Historically, painting an enormous, diverse category of people with the brush of the worst elements among them has been a great way to have a thoughtful, nuanced discussion about a complex topic.

Pastafarianism is the cool version of atheism.

Out of curiosity, aren't you into Nietzsche? (Apologies if I'm mixing you up with someone else.) I don't know how correct he is on this, haven't seriously studied it, blah-blah-blah, but anyway, I think he has a different story to tell regarding religion (particularly Christianity) in relation to the modern world.

Christianity for Nietzsche isn't exactly "incompatible" with modernity - particularly not from a values standpoint. Christian belief, on the other hand, looks rather different today: Intellectually, it's no longer in the air we breathe; we can no longer see reality through Christian lenses, theism being one option among many, almost a curiosity in the marketplace of ideas, rather than the unquestionable default. Our present-day orientation as ethical beings, however - our dealings with other people, our social-political ideals, our aspirations to lead a certain sort of life - these (he believes) originally arose within the context of the Christian worldview, and were thoroughly conditioned by it. And "we moderns" are peculiarly oblivious to this, hence the unstable state of affairs in which our (still Christian) values have yet to "catch up" with our (post-Christian) beliefs.

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this; I'm not putting this forward as a "rebuttal" to a previous comment. (And what little Nietzsche I've spent time with myself, I haven't been deeply moved by.)

I'm an Atheist and it's highly probable that I've always been one even before I knew what Atheism was. How? Well, my parents aren't religious, so therefore I never had to attend mass or catechism when I was a kid. They did not even baptise me, in fact. So, when you're raised without religion being present in your home, you're not going to turn out religious unless you suddenly get really interested in it when you get older or something. But, I just found the whole concept of God and the whole "faith" thing of religion to be be highly flawed and illogical. Not to mention that someone being religious or not says nothing about their character.

What are Christian "values", exactly? I can make a pretty decent guess as to what you may say, and if it is what I think the general idea is, then I'm sure you're very well aware that Christianity isn't the only religion or ideology/school of thought that espouses such values. Christian "values" are not nearly as unique and original as the people themselves like to play it off as.



Right, I'm following...



I'm not so sure that we're oblivious to it, I think many, if not most, people are very well aware of it. I need to know what exactly Christian "values" are, first, before I can form any opinion as to whether or not they're struggling to catch up with our "post-Christian" beliefs.



It's an interesting thought exercise for sure.

I don't have a good answer for that off the top of my head. Let me (gladly!) look at couple things I've set aside (Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist), and get back to this in a bit.

I am also curious to know what Christian values are. Are we talking about the values preached by the gospels? Or what values are held by most Christians?

I'm far from an expert on the Bible, but there are passages that make me doubt that some of the values it espouses were ever "in the air we breathe".

Take Matthew 6:25-34


This is quite the opposite of what the world teaches us, what the "Protestant work ethic" tells us about the importance of work and discipline. Yet how many Christians follow it? Ironically, it's safe to say there are far more Buddhists and non-Christian ascetics in the world living by such values than those who call themselves Christians.

Interestingly enough there is a Biblical passage that is supposedly from Jesus himself where he pontificates about a 'true follower':

Matthew 6:1 "Take care not to practice your righteousness in front of men to be noticed by them;+ otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in the heavens." and then continues with verses 5-8: "Also, when you pray, do not act like the hypocrites, for they like to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the main streets to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your private room and, after shutting your door, pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who looks on in secret will repay you. When praying, do not say the same things over and over again as the people of the nations do, for they imagine they will get a hearing for their use of many words. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need+ even before you ask him.The saddest part about those 'Christians' who believe in Hell is not the painting of their supposed benevolent God is an awful light but the fact that nowhere in the Bible does it state that Hell is a real place.

Of the multitude of Christian denominations there are only 2 that read the text(s) regarding the metaphor of Hell the way it was meant to be perceived. No supreme being worthy of worship would ever construct or even allow for there to be a Hell or place of eternal torment but the words brought on by churches have even grossly mismanaged their own teachings.

Hell is supposed to be just a separation from YOU and GOD, nothing more and nothing less. It was never written to be a literal place and all texts about it were meant to be symbolic. The use of the word fire was a comparison drawn to the valley of Gehenna where everything was thrown into for the purpose of burning. So modern 'Christians' cannot even get right a simple reading of their Bible because they would rather be lazy minded and just listen to churches.

Right, even trying to look at it from a Christian or Christian-sympathetic standpoint, the idea of Hell is deeply suspect, for those reasons and a host of others - most of which are not particularly fresh in my mind, but I will say that David Bentley Hart has a very readable book recently published on the subject. (I liked it, anyway.)

Speaking of very readable, I hope to make decent enough progress on the Nietzsche material over the next few days - will (try to) reply then to the posts above.

In the religious circles I was raised in, it was incredibly commonplace for your parents to tell you that they loved god more than they loved you. This was treated as a very normal thing to say to a small child, almost everyone I grew up with heard something like this. Many of these same parents later moved away from the more extreme aspects of christianity, but this is one of the little things that sticks with you.

To MalignantTyrant and Disembodied - just briefly following up on the Nietzsche stuff from earlier...

Getting a good handle on Nietzsche (or even finishing a relatively short Nietzsche book) is not something I'll be able to do in just a few days, but after taking an initial stab at the Genealogy and some commentary, I did manage to see that I was off on a few things originally:



1. Nietzsche often uses the term "Christian" in a very loose way; he'll indiscriminately speak of the "Jewish, Christian, or plebeian (never mind the words!)," as quoted in Genealogy I.9. I would say that what he typically has in mind when he speaks of the characteristically "Christian" is what he'd call the "slave" dimension of "master/slave morality." (More on that in a moment.)

2. Nietzsche often uses the term "values" (or more specifically, "morality") in a very deep way, that is, concerning one's most basic psychological drives. For Nietzsche, the most basic psychological drive of the common, subordinate class (as distinct from the noble, ruling class) amounts to what he calls "ressentiment" - the drive of powerless, victimized people to inflict some kind of vengeance upon their enemies and oppressors.

Nietzsche (as I'm reading him) thinks ressentiment is the origin of the common distinction between "good" (roughly: whatever promotes the interest of "slaves," or the common, disadvantaged, powerless) and "evil" (whatever's in conflict with this). Out of this origin develop such pervasive habits of mind and conduct as altruism, pity, self-effacement, self-denial, guilt and shame ("internalized cruelty"), egalitarian democracy, the desire to punish "wrongdoers," etc. - and I think he'd even extend this list to their intellectual counterparts, the virtues and orientations of a "good scientist" or "good scholar." (Impersonal, dispassionate "objectivity" and the like.)

I wouldn't claim these are more than sketchy, preliminary impressions on my part - chances are they even make Nietzsche sound a bit silly, but I'm not really in a position to do justice to him. Anyway, just wanted to provide whatever elaboration and correction I could in regard to an earlier post. (Not sure it's terribly relevant to the main discussions in the thread.)

I never liked Nietzsche either. In any event, I'll hold out hope someone can forgive my appalling litany of sinfulness, and fix this world of its aimlessness, soullessness, lack of vivacity, subtle colours, and algorithmic torpor.

No soul, no point.

Just my view.

What's algorithmic torpor? It's the "algorithmic" that baffles me.

Im an atheist, and just wondering something to christians: If gay people, as well as non-christians go to hell, isn't Satan much more 'accepting' than god is? It seems like god only wants the 'perfect' people up with him, while Satan doesnt care?

My guess is that most Christians would find this a loaded question, resting on one or more assumptions that they don't actually accept. I'd expect the responses to be grouped in roughly the following way...

-Friendly Christianity: "No one goes to Hell (or if they do, they don't stay there forever)."

-Unfriendly Christianity: "Everyone deserves to go to Hell, precisely because everyone falls short of the perfection required by God; but God still saves anyone who freely accepts God's offer (i.e., anyone who more-or-less accepts Christianity). Technically all non-Christians go to Hell, but God doesn't send them there. God simply respects people's freedom to accept or reject salvation. And Hell isn't exactly a place where the damned are 'accepted' (as in being valued and welcomed). It's a condition of self-incurred separation from God ('from whom all good things come'), and therefore a condition of sheer suffering."

Come to think of it, the two categories don't necessarily exclude one another; "accepting God's offer" might be considered more an affair of "the heart" (a person's true, innermost character, which only God can observe) than a matter of explicitly identifying as a member of some Church or other. All in all, no Christian I respect (and this seems to disqualify a lot of Christians) is capable of saying, confidently and comfortably, that they "know" of anyone who's pretty clearly Hell-bound, or already in Hell. I suspect they'd find it almost blasphemous for a human being to pretend they know such things. ("'Let vengeance be mine,' says the Lord," and whatnot.)

I believe in Jesus and listen to this music and believe Jesus had goat horns symbolically I associate goat horns with Jesus so I listen to this type of music. The thing is really is if you do get into this kind of music how easy is it to actually shake satan after say party to his drum for 20 years, if your in Satan’s grasp how much is it actually a choice to leave right? Atheist socializing around satan is a lot of favours on satan

Were you having a stroke when you wrote that?

Get ready for a novel. Having spent quite a bit of time making heads and tails of Nietzschean thought, I want to add to this, because I agree with Defenestrated that (whether or not we are aware of it), religious thought weaves its way into our modern life in many ways. This is a state of affairs and mode of operation that Nietzsche thought was a huge inhibitor of most people' ability to become "ubermensch" - and thereby gain real happiness for themselves, unimpeded by the trifles of "slaves."



Agreed. "Christian" is used interchangeably with "slave," "plebian," etc. It also must be noted that his polarizing usage of "Jewish" as an adjective for this stuff was only in reference to its origin: Jesus was Jewish > Jesus founded Christianity > ergo, Christianity and many of its values are by proxy Jewish. He abhorred antisemitism (going so far as to alienate his own sister when he discovered she was courting one). The reason for that was that he identified (rightly) that antisemitism (and all mass social/religious movements for and against a cause) were none other than the projections of slave-morality: "I alone may be weak, but if I band together and find victory for the correct cause, I will find strength and happiness."




One value that permeates our modern social landscape is the idea of the "righteous victory of the underdog." Seen in pop culture through most hero stories, this knee-jerk identification with the righteous underdog seems silly when worded and portrayed thusly, but it looses all ridiculousness when we realize whole currents of sociopolitical thought are based around this notion and countless lives have been sacrificed due to the assumed "sacredness" of this stance. It also happens to be a pretty blatant secular translation of "the meek shall inherit the earth."




You're entirely correct here. The psychological "programming" Christianity imparted unto its followers was at odds with basic human instinct in many situations: nowhere in nature does an animal practice self-denial for its own sake. Hell, I'm no zoologist, but I've often heard of animals eating their young when food gets scarce! But seriously, continual suppression of natural drives when it comes to sex, violence, anger, and... well, anything "socially uncouth" are bound to build up and be transformed into a sort of "psychological fuel" which is then channeled towards aims that the individual - or, more realistically, the church - deem fit (again, "fit" here is selected as such by the very same psychological framework that the religious attitude engrains; it's a cyclical, degenerative pattern).

The reason he calls this "slave morality" is because it could only really make sense in an environment wherein one is powerless and beholden to another. One cannot strike back, one cannot do as one will; therefore, to retain one's sanity and hope, one must transvaluate: morph their powerlessness into strength, and so on.

Regardless of whether you stray to the left or right politically, the traits of "ressentiment" are to be found: they're just aimed at different culprits. Hence, an ubermensch is one who manages to break this pattern. That's literally all the ubermensch is. We've killed god, but have not yet unchained ourselves from his corpse. The religious attitude is as much alive today as it ever was - "...given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow. - And we - we must still defeat his shadow as well!"

Moving onto Heaven and Hell, I find its much more helpful to conceive of them as abstract stand ins for different states of mind. This is a massive simplification, but essentially: different actions bring about different results and reactions from others > these results and reactions generally affect our neurochemistry similarly (aided in no small part by a shared-value-system and the implicit threat of force) > therefore, certain actions are more liable to send you to "heavenly" or "hellish" states of mind. This whole structure is in some part dependent on your social environment, but some "sins" will effect you even if you're isolated.

In regards to religion, I find that some of the basic commandments are sensible, but when looking at the text (Bible) these are sprinkled sparsely among otherwise dogmatic, archaic, and biased passages to a point where it's not worth taking seriously.

Appreciate you taking the time and thought to write that!

Nietzsche is fascinating, sometimes tiresome (who isn't?), but worth the effort. What he represents to me personally, for better or worse, is a frequent reminder to be suspicious of my own motives for believing (or claiming to believe) certain things. Looking back, it's easy to see that I was willing to accept certain things not only because of childish/juvenile naïveté and silliness, but also because it would've been asking too much of me, psychologically, to really question them. But Nietzsche in a way reminds me how ludicrous it would be to think that I've totally risen above this; it's not as though any of us can totally complete the transition from being a frightened/resentful/self-indulgent etc. child to being an impartial "seeker of truth." (Perhaps "the truth is terrible," as he says somewhere.)

However, if you take this line of thought too far, I think there's some risk that you simply content yourself with a sort of lazy ad hominem, rather than actually investigate rival points of view on their own merits. For example, "Religion comes from fables told by frightened, hateful, ignorant men" doesn't logically equate to "Everything religious people say is false."

Nobody here has even implied that "everything religious people say is false". In fact, no halfway reasonable people put forth such assertions. It's an absurd and extreme strawman to distract from the fact that religion is cancerous in how it operates and behaves.

I didn't mean to accuse anyone of holding the position that everything religious people say is false. Taken literally, that position would of course be absurd. (Taken literally, it would mean that we shouldn't believe the religious person who happens to say "Dunkin' Donuts is open on New Year's Eve.")

The point I was trying to make was about Nietzsche-style analyses of the psychological origins of religion: If we find ourselves saying something like, "Religious beliefs are attributable to fear, ignorance, latent authoritarianism, narrow-mindedness, ressentiment..." etc., then we're saying something that doesn't really address the question of whether those beliefs are true - even if our description of the religious person's psychology happens to be correct.

By analogy, I knew a guy who liked to tell the story of how he'd been struggling fruitlessly with his dissertation in mathematics, until finally he smoked a bunch of weed and had the breakthrough he'd been yearning for. He wouldn't have done himself any favors by telling his reviewers about this, but at the same time, his reviewers would have fallen short of the standards of mathematical reasoning if they refused to consider his work on those grounds. "Written by an intoxicated person" does not automatically equate to "logically invalid."

Hopefully that's a bit clearer. I'm not trying to put anything in people's mouths here, just voicing some thoughts I've sometimes had when trying to engage with Nietzsche.

How is religion cancerous?

There's nothing good about it, it spreads uncontrollably and people die from it.

That's an excellent way to put it in the simplest of terms without going into anything too indepth

Just throwing a classic Christrian contradiction in this chat for hilarity and an example to those beleivers on here who question why Atheists don't beleive.

Genesis chapter 1 says the first man and woman were made at the same time, and after the animals. But Genesis chapter 2 gives a different order of creation: man, then the animals, and then woman.

There's more beyond this but when the supposed book you're meant to follow is this easy to pull apart, how can one consider it legitimate?

Creationists would probably rationalize that by saying there's a difference between the creation of an idea (mankind) and the manifestation of form. Genesis 1 starts by saying the earth was created but was formless.

God was never very good at proof-reading.

I tried proof-reading the Bible once. Couldn't find shit.

I'll preface this with a disclaimer that I'm not Christian but have (on an amateur basis, I'm no professional or scholar) done a lot of reading about Christian thought, theology, and history, so hopefully some of this is useful.

Most Christians don't take the Bible literally. The obvious response many would give here is that these are allegories and the point they're making-- whether about the moral state of humans or the duality of the world God created-- is more important than harmonizing every single detail. Chapters 1 and 2 tell stories about different things, they have different morals and different meanings, so naturally they're not going to be the same. They don't have to be. This is not some new-fangled view but one that goes back to some of the earliest major Christian thinkers (figures like Augustine and Origen) as well as influential Jewish thinkers like Maimonides. There are even writings from Origen where he basically says it's silly to imagine that God literally planted a garden or that other aspects of Genesis might be thought to have literally happened.

Literalist interpretations tend to say that chapter 2 is just a more specific account than chapter 1, which gives a more general 'big picture' overview. Or they will offer grammatical analyses of the original Hebrew (with mixed accuracy) that supposedly eliminates the contradictions. It's helpful to remember that, while these interpretations are very popular today and seem fundamental to Christianity, biblical literalism is a fairly recent phenomenon. It has its roots in the scientific and rationalist revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries and really took off in the last couple hundred years-- it really doesn't have a long history in Christian theology.

The critical analysis perspective, of course, is that chapters 1 and 2 have their roots in different sources. The Pentateuch/Torah is generally believed to have been patched together from writings from four different sources. Genesis 1 is typically attributed to the Elohist or E source (so-called because it uses the terms Elohim and El for God) which typically favors a transcendent depiction of a God who cannot be directly witnessed by humans and tends to appear in dreams or in inanimate forms (the burning bush). Genesis 2 is attributed to the Jahwist or J source (because it uses the term Jahweh, or Yahweh, for God) which tends to portray God more anthropomorphically than the E source. Different sources of authorship, different priorities and focuses, different stories.

Although the Bible (however interpreted) obviously plays a central role in many people's faith, I still find it puzzling how often people treat the question, "Do you think there's a God?" as equivalent to, "Is your worldview mainly informed by what the Bible says?"

I don't see how getting to disbelief in God is basically a matter of seeing little of value in the Bible. It'd be somewhat like saying, "Anaximander was a strange, obscure person from a less enlightened time, so we can safely dismiss the idea that humans come from other animals." (Not a perfect analogy, but you know what I mean.)

Many people in the United States simply have very little, if any, knowledge or reference points from any other worldview outside of Christianity.

Think about how many people in the US can't even point out where India is on a map, right? Do you think they'll know anything about any of the major religions from that region of the world? Doubtful

I love my country, but a staggering number of Americans are woefully uneducated in general, and that includes world religions.

The Bible is all they're familiar with, and that's the only reference point they have for their religious/spiritual views.

Hidden from the foolish and revealed to the wise.

And you are not even being sarcastic?

Poe's Law applies here, unfortunately

Unashamed Roman Catholic here.

I hate the roman catholic doctrine.

The rise of wicca/witchcraft stuff on tiktok etc got me thinking. I think it really took the a lot of the wind out of the "skeptic/new atheist" movement when zoomers started realizing how much of it was an edgy paintjob of neoconservatism/neoliberalism/endless war foreign policy in general designed to appeal to middle class & upper-middle class millennials in the 2000s. If Christopher Hitchens were alive right now you know for a fact he'd be rooting for the genocide in Gaza right now because their culture is so, in his view, "backwards." Just as he rooted for Bush's illegal invasions. Also see Bill Maher (big Netanyahu fan), Sam Harris (ditto--https://www.samharris.org/blog/5-myths-about-israel-and-the-war-in-gaza), the Amazing Atheist (completely irreverent on the topic to the point of tacit approval--"both sides are bad!" Really? You're both-sidesing an open air prison being bombed for months?)... and etc. Dawkins seems to be the only new atheist figure with his head still screwed on on that issue, although he's clashing with post-skeptic progressive orthodoxy in his own ways and has fallen out of favor anyway.

I'm not saying this is the MAIN cause of the resurgence of new agey spiritual beliefs in the west (as opposed to just cold hard materialism, which seemed more trendy as a worldview years ago), but atheism being seen as such an unadaptable relic of "2000s millennial/bro" culture is certainly one facet.

(Of course I know that phenomenon is very American and is not affecting the slow growth of atheism so much in the global east, where in many countries atheism is still "counterculturally" coded, and therefore interesting to youth. Although I'd wager the same process will eventually repeat in those cultures.)

The detestable nonsense spouted by commentators like Hitchens appeals to boomers not millenials. Regardless I'd hope the younger generations are able make up their minds on the issue independently from the trendiness or lack of the outdated views you speak of.

Atheism is simply a lack of a belief in a deity/god/higher power. All of the other political/worldview positions are separate issues altogether (or at least they should be).

I'm well aware that people's religious beliefs play a huge part of their politics in many cases...but these folks are without any faith at all. So it's safe to say that there are no holy texts or faiths that are influencing their viewpoints.

The "new skeptic/atheist" movement was just a small counterculture development/paradigm shift that is indeed unique to America. Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins were the figureheads of that movement, so many of the people who started following those guys' work around that time would have probably also started absorbing some of their political viewpoints as well. Those individuals are also likely to be Gen X/younger boomers and millennials.

Pointless ego-boost