I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “Religion ruins everything.” Hold to your faith, beliefs and morals — that’s fine. But, dogmatic rules are a slippery slope for the easily influenced and end up distorting the principles of any faith into downright absurdity. What does anyone need of religion? I’m not much of a religion basher around here — shoot, I’m not even a very good agnostic, but I can’t stand fundamentalist religious douchebaggery. It just ruins everything. I can see why the vehemently agnostic/atheist lash out at the dogmatic on this board, which has become a safe harbor for those looking to escape the insanity. We have to put up with so much in our life, living in a world where 80%? 90%? of humanity believes in some sort of god, it’s tiresome. Cut 'em some slack.
I’m an atheist–well, maybe an agnostic leaning toward atheism–but I don’t think I’m anti-religion. I can think of at least one Christian pastor I know personally and admire greatly. No, make that two. And that’s not counting my father, who, despite his lack of book learning, is a man of great compassion and wisdom (who deserves a better son than I) in no small part because of his faith.
Having written that, I must admit that I have started a few anti-xtian screeds hereabouts. It’s behavior such as is chronicled in thisthread about my cousins, thisone about my wife’s uncle, or thisone about my brother-in-law that vexes me so.
Just the same:
What’s with the entrenched religious groupthink around here?
My issues with Jesse Leigh have nothing to do with religion per se and everything to do with using her beliefs to make other people feel like crap, or to derail threads. Other posters who flog their pet issue to death run afoul of the SDMB’s tolerance. EvilCaptor comes to mind as a non-religious poster that people get irritated with because they say he obsessed on one topic. Other posters have gotten called on talking about their home country, or some other issue. Jesse Leigh’s just happens to be religion. If she’d dial it down, not because she offends people’s anti-religious bent, but because she goes about it rather obnoxiously, she’d be fine.
“Groupthink” implies to me that people come here and become immersed in and coerced by a centrally-formulated doctrine.
I don’t see that. Rather it may be more that people who come here had already self-selected for certain traits. Whether that that be the traits of collecting trivia on interesting facts, or reading alternative newspapers (two traits that could lead someone to the column and thence the board), or people who like arguing online, or whatever, there will be a variety of correllated traits, in many cases.
I come to this board with the presumption that I am going to run across a disproprortionate to highly disproportionate (based on their respective representation in the general populace) number of:
(1) liberals along the spectrum from moderate liberal to near-communist.
(2) science fiction/fantasy and comic book fans;
(3) television addicts;
(4) people who aspire to write fiction;
(5) gamers;
(6) Renaissance Faire types;
(7) homosexuals;
(8) Obama fans;
(9) agnostics; and
(10) hardcore atheists (which are rare in gen pop. because it’s too much effort).
With some of these groups, I feel little fellow feeling or shared interest, but (1) there’s always a counterexample; and (2) no one’s making me stay here.
Oh, I did forget category (11) – self-satisfied, I-was-the-smartest-in-my-elementary-school-class, sophomoric types who are dying to show how sophisticated they are. And sometimes that’s by dumping on believers. And sometimes it’s through other annoying behavior.
Sometimes the battles are worse among believers than between believers and non-believers – some of the latter have the decency not to get involved in arguments about how many angels, which they don’t believe in, dance on the head of the pin.
So other than concurring that, yes, there’s a healthy (as it were) non-religious or even anti-religious crowd here – I don’t feel that other viewpoints are being actively excluded or denied legitimacy, on a group level.
I think the comradery in participating in that “crowing” answers the OP’s question.
Bullshit. I never claimed God exists, but asserting that something so intangible definitely and unequivocably does not exist is patently retarded. It’s the same as saying that since there is no proof that aliens exist, we know they do not exist. It’s a massive failure in reasoning, and I don’t understand why so many otherwise smart people accept that without question. It’s almost like… they just have faith that God does not exist. 
You’re like the horse with his fucking nose scraping the bottom of the trough, drowning in water and asking why no one will give him a fucking drink. You’re a non-thinking troll whose arguments consist entirely of insults and slogans. You’ve never given a cite in your whole miserable history. You counter evidence simply by denying that it has been offered. Your understanding of science and its purpose is so woefully weak that you emasculate it with your idiotic demands that it prove analytical facts. You’re a fucking dumbass, suffereing delusions of grandeur as you imagine yourself to be some kind of warrior against religion. You are impotent. Your brain has no balls. You’re stupid. You’re a punk. You’re a whore. You’re a one-man Gestapo. You have the intelligence and ethics of Fred fucking Phelps. You’re a little bitty man with a big fat mouth. You’re nothing. You’re sewage. You’re a shit stain on humanity. The fact that I’m commanded to love you is plenty of evidence that God exists.
I hate it. I think such attitudes are very disrespectful and imprudent outside the Pit.
And I laugh at the people that say they do it in the name of fighting ignorance. Very few of them give a damn about other people’s ignorance and more about their own personal agenda. These idiots sure like to say atheism isn’t its own religion but they act just like worst bible thumpers out there.
Really? Then am I retarded for saying, unequivocally, that there is no such thing as an invisible pink unicorn, or a flying spaghetti monster? Am I retarded for saying that at no time in the past did anyone named Heracles hold up the sky on his shoulders? That at no time in the future will anyone named Thor die in battle with a serpent so monstrous that it girds the entire earth?
Cite? Who the Hell are you talking about?
Aliens vs. God is not a good analogy. All we need to know is that life is possible to be safe in assuming there might be life elsewhere in this universe. We, of course, have that evidence, which makes the possibility of God’s existence unique in that respect. I’d never go so far as to say God doesn’t exist, but it’s no where near as easy as accepting the possibility that ETs may exist.
I think one should be polite, but we are all posting to a board whose motto is ‘fighting ignorance’.
I challenge here perpetual motion companies, dowsers and psychics. Along with believers in ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, they all have no evidence to support their belief.
And neither does any religion.
Why is there never any debate between Judaism and Christianity about the Divinity of Jesus?
At least one of these religions is demonstably wrong, yet they make no effort to support their views.
My atheism is not ‘entrenched’. I believe in gravity. I have faith in electricity. All I want is a sign from God (any God) - but there isn’t anything.
Atheists stand up for what they believe in -----> atheists look bad
Christians stand up for what they believe in ----> people who disagree with them should STFU
WTF?
I think it’s because Atheists are standing up for what they don’t believe in. For some reason, that’s considered bad form.
One of my all-time favourite quotations, by Douglas Adams, seems to me apt to this thread:
An “aggressive atheist pride movement” for starters.
You can doubt the existence of an invisible pink unicorn all you want, and I’d share your doubt. Anyone claiming its existence I would naturally balk at and expect them to prove it, and that’s fine. But to say with absolutely certainty that it does not and can not possibly exist is fallacy. You just don’t set out to prove negatives.
Sure you do. For one thing, “invisible” and “pink” exclude one another (unless you mean non-seeable fellow traveler, or some other silliness). There can be no entity which is imperceptible to the facility of vision and that at the same time reflects light in the frequencies we name pink. Simililarly, I think atheists more hard-core than I would say that the usual notion of God is incoherent. I’d certainly say that the notion of Christian God my father worships is impossible. But at any rate, the burden is entirely on the person making the positive assertion of an entity’s existence to support it, and it’s reasonable for a doubter to say that, absent evidence, an entity with self-contradictory descriptive features does not and cannot exist.
“Believing in something patently ridiculous would be ridiculous. Therefore, believing in anything else is ridiculous too.” It’s amazing how much airtime that’s been getting round here.
And, Skald, if failure to have a beef against religion were a crime, you’d be acquitted on your recent posting history. 
Oh, please. If I went around claiming that invisible, intangible goblins were sitting on everyone’s shoulders, and said I could make them go away if people sent me money, most people would say that those goblins didn’t exist. Not that we should be “agnostic” about them. I’m simply treating empty religious assertions the way that most people treat empty non-religious assertions with.
Aliens don’t violate physical laws. And we have plenty of evidence for the fact that aliens CAN exist - namely, our own existence - but not that a God can exist.
No. It’s just that the believer’s side is blatantly stupid, and has absolutely no evidence for it’s assertions.
It’s the religious double standard; religion can’t survive without it. It has to be treated with kid gloves to survive the fact that it’s so stupid.