Dear david f,

I am not sure how is this related to what I wrote but thanks for the perspective:

When looking at history, there are facts and there are perspectives. If you claim something to be a fact you are either right or wrong (or do not express yourself clearly). However, different perspectives can coexist, can complement, enrich each other. In this sense I appreciate your historical perspectives, in spite of the ridiculing, even derogative, language you sometimes -albeit not in this post - use to describe those who are not atheists. Nevertheless, I always appreciate your insights.

I think the locution Judeo-Christian is more related to Christians reflecting on their initial underestimation of the evil of Hitler’s treatment of Jews. There are also reasons independent of this: speaking of West’s ethics based on Christianity only, was seen as speaking - in various contexts - of men only. Hence a more explicit “men and women” and “Judeo-Christian” (ethics, heritage, roots, etc. - NOT religion).

There are perhaps hundreds of definitions of religion, but very roughly religion can be characterised either by

1. a belief in the Supernatural or
2. communally shared beliefs which act to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people, c.f. Geertz’s (anthropological) definition (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7816#124645).

Abrahamic religions, as well as some (not all) versions of Buddhism are religions in both the meanings of the word, deism is perhaps a religion only in the first and e.g. marx-leninism only in the second meaning of the word. No atheist could be called religious in the first meaning of the word, though some (again not all) atheists might be called religious (in some version of) the second meaning of the word.

I do not know much about Montaigne, but Spinoza, the grandfather, among other things, of panentheism, is clearly an indispensable part of our cultural heritage.

Dear George,

Language may be objectively derogatory although who is to establish what is objectively derogatory?

Let us take the word, unbeliever. Those of a particular religion may call those who do not share their religious beliefs, unbelievers. They commonly call atheists unbelievers implicitly restricting the meaning of belief to religious beliefs. Atheists may believe that democracy is the best political system. It is a belief rather than a fact since I don’t believe that there are any objective criteria by which we can establish whether democracy is the best political system or even make an ironclad definition of democracy.

I find it objectionable to be referred to as an unbeliever. I prefer the explicit recognition that having different beliefs does not make one an unbeliever. I believe there is no God. Since there is no evidence that there is a God or any acceptable proof that there is one it seems to me reasonable to believe that there is no God. I think it derogatory to call an atheist an unbeliever if one assumes that belief is a good thing.

However, I do not think belief is a good thing in itself. I think it is a necessary thing since we have to get on with our lives and it is wasteful thing to speculate on the legitimacy of all of our beliefs.

You may be correct in your account of the origin of the word, Judeo-Christian, as referring to a belated recognition of the evil of Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. If your account is correct it makes the locution even more wrong.

Hitler as an individual did very little to mistreat the Jews. It was the many who followed him who carried out his wishes. The ground had been made fertile for such treatment by the many years of Catholic and Protestant hatred for Jews. Most of those who carried out the Nazi program were Christian. Zahn, a Catholic, and Bultmann, a Protestant have written about the German churches connection with Hitler. The locution, Judeo-Christian, lumps victims and perpetrators together.

Dear david f,

>>who is to establish what is objectively derogatory?<<

I agree that the term depends on the social context or convention, and is closely related to what is offensive language. Instead of giving a long list of examples, let me just repeat that calling other people’s world-views immoral or irrational (or related terms), without understanding the meaning of terms (often symbols) used, stops any fruitful exchange of opinions. Therefore though I follow some threads here - e.g. about the Atheist Convention - I do not see any point in participating in them, and am glad I found this corner where, as in the past, I can get a reasonable exchange of opinions with you.

I am glad you accept that everybody has to believe something. Not only in mathematics, every rational system, including those underlying a world-view, has to be built on some undefined terms and accept some a priori presuppositions, axioms in mathematics.

Until recently, the terms “God”, and for non-philosophers also “existence”, were such generally understood but undefined terms in our western context. And “God exists” or “God does not exist” were two basic, mutually exclusive, world-view presuppositions. This, in spite of the fact that many tried to “prove” the existence of God using some other undefined terms, or disprove it by reference to some self-referential paradoxes.

That was not a simple situation then, and today the reasons - mostly personal and cultural - for starting from this or that initial world-view presupposition are even more blurry, also, but not only, because of the ambiguity of the terms involved. Therefore I prefer to start from Carl Sagan’s belief as the default position even if it is not mine (c.f. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389&page=0#150883). -- ctd

ctd.
The term unbeliever is standard and many atheists accept it as referring to their world-view. I entered these OLO discussions some years ago to find out about the positions of a variety of atheists (as I knew that not all Christians were as naive as runner, I also knew that not all atheists were as philosophically naive as my marx-leninist teachers or some debaters on this OLO). I learned that many atheists objected to being referred to as believing that God did not exist, instead they preferred to describe their world view as “lack (or absence) of belief, full stop” (see e.g.http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2171#46468). So it would seem natural to call such position as that of an unbeliever, although I still do not understand exactly what the “lack of belief” is supposed to mean. Your “I believe there is no God” is much clearer.

>> Most of those who carried out the Nazi program were Christian<<
Similarly e.g. most of those who were bald were Christian for the simple fact that the vast majority of Germans (Europeans) at that time were baptised. However, you are right if you mean that nazism could arise only in a West with its Christian cultural roots, rather than e.g. in China or other civilisation. Victor Frankl wrote:

“After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips”

Probably he should have written “western man” instead of just “man”. And it is the “western man” who invented also Marx-Leninism and Stalinism but also gave rise to an Einstein, Mozart and Kant.

I did not offer an account of the origin of the term Judeo-Christian in relation to nazism, I only tried to explain why its use has become more frequent after WWII. The origins of the term date back to 1829, and, as I wrote before, are used mainly in an ethical context (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian)

Dear George,

I used to use the locution that atheism is not a belief. Upon reflection I have abandoned that usage and now say that atheism is a belief that there is no God. Atheists do not like to be compared to religious believers, but in some instances there are valid comparisons. It would be intellectually dishonest to deny it where it exists, and I think neither of us wants to be intellectually dishonest.

Some atheists are as naïve as runner. They may think of religious believers in theological terms as embodiments of evil. At one time I resigned from the Humanist Society of Queensland. One of the members approved of the Chinese persecution of Christians. I resigned when it was evident that most members of HSQ agreed with him. I have rejoined since that element is no longer part of the group. Our current president is a former Catholic who will freely admit the good things the church has done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Castellio tells of Castellio, a Christian exceptional in his time. He protested the burning at the stake of Servetus in Calvin’s Geneva. “To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man.” —Sebastian Castellio, Contra libellum, # 77, Vaticanus. At that time that thought was derided by most ecclesiastics of all persuasions.

We agree that any logical system has to start with axioms in which there are undefined terms. Point and line are abstract entities that can be interchanged and the theorems coming from the axioms are still valid. Can God be something like that - an entity which cannot be defined but upon which one bases a logical system?

I do not mean that Nazism could only have arisen in the west. I mean that the anti-Semitism which was a part of Nazism, but not all of it, is primarily a product of Christianity. Many Christians simply do not recognise that. The Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a Lutheran group, is one of the Christian groups that recognise that. http://www.kanaan.org/international/israel/israel1.htm on their website contains a recognition of that.

continued

continued

It seems to me that Hitler was not an aberration but an embodiment of trends implicit in both Germanic culture and Christianity. One can now point to Hitler as evil although many in his time did not think of him as evil. I think many in this world are as evil, but the evil of many people does little or no harm if no one follows them. No mass movement whether it is religious, political, economic or social becomes a mass movement unless it appeals to the masses. That is an obvious truism which apparently is not obvious to many.

I find examining the reason why Hitler and the Nazis were so attractive to many Germans is a more interesting question than what made Hitler what he was. Georg Mosse’s “The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich” deals with that question. On the cover of the book is a reproduction of a painting of Hiler showing him as a knight in shining armour. To look at what happened we have to realise that is how many Germans regarded Hitler. Hitler and Nazis brought together many ideas which existed several generations before the Nazi period. Racial thought, Germanic Christianity, nature mysticism, sun worship and theosophy were some of those ideas.

Judeo-Christian according to the Wikipedia reference has an interesting history. It is now used as part of the current culture wars in the US. Although we are now discussing the term I usually try to avoid using it