dreamer_easy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamer_easy) wrote2004-12-31 08:04 am
dreamer_easy) wrote2004-12-31 08:04 am
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Letter in today's SMH: It's time for atheists to start defending humanism, with the core tenets of compassion, scepticism and scientific logic, with the same fervour that Billy Graham pushed evangelism in the 1950s. What does she mean, "start"? :-) Smart-arse atheists are no less smug and obnoxious than preachy religous leaders, and damage an important cause. (And atheists who show tolerance, understanding, and a little humility are as laudable as people of faith who do the same.)
ETA: This is in the context of people struggling with theodicy in the, er, wake of the tsunami catastrophe. Natural disasters must be one of the greatest challenges to faith - terrible human evil can at least be blamed on its perpetrators. My own comfort, such as it is, is that the same planet that causes such devastation is the same planet which creates the most beautiful and varied life; it's all part of the same system.
ETA: This is in the context of people struggling with theodicy in the, er, wake of the tsunami catastrophe. Natural disasters must be one of the greatest challenges to faith - terrible human evil can at least be blamed on its perpetrators. My own comfort, such as it is, is that the same planet that causes such devastation is the same planet which creates the most beautiful and varied life; it's all part of the same system.
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On an unrelated note, I've been wanting to start a trend for the use of back-formations from the common internet misspellings "athiest" and "feminest". A liberal Christian might be "athier" than a fundamentalist, for instance, while a housewife might be described as being a bit "femin" if she was inclined to argue about doing the washing-up.
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"Hypocracy" is presumably some kind of rule from beneath, although I can't think of any obvious application for the term.