How would you respond?

Jesterspace
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How would you respond?

In my Livejournal, I posted the link to the 'Jesus Camp trailer. I threw in some verbosity.

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Scary shit.. now we got christians using the tactics of radical islam. The battlelines are being drawn. Religion is gonna kill us all. The moderates will look at this and say 'We're not crazy like that'. And yer prolly right. But the crazy ones ARE out there. And much like with Islam, it only takes 19 people who are fanatical to kill thousands. Or one. If their God tells them to kill.

Wanna try to save the world?
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I got a response on the journal post thusly..

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Well...

Being anti-theist isn't the answer though either. As much as you scoff at people with faith; they will scoff at you for not having any. That just leads to a cyclical battle of a logical argument about a thing which isn't logical.

Atheist rationalism won't counter fundamental Christianity. Many of them are well educated, super-logical people who get everything wrong because they take the Bible as the first and most unequivocable piece of the argument. When they are doing that the best tool to use against them is the Bible itself, not atheist rationalism. They just try to convert you if you tell them you aren't Christian.

You can't prove to them (or me for that matter) that there isn't a deity anymore than they can prove it to you.

All of that said, yes that is a scary video. It wasn't like that when I went to church, and because that was all I could find when I moved to Chicago, I stopped going to church.

It's been out there for as long as we've been alive, and that fanaticism is growing. If it is any consolation, a lot of the people I know who were that kind of Christian as kids have lost their faith entirely because it became obvious that the message was a load of ....

I'm trying to word a proper response without being too rude.. Any assistance would be appreciated.

"Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell.... Kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.


darth_josh
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The word 'fundamental'

The word 'fundamental' implies the use of a foundation. The bible is the foundation of christianity. If I destroy the basis of the ideology then the ideology itself becomes subject to destruction.
Humanity stands to benefit from the destruction of theism. Whether that is one 'faith' at a time or all at once. How can I evidence this? Simply look at the secular system of government that we have established. In under 250 years we have placed America at the pinnacle of western civilization.
christianity is the most prevalent religion within our sphere of influence and it is also the easiest to point out the irrationality of its tenets. Ergo making it the obvious choice as the first theistic ideology to suffer a demise at the 'hands' of logic and ethics.
We're not forcing them to change their beliefs or to accept ours. We are merely placing the facts upon the proverbial table for examination and critical inspection. If their ideology is to pass muster then it must be able to stand upon some fact.

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Sapient
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Quote:Well... Being

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Well...

Being anti-theist isn't the answer though either.

And being anti-human or anti-atheist isn't a good way to convince me to change my opinion. If you define anti-theist as someone who is against being a theist, I proudly exclaim I am an anti-theist. If you define anti-theist as someone who is against theists, I am insulted. I am here to help people who are theists, it is because I am pro-theist in this sense that I am willing to help them out of the years of brainwashing they've had to endure. I overcame it, I know they can.

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As much as you scoff at people with faith; they will scoff at you for not having any. That just leads to a cyclical battle of a logical argument about a thing which isn't logical.

You see what this would degrade to? We know god belief is not logical, yet people gladly believe it? People are proud to be illogical? This is a flaw in humanity that we must hope to elevate people out of.

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Atheist rationalism won't counter fundamental Christianity. Many of them are well educated, super-logical people who get everything wrong because they take the Bible as the first and most unequivocable piece of the argument.

Well clearly then, as you already stated, they're not logical. Taking a contradictory illogical book as proof of an illogical concept is illogical, it is not "super-logical."

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When they are doing that the best tool to use against them is the Bible itself, not atheist rationalism.

Actually atheist rationalism is by definition in this sense, using the bible against them, which is something we do very often. Furthermore to open the mind of a brainwashed close minded person, you'll need to attack illogicity in many different ways. The bible is one, but there are many others.

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They just try to convert you if you tell them you aren't Christian.

I look forward to that. It's a way to show them how illogical they're being without having to bring it up myself.

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You can't prove to them (or me for that matter) that there isn't a deity anymore than they can prove it to you.

Sure you can. A contradictory concept can't exist. For example, do you need for me to prove to you that invisible gamma rays that are visible don't exist? No, because if it's invisible, then it can't be visible. It's contradictory, and it can't exist. The god of the bible fits the same contradictory traits. It's EXTREMELY simple to prove this, it's not however very simple to get someone to admit it.