Pyrrho

Yes, you have many vain hopes. Have you ever seen any U.S. money, and looked at what it says on every piece of it? (I exclude, of course, very old pieces of money from this observation about what is on all of our money.)


Let us consider your points, one by one:

- They lived too far away from each other,

That is no longer true (and never was for many, as people tend to congregate in settlements).


- Their churches were too far away from their homes,

That is no longer true (and never was for many, as people tend to congregate in settlements).


- Their new homeland would force them to find a new identity; an identity based on being an immigrant who is seeking for a common sense of feeling at home (the seminal melting-pot concept

Yes, the commonality is religious fanaticism. Have you never heard our village idiot, George W. Bush, give a speech?


- It was the religious war in Europe that they had fled, so they wouldn't have resumed it in America

They fled because they were on the losing end of things. There is no reason to flee if you are winning. And they did not lose the desire to "win" by retreating to what is now the U.S.

Heathen

Butswana, I think that's a good attitude to have And it'd probably work with people who didn't know me. It'd probably work with people I go to school with, people I talk to every now and then, but I'm not very confident in myself right now.. maybe that will change sometime in the future, hopefully.

I know it definitely wouldn't work with most of my family.. one of my brothers knows I'm atheist and doesn't really care, but he's the only person I trust with that secret. I don't know how my oldest brother would react. My mom is nice but extremely paranoid and short fused, so I'm terrified to find out what she'd do. My dad is a smart, rational person.. except when it comes to religion, and otherwise we agree on lots of things and I have been closer to him than my mom. I know he'd be disappointed and I don't want to do that to him.

I find it ironic in a sense that people fled to America to gain religious freedom, and not having to worry about persecution.. but look at us now

pariah

i dont know if ur history is right...

the puritans came to america to escape the anglican church, because they wanted a theocracy in the 1600's. wasnt it???

never been there

Yep. That's why Shakespeare & co. had to work on the South bank of the Thames. They actually did take over the country for a while, but the wind went out of their sails after not too long, and they weren't missed.

Brother Daniel

The common Christian fear of atheists is a memetic inevitability, I think.

A subtext of conservative Christian teaching is that if you don't have Jesus (where "Jesus" should be understood as shorthand for the whole Christian "package"), then ALL IS LOST. One is not only doomed to a very nasty afterlife (although that is the most egregious aspect of the teaching), but even "this" life has no meaning, no structure, and (most importantly for the present thread) nothing to uphold anything resembling "good" behaviour.
Ridiculous, you say? Of course it is. The point is that it is effective in keeping people trapped (by fear) in the cage of Christianity. Those subspecies of Christians that do not engage in such fearmongering are less likely to remain Christian. So we have natural selection at work, narrowing the Christian population down to those who are afraid of atheism, and, by extension, of atheists.
Well, not quite. Christians today are actually nicer than they used to be. I'm obviously missing something in this picture. Comments?

CALDONIA

I was part of an interesting dilemma recently. Two coworkers of mine were rather free and outspoken about their religious beliefs when we took walks during our lunch hour, though religion was not a constant topic (due to my efforts to direct conversation to other areas of interest).

Before I was laid off six weeks ago one of these worthies asked me for my e-mail address (which I gave her, although there was no reason for our continued correspondence, since we had no relationship outside of work) and I gave it to her thinking that to refuse would be rude.

Sure enough, after a few jokes and inane messages, she sent me a forwarded e-mail that came from some dame from Texas. The gist of the message was that a local post office had to remove a poster proclaiming "In God We Trust" and that since 86% of Americans believe in God, the country must be retrieved from the minority, and that those other 14% should "sit down and shut up!"

I pretty much snapped and sent a "reply to all" (to about a dozen idiot friends of hers) the message, "There is no God, there is no afterlife, there is no Santa Claus. Get over it and make the most of your time on earth!"

The crazed drooling red-faced e-mails that followed were a hoot. I was damned, scolded, and prayed-for. The other guy, a self-proclaimed Pentecostal pastor, sent me an e-mail shaming me for being two-faced (in his eyes my failure to debate his unsolicited proselytizing was not about decorum and respect for personal belief but failure on my part to successfully defend my (un)belief).

My response to him was that my reticence to state my personal beliefs or lack of them was a measure of my respect for others' value in religious matters and in effect reflected favorably upon me. Evangelicals have a hard time with such concepts.

In retrospect I see that my candidness was totally threatening, in that it insisted that they either examine why they believe or examine why I do not believe. Naturally, they chose to examine my LACK of faith and they ascribed it to character failings and mental defects. Of course, that argument can surely be turned the other way.

Atheism is a threat to Theism by its mere existence. To even contemplate atheism is a shock to the theistic view of the world.

braces_for_impact

Indeed, as a Christian you are taught that those without your precious "gift" of Christ are unhappy, have no hope and are terribly distressed. Sure, they may look happy and well adjusted, but that's just a ruse. Inside they are spiritually dead, rotten, and selfish. They just think they're happy. They'll never know happiness until they know Christ.

Personally, I tell people I'm an atheist if the subject comes up. It's usually not a first off question, so people usually get to know you a little bit first, and they usually seem surprised I'm an atheist. Then there's usually a curiosity, and I have a chance to answer some questions and (often) clear up some common misconceptions about atheism.

Now if you witness to me, I will be polite. You step beyond polite and I will respond in kind, and I enjoy a good debate.

CALDONIA

Braces-for-impact,

I like your approach and I think that it best that I adopt it in future encounter with wild-eyed (or not) Christians. My mistake is that by being polite in not expressing objections to the dogma (dogshit) thrust upon me led gullible people to believe that I agreed to their fabulous tales.

Maybe old dogs CAN learn new tricks.

The biggest issue with atheists is not in their belief but in their making their belief(s) public or open.

I take this dilemma on a case to case basis, but it is nevertheless dicey.

Splat

He took me outside
and we sat on the grass
I said "you coulda stopped this
if you'd got up off your ass
and gave me different parents
or took that booze and drugs away
but you didn't cause you work
in those mysterious ways.


Sorry for the tangent, but it's such a lovely song, I just thought I should add the last verse.

Heathen

:notworthy LOL!

I hear this a lot, and I hate this "you're not in the majority, so fuck you" attitude. One wouldn't say this to a black person because they're a minority.. well a few would, but they'd catch a lot of flack for it. Yet it's okay to bash and make fun of atheists.

I also hate how they blame problems on us. I remember last year when I was discussing the "under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance on an AOL message board (not exactly a bastion of intelligence to begin with). I was defending myself pretty well and trying to explain to them how I felt, yet I got a lot of shit like "it's people like you that are ruining this country." I asked for an explanation, and I never got it. Probably because they couldn't think of any good reason, anyway. :banghead:

True. But I'm much happier as an atheist than I was as a Christian.