Christians vs Atheists. whats the deal?

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Dusty201087

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guitarplayerone

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just my :2c: coming here. For what its worth I get along very well with my christian friends and never criticise them for their beliefs. but below is what I honestly feel, and what many honestly feel, and may contribute to a vocalization of this aspect of society.

modern religion certainly slows down stem cell research, which is by far the most promising medical phenomenon in recent years. this is certainly 'imposing a belief/values system on others. you guys aren't repressed. you are on our money, you are in our offices, you have won elections and diverty MY taxes towards debating if we should let two people with the same parts play with each other. so personally, I could care les about what someone's personal religious beliefs are, if they are supportive of a system that is detrimental to the health and efficiency of society and government. the USA is one of the last outposts of this sort of madness, but ALL religion causes these sorts of effects. You may have valid points with your faith, and it may help you in your personal life. in fact you may have seen 'miracles' or other phenomena that certainly would have converted myself had I seen them. all of this is irrelevant to me if you impede my research, if you divert the flow of taxes and conversation, away from real issues, and towards 'faith and values arguments'.

this is the position of the modern scientist, and I don't even want to hear something about christian scientists. don't take penicillin derivatives, ever if you don't believe in evolution. there are penecillin derivatives because of selection of resistant organisms, and the creation of modified structures was the only way to keep killing specific strains. this is evolution by definition. if you argue that this is over a short period of time, sure, but I ask you, how many generations? (maybe you won't post such an argument, but this is just a rant if someone wishes to)

I do not need your religion preaching to me about 'helping people' I am a good person regardless, and I PERSONALLY take responsibility for my level of kindness, and make my own decisions. the further position of many anti-religion crusaders is that religion is, as Karl Marx put, "the opiate of the masses". now what is meant here is that it provides a rigorous belief structure that incorporates many aspects of world interpretation and life interpretation, and being a religion, often these are taken literally. therefore this absolves any believer of any responsibility towards the possibly questionable validity of an issue in the first place, allowing them to say "I am a christian, and this is how I think"- PERIOD. No further thought required. No inquisition (pardon a mild pun). Nothing. This is maddening, as when you consider the 'groupthink' mentality simply of ipods and starbucks. How many people do you know who own an ipod? How many people do you know which own another mp3 player? Groupthink at work here, and when groupthink goes to town on what I and many others consider to be the progression of the human animal (ouch, huh), then this becomes a major problem. so this is not a personal attack, not an attack on christianity but an attack on all exclusive belief systems. nobody would have any reason to 'repress the poor christians' -(who got to where they are now by killing lots and lots of people) if they just stayed out of our government and schools'. And by government I mean federal. Local states can do whatever their majorities vote for. Then they can impose whatever they want on the local likeminded populace.

:2c:
RenegadeDave said:
So you're so insecure in your belief structure that you cannot allow other ideologies to coexist, as it were? Or are you simply so egotistical to think affect some sort of modern renaissance through your personal crusade against anything believed to be divinely inspired? It seems that your very outlook on the situation has become a perfect mirror for primitive expansionist Christianity oppressing ideologies/theologies that are different from your own.

You accuse me of generalizing about what some people sometimes do, yet you are guilty of assuming that all members of a general group will always behave in a given way. My observations are obviously my own and accrued through my time on earth interacting with folks, you'll have to forgive me that I haven't had a chance to glean insight from my limited interactions with YOU personally and applying them to my musings on the religious debate at large. I still stand behind my prior post because you've done nothing but illustrate it. You're insecure in your ideology and are egocentric to the point that you think that nothing good can be attained as a result of an ideology/theology that differs from your own. Case and point: I'd love for your to air your grievances on Buddhism and how it has afflicted humanity with it's hideous recognizing of an Awakened One to lead it's to enthralled myrmidons to commit atrocities such as leading altruistic lives fraught with ethical behavior and devotion. You're right, that's a blight on humanity and needs to become nothing more than a footnote in a history text. Or the next time some person comes to your aid in a situation as small as letting you borrow their cell phone to make a call when your phone is dead and you desperately need to make a call. It could just be that person being good natured and friendly, or they could be following whatever religious doctrine they prescribe to but won't flaunt it in your face.

The reality that you're letting elude you is that people are the reason bad things happen in the world. An atheist is absolutely as capable of acting out of selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, or even being generally evil as any man who ever has committed harrowing acts in the name of an unseen deity.

If history has taught us anything it's that if your repress a body of peoples for their beliefs, the group of people will typically rise against you, usually violently. We have laws now to keep the rational ones safe from the irrational ones and secular governments.
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guitarbuilder93

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Dusty201087 said:
I think that's pretty hilarious actually, people get sued all the time
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well i posted it cause i almost pissed my pants... guess i forgot that part :lol:
i thought the best part was when it was thrown out of court for not having a contact address for god!

i guess nobody's used Google Maps before...
 
JBroll

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You may not see how Christianity is forced on people - you were raised around it, so unless you've made a conscious effort to question everything and really look into every detail you just can't see what's really going on.

It's entrenched in our government and political arena in ways that are simply unimaginable for a Christian - several states, including my own, require taking an oath that includes, among other things, a religious oath before taking office. The media simply does not acknowledge nonreligious work in the same way as religious work - if you and some friends spend 20 hours a week *each* tutoring or working with 'at-risk' students, you're ignored because some asshole who did a tenth of the work but threw Jesus in every other sentence has to be in the newspaper first. Even outside public office, where - except in very rare cases - religion is a prerequisite, being identified as an atheist can bring about all kinds of serious and unrelated problems... apart from losing your job because you didn't staple your TPS reports exactly 1/4" from the top-left corner the week after someone finds out you're not religious (really, no coincidence there), you could find yourself being harassed and threatened with serious violence - I know because it's happened to me *personally*.

Christians are simply the biggest offenders because they're the biggest minority - it's not like atheists have a hard-on for Muslim proselytization. If someone tries to force anything on me - or, believe it or not, an atheist who doesn't know I'm in the same boat tries to talk me into becoming an atheist (if there were ever a reason to staple someone's lips together...) - I simply do not respond well.

Unfortunately for us, there is simply no way to get a majority of this nation's population to think an atheist can be a good person. Some Christians have a very nasty tendency towards demonizing belief systems. I was raised Catholic, and one big thing in Catholicism was that every religion had a grain of truth - but Catholicism had all of it, and was the best... however, when someone isn't religious, everything is ruined and there's no way to rectify the complete rejection of a religion with that assertion. This leads to many things - atheists being one of the most distrusted minorities in the country (and often *the* most distrusted), religious tests for office, and so on - that don't work out well.

You simply wouldn't believe the shit that happens to you when you're not a religious (or hiding nonreligious) person. Once you see what it's like to not even be able to walk down the hall between your classes without someone screaming at you, trying to 'argue' (i.e. blather nonsensically so quickly and constantly that the lack of a response is taken as instant victory), trying to 'convert' you (it's okay, it may seem like I'm insulting your intelligence by trying to drag you into a religion you know more about than I do for no reason other than that I like it and think everyone should be forced to believe in it... but it's only because I *care* about you), or telling you that they're praying for you, you'll have a much different viewpoint.

Jeff
 
JBroll

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It doesn't sound like he knows what Satanism is, either... that's something I've never heard out of an actual Satanist.

Jeff
 
Koshchei

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I liked the movie overall, but felt that there were several very preachy moments. Maher, as I said earlier in this thread, is a good thinker, but sometimes subverts his own message by going for the cheap laugh.

The best part was the trucker stop, where the great big fat guy starts going off about how he was a Satanist who did drugs and had loose sex with women before he found Jesus (hiding in the second roll from the bottom? he's always in the last place you look). That's a story I hear from a LOT of born-againers, but ask them a simple question about Satanism (theistic OR philosophical), left-hand path religion in general, or anything of the sort, and they hit stop->rewind and recite the same thing again. They're clearly either indoctrinated into believing total crap (I can't believe I just said that, Captain Obvious), or they're making it up to lend credibility to a system of beliefs that's so knobbly and tenuous that a strong breeze could topple it.

Paraphrased from the Satanic Bible: Stupidity (the willful ignorance kind, not the dropped on my head as infant kind) and Self-deception are the two worst crimes a person can commit. Hear! Hear!
 
A

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Koshchei said:
I liked the movie overall, but felt that there were several very preachy moments. Maher, as I said earlier in this thread, is a good thinker, but sometimes subverts his own message by going for the cheap laugh.
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That's exactly why I didn't enjoy the movie too much.
 
Metal Ken

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RenegadeDave said:
If history has taught us anything it's that if your repress a body of peoples for their beliefs, the group of people will typically rise against you, usually violently.
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I just saw this, and i thought it was really funny. If we look at the major religions, its actually rather the opposite. Who has oppressed muslims, ever? They make up a dominant part of the middle east, and have a huge population in china. Likewise, since roman times, when has christianity ever been oppressed? These are the two most violent religions of the past 1000 years.
Contrarily, Judaism gets repressed all the time, yet i havent seen any jewish crusades, jewish witchhunts or jewish jihads.
 
Koshchei

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Jewish Crusade, witch hunt and holy war: Palestine.
The Palestinians are just as bad, but we're not talking about them.

Muslim oppression: India, resulting in the eventual creation of Pakistan.

I don't agree with the original point either though. The most a persecuted minority can usually hope for is a fast escape from their country as refugees before they're made extinct.
 
Metal Ken

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Koshchei said:
Jewish Crusade, witch hunt and holy war: Palestine.
The Palestinians are just as bad, but we're not talking about them.

Muslim oppression: India, resulting in the eventual creation of Pakistan.

I don't agree with the original point either though. The most a persecuted minority can usually hope for is a fast escape from their country as refugees before they're made extinct.
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Yeah, Palestine, but thats not entirely jewish now, either. Americans are getting in on that to defend the holy land from heathens and shit.
And, it isn't the same degree of inhumanity as witch hunts or crusades were.

Also, if i recall, the whole pakistan creation wasnt because of an active persecution, but more along the lines of muslims being shunned from normal society? Could be wrong.
 
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