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Why are Atheists So Angry (A Rabbi shares his take)

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Robert Tulip

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Re: Why are Atheists So Angry (A Rabbi shares his take)

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geo wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:. . . Freke and Gandy argue there was originally an inner church that only revealed part of its secret teachings to the public outer church. The ignorant masses called for signs and wonders before they would take any interest in new ideas. The early church serviced this mass demand for a new wondrous religion with the allegorical story of a historical messiah.
I see a correlation here to Plato's The Republic. Plato imagined a perfect society in which the people would be categorized into Rulers, Auxiliaries, Farmers, etc. The common person especially needed to accept his place in order to maintain social stability. So in Plato’s mind, the Noble Lie is rationalized as a way to keep people under control and happy with their lot in life. There's certainly a very Machiavellian or Marxist ("opiate of the masses") aspect to this doctrine.
Hi Geo, this is a great point about the comparison to Plato. The Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt included Plato’s Republic, indicating the continuity between his theory of knowledge and the Gnostic movement. So you are right, it looks like the Gnostics imagined they could set themselves up as philosopher kings, failing to see the Stalinist maxim that organisational control produces political power. But I feel there is a sense of tragic doom in the Gnostic project, a sense that the Jesus story reflected how the world was not ready for a philosopher king, and so that the suppression of the high wisdom in the construction of the Christ myth was fated.
geo wrote: This "noble lie" is called the myth of the metals:
"Citizens, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command; and these he has made of gold, wherefore they have the greatest honor; others of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims... that if the son of a golden or a silver parent has an admixture of brass or iron, then nature requires a transposition of ranks; and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has to descend in the scale to become a husbandman or an artisan, just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class who are raised to honor, and become guardians and auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the state, it will be destroyed" (415).
Thanks – this gold, silver, bronze, iron motif comes from India, with the idea of the cycle of the yugas between gold and iron ages. It is also in the Biblical dream of Daniel and in Hesiod’s vision of the golden age of the rule of Saturn.
Using this model to construct a hierarchical social order appears also in a corrupted form in Orwell’s 1984 with the inner party, the outer party and the proles.
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geo

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Re: Why are Atheists So Angry (A Rabbi shares his take)

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Hey Robert, I thought you (and youkrst) might appreciate these few lines from Spinoza. I just came across this last night in Will Durant's THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

In his Treatise On Religion and the State, Spinoza argues that the Bible contains nothing contrary to reason. The language of the Bible is deliberately metaphorical or allegorical. Durants paraphrases Spinoza: "The apostles resorted to miracle stories for the same reason that they resorted to parables; it was a necessary adaptation to the public mind."

Spinoza: "The masses think that the power and providence of God are most clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary, and contrary to the conception which they have formed of nature... They suppose, indeed, that God is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order; and vice versa, that the power of nature, and natural causes, are idle so long as God is acting; thus they imagine two powers distinct from one another, the power of God and the power of nature."

Durant argues that both interpretations have a proper place and function: "the people will always demand a religion phrased in imagery and haloed with the supernatural; if one such form of faith is destroyed they will create another. But the philosopher knows that God and nature are one being, acting by necessity and according to invariable law; it is this majestic Law which he will reverence and obey."

By the way, Spinoza's concept of God and nature as one got him excommunicated. Most of his works weren't published until after his death.
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Re: Why are Atheists So Angry (A Rabbi shares his take)

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And then, on July 27, 1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ of herem, or excommunication, ever pronounced by the Sephardic community of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded. We do not know for certain what Spinoza's “monstrous deeds” and “abominable heresies” were alleged to have been, but an educated guess comes quite easy. No doubt he was giving utterance to just those ideas that would soon appear in his philosophical treatises. In those works, Spinoza denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a providential God—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews. Can there be any mystery as to why one of history's boldest and most radical thinkers was sanctioned by an orthodox Jewish community?
kinda reminds me of Norman Finkelstein :-D
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Re: Why are Atheists So Angry (A Rabbi shares his take)

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ant wrote:
Kevin wrote:To the extent I am angry it is a result of my perception of God as being a failure whose actions in no way live up to the words. I think of it as a righteous anger, though for the most part I'm laid-back.
You're angry at a metaphysical being you decided to anthropomorphize?
The Word was made flesh... I didn't decide it should happen. I'm not sure how much you're hinging the question on "you decided" but that part of it seems very much off the mark to me. And the anger, such as it is, is a result of down-to-earth declarations made in the Bible (since it seems we're talking specifically about the Christian concept of God) I find no evidence in support of as I look outside myself. If God didn't want His cake and eat it too I wouldn't mind so much... but until He lets go of at least one of the All-Powerful or I Am Love banners I can't help but consider Him a failure.
The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? - Jeremy Bentham
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Re: Why are Atheists So Angry (A Rabbi shares his take)

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thought provoking stuff

when it comes to specific concepts of "God" it reminds me of that old bible verse

"you are weighed in the balance and found wanting" :-D

instead of Yahweh weighing us in the balance and finding us wanting we are weighing ideas of him in the balance and finding those ideas unworkable.

test all things eh :-D
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