(urth) Religious writers and audiences

[John Watkins]

Well, just the one.  Atheists by definition reject the existence of a
deity.  Pure reason cannot lead to the conclusion that no such being
exists--at the very best it leads to the conclusion that we can't be sure
whether such a being exists or not.  Any opinion beyond that is, in a sense,
beyond the purview of pure reason.

There are probably many atheists with other views that I might consider
"ultra vires," but you guys don't exactly have a creed, so I'd rather not
lump you together.  And to tell the truth I don't really want to be
embroiled in a religious controversy here--my point is that I think the
rhetorical strategy of some theists to class "atheism" as a "religion"
itself is of limited value, but that I find the rhetorical strategy of some
atheists to class "religion" as a special kind of unwarranted belief about
the universe is a question-begging exercise.  Theists don't believe that the
views of atheists are warranted; if they did, they'd be atheists.

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 2:23 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> John
>
> I'm curious about those "ultra vires views." Do you have an example in
> mind?
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 13:46:05 -0400
> From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
>
> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences
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>
> The Latin root is "sanus."  I suspect that it and "salus" derive from a
> common P.I.E. root, as they were practically synonyms in ancient Rome.
> "Sanus," in ancient Latin, had roughly the meaning of our phrase "sound in
> mind and body."
>
> Atheism is a "religion" is what is meant by "religion" is a keystone or
> foundational belief or set of beliefs, not subject to
> falsification, enabling the mind to order and interpret the universe.  Some
> people like this definition of religion; to me it seems jury-rigged to
> incorporate secular metaphysical positions in order to artificially class
> them as the same sort of thing as mystic or traditionally religious
> metaphysical positions.  I think the nature of the thing the believer
> believes about the universe is different enough in kind from the nature of
> the thing the unbeliever believes about the universe to warrant separate
> categories.  But I also think it's a little misleading to suggest that the
> religious believer and only the religious believer has, as it were, ultra
> vires views about the nature of the universe.
>
> On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 1:37 PM, <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
>
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