athiest bus backlash
Out of context: Reply #21
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- mikotondria30
Obviously we cannot establish a position based on the absolute irrefutable proof of a negative, namely that 'there is no god'..
In the same way that we can only only in all intellectual honesty be agnostic, taking that position does not indicate that the existence of god has anything like the equal chance of being true.
Bertrand Russel postulated that there could be a teapot in orbit around Mars, and noone can ultimately prove that there isn't, so we must therefore all be teapot-agnostics about this. Technically then we must for the sake of technical argument stop short of Dawkins fundamental a-fairyism, and a-theism, and recognise that the majority of the theists, although they claim to have certain knowledge of the existence of god, are in fact as secularised in their behavior and lifestyles as the rest of us. If you really honestly truly believed in the god of the bible, and of the resurrection and salvation of jesus christ, you really couldn't live a secular life in the western world, it would if truly believed, every waking second be the only topic of conversation, and naturally predispose one to militantism and war-like evangalism. There is no safe middle ground - either the god of the bible is entirely as it's written, or becomes meaningless when reinterpreted as 'love', 'nature', or 'the laws of physics'. At which point the fundamental need for the omnipotent god the father has been abandoned, and the huddled masses that comprise the majority of the 'christian world', are left with only the legacy of history and culture and ancestry to protect.
It is the protection of this living history that is seen in the reactions against the atheist bus advertisements, and against the humanist and atheist schools of thought in general. Atheism is seen as the harbinger of moral relativism, and the destroyer of the conservative basis of western culture, as a set of ideas and ideals based on destroying people's sense of intellectual heritage and establishment. When the teaching of history and moral philosophy becomes a part of the curriculum and we raise children to value both their intellectual curiosity, judgment AND encourage a sense of aesthetic appreciation and a need to preserve our cultural heritage for its own sake rather than feel a need to reconcile and modernize every aspect of the religious establishment, then we will be able to transcend the whole debate and not be bound by labels such as a-this, or pro-that.
Egyptology is not a discipline with one side believing in the goddess Nut, and another group putting aNutist adverts on Cairo buses.