The rise of the the atheist right

[pood]

I don't want to be the target of a Gish gallop or sealioning.

Nobody has done or will do that. We are simply asking you questions. This is a discussion board.

But let me see if I have this correct. You want to pay me to read, and summarize, and answer questions about a text that you have read, but either can’t or won’t summarize or answer questions about?

 

[WAB]

I have Spinoza's complete works and clearly recall a letter wherein he wrote to his correspondent that he disdained the Kabbalah and considered the Jewish mystics associated with it "insane", or "lunatics".

Spinoza did not understand the Kabbalah, and thus disparaged it. The connection of his own thought to the Kabbalah is self-evident, and is well-examined in the scholarly literature.

Is there anything by Spinoza wherein he discusses the Kabbalah? I've read most of his important works, but may have missed it. One paper I read claims he referred to the Kabbalah only once, and that happens to be the bit I quoted in post # 48. I'm having trouble locating the paper, but will try to find it.

I just need to know, on what do you base the idea that Spinoza didn't understand the Kabbalah? Not arguing here, I'm genuinely interested.

 

[unapologetic]

Why don't you just read it? Just a few hours work.

Well, if it takes you longer than that to summarize, Screw it.

Philosophy is a demanding discipline. Presenting it in detail to a hostile audience is beyond my ability and interest.

Then why are you still here?

 

[Axulus]

One way to fight the right, especially the MAGA movement, is to redouble efforts aimed at educating people how to think logically and rationally, how to develop a better bullshit detector, how to evaluate claims and evidence. How to think scientifically.

This will attack both Christianity and many ideas and arguments on the right simultaneously.

The article contends that Christianity is the source of the drive toward reason:

Paul’s fanatical drive to preach the Gospels to people who spoke different languages, paid tribute to different gods, and swore allegiance to unimaginably different tribes helped to prove something we now take for granted — that the human capacity for reason is truly universal.

From this perspective, attacking Christianity merely enables a conservatism freed from all restraint. It seems far better strategy to embrace authentic Christianity as an ally against the Right.

So the argument is that one must embrace something unreasonable to be driven towards reason? Even if Christianity drives some people toward reason, I see no reason to believe one can't be driven towards reason with logic, evidence, proper skepticism, and embracing the scientific method.

If one has compassion, then these tools will lead to a rejection of right wing ideas and christianity together.

 

[pood]

It’s not a hostile audience, it’s a skeptical audience. Don’t know if No Robots sees the difference.

No Robots, what text do you want me to read?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The basic argument is that Christianity restrained conservatives and right wingers in the past to some degree.

Which is just the kind of laughable claim Christians make all the time.

Christians are inherently better and nicer people than non-Christians, so just think how much worse it could be if atheists were in charge. Imagine how unpleasant the Spanish Inquisition would have been, if the inquisitors had been atheists!

If you subscribe to the premise: Christians are inherently better and nicer people than non-Christians, then the worries expressed by the article are compelling and terrifying. If you don't, then it's a sick joke.

If anything I think the religious are worse. They can play the god will understand card, we can't.

 

[bilby]

The basic argument is that Christianity restrained conservatives and right wingers in the past to some degree.

Which is just the kind of laughable claim Christians make all the time.

Christians are inherently better and nicer people than non-Christians, so just think how much worse it could be if atheists were in charge. Imagine how unpleasant the Spanish Inquisition would have been, if the inquisitors had been atheists!

If you subscribe to the premise: Christians are inherently better and nicer people than non-Christians, then the worries expressed by the article are compelling and terrifying. If you don't, then it's a sick joke.

If anything I think the religious are worse. They can play the god will understand card, we can't.

Or "God will forgive me"; Or the real doozy, "I am doing God's work".

The Spanish Inquisitors didn't think that they were doing anything wrong.

 

[Bomb#20]

The Spanish Inquisitors didn't think that they were doing anything wrong.

Cut them some slack -- keep in mind they were taken completely by surprise.

 

[lostone]

A century ago, the social gospel unified socialism and Christianity. Divided, they fall.

That’s nice, but today we have a bunch of MAGA evangelical Christians who don’t go for this at all.

And they need to be attacked for fundamentally misrepresenting the nature and meaning of the doctrines they purport to uphold.

Now one could interpret the quotes put in Jesus’s mouth by later writers as a call to socialism or love they neighbor or whatever. But that obviously still wouldn’t the validate Christian claim that Jesus was divine and was resurrected. But possibly one could be a Christian atheist, as Dostoevsky appears to have been, and accept some of the New Testament ethical precepts without believing in the truth of divinity.

Pretty much. I would say, however, that a true universalism has no problem acknowledging the divine in all things, and its special manifestation in the life of the saintly individual.

Why can’t one believe in universalism, egalitarianism and injunctions to peace without believing in superstitious BS?

Christianity is in essence not superstitious at all. It is a doctrine of acknowledging and manifesting the divine in man.

MAGA Christianity is in essence the doctrine of worshipping Everything nasty and brutish in mankind?

 

[Politesse]

I’ve no doubt there are far-right atheist assholes, like Jerry Coyne, who was recently riding his anti-trans hobbyhorse again but got rather severely rebutted. But I still don’t know what atheo-fascism is supposed to be. I suppose there are atheists who are fascists, but the coining of the term in the OP sounds suspiciously like claiming there is some direct links between the two, when of course there is not.

ATe

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The article is a bit long, but it is interesting reading. The basic argument is that Christianity restrained conservatives and right wingers in the past to some degree.

Umm... when was that? Before or after the KKK? Christianity didn't restrain the conservatives... because they didn't need to be restrained. They were in charge and the laws be what they wanted them to be.

Atheist right wingers don't have the restraint.

Lack the restraint, but also lack the presumptive authority to fulfill some greater goal.

Might come out a wash.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

A century ago, the social gospel unified socialism and Christianity. Divided, they fall.

That’s nice, but today we have a bunch of MAGA evangelical Christians who don’t go for this at all.

And they need to be attacked for fundamentally misrepresenting the nature and meaning of the doctrines they purport to uphold.

Now one could interpret the quotes put in Jesus’s mouth by later writers as a call to socialism or love they neighbor or whatever. But that obviously still wouldn’t the validate Christian claim that Jesus was divine and was resurrected. But possibly one could be a Christian atheist, as Dostoevsky appears to have been, and accept some of the New Testament ethical precepts without believing in the truth of divinity.

Pretty much. I would say, however, that a true universalism has no problem acknowledging the divine in all things, and its special manifestation in the life of the saintly individual.

Why can’t one believe in universalism, egalitarianism and injunctions to peace without believing in superstitious BS?

Christianity is in essence not superstitious at all. It is a doctrine of acknowledging and manifesting the divine in man.

MAGA Christianity is in essence the doctrine of worshipping Everything nasty and brutish in mankind?

I thought I had something different to add, but I don't. I tried to delete this but am too dysfunctional to do so.

Oh, and anyone who openly admits to lack of belief may, in the coming years, find out that their vote for the Amazing Orange has landed them in prison. The gross cynicism of today's Evangelicals re: backing Trump for the purpose of installing a theocratic will not tolerate disrespect for Capitalist Jesus.