I’m not looking for hugs or back patting. As an American Atheist (who just happens to be in Canada at the moment) I do have a history which leads me to be very wary of religious people…
The Christian Club at my High School wasn’t shutdown even after they started beating people down. I remember clearly watching them hold down a Sikh while shouting “Repent Rag Head”.
I remember when I was young and less circumspect having a fundamentalist come to my door to preach. I told him I was an Atheist and proceeded to pull a knife on me and try and stab me.
I could go on…there are several more stories I could tell just from my own life and dozens from my secular friends. The gentleman who said he’d lose business if people found out he was an Atheist was 100% right. He’d also likely be vandalized or injured.
I claim to not believe in God, and I claim that the evidence doesn’t justify belief. I don’t claim to KNOW there is no God. If you want to go to Church, read the Bible etc… I support that. I also want you to leave me alone to not believe. I’d also like it to not be forced on my Children. It’s enough that you found the Lord and love Jesus. You don’t need me to as well. You most certainly don’t need to re-write history to make great Secularists like Ben Franklin or Deists like Thomas Jefferson into Puritans. Sadly this is what the Religious Right in the USA is trying to do.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
I’m not looking for hugs or back patting. As an American Atheist (who just happens to be in Canada at the moment) I do have a history which leads me to be very wary of religious people…
The Christian Club at my High School wasn’t shutdown even after they started beating people down. I remember clearly watching them hold down a Sikh while shouting “Repent Rag Head”.
I remember when I was young and less circumspect having a fundamentalist come to my door to preach. I told him I was an Atheist and proceeded to pull a knife on me and try and stab me.
I could go on…there are several more stories I could tell just from my own life and dozens from my secular friends. The gentleman who said he’d lose business if people found out he was an Atheist was 100% right. He’d also likely be vandalized or injured.
I claim to not believe in God, and I claim that the evidence doesn’t justify belief. I don’t claim to KNOW there is no God. If you want to go to Church, read the Bible etc… I support that. I also want you to leave me alone to not believe. I’d also like it to not be forced on my Children. It’s enough that you found the Lord and love Jesus. You don’t need me to as well. You most certainly don’t need to re-write history to make great Secularists like Ben Franklin or Deists like Thomas Jefferson into Puritans. Sadly this is what the Religious Right in the USA is trying to do.[/quote]
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
The Christian Club at my High School wasn’t shutdown even after they started beating people down. I remember clearly watching them hold down a Sikh while shouting “Repent Rag Head”.
I remember when I was young and less circumspect having a fundamentalist come to my door to preach. I told him I was an Atheist and proceeded to pull a knife on me and try and stab me.
I could go on…there are several more stories I could tell just from my own life and dozens from my secular friends. The gentleman who said he’d lose business if people found out he was an Atheist was 100% right. He’d also likely be vandalized or injured.
[/quote]
WTF?
Are you seriously for real with these stories? I’ve never in my life experienced or even heard second hand of anything even close to this sort of behavior coming from Christians or most any other group for that matter other than maybe gangbangers.
If you really are not making this up I am very sorry to hear this and can assure you it is neither the norm nor would it be condoned by the VAST majority of Christians I have ever met.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
The Christian Club at my High School wasn’t shutdown even after they started beating people down. I remember clearly watching them hold down a Sikh while shouting “Repent Rag Head”.
I remember when I was young and less circumspect having a fundamentalist come to my door to preach. I told him I was an Atheist and proceeded to pull a knife on me and try and stab me.
I could go on…there are several more stories I could tell just from my own life and dozens from my secular friends. The gentleman who said he’d lose business if people found out he was an Atheist was 100% right. He’d also likely be vandalized or injured.[/quote]
Google them. Long list of other hypocrites in front of, and behind them.[/quote]
Okay. You know who’s probably on that list of hypocrites? You and me…both of us, brother.
I don’t find it much shocking. I recognize that man is fallen, he has an inclination to do these things. Not acceptable at all, but not shocked either.
I heard about Larry Craig, though I didn’t recognize his name. Ted Haggard, never heard of him except off comments. But, likely more so because I don’t pay attention to scandalous news. I usually end up shutting off the TV after awhile because it makes me sick watching MSM.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
derangement of St. Francis of Assisi much more troubling.
[/quote]
How was St. Francis of Assisi deranged?[/quote]
I’m suspect he will say because St. Francis talked to animals.
As if it is really so far fetched to believe that certain people have the ability to connect with and understand animals. I can pull up a bunch of youtube videos right now of people who can do just this thing.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
derangement of St. Francis of Assisi much more troubling.
[/quote]
How was St. Francis of Assisi deranged?[/quote]
I’m suspect he will say because St. Francis talked to animals.
As if it is really so far fetched to believe that certain people have the ability to connect with and understand animals. I can pull up a bunch of youtube videos right now of people who can do just this thing. [/quote]
<— worked with horse whispers a few months out of year. Those guys are freaking amazing…they just stare at the horse sometimes and the horse does what they want…boggles the mind.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
derangement of St. Francis of Assisi much more troubling.
[/quote]
How was St. Francis of Assisi deranged?[/quote]
I’m suspect he will say because St. Francis talked to animals.
As if it is really so far fetched to believe that certain people have the ability to connect with and understand animals. I can pull up a bunch of youtube videos right now of people who can do just this thing. [/quote]
<— worked with horse whispers a few months out of year. Those guys are freaking amazing…they just stare at the horse sometimes and the horse does what they want…boggles the mind.[/quote]
Just who I was thinking of, along with one guy who works with wolves. I’m sure there are other people of all sorts, too. Hell, Steve Erwin was like this with a wacky, passionate personality.
Maybe he’s talking about some other “derangement,” though.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
derangement of St. Francis of Assisi much more troubling.
[/quote]
How was St. Francis of Assisi deranged?[/quote]
I’m suspect he will say because St. Francis talked to animals.
As if it is really so far fetched to believe that certain people have the ability to connect with and understand animals. I can pull up a bunch of youtube videos right now of people who can do just this thing. [/quote]
<— worked with horse whispers a few months out of year. Those guys are freaking amazing…they just stare at the horse sometimes and the horse does what they want…boggles the mind.[/quote]
Just who I was thinking of, along with one guy who works with wolves. I’m sure there are other people of all sorts, too. Hell, Steve Erwin was like this with a wacky, passionate personality.
Maybe he’s talking about some other “derangement,” though.[/quote]
I unno, but it be awesome to talk to every animal pretty much. Specially since I live in the woods, be like “what’s up black bear wanna go for walk?”
[quote]forlife wrote:
It’s disappointing to see people I normally like and respect using a derogatory slur to describe gays, regardless of whether or not they happen to be religious.
In other parts of the less civilized world, we call our friends “fag”, “faggot”, and “cunt” as terms of endearment.
A - “Oi cunt, pass me a beer”
B - “Piss off faggot, get your own stubbie” (while throwing a beer to A)
A - “Cheers cunt”
And no, I’m not kidding, this is how we talk.[/quote]
That’s because you are all genetically just convicts, criminals, and vagabonds.
;-)[/quote]
How dare you imply I’m Australian![/quote]
You should be happy, he just gave you the ultimate complement…and pass me a stub you dirty cunt.[/quote]
Off-topic: What beer should I be drinking in Australia? Most of the crap I had tasted like piss when I was there.[/quote]
Coopers Red. You probably were drinking piss when you were here. It’s an old custom that dates back to the great beer famine of 1889.
[quote]forlife wrote:
It’s disappointing to see people I normally like and respect using a derogatory slur to describe gays, regardless of whether or not they happen to be religious.
In other parts of the less civilized world, we call our friends “fag”, “faggot”, and “cunt” as terms of endearment.
A - “Oi cunt, pass me a beer”
B - “Piss off faggot, get your own stubbie” (while throwing a beer to A)
A - “Cheers cunt”
And no, I’m not kidding, this is how we talk.[/quote]
That’s because you are all genetically just convicts, criminals, and vagabonds.
;-)[/quote]
How dare you imply I’m Australian![/quote]
You should be happy, he just gave you the ultimate complement…and pass me a stub you dirty cunt.[/quote]
Off-topic: What beer should I be drinking in Australia? Most of the crap I had tasted like piss when I was there.[/quote]
Foster’s Lager, mate.
Not that I would know what it actually tastes like; I was a Mormon at the time I lived down under.[/quote]
Actually Fosters is an export beer and is difficult to even find for sale in Australia. It tastes like shit. The best cheap domestic beers are Victoria Bitter and Tooheys New.
Maybe you missed the thread where forlife eschewed all the dead Jews, Christians, agnostic Germans, and Allied soldiers to remind us all that the Nazis (even the gay ones) persecuted some homosexuals.
[quote]kamui wrote:
because, if we are speaking about infants, it’s the parents’s consent that is relevant, not the infant’s one.
at least in our western legal system,[/quote]
No doubt. I do wish, though, that our society had a little more respect for young children as individuals. [/quote]
…what?[/quote]
“What” you don’t understand or “what” I said something shocking?
the more free you are, the more responsible you should be.
it’s quit easy to be both free and responsible with easy and relatively harmless things. But conjugality and sexuality are neither easy nor harmless.
I know for a fact that my lifestyle is not for everyone. Some people shouldn’t ever dream of the kind of sexual freedom i got, not because they are “not worthy”, but because they are not really willing to pay the price. That’s why i will never proselytize this lifestyle, and i would abandon it for the sake of social stability or legality if it was really necessary.
[quote]Further, you recognize that one can’t mock a theist’s belief (though still not sharing that belief), and then turn around and claim to know the difference between real good and real evil. And, you seem to recognize that while one could abandon a claim to KNOWING good and evil, one then has no firm base from which to criticize the actions–past, present, or future–of the religious. Not if one doesn’t even believe in the truth of their own individual, relative, adopted menu of morals and virtues.
“Rape is wrong. Well, ok, that’s just my personal opinion. It might be ‘the right’ for someone else. We’re both just as right and just as wrong, in reality.”
Not the stuff a civil society can last long on–morals and virtues not even believed to be true in reality.
You also seem, and this could just be me, to have arrived at the same conclusion as I have. Very, very few of those claiming to have abandoned moral truths, have. They talk as if they have, in order to not give an inch to the theist. After all, one can’t examine moral truths, good or evil, under a microscope or through a telescope, either. So, one must let them go as fairy tales, too. Or, at least pretend to. Again, to no longer be able to say,
“I KNOW rape is evil.”
Now, it becomes,
“Well, in my opinion, emotionally, while knowing evil doesn’t exist, I THINK rape is evil.”
Yeah, that’s a foundation of sand right there. No, I suspect most hold at least some of their morals as truths. That is, to believe in their heart, rape is evil outside of any man’s opinion. Faith…
You, though, seem comfortable with the existence of truths outside of human opinion, whim, or emotional state, even if a physicist can’t seem to find them. It’s not theism, but it sure aint this New Atheism. Nor does your brand of atheism seem like the kind that turns purple in the face because it overhead a Christmas carol in public, about a God he doesn’t even believe in. In short, you SEEM to recognize that mankind requires at least some kind of faith. And if not in God(s), than at least in the true existence of good and evil. [/quote]
Indeed, i’m not a post-modern relativist.
I do think that a society need a collective consensus about moral values. A common axiology. Because it’s the only way to avoid anomy.
In the past, faiths, mythologies and religions provided such a collective consensus, but modernity changed that.
Now, our societies are no more religiously homogenous, nor traditionnal. And that won’t change in our lifetime.
Relativism can’t provide such a consensus. by definition.
Moral pluralism may work, but will not last.
Utilitarism will not work, because utilitarism is nothing more than amoralism under cover.
Therefore we need something else.
Probably a new kind of utilitarism.
Right now, our utilitarism is an industrial one. It suppose that all things are theoretically equal, abondant and replaceable. This utilitarism is therefore unable to evaluate anything without exchanging or destroying it.
We need to acknowledge that some things (life for example) are unique, and therefore absolutely scarce.
A rational axiology should conclude, even in the absence of faith, that absolutely scarce things have an infinite and absolute intrinsic value.
Granted, it’s not really a categoric imperative (that would indeed require some kind of faith). It’s only an hypothetic one.
But that could be a good start.
[/quote]
I think we already have a system in place, we just don’t have a name for it really. The ultimately failure of moral philosophy is that nothing fits in one concise little package. For instance, if you are dolling out disaster relief, you have to think like a utilitarian. So I do live in a pluralistic world. Different moral philosophies apply dictated by the circumstances in which one finds them selves in. What it’s not is arbitrary. What it is, ultimately nobody knows yet.
[quote]TheTick42 wrote:
I’m not looking for hugs or back patting. As an American Atheist (who just happens to be in Canada at the moment) I do have a history which leads me to be very wary of religious people…
The Christian Club at my High School wasn’t shutdown even after they started beating people down. I remember clearly watching them hold down a Sikh while shouting “Repent Rag Head”.
I remember when I was young and less circumspect having a fundamentalist come to my door to preach. I told him I was an Atheist and proceeded to pull a knife on me and try and stab me.
I could go on…there are several more stories I could tell just from my own life and dozens from my secular friends. The gentleman who said he’d lose business if people found out he was an Atheist was 100% right. He’d also likely be vandalized or injured.
I claim to not believe in God, and I claim that the evidence doesn’t justify belief. I don’t claim to KNOW there is no God. If you want to go to Church, read the Bible etc… I support that. I also want you to leave me alone to not believe. I’d also like it to not be forced on my Children. It’s enough that you found the Lord and love Jesus. You don’t need me to as well. You most certainly don’t need to re-write history to make great Secularists like Ben Franklin or Deists like Thomas Jefferson into Puritans. Sadly this is what the Religious Right in the USA is trying to do.[/quote]
You had Sikh’s at your high school? A fundamentalist door to door preacher pulled a knife on you?
Sorry, I can’t help it, my bullshit detector is pegged on this one.