Here:
I never attributed those assumptions to you. I’m ASKING for your answers. I have no baggage. I’m an atheist.
Except that I regard the religious as being beyond reason, because if they were not, they would not be religious. I don’t think I or anyone can change their minds, including themselves; I argue mostly for my own enjoyment.
By looking at the evidence, instead of deciding to believe something arbitrary and declaring it God’s Will.
Sometimes the truth is offensive. That is how I regard religious belief, except I tend to lean towards “crazy” instead of “stupid”; saying otherwise would be dishonest.
Or . . . it’s historical fiction and mythology. There’s simply no evidence that God or anything else than plain old humans had anything to do with it.
Occam’s Razor. God is an unnecessary hypothesis. The logical default position on God or anything else is nonexistence.
Well, gee, it must have been the repeated use of the word “you” in a post directed at me that confused me.
My answers to what? Specific questions about my faith? I’ve already posted why I’m not answering. Repeatedly.
You have no baggage? Please. Your response to the whole “Jesus is a cunt” issue was “Why do you care? He’s just a DEAD GUY,” as if you don’t know damn well that He’s certainly more than “just a dead guy” to Christians. The best that can be said about that sort of comment is that you are so invested in your own POV you can’t even see that someone else might have a different one – not even on such an obvious issue as whether Jesus, acknowledged by Christians to be the Son of God, is “just a dead guy” or not. You start from the POV that Jesus is “an imaginary diety” and then you frame the issue as “what words are allowed when describing an imaginary diety.” IOW, you frame the issue so thoroughly in your own POV that another POV isn’t even admissable. Before I could even talk to you about this, I’d have to get you to climb off that high horse. I’m not interested in working that hard.
Thank you. Maybe debates as in high school debating teams are about trying to score points, but here at the Straight Dope, it’s all about learning and fighting ignorance-not trying to win.
claps Bravo, Jodi.
And FWIW, in case anyone cares, I was raised Catholic, but I’m no longer practicing. I’m not a Christian, but I’m not an atheist, either. Just sort of a vague theist.
Well, if you can maintain your cool – shouldn’t be too difficult, seeing as you already know going in that’s all badchad does – why don’t you give it a shot Big Boy? Or should that be, Big Mouth?
Just wanted to let you know, as I said in my post above, this isn’t necessarily always true. There are those out there, I’m assuming in both directions, whose minds can be changed. All depending on what end you’d like to achieve and, I’m sure, how you go about it.
This is why I’m not inclined to try to have a reasonable discussion in the Pit. :rolleyes:
I know a ton of people who have left the Catholic Church for other denominations, other religions entirely, or no religion at all. I know plenty of other people who joined the Church as adults. If what they are doing is “indoctrinating,” then they aren’t doing a very good job.
Think what you like, no skin off my nose. OTOH, I happen to agree that debating is akin to a boxing match. Just don’t happen to see anyone willing to put on the gloves with badchad. Then again, I hardly think what he does (point out inconsistencies and flat-out cruelties and lies in god’s Big Book) is anything akin to “hitting below the belt.”
More like a right cross to the jaw – right on target too. Heck, we might even agree that a well executed KO is a thing of beauty…
Whether you’re boxing, debating, wrestling, playing tennis, fighting ignorace and/or myths, the result can be – and usually is – one of the sides getting the snot beaten out of them.
Sorry. Couldn’t leave your bullshit without comment either.
Pistols at dawn?
Oh. So I guess you’re going to crawl all up on Friar Ted’s ass soon. I’ll wait.
Cowardly and hypocritical is no way to go through life, son.
Jesus, how the hell can you walk with that chip on your shoulder?
Friar Ted is pretty much a jackass. What that has to do with how badchad behaves, I have no idea.
Well, it’s not much the poor salesmanship as it is the lousy product.
Blame “The Age Of Information.”
Kids, nowadays, have, at their fingertips, access to the kind of contrarian information – IOW, information refuting much of the religious BS that was/is used to indoctrinate/scare children into believing – that was unthinkable just a short two decades ago.
World’s going secular – take a look at Europe and such bastions of Catholicism as Spain and Italy to see where we’re are headed. In that particular sense – secularism – it’s the rest of the world (and when speaking of First World nations, especially the US) that’s got a lot of catching-up to do.
Latin America, land of poverty and ignorance, last true bastion of the Catholic Church and false hope.
Right. Well, it’s not for everyone, which is the point I have been trying to make all along.
Nice attitude you have towards Latin Americans, there. :rolleyes:
That bears a suspicious resemblance to the position of Jack Chick and all the rest of the flaky religious whack-jobs. I consider the existence of God an interesting philosophical question and really don’t care too much if someone else believes in Jesus, atheistic rational empiricism, or the Great Green Arkleseizure, but I do firmly believe that if lots of otherwise sensible people all say the same thing, they can certainly all be wrong, but they’re probably not foolishly wrong. A good theory should account for the fact that other people have a brain, too. Dante, Spinoza, Einstein–all raving loons? It boggles the mind.
PS-Have a son, sixteen. Ex-wife, Catholic, myself, a Spaniard, obviously having grown-up – and outgrown it – as one.
As opposed to his Mom (First Communion, Confirmation, Sunday Mass, Catholic schools when younger), gave my son no indoctrination whatsoever. Told him how I felt, the rest was up to him to figure out. Gave him only one book on the matter, Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World,” – which I think should be mandatory reading in high-school if only to teach the basics of independent thinking/logic.
I’ll leave to you to figure out what his conclusions are thus far. Mind you, I only spend two to three months out of the year with him – and would support him fully if he decided to become say…a Buddist Monk or anything in between.
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My name isn’t Jesus. He would have had a cross, not a chip, on his shoulder, and his answer for how he could walk would probably be “Slowly. Very slowly.”
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A chip on one’s shoulder would make use of the upper body difficult. If one has strong legs, and a chip on one’s shoulder, one can still walk just fine. Thanks for asking.
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Why, O Advocate of Civil Debate, did you not berate Friar Ted’s gross incivility when it appeared? Couldn’t have had anything to do with what he was being uncivil about, could it, or whom he was being uncivil to? You know, motes and beams?
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Does that give you an idea? Does it hurt to have one?
I could suggest a few more nouns for what you are. Or would you care to try imagining them?
I fuckin’ LIVE in Latin America, fool. And try to help these poor people in every way I can.
Including explaining to them why it’s plain dumb for them to give any of their almost slave-like wages to The Church so that the Cardinal can stay in Armani suits, or why they shouldn’t buy ‘Holy Water’ from some Brazilian grifters who fill-up stadiums and “heal the sick.”
Walking the walk, toots, not just talking the game.