Re: stakeholders in shared grief

From: Olga Bourlin (fauxever@sprynet.com)
Date: Sun Jan 26 2003 - 18:20:59 MST


In a message dated 1/26/2003 1:43:25 AM Central Standard Time,
fauxever@sprynet.com writes: Huh? I never denied making that statement.
And I'll say it again - there's a link between religiosity and intolerance.

< Ron h wrote:
       Agreed, But have you ever noticed that fundamentalism is an attitude.
There are a couple of different kinds of fundamentalists but basically it
comes down to absolutely knowing we have the one right answer.
       Given that, if we look around we find fundamentalists and the
intolerant among Christians, Jews, Moslems and Atheists. I think the rest
of us have some quantity of the agnostic or the searcher in our make up and
those also are found among every religious persuasion including those that
are not believers in any particular theology. >

Atheism is an outlook, not a philosophy (e.g., humanism) or political stance
(e.g., communism). Atheists throughout history have ranged from Ayn Rand
(virulently anti-communist) to Mao (virulently statist), from the poets
Shelley and Coleridge to the early "feminist" Susan B. Anthony, from the
sweetest-of-humans Robert Ingersoll to the bitterest-of-dictators Stalin.
The only thing they all had in common is that they did not believe in a
supernatural being, but that doesn't say anything else about them, just as
the word "atheist" doesn't mean much beyond "without god." About all one
can say about atheists in general (that is, when a whole population of
people isn't *forced* to become atheist because the government happens to be
officially atheist) is that nontheists tend to be better educated.

It is interesting to note that in the former USSR - even when the country
was supposedly officially "atheist" - there remained a deep prejudice
against Jews (a leftover cultural tradition from the
Czarist/monarchist/godist times before the Bolshevik Revolution). I heard
that even "Soviet Jews" had to state that fact - that they were Jews?
Atheist Jews? - on their identification papers or something (I heard this
from someone second-hand - please correct me if I'm wrong).

Olga



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