Well, I haven’t much use for the rabid Madelyn Murray O’Hair atheist–IMO, there’s not much point in being a mere mirror image of the the same blinkered intolerance that one finds at the fundy Web sites.
OTOH, while religion has given humanity great teachings of love and harmony and has inspired marvelous works of art, it IS superstition, as in Pat Robertson praying, unsuccessfuly, for God to spare Virginia Beach from the ravages of Hurricane Isabel. There is no real difference between faith in Zeus or Shiva or Yahweh. I have no wish to pick on the religious and I will defend Christian dopers from being harassed by the ignorant (hi, BadChad!), but atheism and theism make two separate, contradictory statements about the nature of the universe that cannot both be correct.
Thanks, gobear, but that’s not it. While that guy was certainly a fundamentalist, the guy I’m thinking of was a real ‘demons are literally walking the earth’ type of guy.
How many fundie nutjobs does Colorado contribute to the airways? I had assumed that he meant Bob Larson who used to do (still does?) on-air exorcisms while putting his possessed caller on hold for station identification and his persistent calls for funds. Larson was a really horrible liar who has since been outed for cheating with the wife of one of his employees, has frequently been seen flaunting his wealth while crying poverty on the radio, has written (or, at least, has published under his name) a couple of pre-Left Behind novels in which the hero, (a radio show alter ego), fights Satan in demonic duels, and has frequently engaged in near-slanderous attacks on people who have challenged him.
Raving loonies that have religious issues = Very most bad
Athiests can have religious issues. Like O’Hair.
On the other hand, athiests rarely call for Nothing to smite people. That might be part of it, the part where the raving pro-religious loonies call on unstoppable powers. Tends to annoy people, even if they don’t believe in it.
That, and the value judgement system. Atheists may not be more tolerant, but at least they tend to recognize that not everyone believes as they do, even if they think everyone should believe as they do.
In short, I still don’t think Lib was right about the discrimination case, and the Brights thing is a tempest in a very small teacup.
Personal experience, in relation to the ceremonies. Mom’s jewish, dad’s catholic. Raised with both sets of grandparents close by. The “solution” is that, excepting some brief ceremonies of extreme importance, I have never gone to church or synagogue.
You do not want to understand the sheer feeling of distress entering one causes me. It’s purely psychological, but I’ve been on fire and it hurt less and was over sooner.
Humans are social creatures. Being forced into a place that they do not belong is very, very bad for them.
So are rabid political operatives/pundits religious as well? Because your threshold for religious would seem to include them as well. Not necessarily disagreeing with you, just that the distinction around “religion” and the various meanings that words has, can be pretty tricky to work out. Are all deeply held convictions their own religions? Is being strongly anti-religion a religious conviction? I’m not sure what sense that makes. I think it’s more important to note that anyone can be a nutjob, as many are already pointing out. I agree with Lib insofar as if nutjobs really piss you off, there’s something suspicious about the fact that you for some reason find it especially significant when those nutjobs happen to be religious. Obviously, we have threads of this sort all the time with the same interesting problem: should lawyers here feel a bit wary of threads about “asshole lawyers.” Maybe, maybe not. However…
This seems to be a bit of a decemberism: wryly repeating an already contradicted accusation without giving recognition to the fact that both the specific defendant and the general group being referenced have made it clear that they are not calling all people faith nutjobs, much in the same way that when I call some guy an asshole “he” I’m not also saying that Eve is a “he” at the same time.
“These religious wacko’s are just crawling out of the woodwork lately.”
Nope, no rudeness there…
"Lebon Awards are for those who are trying to desperately set humanity back through their uneducated, poorly -if-at all- researched diatribe, fear and ignorance mongerers and general hatred towards humankind.
Please submit your found entries and catagory they should be entered in."
(bolding mine)
Sorry, didn’t the OP ask for entries? And it seems by the following posts, that it was not just religious entries, or it was, or maybe it was, but who really knows.
Let me get this straight, it’s ok to say “religious nutjobs” are “crawling out of the woodwork lately” and you want no religious wars? Seems to me the whole point of this thread, IMO.
I want to nominate the Cardinal(s) in the Catholic Church, who said that “Using Condoms do not stop the spread of HIV/AIDS Virus.” So they want to discredit the medical and scientific research that has been done, and that is documented that works.
Why can’t the Catholic Church get into the 21st Century. I know they want their followers not to have pre-marital sex, but guess what it happens. They should say, we would like our Single Parisoners and those who are teenagers or young adults to be abstinent/celibut until marriage. But, if you can not, please use a condom and protect yourself from HIV/AIDS or STDS. Condoms also helps with unwanted pregnancies.
Okay, that’s it, I’m nominating Libertarian as a religious nutjob. His religion seems to be incidental to his nutjobbery, but he nonetheless fits both qualifiers. His last post is nonsensical and offensive, fucks the Virgin Mary’s ideals of honesty up the ass, and shows that he’s utterly hypocritical when he rails against religious hatred, calls atheist nutjobs religious nutjobs, and refers to reasonable atheists in this thread as “handstabbers.”
How he manages to maintain any respect around this place is beyond me; his hypocrisy seems incredibly transparent to me.
Yup, I can see how that post of your is filled with the love you’re accusing Libertarian of lacking. The whole point is the OP was offensive, but it seems to me it’s ok to be offensive here, as long as it’s not dirrected at the general beliefs of most dopers. I didn’t see anyone jump on the bandwagon to accuse the op any offensive posting, when clearly it was. Again, the op started the thread talking about ‘religious nutjobs’ then went on to ask anyone who could post other examples of people who qualified for the “lebon award” to be posted. When they were, then it bacame an issue because they weren’t directed at the right ‘religious group’? Nope, nothing hypocritical there.
Svt4Him and Lib, I’m not sure why you two are are taking umbrage. This thread is talking about religious nutjobs, lsuch as Texe Marrs, Pat Robertson, or that fellow who runs the CAP movie review site. This thread is not calling all religious people nutjobs. If it pleases you to retaliate, you can start a thread about atheist nutjobs.
In any event, I don’t want anyone to feel rancor, so in the spirit of love and harmony, may I offer each of you a soothing footrub with scented oils and a nice cup of herbal tea?
I’m an athiest who denies the existence of any supernatural entities, and you guys believe in Yahweh, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot love one another.
But that’s just not so. Sure, people here will mock creationism or atrology, but that’s because this site is dedicated to education and myth debunking. OTOH, broad-based attacks on Christianity (or any other religion) meet with stiff resistance (look at the BadChad thread on this page for evidence of that). There is, IMO, a line of demarcation between vigorous disputation on religion and anti-religious bigotry. The problem is that we have yet to find consensus on where that line is.
No hugs from me for either of them. I think Libertarian is being dishonest and weaselly in claiming the OP was offensive, and I don’t have much respect at all for Svt4Him’s cognitive abilities.
It’s no more offensive than a thread about Socialist Nutjobs, or Vegetarian Nutjobs, or Nutjob Actors would be. Communists, vegetarians, and actors are not per se a group to be mocked; the nutjob members of each group are to be mocked.
And if a socialist came into a thread about Socialist Nutjobs and pooped all over it by posting examples of John Bircher nutjobs, and then self-righteously proclaimed that they were pointing out that not all socialists were nutjobs, I’d be equally annoyed – especially if they had a habit of pooping all over innocuous threads in this manner. And if they came back later and declared that the thread’s “whole purpose is to bash progressive people whom a few fascists believe to be nutjobs,” it’d really piss me off, and make me think that person was themselves a complete nutjob.
Libertarian gets hugs from me when he gives a sincere apology for being such a jerk in this thread, and when he promises to save his outrage for genuine outrages and not spray it all over the place every chance he gets.
Isn’t that twice today (so far) that you’ve inserted qualifiers that I didn’t use?