Video of the week -- Hitchens and Khayyâm
How Omar Khayyâm addressed the Muslim clergy of his time. Silly beliefs aren't so harmless when they become a basis for claiming power over others.
posted by Infidel753 at 11:55 AM
17 February 2012
How Omar Khayyâm addressed the Muslim clergy of his time. Silly beliefs aren't so harmless when they become a basis for claiming power over others.
About Me
- Name: Infidel753
- Location: Portland, Oregon, United States
Individualist, pro-technology, pro-democracy, anti-religion. I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party. It has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that technology rather than ideology or politics has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.
Previous Posts
- Word of the day
- This year's other Presidential election
- The mentality of the opposition
- Link round-up for 12 February 2012
- A more extremist Republican party?
- Video of the week -- Winterland
- Boing! Boing!
- Link round-up for 5 February 2012
- Must-read #2: blundering bullies
- Take action for Planned Parenthood
God doesn't exist
Evolution happened
Global warming is real
Homosexuality is normal
Aging is a curable disease
The election was not stolen
Everything "spiritual" is a lie
Free speech is for everybody
Humans do not have "souls"
Men can't become women
Fetuses are not persons
Words are not violence
Taiwan is a nation
Pluto is a planet
2 Comments:
Very timely for me since I just came here from another blog where a someone wrote the comment below to me in response to my comment that stated that, unlike what he claimed, great minds of the past [and present] didn't/don't always believe in gods. And I listed past and present "great minds" as evidence, beginning with the great Darwin, who was a theist until he understood the great and beautiful truth of Evolution, up to the 98% of physicists who are nonbelievers.
His answer to me?
"I have to laugh at those who are so sure of what they have no way of knowing for sure. Your unbelief is just as dogmatic as that of believers, and we have more evidence than you do. To be fair to your side, one cannot prove a negative."
And my answer:
"The very definition of faith is a belief in something with no evidence."
Getting back to this post. It was great to hear Hitch again reinforce reason and shred the idea of believing something without evidence.
Indeed. "Faith" should be considered something shameful and embarrassing. Belief without evidence is no legitimate position for a rational being to take.
Your unbelief is just as dogmatic as that of believers,
They always have to resort to such statements these days. The issue of, say, unicorns is exactly parallel. One can't absolutely prove that they don't exist, but those of us who do not, in fact, believe in them can hardly be accused of dogmatism.
And as Hitchens points out, theists' belief in the unprovable (and absurd) immediately becomes dangerous once it's used as a basis for claiming authority over other people.
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