religion vs. atheism debates. To hear something like: "You cannot prove 100% that God doesn't exist, therefore your atheism is just as much of a faith and belief in God's non-existence as religion is of God's existence, and can be subject to the same type of scrutiny", is quite a fashionable thing to say and heard a lot nowadays. On the surface it seems commonsense and quite logical, and a lot of intelligent people buy into it quite easily, but taking a moment to think about it a little more will reveal just how silly it is to employ this type of "equivalence" dialectic.

Let Julian Baggini explain why:

"Many critics of atheism will say that this is not possible, since atheism is parasitic on religion. This is evident in its very name—atheism is a-theism: the negation of theistic belief. Hence atheism is by its very nature negative and relies for its existence on the religious beliefs it rejects.

"I think this view is profoundly mistaken. Its initial plausibility is based on a very crude piece of flawed reasoning we can call the etymological fallacy. This is the mistake of thinking that one can best understand what a word means by understanding its origin. But this is evidently not always true. For example, the etymology of ‘philosophy’ is the Greek for ‘love of wisdom’. Yet one cannot really understand what philosophy means today simply by knowing this etymological fact. Likewise, if you go into an Italian restaurant knowing only that ‘tagliatelle’ literally means ‘little boot laces’, you won't have much idea what you're going to end up eating if you order it. So the mere fact that the word ‘atheist’ is constructed as a negation of theism is not enough to show that it is essentially negative. Etymology aside, we can see how casting atheism in a negative light is no more than a historical accident. Consider this story, which begins as fact and ends as fiction.

"In Scotland there is a deep lake called Loch Ness. Many people in Scotland—almost certainly the majority—believe that the lake is like other lochs in the country. Their beliefs about the lake are what we might call normal. But that is not to say they have no particular beliefs. It's just that the beliefs they have are so ordinary that they do not require elucidation. They believe that the lake is a natural phenomenon of a certain size, that certain fish live in it, and so on.

"However, some people believe that the loch contains a strange creature, known as the Loch Ness Monster. Many claim to have seen it, although no firm evidence of its existence has ever been presented. So far our story is simple fact. Now imagine how the story could develop. The number of believers in the monster starts to grow. Soon, a word is coined to describe them: they are part-mockingly called ‘Nessies’. (Many names of religions started as mocking nicknames: Methodist, Quaker, and even Christian all started out this way.) However, the number of Nessies continues to increase and the name ceases to become a joke. Despite the fact that the evidence for the monster's existence is still lacking, soon being a Nessie is the norm and it is the people previously thought of as normal who are in the minority. They soon get their own name, ‘Anessies’—those who don't believe in the monster.

"Is it true to say that the beliefs of Anessies are parasitic on those of the Nessies? That can't be true, because the Anessies’ beliefs pre-date those of the Nessies. The key point is not one of chronology, however. The key is that the Anessies would believe exactly the same as they do now even if Nessies had never existed. What the rise of the Nessies did was to give a name to a set of beliefs that had always existed but which was considered so unexceptional that it required no special label.

"The moral of the story should be clear. Atheists subscribe to a certain world view that includes numerous beliefs about the world and what is in it. Theists say that there is something else that also exists—God. If theists did not exist, atheists still would, but perhaps there would be no special name for them. But since theism has become so dominant in our world, with so many people believing in God or gods, atheism has come to be defined in contrast to theism. That makes it no more parasitic on religion than the beliefs of the Anessies are parasitic on those of the Nessies.

"The absurdity of saying that atheism is parasitic on religious belief is perhaps made most clear by considering what would happen if everyone ceased to believe in God. If atheism were parasitic on religion, then surely it could not exist without religion. But in this imagined scenario, what we would have would not be the end of atheism but its triumph. Atheism no more needs religion than atheists do."

- Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press. pp. 7-10.

[Dhyana]

Nice article, he is good at explaining things. What I find sobering about it, though, is that these things even need explaining!

...a very crude piece of flawed reasoning we can call the etymological fallacy. This is the mistake of thinking that one can best understand what a word means by understanding its origin.

Ahemm.... this reminds me of someone: Partnerpada and his p'rports!

[Gerard]

Nice article, he is good at explaining things. What I find sobering about it, though, is that these things even need explaining!

...a very crude piece of flawed reasoning we can call the etymological fallacy. This is the mistake of thinking that one can best understand what a word means by understanding its origin.

Ahemm.... this reminds me of someone: Partnerpada and his p'rports!

I wish his purports were that useful!

[Prisni]

Ahemm.... this reminds me of someone: Partnerpada and his p'rports!

Hmm, in some ways you have a point. But would you rather believe someone who said - Krishna said it is so?

Actually, I have found that when you (I) say anything, the first question is always - who said that?
"I said it" is somehow not so convincing.
You have to become an established rightsayer, and then suddenly others think every sneese you make is the absolute truth.

I was never a big friend of Prabhupada's purports, when I was in ISKCON. I thought them wordy, even blabbery, and speaking about something else. I avoided listening to Prabhupada's lectures.
But now, when I understand the subject matter myself, I find them genious and right to the point, and enjoy his ability for words and explanations. There is a kind of logic and poetic beauty to his words. It is a big contrast to most of his "followers" who just pile quotes and words, and make clumsy philosophical mistakes as soon as they say something from their own thinking.