Gideon

Gideon

12p

5 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

14 years ago @ ChurchCrunch - CyberMonday Giveaway! ... · 0 replies · +1 points

With family. Simple, but wonderful.

14 years ago @ Emergent Outliers - The Moral Failure of t... · 0 replies · +1 points

I don't think that's the case. The "New Atheists" is a rather specific group of writers/thinkers. I'm not talking about atheism here, I'm not talking about it as an ethos - I'm talking about a group of guys who are promoting atheism in a very particular way.

Does standing up and saying "you're being deceitful, you're being harmful and participating in the things you are supposable against?" mean saying "you people are idiots or non-people or the source of all evil?" There's a difference. I can be against their behaviors without making them sub-human. Perhaps I failed to some extent, as it was certainly not my intention. If the "New Atheists" are against the evils that religion has caused - human suffering, mainly, then you don't go about it by saying something as stupid as one cause is responsible or more importantly, one group.

Terry Eagleton's book "Reason, Faith and Revolution" http://www.amazon.com/Reason-Faith-Revolution-Ref... (also an atheist) does a good job criticizing this group in a useful way. And even more importantly, Eagleton actually knows something about religion aside from the strawmen Harris, Dawkins, etc. seem to understand.

14 years ago @ Emergent Outliers - The Moral Failure of t... · 3 replies · +1 points

My issue isn't that they are being proactive at all. I don't have an issue with atheism or atheists - but I do have an issue with that kind of rhetoric. It's exactly that churches have been using such rhetoric that it is a known problem - we know what the fruits of this sort of work is, and the atheists should know better.

Some of my favorite writers and thinkers are atheists (as is a much loved and admired brother of mine) but I am not talking about atheism in general here, I'm talking about a group of people who regularly make sweeping, outlandish statements (often supported by bad data as Harris does in his book) that seek to demonize most of the human race.

Is it a problem when religious people do it, too? Yes, of course! But if atheists want to maintain any sense of moral superiority before us crazies they need to be more rational and better at kindness than we. But the Emergent conversation is generally very aware of those in our own camp who are less than gracious against our brothers, but the "New Atheist" conversation is becoming less and less civil and more and more ideological and that is a threat to what common goals we share.

14 years ago @ Emergent Outliers - The Moral Failure of t... · 0 replies · +1 points

Yes, religion kills, but of course - so do atheists, politics, economics, nationalism, etc. Ultimately - people do. What actually set me on this line of thinking was that it occurred to me that if these 'New Atheists' took what I believe out of the question and wanted my actions and what I believed needed to be done we'd have a great deal in common. The problem is, of course, the insistance once this creation of the other that includes all those that share the same goals.

16 years ago @ Dumb Little Man - Bookmarking Solutions:... · 0 replies · +2 points

Actually, for short term storage I use del.icio.us as well. With the firefox extension installed you can select a list of tags to have at instant retrieval. I tag my stuff I use all the time with the del.icio.us tag "daily" and then set it as the tag to show on the firefox bar. Works like a charm, and keeps all my common bookmarks just one click away.