Don't Ask ----- Don't Answer

Stop trying to make this about atheists. It’s about YOU.

I know plenty of atheists who are capable of reasoned debate. I know plenty of atheists who are meticulous about maintaining a belief system free from implications of divine intervention. I know plenty of atheists who work actively in the political arena to maintain and increase the secular stance of our laws and our governmental system. That you are none of these things has nothing to do with your beliefs, it has to do with you as a person.

In no way do I think that intolerance, closed-mindedness, ignorant arrogance, incoherent/reductio ad absurdum/broad-brushed debating tactics, or shrill self-identification as victim are traits endemic to atheism as a belief system or atheists as a group of people.

They are, however, accurate descriptors of YOU as you have protrayed yourself on this board.

It’s about YOU, not your belief system or others who may share it.

This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. It has all the overwrought sillyness of the worst Der Trihs comments. Good job, dipshit.

OK, this, I could handle, especially given the source.

But that- that’s just hitting below the belt, even by Pit standards.

For shame. :stuck_out_tongue:

Cite?

Talk about bigotry. :rolleyes:

I’m shocked, shocked to find that some people on the SDMB are “rude, pompous and ignorant” towards religious people.
Don’t take them seriously; they don’t know any better.

I thought that was a great line. It made me laugh and hungry for eggs all at the same time.

He didn’t say anything about athiests being evil, he called you a dick.

See the difference?

Don’t you mean “our” thunder?

Der Trihs, let me try to help you out here. When it comes to viewing religion as irrational, silly, and often dangerous, I’m right there with you. But the difference is I know plenty of religious people who, despite believing in something I find irrational, are otherwise rational, intelligent, and kind. I am free to disagree with their philosophy, but in doing so I am not compelled to attack them as people. You, on the other hand, don’t seem to have this capacity. You don’t seem to be able to discuss religion without saying anything more than “You’re a fucking idiot.” People generally don’t take kindly to that.

Dude, and I say this as a friend: Get out. Go to CS and discuss your favorite band. Go to GQ and ask how they put the cream filling in Twinkies. Go to IMHO and seek opinions on whether your new pants make you ass look fat. Anything. But until you learn to discuss religion without hurling mindless invective, stay out of threads like these.

Please.

Has anyone, anywhere, ever had a useful discussion about religion with Der Trihs? No? Why are we still trying?

Yes, that’s right, I’m bigoted against the irrational. Every weekend, me and a bunch of friends get drunk and burn a wooden sigma on the lawn of a Jehovah’s Witness.

Nice spin on the obligatory “fuck!”

But there is ‘spiritual’ burn. It’s different in every case, and some people might not have it at all, but there are always going to be effects from deep seated beliefs. It’s psychological, and isn’t necessarily big and flashy. Any time your beliefs and your rational mind conflict there can be problems.

I was raised Catholic. I am now an atheist. It took a long time for this change to occur. Even now, sitting here secure in my conclusion about religion’s claims, I still have voices in my brain from when I was little, threatening me with hell, telling me to pray when I hear an ambulance, insisting that Sunday is somehow special, etc. These things were beaten into me when I was growing up, and I might never get rid of them no matter what I do. I know others who have similar problems. I ever know people who were Catholic, got out of it, and got back into and now are worried that they’re going to hell no matter what cuz of what it says in the bible. There’s at least one psychologist I’ve heard of who specializes in helping people who were traumatized by religion as a child, especially in cases dealing with fear of hell.

Oh, and I’m with Der Trihs on this. There is just as much rationality about believing in the Christian god as there is with believing in Zeus or Ra or Vishnu or the Tao or kami or whatever. Fortunately for religions, rationality rarely enters into it, as humans are perfectly capable of functioning without it.

Yeah, but being Thor about it is jutht thilly. :stuck_out_tongue:

Which is what, exactly?

Mark 3:29

If they have decided to return to the RCC, anyway, they might want to talk to a priest to alleviate their doubts. The RCC generally treats “blaspheming against the spirit” as despair, not badmouthing the Ghost. The church has never approved of apostasy, of course, but it has welcomed back apostates (with a lot of tut-tutting and “shame on you” expressions, of course) as early as the first century and nowadays is more likely to point to Luke 15:11-32 rather than Mark 3:29, when welcoming back a person who had left.

Shrug, contradictions like that are one of the reasons I got out and don’t see myself going back anytime soon. Not every Catholic priest I knew would favor your passage over mine. I knew a few who positively enjoyed condemning. When it comes down to it, interpretation is up to the individual.

When my brother caught religion again he used to use the passage I quoted like a hammer, repeating it over and over expecting that I would just suddenly understand and stop being an athiest.

Actually, it’s quite a bit more irrational than having at people with swords. At least when you conquer someone and chop them to bits, you get something out of it: all the stuff that used to belong to the chopped up people. On the other hand, you’ve spent two years here trying to be as big a dick as you can to anyone who remotely disagrees with you on any conceivable subject. What, precisely, has that effort gained you? Have you managed to convince anyone that you’re right about God? Or America? Or the morality of the armed forces? Have you actually accomplished anything for those causes, other than to bring them discredit through your association with them?

He accused me of wanting to kill thousands or millions of people, but that I didn’t have the power. THAT is accusing me of being evil.

First, that’s the core problem of religon; it is stupid, and crazy. And as I point out above, THEY call me evil. I see no reason to be polite to people who more often than not think I’m a monster on the order of Hitler, just because I’m an atheist. Especially in the Pit.

I have no desire to play punching bag under the standard “Atheists be nice, theists lie, threaten and insult” rules".