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this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Shaman is a good word there - like the ancient Incan and Mayan civilizations, that kept the power of the oligarchy in check by having a... second oligarchy, side-by-side with it. If the king ever didn't like a priest they could kill them, while if a priest didn't like the king they could demand a human sacrifice "at random" of their son/daughter - so checks & balances. It is one of those "neat tricks" that evolution uses, to keep the masses in check underneath the authority of a few. And quite frankly it even makes sense - why train every single peasant farmer how to use a sword & read & such, if you can have 1,000 peasants just doing their illiterate thing in the fields, for every one child that you put a TON of effort into being able to do so much more? (or I guess rather, do differently / higher - like learning sword fighting is an enormous investment of training & skill)
That said, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this preacher guy is probably a genuinely good dude? I mean like 24/7 or at least more than half the day, or at least more than 1/100,000 as you mentioned? Okay I still haven't even read the article tbh, but religion has no monopoly at all on evil - like the Catholic church isn't the only entity in the news lately for diddling children, Epstein and others do that just as often if not more so; though crucially, less hypocritically so.
I'm even going to say something a bit unpopular here: 100 years or so from now, there will be dumb atheists. Right now most atheists are "first-generation" in the sense that someone chooses their own views, even if their parents also held identical views. e.g. the vast majority of atheists today know what the word "agnosticism" means, and has made a decision which one they are. But eventually, it will become fashionable, and stupid people will not do the questioning part, and instead just go ahead and say it simply to fit in, b/c it's what they've heard others do (that's another fantastic "good trick" used extremely often by evolution - it takes a lot less effort to accomplish mimicry than to do the whole entire Real Deal, e.g. a butterfly's wings that look like another set of eyes).
Anyway, whether the guy believes in God or not, it's awesome that he helped out the homeless.:-) Even if other Christians might not have done the same - although popular stories lately aside, Jesus Himself was quite adamant that this kind of thing MUST be done, by anyone who would call themselves one of his followers. e.g. Matthew 25:34-40, tldr: "whatever you do to the least person, it's like you did it directly to me".
100 years from now? Atheism is its own religion in a way. There isn't evidence there isn't a God. That doesn't mean there is one but also doesn't mean there isn't one. The absence of evidence is not the same as evidence. Militant atheists must have faith there isn't one which makes them far more similar to religious people than they care to admit.
Correct. Logical statements such as "there does not exist ABC" are enormously difficult to prove in the positive sense, so it is the height of hubris to say that e.g. a time-traveler or alien or superpowered individual etc. (or The Matrix, or The Force, I mean the list really can go on for awhile) could never have caused what was said to have happened. Hollywood shows are even full of such events so it's not even the tiniest bit difficult to contemplate something similar. I can only guess that what is meant is more that "it seems unlikely", or that "the belief does not look substantiated by current evidence".
But unlike e.g. Apatheism - "the attitude of apathy toward the existence or non-existence of God(s)" - militant Atheism ultimately comes down a belief, even if not quite a full "religion" due to lack of an organized belief system e.g. common religious rituals (then again, many people do not go to church their entire lives, yet still profess to be a Christian/Muslim/whatever so still somewhat similar), more so than most seem willing to admit.
I found this funny quote somewhere:
Which makes me think that despite calling themselves "atheists", they are really apatheists wrt all gods everywhere, and only atheist towards the Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Mormon/whatever god that they do not personally like. Except that is most vehemently not what many claim themselves, so how can I reject the very words that come from their own mouths as to what they believe - do I think that they themselves do not even know what they believe, or that they are hypocritical in claiming that they know that which is currently unknowable? Or worst of all, do they in fact know, yet go ahead and redefine that word however they please anyway - b/c apparently words have no meaning except whatever we like, at any given moment in time?
A highly relevant point is that Carl Sagan in particular claimed that he should not be properly called an atheist, for precisely this reason - he earns much respect from me for such a goal towards precision. Therefore, a lot of what "people say about atheists" is not matching what some people commonly thought of as the founders of the modern era of atheists themselves have said - in much the same manner as what "people say about Christ" does not match what He Himself said. People just tend to be sloppy, period, in many matters.
In compassion, most atheists I know were personally harmed by some denomination or another of an organized religion, and so it looks to me like they became militant out of a hatred towards what harmed them. I get that... it doesn't make them logically correct, but it is understandable. Religious people are still people, and people are fucked up - at least, Jesus says so in Romans 3:10: “There is no one righteous, not even one" (emphasis added).