I hope Jesse Leigh sticks around, just to add a little flavor to the usual thinking on this board rather than being chased off and further cementing this board as hostile to pro-religious opinions.
Before you blast me, you should know that I’m an atheist (agnostic?). Fundamentalist, evangelizing atheists make atheists look bad. I don’t understand why some people are so offended at things like someone saying “God bless you” when they sneeze. Even mentioning God frequently shouldn’t be a problem, as long as a person stays reasonably on topic.
Oh man, are we supposed to be anti-religion? Sorry guys I’ve been busy lately. Frankly, I’d be happy if one of the mods would come by and equip me with a new USB port. This old serial port in the nape of my neck itches and takes forever to download my groupthoughts.
You saw the “Fighting Ignorance” slogan thingy, right? Fervent, unyieldingly literal religious belief requires a high level of wilful ignorance which means either patrons of the board self select to minimize discomfort or they get their ignorance dispelled will ye, nill ye. The few vocally religious who withstand the winnowing process tend to be either invincibly stupid, or they are in no way unyieldingly literal, if still fervent, in their belief. The smart ones who think get along just fine and roll their eyes at having to be nominally on the same side as the Fighting Ignorants.
Besides, it’s tasteless and tacky to insist on airing your particular kink at EVERY. SINGLE. CONVERSATIONAL. OPPORTUNITY. This goes for EVERY sort of kink. Religions, like sexual practices, are most enjoyable to all when spoken of least, really. You’ll find similar pile ons of any mono-subject poster who just can’t shut the fuck up about whatever irrelevant thing has them all wound up at the moment.
I agree, and on this board it’s self-proclaimed atheists who engage in this practice the most. Get the fuck over yourselves, nobody gives a shit. (there are very few pro-religion posters here anyway, most of the time people like spouting off about how atheistic they are just for the hell of it, unprompted :rolleyes:)
You believer types have had thousands of years to burn unbelievers at the stake, bag us and throw us in rivers, and generally poke sticks at us. It’s payback time, baby!
So is it unfair to be burdened with the sins of your ancestors? Of course – unless your religions says otherwise. Too bad for you folks!
This is very snobbish. Your purported winnowing process looks an awful lot like abuse aimed at a small minority of posters. It’s true that religious literalists don’t do well here because their position is absurd, but there’s a lot of general dumping on religion, too. It looks less like fighting ignorance and more like crowing about one’s perceived numerical or intellectual superiority.
Jesse Leigh is annoying because she mentions her religion in practically every post, even when it’s completely irrelevant. When she doesn’t do that, she’s quite pleasant.
And personally, I’m not offended by someone blessing me when I sneeze. I’d rather they didn’t, but that’s not the same thing.
Sure, you can find threads that support the idea that there is anti-religious feeling in these parts. You can also find threads [thread=496248]like this one[/thread] in which atheists come in for a considerable amount of scolding. (And the thread you hold up as an example and the one I do both contain many individual posts that run counter to the larger point we are trying to demonstrate.)
I think most SDMB posters are smart enough to figure out that not all atheists are “fundamentalist, evangelizing” atheists. If they do believe that every single atheist fits into that category, well, hell, I can’t be responsible for their misguided view. It certainly seems like overkill to intimate that atheists should stop saying what they think on this board because some religious person might get the wrong idea.
Even so, like the OP I am all in favor of posters who “add flavor” to the boards. Extremists or fools of any POV usually get called out sooner or later, often to extremely entertaining result. That’s a principal reason I love it here.
To be fair, the vast amount of dumping isn’t on the religious, per se as it is more specifically dumping on those of evangelical Christian bent. I’ve never seen anyone bagged on for being Jewish, or Wiccan, or Unitarian Universalist, or Buddhist, for example, since none of those religions tend toward either preaching/witnessing or a mindlessly smug assumption that everybody, simply EVERYBODY is onboard with their beliefs. That assumption, along with the precious bridling and eye popping and huffy “well I nevers!” that ensue from so many of them when confronted with an unapologetic atheist makes them an irresistable target for poking fun. Around these parts any pompous ass that makes broad assumptions and sweeping generalizations is fair bait for a deflating and snotty Christians are no different and in no way exempt from that.
What’s your evidence that atheism around here is ‘entrenched’? I believe in my microwave oven because when I put a bowl of soup in there, some inexplicable magic makes the soup hot. If there’s a timeless, omniscient, omnipotent being out there, he ought to be able to show up my microwave. I’m completely open to his existence, but he just doesn’t deliver the goods.
The vast majority of posters have not expressed the slightest problem if people make casual references to religion. That most definitely includes lunacies like getting upset at “gesundheit” or “God bless” for sneezes.
I’m in the camp that vastly prefers people not make a parade of their religious beliefs or atheism because 1. it’s tacky and 2. I don’t give a shit. People who seize opportunities to witness or belittle religion in completely unrelated threads are behaving like assholes, IMO.
I don’t respect people who use the sloppy ‘group think’ accusation either.
True. But not everybody bothers to make the distinction.
When people slag on the idea of gods and religions in general, they’re being all-inclusive. The invective is usually targeted at Christianity, but religion does tend to get dismissed for being “irrational.”
You know how people here (rightly) make fun of fundamentalist Christians for acting like a persecuted minority when they’re actually the group in power? This sounds a little like that.
Now, I’m not seeing that–someone like oh, say tomndebb doesn’t get all shirty when confronted with someone who says religion is a buncha hooey, he just puts his case out there and if the atheist is also intellectually honest they’ll have a nice discussion. Poke one of the bloated ones of either stripe, though, and you get an over the top reaction that just screams to be made fun of. That’s just monkey nature and everybody knows how THAT works. The fun trick, though, is that there are vanishingly few environments in contemporary America where the Christians are in a minority to the point where nobody will even pay lip service to being inclusionary and this place is one of them. So the stuffed shirt Christians who react badly to teasing are going to get a powerful drubbing around here from those of us who have to smile nice and bite our tongues a million times a day lest we incur societal wrath and the attendant backlash.
If they’d grow some thicker skin and some empathy and realize that the way they feel after being raked over the coals bears a strong similarity to what some of us go through all the time, perhaps they’d be a bit less offended by people who don’t share their views and a bit less automatic in their everyday behaviors and expressions and perhaps then a bit of the societal imbalance would be redressed, thereby raising the emotional comfort level of us all and reducing tension. That’s a good thing!
I’ve been noticing a large amount of radical atheism on these boards as well. Now, I’m a completely non-religious agnostic who was never raised with religion. I think my problem is that I never had the “crisis of the faith” that many atheists had, so I just don’t feel threatened or defensive by religion. Anyway, the aggressive atheists leave a bad taste in my mouth. We all have our beliefs and should learn to work with each other, not fight each other at every possible moment. ****
It’s the job of those claiming he exists to come up with evidence. That’s exactly the way every other assertion is treated - except for religious ones.
As for the SDMB having “entrenched anti-religion groupthink”, that’s apparently a matter of perspective. From my viewpoint the SDMB leans fairly heavily pro-religion.
The believers will never, ever let that happen. They will by nature try to impose their delusions on the rest of us, and endanger the rest of us by following them. And you are fooling yourself, or simply lucky ( for the moment ) if you think you haven’t been threatened by them; by, say, the religious opposition to stem cell research. Given the poor judgment religion creates, the believers inevitably spend their lives inflicting harm on the world, even when they mean well.
