Religion
Related: About this forumReligion Survives National Day of Reason (note: much of this is satire)
http://freebeacon.com/religion-survives-national-day-of-reason/Feature: Atheist unconvinced of religions evil by fellow atheists
Creation of Adam / wikipedia.org
BY: CJ Ciaramella
May 4, 2013 5:00 am
Institutions of organized religion continued to exist following the tenth annual National Day of Reason Thursday.
The national celebration was the latest contretemps in the 131-year-old battle between theists and atheists since Nietzsche pronounced God dead in 1882.
The National Day of Reason was instituted directly to challenge the National Day of Prayer, which was created in 1952 by an act of Congress to be held each year on the first Thursday of May.
The American Humanist Association, together with the Washington Area Secular Humanists, said the National Day of Reason is meant to celebrate reasona concept all Americans can supportand to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship.
more at link
rug
(82,333 posts)"The closest celebration of reason was in Baltimore, but traveling to Baltimore didnt seem very reasonable at all."
cbayer
(146,218 posts)ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)I just wanted to point out a common misunderstanding of Nietzsche's quote, "God is dead."
Nietzsche was an atheist, and he did not literally believe that God had passed away. What he was actually referring to people's relationship with the Christian faith. Nietzsche believed Christians were not living up to his interpretation of Christians values anymore; e.g., prisons, usury, etc.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)Jim__
(14,077 posts)You can disagree with someone's interpretation, but it's hard to say that it's wrong. I'd probably disagree with your interpretation because Nietzsche did not really respect Christian values. He considered Christian morality a form of slave morality. In The Gay Science, in aphorism 108, Nietzsche declares that God is dead but we still have to vanquish his shadow.
Then, from aphorism 125:
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed himyou and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after usfor the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars and yet they have done it themselves."
...
Must we ourselves not become gods ... I think that's Nietzsche's real point. We need a god. If god is dead then we must become god.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)(our representatives and senators) braved the disapproval of the fundies to stand up for reason. Kudos to a brave folk!
*not intended as a factual statement. Actual number of legislators showing support (that I could detect): 2.