Kangaroos don't hate religious people :D
Posted on: November 20, 2011 - 7:59pm
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Kangaroos don't hate religious people :D
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
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That is pretty messed up. Obviously, being atheist doesn't automatically make you completely rational or a nice person. Some of the nicest people I've ever met were Mormons.
Not insulting people, perhaps, but dissecting absurd beliefs in satirical ways. The absurdity of the belief provides most of the humor. So no, I don't think it's funny to just insult people, in principle. Of course, I don't always follow my own rules and sometimes, I can't help but lob an ad hom. But overall, I think my language is quite tame now compared to many other posters, and I try to be at least as polite as the person I'm talking to.
When some religious individual demonstrates that they're not going to listen, the purpose in communicating with them is then not really to have a productive discussion with them, but to provide a resource for anyone else who might observe the conversation (and just to kill time). Since religion is often held on a seemingly untouchable pedestal, using humor can be a good way to 'break the ice,' so to speak. Also, the average person determines what seems more believable by how the information is presented just as much as what the information is, if not more (I'm not familiar with empirical studies on that, if any) and mixing in some humor and wit is more convincing than only facts.
Lol, now that you ask me that, I really don't know of any actual lawsuits that I can recall that would be worth the time. As an example, I would definitely support going to court against mandatory Bible study classes in a public school or any class based on bias towards a specific religion; such lawsuits have probably occurred, but I don't know about them (too lazy to google it). That is a waste of taxpayers money and forces non-Christians to waste their time worshipping a religion that they do not subscribe to.
No, I would not sue for this one, but I certainly wouldn't like it.
As a libertarian, does it not trouble you at all that you must partake in rituals that you don't care for, following the majority?
Well, yeah. But, the reason we treat religion so harshly sometimes is because of people like Westboro Baptist Church and fundamentalist Muslims, not the Catholics studying at the nearby university or the Mormon families down the street. You're coming on really strong when our site, as a whole, doesn't disagree with you that much at all, as far as I can tell.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you getting this from?
- I don't demand silence on anyone, except maybe small cults and terrorists that make death threats.
- I certainly don't want to 'subjugate' them.
- Rights are curtailed to the extent that negative rights should trump positive rights when the two are in conflict, as a general rule, on any issue involving rights.
- Absurd beliefs should be ridiculed, generally not the believer.
- There is usually no reason to fear them.
- 'Suppressed' sounds like we're trespassing on their rights, so I'm certainly not going to do that.
- What's bad about being in any religion is that they are subscribing to an entire worldview that is false, probably wasting much of their time and resources throughout their life and, if they let it inform their actions, making poorer decisions.
- An atheist is a person that doesn't believe in any god(s). If you don't believe in a god, you're an atheist. Nothing else has any bearing on this.
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
Right. Ideally, the emphasis should be on things like skepticism, tolerance, and science. The existence of God just happens to be what people talk about a lot.
That said, again, I do like using a broad definition of religion that includes essentially all organized, unquestionable belief systems. With that definition, I believe it would be quite beneficial to have a totally non-religious society.
Religious people are defective, in the sense that they do not perceive reality accurately and may act in accordance with their false beliefs. It is an unnecessarily negative term, perhaps.
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
looked the christian god is threatening to kill all unbelievers while atheists generally simply disagree with believers.
I accept christians are fluffier than they used to be - for the time being anyway.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Yes, fluffer nutters. Laying low while they are not in power. But should that change they only have this bronze age book telling them what to do. It clearly shows God commanding his children to kill infidels and stone those breaking the Sabbath, etc, etc. How else can god bless them? They must obey THE WORD OF GOD. Christian history shows what they would do again.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Counter-challenge for atheists: You don't add inches to your dick by replacing harmful behavior with harmful behavior. True for theists, non-theists, seculars and nonseculars. Yes, I got the soft end of the theist stick growing up (hippies for parents), so I get to choose to be a secular person growing up. I'm at a slight disadvantage for understanding what sort of "harm" is inflicted in the name of theism and I've been reminded of that at least once by a few atheists here. The problem is... that's total bs. I know good and well what kinds of harm theists do, I just don't feel the need to brag about or promote my views on them.
Another problem is that harm from theists do not justify harm from atheists, harm='action taken' for the sake of argument. The only consideration to be done is think of how a person can adequately defend themselves from harm. There are some extreme ways to do this, and they actually perpetuate harm.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Sure, Kapkao. We are a violent, solipsistic species. But at least atheist don't have a book from god telling them killing the non-like minded is OK.
A secular government is the best we can hope for, that does respond to the majority's will meanwhile protecting the rights of the minorities. I like to think of us as humans, not so much Christians, Buddhist, atheists, etc. If more thought that way and didn't "know" what is right for everyone I think the world would be a better place. Don't know any better way than simply keeping the lines of communication open, i.e. free speech.
Do you have any better suggestions?
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
(Wasn't absolutely addressed to you, ex-m, but wth)
Try selfish, or with narcissistic injury.
Ah, here we go. As I tend to focus on the negative behaviors of our species, I'm going to notice them more than others here. "A cynic is a skeptic on steroids", and so forth.
YMMV
I have a vast multitude of them, ex-m. Nearly all of them don't work. Can't be arsed to find the ones that do.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)