On Nov 24, 4:58 am, leonard-abb...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Leonard Abbott) wrote:
> Are Atheists lying?
> We can't prove this picture is actually the ark. but we can prove
> Atheists are lying, to protect their anti-bible agenda..And that is even
> better.
None of the numerous atheists known to me has an anti-bible agenda.
Most of us probably recognise the bible as no more than a surviving
compilation of early cultural productions, attempting to encode and
preserve the best available insights at the times of their production,
into:
- the world as then perceived and conceived, by some remarkably able
individuals,
- the remembered local histories,
- and the writers' best attempts to establish criteria for social
stability.
Even though the Christian bible has had a tremendous influence on the
development of Western thought, the human race has moved on since
then.
To rely on the bible or any of the other similar ancient productions
as a guide to either sense-making (in its broadest meaning), or to
criteria for social stability, is to throw away the gains of some
centuries, if not millenia, of recent advances in understanding of the
world and how to live in it.
Personally, I interpret reliance on ancient texts as a sign of fear
and ignorance of the modern world.
Of course the modern world is, in a few ways at any one time, worse
than ancient times, but most likely only tem****arily. In the main it
is hugely better for those living in the developed world, and for the
less-disadvantaged populations of the developing world.
The gains have been in terms of such basic criteria as infant
mortality, life expectancy, freedom from tyranny, famine and the
majority of diseases... Such advances were inconceivable until the
move from zero-sum Medievalism into the Modern progressive world, via
the Reformation, the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought (the
latter phrase for which I must acknowledge my friend Scott B.)
Of course there are new diseases, new wars, new floods, new scams even
- necessarily as we live in a complex world - complex enough to permit
life to evolve and flourish. But slowly mankind is learning to deal
with wider and wider ranges of problems and in such a world there are
unavoidably winners and losers.
The problems we face now are increasingly the problems of success,
such as global warming. There will often be a lag between successes
and dealing with their consequences - but likely we will deal with
them, or, just maybe, die out in the attempt. So it goes!
For the moment, the losers- the "ignorati" as one might describe you -
have gained some ground, particularly in the politics of the US and
the Middle East. But history shows that overall it is knowledge and
openness that win in the long term. The tem****ary blips, such as
Caligula and Hitler, punctuate history; but in the long run the
suffering and striving of the many overwrites the evil of the few.
In fact, we are components of a range of nested "complex adaptive
systems", from biological cells to a global ecosystem; and once we
recognise the range of behaviours we should expect from our global
condition, we will be better placed to use our hard-won knowledge to
continue developing the domain of human-kind, probably outwards into
the wider solar system and beyond.
In a sense, we already live in a heaven of sorts, even if it is a hell
for many:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgXFkqZDq7s
Yours, grateful for modern scientific understanding right up till the
moment I finally lose consciousness, die and, like the Norwegian Blue,
simply "cease to be" - PE
PS:
> There was no cold weather before the canopy of water flooded the earth.
If you could pull your head out long enough to acquire the method of
understanding that has permitted you the privilege of living in a land
of milk and honey, you could learn that the world has been through
some exceptionally cold periods over geological time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
http://www.treepower.org/news/nyticeage.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1908JRASC...2..132C
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