keyser_soze

But that is what we do, even though our words may fail us. We TRULY hate religion, but we don't hate the followers. Merely the bile...

Radcliffe Emerson

Non-sequitor recently had a strip that say war stands for:
We Are Right

luvluv

Phyrro:

1) Umm... who are you?

2) You're right about the wiping from the face of the earth part, but the parts referring to a lack of intelligence, a paucity of information about their own religion, and the sheep mentality are all definitely aimed at BELIEVERS. And the statement is still bigoted.

Lori:

That wouldn't apply at all to the brand of religion you are supposedly most familiar with. Christianity does not believe that nonbelievers are inherently sinful. It believes that EVERYONE, including Christians, are inherently sinful. The distinction is not between the inherent natures of the believers and nonbelievers, but in their status before God. One group has asked for forgiveness, one has not. The grace, the salvation, the absolution, all come from God.

And again, that you can hold such a basic misconception of the relligion you probably have the best chance of being familiar with reinforces my point that you haven't got anything near the kind of knowledge about religion in general to declare what "most religions" are like.

Either way, the point stands. You more than likely don't know enough about religions to make the judgements you are making.

There really is no difference between saying that someone's beliefs are unintelligent and in saying that the person who holds those beliefs are unintelligent. So MegaDave's statement at bare minimum holds that religious people never contribute anything to their beliefs, that they are unintelligent, and that they are uninformed. That's still a bigoted position.

Would you feel comfortable saying Blacks never contribute anything to the beliefs they were given at birth, they are unintelligent and uniformed?

Would you say it of Jews? Homosexuals? Asians?

MegaDave:

1) Can a person with adequate powers of reason and critical thinking skills be a member of an exclusivist religion?

2) I am, like MILLIONS of religious adherents, an adult convert. I am the only person in my immediate family who is at all religious. The notion that all religion is inherited unquestioned is another prejudiced and wildly innaccurate notion.

Right, because we're all weak-minded sheep, correct?

My oh my, I don't know how I got the impression that you were speaking about PEOPLE and not RELIGIONS. Must be something wrong with my monitor...

Land ownership and resources have caused more deaths than all religious wars combined. Do you question whether you should own property on a regular basis? (Good for you if you do, but I doubt it.)

Well, I guess it worked okay for Communist Russia...

Okay, so you would agree with the following statement:

Jews accept their beliefs hereditarily and contribute nothing to them, they are uninformed about the history of their religion, they are unintelligent, and they are sheep.

I don't know where I got the impression you were making bigoted statements! I was way off...

braces-for-impact:

And atheism doesn't? You don't divide the world into religious people and atheists? Us and them? (It would be difficult to deny it in this post, because that is the premise of it.)

Every word of this applies to the elitist brand of atheism practiced by most of the members of this board. For that matter, it applies to every political party, sewing circle, faction, club, sports team, etc... in the freaking WORLD.

Every group of people who share a passionately held common cause, whether they be enviromentalists, communists, gay-rights advocates, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, vegetarians, vegans, animal rights advocates, republicans, democrats, or what have you... they ALL separate the world into us and them. It's hardly limited to religion and racism.

Atheists do it too. Even if you try the tried and true cop out of atheism only entailing a lack of belief, that still enables you to neatly divide up the world into the twin camps of believers and unbelievers. And the premise of this thread is that believers:

1) Have poor reasoning skills, otherwise they would be atheists.
2) Have poor critical thinking skills, otherwise they would be atheists.
3) Contribute nothing original to their beliefs. (One wonders, then, where the heck ALL THE DENOMINATIONS CAME FROM.)
4) Are ignorant about their own beliefs.
5) Are weak-minded sheep.
6) Are either fundamentalist or WOULD be fundamentalists, if the right charasmatic leader came along to push them to the edge (see number 5).

So MegaDave's atheism, for instance, divides the world into two categories, and says the members of the category "believer" may be safely assumed to be inferior along the lines of the above six points.

And by the world around you, you mean your hometown and the place you live in now, correct? And probably not very much of even those cities, huh? Ever been to a black church? A mormon church? A mosque? A synagogue? How qualified do you think you are to discuss the merits of the beliefs of Seventh Day Adventists? How about the A.M.E. Zionists? Jainism? Taoism? Confucianism? Have you had any official collegiate training in religious studies? Even one class?

If you even THINK that your personal experience grants you the right to make a sweeping claim of all religions, then this thread is more bigoted and narrow-minded than even I thought.

When I look at the secular dictatorships that around the world that are at least as bad, it is far from self-evident that simply eliminating religion would make the world a better place. I am not aware of any offically atheist country which has a better human rights track record than any officially theistic country. The grand experiments with state-sponsored atheism have not exactly been wildly succesful moral enterprises.

Where are your critical thinking skills when it comes to comparing theocracies to other secular dictatorships, and then assessing whether or not the active variable is not TOTALITARIANISM, not religion?

I guess you're right though, people do have a bad habit of being skeptical selectively, and protecting their predetermined beliefs.

Then why don't you direct some of that skepticism towards your supposed ability to make accurate judgements about religions you know absolutley nothing about? Give me a break. If you were even SLIGHTLY skeptical about any of the pronouncements you have made in this thread you would be forced to withdraw nearly ALL OF THEM.

I don't see any evidence in this discussion that you use critical thinking skills in your attacks on religion. That you claim that theocracies make the proposition that the world would be a better place without religion self-evident, without a single thought to the secular dictatorships that are just as bad, proves this.

It doesn't have to be a hands off issue. I was merely pointing out that in participating in this thread, you are as bad as the racists and the religionists you are mocking.

You have absolutely every right to be a bigot.

auto-da-fe

luvluv,

While I don't have the time to go through and respond to every point made as you so elequantly did, I would like to say a few things and perhaps if I tell you more of how I came to these conclusions, you will better understand what I am trying to say.

Setp. 11th (3,000 people killed)

The Branch Davidian disaster (about 80 people)

suicide bombers in Isreal (untold thousands dead and injured)

The Crusades (here I confess my ignorance in exact amounts)

The Holocaust (or just WWII in general, 800,000 civilians dead, 20 million people left homeless, and that is just in Nazi Germany)

The "1rst Holocaust" (by this I am refering to the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of "Native Americans" by the European settlers)

The list above is a partial list of some of the more infamous events in history. Of course, a complete list would take more time than I have to write and you have to read.

The events above all have two things in common. They all have a religous theme and they all have a racist theme. If I were writing a coloum about any of the above events, that coulum could use either word to describe the overall theme. I would be accurate either way.

When I put it this way, it becomes a little more obvious that the two words are almost interchangeable in certain situations.

I lied, the events on the list have one more thing in common; they all involve the violent loss of life and liberty.

Now, tell me, what events, from the list above, would have turned out differently if the charismatic leader and instigator had been an atheist? Or, for that matter, which would have turned out differently if the leader was a person fond of critical thinking.

Let's take Sept. 11th as it is the biggest one for our generation. You could say that Whabbism (sp?) was the religous belief behind it, or you could say that the hate they had for Americans was the racist bent on it.

Now, lets apply the lessons of critical thinking...

Whabbism (the religion of Usama bin Laden to my understanding) is most certainly an extremeist religon, and I would think that even a conservative christian can look at it critically and see there are some real.... odd beliefs in Whabbism, and that more than likely, even if heaven does exist, there probably isn't going to be 78 virgins waiting for you if you decide to go blow up some buildings filled with thousands of people who don't even know you exist and are completly innocent in any misery in your life. Yet to some, perhaps not all, but to some, they truly beleive that there is.

For the ones who don't believe that, but still do it, they are motivated by the fact that they detest Americans, and all things USA. They do this becuase they believe that they can trace a good deal of their everyday misery directly to the US. However, they have no problem with letting despots rule them like slaves. While the masses die of hunger, the rulers live in wealth. We have throughout history seen what happens when a nation unites against its rulers. The right leader (and military leaders have to think in very critical terms, especially during a war), and perhaps some help from us, instead of fighting against us, and a new leader could have rebuilt the nation.

Now, out of all the regular folk that follow either of the above scenarios, how many of them do you think are truly informed about what is going on, or for that matter, truly care to be informed?


While I will agree that land ownership and resources have caused a good many problems, I have two problems with this. One, I would seriously have to see some hard casulty numbers to compare, because I personally find it hard to believe that Land ownership and resources have caused more deaths than religion and racism. 50 million deaths just in WWII can be attributed to either racism or religion. And two, while the true meaning of some military conflicts are land ownership or whatever, the masses are usually convinced of some other reason, and a good many will fall into either religon or racism.

One of the things that will have to happen before we as a race (speaking of the human race as a whole, since there are virtually no genetic differences between blacks, whites, Jews, Christians to name a few) will be able to ever achieve our true potential, is peace. I am not talking about some hippie, peace on earth, love not war, type of peace. I am talking about working together, as a human race, to solve most of the worlds problems.

Peace of this type will never be achieved completly as long as two things remain... religon, and racism.

Now, if you believe that what I have said is biggoted, well, fine, I guess given the right spin, it could be. However, my true intentions was to apply some critical thinking to the similarities of racism and religion. You chose to focus on the religious part of it and as with most (not all) theist, when in to crouching christian, hidden theist fight stance, and readied some of your best atheist suck rhetoric. I am not asking you to give up your beliefs, only for one second take of your religion goggles and look at the world from a different perspective.

auto-da-fe

To make one more point:

You are right that I do not have an in-depth knowledge of all religions thorughout the world. Conversely, I do not have in-depth knowledge of all forms of racism in the world. However, I do not believe that I need it in order to make an informed decision to wether or not I will subscribe to their beleifs, which is all I need to decide how much credence I will give their tenents and actions.

brighid

You have made a false conclusion. There is a difference, a significant difference in attacking an argument or statement AND attacking a person. An intelligent person can make unintelligent statements, or a reasonable person can (most likely due to lack of information) hold unreasonable conclusions/beliefs. A person is fully capable of being intelligent in some areas and being ignorant in others (but not meaning that said person is therefore unintelligent because one area of knowledge is lacking.) A person may also be very reasonable about most every day things and therefore be a "reasonable person", but may (for emotional and personal reasons) lack the same clarity and objectivity when it comes to a specific issue (perhaps a loved one, a closely held belief, etc.) Therein IS the difference I feel MegaDave was trying to make.

I also think you are really stretching MegaDave's statements by contending that "religious people never contribute anything to their beliefs et al." He has made no such statements and only upon stretching, distorting and adding your own meaning to his statements can you concluded that unintelligent beliefs equates to lack of personal intelligence is bigoted.

Brighid

ManM

Might I recommend a highly relevant article from the II library?

"Was Hitler an Atheist or a Theist? More Importantly, Who Cares?" by Mark I. Vuletic

Just a little snippet:

auto-da-fe

Thank you ManM for taking the debate to an intellectual level.

I will say that I can agree to an extent. Although, IMO, my theory still holds that most of the worlds troubles (speaking of war and conflict, and the deaths caused by them), the majority has still been racist or religiously motivated.

[edited for spelling]

ManM

I think that both religious and racist violence are a subset of violence stemming from pride and avarice. I believe these categorizations are better because they also account for the secular violence that the world has seen. It may interest you to study what happened to the Orthodox Christians in Soviet Russia.

auto-da-fe

Thanks for the suggestion, I just recently did a little research about the Russian vs. Chechnyan conflict, and found it interesting, so I will most certainly check out Russian vs. Orthodox Christians.

Your point is valid, however, what is the source of the pride? Is it religious or racist? I can imagine much pride from either "My god is better than your god", or "Us white folks are better than those black folks" (of course these are crude generalizations, but I am only using it to express a point).

As far as avarice, if it is to be defined as an excessive need for wealth and power, then I think that applies to the leaders of many conflicts, but no so when it comes to the masses that those leaders attract. Usually they are given some other reason. Often times, those reasons fall into either racism or religion.

edited to add

This last point about avarice is best taught by looking at the results of the conflict (or at least, the assumed results by the people who are doing the fighting). Most are not doing it thinking "I want to take over Poland for my country". Most are thinking "I'm going to kill me some stupid polaks"