@lack New thread. This one isn’t a question of why you are an atheist - different question. Why has atheism never (really) been a thing until recent history? Surely there were philosophical and scientific geniuses in prehistoric civilization and in the ancient world - they discovered fire, invented writing, invented the wheel, discovered how to cultivate plants and domesticated beasts of burden. They did this while performing excruciating manual labor, under constant privation (by modern …
@lack Atheism didn’t really become a thing at the civilizational and cultural level until the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution and the Cult of Reason. Even then, the Cult of Reason went out of fashion quickly, and they brought in a Cult of the Supreme Being (basically, Enlightenment Deism, Watchmaker creationism without any messiah or prophets) as I understand it.
@b_chocolatey @lack
Seems like the whole push for atheism has been nothing more than a social engineering psyop to install the new faith if sciencism and consumerism
At the top of the power structure there are few (possibly no) atheists. They may "worship" the light of knowledge (apex of modern science technology etc), deities, or one god. But they "worship" something.
But if someone doesn't bow at some alter or another, the gubmint will gladly fill that "higher power" gap
@MtnStateNomad @lack the woke religion likes to mobilize sympathetic churches leaders and religious organizations towards their preferred in-group whenever possible. They gain nothing by making a principled, internally consistent, unpopular argument for no-god-because-dinosaurs. The Current Thing has already moved on
@b_chocolatey @MtnStateNomad could it be as simple as the fact that ideas, like technology, take time to develop?
Why wasn't the transistor invented in the 1400s? Because the things that had to be before it hadn't happened yet.
@lack @MtnStateNomad so godless materialism is something that the Athenian prosecutor denounced, also something that the Buddha denounced as the opposite of Right View. “And what, monks, is Right View? Right View is that one hold that there is Father and Mother, monks and saints, holy-days and offerings, good and bad action, good and bad karma in this life and the next…”
@lack @MtnStateNomad the Buddha himself addressed this very question in numerous sutras. “And if a man holds to Wrong View, will he abstain from alcoholic and intoxicating drink, from the shedding of blood, from gambling, from unlawful intercourse with other men’s wives, from telling lies?”
@lack @MtnStateNomad like dude, you didn’t even read the brochure! He already addressed this obvious question. Do you have a counter-argument?
@b_chocolatey @MtnStateNomad What do you mean? A counter-argument to what exactly?
@lack @MtnStateNomad my observation here “you didn’t even read the brochure” is the exact, diametrically opposed position from Newton’s standing on the shoulders of giants. It is actually the sort of thing that #Nietzsche had in mind prophesying of the Last Man. “We have invented happiness, they say, and they blink”
@lack @MtnStateNomad “and whoever disagrees goes voluntarily to the madhouse. In the former days, all the world was mad, they say… and they blink”
@b_chocolatey @MtnStateNomad Anyone can say that an idea is the Right View. But how do we find out if it actually is?