What do we mean by "
God" [Theos]? What, then, is
atheism? Neither, by definition, can be proven without any residue/absolutely!!!
[However, depending on the definition of "God", one might quibble with that one, of course - but we shall come to it later...]
It's a very old thing in Philosophy: theism and atheism are the face and the flip side of the coin - two sides of the same thing. Both unprovable!
What we can say and do, says Vico [many, many Moons ago!!!], and then many follow, is
what our world is like, what we have done, what we are doing and what we are going to do with/in our world and leave these "otherworldly questions" to the private sphere and the theologians.
I.e. let's not allow ourselves -
in the public sphere, in essential questions - to be drawn into the theological questions and discourse as such, as it's taking us away from the really essential questions of how we live our lives and what we are doing with our world.
And for that we need neither! So, let's deal with the really important stuff instead. One of them is the movement - here "Brights" movement - equally as we would with the mass suicidal movement of a properly religious cult... In other words,
Phil's Q is legitimate!!!
However, I have to reiterate that the idea/notion of "God" in, say, Hegel's thought, isn't the same idea of "God" as, for instance, a poor, uneducated, powerless person from the bottom of the social scale in, say, Brazil or Ghana, India or Russia, might "imagine/picture" it!
Equally, as someone mentioned, the definition of a cult is at issue here, too.
But! What might be rationally debated here, to my mind, is whether or not Theism of any school is being replaced by an equally dumb, non-critical, comformist attitude towards "belief" which tends to replace the "old Theist belief" with Science, uncritically elevated to the heights normally reserved for the Absolute.
I find, as many here know, the "naturalistic worldview" extremely wanting in its superficial "ideas" about materialism/idealism, Philosophy as such, in particular Methodology and so forth, inasmuch as it coincides with vulgar "materialism" and "Social Darwinism".
None are exactly very intelligent or very educated!!! So, "Brights" seems like a farce, more like, as opposed to how they seem to be "understanding", i.e. trying to "label" themselves.
What rubbish PR that is, FFS...
It really kills it, to my mind!
Brights...
Phhhhhrrrrrrrrr...........
