I love this blogger.

[chibi_evil]

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/12/how-to-be-an-ally-with-atheists.html

she puts words on the page in funny and informative order.  And says stuff that needs to be shouted from the

Comments

[passer_hedera]

It was actually one of the few things I would have really loved to have at Hamline in the Religion program--it got talked about a lot, and dealt with a lot, but in any class where you had non-majors there were always these unfortunately circular discussions with people that just didn't understand either one side or the other in a very basic way and so couldn't wrap their heads around anything else. And it's a struggle that kinda hits both sides--there seems to be this passionate fear among atheists of being called a religion (which I do understand), and yet at the same time that seems to stem from this confusion of Religion and religion--which is to say, a Religion is an organized community of believers like Catholics, while religion (which could be also traded for belief, but that seems then to not include non-belief, which is itself a valid position) is a philosophical position regarding the nature of reality (which really, in this day and age, is closer to how most Americans live). Pagans, deists, atheists, agnostics, new agers,

[passer_hedera]

[continued from above] But in the US, the popular trend is to lump sum everything, which is why you find ludicrous statements like "The Catholic Church hates Harry Potter" (a coalition of Protestant churches opposed Harry Potter. The Catholic Church unequivocally did not, and in fact there was a letter from the US Council of Bishops distributed to all parishes in the wake of the initial Protestant protests informing Catholic parents that Harry Potter had been reviewed and found to be an excellent and entertaining series of children's novels in which positive choices and responses to ethical dilemmas were explored in a fashion that aided children in understanding these complex issues, and that, while they understood the concerns over allegations of witchcraft, they wanted to remind parents that fairy tales and fables are just that, and that even the great Christian writers Tolkien and Lewis found a little magic to go a long way in keeping a reader engaged). The big overarching labels are too big, and they lead to misconceptions,

[chibi_evil]

oh english

[passer_hedera]

Ok, and here we have another big problem

[passer_hedera]

The relevant part of that second definition, btw, is, obviously the "or that human knowledge is limited to experience." I included the rest just so that it's there: just like there are variants on any philosophy, there are variants on agnosticism too

[chibi_evil]

hm. I find the general, dictionary defintion of atheism...uhm....weird

[passer_hedera]

Well, for starters, Why is Newton still relevant in a world with Einstein

[passer_hedera]

It occurs to me, as well, that there's an interesting point to be made about belief

[passer_hedera]

Should have said "Little to no validity to it." More what I meant, in any case.