Dear GrahamY,

Yes it has been a little while since I have delved into the NT and I should have checked rather than relying on memory. It doesn't change the fact that this was indeed Christian teaching.

As to the early 'Western' Abolitionists to be accurate it was the Quakers, who many judge to be borderline Christians at best, that drove the movement in Britain. There was little appetite for it initially among the more mainstream Christian denominations.

You state;

“It really is beyond dispute that Christianity gave rise to the modern western world, universal human rights, and the rules based system of exchange we call the free market.”

I'm sorry but it most certainly is in dispute. It was Christianity which tried to eradicate other forms of classical thinking, particularly some of which were luckily preserved by Muslim scholars and return as foundational material for our now 'enlightened' ways.

But one only has to look at arguably the most Christianised nation and reflect on its highest incarceration rate in the world to see the dystopia which lurks beneath, waiting for its opportunity to consume.

To me nurturers of human rights through history in the West lie have been the Jewish people, particularly their intellectuals; thinkers, philosophers, writers and poets. They drove the historical socialist movements that sought to insulate mankind from the ravages of the marketplace and Christianity tried to wipe them out for their troubles.

And for a bit of fun the suffix ism in atheism is not the pivotal addition rather it is the prefix 'a', meaning "not," from Latin a-, short for ab "away from".

So atheism is not a theism of any description.

A religion requires the acknowledgement of a deity (or dieties), an agreed doctrine, specific rituals to be followed and typically an organisational structure with some sort of figurehead.

Atheism has none of these. It is a collection of free thinkers who simply refute the existence of a supernatural force.

Buddhism, which has no God, considers our origin as irrelevant and has a reality that is based on perception rather than faith - is also technically not a religion because it has no God, but is a belief system or philosopy.

Atheists by definition also reject Buddhism.

Dear Rache,

A religion requires none of the elements you mentioned:
So long as a path leads to God - it is a religion; and if a path does not lead to God, then it is not a religion even if it contains all these elements.

Buddhism does not mention God, but on the assumption that when practised properly it leads one to God anyway (even while this is not consciously recognised and acknowledged by Buddhist practitioners), then it is a religion.

Same for atheism: if it helps some people to come closer to God (and I can envision such circumstances), then for them it is a religion (or at least a part thereof).

AJP thinks I'm a McCarthyist indicating he hasn't the faintest idea what it means. (Hint: I've not got a McCarthyist bone in my body, but I am a McCartneyist or at least I was Yesterday and probably will be on Another Day).

SR thinks the assertions that Iroquois women had some power within their group (Margaret Mead style assertions) proves that Athens was a democracy...or something.

Toni thinks prisoners can't vote which makes this form rather redundant ... http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/pdf/forms/prisoners/er016pw-nsw-0416.pdf

Yet they all and their like preen themselves on being so much more intelligent than those dweebs who believe in sky fairies etc. Which is why they get oh so very upset when its pointed out that they have their own set of non-evidentiary beliefs.

__________________________________________________________________

On a similar vein, while doing research on another project, I came across this notion:

" Sigmund Freud was a dreadful physician but a brilliant salesman who understood all too well what the world wanted to buy. After two centuries of the Age of Reason, he grasped that a world that had given up its religion wanted permission to be irrational once again. The world wallowed in hysterical misery; he offered to replace it with ordinary unhappiness. Thanks to scholars like Crews, we no longer believe in Freud, even if we remain, unwittingly, under his thrall.
Freud wasn't looking for a new cure, but a new cult. He and his followers did lots of harm and negligible good, but they made hay out of the misery that modern liberal culture inflicted on its sufferers."

NB cult.

Gawd! Are you STILL here, mhaze?

<<AJP thinks I'm a McCarthyist indicating he hasn't the faintest idea what it means.>>

No, I said your politics “seem to have a whiff of McCarthyism to them.” At the time, I had in mind your 1950s view of atheism (obviously influenced heavily by your politics), which has you identifying as an agnostic instead (often a sign someone having difficulty distinguishing atheism from communism), and your moral panic over same-sex marriage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Later_use_of_the_term

Sheesh! That comment was I while ago now. How long did it take you to fish that one out? I guess you needed something, eh? Even if it was something I didn’t really say.

"Well it’s certainly easier to make up my views and then disparage them than to actually address anything I’ve said" - mhaze

<<Yet they all and their like preen themselves on being so much more intelligent than those dweebs who believe in sky fairies etc.>>

Yeah, I figured you were trying to suggest I was stupid. Ad hominem is often a last resort of yours, isn’t it? Pretend your opponent has made a mistake they should feel mortified about and hopefully attention will be diverted from the fact that your argument failed.

Now, where have we seen that before?

No one here has commented on the intelligence of theists. You're paranoid.

It’s funny, don’t you think, how someone who once wrote off IQ scores as “ridiculous” and “subjective” now suddenly thinks that one’s knowledge of McCarthyism, or a failure to note that prisoners serving less than three years are still allowed to vote, is enough to draw conclusions about one’s intelligence?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530#330010

You're really scraping the barrel here, aren't you?

<<Which is why they get oh so very upset when its pointed out that they have their own set of non-evidentiary beliefs.>>

Who here is getting upset? And what are these “non-evidentiary beliefs”? I even challenged you to point to one held by myself, and still you merely assert that I do with no specific examples.

//Toni thinks prisoners can't vote which makes this form rather redundant ...//

Oops, didn't split my hairs finely enough for the liking of mhaze. Mea culpa.

Correction: prisoners serving a full-time sentence of three years or more can't vote.

http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Special_Category/Prisoners.htm

But my point about the us not having universal suffrage still holds valid.

Isn't pedantry fun?

//Yet they all and their like preen themselves on being so much more intelligent than those dweebs who believe in sky fairies etc.//

Umm... in case you've missed the memo, I'm one of those dweebs who believes in etc.

Just because I disagree with your daft arguments concerning one particular religion, it doesn't follow that I'm not religious.

Yay! More pedantry!

//Which is why they get oh so very upset when its pointed out that they have their own set of non-evidentiary beliefs.//

I'm not upset by the claim that I hold non-evidentiary beliefs, mhaze. I believe that we are not alone in the universe. I believe that existence is not a hologram, and that we're not in some advanced Matrix-style computer simulation. I believe I'm not a brain in a tank. I don't have any evidence whatsoever to support these beliefs, but I believe them all the same.

What's in dispute are your one-dimensional caricatures of atheists as loony left extremists. We're all still eagerly waiting for you to demonstrate those claims. But I don't think anybody will be particularly upset if you don't... more quietly amused than upset, I suspect.

//Sigmund Freud was a dreadful physician but a brilliant salesman who understood all too well what the world wanted to buy.//

Yep, Freud was a clown. No argument from me on that one. It amazes me that anybody still pays him any heed: he was no scientist; he wasn't even a good philosopher. He just pulled a bunch of nonsense out of his fundament, and people lapped it up. I don't get it.

Mind you, it is amazing what crap some people will buy into. Have you met a conspiracy theorist?