Agnosticism and Atheism

[cainam_nazier]

This is from an article on MSN.  Just to give you the skinny.  
The whole thing can be found here.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067499

The efforts to bring God into the state reached their peak during the so-called "religious revival" of the 1950s. It was a time when Norman Vincent Peale grafted religion onto the era's feel-good consumerism in his best-selling The Power of Positive Thinking; when Billy Graham rose to fame as a Red-baiter who warned that Americans would perish in a nuclear holocaust unless they embraced Jesus Christ; when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed that the United States should oppose communism not because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime but because its leaders were atheists.

Hand in hand with the Red Scare, to which it was inextricably linked, the new religiosity overran Washington. Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. President Eisenhower inaugurated that Washington staple: the prayer breakfast. Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. In 1955, with Ike's support, Congress added the words "In God We Trust" on all paper money. In 1956 it made the same four words the nation's official motto, replacing "E Pluribus Unum." Legislators introduced Constitutional amendments to state that Americans obeyed "the authority and law of Jesus Christ."

The campaign to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance was part of this movement. It's unclear precisely where the idea originated, but one driving force was the Catholic fraternal society the Knights of Columbus. In the early '50s the Knights themselves adopted the God-infused pledge for use in their own meetings, and members bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. Other fraternal, religious, and veterans clubs backed the idea. In April 1953, Rep. Louis Rabaut, D-Mich., formally proposed the alteration of the pledge in a bill he introduced to Congress.

Now any American who says that the "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance is not referring to the Christian god does not know the history of their own country.

With that being said I hold fast to my previous statement.

[cainam_nazier]

Greatoutdoors.

Cainam_Nazier, so what is it about wiccans you notice? And where would you put me, if you had guess?  

Speech, looks, dress, and I don't even have to talk to them able religion.

I just wish with all my being that we could lose the anger! Hatred is perhaps the most useless, destructive emotion on this earh of ours! Harm none, in thought, word or deed! (That's not necessarily wiccan, just my goal!)

Ahh, you're wiccan.

Just a guess.  But I usually have to be in the same room as the person.

[You]

Meh, you only think it's Wiccan because they always say 'Harm none', and heck, didn't Crowley come up with that? That religion is so manufactured...

So, what are you anyway?

[cainam_nazier]

I am not anything.  I practice no religion at all.

I was baptized Roman Catholic by my parents but I haven't been to church since I was 16.  And before that it was only for midnight mass because of my mother.

But that faith never made any sense to me at all and I never really believed in it.  So now I walk my own path.

[greatoutdoors]

Truth to tell, I have no idea where the phrase "harm none" originates. I like the connotation. In many religions the core teaching appears to be kindness. That's the principle I take from whichever religion offers it. The trouble with 90% of organized religions is they take that core and bury it deep inside other "me vs them" dogma. That dogma frequently requires blood sacrifice to "work", either animal or human. I cannot accept a religion built on blood! My sympathies lie in the direction of the druids, but the question is still open as to whether they practiced animal sacrifice or not.

Cainam_nazier, it sounds as though we have a similar philosophy. I worship no diety, and follow no "official" path. The wiccan "god" and "godess" are just as much a human creation as those of the greeks and romans and israelites and mayans and ... you get the idea.  But having said that, I do believe there is "something" out there. I've used this phrase before: "the energy we swim in." In my rituals I call on the elements and the spirits of creation (again, my own rationalization of something I do not understand).

[greatoutdoors]

It occurs to me I may be sailing under false colors and need to clarify a bit. While my focus is on kindness, and I qualify as a "tree-hugger", I am not a vegetarian -- yet. I don't know if my logic is valid, but just feel that whoever or whatever put our "ground rules" into effect perhaps didn't intend that we circumvent them by our dietary habits alone.

When you think about it, every single thing must kill or destroy in order to survive. Those were the cards we were dealt. If there is no "creator," and no "reason for existence," then I suppose it really doesn't matter how we go about that killing or destruction. But what if there is an intelligent design at work? And what if the purpose is not to see how we handle the physical situation, but how we rise above it? In that spirit, I treat animals humanely and the environment gently -- with a hard and fast rule that nothing will die just for decoration. If I need leather for shoes, that's one thing -- if I think coyote fur looks really lovely, that's a whole 'nother thing! (It is lovely, by the way -- on the coyote).

The one reason I may one day go vegetarian is the potential it has for clearing the mind for meditation. I am working that logic-chain through at present, as I'm not convinced that's a real phenomena. I have found no difference so far.

If there is nothing beyond death, then I have made myself happier by trying to do the right thing (as I can figure out what that is). And if there is something or someone out there who will be giving me a final exam, well, so be it and I suppose I'll just have to find out then whether I was right or wrong.

I don't know why I felt I needed to mention this point, but just didn't want to give a wrong impression.

[cainam_nazier]

A side note on vegetarians.

I always found the logic of not killing anything, even for food, kinda funny.  If your vegetarian because you just don't like meat that's fine with me.  But what really bothers me are the "spiritualists" who tell you they don't eat me because it's killing and killing is wrong.  These tend to be the same people who then turn around and tell you that every thing on the planet is alive and there for should not be harmed, to include plants and such.  So with their logic it is not okay to kill but it is okay to continually maime a plant.  Basically stealing its potential offspring consuming them for your own needs.  Whats the difference is what I ask.

And on a very special note I would like to announce that I have had a hand in converting to date, 3 strict vegetarians into carnivores.  Yeah!  
2 were raised vegetarians and one apparently never had previously had a properly prepared steak.

[You]

Except of course for the guys who 'eat' sunlight cainem. You have to respect them guys

I'm against 'harm none'. A lot of people tinkle me off, I want to harm the hell out of them.

[greatoutdoors]

Tyciol, I've heard about the "air-eaters".    So funny how they stoutly maintain they don't need to eat, but generally can be found "snacking" pretty regularly -- just for the fun of it, of course!  

Oh, believe me, my "harm none" philosophy is a work in progress. My temper, and my blood pressure, regularly get a lot higher than I prefer.    But think about it. When we get angry, who are we hurting? Certainly not the jerk who ticked us off! If they know they've gotten next to us, it makes them happy!      If they don't know, it doesn't bother them. So where's the gain to anger? What has your experience been?

[You]

I try to become less angered, but when anger comes, it comes, and suppressing it only harms you.

If you kick his butt, he won't do it again.