Atheist versus former atheist debate

One of the misfortunes of history is that we couldn't burn Hitler and Himmler at the stake. :thumbsup:

I am reading a book about the Middle Ages. Up until the late Middle Ages, Church doctrine was to deny the reality of witches and dismiss the concept as nonsense. Then the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period became a period of social instability. The were severe famines during this period, religious wars, social upheaval, and a kind of persecuting society took hold - elderly unmarried women became a target, or anyone who seemed like a drain or burden to society. It didn't help that the Protestant Reformation had emptied the convents, and the former nuns constituted a significant population of unmarried and even elderly women which society may have looked upon as a drain on resources, unable to support themselves, maybe even eccentric. That's the kind of people that were frequently and falsely accused of witchcraft, mainly just to get them out of the way.
The millennium between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was what a dark age looked like then.
This "Third Millennium" is what a dark age looks like now.
Enlightened civilization is equally impossible to find.

Probably, only those of us here who manage to live for 900 more years
will have a chance to witness a new Renaissance.
 
The millennium between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was what a dark age looked like then.
This "Third Millennium" is what a dark age looks like now.
Enlightened civilization is equally impossible to find.

Probably, only those of us here who manage to live for 900 more years
will have a chance to witness a new Renaissance.
Most historians think the Renessaince is inextricably linked to the late Middle Ages. The Early modern era didn't really begin until the 1600s. Some of the most important political, economic, cultural events of western history occurred in the High Middle Ages.

I don't really think "enlightenment" as our 21st century minds would recognize it really occurred until the 19th century.
 
I personally don't have any proof of an afterlife. I have never had a NDE.

But I also think our souped-up chimpanzee brains do not have access to all truth and all reality. We might be living in a multiverse, or in a three-dimensional cosmos embedded in a higher dimensional hyperspace, and I have no way to prove it. I am willing to accept the limitations placed on our cognitive powers.

If I had to place a wager, I would bet there isn't a heaven in the sense that Dante Allegheri wrote about it or as seen in numerous movies or TV shows.
Heaven as generally been assumed has not existed since Satan's failed rebellion. Since then the Spirit world has been in disarray ,adding in the Spiritual element of Mankind ,mixed with the original Spirit family and we have spiritual babble! But that's not a permanent situation, believe it or not things are in motion to bring things all back as originally planned.
 
Your hatred of Western civilization is noted.

I specifically said that there is nearly universal consensus on the ethos of the New Testament as an aspirational goal, even if most people fall far short. In the same way students in a college class all aspire to get an A, but the vast majority will receive Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs.

The consensus on a Judeo-Christian ethos is so widespread and entrenched that even a prominent atheist like Trump has to pretend to be a good Samaritan, a charitable person, a person concerned with the less fortunate. That is exactly why he cynically set up a fake charity, tossed paper towels in Puerto Rico like he was shooting basketball hoops, and frantically tried to distance himself from Project 25.
morality exists in other cultures.

morality is rational not just a facet of religion totalitarianism.
 
morality exists in other cultures.
I did not say that it didn't dummy.

Did Western civilization get the foundation of its aspirational values and ethos from Buddhism, Confucianism, or Taoism?

Think man, think!

Yep, that's right - it didn't.

It got them in large measure from its 2,000-year immersion in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Just like I stated on this thread.
 
I did not say that it didn't dummy.

Did Western civilization get the foundation of its aspirational values and ethos from Buddhism, Confucianism, or Taoism?

Think man, think!

Yep, that's right - it didn't.

It got them in large measure from its 2,000-year immersion in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Just like I stated on this thread.
morality doesn't change.

societies are more or less moral, but morality doesn't change.
 
I did not say that it didn't dummy.

Did Western civilization get the foundation of its aspirational values and ethos from Buddhism, Confucianism, or Taoism?

Think man, think!

Yep, that's right - it didn't.

It got them in large measure from its 2,000-year immersion in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Just like I stated on this thread.
What societies believe in rape and murder?
 
You are claiming our past system of slavery is based on the same morality we have today? Please stop pretending to be fucking stupid.
slavery was immoral the whole time. society was accepting of it and so therefore the society was immoral in that respect.
 
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