from wikipedia

Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, in an essay entitled “The Discreet Charm of Nihilism”, argues that in order to escape from an eternal fate in which our sins are punished, man seeks to free himself from religion. “A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Charles Kingsley, Canon of the Church of England, wrote this four years after Marx[3]

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's hand book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order. [4]

Nihilism ( /ˈnaɪ.əlɪzəm/ or /ˈniː.əlɪzəm/; from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.[1] Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological, metaphysical, or ontological forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or that contrary to popular belief, some aspect of reality does not exist as such.

The term nihilism is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws.[2] Movements such as Futurism and deconstruction,[3] among others, have been identified by commentators as "nihilistic" at various times in various contexts.

Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch,[4] and some Christian theologians and figures of religious authority have asserted that postmodernity[5] and many aspects of modernity[3] represent a rejection of theism, and that such a rejection entails some form of nihilism.

From Michael Collett, ABC Unleashed...

...

For Dawkins, religious belief is to blame for terrorism.

"Even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes," he writes in The God Delusion.

"...Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.

"...The take home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism – as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion."

Dawkins also believes raising a child to believe in hell is mental abuse, and that science and religion are inexorably at war.

Hitchens prefers the moniker antitheist to atheist. His book God Is Not Great describes religion as "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children".

Harris, meanwhile, thinks religious belief is suggestive of mental illness and perpetuates "man's inhumanity to man"; "The very ideal of religious tolerance - born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God - is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss," he writes in The End of Faith.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-09/collett-no-religion-belongs-to-the-unspoken-for/2830850

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Then the author of this piece, an agnostic, goes off the rails by disputing what these fellows have expressed here. All this written in relation to the Australian Census box asking people which religion or "no religion" they are...

At this stage there has been a campaign by some religious/non religious outfits to stop people who "have lapsed" writing "no religion" in the box... They mention that the Muslim "brothers and sisters" have been waging a web campaign to fill the box to the max hoping that the non-religious census would push their religion as the main religion in this country because many other people living here might not have a religion...

I would suggest write "Santaclausian" in the box...

Got kids? Watched as they've been indoctrinated - sorry, I mean educated - about global warming over the last decade? Then you'll know what I mean. They come home from school moodily depressed about the future of our planet and, of course, what that means for their own lives. What's the point? We're all doomed! Why study? Why bother getting an education? It's futile. Sea levels are rising. Temperatures are soaring. Soon we'll all be living in a polluted hell-hole constantly battling the equivalent of the Queensland floods or the Victorian bushfires year upon year. And you want me to waste what precious time I have left studying accountancy?

It's called nihilism, and it's even more terrifying to witness in your teenage children than hickeys, drunkenness, truancy, insolence, idleness, bad marks or bullying. Nihilism, or the conviction that life on Earth is totally pointless, saps the young of their energy, their ambition, and their will to strive, struggle and triumph

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2843812.html

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Nihilism ( /ˈnaɪ.əlɪzəm/ or /ˈniː.əlɪzəm/; from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.[1] Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological, metaphysical, or ontological forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or that contrary to popular belief, some aspect of reality does not exist as such.

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It's not nihilism that we have to worry about. Nihilism is not "new"... But for more than 4000 years, the lies of religion has ruled people with various degree trying to mask the true identity of life and that of philosophical understanding that can underpin a relative human society. Nihilism opens to door to deconstructionism and reconstructionnism. That is to say at the end of the process, there is an opening for an acceptance of ethics that stem from our animalistic life in our stylistic created environment: We need to pay more attention to pain and contentment as shared as much as possible by our interactions with others.

As studied, adolescent minds are quite different from those of adults and younger kids... There is a sense of selfless uncaring about them, no matter what — religion or not... It's for the secular social system to present a relative ethical viewpoint based on animal life, a notch above away from the "law of the jungle"... The lies of religion cannot quelsh the stupidity and the angst. Thus, fortunately or unfortunately, we need to have a stricter means of control for young adult, not so much to stop them individually in their own inquisitive quests, but to prevent the fires of young mob mentality...

Global warming is a bigger worry that a rioting mob, though... We can control mobs much easier that we are willing to tacklle global warming. Global warming will last for more generations than the mobs... Rowan dean misses the point unless he's sarcastic about his own nihilism...

As Ron Williams heads back to the High Court today in his second challenge the Federal Government's school chaplaincy programme, Chrys Stevenson says it is more than about chaplains, but rather it concerns the integrity of our system of representative democracy and public accountability with regards to public spending.

IN APRIL 2011, Toowoomba father-of-six, Ron Williams, challenged the Federal Government’s constitutional right to fund the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP).

Williams won the case based on his key contention that funding for the program should not have been made without the support of a Bill and the specific assent of both houses of Parliament. Instead, in a method requiring far less parliamentary scrutiny, payments to parachurch chaplaincy providers (approaching $500 million dollars) were approved by successive governments as inclusions to the Education portfolio’s budget statements.

The June 2012 ruling threw into doubt the legality of hundreds of other, similarly funded, Federal programs.

Scrambling to ‘legalise’ a raft of payments falling due to chaplaincy providers at the end of the financial year, the Federal Government rushed through emergency legislation designed to circumvent the High Court’s decision in Williams vs the Commonwealth and Others.

Even as the legislation was passed, policy and Constitutional experts were highly sceptical that the Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Act No. 3 (2012) would stand up to a High Court Challenge. Williams, who already had standing on the matter, seemed the most appropriate person to put the new legislation to a Constitutional test. A writ was filed earlier this year and, this week, from 6-8 May, Williams will challenge the government’s ‘work around’ solution in the High Court.

Williams’ new case brings into question the legality of an Act designed to dodge, not only the High Court, but one of the most basic principles of representative democracy — financial accountability.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/ron-williams-high-court-challenge--its-not-just-about-chaplaincy,6444

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