I’m sorry to come off strong and all but as my school we have believers that follow this. I dont mind in what you believe in for all seriousness BUT the pictures, some are a mockery that you are apperntly trying to put on catholics,jews,lutherians,e.t.c. We dont blast on your religion DONT BLAST ON MINE OR OTHERS! You guys want to be taking serious? well then do it proffessional..
-chris
Hey man we certainly dont get crazy about others believing what they believe, so why should you?
Hi Everyone,
I’ve got chapter 13 and half of chapter 14 up in my book ‘the moral atheist’ i try to argue, defensively, that being moral and being an atheist are compatible notions. I think I have some things to say here. I’ve taught philosophy for 32 years and with the tools of philosophy I have tried to sort out the important issues for myself. I think there some things of general interest here. I speak to you because last February, you people and our conversations were what inspired me to expand on my idea that an atheist or even a Pastafarian can still be a good person and I have reason to believe you guys could be interested and more than that, be critical enough to give me some help, which i probably need.
Some here have been encouraging, especially Eric. I think it’s an important notion and if you would like to see my progress so far go to http://homepage.mac.com/billtomlinson/TMA The TMA stands for ‘The Moral Atheist’ the title of my book. Some think it is a bad title for the audience it is aimed at, those trying to change from thesis to atheist or pastafarian, but I have a hard time dumping it because it seems to me to be a grabber title.
Thanks to Eric and others for your support. If you would like to send comments to me, send to
billtomlinson@mac.com
P.S. I update this doc almost every day. Check in if you find it interesting
billtomlinson@mac.com
@ bill tomlinson - just started reading it, as I’ve got a bit of a quiet lunchbreak today. I don’t want to comment on each little bit as I go because I’d rather consider the document as a whole, but what I’ve read so far seems nicely thought-provoking. Well done on the concept and on actually managing to get it written out. However, returning to the editing/formatting comments made above, I did just notice one awkward phrase in paragraph 12 of chapter 1 - “If the followers can keep from considering the uncertainty of his choice” - either follower/his or followers/their would be better. It may also be worth in these early stages numbering paragraphs to enable you to easily identify issues raised, although this would be best removed by publication stage to make it sit better on a page. Please excuse my jumping in with these points as a first response - both very minor and don’t impact on the overall document - but you did appear to be soliciting comments variously from the assorted throng on editing matters as well as content.
Just to add further editorial comments - in chapter 3, in your section on major ethical theories, part 1 of your own theory would be more consistent if you used considerately, rather than considerate. More generally in Chapter 3, personally I’d like to see further expansion on the 3 main theories you’ve identified. There’s enough there to provide a steer for someone to follow up in further reading, but you cannot assume that all of your readers have a familiarity with philosophical principles and ethical systems. At the moment you’ve given enough detail to form a jumping off point for future, but I’m not necessarily sure there’s enough in the text for someone new to the arguments to follow your own case at the time of reading it, without trying to look up stuff as they go. If you’re envisaging e-publication, or maintaining it online long term, now might be the time to consider hyperlinks if you would prefer to keep your own comments brief.
.
And I think the our/are reference that someone else picked up on above but you then couldn’t locate at the time could be in paragraph 19 of chapter 4, where you have writen “relecting on are weaknesses”. Again, small point, but worth correcting when you have time. Hate to have it look like I’m only bringing up negatives, because I’m enjoying what I’ve read so far but I had a job a few years back where I was doing some pretty detailed proof-reading/editing and it trained me up to notice this kind of thing. For what it’s worth, 3 really minor points in 5 chapters is actually a pretty low rate and this cetrainly isn’t meant to be critical.
Hey Jennyanydots,
Thanks for the comments. This is great. I’ll go back and change that stuff now. In terms of publishing, I think would like to go the regular route first. It would be nice if this could reach a wider audience. The online thing now is just because I wanted to get some feedback and use the fact that people might be reading it now as a motivator for me to continue at a good pace.
I’ll see if I can find an easy way to number my paragraphs. As I sincerely suggested I don’t mind criticism. I don’t think my sentences are as well constructed as they could be, so I welcome that. I wouldn’t welcome a criticism that suggested everything was all wrong. Not because I can’t believe it, but because it would drain my energies right now and I need to get down the first draft. If some part of it seems wrong, I would like to hear about that. Thanks again. Back to work. I should have chapter 14 up by 4 PM eastern US time today 1/10/2008
I’ve taken Eric’s criticism and tried to minimize the use of ‘I’ and ‘me’, except when there is no other way to say it. I’ve started to sometimes use “us” and “we” referring to me and the reader. It seems to capture the right mood. Sometimes upon rereading I’ve found it reads like the ‘royal’ “we” and I definitely don’t want that. Too pompous. So if you see any of those, please let me know. But another thing: try not to “work” on it in a way that feels like work. But if anything jumps out at you, I’d definitely like to hear about it.
cya later and thanks
The Moral Atheist:Http://homepage.mac.com/billtomlinson/TMA
billtomlinson@mac.com
P.S.
I’m not that happy with use ‘he’ all the time to refer to the general person, but ‘he or she’ seems bulky and ‘they’ seems to not in agreement with subject, as in the statement ‘If a person is good, then they will go to heaven’. I’ve see some books that alternate between ‘he’ and ’she’ and for me that seems distracting. It’s as if I’m scanning the work to find the next occurrence of ‘he’ or ’she’ to see if the patter stays.
Anyway, any thoughts?
Oops,
Please excuse all the words left out. I guess I am too impatient to check for my mistakes.
:-)
hey Chris… don’t worry, I’ll be taking serious, and I promise to do it professional !……. muh ha hahahahaahaha HA HAHA HAAAH! Go back to your rad school and learn some grammar !
Glad to be of help, Bill. I’m certainly not treating it as work - it’s much more enjoyable to read than the documents I was paid to do a few years back! A friend of mine is just completing the first draft of a novel and I’m probably going to provide the same level of detail to him too pretty soon, once he’s passed me a copy, so it’s good to get back into practice on something that isn’t 90,000 words first!
OK, just finished reading chapter 6, and picked up a few more errors, all of the easily-done-when-typing-but-not-recognised-by-spell-checkers-as-wrong type. Again, not major issues, and believe me, I’m as guilty as anyone of doing this but it’s always harder to spot them in your own work. Not major issues, but can detract from ease of reading if left in.
.
In paragraph 2 - “They terms seem to form”
Paragraph 6 of the section headed ‘Experience is the foundation of value’ - “These seems to me”.
In the section on ‘Acting kindly and being kind’ - “The intended consequent results in an action” - perhaps either consequence or of an action, depending on which was you meant that to be understood.
And a couple of points for the section on ‘Judging the kindness of others: In paragraph 1 you’ve got “maybe the best advise” - should be advice - and “in this way be can become better people”. Paragraph 3, I think the word “though” has escaped to before “emphasis”, rather than after (currently reads “this should not get too great an though emphasis”). In paragraph 4 you’ve got another our/are (”we our the primary caretaker”). Finally, paragraph 5 “is the ultimate goal and kindness and caring” doesn’t seem quite right - either something needs to complete the sentence, or it’s the goal towards, or of, or for, or something. In this para, you also need to switch insure to ensure in both instances.
.
On stylistic grounds it might be worth excising the word ‘kind’ in its meaning of sort or type from your vocabulary for the duration of writing this - I did pick up on “another kind of knowledge needed to be kind” in the section titled ‘Knowledge and the wise person’ which could get a bit clunky if repeated too often.
.
Having got the minor negatives out of the way, I’m certainly not saying the whole thing is completely wrong. I’m really enjoying reading it, and finding it very helpful as a way of clarifying some of the ideas and thoughts I’ve half stumbled through in my own mind over the years without articulating. It’s good to get the opportunity to read something thought-provoking like this at an early stage and see how the ideas evolve in the writing.
@Jennyanydots
Thanks again. I actually found that problem with ‘kind’ a few times but was not being all the time. I’ve got to fix that, you are right.
Thanks for the other remarks also. I’m going to go back in fill out the standard theories a bit after I finish. I’m thinking four more days until the first draft is complete. It shouldn’t be too hard to clean it up, I hope. In the later chapters you can expect to find a greater percentage of problems, I think. I wanted to get the ideas down as fast as I could.
By the way, my earlier remark about leaving words out is about a post I made that somehow is still waiting to be moderated. If it gets posted, you’ll know what that was about. This moderation makes things a little weird. I guess Aristotle was wrong when he said ‘everything in moderation’ :-)
Chapter 15 is up and there are 4 chapters projected after that.
Thanks again. This is really helpful.
@Jennyanydots
You may wish to download the latest, to keep from going crazy with the ‘kind’s. they’ve been replaced
@Jennyanydots
P.S. You may not want to read anything past chapter 11 until I go through and clean it up. There seem to be a lot of bad sentences in a superficial scanning. I’ll try to fix some of it up tomorrow. cya
“We dont blast on your religion DONT BLAST ON MINE OR OTHERS!”
You might not, but I tend to get several hundreds of messages telling me to convert to Christianity or burn in hell a year.
Only getting short time breaks to read in anyway, so suspect you’ll have no difficulty going through the bits after chapter 11 that you wanted to play with before I get there. Notes below on the editorial stuff for chapter 7, and looking forward to the next bit tomorrow lunchtime.
.
‘Human Rights’, para 1– “The class of class of concepts”. Also, para 2 – the way it’s formulated could be read as meaning either that torture is such a flagrant lack of respect that it shouldn’t be used on animals, or that the right not to be tortured is not applicable to animals. I know which meaning I’m assuming you to have but it might be a good idea to rework this for optimum clarity.
.
‘How much knowledge is needed etc’ – para 1 – “as we did” might be a better construct than “like we did”. Para 4 – “that have been” rather than “that have be”.
.
‘Minimal levels of respect deserved’ – para 4 – too, rather than to in the sentence beginning “I’m not to embarrassed”. Para 7 – “Feeling, learning, reflecting, choosing life forms.” – I’d suggest this isn’t a full sentence capable of standing alone, and should perhaps be preceded by a colon and joined to the sentence before.
.
Hope these help. Best of luck with your last sections
Hey Jennyanydots
Are you still finding it interesting? Do there seem to be any boring chapters? Im going to start from 8 today to start cleaning. I don’t remember when I stopped rereading carefully.
That ‘class of class of concepts’ looks like some sort of replace for the word ‘kind’. I replace kind with ‘type’, ’sort’ and ‘class’ depending upon what looked best in the context.
Thanks Jenny. I hope to clean a lot today. I’m in L.A. Where are you? I was wondering what our time lag is.
P.S. Since you are probably proofing chapter 8 today, I’m starting on chapter 9. I’m sorry if 8 is real bad.
@ anyone who is interested.
9-11 are cleaned up as best as I could. I had some help with a program on my computer that speaks text. I could highlight a paragraph and have it read it out loud. It helped a lot to read it and hear it at the same time.
The Moral Atheist: http://homepage.mac.com/billtomlinson/TMA
billtomlinson@mac.com
cya
None of it is boring, and I’m very much enjoying reading it. Based in the UK, so of course we’ve got a double time lag whereby I post at a sensible time for me here, then it gets through moderation at a sensible time for the Prophet, then you pick it up at a sensible time for you, going through three separate time-zones in the process! Just read over chapter 8, and comments pasted below. Sorry this is quite a long post, and I hope it doesn’t look like nit-picking.
.
Para 1 – could be helpful to put in something here that clarifies what you mean by the term “null set”. I feel like this is a term that hasn’t come up before and whilst I can make assumptions for the purpose of reading it, I have no way of knowing if my understanding is correct. I’d also suggest that where you’ve written “Because he doesn’t believe in a God” this shouldn’t be capitalised – it’s essentially querying the overall existence of gods, rather than referring to laws passed by one particular deity, and it then brings your writing more into internal consistency (e.g. in Para 3, where you refer to ‘no god’ but God’s law’)
.
Para 2 – should be aN intellectual dilemma.
.
Para 3 – “buy”, rather than “by”.
.
Para 7 (NB – I have included your two principles as separate paragraphs here for ease of counting them) – much as I personally try to avoid capitalising this as a matter of principle, I suspect you might need to write “He (or She)” in order to make it absolutely clear in the sentence structure that you’re referring to ‘God’ rather than ‘the theist’, or rewrite it to avoid having 2 separate subjects of the sentence.
.
Para 8 – “on Friday” rather than “of Friday”.
.
Para 10 – possibly “computer which” rather than “who”.
.
Para 12 – can’t think of a quick fix on this one, but you might want to look more closely at “a human being being evil”.
.
Para 14 – perhaps “although it has in the past” might sit easier there to avoid repeating “but” twice in quick succession.
.
Para 17 – “faith does not rationally entail by which God is the correct one” – not sure about the word ‘by’.
.
Para 19 – “if”, rather than “it” in the phrase “for if he really needs this rule”.
.
Para 20 – atheists plural. Also, I’m assuming that the suggestion of anger management courses is made somewhat tongue-in-cheek, based on the rest of your style, but can foresee your good theist reader taking this as an internal justification for disregarding the reasons behind this indignation.
Summary, Para 1 – perhaps either “independent of God”, “not dependent on God”, or simply “God-independent” rather than “God independent”.
.
Para 2 – Is morality the object/our object, or is it objective? I’d also suggest perhaps show, rather than see.
By the way - just to give you an idea of times - unless the board time attached to my message is utterly random and changed noodly with each message posted, I’m 3 1/2 hours earlier than the site is (i.e. that says 4.30 and I make it 1. Future comments on next sections will be sent by me at a similar time of day.
The Church is funded entirely by your purchases of FSM merchandise. Thank you for your support.
An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. This means you're free to use the content but not sell it. More Details |
