Science and Faith

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:42 pm

On Nietzsche's, and my own, stance from an authority on Nietzsche's work that I respect:

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct - henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life… Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." – “One thing only is necessary"… That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf - it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. […]The "salvation of the soul" - in plain English: "the world revolves around me." … […] To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.

Hardly the words of a nihilist - but the words of someone suffering from growing bitterness and aggressiveness for seing false idols taking over and killing anything in the world and human life that make it a worthwhile place for Nietzsche to live in - and stand up for it. A nihilist does not defend the world and does not try to imporve it - he rejects it. Nietzsche defended, and his "superman" (Übermensch) is the man that has left the traditional religious conceptions that he and me are criticising behind. He simply is beyond such coneptions of man and life and meanings. Not more and not less Nietzsche's superman is meaning.

The term nevertheless was open for multiple distortions, perversions and abuses.

I think I'll stop there for now...

requiett · Post by **requiett** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:42 pm

Kalium wrote:
Shazzy wrote:If you say, "this is my life, I've got to make it count," it's easy to also say, "screw as many people as I want, I've only got a hundred years to live and no one to hold me accountable for it if I don't get caught." Eternal accountability is the best antithesis of selfishness and cruelty.
A secular justice system does pretty well, you know. Life in jail packs a much larger punch without the whole afterlife thing when you die.

Enron aside, how many of the vast majority of corrupt businessmen and dictators have spent their lives in jail?

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:46 pm

requiett wrote:Enron aside, how many of the vast majority of corrupt businessmen and dictators have spent their lives in jail?

A lot of them don't live that long.

requiett · Post by **requiett** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:50 pm

Otohiko wrote:On Nietzsche's, and my own, stance from an authority on Nietzsche's work that I respect:

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct - henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life… Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." – “One thing only is necessary"… That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf - it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. […]The "salvation of the soul" - in plain English: "the world revolves around me." … […] To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.

Hardly the words of a nihilist - but the words of someone suffering from growing bitterness and aggressiveness for seing false idols taking over and killing anything in the world and human life that make it a worthwhile place for Nietzsche to live in - and stand up for it. A nihilist does not defend the world and does not try to imporve it - he rejects it. Nietzsche defended, and his "superman" (Übermensch) is the man that has left the traditional religious conceptions that he and me are criticising behind. He simply is beyond such coneptions of man and life and meanings. Not more and not less Nietzsche's superman is meaning.

The term nevertheless was open for multiple distortions, perversions and abuses.
I think I'll stop there for now...

I have great respect for Nietzsche. I just think his works have been as perverted as the Bible itself in the name of intolerance.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:54 pm

This is true and has been my point all along (about Nietzsche). Good you've noted!

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:58 pm

Kalium wrote:Good thing nobody takes that bible thing literally then, hm? Especially the bits where it says one thing but means the opposite, or when it disagrees with other bits. Oh, wait a tick...

Lydia's a pretty good counterexample too, if I'm remembering right. But I don'tread the Bible literally. Otherwise I'd be actually eating Jesus Christ's flesh and drinking his blood at Communion, and that would just creep me out. By realizing that one section isn't literal, it opens the whole rest of the Bible to interpretation. I wish more of the hardline Protestants would realize that. (I don't include Catholics because they actually go for transubstantiation. Eww.)

Arigatomina · Post by **Arigatomina** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:19 pm

Shazzy wrote:Women are raped, abused, and oppressed all the time by non-religious men.

True, but excluding psycho/sociopaths who lack normal human emotions, those non-religious men know what they're doing is morally wrong. If they were religious men (christian bible-reading men) they would know that it's a man's duty to rule over his wife, his daughter, and any woman in his community who lacks a father or husband to keep her in line. As long as he owns her through marriage or fatherhood, he can do whatever he likes to her. He's expected to beat her regularly if that's what's necessary to keep her well behaved, and to rape her if she refuses to perform her duty as his wife. He's to do the same thing to his daughters to prepare them for marriage (not the rape, just the beating, since technically incest went out after the new testament was written).

If you look at the specific rules written by the stricter literalist churches, you'll see that they don't just condone treating women like cattle, they believe it's their moral duty in the service of god as men created in his image. When these men rape, abuse, and oppress women, they're not doing anything morally wrong. They're just being good christians.

That's the difference and it's a big one.

Believing in a God is not a direct correlation to female oppression.

That's true. But mimicking the "acceptable behavior" in the bible is in direct correlation to female oppression. It's especially bad in churches that base their morals entirely on the old testament. Times have changed in the US, but we still have church leaders telling their congregation that the literal interpretation of the bible is the only guide on which they should base every single action they take.

It's not faith in God that's to blame, he has nothing to do with how men interpret a single book written in his name and edited by so many people over the years that no one knows what it originally contained.

requiett · Post by **requiett** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:37 am

The only way to take the Bible literally is if you could read Hebrew and Greek.

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:13 am

Arigatomina wrote:It's especially bad in churches that base their morals entirely on the old testament. Times have changed in the US, but we still have church leaders telling their congregation that the literal interpretation of the bible is the only guide on which they should base every single action they take.

Not just Old Testament. Most of these so-called Christians also like to quote Paul's lines about women being subservient to men as men are subservient to God and the more famous "let your women be silent in church" verse. Without also reading the lines from Paul about how since a man and woman become 'as of one flesh' before God, that anything bad you do to your wife is as if you do it to yourself. Or that it is the man's duty to his wife to treat her well just as God treats man well, lest he be treated just as badly as he treated his wife. And the sections where he commends the female deacons of several churches. :/

Or even better, let me quote the founder of my faith, Martin Luther. "Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave."

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:42 pm

requiett wrote:The only way to take the Bible literally is if you could read Hebrew and Greek.

Aramaic, too. Regardless, it doesn't stop a lot of (idiotic) people from trying.