He isn’t just hateful about religious. He’s said pretty much the same about anyone who leans to the right, politically.
Maybe it’s just me, but stereotyping everyone into one little catagory isn’t much help in fighting ignorance. If anything, that is ignorance itself.
I sometimes see Christianity as a large group of people, where the fanatics are up front with the microphones and megaphones. The soft-spoken on either side of the debate have next to no chance of influencing the public at large, because the public at large is never going to hear the whispering over all the shouting.
Either get yourself some balls, get your ass in front of that crowd, and clean up the mess those yahoos are making of your religion, or shut up and get out of the way of those who are willing to do something to stop the constant infringement and harassment.
Sometimes they do, but let’s face it: who’s more entertaining and for the media, gets better ratings, or readers?
We know who ultimately owns the media and most of the politicians, so that makes the “Meek and Mild” approach even that much more worthless, doesn’t it?
I ask again of all those who say that Der Trihs’s approach is too much for his message: Which softer-spoken atheist do you think would be a good choice to do some major influencing on the Christian community as a whole? What network would let this person have a semi-regular spot to air his views?
I’m not convinced either way, but despite being a fan of both, I suspect that the softly-spoken Carl Sagan was more effective at opening people up to secular humanism than the more strident Richard Dawkins has been.
How was his influence compared to the far right wing preachers that can get on the air any time they want? What laws did he push or prevent successfully? Do you think that he would be given a regular national forum to talk about secular humanism if he were alive today?
The reason that those fanatics are able to spout at all is because of that large crowd behind them. If the crowd went away, no one would listen to the fanatics.
I’m curious what those who admire DT think about his oft-spoken views on American troops in Iraq and conservatives/Republicans in general. Do you agree with those as well, for the same reasons as you do on religion?
Of course not. On most of those issues he’s a nutter.
No matter which way you cut it, right-wing Christianity determines political discourse in the US. I’m sympathetic to those who have the attitude of “We’re not gonna take it anymore!” and feminism and gay rights advocates have had success with such an attitude, so who knows?
But the point is that if the fundies are holding the mic, they’re not going to give you the floor. So you have two choices: shout from the back of the hall and potentially alienate a big chunk of your audience, or use more subversive means that turn people around without them even realising it. And that, IMHO, was Sagan’s gift: to get people to think about the world in a different way without challenging their sense of identity.
I think maybe these boards are going to give Curtis an opportunity many of us didn’t have at that time – a chance to evaluate dissenting and contrry opinions. Maybe it’s not too late.
There was almost no one in my life at that age who was willing to think critically about society, or if there was they kept their mouths shut.
Mad Magazine and Kurt Vonnegut saved my life,
Not fair since he wasn’t a political campaigner and these preachers are. But I’ve often heard people on these boards say how Sagan quitely changed their minds on science and religion. As **Uzi **says, preachers need their flock behind them and politicians only take notice of them because of the flock behind them. People who were quietly converted by Sagan are not now standing behind some preacher.
Between some charismatic preacher telling the flock what to do, and **Der Trihs **hurling abuse at them as being stupid, there is no question whatever who they are going to follow.
Plus you are once more doing something far too fallacious for a person of your intelligence: sliding into an excluded middle with your talk of “meek and mild” vs “going all **Der Trihs **on their ass”. There is interplanetary space between those possibilities. I can see Sagan traversing it in his “spaceship of the mind” now.
You are confusing the way that people react to you, with the way people react to those who are less inclined to hurl abuse. You think you aren’t the statistical outlier here? Look around you. See who provokes threads like this one: it isn’t all outspoken atheists on these boards. Its pretty much just you.
I was thinking about the way atheists are treated and regarded in general, not just here. And I see no connection with how atheists behave and how they are regarded. If you are a known atheist, you will be hated by most of the population.
I don’t even get what you’re trying to say here. Do you really have such a stick up your ass about these common terms because you don’t agree with them?
I especially love the fact that Mohammed shouldn’t be called a prophet, despite founding Islam. It’s an accurate description of the man no matter if you believe in God or not. Or are you just annoyed that it’s a religious title. In which case I hope you also complain about the term Jesus Christ. Christ is a descriptive, not a surname. I hope you refer to him as Yeshua bar-Joseph, which is his secular name. What about John the Baptist?
I know, lovely, isn’t it. So unlike his previous pittings, so many more people coming out in support. Great.
But the hipster in me wants to say “I was into Der Trihs before he was popular, you posers!”
Yes. I am on record here as such - well, on the Iraq thing, I’ve never really cared much for debating US-only politics, but I think my feelings on the matter should be clear given my extreme Leftist personal politics - much Left-er than DT.
Even more ironically, so was I and I still am. Don’t think he’s that effective though, for the reasons I have outlined.
And **Der Trihs **you are exaggerating wildly. I hate to keep harping on the one example but how hated was Sagan, for example? What about Johnny Carson? I don’t live in the US but how hated are the atheists in this thread by their non-atheist friends?
Atheism has unfortunately a history of high profile proponents whose personalities could strip paint (Dawkins, O’Hair, Randi I guess). It has not been an asset to them and has merely provided a neat opening for ad homs.
Yet - no atheist could be voted President. That’s a pretty fundamental fact. And for the rest of the world it is a somewhat chilling thought that the most powerful elected politician in the world has to have a track record of pandering to superstitious nonsense.
As for all you meek and mild Christians - until you seize control back from the loonies, until you stop holding your nose and vote Republican you can he sure you’re going to get tarred with a broad brush. Don’t want Christians seen as lunatic crackpots - do something about it and stop trying to impose your morality on others.
Paul states that man laying with a man is an abomination, and no, the Book of Thomas isn’t banned now, but was not accepted as part of the NT that the Bishops who decided what was inspired by God,and what was the word of God! No God didn’t say anything or cannot be proved to inspire anything,People said it all the writers were just humans, and one believes in the word of humans not God. Many books were kept in the Vatican and only theologins were allowed to read them.
The Pope has stated that If a Gay person has sex it is a sin,an abomination, just as any person who has sex out side of marriage and using a condom , married or not. I have a nephew who is a RCC priest and he can back me up on what I say. I once taught Religion classes in RCC Sunday school although it wasn’t called that,it was Catechism.
And I didn’t imply that Luther came after Vatican 2, I have read a great deal on the Reformation and before Luther’s time no one was allowed to intrepret the Bible, the last word was the Pope. I know priests who have told me that they didn’t know the Bible that well as the Church was considered the authority of God’s word and mostly stayed by the church’s teachings of the Bible. My nephew has never had an answer to the questions I have asked and neither have any priest(I know a lot of them).
When one doesn’t like to hear anything controversial to what one wants to hear, they spout lunacy…Your opinion means nothing to me, the truth is all I am after and you are free to think as you wish.
It’s a hell of a leap from this to “If you are a known atheist, you will be hated by most of the population.”
There are any number of people I don’t hate but wouldn’t vote for. Try again.