Fish

10 mýtů a pravd o ateismu

10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism

By Sam Harris

December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.

Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.

Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was “not at all to be tolerated” because, he said, “promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist.”

That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims “never to doubt” the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.

Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.

On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.

2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

3) Atheism is dogmatic.

Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity’s needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn’t have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the “beginning” or “creation” of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.

The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, “The God Delusion,” this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don’t know precisely how the Earth’s early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase “natural selection” by analogy to the “artificial selection” performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.

5) Atheism has no connection to science.

Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.

6) Atheists are arrogant.

When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.

7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.

8 ) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.

Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature’s laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.

From the atheist point of view, the world’s religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn’t have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.

9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.

Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as “wishful thinking” and “self-deception.” There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.

In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?

10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.

If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.

We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

převzato z: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1/

Ateistický výkřik 03.5

lexikologie 4./5.11.08

占座位

我是去年九月来这里学习的，以前曾在另一个学校过一年汉语。刚来中国时我只是想看看，玩玩儿，没想好好学，对自己没有要求，常常不上课，跟朋友一起到外边去逛。来到这个学校以后才发现过去的一年真是白过了，学到的东西太小了，汉语水平一点儿也没有提高。而且，我从来没去过学校的图书馆。

这一天，因为要准备考试，宿舍楼里不太安静，不能学习，我只好去图书馆复习。到了阅览室一看，一个空座位也没有了，所有的座位都已经有人了。这时一个中国同学让我坐他的位子，我觉得很不好意思。他还告诉我，要是想在这儿看书就应该早点而来。

第二天上午我没有课，所以吃了早饭又到图书馆去了。心想这次一定能找到一个好座位，没想到进去以后，还是没有空座位，因为中国同学去得比我早得多。

第三天，我一吃完早饭，就急急忙忙向图书馆跑去，远远看到一群人站在图书馆门口等着开门。心想: „天啊！这么早就来了这么多人。“

大门一开，人们就都往里挤，我也随着人流挤了进去，还好，这次我得到了一个座位。坐在座位上，我想了好久，中国同学的学习热情怎么这么高。他们为什么这么努力呢？

后来我让认识了一个中国同学。看到她星期天也不休息，就问她为什么这么努力。她看了我一眼，觉得我问的问题很奇怪，不过她还是回答了我的问题，而且很认真。她说：“在中国上大学很不容易，很多同学因为考试成绩少一分就不能进大学的门，所以，我们大学生总是看感到身上有重的责任。要说为什么，我可以告诉你，一是为了我们国家的富强，而是为了我自己得来。“

我明白了。我想我应该向他们学习。从此以后，我差不多每天都来图书馆和中国同学一起学习，在拥挤的人群中，我学会了珍惜时间，也学会了很多书本上没有的东西。

ke stažení ve formátu .doc

upozornění: mělo by být ok.

Měsíc asijské kultury

Konfuciova akademie a Česko-čínská společnost

Vás zve na 9. ročník Měsíce asijské kultury na téma

„Požitky a prožitky z Číny“

Čínské pohádky

Galerie Mona Lisa
Olomouc

si Vás dovoluje pozvat na prezentaci knihy

Lucie Olivová – Čínské pohádky

a ilustrací k ní od Jana Chaloupky

v kavárně Mona Lisa
ve středu 15.10.2008 v 17hodin

(zdroj: konfucius.upol.cz)

Přednášky o čínském umění

Galerie Rudolfinum, Praha.

16. 10. 2008 Jiří Straka: Současná čínská malba

6. 11. 2008 Ladislav Kesner: Současné čínské experimentální umění

více: http://artalkweb.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/prednasky-o-cinskem-umeni/

text lexikologie na 14./15.10.08

雪后爬长城

上星期，我的女朋友电话说要来看我，可是我等了一个星期她也没来。为她准备好的鲜花都干了。我想她可能有事来不了了，没想到，昨天她突然来了。

星期六夜里，下了一场大雪，第二天早上起床一看，外边的雪景很姜。这时我突然想带女朋友去长城看雪景。我给她去了个电话，问她愿意不愿意去长城。她说她也正要给我打电话问我想不想去呢。

太阳出来了，是个好天气。我们吃了早饭就出发了。

我们坐了一个小时的车就到长成了。今天长城上没有人，很静。几个工作人员看着我们都笑了，我不知道他们为什么笑。大概他们觉得下这么大的雪还来爬长城很奇怪吧。买了票我们就往上爬，因为有雪，爬不上去。我们刚爬上去几步又滑下来，滑下来再爬上去，很有意思。长城上边只有我和女朋友。爬了快一个小时了，我女朋友累得有点儿爬不动了。我要拉她，她不让。她说“不到长城非好汉”，一定要自己爬上去。我们爬了差不多两个小时，才爬到了长城最高的地方。站在上边往下看，眼前是一片白色的世界，真美啊！我们在长成上照了很多相，还在长城上边堆了一个大雪人。

下来的时候，我们一会儿扶着墙走，一会儿坐在地上往下滑，很有意思。

回来以后，虽然很累，但是我们今天玩得非常快乐。

你要是去长城，最好也在下雪的时候去。

ke stažení ve formátu .doc (lexikologie21)

upozornění: checked (mělo by souhlasit s originálem )

text lexikologie na 7./8.10.08

我的理想就是当翻译

小时候，母亲就对我说： “希望你将来当个翻译, 成为和世界各国人民友好交往的桥粱。”但是，我那时还小,还不知道当什么翻译。

中学毕业以后，要考什么大学，要学习什么，我自已也不知道。一次我和朋友去中国大使馆看了一个电影，这个电影是介绍中国文化的。看了以后，我就想来中国看看。那时我想，就考外语大学学习中文吧。妈妈知道了我的想法，也很同意，就这样我考到了外语大学中文系。

大学二年级暑假，我第一次来到中国，学习了一个月。学习完以后，我又到中国一些有名的地方去旅行了半个月。这时我才知道，我对中国的了解太少了。

因为汉语说得不太好，旅行中遇到了很多困难。但是，每次遇到困难的时候，都会得到中国人的帮助。一次，在火车上，我正在看地图，因为要去的地方是南京，我对南京一点儿也不了解。火车到南京的时间又是晚上，怎么去找旅馆，怎么买回上海的火车票，我都不知道。心里有点儿着急。

坐在我对面的一个姑娘，好像知道我在想什么，就用英语问我是不是留学生，要不她帮助。没想到，她的英语说得那么好。我就用英语对她说了我遇到的麻烦。她说：“没关系，我也是在南京下车，下车以后，你就跟我走吧。“

就这样我们开始了交谈。她是南京大学的学生。她说：“要是你愿意，我可以和你一起到南京的风景区去看看。“我说：“要是这样当然好，不过这会给你带来很多麻烦的。“她说：“现在是暑假，我正好有时间，我们还可以互相学习，你练汉语，我也练练英语。”

就这样，我认识了第一个中国朋友。

在南京玩了三天，在这三天里，她成了我的导游，带我去了南京有名的地方，又帮我买了回上海的火车票。分别的时候，我们约定以后还要再见面。离开中国的时候我就想，我一定还要来中国学习。我一定要学好汉语，当一个汉语翻译。

zde ke stažení ve formátu .doc (lexikologie1final)

upozornění: text by měl více či méně souhlasit s originálem (asi na 98% )

Ateistický výkřik do tmy #03

TACHYONY

Revoluční léčebná metoda nebo podvod?

Jan Houserek

Září 2008

1. Úvodem

Na následujících stránkách bych se chtěl krátce zabývat tachyony, pro mě ne příliš známou alternativní léčebnou metodou, se kterou sem se nedávno setkal při své neformální návštěvě Slovenské republiky.