mike_decock

Everyone is agnostic on all matters of faith. Only the intellectually honest will admit that to themselves. IMO, anybody who claims to have knowledge on matters of faith is a self-righteous bigot.

-Mike...

spurly

And those who make that leap are dead wrong when they do so. God alone is judge, we can not set ourselves up as the determiner of someones eternal destiny.

Kevin

beth

Geo, I want to apologize. I do not know what you believe, exactly. It was wrong for me to make assumptions when I truly don't know what Christian values you hold. Please accept my apology.

I do know that many Christians do find comfort in the thought of the unbelievers perishing, but I also know that many others lament this part of their faith. I do know that Jesus said not to judge, so I do hope that you do not judge others for their beliefs. As long as you do not judge me personally, I hold no judgement toward you.

beth

Keven, you are right in this. According to theology, one is not to judge.But, isn't it judgemental to witness to others, telling them that they are lost? Isn't it judgemental to tell them that they will find eternal torment?

Starboy

Anyone care to guess spurly's response?

Obey_Matthew_6_6

That would be Rob Sherman; one link of many:

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism...ents.html#bush

Jamie_L

Blondegoddess,

I didn't read this whole thread, so I'm not sure where along the path it got sidetracked. However, I'd like to take my swing at the OP. I know I've responded to this somewhere else before, so I'll try to say something new and different. (And now for something completely different...)

This is what I link to think of as the Contact dilemma. If you saw the movie Contact, there was this scene where Jodie Foster went before some international body to make her plea to be the passenger of the "machine". She was confronted for being an atheist, and basically backed into a corner in which she was more or less forced to admit that she felt the rest of the world was deluded in their religious beleifs. It's a tough thing, but that IS part of what being an atheist is about, whether we like it or not.

As atheists, we do believe theists are incorrect in their conclusions about theism. We may not attribute it to lack of intelligence or mental defect, but we believe theists are making a mistake. Just as they do about us. It's hard to get around that.

I have a friend who absolutely believes a carnival psychic predicted that he would lose his job in exactly two weeks. To me, the best explanation for this story is that my friend is remembering the psychic reading incorrectly, effectively projecting subsequent events back onto the memory of the reading. This fits a lot of information that is out there about how human memory works and why people respond so well to cold reading techniques. It's perfectly reasonable, and it doesn't mean I think my friend is an idiot. However, when our conversations touched on this, I could tell he would respond to this notion as if I were calling him an idiot, a dupe, a rube, etc.

I don't really know what the solution is. We can't deny that we think theists are incorrect, unless we want to stay in the closet. *shrug* What I tend to do is try to express my lack of belief in terms of me and my reaction towards the world and the religion in question, so that I don't really bring other people's beliefs into it. That is, "I am not convinced God is real," rather than "Your God is fake." But some people are just always going to feel they are being attacked. It's unfortunate, but true, and it's part of the reason I'm mostly in the closet as far as day-to-day interactions go.

Jamie

GeoTheo

Well, Thanks.
Here's the thing though. It's not really judgemental to think others are lost if you think you were at one time also. But I think this get's to the crux of your op. Atheists obviously take offense to Christians who think that they are perishing because they don't believe in God. Christians take offense to atheists because they think Christians are centering there life around a fairy tale. But most atheists believed in God at one time also and may have even been devout Christians. So it is kind of a similar thing.
But from this thread I have learned that people use the word 'bigot' as a weopon to attack people they don't agree with, without really understanding what the word means. In the sense that having an opinion that makes you feel superior to others makes one a bigot, then like Starboy said, we all are from time to time. This may be why people aren't as offended by agnostics. I also think it is good for Christians to have humility about what they believe. But I don't think it is bigoted to think others need God. It may seem patronizing, but it is based on empathy. I don't think it is like racism or like feeling superior for having a high I.Q. One might use these qualities to feel superior over others, but no on can change these qualities. Christians believe that anyone can come to Know God. So I personally don't feel it is bigotry.

philechat

I think the Pagans and Polytheistic societies had some very good solutions toward the matter, in that they view spiritual truths as completely seperate from factual claims. In this line of thinking they are not particularly passionate about historically verifying the existence of their gods, and the atheists are seen as simply uninterested in the problems of "the spiritual world". Many ancient Roman philosophers were openly atheists (i.e. not believing in the gods), as long as they were willing to maintain adequate respect to the local traditions.

The Hindus, similarly, saw people worshipping or practicing different religions as seperate pathways to truth. In their opinion there might be superior or inferior "ways of life", but it only mattered in the long run as symbolized in longer or shorter cycles of deaths and rebirths.

GeoTheo

I think I have the same take on it as you. Thanks for your post.