Alain de Botton and the Crisis of Atheist Irrelevance.

The foremost atheist Philosopher of our age recently
launched his new book "Religion for Atheists" and
no atheists are interested in talking about it,
including all the ones who eagerly embraced Dawkin's
even more enthusiastic endorsement of atheist Gods he claims
'came into being'(sic)

From his book Launch:

"A few years ago it struck me that there is a resource
that is a provider of Wisdom, and consolation,
and an ethical framework, and it's rather fascinating and
has dominated the mental landscape of human beings for thousands of years
I'm thinking, of course, of religion.

And the problem is, I'm an atheist."
 
     Yes, that's certainly a problem for any atheist!   B^D

     or for anyone living in any of the atheist regimes they ran! B^[

"Not just a bit of an atheist, I really am an atheist."

     You make it sound like you expect people not to believe atheists! 

      B^D 

"So, this doesn't, in a way, make me an ideal cantidate to write
about religion, but at some point it did strike me that religions
cannot be, in the words of Christopher Hitchins, "the source of
the poison of everything", it's implausible, they've been around
for thousands of years, they reflect the collaborative intelligences
and sensitivities of millions of people and the idea that everything
to do with them is false and wicked just didn't start to stand up to
the scrutiny I applied to it, as I thought more about the subject.

So, that's really the fruit of my thinking"


   We he have one of the most prominent atheist thinkers admitting
   that religion is really the source of so so many good and useful
   contributions to civilisation that Hitchin's malicious lies just
   don't stand up..!   8^o  and as atheism is devoid of anything
   worthwhile itself, it needs to STEAL some of the many great ideas
   religion has to offer:         8^o


         Astonishing admissions, no wonder global atheism has
         fallen SILENT!

" my new book,Religion for Atheists is a deliberate attempt
  to look at a number of areas where I believe that religions
  have things to offer for non-believers"

       Sure,  Truth, Love, Compassion, Justice, Sincerity, Charity,
       Mercy, Courage, Integrity..
       all the virtues atheism lacks, and doesn't even understand, all
       the spiritual values that USENET atheists reject completely...


# From: Budikka666
# Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.religion,alt.religion.christian,alt.agnosticism
# Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:38:16 -0800 (PST)
# Message-ID:
#
# You can keep your spiritual values. 
# I'll piss on them and pass on them.
#
# Budikka

" ..and perhaps believers know about these things already,
    but for non-believers I wanted to look at that."

"It strikes me that at the moment the world is really divided into
believers and non-believers and the debate has become at 
times very fierce, there are people, some of whom live in 
North Oxford who have suggested not only that religion is 
unbelievable but also that it's ridiculous, and that people who 
believe in anything are simpletons, maniacs  .. people who 
must be lectured at, to remove the folly of their intellectual errors."

   We all know the "person from North Oxford" he's criticising for
   being such an arrogant, rabid demagogue with extreme views, is
   Richard Dawkins            B^]

"That's not really my approach, I think such an approach is sterile,
I don't think one makes progress"

   True, Dawkins extreme militancy and all the money spent on Bus
   ad lies to proselytise for new atheist converts never worked! 

"It doesn't strike me that this is really a productive way
to go forward."

   Mate, I have been telling the dimwitted Dawkinite Drones that
   for YEARS now!   But they are completely blind to reason!  B^D 

" How do you live a good life outside of a religious structure?

   Well that's silly, when the good life you want to emulate
   exists WITHIN that moral framework and they claim that the 
   SPIRITUAL  values are what brings life to the attempts at
   self-transformation!

   It's like you want the Light from a lightbulb, using only
   the physical MATTER, not the invisible, electromagnetic
   ENERGY!  B^D

   It's been tried in EVERY atheist state and it failed!   B^]


   The Union of Savage Slaughter and Repression(USSR),
   Mao's Great Leap Bckward and the Cultural Devolution,
   Pol Pot's Year Zero Cambodian Genocide, all were
   totalitarian tyrannies which terrorised tortured and killed over
   80,000,000 people, far more than ANY religion in history,
   all promised a Utopia 'freed of religion' which they repressed,
   and  all FAILED CATASTROPHICALLY!
   (China reformed it's  constitution in 1982, allowing greater
     freedom of thought and belief, and their society has
     transformed into a powerhouse, with 300,000,000 new
     believers, unthinkable during the Gang of Four)

   How can these atheist 'thinkers' be so dumb? 

"This is THE question facing modern society, and we haven't
necessarily answered it that well."

   You atheists have NEVER answered it, B^D  but the majority
   religious societies that you want to emulate clearly have!   B^]

   All the free, open, pluralist, progressive, prosperous secular
   democracies have been built by Majority Religious societies,
   the USA "In God we Trust", Europe, Australia, Indonesia,
   India et al
   ... no atheist state has ever produced a decent democracy!

    Why not? 

"I think it's a legitimate question and my book is an
attempt to answer that question."

   Sure, the hilarious part is that you think atheism needs
   to copy religion ...because it HAS the answer already!!!!  

  BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!!

   Justas Dawkins has attempted to plagiarise when he
   suggests atheist God's 'evolving!  8^o

# 'In one essay, Professor Dyson casts millions of speculative
# years into the future. Our galaxy is dying and humans have
# evolved into something like bolts of superpowerful intelligent
# and moral energy.
#
# Doesn’t that description sound an awful lot like God?
#
# "Certainly," Professor Dawkins replies. "It’s highly plausible
# that in the universe there are God-like creatures."
#
# He raises his hand, just in case a reader thinks he’s gone
# around a  religious bend. "It’s very important to understand
# that these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific
# progression of  incremental evolution."'


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/science/20dawkins.html?pagewanted=all

  So, One leading atheist now thinks God is Plausible,
  and another wants to steal ideas from religion!   8^o

   Dawkins is copying the BELIEF in Supernatural Beings,
   i.e. they are FABRICATING GODS to WORSHIP!  (Just
   like every atheist tyranny tried to do with political cultism ;-) 

    Whereas De Botton wants to steal the PRAXIS of religion:    B^D

"My starting point is to say that we should learn to STEAL from
religions."

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAA!

   Priceless!   The starting point for Atheist 'philosophy' is
   that having no ideas of their own the unoriginal atheists
   need to pinch the ideas of the more successful, ..religious!

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAA

"you know some people have accused me of advocating a
'pick and mix'approach to religions, and I say you know what? 
you're absolutely right, that's completely what I'm doing,
a pick and mix approach.

Some people have said  'religion's are not a buffet, from which
you can go round choosing the best bits', and my answer is yes they are.
And that's precidsely what I'm doing.  So i've taken my plate,
and I've gone round the different faiths, and I've done precisely that."

    -  Alain de Botton, Lanching his new Book, Religion for Atheists
                        The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne  19/3/2012


http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2012/03/19/3455152.htm

The Moral Dilemma For Atheists - What To Do About Militant Atheism?

There is a fundamental logical and moral dilemma for atheists.

If they claim that atheism is no more than not believing in God,
is NOT a dogma or a doctrine, then they really have nothing left to say.

They simply go about life, as I do, not believing in astrology,
or purple unicorns. If I go further, critique astrology, or mock
it's adherents, then my praxis reveals an ideology, that is
'anti-astrology', layered on top of my disbelief and this melded
doctrine can easily develop dogma and all the other attributes
of belief.

So, atheists often claim, as a means of avoiding the challenge
to defend, support or provide evidence for their position, that
'atheism is nothing more than the disbelief in God'.

But atheism is more than that.  Atheists offer their opinions,
usually  critical, often ignorant and prejudiced, about other
people's beliefs, not just the religious,
 but also agnostics and other non-believers.

Theists are referred to, en masse and collectively, as supersitious,
primitive, lacking in reason, opposed to science. Often, even in the
works of prominent militant atheists such as Dawkins, they
extrapolate criticisms of one group, fundamentalists,
to all members of a religion, or even to all faiths.

And as in any pogrom of prejudice, examples can always be found,
(as the Nazis demonstrated), which propaganda can turn into
stereotypes and used to persecute a whole group.

Militant Atheists attack religion, and believers, often with violent intensity;


# From: Steve Knight
# Newsgroups: alt.atheism
# Subject: A.A. BAAWA  - FAQ
# Message-ID:
# Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:46:34 -0700
#
#  We kill theists and shit down their throats and
#  not in a girly way.
#
#
# Warlord Steve
# BAAWA


http://groups.google.com.au/group/us.legal/msg/ce0433cf8b107ed9?hl=en&dmode=source

This is clearly an extreme, threatening believers with death and
mutilation, and as atheist states carried out such threats,
killing over 60,000,000 people in the USSR, Maoist China
and Pol Pot's Cambodia, these threats must be taken seriously.


# "State atheism is the official promotion of atheism
# by a government, typically by active suppression of
# religious freedom and practice."
#     - "Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR:
#       Characteristics and Consequences,
#        David Kowalewski,
#        Russian Review, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Oct., 1980), pp. 426-441,
#
#
# "An atheist, Pol Pot suppressed Cambodia’s Buddhist religion:
# monks were defrocked; temples and artifacts, including statues
# of Buddha, were destroyed; and people praying or expressing
# other religious sentiments were often killed.
# ...the government emptied the cities through mass evacuations
# and sent people to the countryside. Cambodians were
# overworked and underfed on collective farms, often
# succumbing to disease or starvation as a result.
# Spouses were separated and family meals prohibited
# in order to steer loyalties toward the state instead of
# the family.
#
# About 1.7 million Cambodians, or about 20 percent of the
# population, were worked, starved, or beaten to
#death under Pol Pot’s regime."
# 
#      -   http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579038/pol_pot.html
#
# The Cambodian Genocide:
http://www.lietuvos.net/istorija/communism/communism_photos2/392millones.jpg

#
# "The country's 40,000 to 60,000 Buddhist monks,
# regarded by the regime as social parasites,
# were defrocked and forced into labor brigades.
# Many monks were executed; temples and pagodas were
# destroyed or turned into storehouses or jails.
# Images of the Buddha were defaced and dumped into
# rivers and lakes. People who were discovered praying
# or expressing religious sentiments in other ways
# were often killed.
#
# The Christian and Muslim communities were among the
# most persecuted, as well. The Roman Catholic cathedral
# of  Phnom Penh was completely razed.
#
# The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they
# regard as an abomination. Many of those who refused were
# killed.Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed."
#        -  http://countrystudies.us/cambodia/29.htm
#
# "Forty-eight percent of Cambodia's Christians were killed
# because of their religion."
#
http://www.lietuvos.net/istorija/communism/communism_photos2/44camboyano.jpg
#
#
# "the state established atheism as the only scientific truth."
#     - Daniel Peris, "Storming the Heavens:
#       The Soviet League of the Militant Godless"
#      Cornell University Press 1998 ISBN 9780801434853
#
#
# "State atheism has been mostly implemented in communist
# countries, such as the former Soviet Union,[1] China,
# Communist Albania, Communist Afghanistan, North Korea,
# Communist Mongolia and Poland under communist rule also
# promoted state atheism and suppressed religion.
#     - Forced out: the fate of Polish Jewry in Communist Poland.
#       Wolak, Arthur J.    p 104
#
# In these nations, the governments viewed atheism as an
# intrinsic part of communist ideology.


But we must not judge all atheists by the words and actions
of one individual or a minority, as atheists themselves
frequently do when they blame all Christians for the Crusades
or all Muslims for Islamofascist terrorism, or worse,
simply hold all Religion to blame for both.

This is the evil doctrine of Collective Responsibility, which
easily becomes Collective Punishment.
The Nazis took examples of individual crimes, some real,
some fabricated, and used the new media, radio and film,
to constantly present a propaganda barrage in which each
individual crime was referred to with an ethnic/religious
appellation. As the terms "Jewish [insert crime]", 
were heard repeatedly, an association was formed, in
the reader's mind,  between the group, and a whole
range of crimes, a stereotype created and then
used to justify the most horrific persecutions.

We can not hold all atheists responsible for the crimes
against humanity committed by atheist states.
Just as we cannot hold all believers, from every religion,
 responsible for  the Crusades, or Witch Burnings, or
paedophile priests.

What we can hold modern atheists, or believers, responsible

for is their denial or defence, of those past wrongs.

Just as modern Neo-Nazis cannot be held responsible for

crimes committed by past Nazis, but can be held

complicit if they deny and defend those crimes, so

contemporary atheists can be complicit in the holocausts

committed by atheist states, if they deny or

defend them, or worse, go further to advocate

them and call for them to be repeated:

 http://www.atheistnexus.org/photo/2182797:Photo:17475?context=latest

The Church has apologised to Jews for the historical pogroms
of the past, Muslims around the world have condemned
Islamofascist terror, and Indonesia, a predominately Muslim
democracy, has been among the most effective in capturing,
trying and executing terrorists.

This, in the view of the Atheist Reform Movement(ARM) is
the example contemporary atheists need to follow.
To admit that every atheist state in history has been a
totalitarian tyranny, to condemn those regimes and not to
repeat their propaganda lies and pogroms against
believers.


What we see in alt.atheism is a hypocritical see-sawing by
militant atheists between the claim that 'Atheism has no
dogma or doctrine" and therefore no need to provide
evidence for their opinions, and the historical evidence
that atheist regimes have Forcibly IMPOSED atheism
on whole populations, enforced by terror, torture and
mass murder.Children in atheist states such as the USSR,
Maoist China and Pol Pots Cambodia were subject
to the FORCED INDOCTRINATION of atheism.
Adult believers were beaten, brainwashed, tortured
and murdered.

You can't claim to be a Nazi and not have to confront the
Nazi Holocaust

You can't claim to be an atheist and not confront the
atheist holocausts.


I don't believe in witchcraft, but if I critique witches,
then I must expect that witches will respond.

For atheists, whose main conversations in alt.atheism,
an open unmoderated PUBLIC forum to claim that
theists may not present their responses to atheist
provocations, will be attacked for doing so, or
'deserve whatever they get', even extremist threats of
violence, is hypocritical,  absurd and unacceptable.

Atheists repeatedly issue the challenge "Prove God" and
then abuse, slander vilify and even forge the posts
of those believers who attempt to do so.

If I really regard 'flat-earth' as a primitive superstition,
outdated and irrelevant, I do not spend time and energy
denouncing it.. I ignore it.

If I perceive it as a threat, as fundamentalist theism or
atheism can be, then I will debate it, oppose it,
denounce it with energy and determination UP TO and
INCLUDING the legal and moral boundaries for
civilised discourse, and no further, ..without whining
about the robustness of the opposition,
but pointing out it's dirty tactics,
without threatening violence,
but exposing it's attempts at intimidation or threat.


There are intelligent, rational, tolerant atheists AND
theists capable of moderate and fruitful discourse,
they should not be drowned out by ratbags
and fringe nutters.

Christians and Other Believers Concerned About Atheist DeathThreats

Concern has been expressed over a recently formed group 
of radical atheists that have threatened to murder
and mutilate religious believers,  amid evidence
that the group, known as BAWAA have attempted
to have all reporting of their threats suppressed
and silenced

Further details wil be provided once legal advice is taken
and police advised of this matter.

alt.atheism FAQ

the alt.atheism FAQ, last published 1992 has been recreated:


http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.atheism/msg/7c0978c14fd4ed37?hl=en&dmode=source

Meet Fluffy, the BAWAA faction's New 'Warlord' B^D

Fluffy Leaves the Field B^D

North Korea - the only atheist state still operating

According to the CIA World Fact book North Korea, which appears to
be one of the last atheist/communist governments left, has virtually
exterminated genuine religious practices, leaving only state run and
controlled Front organizations.


"Religions: traditionally Buddhist and Confucianist, some
Christian and syncretic Chondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way)


note: autonomous religious activities now almost nonexistent;
government-sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of
religious freedom "

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html



http://groups.google.com.au/group/talk.atheism/msg/759eaa03951bf767?hl=en&dmode=source
 

Laodicean - The Modern Alternative to Atheism

Laodicean - The Modern Alternative to Atheism

It is fairly clear, to everyone except perhaps the tiny
rump of Western Atheists, that atheism is a spent farce, er, force,
...er, no.. I was right the first time.

In the past century since the Soviet regime was established, crumbled,
and collapsed, it initially looked to be going somewhere, but that
somewhere turned out to be a repressive Gulag, with a bullet in the
back of the head, and a dungeon with electrodes on your testicles.  8^o

Atheism has never really recovered, can never recover, from the
blight on it's record in the Union of Savage Slaughter and
Repression (USSR), Mao's Cultural Devolution and Great Leap Backward,
Pol Pots Year Zero and the North Koreans, the nuclear armed threat to
world peace and stability, whose people eat grass to save off famine.

Atheism simply doesn't work IN PRAXIS!

Some will be happy to sit around and discuss abstruse and unprovable
theological arguments about God not existing, probably not existing,
maybe not existing, being an invisible spagetti monster, and the
superiority of Bastet and Buddhism..  but no one really listens to atheists.

It's like old Commo's in politics.. a bit of a joke, people poke
fun at them, but they are irrelevant.

Generally the intelligensia who are not believers prefer agnosticism,
it's more rational and more sophisticated.. but both it and atheism
have that 20th Century -ISM tag that reminds everyone of the other 
dogmatic and doctrinaire ideological failures;

Atheism, and it's internet form: Onanism
Botulism,
Communism,
Despotism,
Elitism,
Fascism,
Gorgonism,
Hedonism,
Illusionism,
Marxism,
Maoism,
Nazism,
Nihilism,
Post-modernism,
Racism,
Satanism,
Terrorism,
Voyeurism

     All of them, with the exception of Nudism, are a waste of time,
     and have become unfashionable, a bit like Myspace, ...leave it
     to the adolescents who like to say "Fuck Jesus" and feel like
     they are real rebels.

The new FaceBook and beyond,  is laid back and....

       Laodicean

La·od·i·ce·an  (l-d-sn) adj.

Indifferent or lukewarm,
especially in matters of religion (and/or politics)

     We are so cool we just don't care.

     Beyond blasé

http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.atheism/msg/12e7b9916d468ce0?hl=en&dmode=source