(urth) Religious writers and audiences

[Craig Brewer]

If by "radical," you mean to look at the term's etymology, it comes from Latin's sanus, or something like "healthy." So when you say that atheists are insane, you *really* mean that they are not healthy or do not have a world view that allows them to have a healthy intellectual/emotional/spiritual (or some combination thereof) life.

Fine (although using the word "sane" doesn't clarify anything about what you think is "unhealthy" about atheism). And you've said you use the radical meaning primarily when you choose your terms. Again, fine. But it strikes me as lacking civility or even a simple willingness to be clearly understood when you use a term in a way that likely isn't shared by others. Insane, of course, to most people means "crazy" rather than "not healthy." But it appears manipulative to put that out there when it seems designed to provoke a response and an argument. It's especially manipulative if you then act like a guru-on-the-mountain who asks patronizing questions about the meaning of words.

Words have meanings, but they also have effects. The way you constantly address the meaning of words is fine, but you seem to either ignore the way they will be received by people who don't share your sense of "radical" words...or you do it to provoke people. I have no idea what your actual intention is, and I'm not making any guesses. But this does seem to be a pattern.



----- Original Message ----
From: "brunians at brunians.org" <brunians at brunians.org>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Sun, June 6, 2010 12:37:33 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences

Atheism is just another religion.

You are required, if you adhere to this religion, to insist that it is not
a religion.

Now.

What does the term sane mean?

What is the radical meaning of the term sane?

.


don't see people who disagree with me as insane.
>
> Once again you play fast and loose with terms.
>
> .
>
>
>> Yes, it is.
>>
>> And in a sense I agree with Brunians, because I too see the natural
>> universe as screaming evidence of something---in my case the absolute
>> unnecessariness of a anthropomorphized deity---and see no point in
>> forming
>> an argument connecting them. It just is.
>>
>> However, I don't see people who disagree with that as insane.
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 18:02:58 +0300
>> From: Pedro Pereira <domus_artemis at hotmail.com>
>> To: <urth at lists.urth.net>
>> Subject: Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences
>> Message-ID: <COL105-W33547DB7D831FD0BAFD37585D40 at phx.gbl>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>>
>> Fair enough. Guess I missed the memo on Brunians' views and I
>> misinterpreted him. However it is in my opinion pointless to argue such
>> views (or at least I have no interest in arguing those and for that I
>> appologise to Brunians) when one takes "the natural world (as he defines
>> it) and the entire universe to be an argument for his beliefs and in
>> short, his observations are beliefs and his beliefs are observations".
>>
>>
>>
>> Over and out.
>>
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