Atheist zealots annoy me to no end.

The BBQ Pit
1

Before you flame, please make sure you’re part of those who annoy me. Odds are you are not

[ul]
[li]If you don’t know or don’t think there is such a thing as a higher power, that’s cool.[/li]
[li]If you think all religions are man-made fantasies, that’s cool.[/li]
[li]If you think religion has been used to justify a staggering number of atrocities, that’s cool (hell, it’s true).[/li]
[li]If you think religious people are weak for needing the crutch of religion, while you don’t, that’s cool.[/li][/ul]

To those who know there is/are no higher power(s):

Man has always looked upon this infinitely awe-inspiring universe and felt humbled, and rightfully so. What kind of an arrogant fool dares to say there is no higher purpose, that all is meaningless in absolute terms? It boggles the mind. You don’t know SHIT so STFU.

To those who say religion is nothing but the opium of the people:

A world without religion was never in the cards for us. Can anyone deny that spirituality is endemic to our species? It is our nature to try to understand and interpret the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Science is an enhancement of our senses and a pen to write down our observations, nothing more. Science is cool and pretty because it reflects the beauty of the universe and lets us be even more awed by it.

To those who bash christianity and other major religions as a Bad Thing ™ for mankind:

Successful religions were the ones that united countless tribes, prevented countless bloody battles and endless vendettas, helped civilisations prosper and likely helped increase the human population by far larger numbers than were ever lost during atrocities and wars in their names. The effects of encouraging people to have more kids and lives saved by humanitarian works are just a bonus. Life is not just precious if it’s taken away, it’s also precious if it’s given. Stop being such hypocrites and only looking at the flipside. Do the goddamned math!

To those who claim religion = malicious brainwashing

Some religious people are bad, some are not. Same as everybody else. Religion is not the frigging Borg assimilating you and running scripture code in your brain 24/7* and obliterating your personality. That’s why people are sinning all the time. That’s why most believers don’t even bother to finish reading their scriptures. Because they can. Ultimately, nobody is forced to believe. (social pressure and constraints exist regardless of religion. From “Don’t fart loudly” to “Don’t rape dead bodies in the municipal park in broad daylight”). Stop fucking making it into a scapegoat for the ugly side of human nature. You freaking believe it’s man-made! Think about it for a while and get your heads out of your asses.

*Now some sects/cults are bad (scientology, taliban) because they attempt to do precisely that, or, failing that objective, repressing dissent, advocating hatred, opressing people, etc. but even those only succeed in retaining the loyalty/faith of a fraction of their believers. (IE: ex-scientologists, mass people shaving in Kabul and selling secular music in 2002, etc)
I’m not a christian nor I do not claim to have The Answers but Goddamnit, neither do you, you arrogant pricks!

To recap: Nobody should be arrogant, anyone can be wrong, even me and you.

Ahhhhh, I feel much better! :stuck_out_tongue:

2

Religious zealots: Fly airplanes into buildings, blow up abortion clinics, attempt to “cure” gay people, believe that everyone else is going to hell, want various parts of science to not be taught in public classrooms, (etc etc etc etc), are measured in double digit percentages in the US population.

Atheist zealots: Are rude and condescending, want to remove “under God” and “In God We Trust” from the pledge and coins, are barely measurable in the US population. Save me from them!

3

Um, yeah, a substantial percentage of the US population are the kind of people who fly airplanes into buildings and blow up abortion clinics. Got a cite for that?

So it’s okay to be rude, condescending and arrogant as long as you don’t blow anything up?

4

Can’t speak for Max, but we have lost a bunch of buildings to zealots, all of them religious. A cluster in New York and one on Oklahoma. Care to cite me a similar incidence of atheist bombings?

5

No, but the proportion that opposed gay marriage and don’t want evolution taught in schools is frighteningly high. So the worst case religious zealots are WAY WAY WAY worse than the worst case atheist zealots, and the not-worst-case religious zealots are still worse (in that they are trying to shove their beliefs down other people’s throats) and are incredibly numerous.

Obviously not. But the reason I got my dander a bit up is that I’m always suspicous that people who are going out of their way to pit “atheists zealots” or “fundamentalist atheists” are doing so to generate a false equivalency between atheism and religion, as if they are simply two sides of the same coin, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, etc. Which, as I ranted about at great length here, is something I strongly disagree with.
I mean, yes, there are some people who are condescending assholes about their atheism/agnosticism. But there are people who are condescending assholes about EVERYTHING. I don’t think there are more people who are condescending assholes about their atheism/agnosticism than about, say, what music they listen to. So, if those people really bug you, well, then, they bug you, and I’m sorry you encounter so many of them.

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Well, I doubt you’re going to often see many atheist zealots doing atrocious things explicitly in the name of atheism. If anything they’re going to do USSR “for the state!” style atrocities. Same thing different guise. If I recall correctly the USSR was keen on getting rid of religion (seeing it as a weakness) and though there were other motives there (much like religious zealots have other motives much of the time such as land like the Crusades) I could easily say instillment of their doctrine 9and by proxy eradication fo religion) was one of them.

Also I think atheist extrimism is a little bit bad of a term, atheists really wouldn’t be trying to instill a doctrine on people becuase they have no doctrine, I think at best it would be a branch called antitheism, trying to instill a philosophy that religion is bad than anything, but that’s just my terms feel free to not play along. All in all though, what it boils down to is the corruption of any belief system (counting antitheism here as a belief system though it is a corruption of lack of belief) can lead to atrocities and its not just a one sided ordeal.

Edit: I added “atrocious” because there are definately “activists” and i didn’t feel it outlined my argument well enough for the “atheism doesn’t do bad things” crowd without it.

7

No, you STFU. If it’s ok to know that there is a higher power, then it’s certainly ok to know there isn’t one. Are you saying that the only people who don’t piss you off are agnostics, or that it’s ok to know there’s a higher power and it’s ok to doubt a higher power, but it’s not ok to know there’s not one? Sounds pretty fucking arrogant, to think that you know what’s right and what isn’t. You don’t know SHIT.

I don’t particularly think religion is a Bad Thing, but your list of reasons why it is good is off the hook. You think people need religion to encourage them to procreate? What would humanity have died off due to low birth rates if not for religion? And, I know this is not GD, but I don’t think you can claim with any factual certainty that in the great tally sheet of fight prevented due to religion or fights initiated due to religion that those prevented would win out. You say ‘do the goddamned math,’ so maybe you can start with a moderately comprehensive list?

It’s also important to note that you can ascribe a lot of things both good and bad to religion, but we can never accurately play the ‘what if’ game. I happen to believe that people do good and bad things to each other all the time, no matter what organizations or beliefs they might have.

8

Care to cite any atheist organizations with the power and resources of al Qaeda?

9

Just as an aside, when Marx said that he meant it as a compliment.

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I got nothing but Love for you, my brother. Let us exist in Peace.

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The kind who realizes there is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise.

12

No, actually, if you sneer at religious people for believing in god because you know there is no God, you’re making the same leap of faith they are. You can’t prove there isn’t a God anymore than they can prove there is one, and all of the logic tricks and justifications that militant atheists like to use to “prove” there is no God are meaningless because, by definition, God exists outside our frame of reference (the Universe) and isn’t subject to the same laws that we are subject to. You can say “i don’t believe there is a God”, that’s cool, no problem, but when you say to the theist “You fool, there is no God” then you’re the exact same type of fool.

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There ain’t any. And isn’t that kind of the point?

14

I do occasionally encounter atheists so obnoxious I kind of get a taste of what ‘regular’ religious people must feel when they encounter fundies. And yet… I’ve never had a strange atheist try to convert me in a public washroom, bash my gay friends or deny me birth control. And so many religious people are terribly atheist when you get them talking about a religion other than their own. So really, I can’t complain.

15

By your definition, maybe. But most theists believe that things can be known about their god, including how he wants them to act, what he wants them to do, as well as various properties he possesses (such as omnipotence, etc). If you truly define God as being completely removed from our universe, then you are in a tiny minority.

16

I’m an atheist and I almost never mention it to anyone unless they ask, and then I don’t make a big thing about it. I have no interest whatever in trying to prove the non-existence of God (or whatever deity floats your boat) to anyone.

In return, I hear endlessly from religious folk about how I’m morally suspect, how supposedly ‘hate God’ for some rerason and, for a few of the more extreme, how I’m going to be consigned to Hell for all eternity. Howsabout you folks give me the same courtesy I give your superstitious beliefs?

17

Dave, you seem to be making a point that wasn’t at all in the text of the OP:

Nothing here about sneering at religious people at all. Nothing about trying to prove the non-existance of God scientifically (do people actually do that?).

My issue with the OP is that he claims to not have an issue with atheists, and yet an atheist who says he knows there is no higher power (which seems to me to be a very passable definition of atheist) doesn’t know SHIT and needs to STFU.
My question to you (and the OP) is, is a religious person who says, “yes, there is a God,” also a fool, because how could he or she possibly know?

18

Personally I think you’re just noticing the ones that do more. There are certainly plenty of religious folk (hell I’m friends with six mormons and not one has tried to convert me) that don’t bring it up in casual conversation, if ever at all.

And here’s a good article:

Comedy site? Yes. Good points? yes. Do i agree with all of it? Not particularily. Mainly my gripe is with the first one, which I clarified my stance on in my above post (you’re not going to see war-criminal atheists but you will see for example the Soviets having it as part of their agenda, and I thought of that before I read this article so don’t call me a copycat).

19

The religiosity of Tim McVeigh is a matter of great dispute.

Only real examples I can give you of atheist, not bombings, but other nasty stuff, is Soviet & Chinese Communism & their satellites.

20

Communism is not Atheism. Can you come up with an example where Atheism is given as an excuse/reason?