Said another way, both religion and society are human artifacts that co-evolve.
Or society evolves, and religion declines and becomes less and less important in the process.
Religion still relevant as churches lose members – DW – 06/29/2020.
Thanks for the response. Personal lens I get, but I’m interested in communal lens. Many issues (like abortion and SSM back a while ago) didn’t have a single communal position. You’d have to pick which of several conflicting opinions you were going to adopt.
As you found, not everyone reads the Bible in the same way. You used “love my neighbor” as justification for your progressive views. I now don’t suspect you are more moral than the Bible, I know it. Your old church read it differently.
My guess that all of us base our morals on society, our upbringing, and our ethical reasoning - and then believers select which parts of the Bible or other holy book supports these.
Could you give some examples of this? The most fervent atheist proselytizing I’ve seen barely rises to the level of the signboard you’ll find in front of nearly every church.
Do you consider books where an atheist says what I don’t believe and why as proselytizing? How about books responding to theists “proofs” of god?
The most active proselytizing I’ve seen isn’t to deconvert anyone, but only to fight against religious laws and rules which take away the rights of those who don’t believe in the majority view, like Blue Laws, prayers in school, and teaching of religious doctrine like creationism in school.
Baptists have come to my door. Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door. An atheist? Never. No atheist missionaries either.
From what I heard, in many places coming out of the atheist closet can get you ostracized. In some parts of the world it can get you killed. And coming out of the closet isn’t a term I use lightly. 50 years ago gay people didn’t advertise their sexual preferences either.
I’ve been lucky in living in places where this hasn’t been a problem, but it divides some families.
I believe so and I believe that many human artifacts have points and serve functions. I do not believe any good is served trying dissuade anyone of religious belief.
My read of many posts on this board and even in this thread is their representing an actively antagonistic view to faith and to those who have it.
Dawkins is good example of a proselytizing atheist.
No religious identification (nones) is the fasting growing group in America, FWIW.
I would have to disagree. What I have seen is antagonistic against those who seek to impose their religion on others, but against those of faith and of their faith, I’ve seen very little.
Not none, as there are those who I think are looking to antagonize in any way they can, and a religious argument is the excuse, but not the reason. I’ve certainly seen people disagree about the existence of deities in debate, but that’s not being antagonistic against faith and those who have it, that’s simply disagreeing with someone else’s opinion.
I’d say that he’s the closest, but that example kinda shows how far from proselytizing atheist really are. Compare him to any televangelist, and tell me which one is actually trying to get you to follow him, rather than think for yourself.
My bold
I’m not one to nit-pick typose, but in this context, that one is quite amusing.
I would guess that is an attempt at self-preservation by those who don’t believe.
After covid year I may need to do some fasting myself!!!
Do you have the same advice for those who promote their religion?
Like who? Who are the televangelists nowadays?
Trying to find daylight between what you actually said, and my description of it. Not seeing any.
is from Wikipedia.
Is a Cracked article from 2018. It’s not like there are fewer, despite the ones busted for sex and money scandals.
Before I had Sirius, in some parts of the country nearly every AM station I tuned into had someone preaching.
A bet that with a little bit of work you could find cable channels full of these clowns.
Communal lens is generally through your local church or tradition. There are different ways to read Scripture but there are some general positions that people coalesce around. Like of like how in Judaism you had schools based on a certain rabbi.
I mean most people don’t read ancient Greek or Hebrew. So it helps when people who can tell you what it says.
So how do you explain my moderate Republican atheism when my views were diametrically different? 
(Granted, I wanted civil unions for LGBTQ but I wasn’t for gay marriage).
Oh and I came around on the economic views after reading the Old Testament, not the New.
Put it this way, I went from George Will to Elizabeth Warren in 2 years with my conversion as the demarcation line.
Anyone attacking religious posters would and should be shut down by the mods.
Back before your time, I think, every so often we’d get an atheist coming into GD from outside ranting about religion. Doper atheists asked for logical justification as fast or faster than theists did.
Now, do you consider someone attacking a belief in a Flat Earth as actively antagonistic (and somehow obnoxious.) Creationism? Chemtrails?
Dawkins - who appears to be an asshole in other respects - proselytized how? For having the nerve to write a book? To have the nerve to go on interview shows? To participate in debates on atheism? (Do you think he proselytizes evolution also, and is that wrong?) To have the nerve to pay for some ads on London buses saying that there almost certainly isn’t a god?
As for nones, I wonder how many are atheists and how many are apathists. Back 50 years ago the gay guy who edited the veterans group magazine my father ran was a “confirmed bachelor.” Kind of the same thing today.
Then your “translation” wasn’t really necessary in the first place, was it?
Yes. I think both are disrespecting the beliefs of others.
Yes that is proselytizing.
But how did you pick the church with these views? That’s what I meant. I went to a very moderate Conservative temple as a kid, partly due to accident of location and based on what my father picked. And it probably had something to do with what they charged for Hebrew School, knowing him.
And I became an atheist the very second I learned that Moses did not write the Bible. The whole belief structure fell apart. I was a Republican atheist also.
Who knows why beliefs change. In my case it was exposure to new information. Sometimes it is opening ones eyes.
BTW, given what a big change SSM was, full points in my book for civil unions. After all, that’s where Obama was at the beginning. My good opinion of your beliefs has not changed.
The text read:
There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
No call to action, except enjoying one’s life. And it was done in reaction to Christian ads.
If Christians’ only outreach was running bus ads, I probably wouldn’t consider them to be proselytizing either.
Hell, on my Stan Freberg boxed set I have an ad he did for the Lutherans telling people to go to church, since you never know what golfing on Sunday instead will do to you. An atheist running something similar would probably really catch hell, as it were.