[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

Fri Nov 26 16:54:42 UTC 2004

I've been following this thread and I felt it necessary to put my two cents
in.
I am an atheist and I am raising my children atheists. Most of my parents,
sister, aunts, uncles, and friends, are Christians. They are all aware of my
atheism as I am quite open and honest about it. As they try to "convert" me,
I try to convert them. I feel it is my mission in life to convert as many of
these Christians to rational thinking as possible.

That being said, I have to agree with Mike here. History is full of
religious figures. Some are bad, some are good. Being religious doesn;t make
someone bad. Lots of christians do great things. If person X believe that
God motivated them, or that God helped them accomplish something, then when
writing about X's actions in a historical perspective, it must be written
that X believed that God helped or motivated them. If we are then to teach
the history of X's actions, it must be taught that X believed that God
helped them.

It is important to note the difference between teaching children that X
believed that God helped him, and teaching that God helped X. The latter
suggests that God is real and that the help he received was in fact from
God. The former only teaches that X had these beliefs.

Mike's brief paragraph on the Founding Fathers' religions is consistent with
what I have read in the past as well. I have stumbled upon a lot of material
online that claimed that many of them were Deist, atheist, or agnostic and
have found these claims to be inconsistent with the overwhelming evidence to
the contrary. As much as I would like to think that Jefferson was an
atheist, I am afraid it is simply not true. These people were motivated at
the time by their religious beliefs. Jefferson comitted sins (according to
his religious beliefs) but this does not mean that he did not believe. It
only means that he was a human being capable of sinning and asking God for
forgiveness. (or whatever his particular denomination did when dealing with
such things)

Their religious motivation is a historical fact. I truly wish that it were
otherwise, but it is not. Until Darwin, most scientists were religious and
the job of a naturalist was to describe God's work. Many prominent
"scientists" of the day went out of their way to keep God in the picture,
but even Darwin had trouble accepting his own findings. This is one of the
reasons he did not publish his findings until someone ealse was about to
publish the same thing. The period we are talking about however is 100 years
before Darwin. The people were social leaders, not scientists. I doubt that
any of them were atheists. If even one of them was, they would have went out
of their way to make sure that this was not known. History does suggest that
a few of them at times had questioned their faith, but this is a common
trait of people of any religion. In Christianity, the questioning of faith
is accepted as the work of the devil.

History is History. It is always written by the winners, and is somewhat
subject to perspective, but changing facts to suit fads is totally
different. I think the atheist movement needs to grow on it's own through
truth, logic, rationality, and understanding. Attempting to change history
to suit atheist objectives will only harm atheism in the long run. I have
always seen atheism as the end result in the search for truth. If atheism
itself is considered a religion of truth, these tactics are those of
hypocrites. The thinking behind this does not seem to fit with what I see as
true atheist objectives. If it were not for the support of some on this
list, I would have thought this entire thing was a scam conducted by covert
religious operatives determined to make atheists look like evil morons.

Kevin Freels

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
To: <moulton at moulton.com>; "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 8:57 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

>
> --- "Fred C. Moulton" <moulton at moulton.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Before everyone goes too far on this I suggest that everyone remember
> > what the article said:
> >
> > >Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are
> > >excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's
> > >journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' "The Rights of the
> > Colonists"
> > >and William Penn's "The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania."
> >
> > News articles sometimes get the story wrong but according to this
> > part
> > of the news article what was rejected were "excerpts" not the entire
> > document.  Unless someone can provide more info lets remember that
> > the story is about "excerpts".  If the excerpts were selected and
> > presented
> > in such a manner as to provide a false impression in the minds of the
> > students as to the nature of the documents and the document authors
> > then that is an issue of concern.
>
> On the contrary, I don't think it is germaine. Even if the teacher were
> specifically teaching these exerpts as part of a module regarding the
> religious basis for the colonizing of the US, it was entirely within
> her responsibility to teach that REAL history. I saw another article
> yesterday in which Maryland public schools are banning teachers from
> teaching students that the "Thanksgiving" the pilgrims were giving were
> to god. Instead, they are presenting it solely as a giving of thanks to
> the local native Americans who they invited to their feast.
>
> This absurd and revisionist view of history is exactly what is wrong
> and what I am talking about. Whatever you think about religion of any
> kind, it is entirely wrong to rewrite history in order to write
> religion out of it.
>
> It is classic atheist agit-prop to write out of history all the good
> things done in the name of religion, while emphasizing all the bad
> things. This illustrates the inherent irrationality of many/most
> atheists.
>
> Another revision is the claim on this list yesterday that many of the
> founding fathers were atheist. This is bogus. Jefferson was a religious
> man who wrote his own version of the bible to eliminate what he saw as
> a cult of personality regarding christ. The least religious people were
> unitarians or universalists, which were not the same thing then as they
> are now. They were still quite christian in character then. I challenge
> Samantha and others to actually name any of the signers of the D of I
> or the Constitution who were avowed atheists. At the time, all colonies
> had proscriptions against atheists taking office.
>
> =====
> Mike Lorrey
> Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
> "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
> It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
>                                       -William Pitt (1759-1806)
> Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism
>
>
>
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