March 5, 2006

Bacon and God: Atheists without science?

Click on cartoon to enlarge it.

The history of Atheism is pretty interesting. The Greeks of 4th and 5th Century BC had a few quasi Atheists and there was even talk of biological evolution. Then the Church took over it seems and silenced freethought for a long time. Atheism started to gain momentum in the 18th Century, but it was mainly because a few intellectuals started doubting the bible. I really don't know what these pre-evolution Atheists thought when it came to the idea of man starting off as man on this earth. There was atomic theory, but I'm not sure if that covered abiogenesis. To have humans start off as humans on earth implies a creator, unless a chemical reaction in a hostile atmosphere can somehow produce a human baby.
Interesting quote from The Marquis de Sade in 1782: "The cause and explanation of what you do not understand may perhaps be the simplest thing in the world. Perfect your physics and you will understand Nature better, refine your reason, banish your prejudices and you'll have no further need of your god".

20 comments:

  1. WINO
    by: lardy_mess56 (50/F/shasta county) 03/05/06 01:50 pm
    Msg: 2423635 of 2423650
    2 recommendations

    Please don't take this the wrong way, I am only telling you this as 1 friend to another.

    Your blog blows. It's crappy. Having a blog is like having a baby. You don't need a license to have one. You don't need to meet any qualifications to have one. Anybody CAN have one or more than one. And the ones who normally have them are the ones who really shouldn't have them because they suck. Having one doesn't make you important either.

    What I'm trying to tell you is GET A FUKKING JOB AND STOP SPONGING OFF YOUR WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!

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  2. Oink, if you are going to be repetitive, I will have to change the options of who gets to post here. I don't mind original thoughts, but this is the second time you posted this.

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  3. That anonymous cracks me up. Not imaginative enough to think of a name or write something new. And what’s the purpose of criticizing this blog or any blog? What a sad individual he or she must be. You must have hit a nerve Bacon. I would never dream of abusing the author of any blog no matter how much I disagreed with their viewpoint. Keeping a blog going takes a fair bit of commitment and cutting and pasting stuff is essential and really the great thing about Internet publishing.

    Mr Anonymous how about you create your own blog and we can all come over and take a gander?

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  4. You are incapable of original thought and your sh!tty blog shows that. Get a real job with real pay and bennies. You are wasting your time here.

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  5. I guess Oink thinks that daily kos is an original, cool and thought provoking blog...


    Johdarr

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  6. Bacon, you are showing poor leadership skills. Why don't you delete hate spam? You have a delete button that allows you to delete any post. You don't even have to change the posting options, just use that little Ole garbage pail.
    ...
    I don't mind what a person says so long as it is sincere and relevant. I don't like to weed through a thread seeing irrelevancy like those posts. Probably no one else does. Use the garbage pail.
    You are showing signs of terrible weakness. Are you tough enough to win against the Islamist Fundies? Can you beat down the Pope? Do you need to buy papal absolutions? Can you abolish the inquisition will it abolish you?
    ..
    Bacon!! Do something useful and start a Church of Atheism... or actually the Atheist equivalent of a church , the problem with the Fundies is that they group together and in unity there is strength. A strong organization is needed to oppose them.
    Instead of an Atheist Society how about a Anti-Fundie Society or a Pro Rational Society or just call it "The Rationalists" or "The Scientifics".
    Denounce all religions as Spawns of Satan,,,er the secular equivalent,have a program, Sunday school classes, regular gatherings, a center for lobbying organizations such as pro-abortion n, anti-censorship etc etc.
    Lots of useful activities to do , bring all the rational scientific pro-humanity causes under one Umbrella.

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  7. Max, Oink is spars with me on the Yahoo hate boards constantly. He is harmless, and I'm afraid he might harm himself if I deleted his posts.

    There is a great church. I put my name on their mailing list last week. I don't like the fact they use the word church because that gives me visions of crosses and Jesus. Check it out here

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  8. Interesting post. I just posted something about Epicurus in my blog. Athiesm has existed for millenia, and has not died in spite of the fear-inspiring deities.

    Many of the comments had to to with the anonymous one, just delete it and forget about it. We do not have time for hate.

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  9. Can I "borrow" this cartoon for my blog? :)

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  10. http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/Oink_Sharon/327601 pusgut & goy
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060213/ap_on_sp_ho_ne/hkn_gambling_bust_gretzky
    "From the same episode, this scene is simply billiant:"

    You stooge.

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  11. I like this quote from the writings of the Marquis de Sade:
    "The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind."
    Although I’m not sure if the Marquis is the most sensible person to be seen quoting.

    Diagoras of Melos is my favourite Greek atheist. He decided not to believe in the gods when they didn’t help him out when he asked them to and spent the rest of his days telling everybody that the gods didn’t exist. Condemned to death he fled to the Spartan lands and died of old age there I believe. Cool dude.

    It seems to me that Joseph Campbell, American mythologist (1904-1987) had it right when he said,
    ". . . god is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.”
    A metaphor can be useful, you could even be inspired or cured by it if you had a bad back or something. However a metaphor will not cure a missing limb. A metaphor will let the guilty go unpunished and the innocent suffer. It certainly fits the facts we see on the ground today.

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  12. > If you are terrified of horses and afraid to be near them, and yet like
    > to dress up in cowboy costumes as an adult and ride bicycles rather than
    > horses on a former pig farm that you call a "ranch", you just might be an
    > asshole.
    >
    > If you were a cocaine-snorting, shiftless and worthless drunk until you
    > were forty years old, and yet then begin to pontificate sanctimoniously to
    > the entire nation about "decency and honor" and "moral character", you
    > might just be an asshole.
    >
    > If you dodged the military draft and avoided a foreign war because you
    > were the privileged son of a Congressman, and yet like to dress up in
    > military costumes as an adult and send hundreds of thousands of poor kids
    > to a war that you alone started, you might just be an asshole.
    >
    > If you and your brothers went from one failed and questionable business
    > venture to another and were bailed out time and again by taxpayers and
    > family friends, and yet have the gall to lecture a nation on economics and
    > budgeting, you might just be an asshole.
    >
    > If you and your family helped arrange for your girlfriend to have an
    > abortion because you didn't have the sense to use a condom when you were
    > young, and then later wag your finger at women about the "sanctity" of
    > life of an embryo, you might just be an asshole

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  13. AA, good quotes. I'm still wondering what the early Greek Atheists thought when it comes to the first human on earth.

    Anon, WTF???????

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  14. The ancient Greeks had mythology to explain the human origin and the origin of all things. The story of Prometheus describes how the first humans were created. In ancient Greece, mythology was not dogma. The materialist can accept the myth as an explanation, however, also accepted the lack of influence of those gods in their ongoing lives. (See Democritus and Epicurus)

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  15. Dr. Marco, that is still a belief in God. So technically, they were not Atheists. They just thought Gods were around at one time and then went into hiding. But then again, they didn't have the findings of moderen science.

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  16. And the LORD said, “Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”
    --------------------
    What is interesting about this verse is that there is only one language that is common to all men. It is language that men use to engineer, to design, to model and to build. A man must possess a passion for that language to be fluent in it. If you remove the passion then eventually, you remove the language.

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  17. BEAJ-

    Here is another Atheist church here in Texas. Personally, as an Atheist, I don't like this idea because as you said a church invokes thoughts of crosses and Jesus.

    http://www.churchoffreethought.org/

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  18. I emailed the head of the Church of Reality and told him the very same thing. I told him he should have gone with Temple instead.

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