well hellooooo
Offline i'm glad i found this site. i am an atheist and only know a few other atheists, and i have been feeling a little suffocated by stupid lately. i am finishing up my history degree and am in a class at the moment where a question if whether or not the bible is a historical source is creating some discontent. i find it amazing how otherwise seemingly intelligent and nice people are willfully ignorant, judgmental, and downright nasty when it comes to their religion being questioned. its a little scary when people start shouting and becoming angry at you for having an opinion. has anyone out there had any scary/crazy encounters? anyway, nice to "meet" who ever is out there.
I know the answer! The answer lies in the heart of all mankind!...The answer is 12? I think I'm in the wrong building. --Charles M. Schulz
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Hello, sidekick. Welcome to the forum.
I haven't had any experiences that I would consider scary or too crazy, but I've been proselytized plenty of times.
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
Hi, nice to meet you. Hmmm -- not so much scary but crazy by the bucketful. The street preachers always are good for a laugh. I remember one poor soul in Tucson at the U of Az, trying to preach on the "mall" (a large grassy area near the student union). The preacher guy is yelling about hell (in the hot Az sun) and a bunch of fraternity dudes started to harass him. They sat around him cross legged in a circle and as he moved, they all scooted on their butts, hooting at him. Whenever this preacher showed up again, word would get out and another bunch of fraternity types would show up for the hooting. Quite a show.
I live in Portland, OR now with one of the larger nonbelieving populations. But just an hour away is a colony of theists who don't believe in taking their children to the doctor. Not Christian Scientists, but similar. That is crazy scary for their children.
Welcome.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
thank you!
i feel bad for kids growing up in that kind of environment. someone i know posted on facebook today that the devil is attacking her 8 year old while she sleeps. she said they have tried praying over her bed, bathing her in the blood, and giving her a prayer cloth to sleep with, but nothing is working, and she was asking if anyone had any advice. i could think of a pretty good solution, maybe not telling your poor kid that she's having nightmares because she's being attacked by the devil. but i kept my mouth shut because i know there is no use in arguing with some people.
I know the answer! The answer lies in the heart of all mankind!...The answer is 12? I think I'm in the wrong building. --Charles M. Schulz
Hehe, we have the same Nietzsche quote for a signature. (But I was already thinking about updating mine to something different).
Welcome aboard. You'll find a wellspring of knowledge here. I have only been on here a short while and I can attest that I have gotten several points that have helped my position immensely. You'll never have to worry about dogmatic fundamentalists trapping you in a debate again. In fact, you'll be able to shred most of their arguments in no time at all.
In answer to your question, yes, I have had both crazy and scary encounters. I live in the Bible Belt and although it is in a fairly large metropolitan area, the local churches are always interjecting into local politics and forever messing things up.
I agree that it is far out, when seemingly intelligent people become psycho fundamentalists when religion is questioned.
I think you'll love it on here.
I know that I do.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
I live in a country where religion has nothing like the hold in politics, and in general life, that it seems to have in the USA - currently with our third Atheist/Agnostic Prime Minister...
But, we do have our quota of nuts.
Our Atheist Meetup Group has a more-or-less regular night out where we get together over a drink, then go out and heckle a group of Christian public proselytizers in our inner city mall ( an area which used to be part of our main city street).
The 'debates' get a little heated at times (surprise).
It is hard to carry on any serious argument with many of them since you don't get a chance to get very far into a counter-argument before they are shouting back at you.
It is a little easier to engage some of the hangers-on, rather than the main speakers.
The closest I got to a scary moment was when I got close to 'losing it' over some insane response, and involuntarily reached out to grab one guy by the arm before I pulled myself together.
It wasn't a serious grab, but it appears they have some guys video-ing the proceedings, and they threatened to report me to the local police for assault.
I decided I should leave the area and go home rather than risk getting tangled up in something like that.
Nothing happened, but I skipped a couple of months, and approached the next 'event' with a little more conscious effort at self-control.
I think it is a valuable experience in figuring out how to approach such people - it is quite different face-to-face than on a forum like this, of course, but is one thing to understand that in the abstract, another to be confronted with it for real.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Welcome. Like you I don't think you can use the literary historical method to prove the supernatural but it's odd how many people believe the bible was written by the world's greatest journalists at the peak of their objective powers. My entire family for instance, believes the bible reports the conversation jesus had in the desert with satan while completely alone.
Long have I wondered and loud shouted that a christian cannot embrace the nebulous vagaries of the literary historical method and deny the comparatively inviolate testament laid down in sedimentary rocks, oldest and their fossils first, just as the ever constant law of gravity decrees. Geology takes precedence over human writ history.
In any case, we understand your pain and welcome your input.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Thinking about it, from what I have read, the old testament was written about 900 BCE. If you stick with what was current about that time, then there is some historical accuracy. Some. For a people who were occupying a small piece of poor land surrounded by larger, richer, stronger neighbors. And they were hopeful of convincing everyone they were just as "bad" as those neighbors.
The new testament is largely bunk. Stuff written to promote a religion - so the leader could live in comparative luxury for not doing much of nothing.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Boy do I know that feeling. My 'scariest' encounter was actually when I was young and expressed my extreme disbelief that my classmates believed in miracles, Noah's Ark, 'god', and that Jesus was/is a god. It sounded to me the equivalent of believing that Zeus and Poseidon were real and that Arachne offended Athena and that's where spider-webs come from. If the ancient Greek religions were myths, why not the Bible? How was the story of Samson any different than the story of Heracles? (Actually, Heracles was way cooler.)
Anyway, some anonymous classmate must have gotten offended because suddenly there were rumours being spread about me of being a 'devil-worshipper'. Sigh. Anyway, it got worse from there, and I ended up changing schools partially because of it.
I kept my atheism to myself for much of highschool, and that's when the 'suffocated by stupid' feeling really set in. It took the internet for me to find other like-minded people to talk to.
Welcome to the forums, sidekick. Keep wonder alive!
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