"When we become the majority we will treat you better", ATHEISTS please stop using this argument!
Offline OP/ED.........
Often online I run into this attitude. Those long term members here know how I feel about all religions and god claims. But even with that I do not give atheists a pass either. There is no virtue of the oppressed. It is easy to get caught in the moment as a minority and think you would never do that yourself. That misses the point that power shifts and you will not be around in the future regardless, and those future generations will not be subject to the same conditions that may lead a current minority to say things like this.
Our evolution as a species has always set up social pecking orders and power has shifted as well in that time. But what has not changed is our species ability to be cruel or compassionate. That ratio would still be there no matter who the majority is. I do rail against the comic book morality and magical claims of religions and the horrible divisions it creates in the world. But even atheists cannot sit there and claim that we are above what humans have always displayed and will always display.
Yes I do rail against the magical claims and superstitions of religion. I do rail against all claims of immovable beings who are Orwellian in nature. But that is a matter of claims, not human rights. Atheists are still part of an imperfect reality and we cannot think ourselves that because we are on the right side of education and science, that we are always going to automatically be moral ourselves.
Scientific reality is that life and the universe is not perfect. In a very literal sense energy transfer demonstrates this. You will never have 100% input create 100% output. Religious ideology political ideology, national ideology and even business models can be worshiped on a very dogmatic scale. There has never been anything such as a utopia and when atheists do this it shows a failure to see that we can be just as flawed in our perceptions. When we say well intended things like this that is our evolutionary empathy talking, but it is not a given in the future, especially after we are gone and cannot be around to remind our fellow humans of the past.
In agreeing with Hitchens railing against religion and calling it poison, that still does not put any human being regardless of the same behaviors our species have always displayed. Our species ability to be cruel or compassion are in our evolution, not our labels.
The only way humans in general can treat each other better is to accept the imperfect reality we all live in.
"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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lol
What is so funny Ayn Rand?
"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
Your cognitive dissonance and your complete inability to recognize it.
My first thought was this for some reason.
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/z95a6u/dawning-of-the-sea-otters
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
You like to hear yourself type sometimes, I must say!
Umm..duh! Did we ever? I mean, individual people do, sure! The fact, though, that rather than point out individual mistakes (and if I make them, I am glad to have them pointed out) you make a big all-encompassing post, says more about you than it does other people. I realize that the last sentence I typed borders on random platitude, but your entire post here reeks of the same, and everything you're blanket-accusing people of here is probably something you can be plausibly accused (and more) in your entire post here.
Yes you do. It's just not always what you want. By definition, the output is identical in terms of energy/matter as the input. A lightbulb might emit more waste energy (heat) than intended energy (light) but the net result is equal to the input. Just because we can't harness heat nearly as effectively as we can light (if we could, fridges would emit energy rather than consume it...) does not mean that the energy is gone. We just consider it waste because it's not going where we intended it to.
I know I split a paragraph, but it really didn't do much in terms of making the above statement make any less sense. I rarely, VERY rarely hear atheists scramble to use evolutionary theory to explain human behaviour. It may be explainable in a way at the end of the day, but that's the realm of psychology, not biology. Sure, you can explain it using biological terms, and explain certain behaviours considering our ancestry, but at the same time, you can explain all of biology in terms only a chemist understands, but it would take way, WAY longer! That's what biology is for; a simplification of chemistry when we're talking of a certain topic (life!). But seriously I must say, you have a very antagonistic personality Mr. 37, and you quite literally accuse a group of people for behaving in a religious way, while typing a paragraph that is as discombobulated as a creationists attempting to explain why speciation happens, or whether or not Yahweh has been seen. I could say that you adhere to an ideology of antagonism, and a view of "I'm better than you!". I would like to refrain from it, but I guess I just said it.
Nobody is perfect. I respect Hitchens greatly. I only discovered his existence when it was no longer so. He didn't make me atheist. However, he at least was responsible for making me a gnostic aChristian. I wasn't certain that Christianity was wrong until I heard it put into his terms. This doesn't make him a saint. It doesn't make him infallible. I agree here though (as badly as you put it). Agreeing with him on the points where he was right doesn't make anyone any better for it. Reserve those thoughts for the religious, I agree.
You seem to have a bizarre attachment by chalking it all up to evolution. I know that in the end, you probably can attribute most of our behaviour to it. But since we have very little idea on how Homo Erectus behaved, or Homo Habilis, not to mention our further Australopithecus ancestors, we should examine human behaviour first, and attempt to figure where it came from (using real evidence), rather than slapping the word evolution onto everything and hoping it sticks. I'm confident that evolution happened, and our tendencies are a result of it. However, you have accused the atheist community in your post to adhering to some form of dogma, while in the same post implying that you, yourself, are subject to it too. I don't mind doing both either myself. However, at least implicate yourself while you're at it. Be a little humble man!
Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.
This topic is yet another strawman argument courtesy of the resident fool.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
One of the classics from South Park
Really?
Straw is very useful, you can do so many things with it.
"scientific reality" (which is an utterly meaningless phrase, btw) is that the entire concept of "perfect" is completely relative. to say the universe is perfect would be equally as true as saying it isn't.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
You are perfect to me!
I sense a kiss incoming.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
<smooch>