Ch. 8 - Unholy Trinity: Atheists, Reds, Darwinists

Chris OConnor

This thread is for discussing Ch. 8 - Unholy Trinity: Atheists, Reds, Darwinists. You can post within this framework or create your own threads.

ginof

p230: Something really surprising here. That a minority of freethinkers were social conservatives influenced by Spencer. How could a freethinker end up anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and wanting birth control to limit the number of the 'unfit'? To me this is just counterintuitive.

ginof

Quote:
has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanction, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will

Well, not much we can say about mixing religion and politics that the pope hasn't said for us already.

ginof

p233

Quote:
But Jews still avoided taking an active role in any political or social movement, including freethought, that might have presented them in an unfavorable light to their gentile neighbors. This was true even of someone as prominent as Felix Adler, the founder of the Society for Ethical Culture, who certainly qualified as a kissing cousing fo native freethinkers like Ingersoll.

Huh? Adler said that religion was a failure. He started his own group to make up for this failure. This is almost as inflamitory as Joseph Smith saying that the legitimacy of religion was lost until the mormons came around. How is that avoiding something that gentiles woudl find favorable in a jew?

Mr. Pessimistic

Pg. 227:

Quote:
With the Bolshevik Revolution...American antisecularist crusaders could point to a Moscow address as headquarters of the conspiracy against American religious values.

Of course. Quick to point the finger to draw false analogies. Yet, mention Timothy McVeigh and Xtianity in the same sentence and look at how Xtians are quick to disavow his actions as Xtian...how he is NOT representative of Xtianity's horseshit.

Quote:
Most [freethinkers] were extremely suspicious of both doctrinaire socialism and communism - although atheists and agnostics were frequently called socialists, communists, or anarchists by conservatives who prefaced every group they disliked with the adjective 'atheist'.

We still see some of this...as GHWB said not so long ago..."No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." And this divisiveness is even more potent under the current administration, what with Rove and his knack for character assassination (and not ONLY toward atheists).

Like father like son...and like the ignorance that pervades throughout the centuries...

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Mr. Pessimistic

Pg. 232, Leo XIII (kudos to ginof for first spotting this!):

Quote:
[it] has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanction, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will.

Help...I do not see the problem here. The real joke is, considering that all religion and gods are products of the mind of man...we have indeed devised EVERY law on our own!

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Edited by: misterpessimistic at: 9/27/05 2:08 pm

GOD defiles Reason

You're comment about what Daddy Bush said answers your question you asked in the chapter 7 thread: "Why does it still persist that atheists, et al, can not feel emotionally or aesthetically about things as theists or others of faith feel? Why is it always called into question?"

People in the highest of positions saying things like what Bush Sr. said keeps those illusions alive.

Edited by: GOD defiles Reason at: 9/27/05 11:57 pm


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