henry (01/21/83)
tektronix!rich misses a point: just because the atheist under fire says "God help me" does not mean he is sincerely appealing to the Christian God for help. The heavily Christian heritage of our culture has promoted a number of such phrases to common idioms, to the point where they are used without consideration of their original meanings. Example: "goodbye" is a contraction of "God be with you". In the context of artillery fire, "God help me" could mean anything from its literal meaning to "shit, am I ever in trouble". It is a mistake to interpret a common idiom, used without thought of the historical meaning, as implying a religious conversion. He also missed an important category of people in his list. This is best illustrated by rephrasing his definitions in terms of answers to the basic question "what is the nature of God?": - Atheist: There is no God. - Agnostic: I don't know the nature of God, and I don't believe you do either. [This is the strict meaning of the word; for a looser and increasingly-common meaning, omit the second phrase.] - Christmas Christian: [Not really a separate category. The selective church attendance is seen by True Believers as hypocrisy, but can arise for other reasons including avoidance of oppression (yes, Virginia, there are still places where one must bow to social convention to avoid being hassled endlessly).] The category he missed, which lacks a formal name, is the following: - Unreligious: I am unconcerned with the answer because I do not consider the *question* interesting/relevant/important (circle one or more). I am willing to believe in God(s) if presented with solid evidence of his/her/their/its existence, but have seen no such evidence to date. Hearsay doesn't count, especially when there are hundreds of different, contradictory versions. [This category is sometimes called "humanist", but that word has come to have more complex implications in some quarters.]
mark (01/21/83)
someone recently presented that old chestnut "there are no atheists in foxholes". this strikes me as the defense of one who can't stand the idea that his beleifs might be open to question. it is akin to "we all REALLY worship the same god", which is applied to jews, moslems, christians, buddists, etc., with all their sub-catagories. such assertions are both a sign of lack of self-confidance and a potential insult to those lumped in with the speaker. i don't doubt that some have found religion under fire, though i do doubt that such conversions necessarily outlast the shelling. deathbed recantations are well-known (eg. cyrano de bergerac, charles darwin), and i think the two phenomena are similar: they owe more to panic and a childhood indoctrination with a fear of fire and brimstone than to reasoned opinion. i did not have such an upbringing, and very much doubt that i would turn christian in a foxhole, although this has never come very close to being tested. religious feelings simply do not come naturally to my mind. BTW i call myself an atheist, although by a recently posted set of definitions i am "unreligious": i would beleive in a god (or gods) if presented with good, hard evidence. i invite submission of such (preferably by mail; i think this discussion will take up enough net space without adding tertiary responses), but warn that "the universe couldn't have happened by accident", or "100 million christians must know SOMETHING" don't qualify as evidence. let the roast begin! not afraid of bolts from above mARK bLOORE univ. of toronto
bstempleton (01/21/83)
Jesus Christ! Let's not discussion religion on the net. No amount of argument about religion is going to convince anybody of anything on the net, and very little, if any, new information will be presented. The best thing would be to create a newsgroup "religion" for which all posted articles are written to /dev/null. If you think dirty jokes could offend people, wait to you see what they do when you insult their religion. Religion is amost literally a sacred cow to some people.
jfw (01/22/83)
Re atheistic foxholes: Though I do *not* consider myself an atheist, I
firmly believe that my first words on seeing the oncoming wave of
missiles would be something on the order of "Oh { scatological reference }!".