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The Morgan Dilemna By: Mark Morgan on 10/21/2001; 4:37 PM I am an atheist. It's a long story, but at its fundament is the question: What is the value of faith? What does faith bring to our lives? Do we need to have faith? Is it possible to construct a person, a family, a community, a country, a world, without faith? Why not? Aradia, discussing this with me, started calling this the Morgan Dilemna (make one little typo, I tell you, and she never forgets). This is my exploration of the Morgan Dilemna. As a hypertext document, I've tried to make no part dependent on the other. You might want to read the definition of faith first, just to put us on the same page, but if you don't I've tried to make its meaning clear as I use it. Explore the Dilemna in whatever fashion you want. Every page links back to here so you can bounce around all day if you want. Have that part you just read inform that piece you read yesterday. Here's my claim: faith does not add anything of significance to my life. In fact, I will go further and say that anyone can have just as valuable a life without it as anyone can with it. Additionally, faith can cause some problems in your thinking, and every faith has to tackle philosophical issues that aren't issues if you don't have faith. No particularly compelling positives, some compelling negatives, therefore faith should be abandoned. Is this claim true? I haven't reached a conclusion, although if one does arrive, I'll put that in here. Think of this as a springboard for thought. And you might post those thoughts while you're at it..
RE: The Morgan Dilemna By: Zares Kurtoga on 12/27/2001; 1:39 PM Will Atheists be allowed to celebrate christmas?Or any relligious festivals?I think that they should not have time off for christmas..or any other holiday.I mean they can have a specified number of days off per year, which shall be used when ever they wish, but, they should not have to (forced to)go off work during christmas or easter because they are atheists..
RE: The Morgan Dilemna By: Brian Carnell on 12/27/2001; 2:08 PM At 01:55 PM 12/27/2001 -0500, Zares wrote: >Will Atheists be allowed to celebrate christmas?Or any relligious >festivals?I think that they should not have time off for christmas..or any >other holiday.I mean they can have a specified number of days off per >year, which shall be used when ever they wish, but, they should not have >to (forced to)go off work during christmas or easter because they are >atheists.. Why? It's not a real Christian holiday either, yet they allow lots of Christians to take the day off? I was joking with my wife that we should send out Happy Germanic Pagan Holiday cards (in fact, Jesus' birth was affixed a few hundred years after the death of Jesus as Dec. 25 to quite blatantly to coincide with the Roman celebration of the sun god, Mithras).
RE: The Morgan Dilemna By: Chie Theresa Fujioka on 12/30/2001; 7:01 AM Curiously, catholicism coincided christmas celebrations with celtic cult's in order to increase the mass popularity of the religion. Halloween is a more commonly known one. sadly... here in japan, the american club was unwilling to set up and decorate a christmas tree because of its "religious" backgrounds. they fail to recognize that even atheists celebrate christmas...
RE: The Morgan Dilemna By: mark james morgan on 7/1/2005; 12:42 PM mark.you say you are an atheist? that would suggest that you have confidence/trust/belief in that particular ideology.which must mean you do have faith,faith in atheism!
Re: The Morgan Dilemna By: Mark Morgan on 7/1/2005; 1:26 PM Hah! Although I've heard that one before. I don't agree that "faith" means "basic worldview", since I am an atheist because I do not see there is empirical evidence for any other philosophy. I've also explained it as "Faith does not equal axiom". We're probably going to have to have sabers at dawn over the rights to the name "Mark Morgan", though. Sorry.
RE: The Morgan Dilemna By: Richard Davidson on 7/1/2005; 7:56 PM mark.you say you are an atheist? that would suggest that you have confidence/trust/belief in that particular ideology.which must mean you do have faith,faith in atheism! That's a different kind of faith. Having faith that your insurance company will pay a claim is a faith based on certain cause and effects that are measurable. Faith in God is faith in something that is immeasurable, and undetectable. That is a specious argument, and not particularly original or clever. Atheism is basically derived from LACK of Faith in God. If you have Faith in God, you are not an atheist. This is all pretty simple.
RE: The Morgan Dilemna By: Jeff Hollett on 11/8/2007; 10:10 PM But you have faith. You use it everyday. The problem is you think it is a verb and not a noun. It is unfortunate that many words, and more importantly our use of them, has changed from the original use to the point of losing meaning. For instance, you call yourself an atheist and use this word in place of agnostic. This is a very common mistake among real agnostics. There are no true atheists by definition because you cannot “prove” that God does not exist you “believe” that God does not exist. You believe there is no God and have set out to convince yourself. This is just further evidence that faith is a noun, that you have faith, and you have chosen to use it to believe that God does not exist. At best you are an agnostic and worse you could just be deceiving yourself and espousing rhetoric. May I suggest an article to read on your journey of discovery of the truth? http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=28 Self-deception by definition cannot be known to the deceived. To deceive oneself is not an overt act it is a covert act. When someone set out to deceive they do not let their intentions be known for, once discovered, the object of the intended deception guards or protects against it. You may not believe you are deceived but, because you are doing it to yourself, you will not know. You may say; I would be a fool to do this to myself, or who would do that to themselves? Everyone dose it, to different degrees, because we “believe” things that are based on false information. I would refer you to my post of your page where you attempt to define faith. http://www.voicesofunreason.com/fullthread$9704#VU9704 Your mistaken “belief” that faith is a verb is evident throughout you posts. Your use of this word repeatedly misses the mark of he true meaning of the word. It is unfortunate that you have based your pursuit on a false definition of terms but it is very common. As with any good debate the definition of terms is a must but if you cannot establish the definitions there cannot be any further debate. If you can agree on a definition then we can proceed.
Re: The Morgan Dilemna By: Brian Carnell on 11/9/2007; 10:18 AM Jeff Hollett wrote: > There are no true atheists by definition because you cannot =80prove” that > God does not exist you “believe” that God does not exist. You believe > there is no God and have set out to convince yourself. This is just further > evidence that faith is a noun, that you have faith, and you have chosen to use > it to believe that God does not exist. At best you are an agnostic and worse > you could just be deceiving yourself and espousing rhetoric. May I suggest an > article to read on your journey of discovery of the truth? > http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=28 There are no true a-unicornists because by definition you cannot "prove" that unicorns do not exist. Instead, you "believe" that unicorns do not exist. You believe there are no unicorns and have set out to convince=20 yourself. At best there are simply unicorn-gnostics, and at worse people who simply deceive themselves in spouting their anti-unicorn rhetoric.
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