Why is it when Atheist take an offensive approach it's bad, but when the church does it's good?

I'll stop trying to get people to think for themselves when xtians stop knocking on my door, sending me pamphlets, and trying to get at my kids. They show up at my kid's pre-school handing out flyers for their church's "fun fair."  It's ridiculous. 

 

 

But I'm the bad guy.... 

Is the original author of emails posted in the forums notified that it has a thread and that members will be responding? Seems like sending an email/message instead of posting is a hit-and-run tactic, followed by "LA LA LA I can't hear you!" fingers in the ears. I'd like to think we're actually responding to the message.

Something that comes up on a fairly regular basis when these theists write in, is that we are somehow forcing people to deny god or leave their religion. Where the hell is this mentality coming from....oh yeah the theistic view of believe or burn.

I thought imaginary friends were for kids????

 

See, the problem I see with this (besides the wah wah wah attitude) is that whole pesky god in our government thing. If you don't want me to question your god, or question your beliefs, then don't put your beliefs in our courts. Keep your beliefs out of our schools. Because once your beliefs begin to affect me, and people I love, you bet I'm going to question them. You say you want to let people choose for themselves? Have you read the new lately? People can't 'choose' to get married these days. The 'choice' of terminating a pregnancy is in the balance because of the your beliefs. I have no problems with you having your beliefs. I do have a problem when you beliefs begin to encroach on other people's lives.

Sorry, that turned into a slightly incoherent rant.

 These people seek to end religion because they believe that theism is detrimental to society. It is. And it has been for quite some time. But I don't think they understand completely the positive effects of religion. You see, without religion, the general populace would become these bland and uncultured savants that abound in this forum. Nothing is universal, but I find that quite a majority of atheists share a very prominent trait. They are arrogant. They think they have an answer for everything. They are boring and they express themselves merely through their assumption that they are "superior" to the populace. Eventually theism will cease to exist. I find it amusing how atheist believe they are so smart, when in actual fact, they have just been told something before everyone else. I see this arrogance in the Rational Response team. These videos you speak of are essentially just mocking theists. They serve no real purpose in ending theism. The t-shirts they make and other merchandise are usually producing humour from theism also. But I don't really care. Theism will end. It is in my deepest hope that Religion will not. Because as wonderful and essential to the progression of the human race as it is, I find science rather boring. And I don't mean religion as in ceremonies and worship. I mean celebration, philosophy, morals and appreciation of existence. Peace and love for all. 

 Because that is what Religion should be.

Forget all you know of Religion.

 

Now picture what I have said.

 Would it not be beautiful?

 

It would be the new Religion.

 

It would have nothing to do with the old "religions".

But that is what the word formerly meant, a collaboration of people, all binding their souls to complete each other in every way possible.

 

Sure, these things I envision exist today, but they are not shared by all, their is no complete love.

 

 What I say sounds very "theistic"... right?

 

Forgive me, I grew up with poetry and it flows through me like the words from my mouth.

 

I will put it bluntly. For you "rational minds"

Basically, a society where there is no said object of worship, but the centre of focus is around the appreciation of humanity as a whole.

 Not only humanity but also the Earth.

Not "worshipping" the Earth, like Wiccans, more revelling in its delights, and preserving it against those who would seek to plunder it.

No churches, no heirachy, no rituals.

 Just love for the fellow man and woman, and a furthered interest in the arts and in compassion.

 I can see this idea working well with a revised version of communism.

Of course it has flaws, and there would be those who would see themselves "superior" and attempt to become manipulative in some way. But there are ways around this.

 

These are just thoughts, please, no ridicule. 

 

It's my understanding that Europe is pretty much without religion as perhaps is Australia. Europe is bland and uncultured? I think not.

Not to mention, "bland and uncultured savants that abound in this forum" is simply an insult to all the atheists on this forum.

I do believe we have a goodly number of pretty darned intelligent folks here. There's a difference between arrogance and confidence.

Calling us arrogant is simply rude.

Again with the insults. Many of the posts are fascinating and one can learn a great deal here.

sonofthemorningstar, you have some interesting things to say, but it's completely uncalled for that you insult the people here while saying it. 

 

 

 
So, Lucifer's child, you feel intimidated?
 

So you feel ignorant?

So you feel inferior?
Thanks for sharing

No it isn't. Organized theism is detrimental, and that is religion. People can believe what they want. It won't change anything unless they band together.

There aren't any.

Baseless assertion. And insulting to boot. I say you're the bland and uncultured savant.

I find the majority of theists share a very prominent trait. They are arrogant. I guess it's a human characteristic.

Pure bullshit. Do you even know what the term atheist means? I'd guess not by this stupid comment.

More pure bullshit. You sure love lying don't you?

Wow. You are capable of telling the truth. I'm amazed.

3rd massive lie in one post. Really not going so well for you here...

Actually they do. They serve to bring people here, where the intellectual discussion can commence. But I guess you're too brainless to have figured that out.

So? It's a humourous thing to see people worship things that don't exist.

Religion will die before theism does. I can't wait.

I guess you have a significant problem with reality.

You don't need religion for morals, appreciation, philosophy, or celebration. It corrupts them all, and needs to die.

Oh, Vastet, you make me smile with you bluntness and closed mind. An answer for everything, that directly rejects all I say. You people surely are destroyers of Joy and Love. Yet how blind you are to see that religion is but a word. There are forces at work in the world that heed no words nor alphabets. They cannot be scientifically explained. People have tried but failed. No. Before you all start. I do not mean "God" or "Dragons" or "Faeries" or other myths like that. Figure it out, I know you can, being so infinitely intelligent. I do not wish to critique Atheism further, because you people are not yet ready to face your reality. And perhaps you will find out when its too late. Its a shame, you must understand that people like me are merely trying to help you, by delivering an outside perspective, as you do to Theists. I apologize for all you may take offence to, and I will leave you from my thoughts. Goodbye, Brothers and Sisters.   

You're a perfect example of arrogant hypocracy. Congrats!

What threats? Your lies and stupidity increase incrementally. I won't deal with the mature comment since I didn't make it.

The restriction against saying blue is green is hardly a bad thing. We aren't talking about art. Or fiction. We're talking about day to day life.

Unsupported assertions merely make me lower my estimate of your intellect once again. It's approaching the 10/100 mark now. Where 100 is the average person and 0 is a brainless vegetable.

You've given me nothing to deny. So there's no point.

Prove it.

Oh I'm blunt alright. But my mind is not closed. Even though you apparently want it to be for some reason.

I don't have answers for everything. I already pointed this out to you in my last post. Down again: 9/100.

Theatrics will get you nowhere.

Every word is just a word. It's the concept behind the word that's the problem.

Name some.

Impossible. They have not been scientifically explained perhaps. But then, that will always be the case with something or another. Unless we get to a point when we know everything that is.

And in the future they will try and fail, and fail, and fail, and then finally succeed. Such is the beauty of science. Even failure is success.

For someone whining about arrogance, you certainly are possessed of enough of it. But then I already concluded above that you're a hypocrite.

In other words you've been shown as a fool and can't support your stupid comments. No surprise there.

If it's your wish to help us, you're failing miserably.

And I don't even know what language that last line is, if it's even a language, let alone what it says/means.

From my experience it is actually the other way around, it is the theists who are arrogant often telling the atheists and those who are of religions other than theirs things like "I am superior because of my god, my god is what gives me my happiness and morals.  Without my god one wouldn't truly understand what happiness is nor what morals are.  I'm not going to explain to you how my god makes my happiness, morals and cultural richness superior because you wouldn't understand because you don't have my god."

Most of the threads in this very site will back my argument, just take a quick browse and you will see in almost every thread that has been contributed to by a theist these very things.  That, is arrogance.



Theism to end but religion not to?  Aren't they both one in the same?  Oh, and right there I see that very same arrogance, you include celebration, philosophy, morals and appreciation of existence as though they are things atheists do not and possibly can not have ...



Sounds like an atheist world to me.  One that many thiests cannot understand because they believe love, morals and compassion are things purely brought of their god.  

What you have said here, this is the exact same future I am fighting for.



I agree.  Nobody can be free from flaw and fault, those are characteristics of humanity no matter what their beliefs are.  



You are not seeing the entire person through these forums, just one side of each and every user here.  The side that is either for or against theism.  It has no effect on the other aspects of ourselves, our daily lives and interactions.  We are not robots who live and breath arguments on theism.  We hold down jobs, we spend time with our friends, we go out and experience life.  Word of these actions never make it to this board though as this board is not about people socialising but rather it is about discussing a certain topic.  If RRS were to create seperate sub forums for non-theist topics I'm sure you'd get to see the other sides of most of us and come to appreciate us more.

The last line is Runic for his screen name.

Vastet and Susan are spot on in analysis in my opinion. 

I suspect that if you remove the centering format, you all probably wouldn't think it's poetry.

 

No, it's what you think religion should be. Besides, you didn't answer the question.

The question was "Why should celebration, philosophy, morality, and appreciation of existence be subclassifications under 'religion'?"

celebration, philosophy, and morality are the primary concepts he was regarding

He was asking why you believe these concepts to be solely a subset of religion (i.e. religion taking ownership of those concepts) instead of being stand-alone concepts which might just happen to coincide with religion sometimes.

You turned the question on its head, and did not regard celebration, philosophy and morality as the primary concepts. You instead held religion as the primary concept.

Now that I've tried to basically spell that out for you, can you answer the question he asked?

 

The "point" is encourage atheist to come out. Atheist are one of the most distrusted and disliked groups. It time to people realize that where here and we will be heard, and well yeah, its also a promotional gimmick for The God Who Wasn't There video.

 

If it is immature to declare one's disbelief in god, then it must be also be immature to proclaim one's belief as well. This shames every evangelist and pastor you have ever know. It is not the act it self that is "immature" just how you go about it.  The Blasphemy Challenge does nothing that is disgraceful or tasteless. So our "maturity" is not at stake.

There are those of us who don't believe in God but have had to live alone in a God fearing world our entire lives. The act is a voice of reason that says "Humanity does not need religion but we do need human affection to survive."

What's the voice of reason coming from the Christian camp, is it one of compassion and tolerance? Draw your own conclusions...

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

Your questions should now be one of reason and why you are here feeling threatened by a minority of people. A group of people who hold similar views to each other and are trying to find one another.

Now I ask you again what is the voice of reason coming from the Christian camp? Is it tolerance?