The Antithesis of Our Values
A few days ago, while still at the CFI Student Leadership Conference in Buffalo, NY (which the CFI graciously provided the travel funding for), I read a thread by a theist I often dialogue with about how to respond to atheists. The title alone, "Answer a Fool According to His Folly", should be enough to stop me there from responding, due to its clear disrespect. However, idealist that I am, I left a comment on the post. Of course, the response of Steve to that comment is the subject of the next post, but I wanted to replicate the comment I left below the fold for consideration:
Can't we all just get along...
Oh, wait, if we believe in a "god-ordained" antithesis, then I guess not.
I'm up here in Buffalo NY at the CFI Student Leadership Conference on secular humanism. It's kind of funny in how I felt in reading over this thread, and the comments, and having gone to meetings today where we discussed the need to be polite and respectful and even try to connect with those who disagree with us (esp Campus Crusade), to get the issues out before people.
We want more people to hear dissenting and alternative explanations to the worldview of traditional Western theism. Calling them names, and belittling their intellect, is not the best way to get them to seriously dialogue. It's just funny that as a bunch of "godless heathens" up here in Buffalo, we aren't talking about "answering the fools according to their folly" with respect to theists.
I actually don't want to "make" you atheists, or necessarily even convince you that your worldview's presuppositions, esp of taking the dusty old parchments as a sacred oracle, are in error. What I want is to keep the voice of dissent loud, clear, and coherent. You can have your faith, I can't take it from you if I wanted to.
I value science, reason, and humanistically-based ethics.
Your values include faith, divine commands, etc., (not to say you don't value what I do as well). So long as you put faith and what you believe God has told you to do before the practical and scientific realities that we all face together, as humans, it doesn't appear that we will ever make headway with one another. Your values and our values are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but prioritized in an inverse fashion to one another's. And perhaps we both realize this.
And perhaps that's why we both get frustrated at times.
So long as you value the possibility that a man raised from the dead 2000 years ago, and that your book is accurate historically, and that your doctrine of ensoulment is correct, more than you value the possibility that using a glob of amino acids and sugars, which could become a [Christian] person one day, will lead to the alleviation of clear and present pain, suffering, and evils...
We will never move in the same direction. My values point me towards what I can know and experience and those I care about. Your values are quite different. I don't value faith. I value science, evidence, and reason. I tentatively hold to "big" concepts, and prefer to live in the practical and real world according to the best of my abilities, intellectually and ethically.
So far, as an atheist, I am far better as a person, as a whole, than I ever was as a Christian.
I wouldn't say that this is ALWAYS the case, or even that Christianity doesn't help some people to be better, ie drug addicts. Religions may indeed stabilize societies within certain contexts, and give people hope and optimism and comfort. What they also do is lead people to what is happening in Lebanon and Israel right now...
...by faith. People who won't sit down and dialogue, as we try to do, but instead choose to kill one another for their opposing values.
And that is a tragedy. A travesty.
And you believe that your God leaves all of us down here like this, aloof and cold, to care more about It and what It thinks than to prevent things like this. To spend our time arguing over what It supposedly wants us to know from dusty old parchments of completely ambiguous origins which have undergone unknown revisions to give us the extant oldest copies we have. To spend eternity in hell or heaven. What in the hell was life for? Why not just be expedient and cut to the chase and assign us all there now? What is Jesus waiting for?
Values. Priorities. Perhaps we'll always frustrate one another.
Oh, wait, if we believe in a "god-ordained" antithesis, then I guess not.
I'm up here in Buffalo NY at the CFI Student Leadership Conference on secular humanism. It's kind of funny in how I felt in reading over this thread, and the comments, and having gone to meetings today where we discussed the need to be polite and respectful and even try to connect with those who disagree with us (esp Campus Crusade), to get the issues out before people.
We want more people to hear dissenting and alternative explanations to the worldview of traditional Western theism. Calling them names, and belittling their intellect, is not the best way to get them to seriously dialogue. It's just funny that as a bunch of "godless heathens" up here in Buffalo, we aren't talking about "answering the fools according to their folly" with respect to theists.
I actually don't want to "make" you atheists, or necessarily even convince you that your worldview's presuppositions, esp of taking the dusty old parchments as a sacred oracle, are in error. What I want is to keep the voice of dissent loud, clear, and coherent. You can have your faith, I can't take it from you if I wanted to.
I value science, reason, and humanistically-based ethics.
Your values include faith, divine commands, etc., (not to say you don't value what I do as well). So long as you put faith and what you believe God has told you to do before the practical and scientific realities that we all face together, as humans, it doesn't appear that we will ever make headway with one another. Your values and our values are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but prioritized in an inverse fashion to one another's. And perhaps we both realize this.
And perhaps that's why we both get frustrated at times.
So long as you value the possibility that a man raised from the dead 2000 years ago, and that your book is accurate historically, and that your doctrine of ensoulment is correct, more than you value the possibility that using a glob of amino acids and sugars, which could become a [Christian] person one day, will lead to the alleviation of clear and present pain, suffering, and evils...
We will never move in the same direction. My values point me towards what I can know and experience and those I care about. Your values are quite different. I don't value faith. I value science, evidence, and reason. I tentatively hold to "big" concepts, and prefer to live in the practical and real world according to the best of my abilities, intellectually and ethically.
So far, as an atheist, I am far better as a person, as a whole, than I ever was as a Christian.
I wouldn't say that this is ALWAYS the case, or even that Christianity doesn't help some people to be better, ie drug addicts. Religions may indeed stabilize societies within certain contexts, and give people hope and optimism and comfort. What they also do is lead people to what is happening in Lebanon and Israel right now...
...by faith. People who won't sit down and dialogue, as we try to do, but instead choose to kill one another for their opposing values.
And that is a tragedy. A travesty.
And you believe that your God leaves all of us down here like this, aloof and cold, to care more about It and what It thinks than to prevent things like this. To spend our time arguing over what It supposedly wants us to know from dusty old parchments of completely ambiguous origins which have undergone unknown revisions to give us the extant oldest copies we have. To spend eternity in hell or heaven. What in the hell was life for? Why not just be expedient and cut to the chase and assign us all there now? What is Jesus waiting for?
Values. Priorities. Perhaps we'll always frustrate one another.
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