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Atheism
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Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
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- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
No, it really isn't. You are reducing thousands of years of history to "basically monotheism" because it suits your argument. You are literally trying to label one of the oldest polytheistic religions in the world as a monotheistic despite the fact that they only interacted with each other for a relatively insignificant amount of time.
Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You are constantly forgetting that you were the one who made the original affirmation.
My only claim is that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Lol, well actually, I invented history, and have been studying it before written time! You see how anecdotal evidence means next to nothing?
Again, I was the first person to ask about sources? The burden of proof is laid upon the person who made the claim, not the rebuttal.
When did I say they didn't?
Lol, we were talking about the beginning of the Christian church, specifically before the policy was made prior to the council of nicaea.
Lol, I'm not upset. I'm just explaining how you have no grounds to make that claim. You haven't given any body of evidence that established your narrative, nor offered any evidence that prohibits alternative explanations if your narrative was proved in the first place.
Lol, what? Your abilities to confidently jump to wildly inaccurate conclusions is pretty amazing. I don't particularly care for any religious thoughts unless its about how it relates to culture or history.
I like history, I don't like people making silly unprovable claims.
Lol, the philosopher from the enlightenment period? You know that is not actually an academically appropriate source for history, right?
There's a difference between philosophy and actual history my dude.
And a couple of the books you listed look pretty interesting, but just based on the summaries. I highly doubt they actually attempt to make the same claims as you.
There's no point in arguing someone like you who has zero understanding and is not ready to educate himself on the subject.
Just because you refuse the evidence in favour of opinions you pull out of your arse doesn't make the evidence less credible.
There's tons of books on this, and the mechanisms the theories suppose are very clearly written out in excerpts of those books, since you're clearly nor a person with the ability to read an entire book.
First off, "oldest"? You truly, truly make me laugh. Like heartily.
The reasons for why monotheism sucks began in early henotheism, which is a word I bet my left ball you don't even know the meaning off.
Your temper tantrum won't change the consensus on the matter, lil guy.
Was Atenisn mono- or polytheistic?
(Rhetorical question, I honestly don't care about anything you say. Imagine how frustrating it'd be for you to try to discuss the intricacies of your favourite movie/game with some seven year old who's barely seen proper movies or played games, and definitely doesn't have a good grasp of them. That's roughly what this conversation is like to me.)
Enjoy your ignorance.
Ditto?
You haven't given me any evidence that supports your argument. You're just rambling about philosophy.
Anecdotal.......
Learn to read....."one of the oldest"
Way to avoid the topic though.
Lol, that excited to become eunuch? Henotheism probably isn't going to be an unfamiliar concept if I've already mentioned dualism.....
Lol, I'm just correctting you. You're the one whos relinquishing themselves with ad hominem. Also, ya haven't established there's a consensus, you're just saying trust me bro.
Neither...... You do know that history isn't some walled garden that only Scandinavian have access too, right?
Just because I don't partake in your pet philosophical theory doesn't't mean I can't enjoy reading history.
I don't understand the mental gymnastics needed to say "you haven't provided any evidence" when I've told you the arguments, who made them, why and where you can read more about them.
You're pretending as if you don't know how to use a search engine. Or open links, for that matter.
https://books.google.fi/books?id=S1tQ5Larst0C&redir_esc=y
https://books.google.fi/books?id=9P4TU-0zEs8C&redir_esc=y
Arvind Sharma, "A Primal Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_conversion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization
https://devayasna.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/a-theory-of-polytheism-2/
We have noted in a previous blog that polytheism distinguished between justice and cult while monotheism merged them and projected justice itself as the true cult. Assmann claims – a point that is not fully clear to me – that monotheism marked a separation between religion and state while they remained indistinct under polytheism. In the Egyptian case, the Pharaoh acted as god’s deputy on earth. Assuming a distinction between heaven and earth, the Pharaoh maintained order on earth, on behalf of the gods in heaven. The state thus assumes religious authority and its power becomes absolute. Monotheism challenged and overthrew precisely this absolutism by introducing a separation between religion and state:
Religion is now constituted as a sphere with its own normativity, which might even override the political normativity of the state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_monotheism
Criticism of monotheism has occurred throughout history. Critics have described monotheism as a cause of ignorance, oppression, and violence.
You're just regurgitating things you literally pull out of your arse. Have you ever taken a single course of theology, or studied it independently? I can bet you haven't. And you're not willing to look at the materials I giving. So you're asserting something, without an explanation, without evidence, and the rhetoric you try to use is ridiculous as fuck: "Oh polytheism is more tolerant than monotheism? Well explain the mongol empire."
That's honestly the "best" strawman I've seen this year. It's ludicrous, and the cherry on top is that you larp someone who understands how rhetoric works. :D
Thanks for the entertainment, but please realise that you're just doing this because you want a debate, not because you know anything about either philosophy or religion.
When you write academic papers, do you just add entire books as sources? No, you supply evidence within the book that reinforces your argument. Just simply pointing at a book and saying that is my evidence is just a poor attempt to appeal to authority.
Again, you're pretending that giving someone a title of a book is an academically honest way to supply supporting evidence to a statement.
And based upon the "evidence" that you have supplied that isn't behind a paywall, I'd highly doubt they're making the same definitive conclusion you have.
My initial rebuttal still stands. We don't have the same quality of sources or cultural context for polytheistic societies to make adequate comparative studies. Even if we did, terms like progressive and tolerance are still too subjective to blanket different social and cultural mores too.
And finally it is exceedingly rare for an actual consensus about historical social motivations. There is no overall consensus that polytheistic are more progressive or tolerant, as there is no consensus on just how impactful religion is to societies. For every 4 books you can find about this specific topic, I can find 10 more over the theory of historic materialism that claims religion is just window dressing.
Yes professor, you see this blog I found ...
The primary claim in that blog is that political and religious violence are independent of each other. This is not a provable claim.
Again, I am talking about history. You are the one who is trying to force this conversation into a theological one. As I said, I am completely uninterested in your realm of fantasy outside of its historical context.
Just denying something.... You're the one making the claim here.
Lol, keep on purposely misinterpreting..... You are the one who defined tolerance as less violent, and now you're mad your definition is so easy to disprove.
Lol, do you want a redo? How about you try defining tolerance again in a way that's less subjective?
Lol, this was about history. I'm sorry you don't know any methodology that can be found outside of the philosophy department of a liberal arts building.
You are presenting philosophical theory as fact, which is just academically dishonest. People are free to make their case, but you are forming definitive conclusions, and you should know that's just illogical even in philosophy.