Steve, Sheila and I attended Noah's class on the book at Oakwood Reformed Presbyterian church at 1665 S. Germantown Rd., TN.
As always, everyone was extremely nice and talked to us afterward. Steve and I brought up a few typical points: 1. Atheism is not a religion and explained why. 2. Hinduism has supernatural elements such as reincarnation. The author argued that Hinduism did not have supernatural elements in order to classify religion as any philosophy even ones without supernatural elements. 3. We argued that atheism (non-belief) is robust and difficult to stamp out of cultures even when non-believers are burned at the stake. 4. We argued that the problem is the method that religions come to evaluating truth, that is, by revelations of a prophet such as Mohammad, Jesus, Joseph Smith, etc. 5. The author claimed that "There are three approaches that civic and cultural leaders around the world are using to address the divisiveness of religion." (1) outlaw religion, (2) condemn religion and (3) radically privatize it that is keep religion completely private. I pointed out that there are other approaches (1) open public discourse (outside of government) about religion amongst various faiths and non-faiths, (2) secular governments, that is, separation of church and state, (3) protection of religious liberties in conjunction with freedom of speech to criticize religious or non- religious ideas and (4) so forth. Jason --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Memphis Freethought Alliance" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/memphisfreethoughtalliance?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
