ravi@flairvax.UUCP (06/15/83)
Hi there,
I need to know how you people out there in the net world feel about the
following issues.
1. What is Atheism?.
Is it another religion?. Preaching and practicing how not to
believe in religion?. In which case it is another religion again.
What is the purpose of atheism?.
2. children and religion
Why should the children be taught religion?. Expose them to the
choices and they may choose a different religion from their parents
(May be become non-believers) or better yet- don't teach them, let
them do it as they grow up. It appears to me that parents bias them
just because they think it is right. (??)
3. Which religion is better?.
On what basis a religion is considered better?. Why is that followers
of another religion are considered heretics?.
one possibility - all of them misinformed ??.
With so many religions it is hard to believe that god(?) has anything to do
with all this religious stuff. If there are so many gods they must either
be fighting amongst themselves (just like us) and don't have time to listen
all the prayers etc.. or they must be getting really amused at the way we
we are all behaving.
a non-believer.
Ravidebray@sbcs.UUCP (06/17/83)
Ravi asks:
" What is Atheism?.
Is it another religion?. Preaching and practicing how not to
believe in religion?. In which case it is another religion again.
What is the purpose of atheism?. "
It depends, I suppose, on what one defines a "religion" to be. Some people
I've spoken to feel that belief in a divine power is a necessary part of
religion; in which case, atheism wouldn't qualify. Others have viewed
religion as an integrated world-view encompassing one's life, but not
necessarily including a deity; in which case, atheism might be a religion.
I don't know if philosophy texts treat atheism along with all the various
other "-ism"s; I myself would tend to call atheism a belief system.
The atheists I have known (and that included me) based their rejection of
god and the established religions primarily on logical inadequacies of
theologies; these have been discussed and debated on this newsgroup
extensively, so there's little need for us to go into them again. What I
found interesting was the fact that atheists need at least as much faith
as theists: faith in the scientific method and the power of the human
mind and the power of reason and logic. When we get down to the absolute
basics, what qualitative difference is there between belief in God, and
belief in Logic/Science ? The differences, in my view, are just a matter
of degree: belief in god might make things easier in some ways (e.g. in
times of trouble), belief in science in some other ways. Each approach
has its absolutes, each has its limits. Goedel's incompleteness theorem,
once I *really* understood it, jolted the foundations of my rationalistic
world-view ... I mellowed out to a tolerant agnostic pretty soon after
that!
Saumya Debray
...philabs!sbcs!debray