[Raj_Copi_Jin]

I am not starved for want of food, but it is Janardana who deserves my reverence.
I have looked on God as one who sees everything, on bright and dark days, alike.
God is like a father with his child,
who both feels and gives pleasure at the same time.
Good acts and bad acts vanish.
Tuka says, "God's glory alone is left."

Sant Tukaram

[Paul Bunyan]

Just beyond us we see that purple luster - how glorious!
With His noble crown of peacock feathers stitched together.
As you look upon Him, fever and illusion vanish
Adore then the Prince of the Yadavas, the Lord of Yogis.
He who filled with passion the sixteen thousand royal damsels,
Fair Creatures, divine maidens.
He stands upon the river bank with the luster of one million moons.
It is fastened in jewels on His neck
And merges into the luster of His form.

This God who bears the wheel is the chief of the Yadavas.
Him the thirty three crores of demigods adore.
The demons tremble before Him.
His dark blue countenance destroys sin.
How fair are His feet with saffron stained!
How fortunate is the brick that is grasped by His feet!
The very thought of Him makes fire cool.
Therefore embrace Him with experience of your own.
The sages, as they see His face, contemplate Him in the spirit,
The Father of the World stands before them in bodily shape.
Tuka is frenzied after Him; His purple form ravages the mind

Sant Tukaram

[tgs]

Spinoza was one of the most influential European philosophers laying in the foundation for an epoch that followed him and came to be known as the Enlightenment.

He was not exactly an atheist, but he didn't believe in the notion that soul was immortal. For this sin he was excommunicated by the rabbis. He faced severe persecution for expressing views that went against the majority opinion so much so he went to the extent of publishing his writings under false names, or having the author page blank.

An interesting side note, Spinoza's system is supposed to be similar to that of Sankara's Advaitam sans the theism -- see the Wiki article for more.

Spinoza was a fierce critic of religion and superstition. Here is one small passage:
The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, we may readily understand how difficult it is, to maintain in the same course men prone to every form of credulity. For, as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty, which has not yet proved illusive.

[…]

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honour to risk their blood and their lives the vainglory of a tyrant;

[LottiFurmann]

Just to let those know, who are not familiar,

Spinoza also believed that a human being had no 'free will'. Everything in one's life is already pre-determined (not exactly Karma theory though). He also believed that intellect can not override emotion.

He is my most favorite of all Western Philosophers - his thoughts were really original and he led a very simple life, and on his death he was considered a Saint by all who knew him.

Regards,
KRS

[MannoFr]

David Hume is another towering freethinker of the era of Enlightenment. He rejected superstition, religion, theistic gods, but did not take a position on an impersonal god. Still he was accused of "atheism" and was denied a coveted Chair at University of Edinburgh because of it.

Here is a taste of Hume's forceful criticism of religious superstitions:
… It is certain, that, in every religion, however sublime the verbal definition which it gives of its divinity, many of the votaries, perhaps the greatest number, will still seek the divine favor, not by virtue and good morals, which alone can be acceptable to a perfect being, but either by frivolous observances, by intemperate zeal, by rapturous extasies, or by the belief of mysterious and absurd opinions. The least part of the Sadder (Jewish text), as well as of the Pentateuch (Bible – OT), consists in precepts of morality; and we may also be assured, that that part was always the least observed and regarded.

[...]

This observation, then, holds universally. But still one may be at some loss to account for it. It is not sufficient to observe, that the people, everywhere, degrade their deities into a similitude with themselves, and consider them merely as a species of human creatures, somewhat more potent and intelligent. This will not remove the difficulty. For there is no man so stupid, as that, judging by his natural reason, he would not esteem virtue and honesty the most valuable qualities, which any person could possess. Why not ascribe the same sentiment to his deity? Why not make all religion, or the chief part of it, to consist in these attainments?

Nor is it satisfactory to say, that the practice of morality is more difficult than that of superstition; and is therefore rejected. For, not to mention the excessive penances of the Brachmans (Brahmins) and Talapoinss (Buddists); it is certain, that the Rhamadan of the Turks, during which the poor wretches, for many days, often in the hottest months of the year, and in some of the hottest climates of the world, remain without eating or drinking from the rising to the setting sun; this Rhamadan, I say, must be more severe than the practice of any moral duty, even to the most vicious and depraved of mankind. The four Lents of the Muscovites, and the austerities of some Roman Catholics, appear more disagreeable than meekness and benevolence. In short, all virtue, when men are reconciled to it by ever so little practice, is agreeable: All superstition is forever odious and burthensome.

[Beerinkol]

Dear Prof. Sir,

So, Omar is diagonally opposite to our dear poet 'Kavi Chakravarthi KaNNadAsan'!!

[Ifroham4]

So, Omar is diagonally opposite to our dear poet 'Kavi Chakravarthi KaNNadAsan'!!

No, no, exactly the same, dear Kannadasan is Omar of the 20th century, haven't you heard the song ஒரு கோப்பையிலே என் குடியிருப்பு LOL

Cheers!

[Slonopotam845]

Kannadasan is the prodigal son who understood the greatness of sanatana dharma and returned to the roots and has penned several books 'arthamulla indumadam' and countless 'god is great' songs.

[Slonopotam845]

No, no, exactly the same, dear Kannadasan is Omar of the 20th century, haven't you heard the song ஒரு கோப்பையிலே என் குடியிருப்பு .........

O! S! I have heard that song quite often. What I mean to say is, from 'KOppaik kudiyan' he transferred to an

and wrote அர்த்தமுள்ள இந்து மதம்!

[softy54534]

Here is a song for Prof. Nara!

Krishna,

[Big A]

I wrote as Kavi Chakravarthi instead of Kavi Arasu because of his songs like 'PullAnkuzhal koduththa'!

[PhillipHer]

P.B. Shelly the much celebrated poet was also an ardent atheist. He lived in a time when espousing atheistic views came with severe cost -- he was expelled from Oxford for writing an essay called The Necessity of Atheism.

He was the first to forcefully advocate pacifism, nonviolence and civil disobedience, take a look at a few inspiring verses from his Masque of Anarchy to get a sense of his passion on this subject.

He was also into vegetarianism.

I will give a very small section from his A Refutaton of Deism in which he refutes the argument that there must be a creator god because every effect must have a cause by pointing to the problem of infinite regress.
Thus have we arrived at the substance of your assertion, "That whatever exists, producing certain effects, stands in need of a Creator, and the more conspicuous is its fitness for the production of these effects, the more certain will be our conclusion that it would not have existed from eternity, but must have derived its origin from an intelligent agent."

In what respect then do these arguments apply to the Universe, and not apply to God? From the fitness of the Universe, to produce certain effects, be thus conspicuous and evident, how much more exquisite fitness to his end must exist in the Author of the Universe? If we find great difficulty from its admirable arrangement, in conceiving that Universe has existed from all eternity, and to resolve this difficulty suppose a Creator, how much more clearly must we perceive the necessity of this very Creator's creation whose perfections comprehend an arrangement far more accurate and just.

[doctorzlo]

I am returning to David Hume to present a kind of longish excerpt of his methodical evisceration of miracles and the testimony upon which they are based. Even though Hume may have targetted Christian miracles like virgin birth and resurrection, his critic is general enough to be applied to any religion including Brahminism/Hinduism. Further, his meticulous analysis of the extent to which testimony may serve as source of true knowledge goes to the heart of the article of fundemental faith of Brahminism that Shruti is a valid source of true knowledge.

Hume's painstakingly methodical argument runs to pages, all I am doing here is cite some compelling snippets.

Let us start with this, Hume says, "Miracle is a violation of the laws of nature... It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden... But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life...."

Then, Hume presents four reasons why we should reject these miracles; in the course of the argument he tackles the believability of testimonies that assert these miracles.

[1]"First, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time, attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable: All which circumstances are requisite to give us full assurance in the testimony of men."

[2]
The second reason Hume makes is the general credulity of people -- the higher the improbability, the more ready people are to believe -- the proliferation of magic making god-men and the ease with which people swear eternal allegiance to them attests to this reality.
"With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travelers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority. A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality. He may know his narrative to be false, and yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting a holy cause...... His auditors may not have, and commonly have not, sufficient judgment to canvas his evidence: What judgment they have, they renounce by principle, in these sublime and mysterious subjects: Or if they were so willing to employ it, passion and a heated imagination disturb the regularity of its operations. Their credulity increases his impudence: And his impudence overpowers their credulity."


[3]
The third point Hume argues is the separation of these miraculous events from the present both in terms of distance and time, that make them unbelievable. If well educated and otherwise rational people in this day and age fall for "miracles" performed by godmen, is it any wonder these magical miracles claimed to have occurred in distant lands in the remote past would be believed even if they were nothing more than lies? Hume wonders, "It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon perusal of these wonderful historians, that such a prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages."
"The advantages are so great, of starting an imposture among an ignorant people, that, even though the delusion should be too gross to impose on the generality of them (which, though seldom, is sometimes the case) it has a much better chance for succeeding in remote countries, than if the first scene had been laid in a city renowned for arts and knowledge. The most ignorant barbarous of these barbarians carry the report abroad. None of their countrymen have a large correspondance, or sufficient credit and authority to contradict and beat down the delusion. Men's inclination to the marvelous has full opportunity to display itself. And thus a story, which is universally exploded in the place where it first started, shall pass for certain a thousand miles distance."

[4]
The fourth point Hume makes is the history of opposing testimonies that have destroyed the previously believed miracles and replaced them with new ones. The miracles of the Athenian gods were negated and replaced by the Roman ones, the Roman ones by the Christians, the Christian ones by Muslims and so on. This is so among Brahminism/Hindusim also, first it was Agni, then Varuna, then Indra, then Vishnu, Shiva, etc., etc.
"Every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is attributed; so has it the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of these miracles, on which that system was established; so that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidence of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other..... but is not in reality different from the reasoning of a judge, who supposes, that the credit of two witnesses, maintaining a crime against one, is destroyed by the testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been two hundred leagues distant, as the same instant when the crime is said to have been committed."

[tgs]

There is no attribute of God which is not either borrowed from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is not a negation. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Infinity, Immutability, Incomprehensibility, and Immateriality, are all words that designate properties and powers peculiar to organized beings, with the addition of negations, by which the idea of limitation is excluded.

That the frequency of a belief in God (for it is not Universal) should be any argument in its favor, none to whom the innumerable mistakes of men are familiar, will assert. It is among men of genius and science that Atheism alone is found, but among these alone is cherished an hostility to those errors, with which the illiterate and vulgar are infected.

[NeroASERCH]

namaste Nara.

The personality and thinking of a many-faceted celebrity are best understood from the interpretations of scholars who can read his works in original rather than in translation. According to this Wiki article, there are some Islamic scholars who give evidences from his writings about the other side of OK's personality--which is that of a Sufi philosopher.
Omar Khayyám - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If OK sounds like an agnostic hedonist in the quotes you have picked up, does he not sound like a fatalist in this famous quote of his?

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

In these other quotes too, OK does not sound like just a hedonist?

A hair divides what is false and true.

The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.

There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see:

Whether or not God is fallacy, fallacy does seem to prevail in OK's poems!

[Big A]

namaste Nara.

PB Shelley also wrote these famous lines of his, which can be interpreted as Advaita:

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
--Adonais (1821)

It seems that Shelley was an atheist in his early days (as seen in his works The Necessity of Atheism (1811) and A Refutation of Deism (1814)) and did deny theology but later matured into a pantheist.
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Wikiquote

Some quotes from PB Shelley's later writings:

Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.

Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle —
Why not I with thine?
--Love's Philosophy, st. 1 (1819)

From his Ode to the West Wind (1819):

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Perhaps we are yet to see a poet who is out and out an atheist, like our friend Yamaka here!

[Raj_Copi_Jin]

... does he not sound like a fatalist in this famous quote of his?

Whether or not God is fallacy, fallacy does seem to prevail in OK's poems!

Dear Saidevo, I did not present Omar Khayyam as an atheist, only that he rejected the established religion, one that imposes rules, like Islam, Christianity, and yes Brahminism/Hinduism. He did have Sufi influence, but that did not prevent him from looking further, doubting, something all of us can do with some benefit.

PB Shelley also wrote these famous lines of his, which can be interpreted as Advaita:

Shelley lived all of 30 years. So, "later in life" is not like after he got older and wiser, not that those two things go together. He wrote Refutation of Deism a mere 8 years before his death. This title is somewhat misleading, his arguments were against an intelligent agent/designer, a position very similar to what most atheists of the present time, like myself, Denette, Dawkins and others take, it is nuanced Atheistic/Agnostic.

BTW, Shelley's poems glorifying nature can be seen as pantheism, but it is not to be confused with any form of theism, it is just as far removed from theism as any other non-theistic world view.

All said and done, have an open mind, read and enjoy their arguments, let them sink in, and if you are not persuaded it would at least be not for want of trying.

Cheers!

[Fegasderty]

God denied none and neither He privileged a few,
We the insects of existence created the wounds of desire,
There is actually no secret,only Truth called in various hues,
Alas! We know not and move from pyre to pyre.

True! The 'Godless' made the world what it is like now and then go on to blame 'God' for it all.

[softy54534]

True! The 'Godless' made the world what it is like now and then go on to blame 'God' for it all.

Dear MSV, pardon me, but this statement makes no sense at all, do you really think the "Godless" as you put it, made the world what it is now? The "Godly" did not have any role at all? If you want to credit the Godless with making the world what it is like now, then, are you not implictely admitting the God in whom the Godly believe did not make this world like it is now?

The second part of your statement is even more self-contradictory, why would the "Godless" blame God, the entity whose existence they deny? For us this is not a blame game, there is no blame to go around in the first place. It is what it is, the world we have now is what we all made it out to be. Ours is only a sincere attempt to understand reality in as rational a way as humanly possible.

Perhaps you are frustrated with all this "no God" talk and want to express it. If so, I understand, go ahead and unburden.

Cheers!

[S.T.D.]

Many of the thinkers I quote here lived in a period when expressing unvarnished rational thinking was hazardous. Many wrote under pseudonyms or no name at all. As I pointed out, Spinoza was excommunicated; Hume was charged with heresy and was denied a Chair of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh; Shelley was thrown out of Oxford.

So, in this environment, it is not surprising that some of the arguments against theism were made in a way that is less forthright and with a little bit of hedging.

John Stuart Mill speaks of this atmosphere of hostility towards rational thought during the time of his father.
".... I think that few men of my father's intellect and public spirit, holding with such intensity of moral conviction as he did, unpopular opinions on religion, or on any other great subjects of thought, would now either practise or inculcate the withholding of them from the world, unless in the cases, becoming fewer every day, in which frankness on these subjects would either risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would amount to exclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiary suitable to the capacity of the individual."


He then goes on to urge his fellow rationalists to stand up and speak the truth.
"On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come, when it is the duty of all who being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known; at least, if they are among those whose station, or reputation, gives their opinion a chance of being attended to. Such an avowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very importantly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of mind or heart."


I don't presume to meet Mill's standard for knowledge, station and reputation, but I will at least continue to do what Mill wants those drawn to reason to do, speak out.

Cheers!