Calling All Atheists and Interested Parties

The BBQ Pit
81

I’m an atheist, culturally Jewish, with many values derived from Judaism, and philosophically Buddhist-ish.

No. However, when I enter threads with religious content, I try to stick to speaking about my own beliefs, or from my own knowledge, and generally avoid GD on religious issues related to the veracity or merit of any particular religion or belief system. Part of this is that I experience these debates as acrimonious, larded with insults, and generally unpleasant to participate in. I’ve also never been very interested in or concerned about questions like “Is there a deity?,” and questions such as “Which is the correct deity?” are not relevant to me. I’m very interested in religion and its transmission, but whereas face-to-face conversations sometimes go somewhere interesting, I experience the majority of the religion discussions here as shouting matches.

82

Agnostic/soft athiest. No. No. No.

83

Atheist. No. No.

My personal beliefs/preferences/likes/dislikes do not interfere with my judgements as a moderator on the dope, even when they are in conflict.

84

I’m not superstitious, i.e., I’m an atheist. No and no to the OP’s question. But catsix nailed the problem with Christianity here. It’s as full of lardbrained malarkey as most other religiions, but it gets a pass in a way the others don’t. It’s not institutional bias, though, it’s cultural bias.

85

Google “Free Zone Scientology”. Scientology is one main group, the cult called the “Church of Scientology”, and a lot of much smaller groups spread around the world (at least in America and Germany that I know of) which worship Hubbard and his teachings in their own way. I’ve never heard of the small groups engaging in the cult behavior the CoS does.

86

Born and raised LDS, but have been an agnostic leaning toward atheism for nearly 40 years now.

To directly answer the OP, I see no oppression of atheist views, and no moderation that seems to favor Christianity over atheism.

To address other issues raised in this thread, and in some of the other related current threads, I also don’t think that Christianity regularly gets more of a pass than scientology on the board, or more than other non-xian religions.

But they do sometimes get treated a little differently.

We’ve all seen the xian fundamentalist come in, make statements about how one thing or another is proof of the their particular “truth”. And we’ve all seen them torn to shreds logically, and sometimes personally if it winds up in the pit, all without moderator intervention. Many times we’ve had mods join in. I seem remember such a thread recently, where Tomndeb repeatedly challenged a particularly ignorant poster’s claims and trashed his arguments.

So these kinds of claims mostly get treated like any other nutjob claim. Cites are called for, correct information is posted, ignorance gets fought.

But if a xian (or poster of pretty much any religion) posts about beliefs, does not claim to have scientific proof, or even any proof, just a belief, they usually aren’t given too much grief. And they might even get mod protection if one of our oh-so-noble-we-just-HAVE-to-fight-ignorance-or-we-betray-all-we-hold-dear atheists gets a little too frisky.

In my opinion, this is the way it should be.

And it seems to me that for a couple of reasons, we see more xians posting just about beliefs than we do other theists. For one, there’s a bunch more xians in the population that the board draws most of its membership from. For another, some religions, such as Scientology, pretty much base their entire set of beliefs on things that are, well, scientific. Things that are directly testable, or for which hard evidence exists to the contrary.

So the xians (or other theists) who don’t make falsifiable claims, or who at least aren’t basing their main points on falsifiable claims, may get treated differently then those who do. Again, IMHO, this is ok.

87

This is an atheist friendly place. You’ll find atheists overrepresented here as compared to the US population in general, and as an atheist myself I don’t find the mods to be predisposed to rule in favor of religion or non-religion. The only people who would think otherwise, IMO, are the ass-hole atheists who think it is their duty to unconvert the religious. We just don’t care one way or the other here. Profess your faith, as faith, and that’s fine. Claim scientific certainty about your faith and you’ll be ripped to shreds.

88

Confirmed Congregationalist now soft Atheist/Agnostic. Not in the least. Nope.

89

Renegade Christian who believes that Jesus is God, and the universe is not real…

In general, there is very little official bias either way. The only problems of this kind I’ve ever had were with DavidB (now pretty much defunct) and MEBuckner, who seems intent on keeping me out of Great Debates.

90

Agnostic. I don’t get into many, if any, deep philosophical discussions around here, but I don’t think there’d be impediments against participation in such discussions. Certainly no one pulling the “Oh, you’re threatening our belief!” ploy.

91

Hard atheist, no, no. Not from tomndebb or anyone else.

92

From a relative perspective: this is the most atheist-friendly environment I’ve ever been in.

From an absolute perspective: I have on occasion been criticized as “disrespectful to other people’s beliefs” - *not * because I attacked a specific person’s particular beliefs (I almost never do that), but because, in simply stating my beliefs, I appeared too dismissive of religion in general. Or from my perspective, not even dismissive - but not sufficiently reverent. Since, as an atheist, I grant religion no special status, I get seriously annoyed when my honest beliefs are characterized as “disrespectful” or stating them plainly is seen as a “gratuitous attack.” This happens here, as elsewhere in the culture. But I can’t say any mod has been guilty of it that I can remember.

93

I don’t get it, the point of the thread, why anyone would ask the question, why anyone is bothering to answer, or why it was put in the pit by someone who would then seemed surprised to be called a fucktard of of the blue.

94

Why did you bother to answer? Who was called a fucktard out of the blue?

95

Atheist, and no, no, no.

96

It was asked, I think, because there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in another thread by Badchad and Pseudo about how atheists are persecuted mercilessly on this board especially by Tom. I’m glad the question was asked because I was wondering myself how prevalent that feeling was among atheists. Apparently, there are only two crosses on that hill.

97

Way to mischaracterize, Liberal! Good un!

As I’ve noted, I (not badchad, btw) find it hypocritical of a website dedicated to fighting ignorance to relax that admirable standard where one particularly entrenched species of ignorance is concerned. There’s no martyrdom involved here, no complaints about being systematically oppressed, none of that shit. Simply a mild noting of an oddity that I’ve learned to live with over the years, doubly odd because it’s so well established that Xians are given a pass on the SD that no one really notes it anymore, though I’m please to see the many, many atheists in this poll who acknowledge that, yes, that’s certainly the case, Xians are treated like privileged spouters of an unsubstantiated belief.

As to **Tom ** , it’s simply my opinion that he is a little bit too zealous in promoting a pro-religion agenda on GD. He’s a bright fellow, and moderate in his beliefs (compared to most nutters), subtle, likeable, amusing, often knowledgable, and if he doesn’t actually get in your face, wholly unobjectionable. But putting a fox as head of security in a henhouse simply strikes me as unwise, and I’ve made that known. Pardon me, please, for expressing a minority opinion.

98

I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t call this one.

99

Atheist here. No. Not in the least. We’re way overrepresented here vs the rest of the US.

100

Once again your argument is garbage and you are trying to reduce it to a popularity contest.

Scientology is an obvious bunch of garbage to any outside observer, but what makes you think the Bible does not look just as silly to a non-Christian?

Jim