Starboy

Yes Kassiana, it would be ridiculous to say that all Christians are intolerant SOBs. But a very large number of them are. Just as in the days of Tom Crow, it was not the nice white people that made the black man's experience in the south horrendous, it was those intolerant SOB white people. And what it took was white and black Americans to stand up against the intolerant whites and make such behavior unlawful and socially unacceptable.

When I see Christians in my neighborhood standing up against the abuses committed by the believers of Jesus then I will change my mind. But to coin a phrase, it will be a cold day in hell before that happens.

A short list of Christian abuses:
1) Proselytizing - how intolerant can you get. Being tolerant would be accepting non-Christians as they are with no desire to convert them to your religion. You have a right to think and believe as you wish but you have no right to pester others to adopt your beliefs.
2) Pandering – Christians should not be allowed to make any crazy claim they want. If a private corporation made crazy claims about their service or product they would be sued or prosecuted. Just because a person is waiving holy writings doesn’t mean that they can say anything they wish to attract converts.
3) Fraud – I have seen numerous cases where a pastor has stolen large amounts of money from the church, lied about their actions or behavior, or were involved in other criminal acts and little to nothing happens. This is outrageous, and it is beyond me how Christians can let it happen.
4) Manipulation – this is the most insidious of all. I have seen this in action and it makes my stomach churn. In some sense I think that any sap that falls for it deserves it, but at the same time, most of these people are lied to or are brought up in it and never had a chance to see and understand other points of view. Christianity has created a climate in this country where people just don’t question the bull sh*t they are fed.
5) Creating a Christian government – this is unconstitutional! But they do not care since the “Kingdom” of god should take precedence over a democracy of people.

AAARRRRRRGGGGG!

Sorry about the rant, but there are just tooooo many SOB Christians for me to think well of them as a group. Kinda like the negro that just can’t accept that there are any good white people because so many of them have behaved so badly for so long that it just doesn’t make any sense how that could be unless they all sucked!

Starboy

SecularFuture

Wildernesse,
That has happened to me twice, and since then I’ve been typing everything into Microsoft Word, and then copying / pasting my text over to the submit reply window. If anything funny happens, I can always rely on the MSWord backup.

We all need something fun to do to take our minds away from the more serious things; we all need a time to refuel or take easy. Theism, in my honest opinion, is a total waste of time. It is dangerous in nature, especially when taken seriously. It promotes magical thinking, and classifies such thinking as valid. “If rational thinking has been the key to our survival since our beginnings, rational thinking should also be the key to understanding our creator, if there is one.”

Theism is confusing and contradictory. In the real world, we are asked to use critical thinking and science to understand all that is around us. However, through theism we are asked to use a blind religious faith to hold to a belief in an unfounded god concept. My main problem is that many are unable to balance the two concepts (critical thinking and religious faith). In result, you have people who are unable to think critically when required to.

Why is critical thinking important?
Without critical thinking, all of us would be jumping to conclusions about everything. Instead of taking the time to investigate, or to analyze, we would just make quick decisions and then move on. This is dangerous! For Example: Imagine if a jury put their faith and intuition before a critical analysis. “The defendant doesn’t *seem* like an honest person. I have a *feeling* that he/she is guilty!”

Some claim that they have heard from, been touched by, and/or have had a kind of divine experience through God. Nevertheless, how do they know that their continual belief in a God is not psychologically disturbing their rational judgment, and mentally creating what they feel to be God's presence? How do they know that an answered prayer was not the result of a series of natural causes motivated by them? Some may ask me, “But, how do you know that their divine experiences aren’t real?” My answer, “I don’t know, and neither do they. But without any evidence for the supernatural their claim lacks credibility.”

Or, they could have created experiences to match what they would expect if their beliefs were true. I can admit to you right now that I do not know if divine experiences are real or not. However, as I said above, if there is no evidence for anything supernatural in nature, other explanations are possible for the divine experience claim. A divine force is not required to create the sense of a divine experience.

Everyone has different interests, I agree.

Keep up the good work!

I’m an independent film director, and no - you probably don’t know of any of my work; not yet, at least. But SOON… And no, my films are not about atheism. Woody Allen has that department covered already.

I typed a HUGE response to a thread once, nearly 1 ½ long, and my computer froze. I lost everything! I did not retype my reply. In fact, I didn’t type anything else for about a week.

To me, it seems like humanity (the majority) wants happiness and something close to perfection. We can’t be happy when people around us are dying from diseases, and we can’t be a productive through a flawed system. Just my personal theory.

We’re moving too slow, though! I want to see some significant change within my lifetime. I mean – come on! Why haven’t we found a cure for the common cold yet?! We’ve found ways to make bigger penises and bigger breasts, but we still haven’t found the cure for cancer or A.I.D.S. And no, theism is not entirely to blame for this. We need to become more… I don’t know! We need humanism, more people concerned about the wellbeing and future of humanity.

We need to cut down on the categories. Instead of having Black, White, Chinese, Mexican – we should have one category, one word – HUMANS. Etc – Etc – and so on. Some divisions are necessary, but most are just gratuitous.

“Believe in Jesus or go to hell” is not the primary teaching of Christianity, but it is a central theme.

Theism is obviously an unfounded belief in an unfounded concept. (And damn it – I need to stop using the word ‘unfounded’!) Why should theism be considered valid? Why should theism even be considered an option when naturalism, a more grounded belief, is available?

It doesn’t. My point (new point) is that it creates a contradiction between real world issues and the belief in the supernatural. Have faith with one, and use critical thinking with the other. It just doesn’t make any sense, and it doesn’t seem like a very healthy practice either.

Fiach

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tercel
[B]Okay SecularFuture you clearly have some serious issues that you need to deal with.]/B]

I would point out that you are committing a fallacy of over-generalisation. Your logic that "some theists did something bad, therefore Theism is bad" is absurd. Some humans have done bad stuff therefore humanity is completely evil and should be abolished... right? I hope you see the problem with this line of reasoning.

The point is well made. All theists were not to blame for inhibiting learning and inquiry. Some theists were quite oppressive and suppressive of new knowledge. The greatest guilt goes with organised Christianity not necessarily all Theists. I would be correct to blame organised Christian/Islamic Theism for retarding human "progress" in the acquisition" of new knowledge and challenging of absurd superstitions of the Bible.

It was the HUMANS! Humans are terrible with their awful unfounded beliefs. Overgeneralisation.
Some theists, yes: "THEISTS" in general? NO.

Correct, but while not all theists were out there suppressing thinking, many were doing just that. And only theists were doing that. I know of no Atheists or Agnostics, or Deists who favoured the suppression of knowledge that conflicted with Scriptural superstition.

People have been around for 300,000 years or so and not got anywhere with science 'till now. Within a mere 2000 years (with perhaps the majority of that wasted time by barbarians during the dark ages) Christianity has produced civilization as we know it with a degree of technology unsupassed in human history.

People have been around as H. sapiens for 100,000 years and as mankind for 3,000,000 years. Much of the first 96,000 years were the progression from Palaeolithic to Mesolithic to Neolithic. Human progress tends to accelerate in increasing velocities as new inventions spur others. The Stone Age lasted 96 thousand years give or take a fortnight. The Copper age for a thousand, the Bronze Age for maybe 800, then the Iron Age to past 1 AD.

During the Pagan Age of Graeco-Roman Culture they postulated the existence of Atoms. Aristothenes in 400 BC placed two poles, one in upper Egypt and one in the Delta, and measured the Noon shadows. Using geometry, Aristothenes correctly found that the land was an arc, and measured the circumference of the Spherical Earth to close to 25,000 miles. He said the curved shadow on a Lunar Eclipse was due to the Spherical Earth between the Sun and Moon. Aristotle (or perhaps another Greek Scientists of his time postulated evolution and the interrelationship of all animals including mankind. These were taught at the great school of Alexandria, Egypt until the early 5th century. Hypatia the great woman scientist taught these things. But Christianity had taken over the Empire, and began a systematic persecution of Pagans. Bishop Saint Cyril of Alexandria preached against her heresy of the spherical Earth and other facts. He had the Christian mobs drag her through the streets, beat and rape her, disembowel her, then have 4 horses pull her limbs off in different directions. The brilliant and reportedly beautiful martyr to learning and the enemy of superstition died slowly. From then on the Earth was flat, and there were four elements, and Magical Creation of the Bible taught as truth.

From Hypatia's Death in 412 CE. Science remained stagnant under Catholic Church suppression until the Renaissance. Galileo was intimidated with threat of torture and death for his "heresy" that planets had satellites. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for blasphemy (Pantheism), and heresy ("Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun.") That got him killed.

What saved civilisation was the Reformation. North German kings who were tending to Deism, fostered the works of Copernicus, Huygens, Kepler, and others safe from the inqisition.

So "progress" was an initially slow climb for 96,000 years and an accelerated on up to 412 CE when Organised Christianity put an abrupt stop to it for another millenium. Then it resumed where it left off. Accelerating to Steam engines in 1840?, Internal combustion engines in 1880s, Aero plane in 1903, Jet plane in 1939, Space craft in 1957, Moon landing 1967. The greatest progress occurred in nations favouring science like Kaiser's Germany and Nazi Germany (for the wrong reasons), Semi-secular USA, and Atheistic USSR.


Yeah, right. You've had 300,000 years without Christianity and you didn't get anywhere.

No, you got from a primitive stone ax to Iron swords, axes, domestication of horses, cattle, sheep, wheat, Iron rimmed wheels. That is a lot when starting with men just barely bipedal with a 750 cc brain.

It doesn't make any sense for grown people to assert that their island is the only one in the ocean just 'cos they can't see any others either. But you atheists are good at such crazy assertions that if you don't see it then it ain't there.

You theists are good at believing in bullshit like the Bible when anyone with intelligence sees that it is all bollocks (myth and superstition) upon which you base your irrational faith. You don't know what Atheism is. It is the lack of belief in Gods. No Atheists I know say with certainty that there is no undiscovered island in the South Indian Ocean. Like gods, undiscovered or invisible islands may or may not exist. But I am under no obligation to believe it unless the one claiming the invisible entity proves it to me. I don't believe in the existence of God. I don't deny the possibility of the existence of a God. I just don't see any reason for believing in it, with absolutely no evidence for it.

Yes, I think you do need it.

What we need is to improve teaching of science in our schools. We need to teach critical analysis, rational thinking, processing of information, and most of all to never accept any claims lacking in evidence. If that can be done, human progress will continue to accelerate, and some day, superstition and myth will die out.

Fiach

Kassiana

SF said I didn't answer the following:
Do you think it should be considered healthy for an adult, 21+, to hold to a firm belief in Santa Clause and/or The Tooth Fairy? If yes, why? If no, why?

Kass:
I already answered this question. BTW, it's Santa Claus, not clause. Clause = bad Tim Allen movie. Look back through my posts. I know I answered this. If you still can't find it, let me know and I'll look for it when I have more time...gotta get to work.

Re: religious minority = atheist...I tend to see atheism as a viewpoint ON religion, so yes, I think atheists can be called a "religious" minority, in that their viewpoint on religion is in the minority. Believe me, after my years here, I have learned what atheism is as defined by the atheists on II.

SecularFuture

We're not religious. We are non-religious.

Correct.

And what does being a minority (in any sense) have to do with creating a better world through secularism?

the last question is to everyone

Rousseau_CHN

I fear the day that we defeat Theism. I fear the day when we no longer are part of the underground, but rather have become part of the mainstream.

Should we, atheist, be one day in the position of power, I believe we would be no different from the theist who now seeks to envelop the world in flame.

No matter how rational we atheist are, I believe we will be corrupted by power once in possession.

So I say I do not wish to see Theism fall. I do not wish to see a change of position. I wish we remain the minority. I wish we remain part of the underground. I wish we remain the gadfly that continous sting the donkey that is theism.