Cafe of Broken Dreams by John scientific terrorist in action

Dogma versus Atheism

I’ve just seen this 2 years old British documentary which criticized atheism. Rod Liddle who is a moderator of the documentary also accused atheism of being same dogmatic as religion, comparing it to the regime of Soviet Union.

I consider myself as an atheist, and because atheism is the opposite of theism, meaning it is lack of belief therefore it does not mean I must necessarily refuse any higher creator (for example some race of Aliens who just study us as humans study ants). I don’t have a problem with this, but I think that creator as is described by Abrahamic religions simply cannot exists. Regardless to my evidences – this article is not about them, but about dogmas.

I don’t know why Rod Liddle suggested that connection to science and theory of evolution gave Hitler a moral apology for his actions (wasn’t Hitler a believer?). In fact if had Hitler used science he would be never able to do what he did. Science which talks about human morality is philosophy – concretely ethics.

And it had been known before Hitler was born that what is natural was not good or moral, actually it’s a logical fallacy. No as an atheist I really don’t see Sparta style as moral.

To say that Marxism is the result of non-belief seems to me also a bit strange, because it was a blind belief that the whole worker class is exploited by capitalist or bourgeoisie.

It does not matter whether you are a victim of Mohammed’s dogma of being chosen by Allah and killed in his execution of a whole tribe or another Islamic conquest. It does not matter whether you are a victim of Christian Inquisition, Christian conquests or Crusades itself.  And it also does not matter whether you are a victim of Nazi dogma of superior Aryan race or communism dogma of exploited worker class – you are the victim of a dogma and that’s it.

Faiths are to be dogmatic and that’s the point all believes have some laws which they want to apply on others or a certain area (give me a tip about some religion which doesn’t if you know it, might some secular protestant Christianity?) .

The problem of dogma compared to opinion is that opinion can be easily changed when more information is available, dogma cannot.

In the end read this small text about abolition of Slavery which some consider to be product of Christianity (of course that other religions claims their religion is also against slavery – they were just 1000s years silent)

It is certainly true that the campaign against slavery and the slave trade was greatly strengthened by devout Christians, including the Evangelical layman William Wilberforce in England and the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing in America. But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others—for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan—also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion. Lord Mansfield, the author of the decision in Somersett’s Case, which ended slavery in England (though not its colonies), was no more than conventionally religious, and his decision did not mention religious arguments. Although Wilberforce was the instigator of the campaign against the slave trade in the 1790s, this movement had essential support from many in Parliament like Fox and Pitt, who were not known for their piety. As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion.

Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God’s will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. whole text here.

I would a bit modify it:  for good people to do evil that takes blind rationalization, god(s) know the best is one them. Yes faith kills reason.