Generally atheists don’t have any particular bias against Christianity. It’s just that some U.S. Christians are unable to view atheism as anything other than a rejection of their particular god and faith.
Why would we think otherwise when you people gripe and moan about things like cross memorials? It’s a freaking symbol. It’s not going to hurt you. Atheists want to wipe every trace of Christianity from public view.
Ahem:
I don’t know of any atheists who want to rid any symbols of Christianity from public view.
On the other hand, we do object when our government, the government of all of us citizens, shows favoritism to Christianity. Not only does it make us feel like second-class citizens, we’re guaranteed by our Constitution that it won’t do that.
So if you can find a single example of atheists objecting to publicly-seen Christianity that’s not a case of the government doing it, I’ll listen.
- What is or isn’t in the Bible has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.
- I don’t feel threatened.
- I am asking for evidence that supports the belief in your deity. Could you please explain why your evidence pertains only to the god you believe in?
Thank you.
Without any reference to your thought process, I will note that such thought processes in general form the root of virtually all forms of bigotry, intolerance and racism. It’s a very simple pair of two very simple fallacies.
The fallacy of composition comes into play when you take a small, non-representative sample of a group, and attempt to claim that the entire group is the same as that item. It’s fairly obvious to us that this would be a fallacy if we use inanimate objects, such as cars. “Your car must be all oily, there is oil in the oil filter.” is as much of a logical error, and for the same reasons, as “Some people who happen to share [identifying marker(s)] did something bad, therefore everybody in [identifying marker(s)]'s group is an asshole!”
The fallacy of division comes into play when you take what is or may be true about a group in aggregate, and apply it to individuals. Again, it’s clear to us that it’s a fallacy if we use an example like a car. “If you take a lug nut off your car, that must be a really fast lug nut because I just saw you driving your car at about 100 miles an hour!” And however, for some reason some people do not make the connection, and don’t understand why having a generalization in your head for “how atheists are” does not then allow you to intuit the mental or emotional life of any given atheist.
Now, the issue of what types of displays are valid on public land is a side topic (and I won’t participate in that hijack), but I will point out that you are using the fallacy of composition to build a fictitious “Atheists” group and then the fallacy of division to claim that individual atheists are fungible within that group as exemplars. It’s a fallacy sandwich. Cut it out.
Well to be fair some are pretty vocal about how evil religion is.
I tend to be of the view that what you believe is between you and your higher power.
Is the bible or any great sacred book written by god and should be taken as literal? No freaken way, these books have been and continue to be written by men and women trying to wrap their minds around the universe. In the story of Jesus we glimpse the early days of our culture. The central message is that we must move from selfish love to self less love, the stories [new testament] seem to help explain this.
Again I have an innate feeling that their is a higher power, you can call it whatever you like but I use the Christian tradition as my framework. But hey some of my best friends are Buddhists, Atheists, Sikhs, Moslems and I even know a Baptist [truth be known he is a bit of a looney] and they all have their paths to follow…
That’s a criticism of all religions, not Christianity.
Yeah that’s what I meant if not said.
To a large degree I don’t disagree with some of the view points but to say that religion is the cause of wars [as a lot do] is a bit lazy. Religious entities are groups of humans who may [many times falsely] rationalise violence through religion. We even see people invoking God as a reason for the middle east wars when we all know it is about economics and keeping certain governments in power.
In metaverse of infinite space, time, and permutations, the only possibility is that god has created us in an infinite number of contexts, and we have created god in return in an infinite number of contexts.
I tend to agree, actually: not that I think religion is “really” peaceful, but I think in most cases, the cynical and greedy have used religion as a figleaf to justify wars that had much more temporal goals. One of the possibly scary parts about modern Islamic terrorism is that in some ways it might be an exception. But that’s a topic for another thread.
Ooops! Thread’s over, guys- turns out there was only one possibility all along!
It certainly is.
Education is the key to it all, many people who understand and have studied religion tend to have a wide set of beliefs and are much more accepting of other view points. Please note studying One Book does not make you educated.
Y’all aren’t seriously wondering why yer not gettin’ many responses, are you?
At 8 pages? Doubt it.
Jericho hadn’t even been an inhabited city for at least a century at the supposed time of the Exodus.
8 pages of sycophantic back slapping.
What about 13 years of claims that there is evidence for the existence of gods that we just aren’t smart enough to understand and/or worthy of viewing? This thread wasn’t created in a vacuum-please reread the OP.
By the way, there is no legitimacy in bitching that the evidence would be presented…but why bother because us evil atheists(which apparently make up 99.99% of the board) would only dismiss it. Present the evidence, get our actual reaction to it instead of the one you are imagining, then(if called for) do your bitching.
The fact that you immediately dismissed my personal experiences as lies is enough proof that you will auto-reject any pro-Christian evidence.
This happens here all the time when the subject is republicans.
I’m sorry but I do not think this is fair. You have attempted to put forth other evidences that support your religious beliefs and we have put up criticisms of those evidences. You either drop the argument or you accuse us of rejecting them merely because we are atheists.
What about your experiences are necessarily supernatural? You’ve mentioned, erroneously, that only Christians have ‘miraculous’ healing and life changing events. Either you are not well informed on people of other religions or you simply choose to ignore their experiences. In either case, for you to then comment on Czarcasm’s immediate dismissal is grossly hypocritical.