Which is the proper, and most effective, response to that?
- Your beliefs are a load of crap.
- Stop trying to impose your beliefs on me. I don’t do that to you.
You implied that you’re outnumbered so you have to fight like they do.
Never mind, the point is obscure and its not worth another tiff over minor word meanings and such.
It’s so frustrating when you’re right and everyone else is wrong.
No, it isn’t. It’s a survival from ancient history. It just repeats the same old nonsense over and over.
It’s so frustrating when you’re right and everyone else is wrong.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, because supporting “atrocities, misinformation and violations of human rights” is just as reasonable as opposing them. :rolleyes: You are taking your “both sides are just the same” handwaving to a rather disgusting level.
“Atheist activism” might not be effective, but “skeptical inquiry” and “anti-fundamentalist activism” can be. I used to argue with Orthodox Jews a lot, and I was surprisingly effective. More than one person credits me with their atheism, and a number of folks who aren’t atheists (yet :P) credit me with helping to break out of their fundamentalist mold where they accepted everything that came out of the rabbi’s mouth. I’m not writing this to brag, but to show that good things can be accomplished if, instead of smugly rejecting your correspondents’ premises, you listen to them and work through their prism, in their context, and argue against their context only in a way you know they’ll understand. I don’t argue with Orthodox Jews publicly anymore though; I wrote what I needed to write, said what I needed to say, and made clear (because I felt obligated as somebody who could understand where many Orthodox people were coming from) that if anybody wanted to correspond about their struggles with Orthodoxy, I couldn’t promise all the answers, but I’d certainly be happy to discuss the issues. You can’t force people to adopt your positions, even if they are more rational (and they always are 
), so you do what you can, but you don’t troll.
One more thing. Despite some disagreements on non-political-matters in the past on the forum (mainly related to disputes over considerations of etiquette), Rachellelogram and I agree on the issues she gave her position on. We both oppose homophobia, racism, and sexism. We’re both atheists. I suspect we’re both on the left, although I could be wrong there. But I’m sorry, I have to dispute Rachellelogram’s point that a person isn’t “oblige[d]…to be a fighter” or among the “activists” though. It seems cynical and morally bankrupt to me. As JFK said, “the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” Neutrality, sitting down, doing nothing, is a position. It allows bad ideas to overtake national dialogues, influencing mainstream groups. You don’t have to shmooze about the wrongheaded positions of your friends, and if they’re not interested in having such shmoozes, it’s downright obnoxious to try to cajole them. It doesn’t have to be about religion…hell, me, I’m doing what I can with politics these days (mostly research, since I’d spent all my time in Judaic Studies, and need to freshen up on the issues…as well as the nitty-gritty of American history so I can understand the context of where those who disagree with me is coming from). But you have to do something – volunteer, stuff envelopes, something – about some issue…in my book, if you’re not doing anything, it makes you apathetic, and I think apathy is a big problem that in and of itself hurts society.
No, actually, religion is very dynamic. Read some history.
You still don’t get it.
A typical religious person thinks that they are the one who is opposing atrocities, misinformation and violations of human rights.
So you can either talk to them and acknowledge that they have beliefs that you don’t share and respectfully try to convince them that you are right, or you can simply blow them off and refuse to listen and insist that you can’t possibly be wrong and force your views on them.
To me, the former is the way that a modern, rational, enlightened person acts, and the latter is how a closed-minded religious nut acts. Don’t act like a closed-minded religious nut.
No, it isn’t. It’s the same collection of errors, delusions and lies as it was thousands of years ago, with very few additions.
So what? They typically believe that even while they are committing them.
Or I recognize that their beliefs are foolish and do not deserve respect, that they will take the false respect you want me to offer as validation of their beliefs, and that they are simply irrational. And where do you get “force my beliefs on them”?
A modern, rational, enlightened person rejects religion because it is wrong.
Sigh.
You can just keep insisting that, but it doesn’t make it true.
Religion has changed dramatically and keeps changing today. That’s not to say that most religious people change, or the mainstreams ones. But there are new religious ideas and movements happening all the time. Most are small and not very visible, which is why most people don’t know much about them. Many are dismissed as cults, or not quite religion. Even mainstream religion changes. We have gay-oriented churches now, for instance.
I wouldn’t expect you of all people to be aware of this. But don’t argue from ignorance.
No, they don’t typically do that, not today.
Well, duh, you’ve already done that. So what more is there to say or do?
Depends on what you mean by “do not deserve respect.”
It’s just amazing how much you sound exactly like a religious person when you talk. And you don’t even see it - another hallmark of a religious person.
By all means, if you wish, YOU defer politely when someone intrudes rudely on your door, your property, and your time. I’m not sure where you get off judging what someone else does in their own circumstances. And frankly it’s a bit tiresome in this thread insinuating that everyone else is setting up a false choice to be passive or lose all civility. One need not start a “screaming match” simply to respond to someone else’s statement of belief with your own statement of fact.
The confusion problem, which apparently you suffer, is that it’s perfectly ok to spout florid superstitious nonsense, possibly accompanied by personal judgements of character, entirely unchallenged as if it were incontrovertible fact.
If someone tells me I’m going to hell because I don’t believe Jesus died for me, why do I have to be the tolerant one who meekly says “oh, isn’t that interesting?” If someone works to promote laws that they’ll readily tell you are based on elaborate religious readings, by your lights, I’m simply to say “oh, I’ll vote against that”, without explaining exactly why it’s entirely founded on horseshit?
People who intrude their beliefs on you in ANY context open themselves up to a volley of return fire. If they can’t take the heat, they can keep their opinions to themselves. End of story.
You spout a lot about what a typical religious person thinks. Is it also what you think?
I didn’t say that. This is not about someone coming to your door. It’s about whether you should go to THEIR door.
I’m not judging.
It’s a rhetorical device. You’re right. But I bet a screaming match is what would happen with alot of posters here.
Depends.
People have an absolute legal (and moral) RIGHT to do just that. It’s freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
You have the same right to respond.
If they do it to you, in your face, you most certainly should respond aggressively.
But this isn’t about any of that. It’s about whether atheists should go out and actively confront religious people who are minding their own business and tell them their views are wrong. At least that’s what I’m talking about. I already agree that you can and should respond in self-defense to anyone who tries to impose their religion, or spew insulting nonsense at you or whatever. Of course.
Of course not. But that’s not what this is about.
I agree.
But this is about whether you should go intrude your beliefs on them.
And they are all the same sort of nonsense that’s been around thousands of years.
Yes, they do. They are quite self satisfied and self righteous when they set out to persecute some gays, or beat one to death. Or support bombing people of the “wrong” religion. Or insist that women should be punished for being “sluts” or not being properly submissive to men.
Yawn. Your constant attempts to create false equivalences are repetitive and boring. For someone who insists that religion has all sorts of new arguments, you do repeat the same old ones a lot.
Where is this happening? Where are the door-to-door atheists? Where are the atheists that go into churches during service to protest? Where are the atheists that try to get on church boards to change how and what they teach?
Where?
Thank ghod someone is finally here to speak on behalf of the poor persecuted majority. What next, a thread titled “But what about the poor muggers?”
Q: “What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness and an atheist?”
A: “Someone who knocks on your door for no reason.”
Oh, OK, then we’ll just agree to agree in a world where post #30 never happened and you didn’t say:
[QUOTE=lance strongarm]
So when someone comes to your door with a brochure about whatever religion, are your only choices to go quietly sit in a corner or start a screaming match?
[/quote]
:dubious:
Though I’m at fault for not noticing this thread is 6 pages long and you’ve probably moved onto more defensible ground in that time.
It’s clear that you are not interested in educating yourself. You sound as closed-minded as a typical religous person. In fact, I know of many religious people who have displayed more open-mindedness. This is not about your beliefs, just your understanding of theirs, and of history.
All of them?
No, the vast majority of religious people don’t do any of that. Many openly and vigorously oppose all those things.
You’re just proving my point even more.
That was a different issue. That actually was about when someone comes to your door. Sorry if I confused you.
If someone comes to your door, and politely asks to talk to you about their religion, to me that doesn’t rise to the level of outrage or imposing their religion or insulting your or any of that. I would politely tell them no thanks. If they start yelling or whatever, then they crossed the line.
If you want to go door to door and politely ask people to talk about your beliefs about religion with them, knock yourself out.
I didn’t start the thread.
That’s the whole point. Glad you’re finally starting to get it.
Do you think atheists SHOULD go door to door?
THAT is what I’m discussing, based on the question in the OP.