Hey, what’s wrong with a country where the head of state is also the head of the established church and bishops sit in the upper chamber?
Try complaining about the influence of religion in one of those constituionally secular republics such as Ireland or the USA.
I’m glad someone asked this question…cuz I was wondering, myself.
“Assholes are everywhere” seems like a plausible explanation, to me.
The strange thing is…you pretty much expect a JW or fundie baptist to try to shove their beliefs down your throat. In my opinion, its strange that someone should be so uptight about their belief in nothing. And I go on this site: http://www.atheists.org/, and it seems most of the site’s content is used to try to debunk other religions. Who are they trying to convince, anyway?
Hey, it’s fine for you guys, but we Yanks (or Seppoes, as I hear Brits refer to us sotto voce) fought a revolution precisely to free our nation from that sort of nonsense (plus the whole “taxation without representation,” thing, the Stamp Act, mercantilism… yada, yada, yada). American democracy is strictly secular because we wished to avoid England’s example of hanging Quakers, forcing non-believers to pay an ecclesiastical tax–abolished in England around WWI, I think, and requiring religious tests to hold political office.
I firmly support a person’r fundamental right to espouse any damnfool nonsense they please, but I also just as firmly require that they not force their damnfool nonsense on other people. If schoolchildren wish to pray at luch or before an algebra test, fine. If they wish to pray as a group, fine. But the school cannot require the student body en masse to pray–that is an intolerable breach of the individual’s right to freedom of conscience.
LateComer, I think you may be missing the point here. The discussion at hand is more board related and has minimal to do with the separation of Church and State. Apache has not even mentioned his own religous beliefs or political views in this thread. He is annoyed that some atheist posters around here are openly hostile to religion, feel themselves intelectually superior, and will falsely include another’s beliefs with the likes of extremist causes. It is a question of civility - not of law.
I have seen atheists on this board say things along the lines of, “well, at least I don’t believe everything in a 2000 year old book of fairy tales and that everybody besides me and my little group of friends is going to burn in hell”. A proper response to this would be “I don’t either, asshole”.
Apache erred in overgeneralizing (some atheists are assholes, true, but not all) and failing to use links to examples of atheists using bad behavior.
That’s the site for an atheist organization. We get organizations too, ok? The point of that site is to let atheists know that there are others out there like them. If you live on the east coast you wouldn’t know it, but there are moderate-sized towns throughout the country in which one would never meet another atheist. I didn’t even know there were people who didn’t believe in god until I was 10. I was one of those people 4 years later, but I had to work the philosophy out on my own. That site provides some arguments for athiests to read through, refine their own beliefs, use in argument, whatever they wish.
BTW, as a former agnostic (ages 12-14), I don’t get the constant drive to redefine the word as some wishy-washy undecidedness. Agnosticism is (or was) the philosophy that claims about the supernatural cannot be proven or disproven. So it’s really more of an epistemology claim than a metaphysical world view. It’s not indecisiveness, it’s the claim that decision can’t be reached by anybody conclusively. Personally, that seems to me just like a focused aspect of skepticism. Defeating skepticism is a subject we realists ought to take up in GD sometime, but it’s not for the Pit. Suffice to say that I feel confident denying specific gods, most commonly the Judeo-Christian one, on the basis of internal contradictions. Since I’m making a claim about a supposedly supernatural being (that it is logically inconsistent), I’m no longer an agnostic, I’m an athiest.
As for whether religionists are “intellectually inferior” I don’t think they are. I would say that taking anything on “faith”, meaning to believe it absent evidence, is intellectually lazy. I know many smart people with good reasoning skills who use those skills in chemistry, engineering or other sciences who also believe in god or gods. I think they’re selectively applying their intelligence, it’s closer to willful blindness. That’s just my guess at what’s going on in their heads, I’ve spent years trying to find anything intellectually redeeming about religion as a metaphysical worldview and have failed to find it. If those people really have found something they’ve failed to tell me what it is.
I don’t think that behavior is typical of the regular SDMB atheist contingent. You usually see that from the “school’s out” crowd, a form of adolescent sullenness thaqt manifests itself as a blanket rejection of religion without a frim philosophical basis. Mind, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Now, I do think that there is no evidence for believing in the supernatural, but I don’t consider myself intellectually superior to a theist. Some theists, like Polycarp and Triskadekamus** are firmly convinced that God has given the gift of reason to humanity to further their discovery of Him. They, like the SDMB, Jews, the pagans, and other religious believers, feel strongly that they have been vouchsafed a foretaste of the Divine Presence.
And that’s fine, because ultimately, faith is a thing that one wither has or has not, and some questions lie outside the domain of the scientific method. My beef with some of the more fervent Christians on this board is the tone of some GD threads, as in “The existence of god is just blinding ly obvious, and if you don’t beleive you’re just being stubborn.” That really sets my teeth on edge. Moreover, in the last two threads of this nature, the OPs basically quit in the face of rational discussion, and said, in essence" “Well, we can’t argue with you, so we’re just going to run away. but we’re still right, and you’re still wrong.” In addition, one GD thread starter told people who were asking her to back up her statements, “well, I’m no good at arguing, so if you want evidence to support my fundamentalist views, you need to look it up yourself.” I have no respect for such intellecutally lazy and disreputable tactics.
To thestis: if you wish to open threads that espouse your subjective views, like "This is how God is acting in my life, " fine by me. I have no argument with unfalsifiable statements that are not subject to rational evaluation. If you want to start Bible discussion threads, go for it. However, if you start Creationist threads that reek of basic ignorance of the subject, have the cojones to finish the discussion and open your minds to the evidence, and don’t ignore or gloss over scientific objections to your Young Earth Creationist nonsense.
"To quote Divine in Pink Flamingos, ‘There are two kinds of people in this world: my kind and assholes.’"
I was going to stay out of this brouhaha, but I had to point out that Divine did not say that—it was Mink Stole, as Connie Marble. Divine did, however, say, “You have been convicted of first-degree assholism.”
I like this thread!
Actually, Santa has a little helper to help him deliver ALL the gifts…OG!
and some folk are guilty of involuntary assholism 
Can’t the Atheist Assholes and the Religious Nutjobs all agree that the agnostics are lame?
“Oh, I just don’t know if God exists…” Take a fucking guess, you pathetic intellectual coward!
See, I see this a little differently. I consider atheists to be intellectually lazy. Definitely not inferior…I’ve read some papers on whether or not God exists that made my head spin.
To me, looking at everything in terms of whether I can prove it or not is lazy. It limits your view. For me, it was never enough.
I think “wilfull blindness” is a good definition of faith, when it comes to a point where I have to throw up my hands and say “I don’t know”. I don’t know why I believe in a higher power…I just know that its part of my emotional/spiritual/neurological makeup to do so.
OTOH, I don’t see the difference between me, believing in a higher power, and a bunch of realists believing that one day a really really clever person will figure out the Theory of Everything, and explain it to us, and then only about .00005% of us will understand it anyway.
I don’t believe intelligence has anything to do with whether you’re atheistic or religious; I think atheists, however, are given to question–and most religions fall apart under rigorous questioning.
As far as www.atheists.org and its discussion of Biblical matters, that’s another place where questioning comes in. Many atheists are routinely confronted by Christians and thus go looking for information on the questions raised in those confrontations. That site, and others like them, serve more as gathering places for information.
I vilify the power structure that creates the belief system. If you want to believe in god, go for it, do so however you please. Just:
A) Don’t tell me I should believe what you do so I won’t go to hell.
B) Don’t blindly follow whatever you are told by higher ranking individuals in the church.
C) Realize that you could be wrong.
D) Your faith does not give you any more right to do anything than I have.
E) No faith is any better or worse than any other.
F) Follow the messages in your holy texts, and what is preached to you.
G) When members of the church violate laws, call out for legal punishment. None of this, “Well he faithfully served the church for years, and it only happened once” crap.
When I start seeing all those things in my every day experience, I’ll stop having problems with religion.
As it stands now, all I see are people who believe in powerstructures and play lip service to the messages contained in their beliefs. I see preachers and churches more interested in getting money, and telling people they will go to hell for not giving them more money… And people claim it’s god’s will.
Yes, it is god’s will that your children don’ t have shoes or vacinations because you are going to HELL if you don’t tithe 800$/month.
I just see too much of religion being used for personal benifits of very few people.
That is Hell-fucking-larious!
RexDart, I’m also going to have to disagree with faith being “intellectually lazy”. Since the existance of God can neither be proven nor dis-proven, I think it takes a great deal of thought to examine and flesh out one’s beleifs on the subject, whether you believe in Him or not. Faith, or the lack of it, should be examined. It is the people who deny that the other side can possibly have anything useful to say on the subject that are “intellectually lazy”. Like being an asshole, intelectual laziness has no creed. Possibly you just had a poor choice of words, and meant to say that faith was “irrational” because the basis for it can not be proved or disproved logically. I would likely have to agree with that, but the examined faith is not intellectually lazy.
yeah, usually it’s posted by some kid who just can’t stop listening to his Morrisey CD’s, but there are others such as gatopescado, who is a regular and somewhat respected poster, and yet had the audacity to offer this gem in Great Debates:
** His/her current sig is now “Jesus was in a coma”. sigh
Now, if someome is an atheist and wants to be an asshole in the pit (especially in a thread entitled “Atheists are Assholes”) - fine. But to show that type of half assed proselytic bomb-throwing behavior in GD is unacceptable. Thankfully though, that faction is the minority of atheists around here.
I could say a few things about the “I’m so fucking persecuted by the religous power structure” faction, too, but I think I will let that lie for now - those guys have no sense of humor.
To vanilla, grendel72: organized, state-enforced atheism got pretty ugly, too - in the Soviet Union. Priests were imprisoned just for being priests, and churched were wrecked (or converted to warehouses or something) just for being there. I know that it’s a warm, fuzzy feeling that “at least we have never prosecuted them”, but it’s untrue. Sorry.
Disclaimer: I personally don’t believe in god. And I don’t like Apache’s tone, either. Keeping up with the spirit of the BBQ Pit, I suggest that Apache goes makes love to himself.
I know; my grandfather was a priest who just barely got out of Russia in time. However, the ‘state-enforced atheism’ might not have gone so far, or even existed, had the Russian Orthodox church not have been just as strongly enforced by the Tsarist state.
A lot of *anti-*theist jokes, slogans, etc. occur simply because 1) Christianity has the upper hand in American culture, and 2) some Christians get really, really upset if you poke fun at Christianity. Check out the hatemail section of www.punkassgear.com
Why are atheist assholes? Why are atheist assholes what? Pink, brown, puce? Hairy, puckered, loose?
Oh, you meant “why are atheists assholes?” Well, why the fuck didn’t you say so? My intelekshuly infeyer brian is bekum overtacksed.
To Squish: true. The Orthodox religion was badly entangled with the structure of the prerevolutionary Russian Empire’s government, with occasional persecution of pagan minorities not unheard of. The separation of church and state is a good idea after all.
I also condemn Apache for hijacking his nickname from a perfectly good HTTP service.
Considering that my atheism comes out of a lifetime of studying human behavior, psychology, and history, and strenuous effort put into attempting to understand how things work, I must take vehement exception.
I like what gato has to say in many threads, but I’ll readily concede that his contributions in religious discussions are almost invariably unhelpful and abrasive. No group of people sharing a common philosophy has either a monopoly on or an exemption from stupidity.
Oh, and regarding the OP:
Labeling somebody an asshole merely for his belief or lack thereof in the Great Unknowable is completely invalid.
Labeling somebody an asshole for engaging in the above fallacy is perfectly legitimate.
–looks back at OP–
QED.