Ok, so PolyCarp harasses my “Santa Clause” typo (it really is, “clause” just kinda rolls off my fingers), but really doesn’t address my point. Which, btw, despite the typo, was quite obvious.
The OP’er again suggests that a Christian chooses to follow Christ (as in chooses to believe).
So I ask again, do you choose your beliefs, or do you simply believe? Is it really a choice?
I guess I’m not very subtle. I don’t get this…could you explain some more please?
I’ve seen a few threads on these boards where atheists have hinted that non-atheists are not very bright. Which really is an asshole-ish thing to say.
Some christians may tell me I’m going to hell for having an IUD, but at least they don’t tell me I’m stupid.
thx
I, for one, do not think people “choose” to believe things religious.
Philosophical, maybe. Religious (why are we here, where did we come from, what happens when we die, are we superior to other life forms, is there an unseen intelligence, etc.) no.
So -
Believe what you will, discuss all you (that is pural, and amongst consenting adults only) wish. Does believing what you do make you superior? No. Does it make you inferior? No. Can your beliefs be used to cause/justify evil? You betcha.
Use your beliefs for good, or at least not for evil.
“If you can do not good, at least do no harm”.
ouisey
The difference is positive knowledge “I know that there is no”, vs. negative “I do not know that there is”.
The second leaves open the possibility that there may be, but no (convincing) evidence has been found.
If I say “I know there is no skeleton under my house”, I should have dug up the lot - If I haven’t PROVEN that there isn’t, the best I can say is “I don’t believe there is a skeleton under my house” - which is to say “I have no knowledge of any such thing, but maybe there is”.
I’m personally an agnostic, bordering on being an atheist. However, I try to have an open minded and nonjudgmental view of all faiths. There are plenty of religious people who I know and respect, who are extremely intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable people. In fact, perhaps because I live in very liberal California, I would find it hard to think of anyone who I know who is religious who I don’t think is a basically reasonable and openminded person.
That said, I think that there is a valid point to be made that religion is more likely to breed intolerance than atheism. There are large numbers of Christians, and Christian organizations (although not all!), who:
(1)believe that atheists are evil
(2)believe that atheists are going to hell
(3)believe that it is their duty to stop others from being atheists
(4)believe that those who do not share their beliefs can not be “real” or “patriotic” Americans
(5)attempt to force public money to be spent promoting their beliefs, in a variety of ways
(6)believe that laws should be passed codifying various arbitrary parts of their moral code
Are there significant numbers of atheists or atheist organizations doing the same thing? I’m certain (having witnessed it relatively often) that there are some atheists who are smug and arrogant in their perceived intellectual superiority. But that’s not the same as any of the above items. And there are certainly atheists who, while opposing (5) and (6) from above, might venture into territory that seems like the converse of (5) and (6). However, it’s a telling point that removing “in God we trust” from our coins is hardly the same as addding “there is no God” to our coins, and outlawing school prayer is hardly the same as forcing schoolkids to reflect on the stupidity of magical sky pixies once per day.
Another point: people arguing against religion relativley often bring up things like the crusades, the spanish inquisition, etc., as evidence of the harm that religion has done. This is a bit silly for at least two reasons:
(1) it happened 500 years ago. There are plenty of far more recent examples of religious intolerance to choose from
(2) things as complex as the crusades certainly had religious aspects to them, but the extent to which they were “caused” by religion is a complex debate in its own right.
However, I find it even more spurious to respond with something along the lines of “well, look at Stalin and Mao. They were atheists and killed even more people than Hitler and Torquemada combined”. No one is proposing that we should find every person who was ever killed, then check whether their killer was religious or not, and then add up two numbers, and hey, presto, we’ll be able to morally judge religion vs. atheism. There are various reasons why that would make no sense, but the most relevant is that there are plenty of times when people kill people for reasons totally unrelated to their religion, or lack thereof. Take the fire-bombing of Dresden, often cited as an unnecessary atrocity that the Allies committed during WWII (let’s assume for a moment that it was, in fact, an atrocity for the purposes of this discussion). I have no idea who ordered it. So should I, being an atheist, research whoever was the general who gave the go-ahead, find out whether that person was religious or not, and then if that person was religious, view that as a vindication for my (lack of) faith? Of course not! that would be preposterous.
There are important differences between:
(1) World Leader X subscribes to belief system Q and, unrelated to Q, commits atrocity A
(2) World Leader X subscribes to belief system Q, wants to commit atrocity A, and finds tenets of Q to support and legitimize that action
{There’s an important subcategory of (2) in which World Leader X subscribes to belief system Q and wants to commit atrocity A against a group who don’t subscribe to Q, and uses said non-belief as justification}
and
(3) World Leader X subscribes to belief system Q, and motivated primary by said belief system, commits atrocity A
I’m sure you can find examples of (1) in which Q was both religion and atheism. However, there are huge numbers of examples of (2), and arguably (3), in which Q was religion. Are there more than a vanishing few in which Q was atheism? (You might argue that Stalin and Mao were motivated by communism, and one of the tenets of communism is atheism… I guess I don’t know enough about the precise historical situations to comment on that… but it would be hard to argue that those acts were motivated by tenets of atheism. Atheism doesn’t have tenets!)
So, to sum up, I would agree with both of the following very carefully phrased statements, although I strongly stress that I in no way mean this as “every Christian is evil” or “every religious person is hateful”, or anything of that sort:
(a) A higher proportion of religious folks than atheists are zealous about their beliefs to an extent that their actions interfere with the lives of nonbelievers to some substantial negative degree
(b) Historically, more evil actions have been taken with religion as a cause or justification than have been taken with atheism as a cause or justification.
Oh, and one final point: it is certainly true that there are many many religions, many subcategories of the major religions, and huge varieties of people within each subcategory, making it close-to-useless to make sweeping statements about “all Christians” or “all Baptists” or even “all fundamental Southern Baptists”, I would argue that if one simply defines atheism as “the belief that there is no God”, then it’s even more useless to make statements about “all atheists”.
Although the OP is not entirely correct I wouldn’t go that far Cervaise. To me, the OP and many other people here in this thread are orbiting around the central point but not hitting it: the real problem is the excessive degree of zeal one has for a belief (or lack thereof), not the belief (or lack thereof) itself. It’s one thing to be an atheist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, pagan, communist, libertarian, anarchist, Green, etc., but when you start taking an exclusionary, self-righteous, “my-way-or-the-highway”, and strident attitude toward things, you can be a real pain in the ass.
BTW, Pythagras, while both zealous Christians and zealous atheists can be annoying in their own special ways, I think, at least in the U.S.A., zealous Christians are still far worse. For one thing, they have a lot more power. I don’t think any major political party caters to the zealous atheist voter as much as the Republicans cater to the zealous Christian (a.k.a., the religious right).
Although the OP is not entirely correct I wouldn’t go that far Cervaise. To me, the OP and many other people here in this thread are orbiting around the central point but not hitting it: the real problem is the excessive degree of zeal one has for a belief (or lack thereof), not the belief (or lack thereof) itself. It’s one thing to be an atheist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, pagan, communist, libertarian, anarchist, Green, etc., but when you start taking an exclusionary, self-righteous, “my-way-or-the-highway”, and strident attitude toward things, you can be a real pain in the ass.
BTW, Pythagras, while both zealous Christians and zealous atheists can be annoying in their own special ways, I think, at least in the U.S.A., zealous Christians are still far worse. For one thing, they have a lot more power. I don’t think any major political party caters to the zealous atheist voter as much as the Republicans cater to the zealous Christian (a.k.a., the religious right).
Although the OP is not entirely correct I wouldn’t go that far Cervaise. To me, the OP and many other people here in this thread are orbiting around the central point but not hitting it: the real problem is the excessive degree of zeal one has for a belief (or lack thereof), not the belief (or lack thereof) itself. It’s one thing to be an atheist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, pagan, communist, libertarian, anarchist, Green, etc., but when you start taking an exclusionary, self-righteous, “my-way-or-the-highway”, and strident attitude toward things, you can be a real pain in the ass.
BTW, Pythagras, while both zealous Christians and zealous atheists can be annoying in their own special ways, I think, at least in the U.S.A., zealous Christians are still far worse. For one thing, they have a lot more power. I don’t think any major political party caters to the zealous atheist voter as much as the Republicans cater to the zealous Christian (a.k.a., the religious right).
kaylasdad, I’m less concerned about that than about what a Pythagras is.
But I do know that a noble spirit embiggens the worst speller.
I’m an athiest. But I don’t believe and base my disbelief on science. I just… don’t believe. I think that(pardon my views, I don’t mean to offend) the whole “god” idea is crap, and that they just made up the bible to scare some peasents into behaving themselves. But I’m certainly not zealous.
Poeple can believe what they want. If you want to belive in god, sure. If you want to believe that mary had a child without her cherry popped, sure. If you want to belive that the sky is purple and the sea’s are pink, all the power to ya.
Fact is, you can believe whatever you want. Just don’t try to make me believe.
I said people, not organizations. And I’ve lived in places where Christianity has been made so unfashionable that churchgoing has dried up and public life is entirely secular.
When I said churchgoing was in danger of being discouraged, this is what I meant. If I had wanted to say prohibited, I would have used that word.
The notion that Christians should worship in private and shut up the rest of the time is alien to most ideas of what the church is. Dinsdale’s humanist group discusses politics. I’m sure the members are very involved in the community. Christians are called also to bring their faith into the world. I don’t want there to be obstacles to them doing so.
I’m not calling for anyone’s rights to be trampled. I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I am concerned, though, that the anti-religious hysteria in public schools is a violation of the rights of religious students. I worry that forcing the Boy Scouts to water down their message just to accomodate anybody with a grievance is a violation of their right to set their own rules. And removing the Ten Commandments, even when they are permanent parts of historic structures, serves to obliterate history by blurring the religious basis of law.
My idea of freedom involves a cacophony of ideas, with those that make sense and speak to the soul winning the most converts. I am disturbed when some try to shut down the debate.
Laws in the United States
DO NOT HAVE A RELIGIOUS BASIS!!!
The supreme law of the land was ordained and established by the people, and government here derives its authority from the consent of the governed, not from the commandment of God or the mandate of Heaven. Law and government in this country are secular. The Ten Commandments are NOT the basis of our laws; if they were, there would be no free exercise of religion clauses in the constitutions of the United States and of each of the states because the worship of gods other than the God of the Bible is completely against the principles of the Ten Commandments and of Biblical law. A law system in which the First Amendment is the supreme law of the land can no more be based on the Ten Commandments than a Christian church can be based on the Internal Revenue Code.
Nah. I need at least one thread where somebody posts this “the Ten Commandments are the basis of our laws” nonsense where I can yell at people.
Don’t tease us man, where are those places? I’m looking for a job and I’d like to give those places top priority.
“Religious people” cannot be honestly said to do or be anything other than religious. There are religious people who proselytise, there are religious people whose religions forbid evangelising. So no, it’s not true that “religious people” as a rule are trying to push their beliefs on anyone. There are religious people who hold bigoted positions and justify them by their scriptures – in the cases of those who even have scriptures, which is hardly all of them; there are religious people who refute bigoted positions out of those same strictures.
There are hundreds of different Christian denominations; I know of three divisions in Judaism and two in Islam, and would not be surprised if my lack of knowledge of the existence of additional denominations is ignorance. There are dozens of branches of Wicca alone, completely setting aside other neopagan faiths such as Asatru. There are two broad divisions in Buddhism (Mahayana and Hinayana) and many smaller subdivisions. Hinduism has its own complexities, though I can’t speak to them from knowledge. And then there are the myriad other religious faiths and practices, ranging from Voudoun to Unitarian Universalism to ethnically linked faiths to individually assembled practices.
Given the number of sects of most faiths, each with their own political spin and their own interpretations of the roots of their religion, I’m wary of generalisations about broad faiths that don’t touch on the absolute fundamentals of those religions – and hell, some of those schisms are about which things are fundamental, so what’s to say then? Given the broad variety of religions in existence, some of which do not even necessarily recognize the existence of a god or gods in the first place, I’m even more wary about claims about “religious people” in general.
With regard to the OP, I’ve encountered a goodly number of atheists who hald the belief that any possession of faith, no matter its foundation, was a sign of an unsophisticated mind desperately seeking Sky Fairies. In fact, a majority of atheists I’ve encountered and known as atheists I only know as such because of their voiced contempt not just for a specific religion (most often Christianity, but not always) but for all faiths. (Never mind that it’s been pointed out that most atheists disbelieve more significantly in YHWH than they do in Thor.) I fully suspect that I know a number of atheists who do not feel a need to express contempt for the existence of religion, but for the most part, I would have no more reason to know that they’re athiests than I would to know that they’re Christians, Jainists, practitioners of Shinto, or Confucians, or something else entirely.
Mind, I’ve also known Christians who felt a need to slam other faiths, and pagans who felt a need to slam other faiths, and other people who felt a need to slam other faiths. More importantly, though, I’ve known all of these sorts – and atheists as well – who didn’t.
…but I thought I’d deal with this and then move on.
I did consider that Eonwe, but then the sentence would read:
“Your definition of ‘fact’ is based solely on the etymology of the age.”
Maybe it’s just a failure of my own imagination, but I can’t wrap my mind around that statement so that it means anything.
How does that happen? And that’s been pointed out by whom?
Yeah, Lilairen, are you seriously saying there are people who call them atheists who believe in Thor of Norse mythology? Have I been whooshed? That’s one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever heard.
This is a rather poorly-phrased attempt to show (I think) that people who define their personal beliefs as a rejection of the establishment will be more vocal in specifically denying that establishment, i.e. if you were raised in a Jewish culture and became an atheist, you’re more likely to make anti-YWHY statements (since you’re familiar with the concept of YWHY) than you are to make statements against Norse mythology, about which you know little. Strictly speaking, being an atheist means a rejection of YWHY and Thor (and Osiris and Zeus and Jupiter etc) but simple efficiency means you may as well deny the “biggest” God rather than waste time rejecting the small-fry. Geez, we’re only on Earth for a short time. Why waste it running down a list of the gods you don’t believe in?
Of course, I may be misinterpreting.
For thos who don’t read Hebrew (right-to-left) the previous references can be read as YHWY.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly - in my opinion calling an “unfounded assertation” a “fact” is a lie. Thus - responding with lies.
Also, I read wolfmans statement to mean “I’ve known people in positions of authority to use that authority to discourage others from participating in religious activities.” To which I reply: Who are these people. Let’s assume I find their ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to their newletter - how might I go about doing so? To this day, though I have actively searched, I have found no such person or group of people.
Beeblebrox - In my haste to reply I forgot to list exceptions for totalitarian regimes. Sorry about that. I was under the impression we were discussing cultures in which people are theoretically free to worship as they choose (ie, the US), yet have to suffer through others attempt to legislate religion or the lack thereof. I’m limiting my responses to matters concerning the US because of the establishment clause, and because there are several organizations seeking to put Christian mythology into the public works, such as the examples already given (Big 10 in the courtrooms, genesis in the public schools, etc).
When the communist chinese start calling up to discourage US citizens from attending church, I’ll consider them. Until that time: 
Yeah, but it’s much more fun seeing if Lilairen would bother to defend the other interpretation. 