User talk:ListenerX/On Secular Humanism

On Secular Humanism

I'm not sure I understand the author's point of this quote. What is your take?--En attendant Godot_{"«Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! V.Nabokov»} 14:29, 16 March 2009 (EDT)

Mr. Bonewits explains himself more fully here (although in doing so he goes way over the top). I think he was trying to point out that Western atheists often reject non-Abrahamic religions not on their merits, but on the basis of what Christianity has to say about them.

In this vein, many atheists (e.g., Richard Dawkins) think that all they have to do to argue for atheism is to disprove the idea of a monotheistic creator like YHVH, and secular humanists only reject a part of Christianity. ListenerX^TalkerX 15:02, 16 March 2009 (EDT)

Ah, that makes sense to me. I've often had that problem with some atheist writers. They lump all religion into one category, not understanding things like the Atheistic aspects of Buddhism, the pantheistic and panENtheistic aspects of some native American religion, for example or the monadism of Spinoza and Einstein. I have always been comfortable saying I can virtually *prove* that the tri omni god does not exist. But there would be no way to argue or prove that a pantheists' god does not exist, since it is by definition "all of creation" without transcendence.--En attendant Godot_{"«Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! V.Nabokov»} 15:46, 16 March 2009 (EDT)

I tried to argue roughly the same thing in my first essay. ListenerX^TalkerX 16:30, 16 March 2009 (EDT)

no gods

I don't believe in any gods, whichever you pick to say I don't believe in, they don't exist. They can make for fun stories, of course, and some gods make better fiction than others. Like the Thor hammer I made out of a shovel handle wrapped in strips of a dead vinyl soccer ball as a seven-year old. Sadly, I didn't have the biceps for the job, so I ceased to believe. ħuman 05:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course the Norse myths are fiction, just like Aesop's fables, but also like Aesop's fables they have a sort of truth to them.

Now think quickly — when you hear the word pagan, what other word comes to mind first, "bulls***" or "idolatrous"? ListenerX^TalkerX 06:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)