OK, you say that you don’t mind having glurge debunked by Snopes. I see that and apologize.
Please show me a post on this board where a theist told you they expected you to “shut up and conform” to their way of thinking.
If they were minding their own business. But if Congress were preparing to pass a law requiring pineapple on all pizzas, if 400 years ago Europe was torn for ten decades in a pineapple - no pineapple war, and if some country today was riven by sectarian strife between the believers in an Invisible Pink Unicorn and Invisible Purple Camel, then it might behoove the more rational among us to say stop the madness.
Plus the charges of intolerance thrown by Tris, Faithfool, and Polycarp are meant to tell me to not speak up.
Welcome to the SDMB, Taber!
Your post is very reasonable (translation: I agree with it) but don’t expect much response. Most theist s of all sttripes just don’t seem to understand the inherent contradiction in saying God cannot be expected to provide evidence of his existence on one hand, and a moral code supposedly given by God on the other. The other thing I don’t get is why they say God won’t show himself to allow for faith, while God shows himself all the time in the Bible, and even punishes Moses for doing something that reduces the direct evidence of his existence.
No, they’re telling you to quit being intolerant.
Um, thank you. But what about the “angry” part? I’m trying to see both sides and help to broker some sort of tacit agreement. Why is that bad for the folks who aren’t trying to hurt you, but to assist as well?
When they redefine intolerance as “any POV contradicting theism,” they are effectively telling me and other atheists that our view may not be spoken in polite society. We are to shut up and be quiet.
Ok, I really, really do give up because this is verging on ridiculous. That’s twice now that you’ve insulted me, gobear, and your apology was half-hearted and forced, at best. Regardless, I am sorry for any offense I have caused you or for being intolerant. That is the last thing I’d ever want attached to my character, so I’m more than willing to cast it out in myself before I attempt to help anyone with it.
However, I can’t speak for Tris since I don’t know him that well, but I had believed, or hoped rather, that Poly and I and Seige, among others, were doing our very best to consider other viewpoints and ideas as respectfully as possible. I see that I, at least, have fallen woefully short.
I will back out of this thread now, re-read what I’ve written and try to correct my lack of sensitivity and poor attitude. I appreciate you pointing it out to me, from a different point of view.
Again, I’m very sorry.
I don’t see anyone in this thread defining intolerance as “any POV contradicting theism.” “Insulting people you disagree with” seems to be a more prevailing definition, and one that you meet in spades.
:eek:
Wait! Stop the presses!! I do get it now. I believe there is a misunderstanding. I am not a theist. I’m more of an agnostic deist. And I have no desire whatsoever, to make any “shut up and be quiet” nor that your “view may not be spoken in polite society” ever. For from it. I was lobbying for respect on both sides, is all. That’s it and nothing more.
I hope that at least clarifies one position. Well, mine.
Are you saying that without belief in a god, human beings would completely lack the concept of compassion? That all that ever motivates giving and helping is an external source of guilt or fear, not an innate generosity or empathy? You’re not painting us Godless Heathens in a very fine light, here.
I’d think it might be the opposite. With no God, there’s no illusion that The Big Guy Upstairs will sort it all out in heaven, nor the suspicions that “gee, maybe God is punishing them all for being heathens” or “it didn’t happen here 'cause we’re nice, God-fearing people.” If nobody else is going to help us, and this particular world is all we have, maybe we depend on ourselves to make things better, instead of sitting back and waiting for justice in an afterlife that may or may not exist.
Given your very first post in this thread, you have an interesting view of “polite society”. Stop moving the goal-posts. Lord Ashtar did not tell you to “shut up and be quiet”.
And you seem bound and determined to ignore that I’m criticizing ideas, not people (except for Bible literalists–they’re drooling morons.) Religion makes no sense at all in a rational worldview.
Well, the Supreme Court did it when it ruled that I have to accept “Ceremonial Deism” when it’s practiced in public instutions that I pay for. Any theist who says I have to accept “in God we trust” on the money or “under God” in public schools is telling me to shut up and conform. Ditto to if they tell me to accept Franklin fucking Graham performing a benediction at the presidential inauguration (and thus turning it into a religious ceremony) or any clergy offering prayers to Congress on the public tit and in a public building taking away time when those public officials are supposed to be attending to public business.
Yeah, and some of us have our tax money paying for abortions that we do not endorse either…
But Lord Ashtar specifically asked who on this board told other posters on this board to “shut up and conform”?
Fight those who are not minding their own business. Don’t assume to include those of us (like Polycarp, Siege, faithfool, etc.) who, as far as you know, are minding our own business. Do you know that we want to impose our beliefs on you? Have we claimed that we do? If so, fight us. If not, do us the courtesy of assuming that we just want to live our lives, believe what we believe, and not be insulted for it.
Faithfool brings up some excellent points about being less insulting and more tolerant. You (the collective “you”—not singling anyone out specifically) don’t have to shut up and be quiet. It’s possible to tell those of us with faith that you don’t share our faith (and think we are “mistaken” in our faith) without going so far as to tell us that we’re deluded fools.
I think that some of the outfits people wear are abysmal, and while I may not tell them that they look fabulous, I somehow refrain from telling them they look like shit. See? There’s a middle ground there. To tell someone, with great relish and bluntness, that they look absolutely terrible isn’t necessary. You can say, “I don’t think it works for you.” Or, “Maybe the green pantsuit is better.” It’s never going to ilicit a positive response from someone to say to them, “Oh my GOSH. You look like such a fat hideous cow in that.” Yet some of you are doing something similar to that, and you wonder why it pisses the rest of us off. You say you are being “truthful.” Why, yes, you are. Just as much as the person who tells someone else that they look like a fat hideous cow is being “truthful.” They are truthfully telling someone exactly how they feel, after all.
You make a choice. If you choose your words more carefully, temper them a little, perhaps you’ll ruffle a few feathers now and then. But for the most part people will accept what you have to say, even if they don’t always agree with it. Or, you can say exactly what’s on your mind, in a more blunt, insulting way, and be branded an asshole for it. Your choice. You can’t say whatever you want, in any manner that you want, and not risk being called an asshole. This seems to not get through to some of you. You want it all your way. You want to tell people how stupid and deluded they are, and you want them to not think you are an asshole for doing so. Sorry, it simply does not work that way. And it never will.
An abortion is not religious statement. It’s not an establisment violation. The government is not restricted from using taxpayer money in ways which offend you, only from propagating a specific religious view.
Anyone who has argued in support of “Ceremonial Deism” has done that figuratively if not literally.
But you miss a crucial bit–one can omit the “deluded” comments and limit oneself solely to doubting the existence of any gods, and one will still be called an intolerant asshole. It’s impossible to be an atheist publically and not get called names or draw the hate of the righteous, which explains why some of us are getting a mite tetchy.
Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense. Whoever investigates a religion as he would any department of science is called a blasphemer. Whoever contradicts a priest; whoever has the impudence to use his own reason; whoever is brave enough to express his honest thought, is a blasphemer. When the missionary speaks slightingly of the wooden god of a savage, the savage regards him as a blasphemer. To laugh at the pretensions of Mohammed in Constantinople is blasphemy. To say in St. Peter’s that Mohammed was a prophet of God is blasphemy. There was a time when to acknowledge the divinity of Christ in Jerusalem was blasphemy. To deny his divinity is now blasphemy in New York.
– Robert Green Ingersoll, “Interviews,” Works, v. 5, p. 50, quoted from Joseph Lewis, The Ten Commandment, “Third Commandment,” pp. 212-3
in light of the cultural changes since 1877, for “New York,” read, “The USA.”