@Poitier : heres your homework: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience
Debate: You can't be pro-black and religious
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http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-02-22/black-atheists-civil-rights/53211196/1
Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes
By Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service
Updated 2/23/2012 11:41 AM
Think of the civil rights movement and chances are the image that comes to mind is of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leading the 1963 March on Washington.
Why is King, a Christian, remembered by so many and Randolph, an atheist, by so few? It's a question many African-American nontheists — atheists, humanists and skeptics — are asking this Black History Month, with some scholars and activists calling for a re-examination of the contributions of nontheists of color to the civil rights movement and beyond.
"So often you hear about religious people involved in the civil rights movement, and as well you should, but there were also humanists," said Norm R. Allen Jr. of the Institute for Science and Human Values, a humanist organization based in Tampa, Fla.
"No one is discussing how their beliefs impacted their activism or intellectualism. People forget we are a diverse community. We are not monolithic."
Civil Rights Movement
Stories, videos, cold cases.
Allen has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989. This year, more than 15 local AAH chapters are expected to highlight Randolph and about a dozen others as part of their observance of a Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers on Sunday.
The hope, Allen said, is that highlighting the contributions of African-American humanists — and humanists in general — both in the civil rights movement and beyond will encourage acceptance of nonbelievers, a group that polls consistently rank as the least liked in the U.S.
"So often people look at atheists as if they have horns on their heads," Allen said. "In order to correct that, it would be important to correct the historical record and show that African-American humanists have been involved in numerous instances in the civil rights movement and before."
AAH is also promoting black humanists in a billboard campaign in several cities, includingNew York, Dallas, Chicago and Durham, N.C. Each one pairs a local black nontheist with a black nonbeliever from the past. "Doubts about religion?" the billboard reads. "You're one of many."
A billboard in Los Angeles pairs Sikivu Hutchinson, a humanist activist based in Los Angeles, with Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being an unbeliever in her childhood. Hutchinson, author of the forthcoming "Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels," links blacks' religiosity with social ills such as poverty, joblessness and inequality.
"To become politically visible as a constituency, it is critical for black nonbelievers to say we have this parallel position within the civil rights struggle," she said.
A strain of unbelief runs across African-American history, said Anthony Pinn, a Rice University professor and author of a book about African-American humanists. He points to figures like Hubert Henry Harrison, an early 20th- century activist who equated religion with slavery, and W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP, who was often critical of black churches.
"Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes— they were all critical of belief in God," Pinn said. "They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle."
But they are often ignored in the narrative of American history, sacrificed to the myth that the achievements of the civil rights movement were the accomplishments of religious — mainly Christian — people.
Add in that black nonbelievers are a double minority — polls show African-Americans are among the most religious U.S. group — and it becomes even more difficult to discuss the atheism of heroes of black history.
"This is a country that loves the rhetoric of the belief in God," Pinn said. "And think about how things currently stand. You can be socially ostracized and lose all sorts of connections by voicing one's disbelief. If it raises these sorts of questions now, what were the consequences of doing it during the mid-20th century when everything about black life in the U.S. was in question?"
Juan Floyd-Thomas, a religious historian and professor at Vanderbilt University and author of a book on the origins of black humanism, agrees with Pinn, and called the traditional view of the civil rights movement as an inevitable extension of American Christianity "a mythology."
Wright's and Randolph's critiques of organized religion, Floyd-Thomas said, "would not be too far out of step with the New Atheists" — best-selling atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But he laments that most African-Americans and even many nontheists are unaware of this history.
"One of the things that can be gained from shining a bright light on the contributions of nontheists to the broad sweep of the civil rights movement would have to be integrity," he said. "These people had a moral core and that's something that is sorely needed, whether you are a theist or a nontheist."
African American atheists
Sunday's "Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers", will include a remembrance of African-American atheists of the past, including:
James Baldwin (1924-1987), poet, playwright, civil rights activist
Once a Pentecostal preacher, Baldwin's 1963 book, The Fire Next Time, describes how "being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked." Baldwin never publicly declared his atheism, but he was critical of religion. "If the concept of God has any validity or any use," he wrote, "it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him."
W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963), co-founder of the NAACP
Columbia University professor Manning Marable wrote that DuBois' 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folk, "helped to create the intellectual argument for the black freedom struggle in the 20th century." DuBois described himself as a freethinker and was sometimes critical of the black church, which he said was too slow in supporting or promoting racial equality.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), playwright and journalist
Hansberry's partly autobiographical play A Raisin in the Sun, shocked Broadway audiences when a black character declared, "God is just one idea I don't accept. … It's just that I get so tired of him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no God! There is only man, and it's he who makes miracles!" She worked with W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson on an African-American progressive newspaper, but her life was cut short at age 34 by cancer.
Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), activist, educator, writer
Harrison promoted positive racial consciousness among African-Americans and is credited with influencing A. Philip Randolph and the godfather of black nationalism,Marcus Garvey. Harrison proudly declared his atheism and wrote, "Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, … content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction."
A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), labor organizer
Randolph was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black union. He helped convince President Franklin Roosevelt to desegregate military production factories during World War II, and organized the 1963 March on Washington with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1973, Randolph signed the Humanist Manifesto II, a public declaration of Humanist principles. He is reported to have said of prayer: "Our aim is to appeal to reason. … Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is."
Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), journalist and historian
In 1926, Woodson proposed "Negro History Week," which later evolved into Black History Month. In 1933, he wrote in The Mis-Education of the Negro that "the ritualistic churches into which these Negroes have gone do not touch the masses, and they show no promising future for racial development. Such institutions are controlled by those who offer the Negroes only limited opportunity and then sometimes on the condition that they be segregated in the court of the gentiles outside of the temple of Jehovah."
Richard Wright (1908-1960), novelist and author
In his memoir Black Boy, Wright wrote, "Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God's existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen his creatures serve him at first hand, I had had my doubts. My faith, as it was, was welded to the common realities of life, anchored in the sensations of my body and in what my mind could grasp, and nothing could ever shake this faith, and surely not my fear of an invisible power."
Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes
By Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service
Updated 2/23/2012 11:41 AM
- Comments113
- http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-02-22/black-atheists-civil-rights/53211196/1
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-
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Think of the civil rights movement and chances are the image that comes to mind is of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leading the 1963 March on Washington.
-
By Bob Mahoney, Religion News Service
African Americans for Humanism erected billboards in several cities featuring black icons, including Langston Hughes on this billboard in Atlanta, alongside African-American atheists.
Why is King, a Christian, remembered by so many and Randolph, an atheist, by so few? It's a question many African-American nontheists — atheists, humanists and skeptics — are asking this Black History Month, with some scholars and activists calling for a re-examination of the contributions of nontheists of color to the civil rights movement and beyond.
"So often you hear about religious people involved in the civil rights movement, and as well you should, but there were also humanists," said Norm R. Allen Jr. of the Institute for Science and Human Values, a humanist organization based in Tampa, Fla.
"No one is discussing how their beliefs impacted their activism or intellectualism. People forget we are a diverse community. We are not monolithic."
Civil Rights Movement
Stories, videos, cold cases.Allen has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989. This year, more than 15 local AAH chapters are expected to highlight Randolph and about a dozen others as part of their observance of a Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers on Sunday.
The hope, Allen said, is that highlighting the contributions of African-American humanists — and humanists in general — both in the civil rights movement and beyond will encourage acceptance of nonbelievers, a group that polls consistently rank as the least liked in the U.S.
"So often people look at atheists as if they have horns on their heads," Allen said. "In order to correct that, it would be important to correct the historical record and show that African-American humanists have been involved in numerous instances in the civil rights movement and before."
AAH is also promoting black humanists in a billboard campaign in several cities, includingNew York, Dallas, Chicago and Durham, N.C. Each one pairs a local black nontheist with a black nonbeliever from the past. "Doubts about religion?" the billboard reads. "You're one of many."
A billboard in Los Angeles pairs Sikivu Hutchinson, a humanist activist based in Los Angeles, with Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being an unbeliever in her childhood. Hutchinson, author of the forthcoming "Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels," links blacks' religiosity with social ills such as poverty, joblessness and inequality.
"To become politically visible as a constituency, it is critical for black nonbelievers to say we have this parallel position within the civil rights struggle," she said.
A strain of unbelief runs across African-American history, said Anthony Pinn, a Rice University professor and author of a book about African-American humanists. He points to figures like Hubert Henry Harrison, an early 20th- century activist who equated religion with slavery, and W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP, who was often critical of black churches.
"Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes— they were all critical of belief in God," Pinn said. "They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle."
But they are often ignored in the narrative of American history, sacrificed to the myth that the achievements of the civil rights movement were the accomplishments of religious — mainly Christian — people.
Add in that black nonbelievers are a double minority — polls show African-Americans are among the most religious U.S. group — and it becomes even more difficult to discuss the atheism of heroes of black history.
"This is a country that loves the rhetoric of the belief in God," Pinn said. "And think about how things currently stand. You can be socially ostracized and lose all sorts of connections by voicing one's disbelief. If it raises these sorts of questions now, what were the consequences of doing it during the mid-20th century when everything about black life in the U.S. was in question?"
Juan Floyd-Thomas, a religious historian and professor at Vanderbilt University and author of a book on the origins of black humanism, agrees with Pinn, and called the traditional view of the civil rights movement as an inevitable extension of American Christianity "a mythology."
Wright's and Randolph's critiques of organized religion, Floyd-Thomas said, "would not be too far out of step with the New Atheists" — best-selling atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But he laments that most African-Americans and even many nontheists are unaware of this history.
"One of the things that can be gained from shining a bright light on the contributions of nontheists to the broad sweep of the civil rights movement would have to be integrity," he said. "These people had a moral core and that's something that is sorely needed, whether you are a theist or a nontheist."
African American atheists
Sunday's "Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers", will include a remembrance of African-American atheists of the past, including:
James Baldwin (1924-1987), poet, playwright, civil rights activist
Once a Pentecostal preacher, Baldwin's 1963 book, The Fire Next Time, describes how "being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked." Baldwin never publicly declared his atheism, but he was critical of religion. "If the concept of God has any validity or any use," he wrote, "it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him."
W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963), co-founder of the NAACP
Columbia University professor Manning Marable wrote that DuBois' 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folk, "helped to create the intellectual argument for the black freedom struggle in the 20th century." DuBois described himself as a freethinker and was sometimes critical of the black church, which he said was too slow in supporting or promoting racial equality.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), playwright and journalist
Hansberry's partly autobiographical play A Raisin in the Sun, shocked Broadway audiences when a black character declared, "God is just one idea I don't accept. … It's just that I get so tired of him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no God! There is only man, and it's he who makes miracles!" She worked with W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson on an African-American progressive newspaper, but her life was cut short at age 34 by cancer.
Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), activist, educator, writer
Harrison promoted positive racial consciousness among African-Americans and is credited with influencing A. Philip Randolph and the godfather of black nationalism,Marcus Garvey. Harrison proudly declared his atheism and wrote, "Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, … content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction."
A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), labor organizer
Randolph was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black union. He helped convince President Franklin Roosevelt to desegregate military production factories during World War II, and organized the 1963 March on Washington with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1973, Randolph signed the Humanist Manifesto II, a public declaration of Humanist principles. He is reported to have said of prayer: "Our aim is to appeal to reason. … Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is."
Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), journalist and historian
In 1926, Woodson proposed "Negro History Week," which later evolved into Black History Month. In 1933, he wrote in The Mis-Education of the Negro that "the ritualistic churches into which these Negroes have gone do not touch the masses, and they show no promising future for racial development. Such institutions are controlled by those who offer the Negroes only limited opportunity and then sometimes on the condition that they be segregated in the court of the gentiles outside of the temple of Jehovah."
Richard Wright (1908-1960), novelist and author
In his memoir Black Boy, Wright wrote, "Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God's existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen his creatures serve him at first hand, I had had my doubts. My faith, as it was, was welded to the common realities of life, anchored in the sensations of my body and in what my mind could grasp, and nothing could ever shake this faith, and surely not my fear of an invisible power."
Blackout
just your usual nerdy brotha
My only issue is that your saying its their belief system.
They may follow it and twist to their agenda yet it isn't theirs at the end of the day.
Non-materialist as in the Universe, not the human brain. The human brain is a self-contained GUI, which is why neuroscience falls short.
Close this thread.
Please close it
the guy isn't even worth entertaining with this mess
you're reshaping the god-of-the-gaps argument.
Modern neuroscience is and has already answered this.
you're reshaping the god-of-the-gaps argument.
Modern neuroscience is and has already answered this.
you're reshaping the god-of-the-gaps argument.
Modern neuroscience is and has already answered this.
I can consciously shape my brain anatomy with my thought, which is why cognition has to be accounted for
spliz
SplizThaDon
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I don't think I've come across anyone who loves to argue more than this nikka...I could see this nikka even arguing with people who agree with him...lol..one of them nikkas who loves to hear themselves talk..can't debate with someone like that..they're NEVER wrong..even when they know they are..u can never win a debate cause they will never admit defeat...u can't learn anything new in the debate cause the dude will literally dismiss every point that isn't his..no matter how much sense it makes and how much u proof u have against it...OP is literally the epitome of a knucklehead..dude completely ignores history..the most advanced civilization in the history of our planet..Ancient Egypt..masters at math..science..philosophy etc etc..was huge on religion and spirituality..and countless other advanced civilizations as well..yet..we supposed to take the advice from a nikka who hasn't done shyt for the overall improvement of black people..and is a blip on the radar filled with hot air and weak theories...unbelievable..lolMy arguments are not theological assertions of christianity all my arguments revolve around the idea of illusory concepts and how concepts such as those have driven us to fight against racism...
Illusory concepts u say disqualify us from being pro black
nikka dodgin questions with baseless insults
Its alrdyclear as day u havenothing to say because the premise of your thread has now been shown to be one created out of idiotic homotion
Good day u fakkit ass nikka
Davin Black
Rookie
Those are used to illustrate some sort of lesson or point - though you seem to be aware of what the bible says (on some level) so I'm not going to get into a spiritual back-and-forth.
I disagree. It is not a weakness to cite or use religion as a source of motivation for altruistic acts. That's like saying that someone should like a good song only for the lyrical and production quality instead of "because the beat is fun to dance to" - if it's a good song, and inspires you to seek out similar music, then it doesn't matter what inspired you to do so.
YOU asked me what religion provides that doesn't delve into "a bunch of Christian bullshyt." I purposely spoke on themes not exclusive to Christianity, AND the fact that people discover and develop these behaviors without religion. But whether you like it or not, organized religion encourages and guides its followers to think and act in these ways.
If you get there without religion, THAT's FINE. But if you get to that place because of religion, THAT'S FINE TOO.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-02-22/black-atheists-civil-rights/53211196/1
Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes
By Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service
Updated 2/23/2012 11:41 AM
- Comments113
Think of the civil rights movement and chances are the image that comes to mind is of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leading the 1963 March on Washington.
A. Philip Randolph, a labor organizer who originated the idea of the march and was at King's side as he made his famous I Have a Dreamspeech.
By Bob Mahoney, Religion News Service
African Americans for Humanism erected billboards in several cities featuring black icons, including Langston Hughes on this billboard in Atlanta, alongside African-American atheists.
Why is King, a Christian, remembered by so many and Randolph, an atheist, by so few? It's a question many African-American nontheists — atheists, humanists and skeptics — are asking this Black History Month, with some scholars and activists calling for a re-examination of the contributions of nontheists of color to the civil rights movement and beyond.
"So often you hear about religious people involved in the civil rights movement, and as well you should, but there were also humanists," said Norm R. Allen Jr. of the Institute for Science and Human Values, a humanist organization based in Tampa, Fla.
"No one is discussing how their beliefs impacted their activism or intellectualism. People forget we are a diverse community. We are not monolithic."
Civil Rights Movement
Allen has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989. This year, more than 15 local AAH chapters are expected to highlight Randolph and about a dozen others as part of their observance of a Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers on Sunday.
The hope, Allen said, is that highlighting the contributions of African-American humanists — and humanists in general — both in the civil rights movement and beyond will encourage acceptance of nonbelievers, a group that polls consistently rank as the least liked in the U.S.
"So often people look at atheists as if they have horns on their heads," Allen said. "In order to correct that, it would be important to correct the historical record and show that African-American humanists have been involved in numerous instances in the civil rights movement and before."
AAH is also promoting black humanists in a billboard campaign in several cities, includingNew York, Dallas, Chicago and Durham, N.C. Each one pairs a local black nontheist with a black nonbeliever from the past. "Doubts about religion?" the billboard reads. "You're one of many."
A billboard in Los Angeles pairs Sikivu Hutchinson, a humanist activist based in Los Angeles, with Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being an unbeliever in her childhood. Hutchinson, author of the forthcoming "Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels," links blacks' religiosity with social ills such as poverty, joblessness and inequality.
"To become politically visible as a constituency, it is critical for black nonbelievers to say we have this parallel position within the civil rights struggle," she said.
A strain of unbelief runs across African-American history, said Anthony Pinn, a Rice University professor and author of a book about African-American humanists. He points to figures like Hubert Henry Harrison, an early 20th- century activist who equated religion with slavery, and W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP, who was often critical of black churches.
"Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes— they were all critical of belief in God," Pinn said. "They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle."
But they are often ignored in the narrative of American history, sacrificed to the myth that the achievements of the civil rights movement were the accomplishments of religious — mainly Christian — people.
Add in that black nonbelievers are a double minority — polls show African-Americans are among the most religious U.S. group — and it becomes even more difficult to discuss the atheism of heroes of black history.
"This is a country that loves the rhetoric of the belief in God," Pinn said. "And think about how things currently stand. You can be socially ostracized and lose all sorts of connections by voicing one's disbelief. If it raises these sorts of questions now, what were the consequences of doing it during the mid-20th century when everything about black life in the U.S. was in question?"
Juan Floyd-Thomas, a religious historian and professor at Vanderbilt University and author of a book on the origins of black humanism, agrees with Pinn, and called the traditional view of the civil rights movement as an inevitable extension of American Christianity "a mythology."
Wright's and Randolph's critiques of organized religion, Floyd-Thomas said, "would not be too far out of step with the New Atheists" — best-selling atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But he laments that most African-Americans and even many nontheists are unaware of this history.
"One of the things that can be gained from shining a bright light on the contributions of nontheists to the broad sweep of the civil rights movement would have to be integrity," he said. "These people had a moral core and that's something that is sorely needed, whether you are a theist or a nontheist."
African American atheists
Sunday's "Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers", will include a remembrance of African-American atheists of the past, including:
James Baldwin (1924-1987), poet, playwright, civil rights activist
Once a Pentecostal preacher, Baldwin's 1963 book, The Fire Next Time, describes how "being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked." Baldwin never publicly declared his atheism, but he was critical of religion. "If the concept of God has any validity or any use," he wrote, "it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him."
W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963), co-founder of the NAACP
Columbia University professor Manning Marable wrote that DuBois' 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folk, "helped to create the intellectual argument for the black freedom struggle in the 20th century." DuBois described himself as a freethinker and was sometimes critical of the black church, which he said was too slow in supporting or promoting racial equality.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), playwright and journalist
Hansberry's partly autobiographical play A Raisin in the Sun, shocked Broadway audiences when a black character declared, "God is just one idea I don't accept. … It's just that I get so tired of him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no God! There is only man, and it's he who makes miracles!" She worked with W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson on an African-American progressive newspaper, but her life was cut short at age 34 by cancer.
Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), activist, educator, writer
Harrison promoted positive racial consciousness among African-Americans and is credited with influencing A. Philip Randolph and the godfather of black nationalism,Marcus Garvey. Harrison proudly declared his atheism and wrote, "Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, … content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction."
A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), labor organizer
Randolph was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black union. He helped convince President Franklin Roosevelt to desegregate military production factories during World War II, and organized the 1963 March on Washington with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1973, Randolph signed the Humanist Manifesto II, a public declaration of Humanist principles. He is reported to have said of prayer: "Our aim is to appeal to reason. … Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is."
Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), journalist and historian
In 1926, Woodson proposed "Negro History Week," which later evolved into Black History Month. In 1933, he wrote in The Mis-Education of the Negro that "the ritualistic churches into which these Negroes have gone do not touch the masses, and they show no promising future for racial development. Such institutions are controlled by those who offer the Negroes only limited opportunity and then sometimes on the condition that they be segregated in the court of the gentiles outside of the temple of Jehovah."
Richard Wright (1908-1960), novelist and author
In his memoir Black Boy, Wright wrote, "Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God's existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen his creatures serve him at first hand, I had had my doubts. My faith, as it was, was welded to the common realities of life, anchored in the sensations of my body and in what my mind could grasp, and nothing could ever shake this faith, and surely not my fear of an invisible power."
How about giving credit where it is due? MLK didn't even give the entire speech the guy helped him with cause people were walking away. MLK thought he was losing people and not connecting with them. It was then one of the ladies of his church told MLK to tell them about your dream. He had previously shared part of it with his church. The I have a dream portion was not written down it was an actual dream he had.
What part of MLK's speech that dude helped write is remembered today? Next to none if any at all. Even today people trying to hop on or over someone else to get some fame. We have ALL of it on video and documented.
mcdivit85
Superstar
Well, I don't think they are mutually exclusive necessarily. But it depends on a person's outlook and how they perceive their religion.
You have black christians more concerned about Israel and jews than Africa and their black counterparts. Same with black muslims who are more concerned about the Middle East(western asia) and arabs than Africa and blacks. You really have blacks who are more emotionally affected by the conflict between Israel and Palestine than the fleecing of Africa.
If a person uses their religion as a means towards black liberation and self-sufficiency, then that is fine. The greatest example of this being Elijah Muhammad who took Islam and made it into a black reformation project that changed the lives and outlooks of many including some of the world's best black leaders such as Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan.
There are others who do this without much acclaim. Certain factions in Africa follow Islam but not its arabized tenets such as Mecca being the "holy land" and others. They are muslim but use Islam for their own African well-being and purpose. I can rock with that.
The same can be said for MLK and others who were christian to a lesser extent. And I say lesser because they did not necessarily create a black idealized christianity but moreso used their beliefs of justice and peace via their religion to make change.
But I will say that most blacks who seem to be community-minded tend to not be overly religious.
I'm not a fan of religion because I believe it to be a tool used on the masses for political reasons. Also, it has subjugated more blacks than it has liberated. Blacks tend to buy into religion more than others, which has done more harm than good. Others use religion as a political tool against blacks in many cases while blacks tend to pray harder thinking if they are more pious and more forgiving that their oppressors will see the light. Not the case.
Peace
You have black christians more concerned about Israel and jews than Africa and their black counterparts. Same with black muslims who are more concerned about the Middle East(western asia) and arabs than Africa and blacks. You really have blacks who are more emotionally affected by the conflict between Israel and Palestine than the fleecing of Africa.
If a person uses their religion as a means towards black liberation and self-sufficiency, then that is fine. The greatest example of this being Elijah Muhammad who took Islam and made it into a black reformation project that changed the lives and outlooks of many including some of the world's best black leaders such as Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan.
There are others who do this without much acclaim. Certain factions in Africa follow Islam but not its arabized tenets such as Mecca being the "holy land" and others. They are muslim but use Islam for their own African well-being and purpose. I can rock with that.
The same can be said for MLK and others who were christian to a lesser extent. And I say lesser because they did not necessarily create a black idealized christianity but moreso used their beliefs of justice and peace via their religion to make change.
But I will say that most blacks who seem to be community-minded tend to not be overly religious.
I'm not a fan of religion because I believe it to be a tool used on the masses for political reasons. Also, it has subjugated more blacks than it has liberated. Blacks tend to buy into religion more than others, which has done more harm than good. Others use religion as a political tool against blacks in many cases while blacks tend to pray harder thinking if they are more pious and more forgiving that their oppressors will see the light. Not the case.
Peace
It is. Religion isn't something you get to pick and choose when you want to submit to it. If you don't like that tenet, don't submit to it. Its all or nothing. I don't waver on that, nor will I.
Music isn't religion. Poor metaphor
Which is precisely why you don't need to believe in "the trinity" and whole other host of irrational shyt to be religious
I have a problem with the means as well as the ends.
Do you need to believe in superstition and unsubstantiated claims to do so?
Yes, especially if you aim to be mentally equipped to avoid being taken advantage of if you're gullibe
More bullshyt inflammatory nonsense
