Nice Comment

Comment was by Loren Miller on May 13, 2022 at 6:28am

When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another.
-- Sam Harris, An Atheist Manifesto

By “reasons,” I believe Harris means rational, objective reasons, which can be observed and/or tested by anyone. That is when belief aligns with knowledge and reality. It's when that alignment doesn't occur that the problems crop up.

Comment was by Loren Miller on May 12, 2022 at 8:07am

…the only way to fight an idea is with a better idea, and regardless of the outcome of the contest, BOTH ideas will remain extant. “Killing an idea” strikes me as a virtual impossibility. The most you can do is demonstrate an idea’s ill-suited nature and incompatibility with the advancement of life or whatever positive goal is on the table.
-- me

Considering the previous quote about books and the mistaken idea that burning them amounts to destroying the ideas they contain, I thought my quote here would be appropriate. I'm not entirely sure that an idea CAN be utterly obliterated. More likely, they can be rendered so unpopular as to be out of sight, out of mind. That still takes WORK, though.

Comment was by Mrs.B on May 11, 2022 at 1:19pm

I won't even fold a corner down on a book's page, let alone even think of burning one! I've never understood that logic.

Comment was by Loren Miller on May 11, 2022 at 9:32am

“Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people.
-- Heinrich Heine

And I can't help but notice talk about book burning in Florida and other Trump states. I find that disturbing and wonder why the citizens of those states don't.

Comment was by Joan Denoo on May 10, 2022 at 2:31pm

"If we can't be whistleblowers...

then let us become those who will hear the whistle..."

Yan Lianke

Ren Min University

Via < Patty < Marilyn 

Comment was by Loren Miller on May 10, 2022 at 7:04am

Perhaps so, Onyango, but the author of The God Delusion sure took a hard swing at that one:

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
-- Richard Dawkins

And Dan Barker was good enough to fill in some blanks that Dawkins left behind, expanding on Dawkins' quote with his own book!

Comment was by Onyango M on May 10, 2022 at 6:51am

Nero's only fault was to be an ineffectual leader in times of crisis. But if the bible were a biography, the English language lacks the adjectives to really describe the personage behind the book.

Comment was by Loren Miller on May 10, 2022 at 6:09am

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness ... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast.
-- Mark Twain, Reflections on Religion

Indeed, Nero only let Rome burn. If we're to believe the bible, Yahweh drowned the entire planet!

Comment was by Loren Miller on May 9, 2022 at 8:42am

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.
-- Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files #3)

I'm especially leery of any kind of "Creator" whose rules favor men over women, castigate alternative sexuality without giving a reason why, and where the penalty for violation is, in almost all cases, death. That isn't morality; it's governance by threat.

Comment was by Mrs.B on May 8, 2022 at 1:10pm

Terrifying barely covers it.

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