PETA is radical because they’re a bunch of attention whores who would rather do ridiculous things ostensibly for the benefit of the animals than do calmer things that actually make people inclined to support them.
Wow, I think this is the first guy who thought that was a crack against PETA.
mswas pets his sea-kitten
Plenty of Christians are liberals. I have a few (okay, three that I can think of) friends that are devout Christians and also liberals who support gay rights and a secular government
This is totally untrue. I hate proselytizing no matter who is doing. I especially hate Der Trihs version of proselytizing, ie, berating everyone who doesn’t agree with him. It’s cringeworthy. Check out any thread where he does this and you’ll see that inevitably his posts are followed by multitudes of atheists telling him to shut up.
Yes, as do I.
I must have missed the throngs.
You posted this:
So, your evidence for the existence of “atheist culture” (and possibly also a “gay agenda”) is the existence of crude jokes on television and underwear advertisements on billboards, i.e., “atheists control the world!” I suppose we also run the International Banks, eh?
Later, you sort of backpedal and give as examples of “atheist culture” a bunch of things actually written by atheists (and which, whatever they may say on the cover, probably mostly wind up being for atheists as well. Of course, those particular books and movies and websites being atheistic, for that very reason they are rejected or ignored by most Americans.)
Nonetheless, your first example of “atheist culture” was to blame the “lowering of standards” in American culture “since the 1960s” on us all-powerful atheists. Personally, I’d love to take credit, on behalf of atheists, for ending Jim Crow, for the rise of women’s equality, for the end of repressive laws against “sodomy”, for gay rights, for a broadly more open society when it comes to freedom of speech and expression, and for a society that is generally more respectful of those who differ from the mainstream of American thought. But that would be really stupid and obviously untrue, since we atheists don’t actually control American culture in general. (Neither do the Jews, FYI.) Rather, the liberalization of American culture has resulted (among other things) in atheists being more free to publicly express themselves–not, the atheization of American culture has resulted in its being more liberal.
Hmm, well to me it’s trivial. Maybe it’s important to you. Ultimately, your cash is as green as mine. The reality though is that it’s an insult to Christians too as it’s blasphemous, just not too many understand their religion well enough.
It is meaningful to those who are religious, which the President-Elect is.
Eh, I think that’s a bit paranoid. Mostly i think it’s a cultural accretion that won’t matter to most people in a few years. Hell doesn’t matter to most people now.
Holy false equivalence Batman. Besides everyone knows the Jews run the banks. Atheists are just destroying morality.
I didn’t backpedal, you just extrapolated a whole bunch of bullshit and call it back-pedaling when my real opinion is inconsistent with your imagination. So you hold a non-mainstream belief, boo-fucking-hoo.
No actually it was a reference to the decline of Christian culture.
Yeah, Christians and Jews had a lot more to do with Civil Rights than atheists.
The point is that Christians see the loss of their moral culture as a decline into atheism. It’s a totalitarian belief system where yuo either take the full spectrum of morality or you don’t, you can’t take it piecemeal. There is some evidence for this decline, such as sexualizing young girls in order to sell other young girls products that make them look like whores so that they can be cooler and have more premarital sex. That is certainly a decline in Christian culture. You might agree with it, but that doesn’t make the Christians delusional who call it as they see it.
Do you understand what I’m saying or are yuo just going to randomly cherry-pick my posts and eliminate context some more?
I’m still working my way through this thread (about half way through page 5 now), but I just want to comment on the whole “have a blessed day” thing. I find it interesting how some are claiming that it’s a religious litmus test or an attempt to force one’s beliefs on something else.
This conversation brought to memory a sermon from when I was a kid about how in addition to asking God to bless us and others, we ourselves were to bless God. This made me say to myself, “How can a person bless God? Isn’t that something only He can do?” This triggered me to look up the definition of bless. So I mosey on over to dictionary.com and find that, while the first definitions tend to be about holy rites and whatnot, there is always another definition similar to this one: “to bestow good of any kind upon: *a nation blessed with peace. *”. I really, truly do not see how anyone can be offended by this. It really is just another way of saying “Have a nice day” or “Okay, hey, take it easy”.
Seriously, lighten the fuck up.
A simple explanation will do with no weaseling required, as even you seem to be aware - in that dim chamber you call a mind - of the fact that you’re grasping at straws here and skating on extremely thin ice indeed (how’s that for a mixed metaphor) in your attempt to allege that I’ve called liberals evil at least once in my 6,600+ post posting history.
The fact of the matter, as you should well know, is that I was responding to the meme that was taking hold around here that anyone voting Republican in the upcoming election was evil, myself included. I responded by saying that if anyone could be called evil, it would be you guys and I outlined the reasons why. I also stated in that or a similar thread that I had long declined to outline my thoughts in this regard because I felt it would be hitting below the belt (with the implication being that the harmful results of liberalism that have occurred in this country have not been intentional), and that I was only doing so now in order to counter the egregious claim of: Vote Republican=EEVIL.
Further, and perhaps you missed it at the end of the post you linked to, but I ended it by saying:
*"So which side has caused greater pain and suffering and harm to society over the last 40 years? I’m gonna go with you guys, but I’m not gonna call you EVIL.
Because that’s stupid."*
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
So now it’s “semantics” - a mere “rhetorical” device.
Where I come from claiming people said things they didn’t in order to make them look bad to others is called a lie. How nice it must be to be your type of liberal (see, Zoe, I’m trying to differentiate) and live in a world where words have no true meaning.
I agree wholeheartedly, thus, in light of my explanation and the fact that even some of those normally in agreement with you regarding my posts have told you that you were on thin ice here to begin with, I’ll anticipate accepting your apology as graciously as you will surely offer it.
Basically, mswas, you’re so fucking incoherent that it’s very difficult to have any kind of meaningful discussion with you.
But if a bunch of Christians think that the moral behavior of a bunch of other Christians has something to do with “atheism”, then yes, that’s pretty delusional of them. And if an incoherent theistic hippy (or whatever the fuck it is that you are) agrees with those Christians, then that would make you delusional too.
I don’t know, SA. Accusing liberals of causing millions of deaths and ruining American society is not de facto calling them evil? Really? But actually, you said it anyway, and I posted the quote. The facts speak for themselves. No need for you to repeat what you said in the post that I quoted. I quoted it, so I already know what it said, and in fact, I could have written your post back to me pretty much verbatim. Weaseling, par for the course. And of course, you always rise to the bait anytime I criticize you. You are so much fun!
Yes. Listing a whole bunch of evils (entirely cite free, fact free list) that you claim are the fault of liberals, but at the end saying, “Well, if I WERE going to call someone evil, it would be YOU, but I WON’T 'cuz that’s STUPID” is a rhetorical device. You did exactly what you said you were not going to do. You do it regularly. Jack Batty was using shorthand when he said that you think liberals are evil, and you called him a liar for it. Not really fair of you.
I’m on thin ice? What kind of thin ice do you think I’m on? Take a survey and see how many people reading your posts think that you irrationally hate liberals and believe they are evil. I think you’ve given many people the impression that’s what you believe. Whether or not you have actually said that specific sequence of words, that is the intent behind all your posts on the topic. We can even disregard the fact that you DID say it if you like. Doesn’t erase that your meaning comes across loud and clear, no matter how much quibbling, semantic hair splitting, and weaseling you want to do. You are just as guilty of demonizing your enemy as you claim your enemy is. You are not on higher ground because you haven’t come out and said YOU ARE EVIL.
Others seemed to be able to keep more than one concept in their minds at a time ok.
Yeah, you’re missing the point entirely.
Nope, because there was not evil intent - just like voting Republican does not signify evil intent.
Indeed they do, and you’re not looking too good as a result.
Well, we wouldn’t want anyone to be left with the impression that you were correct, would we?
Thank you, darling. (Oh, btw, you never did answer when I asked if you were busy that weekend.) 
No, I listed harmful consequences. You are the one who has labeled them as evils.
No, the unfairness lies with you, I’m afraid. I did not claim that calling liberals evil was stupid in order to obliquely do just that; I claimed it in order to show that calling Republican voters evil was just as stupid as it would be for me to call liberals evil based on the harmful consequences that I listed. Which it is.
I’m going to tell you something that might come as a big surprise to you, Rubystreak. The fact of the matter is that I regard very, very few people as truly evil. My father pointed out to me when I was young that even people who most other people think are bad don’t think of themselves as bad and they usually feel they have good reasons for what they do. I think that people do bad things, and I think that sometimes people do very bad things that even they know are wrong, but I don’t attribute that behavior to evil. I reserve the word ‘evil’ to certain specific people and circumstances just like I reserve the word ‘hate’ for certain people and certain circumstances. They aren’t words I throw around willy-nilly, they aren’t words that I ascribe to large groups of people, and as a matter of fact, they aren’t words that come to my mind very readily at all. You could almost say I don’t believe there is any such thing as evil, but then someone like Paul Bernardo (Wiki him if you wish) comes along and gives me pause.
So you see, what you are guilty of here is projection. I’ve never thought liberals were evil. The thought has never even crossed my mind…other than as a rebuttal to the ridiculous claim that no one could possibly vote Republican unless they were evil to begin with, that is.
Are you confusing secular with atheist? Still wondering how this relates to atheism. Where’s the atheist message in Baby Phat billboards?
Yes, such a huge leap there. :rolleyes: I notice you didn’t rebut her saying that you had absolutely no evidence for any of the ‘harmful consequences’ being the result of liberal . . .well, anything.
They see it as a decline toward atheism. I’m sorry if the basic fundamentals of the debate are so foreign to you that I have to explain it over and over again.
What exactly am I projecting? I don’t think conservatives are evil. I don’t think you really know what the word “projection” means.
You are quibbling now about the definition of the word “evil.” You only use it for people like Paul Bernardo. Others use it hyperbolically to describe Republican voters, or how they feel about being made to eat liver by their mom, or -10 degree weather. Do you take them literally when they do that, just as you took Jack Batty literally? OK, when YOU use it, you only use it to mean serial killers. But you know damn well what he meant, and you know what I mean.
Let me put it to you this way. If you said to a woman, “If I were to call anyone a bitch, it would be you, but I don’t call women bitches, because that’s a bad word,” would you be surprised if she got offended and angry? And would you feel you didn’t deserve it? Just try, for one second, standing on the other side of one of your screeds. You can make the semantic argument all you want, but your sentiments are clear. You are only denying it to claim the illusory high ground.
The evidence is all around us, at every turn. Look at the way people think, act, talk and dress today, the way they behave in traffic, the behavior encouraged by rap music and other forms of entertainment, the number of abortions and STDs, and the biggest, most harmful aspects of all, drug use and its concomitant crime, death and misery. These things most surely have not flourished the fifty years because of conservative politics.
If you don’t think they’re a result of the permissiveness advocated and promoted by the left over the last fifty years, I’d be very interested in hearing just what it is that you do attribute them to (assuming of course that you even regard them as problems, which, as a liberal, I realize you may very well not). I won’t even make bogus cite demands, as I am willing, unlike some of my opponents around here, to acknowledge that definitive cites do not exist. So, just counter my uncited beliefs and observations with those of your own. (And I don’t mean recite a litany of what is wrong with conservatism; I mean show me how the problems I listed came into being if not as a result of liberal ideology and permissiveness, if you can.)
I’ll be anxiously awaiting your response.
It’s confusing perhaps because the woman behind Baby Phat, Kimora Lee Simmons (I don’t know if you’ve ever watched her show), is not an atheist.
Could it be perhaps that you may be a bit more Victorian than much of current society?