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- a military and fundamentalist Jewish movement which founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE, reasserting the Jewish religion and reducing the influence of Hellenism. See Hannukah.
Wikipedia page: Maccabees
Book:
Louise Mailloux was a speaker at the Atheists Without Borders convention, where the subject of her talk was Has Secularism Killed Atheism?
Manichaeism (n.)
- The syncretic, dualistic religious philosophy taught by Manes (216-276, Persian, death by crucifixion), combining elements of Zoroastrian, Christian, and Gnostic thought
- A dualistic philosophy dividing the world between good and evil principles or regarding matter as intrinsically evil and mind as intrinsically good
Books:
materialism (n.)
Book:
Book:
See also:
H.L. Mencken on Religion
MENCKEN, Henry Louis ; JOSHI, S. T. (Editor)
Keywords: religion
Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, USA
2002
A collection of writings by the brilliant editorialist H. L. Mencken, edited by S. T. Joshi.
MESLIER, Jean, Curé d'Etrépigny
Book:
Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier
See also:
metabelief (n.)
A number of common attitudes towards religion are widely held by many believers and non-believers alike. These attitudes may be called "religious metabeliefs", i.e. beliefs about religious belief. (See, Breaking The Spell, Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett.) Here are several examples of metabelief:
Some of the opinions listed above are closely related and mutually reinforcing. All are preconceptions which many people simply absorb and pass on to others, without questioning them. But when these metabeliefs are examined, they reveal themselves to have very little basis. At best, some may be considered to be half truths. Many are pernicious falsehoods.
(Article under construction...)
Book:
The Missionary Position
Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
HITCHENS, Christopher
Keywords: Catholicism history
Verso Press
1997
Mithraism (n.)
- an ancient Persian religion, the worship of the god Mithras, a major competitor of Christianity in the Roman empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries
- Also known as "Mithra"
monotheism (n.)
- The variant of theism which involves a single deity.
Examples of Monotheism
The most important and well known monotheisms today are, of course, the three major Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (Trinitarian Christianity appears to have three gods, not just one, but they are considered to be of one "substance" only. Apparently theologians are able to make 1 = 3.)
There are of course other monotheisms, such as Zoroastrianism.
As a consequence of divine authority being concentrated in a single fictional being, monotheism has a strong tendency towards totalitarianism. This is currently most evident in Islam, but is certainly not exclusive to that religion.
The Origins of Monotheism
[This section under construction]
The Moral Landscape
How Science Can Determine Human Values
HARRIS, Sam
Keywords: morality philosophy religion science
Free Press, New York, USA
2010
A Few Quotations
"Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident."
p. 6
"My goal is to convince you that human knowledge and human values can no longer be kept apart. The world of measurement and the world of meaning must eventually be reconciled. And science and religion—being antithetical ways of thinking about the same reality—will never come to terms. As with all matters of fact, differences of opinion on moral questions merely reveal the incompleteness of our knowledge; they do not oblige us to respect the diversity of our views indefinitely."
p. 10
"The disparity between how we think about physical health and societal/mental health reveals a bizarre double standard: one that is predicated on our not knowing—or rather on our pretending not to know—anything at all about human well-being."
p. 19
"But there is no mystery why many scientists feel that they must pretend that religion and science are compatible. We have recently emerged—some of us leaping, some shuffling, others crawling—out of many dark centuries of religious bewilderment and persecution, into an age when mainstream science is still occasionally treated with overt hostility by the general public and even by governments."
p. 24
"...the Vatican is an organization that excommunicates women for attempting to become priests but does not excommunicate male priests for raping children. It excommunicates doctors who perform abortions to save a woman's life—even if the mother is a nine-year old girl raped by her stepfather and pregnant with twins—but it did not excommunicate a single member of the Third Reich for committing genocide.
...It is no exaggeration to say that for decades (if not centuries) the Vatican has met the formal definition of a criminal organization devoted—not to gambling, prostitution, drugs or any other venial sin—but to the sexual enslavement of children."p. 34-35 and p. 200-201
"...the fact that millions of people use the term 'morality' as a synonyum for religious dogmatism, racism, sexism, or other failures of insight and compassion should not oblige us to merely accept their terminology until the end of time."
p. 53
"Many people imagine that the theory of evolution entails selfishness as a biological imperative. This popular misconception has been very harmful to the reputation of science. In truth, human cooperation and its attendant moral emotions are fully compatible with biological evolution."
p. 56
"If one fully accepts the metaphysical presuppositions of traditional Islam, martyrdom must be viewed as the ultimate attempt at career advancement."
p. 63
"Because most religions conceive of morality as a matter of being obedient to the word of God (generally for the sake of receiving a supernatural reward), their precepts often have nothing to do with maximizing well-being in this world. Religious believers can, therefore, assert the immorality of contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, etc., without ever feeling obliged to argue that these practices actually cause suffering. They can also pursue aims that are flagrantly immoral, in that they needlessly perpetuate human misery, while believing that these actions are morally obligatory. This pious uncoupling of moral concern from the reality of human and animal suffering has caused tremendous harm."
p. 63
"If morality is a system of thinking about (and maximizing) the well-being of conscious creatures like ourselves, many people's moral concerns must be immoral."
p. 87
"It seems to me that few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems.
...on balance, soul/body dualism has been the enemy of compassion."p. 110
"The illusion of free will is itself an illusion."
p. 112
"...on almost every measure of societal health, the least religious countries are better off than the most religious."
p. 146
"...religious commitment in the United States is highly correlated with racism."
p. 146
"Clearly, religion is largely a matter of what people teach their children to believe about the nature of reality."
p. 152
"The fact that some scientists do not detect any problem with religious faith merely proves that a juxtaposition of good ideas and bad ones is possible."
p. 160
"For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion—that great engine of ignorance and bigotry—a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result, the most powerful societies on earth spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools."
p. 191
morality (n.)
Relevant Books:
Atheism, Morality and Meaning -- MARTIN, Michael
Can We Be Good Without God -- BUCKMAN, Robert
Ethics -- BLACKBURN, Simon
The Ethics of Belief -- BURGER, A. J. (editor)
The Moral Landscape -- HARRIS, Sam
Science and Ethics -- KURTZ, Paul (editor)
The Secular Conscience -- DACEY, Austin
Superstition and Other Essays -- INGERSOLL, Robert Green
Relevant Articles:
Atheophobia, A Prejudice Thousands of Years Old
Has the Templeton Prize Compromised Charles Taylor?
Letter to the Editor, Free Inquiry, Vol. 31, No. 5
Religion, Morality and Charlatanism
The Moralistic Foundations of Creationism
multiculturalism (n.)
- "the characteristics of a society, city, etc. which has many different ethnic or national cultures mingling freely; political or social policies which support or encourage such coexistence" according to Wiktionary
The above definition is problematic because multiculturalism — which may once have been a synonym for cultural diversity — has evolved into an ideology which tends to associate each individual with his/her ethno-religious affiliation, thus compromising his/her freedom of conscience. It is incompatible with secularism. Only the naïve — or the dishonest — still use the term multiculturalism to mean cultural diversity. Today the meaning of the term is closer to cultural relativism.
Some Approximate Synonyms of "Multiculturalism"
Multiculturalism as described by Atheist Freethinkers
The following quotation is an excerpt from the brief of Atheist Freethinkers on Draft Bill #62, presented before the Committee on Institutions of the National Assembly in Quebec City, 8th November 2016.
We oppose the ideology known as "multiculturalism," often naïvely confused with cultural diversity but in fact closer to cultural relativism and leading inevitably to communitarianism. This was obvious in the controversy about the niqab at Canadian citizenship ceremonies. Even worse, those who criticize multiculturalism are often the targets of defamation in the form of false accusations of racism or xenophobia, whereas in reality it is the multiculturalist ideology itself which is akin to a form of light racism, because it is based on the assumption that members of certain ethno-religious communities are incapable of adaption to modernity and must therefore be granted religious privileges. But these privileges come at a price: ghettoization, thus condemning them to cultural inertia and isolation.
Multiculturalism & Neoliberalism
Given that the goal of neoliberalism, i.e. laissez-faire economic liberalism or laissez-faire capitalism, is to weaken national governments and boundaries and to undermine national sovereignty, neoliberal policy makers naturally favour multiculturalism because it corresponds to giving ethnoreligious affiliation priority over citizenship. Thus, ethnoreligious community leaders become delegates for community members, whereby neoliberal politicians represent communities rather than citizens, and electoral politics degenerates into wooing communities rather than individual voters. Nationalism of any form is disparaged and anyone who opposes the erosion of national sovereignty is demonized as racist, xenophobic, etc.
Multiculturalism & Clientelism
"The trouble with multiculturalism is not the fact of being multicultural—which is a reality of our lives, an obvious reality—nor is the problem cosmopolitanism or the melting pot. Indeed we would prefer more melting, more mixing together. The problem with multiculturalism is, in the final analysis, political patronage or clientelism that ends up valuing what differentiates us rather than what unites us, so much so that it even tolerates the intolerable. The old philosophical dilemma, that is to say that it ultimately tolerates—in the name of so-called diversity—religious fundamentalism, attacks on gender equality and sometimes even manifestations of racism and antisemitism."
— Caroline Fourest (translation: D.R.)
Laïcité et tolérance (Secularism and Tolerance), France Culture, 2016-12-10.
Articles about Multiculturalism
Videos about Multiculturalism
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