I agree with your point about small-city and middle America. I think that, in many places, it’s far more tolerant of atheism and agnosticism that a lot of city people realize.
But the funding thing is, for the most part, a legal requirement. As a government institution, your local state university is required by the Constitution not to engage in viewpoint discrimination in its allocation of funding. If the student association had refused your son’s request while funding religious institutions, he would have had a viable claim against them for violation of his first amendment rights.
That suggests strongly to me that you believe a fetus is not harmed by abortion, because how can something or someone that is never conceived suffer any harm? And, as I suggested in a different post, why can’t you apply this principle to a living human? If you kill a living human, that person (once dead) is no worse off than they would have been if they had never been conceived in the first place.
I never said that enlightened self-interest is a bad foundation. Your own articulation of your worldview in this thread, however, bears no real resemblance to enlightened self-interest as it’s commonly understood. It’s more along the lines of pathological self-centeredness. If you believe that the central and only guiding principle of enlightened self-interest is “How does this harm me?”, might I suggest that you read up on the concept.
To be honest, I think I have to stop talking about this with you, partly because it’s become a hijack from the main thrust of the OP’s questions, but mainly because your argument here is so divorced from any relationship with reality. It seems to be based on a variety of misreadings of political and philosophical principles, leavened with a healthy smattering of logical incoherence. I just don’t think we can have a productive discussion about the issue.
How would I feel if an abortion happened to me? Exactly the same way I would have felt if my father had worn a condom the night I was conceived.
My selfish desires matter to me. I don’t expect them to matter to you. But, I do expect your selfish desires to matter to you, and if we can agree on our selfish desires, then we are on our way to building a society.
Get enough people together that don’t want to be murdered or have their friends and family murdered, and we can impose our will to try to make the murderers stop. Get enough people together that don’t want to be stolen from, and we can condemn thieves. If you can get together enough people that don’t want to be aborted, then we can talk.
Sadly, infanticide has been a fact of life since long before any semblance of civilization. If you had an extra mouth to feed, and didn’t have enough to go around, then leaving it out in the snow was better for everyone, infant included.
I am happy to live in a time and place when this is no longer necessary, in that unwanted pregnancies can be either terminated much more humanely, or the child taken care of as wards of the state rather than being left to the elements (though I would like to see drastic improvement in that).
However, I would not judge someone in a bad situation, rather that be in our past, or in some very impoverished places in the present, that left their newborn out in the cold, rather than stretch already inadequate resources.
My Baptist mom always called that kind of prayer “talking to the congregation over God’s shoulder,” implying that it was a performance rather than an expression of gratitude.
If you believe that that is what I have said, then you have been reading something completely different.
I did not say that the guiding principle of enlightened self interest is “how does this harm me?” I said that that is the bar that is required before I can judge the actions of others.
If you are going to tell someone that they cannot do something, then you should be able to articulate how it harms you. Do you not agree with this? What other reason can you use to justify to limit the actions of others?
As a fellow atheist, I’d urge you to understand all religions before you criticize them. All deserve criticism but for different reasons.
Your belief that Humans have always believed in mythological beings itself needs some examination. For example : Circa 1500 BC, Rig Veda was written which is one of the Hindu religious books. It has a chapter equivalent to the genesis chapter of the Holy Bible.
It says that God may or may not have created the universe. He/She may or may not be all powerful. He/She may or may not even know the secret to creation, even if he/she were to exist. The answers to these questions are Unknowable.
The Gita highlights 4 broad life paths : Karma - the path where people find joy in the work they do and that’s the path for their enlightenment; Bhakti - the path where people find joy/comfort in devotion to a deity, real or imagined; Gyana - joy/comfort in seeking knowledge and Kriya : Joy/comfort in seeking the meaning and origin of life itself.
Many aspects of modern atheism is not new - in fact it goes back thousands of years.
No, I assume that we all selfishly desire to not be murdered, and based on that, we can mutually exclude those who don’t agree with that assessment. Anything else that we don’t want to have happen to ourselves, we can forbid others doing.
I think that I am badly paraphrasing Neil Degrass Tyson in saying that reality is what is left when you stop believing in anything else.
Close your eyes and stop believing in your cat. Well, wait, that might work, try your keyboard instead. Now open them, is it still there?
Reality is what I interact with, and what affects me, whether or not I believe in it. This may be a simulation, a game, or a delusion, but that doesn’t change the fact that I experience a world with cause and effect. This can be empirically proven to any degree of certainty and accuracy.
What you described is just object permanence, where you continue to believe i things that you have seen or experienced. What I am discounting is a belief in something that has not been seen or experienced.
It’s more like you have people with red shirts, and people with blue shirts that stay in their circles, and some other people that don’t care about fashion that don’t want to be told what to wear by anyone.
While I agree with you in principle that religious people believe in something that has no evidence, and often even in spite of evidence, I do not think that calling them delusional is the best way to start a theological conversation.
In fact, it is best to simply let the facts speak for themselves and keep your opinions to yourself.
OTOH, if you just want to rant about delusional people who believe in magical beings, knock yourself out if you think that you will enjoy it and that you may entertain others of like mind, but don’t think that it is going to sway a single mind. (I’d recommend such a rant to take place in the pit, personally.)
Thank you for replying to me. Do you think we are ever going to get bacon_cheeseburger to see the light of day? Seems like she/he/they are doing exactly what they are railing about.
I’m getting weary but I hate to give up the good fight.
OP, let’s say for the sake of argument that you and I are coworkers, neighbors, or otherwise need to interact on occasion. What would you ask of me?
Not speak to you about my religious beliefs? Fine. There are a bajillion other things to talk about. I have zero desire to convince anyone to believe in a certain way, and I don’t think my religious/spiritual beliefs make me morally superior. I have plenty of friends who are atheists, and I spend zero time worrying about them facing eternal damnation.
Not speak about them in your presence? Sorry, not likely. I’m not likely to start the conversation, but if it happens I won’t avoid it.
I’m sure you’re aware of this already, but even many who identify as Christian don’t believe in sky gods either. I’m fine with people saying that my belief in God as the ground of being is a fairy tale if that’s what they think. I’m offended if you don’t wear a mask or keep distance from others during a pandemic, but not if you think my religious beliefs are BS. My response to “you believe in fairy tales” is “I think they are much closer to myths, with some folk tales thrown in.” I definitely don’t take the Biblical accounts literally. To fundamentalists, that make me not Xian. Fine. I believe what I believe, and am not going to pretend to accept a literal interpretation of stories collected thousands of years ago to avoid having a jealous deity casting me into a lake of fire. If such a deity existed, he/she wouldn’t be so easily fooled.
One word could be changed in the title of this thread, and we could ask the OP just about the same question. “Why do we have to put up with Atheistic People?” What would be the response?
The “atheistic people” are a very small minority that have no real social or political power to speak of…and do you know the difference between “punching up” and “punching down”?
This is what I miss most about Thailand. There is a total absence of religious pushiness. Buddhists never try to force their beliefs on you. It is heaven. Here in Hawaii, missionaries had a major influence in the 19th century, and the fundamentalist missionary mindset predominates to this day.