November 21,
2012
Nature or God
The Buddhism of the Pali scriptures does not worship or make reference to the divine. Taoism of Lao Tzu or ChuangTzu talks about nature not the divine. The Greek atomists like Democritus and Leucippus, Greek and Roman Epicurean philosophies of Epicurus and Lucretius were either atheists or they held the gods to be irrelevant.
Atheism is the belief
that empirical evidence for the divine is lacking. It is lacking in the same
way that there exist no compelling proof for Unicorns or Pegasus. In addition Ferengi,
Cardassian, Klingon, Angosian, Bajoran, or Lela Dax who joined a Trill cannot be proven to exist other
than science fiction characters. The point is atheism is not a profound faith
in the non-existence of god or gods. But atheism simply states there is
insufficient evidence to waist time worrying about the nature or existence of
the divine. This does go beyond a
lack of faith in God. Atheists state God is not necessary. At a certain level
all atheists are agonistic in the same way that it is impossible to prove that
a hot pastrami sandwich, double shot of espresso and a shot of Canadian whisky
eternally rotates around Pluto without ever changing temperatures. It is so
remote a chance that to considerate is absurd. At this point our discussion has
slipped into intellectual masturbation.
Humanism claims people
are capable of being ethical and decent and becoming richly fulfilled without
belief in God. In fact belief in the divine makes this more difficult.
No comments:
Post a Comment