Salutatio Fredric!
11-Apr-98, Fredric Rice wrote to Richard Meic
          Subject: Needs for gods
 rm>>> I cannot speak for ALL atheists, but I can say that I have grown
 rm>>> out of the need for a deity concept.
 FR>> As primates I think that most humans still need an Alpha Male.
 FR>> How so much better when they construct an invisible Alpha which
 FR>> can't be reached and thus can't be challanged and dethroned.
 rm>> Likely done out of necessity.  How long do you think it could
 rm>> have lasted without the impossibility of disproof?
 FR> About as long as it would take for a skeptic to step forward and
 FR> cut the Alpha Male's balls off.  (Metaphorically speaking, of
 FR> course.)
So, you concede that there was, at one point in human history, a *NEED* 
for deities.  What makes you so sure that there is no longer a need for 
such beliefs to keep people, who are not able to choose to be moral,
moral?
 FR>> With this unreachable, invisible Alpha Male mounted at the top,
 rm>> Sounds rather racy. ;)
 FR>   Naturally we're disgusted.  
 
Glad you enjoyed that one.  ;)
 FR>> the greedy and the control freaks and manipulate the ignorant,
 FR>> the weak, and the gullible.
 rm>> Or perhaps to also keep many of the immoral in line with what
 rm>> society deems is fit behavior for a citizen.  What reason would
 rm>> they have had to be moral at all, after all it usually got one
 rm>> poverty, mistreatment, death, etc with no reward in sight.
 rm>> Religion (or theism, if you like) provided that reward,... and
 rm>> still does for many.
 FR> If it were only just the reward, religion wouldn't be so evil.
It is not religion that is evil, but individual people that choose to be
so.
 FR> The Jewish holy books didn't contain any ideology of punishment
 FR> and yet when the Jewish holy book was mated with the new Christian
 FR> gods, the resulting synthesis contained one.
 FR> It is the idea of "sin" which has been responsible for much of the
 FR> tyranny of religion, not the idea of reward.
   
No, it is simple human selfishness.
 rm>> Imagine how fast early civilization would have crumbled if
 rm>> everyone were viewed equal?  I am thinking of the Egyptian gods
 rm>> and rulers (who were thought of as gods themselves embodied in
 rm>> human form).
 FR> At least they, like the Romans, allowed their citizens to believe
 FR> in a large number of gods and goddesses.
                                   
That is not the point I was making.
 FR> It used to be that when one passed through the domain of a king or
 FR> ruler, one would bay ritual or symbolic homage to the gods and
 FR> goddesses of that nation or city.  That was tolerant and polite.
 FR> Along came monotheism which demanded that all the other gods and
 FR> goddesses were "false" and such polite behavior was, in fact, an
 FR> affront to the one god.  I think that religion became evil when
 FR> monotheism caught on.
Evil or just intolerant?  You will have to define evil for me, for your 
definition looks quite different from mine.
 Dicere...
 email address (vrmeic@nucleus.com) 
Richard Meic
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