Fellow atheists PLEASE DONT DO THIS!
Online I am all for free speech. I have ripped the Pope a new one myself. I think religion is nothing but human imagination. BUT, please do not speak for me or any other atheist by destorying property you don't own.
If you remember when "Atheist Station" was vandalized, it pissed us off. LETS NOT lower ourselves to trailer park trash by "defending our sister's honor".
THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS AND THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE SHOULD BE PROSECUTED!
Words are one thing, blasphemey is one thing, but ALL OF US, believer or not, should have the human empathy to know that we can be safe in our own lives.
IT IS WRONG WHEN THEY DO IT, IT IS WRONG WHEN WE DO IT!
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view/20090713nh_churchs_response_to_vandal_jesus_loves_you/srvc=home&position...
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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Private property is the foundation of a free society. Free speech has never involved destroying the property of others.
No one gains when people are victimized by criminal acts of destruction of property. Religion will do itself in over time as it fails in the face of rationality.
Acts of violence and vandalism against others are not the answer.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Not even talking about constitutional law her, which should be a given.
What Christians call the "Golden Rule" we would call "NO DUH!"
Wanting to be safe in one's own environment is not the cause of Jesus, or Allah or Vishnu or Thor.
This pisses me off because even with some atheists, it leads the "well intended" to government intervention of speech, which fucks both sides over!
Lets all bitch about each other without harm and leave it at words!
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
It was most likely the work of some teens with too much time and beer on their hands. I wouldn't even be surprised to find out that the culprits actually attend that particular church.
Understand, however, that I am not condoning vandalism. This was a bad deal, no matter who was behind the paint can.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
I find an "inside job" to be higly unlikely. But it would not be beyond the scale for any group of any label to look at others and take license to do what they want.
In any case, the assholes who did this should be prosicuted.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I agree with you completely. I support free speech in all cases, but if they put me on a jury, I'd send these vandals up the creek. Vandalism is a crime, and it ought to be.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
What saddens me, is that the media will readly report that a Church was attacked, but how many national or globle media will give the same time to us who condem this?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Uh yeah, Can you say Tawana Brawley ? ( ...or Rev. Al Sharpton ? )
Since we agree that a crime has been committed I propose that in the name of we atheists showing solidarity with these theists that a traditional religious punishment be implemented and the perpetrator(s) shall, in the name of Allah, have their right hand removed from their body.
In this way justice will have been served and God's / Allah's name(s) will have been honored.
Praise Jesus !
Allah Akbar !
insert name of diety:
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If by inside job you mean that the vandalism was performed with the intention of casting blame on atheists, I don't believe that. What I meant was, in the cases I can recall, the perpetrators were generally disaffected teens who attended that church. It might be a false impression, as I'm not drawing from any statistics on this. This is just what I remember from other vandalisms I've heard of.
I agree. Although, I have to admit that I have been sorely tempted to rearrange letters on some of those signs. One of the churches around here ran a "No God, No Peace; Know God, Know Peace" sign for a bit, and I wanted to swap the beginning words.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Vandalism is a crime and we should/ will never condone this behavior.
Prozac, one of the reasons you amuse me is that you puzzle me. Everytime you say something like this, my first reaction is to laugh, 'cause it's the kind of humor I like. Then I stop dead when I realize I'm not sure if you're joking.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Rest assured I am joking.
Like some other atheists on this forum ( Doomed Soul I'm looking at you...) I sometimes employ a dark sense of humor. My avatars sometimes reflect this as well. It's just part of who I am.
I actually try to keep a fairly low profile, not piss anybody off ( theists or atheists ) etc. Try and keep it fun....
Agreed.
Private property is a right. Vandalism is a crime.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
The first article does not even tell the story properly. This article has a picture of the damage and it is appalling.
http://www.wmur.com/news/20032710/detail.html
Seriously, the whole building is going to have to be repainted. Changing a church sign, while also not appropriate would be quite pedestrian and only take a minute or so to fix. This damage is quite extensive.
They don't have a web site but I think that I may call them in the morning to see if they will take donations from atheists. Apparently, they are unitarians so I would give good odds that they will.
If they do, what are the odds that one of our moderators would be willing to start a collection for this?
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I like the fact that it was a former strip club.
And, actually, the fact that it is Unitarian makes me reconsider the likelihood that it was an offput member. From what I've seen, they don't tend to be the type, although my experience with them is admittedly very limited. I've seen Christian church kids rebel and blow their tops(and, indeed, had a couple of interesting nights with some of the female examples back in my youth), but I've never seen any UU kids act up. Maybe it is the loose rules that give them more latitude so that they don't feel the need to vent.
EDIT: This brought to mind a story. I was passing by the local Baptist church a few weeks back, and someone had taken a marker and scribbled something on the plexiglass cover over the weekly message sign. It wasn't legible except for something(I couldn't tell you what now) that made me think it was an anti-religious message. I remarked that I thought so, and immediately had to convince my wife that, no, I had nothing to do with defacing the sign cover, silly ass message or no.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Gross.
I'm a die-hard fan of graffiti that gets painted over old, boring, mono-tone building facades, so I'm afraid I cannot condemn all 'private property' vandalism... but this is a shitty deal. It's not designed to lighten-up anyone's day, beautify it's surroundings or even cleverly chastize it's target; it's just spiteful damage doen to what is clearly a very low-key, low-income building.
Even if only to draw lines between different types of vandalism, I'd see the perpetrators in this instance brought in front of a judge.
It does make me a little extra-cranky that the vandals apparently decided they needed to get up on their soap-box and incorporate the 9th grader philosophy lecture into the anarchy signs and Bad Religion logos. If anything, that's just going to strengthen the convictions of the church-goers.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Prove it
What Would Kharn Do?
A vandal who can spell Nietzsche correctly? Hmm...?
Notice the news reporter in the video pointing to specific quotes? He's clearly ignoring the 'innocent until proven guilty' maxim of our justice system by implicating godless anarchists (as if they are one and the same) as the guilty miscreant party. "Bad, bad, bad people these are!"
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
This reminds me of the Emmett Till murder, where the prosecution tried to claim it was an inside job by the blacks.
Where'd you get they're unitarian from? I couldn't find that association, the fact their response to the vandal was "Jesus loves you too" doesn't seem to me like a unitarian message. I think you must have read wrong.
From trying to google up a web site for them. They don't seem to have one but a directory of the town says that they are Unitarians.
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I'm not laying the blame on anyone. But in my experience, which I noted is not claimed as definitive, the culprits have usually been rebellious teens from the congregation who acted out. The only other vandalisms that I knew anything about personally were related to racial bigotry or anti-semitism, and those were more rare.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Hold on now, we are above barbaric punishment. Exept when it comes to fat women in Spandex! If anything deserves a stoning, that does!
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
What is this? Your version of the 10 commandments? I shit on your property as foundation of a free society. How people manage to get 'property' and 'free' in the same sentence without scratching their head afterwards is a mystery to me.
While I agree that tagging on church walls as a general protest against religion is retarded and deserves some community work cleaning a lot more walls, the White House should not pass a day without attempted/accomplished symbolical vandalism. Not a day.
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Can you link me to that directory? The reason why i doubt, the unitarianism, is that saying "jesus loves you" doesn't sound to me like a uniterainian message.
Maybe he was mistaken. They don't look like unitarians. Hmmm, they seem like nice people though.
http://www.hopechapel.org/HChistory.htm
http://www.hopechapel.org/daughterchurches.html
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
That being the case I suppose that your house is open for everyone to take your shit and what they can't carry away they may destroy and you won't have any problem when they do.
____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I'll help you with that. In fact, how about we all take a dump in ZuS's house? After all, our right to shit on his property is the "foundation of a free society."
Edit:
*scratches head*
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I am sure the church has a phone number and anyone with the time should call them and leave a message expressing empathy.
I am for all the blasphemy and "trash talk" in the world. Anyone who has read my posts knows that I don't pull punches. But long before I am an atheist, I am a human being and I know that I would not want my property or person violated.
These perps are assholes and do nothing for society by their actions.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog