The Other Michael

hello Typhon,

you wrote:

When I went to Spain a few years ago I went through the Catedral in Toledo. I was very impressed by the engineering/architectural feat of its construction.

But I couldn't stop thinking about how many peasants were squeezed for how many decades to create this monument to God's glory.

Other RC meddling - on "The World" today they had a story about how Chile is the only country in the western hemisphere that doesn't allow divorce. It seems the RC church has managed to keep a firm thumb on the male-dominated politicians (separated wives can't do much of anything in the legal sphere without the approval of the estranged husband - mortgages, sale of property, etc - and the hubby gets 1/2 of any of their estate upon their death) to keep divorce from being made legal.

The women they interviewed must have all been anti-captialist lesbian witches (see the comments elsewhere - the Robertson/Falwell thread I think) as they weren't too happy with the situation.

Thank Gawd for religion - saving us from individual freedoms once again!

cheers,
Michael

Jubal

What fascinates me most about Cretinism:

1. Almost every variation of "Satan" is the name of some god or other.

2. All the holidays are pagan (which is very odd).

3. Similarity to SC myth, and adult retention of the literal understanding of it.

4. Adults seem, at times, much like children.

5. Aversion to intellectual freedom.

6. The strange attraction of a religion that promises horrors on unbelievers.

7. Their incorrect image of a loving, personal god, sometimes even long after belief fades.

8. A strange need to shove it on everyone else.

9. Bizzare dislike of energetic music in some sects.

10. Mixed results from identical brainwashing. Effect of preinstalled personality is held suspect.

MadKally

Santa and I are not discussed very often here. We don't try to poison little innocent children by indoctrinating them as cult members for the remainder of their lives.

What would it take for you to believe in me?

David M. Payne

See <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000122" target="_blank">this thread</a> for my answer God Head. Who knows, perhaps you will have the answer to the question I raised there. We will see.

Eudaimonist

Maybe if you were the Truth Fairy.

atheist_in_foxhole

That is so true. My local Barnes and Noble bookstore has only two small shelves for books on science, but several GIANT shelves (at least fifty feet long) for books on religion and new age crap.

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: atheist_in_foxhole ]</p>

Eudaimonist

I hate that religion and new age books are so popular, but I don't think that your comparison to the variety of science books is fair. Science has little to say of deep personal interest for most people. Science books aren't geared to help people understand their lives, live better, or find meaning in life, except perhaps for the few pantheists out there.

To the science section, I'd add the self-help section (minus explicitly religious themed books), the sex & relationships section, and the western philosophy section. It evens out at this point.

jj

Come on, most of those advances were made before fundamentalist Islam destroyed the advances, the civilization responsible for them, and the people who made them.

What we see in the USA right now is the same thing, too. The ultra-right religious types (that isn't ALL religious types) who push hideous intellectual dishonesties like "creation science" and the like, who dumb down the science, math, and literature curriculum under the guises of "fairness" and "morals", are engaged in exactly the same sort of attack, they want to replace science, falsication, etc, with inerrent belief in their particular gods.

What they may or may not realize is that when they do this, they destroy the foundations that not only modern society, but the USA itself at its start, were built on, and replace them with pre-feudal rules of life that have been demonstrated time and again to cause massive suffering, misery, and death.

Why they engage in this evil I frankly do not know. I suspect that they do not know what they are doing themselves. Were I a believer, I'd say that they were Satan's tools.

jj

Actually, I agree with you there. The problem is that organized religion MUST stop dishonestly trying to subvert the constitution through nonsense like "creation science" or 'life begins at conception' or other attempts to codify their religion into the law despite the constitution itself.

If it does not, it is engaged in ultimate treachery, and should be so indicted.

m.e.h.

Why revel in atheism? To impudently thumb your nose at the most prevalent dogma, which one feels to be irrational, evil and repugnant? A dogma that if you do not hold to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, despite having no evidence what so ever to take that as truth, you are branded as unfit in a myriad of ways, to be scorned and ridiculed and called names, to be pitied and laughed at? Why indeed to revel in atheism?

I will tell you why: In value of truth. Holding honesty above all to oneself, despite such overwhelming pressure on all fronts to believe dated comforting sugar-coated fairy tales. That is why.