@ The People's Party
Sigh.
Athiesm as RELIGION? Please. If it's a religion, it's a religion of one reinvented for each individual. Ask ten athiests a question and you'll probably get eleven different answers. Theres no creed, no dogma, and absolutely ZERO organization. The only common thread is that athiests do not believe in a god or gods. Everything else, ANYTHING else, varies widely. Many athiests are heavily religious (see Buddhism). Many athiests believe in supernatural phenomena. You can't put athiests neatly into a box like you can adherents of a religion because by nature they pretty much can't be made to agree on ANYTHING. I seem to recall Richard Dawkins describing organizing athiests as a group (say, for political action) as equivalent to herding cats, which lines up with my own observations.
And yes, LACK of belief IS a sound basis for excluding athiesm from the label of "religion". Do you believe in the tooth fairy? No? Does that make you a member of the religion of atoothfairyists? No? Good, we're done here.
The mention of communism as some sort of example is assinine. Communism is a totalitarian ideology that tolerates no rival. Of course they're going to condemn and attack religion, just like they attack capitalism and other rival ideologies. It's not athiesm that's causing the issue there, it's Communism's unrealistic and unbending dogma.
As for athiesm being intolerant... that doesn't hold water. Are some individual athiests intolerant? Sure. But there's nothing in the concept of "not accepting the existence of a deity" that has any bearing on tolerance or lack thereof. Even being more specific about what type of athiest you're talking about doesn't really help that argument. Secular Humanists (which again is still casting a rather wide net) are generally pretty happy to let people think whatever they want to think, and certainly the common themes among Secular Humanists have more to do with freethinking than limiting free thought!
And now, the lovely mention of social darwinism and attempting to pin it on evolutionary thinking. That's utterly ridiculous. Social Darwinism is based off, at best, a poor understanding of evolutionary principles, and at worse just used evolution as a cover for preexisting racism. Eugenics, again, has NOTHING to do with evolution by natural selection, and is instead a form of artificial selection like what we do with domesticated animals. In fact, Darwin was opposed to that sort of interpretation.
Finally, the off-handed jab at evolution. Pseudo-science? REALLY?
Lets see what wikipedia has to say about pseudo science:
Pseudoscience is a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be
scientific, or that is made to appear to be scientific, but which does not adhere to an appropriate
scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, or otherwise lacks scientific status.
Lets see. The theory of evolution by natural selection is:
- Logically sound
- Based off 150 years of accumulated data and experimentation
- Has survived several competing theories, like Lemarkian evolution
- Adequately explains most of the data we have accumulated
- Has been observed in a lab
- Is applied practically in many different fields, including computing science and microbiology
I dunno. Sounds pretty fucking scientific to me.
(I can name a bunch of promient evoluationary thinkers who are VERY VERY ANTI-RELIGION just probably as easily as someone could find some very religious person wanting to destroy any one that's not like them)
Presuming that you're talking about folk like Richard Dawkins, the position they promote is that religion is harmful and that it shouldn't be allowed to influence other people's lives. Is that tolerant? Hell no, and they don't even pretend it is. But that's a far stride from "wanting to destroy any one that's not like them" as the religious extremists of the world are happy to do on a daily basis. From what I can tell of Dawkin's position, he's a huge advocate of free speech and thinks his beliefs stand up well enough on their own that there's no need to silence those who would criticise them.
Mmkay. Rant over.
Now, Leauki, it's sad to see a good post like this get utterly derailed like this, so I'd kind of like to get back to the original topic. I'm sorry for contributing to that derailment.
The events you're describing make me sad. It's really quite pathetic... any belief that requires violence to support it in lieu of standing on its own merits isn't worth the breath taken to express it.
