Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Via Bitch, for Drek to follow up (subtil, ain't I?)
by Ken Houghton
Teaser:
Yes, that's Locke as in "the Declaration of Independence is almost pure Locke."
and the teaser from the comment at Bitch:
Los Angeles Times: 10 myths -- and 10 truths -- about atheism
Teaser:
SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was "not at all to be tolerated" because, he said, "promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist."
Yes, that's Locke as in "the Declaration of Independence is almost pure Locke."
and the teaser from the comment at Bitch:
When scientists don't know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
Comments:
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Faith is also an admission of lack of knowledge, but only if one keeps an open mind which many do not.
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# posted by 
: Fri Dec 29, 10:44:00 AM
: Fri Dec 29, 10:44:00 AM << Home
