Der Tris, I’m not a religious man. I haven’t been to church in years.
But one thing I do know is that hate isn’t good. You don’t seem to do anything but hate when it comes to religion. That ain’t healthy. The overly religious hate, can’t you at least try to be a better person than they are? It’s not that hard.
Please, just show some tolerance of how other human beings view the world. Drop the hate. You’ll live longer.
Yeah, I know, but I’m not trying to start some flame war here. I truly want to know why Der Tris is so damn angry, and the pit is the only place I can ask that question.
It’s the pit, so we don’t have to be civil, but I want to be anyway. I’m not criticizing your world view, Der Tris, so much as your hatred of those that conflict with it. You can disagree, just don’t hate. We’re all human.
On preview: Idle thoughts, no, it’s not a specific thread. Both he and I have been here for years, I just picked this random time to say something.
Hate is neither good nor bad; it’s just an emotion.
Tolerance means that I don’t try to shoot them, burn their churches, get them tossed into prison, silence them, or otherwise try to oppress them. It does NOT mean I have to pretend that I respect them or their beliefs.
You can ask a question like that most places. As for why, why shouldn’t I be? If anything deserves anger directed at it, it’s religion. I’ve gone into the reasons why I despise religion; repeatedly and at length. Religion deserves to be hated, the way racism, sexism, slavery and fascism deserve to be hated.
No, it’s bad. It is bad from both a moral and ethical point of view. Perhaps you should look into Humanism. Surely your hatred for others does not prevent you from at least questioning the hatred?
Considering that I practically can’t go a day without coming across yet another evil or stupidity inflicted on the world by religion, why would I? I would hate anything else that was responsible for so much evil, with so little reason. Why not religion?
It makes me feel better than depression, which is my other reaction to living in a world dominated by religion. We live in a world where evil and madness triumphed ages ago, and has inflcted immense suffering and evil upon billions of people. A world where religion has spent millennia grinding all that is good or sane out of humanity.
Der Tris, I’ve wrestled with depression myself, but you have to realize that depression is internal. I wasn’t able to heal until I realized that the outside world wasn’t trying to keep me down. Hell, it didn’t even know I was there. I healed when I stopped hating it.
Basic problem though is that if religion is responsible for so much bad stuff in the world (and I’m with you there) then the sane thing for you to do is to do your part to rid the world of it. You’re not doing that, because most people (rightly or wrongly, whether it is logical or not, like it or not) are turned off by your eloquent evisceration of their beliefs and turn away from you and towards their beliefs. So your actions are counter productive.
Must you cling to the hatred? I don’t want to debate the merits of religion with you, der tris, but I do want to talk about your hatred. Your hatred seems to spill over to people, not just institutions.
It hasn’t in this thread, but from your past posts it seems a deep seeded thing. I’m telling you as a friend, it would be healthier and more productive if you didn’t hate.
All the bowing and scraping towards religion certainly hasn’t convinced them that it’s wrong. I see no evidence that ANYTHING will convince most of them; believers generally need to be outlived, not convinced.
As for the few who are persuadable; tiptoeing around the elephant in the living room, pretending that religion is anything other than baseless nonsense can only encourage religion. Giving religion false respect simply encourages people to think that religion is reasonable, because otherwise why is it getting respect? No, I don’t think I’m likely to convince anyone; but I doubt that I’m any less likely to do so than someone who pretends respect towards religion, and by doing so props it up.
Plus, I’m sure his distaste for religion (and his belief that people who believe in it are either deluded/crazy or evil) comes across in his dealings with those people, which is certainly counterproductive to his doing anything about religion.
Again, as you said, it’s not necessarily reflecting poorly on anyone here; it just is.