Starboy

It depends on if the practice requires you to advocate it, now doesn't it.

Starboy

brighid

A practice may "require" the "advocation" of some thought, act or process. However it is up to the individual practitioner to actually partake of the requirement. As to Christianity, there are plenty of the things the Bible "requires" and "advocates", but few people practice most of those things.

Adultery is against the rules, as well as divorce ... yet millions of Christians commit adultery and get divorced ... and so on and so forth. Jews no longer sacrifice an umblemished bull and offer up it's burnt carcass. So any Biblical requirement is a non-subject unless the actual Christian individual actually practices that requirement, and therefore your blanket condemnation of Christians fails yet again.

Brighid

seebs

Not necessarily. A case could be made that, for instance, anyone who is a practicing bully is advocating bullying, no matter what he says.

Heathen Dawn

There is “valid” as in “true” and “valid” as in “acceptable”; distinguish between those two meanings. I consider only metaphysical naturalism, the worldview that nature is all there is, to be true; but I consider many religions to be acceptable, no matter what silliness they have in their doctrines. I consider Ojuice’s polytheism acceptable, because his is a tolerant religion that makes room for people like me. I consider Christianity and Islam unacceptable, because Christianity and Islam are intolerant religions that condemn the majority of humankind to eternal torture, and advocate the spread of their doctrines by force (political or violent).

I am willing to tolerate any falsehood that doesn’t harm me. Since Christianity and Islam do not fulfill this minimal requirement, all restraints against them are off. I’ve never hidden and I don’t now hide the fact that I want to wipe those evil religions off the face of the earth. By peaceful means, of course, but that is what I aim for.

Starboy

I have no idea what you are talking about. I have never attacked anyone for just being a theist. This is the demonization I am talking about. If you want to accuse me of something then just come out and do it otherwise the backhanded accusations should stop. As for proselytizing, it goes on all the time here at IIDB. Do not think for a second that people like Magus55 are not witnessing to us. Just about all the theists at one time or another have done it on IIDB. Its part of their cognitive dissonance, if they can convince someone of what they believe, no matter how whacky, it reinforces their belief that they are right. On only a few occasions have I seen a theist show up here without an obvious agenda to save us or defend the faith. If theist here were genuinely interested in understanding atheist or working with atheists I would get far more question or there would be far more effort on the part of theists to find common ground. For the most part they spend their time slinging BS. Or doing what we are doing here, just bickering back and forth. Sorry, my experience with theists here and in my life just doesn't match with what you are saying. Just the other day I was having lunch with a supposedly educated theist, PhD in divinity no less. When he heard I was an atheist (I didn't tell him by the way) the guy had the stupidity to tell me that this was a Christian nation and that our government was built on Christian principals and saw no reason for separation of church and state. Nope, sorry, what you claim just doesn't wash. Theists are taught to be thoughtless, insensitive bullies.

Starboy

seebs

That mostly makes sense, except for the part I'm not sure I buy, which is that I'm not sure it is inherent in Christianity to condemn the majority of humankind to eternal torture. There have been universalists for probably nigh onto two thousand years now, for instance.

Furthermore, consider that I believe that all people eventually die. Is it truly fair to say that my beliefs "condemn all people to death"? No. I believe that they *will* die, but I take no part in it. Insofar as I believe that there will probably be people who are damned, I'm still not advocating it; I merely think it is a probable outcome.

As to the methods for spreading the doctrine, here's what I found in the Bible on how to spread Christianity:



This doesn't sound like force to me.

Perhaps you should learn more about them, just as many Christian fundies need to learn more about the different varieties of atheism. It sounds to me like your objection to Christianity is rooted in the same kinds of misunderstandings as a typicial fundie's objections to atheism, based on a study of Stalin and Mao.

Heathen Dawn

It’s a betrayal of humanity to serve a God who puts all opposition to eternal fire.

I just let the scriptures speak to me ... the Bible, like its cheap rip-off the Qur’an, is a manual of atrocity.

I find non-fundamentalist Christianity acceptable. Unfortunately, it’s the fundamentalists we see and hear in action all over the world.

seebs

I would tend to agree. That said, I don't think that's a fair or accurate description of Christianity.

I think the problem here is a sampling error; you only recognize as "behaviors of Christians" the things conforming to the expectations, and done by people who wave a big sign saying "I'm a Christian over here! Looky me!"

A lot of the things done by Christians are entirely reasonable and many are quite beneficial... But keep in mind, there's actually a specific instruction telling Christians *not* to call attention to their personal acts of charity, and to, if at all possible, keep them anonymous. So, you *won't* see the ones who are actually following those instructions... This creates a gigantic sample space error.

Majestyk

Actually, the problem is still the tendency of people to adhere religiously to dogma. Quite a few of us don't see the line where atheism becomes Atheisim. Whereas, one expresses a lack of belief, the other a belief. It�s more than a matter of semantics to say: �I do not believe in the existence of gods�, as opposed to, �I believe gods do not exist.�

We are all susceptible to it. When, engaged in an exchange of views and confronted by the blind faith of people who believe the only education that they need is in the understanding of their particular cult�s spiritual texts, it is easy to allow our vocabulary to express as fact that which is not yet proved. We become less willing to say that we do not know the answers to all the questions when, we are arguing with someone who, simply disregards factual, testable, and repeatable evidence. Do it often enough and it becomes habit.

The only way to fight it is to educate ourselves in, not just the conclusions of, but also in the methods of, science.

seebs

I'd tend to say it's the tendency to adhere religiously to dogma.



But you do make a good point.