I had one like that once, but more succinct. It said, “Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons not welcome.” That pretty much covered it.
Well, at least till about 1989 or so.
It’s hardly a yawn and a shrug when atheist groups muscle in on the traditional territory of religion. When someone puts up a nativity scene on a courthouse lawn, society at large yawns and shrugs. When atheists exercise the same right and emplace some sort of atheist message next to it, there are howls of “Oh, my righhhhts, they’re trampling on my right to to erect religious monuments on public property unsullied by dissenting messages.”
Religious solicitations? At worst, people will say ‘get off my lawn’, and do nothing because it’s considered an unavoidable nuisance.
Atheist solicitations? There will be a non-trivial part of the population whose first reaction will be to specifically ban atheist solicitations. You will hear people state publicly that it violates their religious rights for atheists to come to their door and insulting their religion. When it gets to the point where it’s clear you can’t ban one group and not the other, the whole thing will quietly die down, because what really matters to the religious is preserving their right to prosyletize.
Exactly!
Rep. Cooper is one of our few legislators, state or national, with a “D” behind his name. Tennessee General Assembly - Wikipedia If you check this link out, you’ll see that there’s a supermajority in both our state house and senate on top of a Republican governor. So, yes, Tennessee is definitely a red state.
:hijack over:
So you think if it had been put up by a Christian group everything would have been all hunky-dory? :dubious:
The same religious groups that proudly display the instrument of their messiah’s torture and death in the same house they worship him in?
Do you think a Christian church displaying a crucifix is the same as an atheist group putting up a billboard with a drawing of an African slave in chains?
Seriously, stop playing games. The very idea that people were offended because said billboard was put up by an atheist group is extremely disengenious.
But oh yes, then they should stop and see, it’s the BIBLE they should be offended by! Not the people who actually posted the images.
:rolleyes:
I disagree. I think it would be more akin to trying to convert someone to evolution or gravity. All of the facts and logic are on our side. Trying to convert people to Christianity is like trying to convince them that Santa Claus exists.
Small odds on which side of the fence you sit on.
I don’t disagree with you on one perspective, however I do disagree in the overall sense that trying to convince someone to believe the same things as you is the common denominator. One perspective is based on faith and belief in their church and it’s literature and the other is based on faith and belief in science and it’s literature.
I perceive that in the USA the Christian lobby is a lot more vocal than most other western countries so the polar opposite viewpoint is also vocal to compensate for it.
Most aussies are fairly laissez faire about religion, it’s not a topic of interest or conversation generally. People who believe in a god (s) of whatever variety do so, people who don’t do so, people who don’t care get on with whatever they’re doing.
I just lump everyone who tries to push their belief system (whatever it is) onto others all in the same boat.
I’m told that in Ireland if you walk into a bar you get grilled about whether you’re catholic or protestant before you get served. My response to that would be “Whatever gets me a beer and not a punch in the head”
Well, the anonymity of the Internet makes it easier to speak your mind about some things.
Still, I have to disagree with you. There is no faith in science and it’s literature. There is evidence. There is testable, repeatable, verifiable results. That is not faith. Faith is the opposite of that.
good point, but unless you did the testing and got the results yourself, you simply have faith or believe that those who did it and published it, actually got those results.
Long bow I know, and I’m actually on your side of the chasm
Good to hear you’re on the right side of things.
I’m completely fine with having faith in the scientific method. Look at how far it has taken us. I assume you have heard of Richard Dawkins before, right?
I don’t think faith is required to believe in science. I mean, the proof is in the pudding.
To me, faith is something you believe in sans the proof.
I don’t think there’d be significantly more ire for a door-to-door athist than for door-to-door anyone else but certain expressions of that ire would get a more positive reaction when the target is an atheist.
In other words, if someone got shot in the course of door-to-door deproselytizing, there would be murmurs, at least, of “had it coming” from certain quarters.
Moreover, I’ve never really lived anywhere public religious observance was a major part of ostensibly secular community life, so I may be miscalibrating the level of ire.
Presumably it’s for people who have already deconverted and suddenly noticed how much their social support network was built around church.
Senor Beef, you are my new hero.
For myself, I would treat them the same way I would treat any and all other conversion attempts. No, thank you. Go Away. Go Away Now. ::close door::
If that doesn’t work I’ll go get that lorry mentioned elsewhere on these boards.
That’s his point, I think. We may think of them as annoyances to some degree or as a chance for hilarity to ensue at their expense, but we don’t think of it as wrong. It is considered socially “normal” for them to do this, and it would be considered socially “abnormal” for atheists to do it.
Although I wonder how many of the people who go door-to-door for some Christian cult or another realize that, by doing so, they are directly disobeying the instructions of the god they profess to worship.
Whoever told you that was either spoofing you or was ill informed.
Your problem is that you don’t know enough scientists, and how we love to find mistakes in other people’s work - especially important work. There are tons of errors in papers no one ever references, but no one cares. I know someone whose PhD was delayed a year when he found an error in a paper he was depending on.