Can you understand that can work the opposite way sometimes?
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What would happen?
- Thread starter Spirit of Light
- Start date
Can you understand that can work the opposite way sometimes?
Jim
Nets of Wonder
I don’t think that anything you’ve been complaining about, here and in other threads, has anything to do with atheists or atheism.
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Jim
Nets of Wonder
Some time in the last few months I noticed someone else starting threads stigmatizing atheists, and I don’t remember that happening before.
Who's forcing atheism on people? Well maybe some communist nations like China.
State atheism - Wikipedia
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
They're called missionaries. Typically singing, Onward Christian Soldiers. ;0)
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I wouldn't exactly call it Atheism. It's more like a forced form of centralized nationalism.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Not sure how you could eradicate atheism since it's only the default status that everyone starts out with. Even you were an atheist at the start before someone came along and introduced you to theism.
Anyways no need to put the wagons in a circle. There is a nice cozy cathedral called the DIR. ;0)
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Oh by the way there's a sale today on rancid tomatoes to pelt each other with. I hear it's next to the stocks.
I took the liberty of filming the last round of debates here to show the need for a continuation of pelting with tomatoes will be on the uptick as well as the popularity of pelting and being pelted with rancid tomatoes.
Please note, not for the faint of heart with horrific scenes of tomato'y carnage and gore .....
The irony, of course, is that these state-imposed nationalistic ideologies are much closer to mainstream religion than they are to the secular humanism and freethought that are common among western self-declared atheists.
I suppose you need some means of controlling the masses. Can't just leave the people to run amok.
Once the religions butt out of our lives, I doubt that secular humanists will even think about religion. And that won't happen waiting on the Christians and Muslims to be good neighbors.
Regarding warring, you started a thread complaining about atheists. This is your war.
The war against atheists and atheism has been going on in the Abrahamic religions for millennia. The Christian Bible depicts unbelievers as lying, corrupt, vile, abominable, wicked, godless vessels in the service of darkness and evil, not one of which does any good, and fit to be burned alive forever as the moral equivalent of murderers and whoremongers, and the declared enemy of a good god? Refer to Psalm 14:1, Revelation 21:8, 2 Corinthians 6:14, 1 John 2:22, 1 Timothy 5:8 and Luke 11:23.
And the consequences of being depicted as the immoral enemy of a good god has been costly for unbelievers. Once, they were executed for heresy. When this was outlawed in the West, atheist were still forbidden to adopt, teach, coach, serve on juries, etc.. Today, an openly atheistic political candidate is at a huge disadvantage as he is seen by many as morally unfit.
So we have a legitimate complaint against at least that one religion.
What you are experiencing now is the answer from us now that we have a platform. As I said, when the dominant religions become good neighbors, which will only happen by their diminution and loss of cultural hegemony. They are like kudzu, and have to be restrained.
Druidism is a nice polite religion, but only because being so small and uninfluential it has to be. What does Brigid think about same sex marriage and abortion? Yeah, me neither. If only Jesus could be that polite.
Many of us don't. We actively oppose powerful, organized religion. I saw specials yesterday on Osama bin Laden and the Church of Scientology. How nice if the world were rid of such abominations.
Ridicule is often appropriate, although I haven't seen you mocked. You routinely describe impersonal comments contradicting your opinions as attacks and mockery.
Ridicule is the great equalizer against the harsh, angry, judgment coming from the pulpit. It is much kinder. It doesn't ask you to hurt its target like the hateful angry scapegoating by the church, just to laugh at it.
We can offer reasoned arguments to those that care about such things, and appeal to the consciences of those that have them, but ridicule is useful against the absurd and destructive proclamations of religion from those not amenable to either.
- "Religions' entire authority and real-world power are undergirded by their abilities to command reverence and deference and create the illusion that they are sacred, sacrosanct, and immune from fundamental criticism or ridicule." - Dan Fincke
- “The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!” - Brian Cox
- "No idea should be above ridicule. Ridicule is a very important tool. And why should religion not be subject to ridicule? If politics, if science, if sex, if everything is subject to ridicule, as a way of illuminating reality, why shouldn't religion?" - Prof. Lawrence Krauss
- "If religion contained any truth, it could be ridiculed, insulted, even defiled, without being diminished in any way. Its truth would shine through: undimmed, unblemished, shaming those who abused it into silence. I give your religion as much respect as your religion gives me. There's nothing complicated about it, and I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being, which your religion does with self righteous gusto. When it comes to insults your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut so would I. But given that it doesn't, and given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world. I'd say that not only do I have a right, but a duty to insult it, as does every rationale thinking person on this planet."" - Pat Condell
- "I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion. I think it should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt, and I claim that right". - Christopher Hitchens
- "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." -Thomas Jefferson
We don't expect to be left alone until we compel it. Until then, we will engage the church.
If you don't want your ideas criticized, don't share them in a discussion forum.
I think you like it. You invite it. You start threads like this one criticizing atheists knowing that you will receive the kind of responses that you have here, none of which attack or mock you, so that you can play victim as you have yet again. There is no merit to your complaint about your treatment on RF.
I don't consider Christian morals adequate. There are many items on that list that are immoral in my estimation, and it is missing many moral values that I esteem.
And regarding the religious values I approve of, the religion frequently only gives lip service to them and then violates them. The Christian church will have to learn the Golden Rule from the secular humanist example, as it has with slavery in the past, but not yet with same sex marriage and LGBTQ rights.
Moral progress will not come from any holy book. They are all stagnant. It comes from the rational ethics of secular humanism, without which the Christian church would still be hanging witches and calling for inquisitions.
The only reason that that has stopped is the rise of secular humanism in the West to criminalize such activity and create the modern, liberal, democratic state with church-state separation and a guaranteed freedom from religion. The Islamic nations have not had the benefit of this influence, and still behave like the Christians did the the Middle Ages, throwing acid in one another's faces, burning people alive in cages, cutting off hands.
I say religious people should keep their religions to themselves and let irreligious people live outside of religious law. As I said, do that and you'll probably never hear from us again, as we would have no reason to give religion a second thought.
So do you think that a naive idea like that shouldn't be disagreed with, or that any such disagreement constitutes an attack or mockery?
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To be fair, not all religious or spiritual people are ''peace makers.'' Many try to infiltrate the government with their views, so many atheists might feel that they are simply defending against religion taking over. There are also mean spirited atheists who too, are very vocal and hurtful. I don't see any ''saints'' on either side, and I wouldn't want religious freedom or the freedom to choose, to ever be taken away from anyone. Atheists have the right to believe as they wish, that's what makes the world go 'round.
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
Yes i do understand that
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
I remember once I only tried to explain to you that a view of the universe as being comprised of 4 "major elements" (i.e. Earth, Air/Wind, Water and Fire) was sort of misleading/incorrect/baseless - since there are certainly things within the universe that we have come to know switch between various phases of matter to appear as liquid (water), or gas (air), or, in the case of the sun, which I explicitly brought up, may appear as "fire" even when it is mostly composed of things that would be found to be a gas (air) under less volatile conditions.
The reason I am bringing this up is to simply ask whether you would take the above comment and attempt at knowledge-share and a change of perspective to be an "attack" by me?
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
No
I am finished discussing that topic now
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
To be sure... I wasn't bringing it up to re-engage that topic, only to provide context to something. My main point was to try and seek out your threshold for what gets determined an "attack" by you.No
I can tell you that my threshold for what I consider an actual "attack" is extremely high. In fact, I am not sure I would ever classify words short of a threat of physical violence against mine or another's person as an "attack."
wandering peacefully
Which way to the woods?
Too funny. It's an Internet forum. No one can "attack" you. If you are talking about in real life, I don't know how any atheist would know your personal god beliefs unless you told them. Which is no one's business except your own. If you don't like having your ideas "challenged" on an Internet debate forum, don't tell anyone what you believe. It's a simple fix. Or stay in the DIRs like others suggest. No one in general cares what you personally believe as long as you don't expect others to believe the same things you do.
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
Amanaki, they're words. Try to maintain perspective.