There’s also this Pew study, where atheists and agnostics scored higher than any religious group on a test of general religious knowledge.
Well, just this evening reading comments to an article referenced on Fark (www.fark.com) about a man who died doing a stunt at an airshow. The article had some comments from some of the spectators who witnessed the fall. One lady was there with her two young sons and made the comment that they prayed after watching the man fall to his death. So, I read the comments section on Fark about this article, and there it is. The exact example of what I was talking about in my OP. Here is the comment:
“There were lots of tears,” Bradley told the newspaper. “We sat and prayed together.”
**Todd Green is still dead, you stupid coont.
/prayer: never accomplishing anything, for… what, 6000 years?**
Was the comment made concerning this ladies statement even neccassary? Why would it bother this poster so much that this woman prayed after seeing someone fall to thier death? This is typical of the behavior that I see concerning Atheist all the time. Hate filled and intense? Why? I just don’t get it.
Yeah, you never see any stupid shit from religious people in internet comment sections.
My apologies, I should have said some of the posters here. Obviously you aren’t one of them.
I guess you missed some of my previous post in this thread where I admitted that there are people on the religious side that I am sure voice their views when uncalled for. However, I will stand by my assertion that the innappropriate comments directed at others is overwhelmingly done against those with a belief in God by Atheiest. This has been my observation and I am just curious as to why it is.
Are you in some way justifying the example that I just put up? Can you really give me a good reason for this person (who I can assume from the comment is an Atheist) felt the need to call this woman a stupid coont, even though her gesture at prayer was not in anyway directed at him, nor was he involved in the events that took place? The story was about a man dying in an accident and a resonable response to having just watched a man plummet to his death is to offer a prayer for him. Why the hate? What is the problem?
Not to mention that this person gave no cite to prove that prayer had never acomplished anything? I am sure there are plenty of people living today that will swear that prayer acomplished a lot. Why would someone have a problem with this as well? You don’t have to believe in prayer or believe that it ever has done a single thing, but why would anyone feel the need to trash someone that does? Sounds like an anger issue to me.
And they outnumber atheists by about a thousand to one.
Incidentally, how about a cite for prayer ever accomplishing anything. The efficacy of prayer is not something that has to be disproven, anymore than the efficacy of raindancing has to be disproven (and both of those things are basically exactly the same). If you want to assert that magical chanting can change or affect the physical laws of the universe, let’s see the evidence.
Firstly, and most importantly, what insult are you talking about? I’ve insulted nobody.
Quote me the insult from my statements in this thread or feel free to apologise at any time. I’ll forgive you, that’s the sort of guy I am!
Are you deliberately setting out to prove that benign statements are taken by the religious to be insulting? because you are doing a good job.
And secondly, Religions admit that they are based on faith yes? many religions admit they have associated dogma yes? If you are unaware of what “faith” and “dogma” means then I suggest you look it up.
Most of us know what they mean and accept as self-evident that many religions base their existence on such concepts. If you do not accept that then I can’t see any quotations from religious figures convincing you.
Dude, that was on Fark. You’ve got to have a thick skin on that website. You could find a cure for cancer and someone would *still *call you a “stupid coont”.
It’s just the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action. It’s not “liberal hate”, or “atheist hate”- it’s just “anonymous hate”.
I admit the metaphor is too graphic and intense, because I do agree with you that atheists do not, by and large, suffer grievously, overtly, and daily from discrimination as many other non-default folks do – at least not in the U.S., where, “inching towards theocracy” as we may be, it’s a heck of a lot better than in many other countries.
But the main point of that metaphor is still valid: that YOU GUYS WON. You won long ago, and you continue to win. You are the default. (It’s amazing to me that the fairy-tale folks are the winners, but the fact is they are.) So don’t whine.
If any theist in the U.S. feels aggreived or discriminated against, they need only change their venue, and they’ll feel much better. If you find yourself stuck living in, say, Berkeley, CA, just move a few miles east, and you’ll be golden. Or, for starters, you can avoid internet fora explicitly dedicated to fighting ignorance.
Are you sure? You seemed to have a bit of difficulty telling atheists and theists apart back there.
As a Christian I don’t have any dislike at all for atheists because of their beliefs. When I found out that one of my buddies at a wildlife park was an atheist, I sent her a “Christmas” card that showed a tent in the desert that had a sign that said “Cheeses of Nazareth.” That secured our friendship. She was in every way my moral superior and became my mentor.
And I’m open to other religious faiths. Sandwich, there are churches which promote open-minded studies of other religious teachings.
I’m a little sensitive on this. You are talking about my entire family. I buried my mother and my only sibling this year. What do you know of them or of my father and how they all lived out their Christian beliefs? What laws did they pass? Whom did they harass, harm and oppress? Which laws did they pass or even help pass with ill intent toward others? Whom did they slander? What lies did they tell? Whom did they assault and kill other than by paying their taxes to the government (which had nothing to do with religion).
They did not constantly and relentlessly work to hurt anyone as you have claimed.
How rational is it for you to judge the lives of people whose specific beliefs and lifetimes you know nothing about? It seems to me that you are the one doing the bullying. There cannot be a discussion of religion – specifically Christianity – at SDMB, without your scathing remarks that generalize about Christians. None of us are perfect, but they are undeserving of the insults you serve up.
With all due respect to your loss, this is just a variation on the “I know some very nice Christians, so that invalidates your claims on Christianity being a violent religion” defense.
And yet you seem blind to it happening in the other direction - earlier in this thread you held up ITR as an example of an angry atheist (post 57 you said “[ITR’s] posts seem to me to be written in anger, but maybe I am just mis-reading. Do you think that ITR’s posts are being typed in a calm, even handed manner?”), when in fact he’s a Christian. Isn’t it possible that your assertion is wrong, because you can only see it from your side? (And isn’t this exactly what the Parable of Motes & Beams warns about?)
Let’s see; an attempt to use shame and guilt to shut me up by accusing me of slandering the dead, and an attempt to defend the virtues of Christianity using people that I have no proof even existed, much less what they were like. I could just as easily claim that Christianity deserves to be condemned because of the Christians who killed and ate the rest of my family.
And it’s all irrelevant since a few nice people don’t redeem an entire evil belief system like Christianity any more than Oskar Schindler redeemed Nazism. Christianity has inflicted massive amounts of evil on the world and continues to do so, and upholding or promoting it contributes to that evil even if only indirectly. My grandfather was a nice guy in most ways; he was also a racist. Should I then defend racism the way you are defending Christianity in the name of your relatives?
My 16 year old son is on summer vacation, and is home while my wife and I work. Just last Thursday some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door. Despite confirming for them that his parents were not home, they spent 15 minutes proselytizing at him. This included questions about his personal preferences (such as music) and whether he knew that his choices were leading him to the devil. They also asked about how we as his parents were training him, all with the subtext that he was being led to a dismal future.
Now, he is physically and intellectually quite capable of handling himself, and is well-set in his beliefs, which align with atheism. I’m not at all concerned about his ability to tolerate such bullshit intellectually and emotionally. In fact, his only spot of any concern in retrospect was handling the social intricacies involved when someone is so rude as to harangue you in such a fashion. Of course, I made it quite clear to him that he is free to tell someone like that to shove off.
But, in point of fact, he is a minor, and it pisses me off that Christians feel that they have the right to spend time telling a minor such complete fucking bullshit about his choices, his “training” and his future if he does not believe as they believe.
So, Christians who get their panties in a wad at the slightest suggestion that others do not agree with them can, in fact, shove off. I’m sick of the persecution complex and the hypersensitivity that they regularly display, while also having to politely endure all the nonsense in every sphere of my daily life that comes from religionists.
It might be that, but DT does tend to omit scope or qualifiers in his statements about believers, giving rise to the misconception that he’s talking about them all, without exception.
It happens on both sides. I suppose it depends on what websites you are visiting. IIRC, there were some very rabid antiatheists who wrote blogs up at atheismsucks.com, for instance.
The mentality that you are referring to occurs with strongly held beliefs, not just religious beliefs. I used to participate on a messageboard whose members believed in vampires. I had death threats when I challenged one particular ‘vampire’'s beliefs.
Something I got into the habit of because when I used to use more qualifiers i was accused of “using weasel words”. It’s all just different methods of dismissing what someone says without having to actually address it.
You can be seriously suggesting that Fark is a place for level-headed commentary.
The website is devoted to snark. It derides most beliefs.
The objective for most posters there seem to be for the lulz.