You want atheists on your side

http://churchandstate.org.uk/2012/0...me-a-kick-ass-movement-you-want-on-your-side/

 

"atheism movement"... what a poorly named movement

i agree to cut down ignorance... and separate church and state in the U.S.

i have to say, though, that the mentally healthiest, kindest, and most loving people i know are people that go to church and/or have a spiritual life

don't make the mistake of thinking that your ignorance is better than their ignorance just because it is yours

 

I wonder if this forum was created mostly for atheist to post their thoughts/ideas or if it was created to piss on atheist ideas?

It seems the majority think this is a place to come urinate all over.

 

Maelstrom, you have to let go of the hate.

Its just like the adage guns dont kill people, people kill people

Its not religion, its how people fuck it up

 

Ah, where would be without people to fuck things up?

 

No hatred here, but thank you for making that assumption. What I posted above is merely a revelation of facts.

And here is a brilliant idea. If you do not like what is being discussed in a certain thread, ignore the thread. There are plenty of sex threads into which I could go into and complain about the nasty content within, but I instead ignore those threads. This is a free speech forum, after all, and I am just as entitled to state what I wish as does anyone else here.

 

Are there examples of atheists exercising real power in the United States, of a kind politicians would be interested in? In Oklahoma, we have lively and growing atheist communites in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, mainly in reaction to fundamentalist dominance in the State. At the present time, however, most savvy politicians treat them like the plague. The Oklahoma Atheists did manage to put up a billboard sign, for a brief period, and it attracted the intended controversy. But the real clout still rests with the fundies.

 

Wise words, quoted for emphasis :sunny:

 

the atheist movement sounds a bit like a religion. I miss the days when atheists could just not believe in God and call it a day. Now they feel the need to proselytize about their non-beliefs and create a movement.

 

And soon the first murder in the name of atheism will take place.

 

I'm sure you are aware of it as well but I have the feeling the majority of people that can be labeled atheist are still these kind of people:

You just don't notice them as much since they indeed call it a day and keep it personal or at least don't actively proclaim their conviction. They are generally the more wise and pleasant people and know it serves no purpose to agitate against those who have a different conviction where it comes to religion. Of which I am very thankful :2thumbsup: This obviously counts the same for most theists who accept the world is full of people with different beliefs. Nobody needs polarization.

 

I think what maelstrom was trying to point out was that atheism is starting to mobilize, not for the sake of hating or polarizing, but for the sake of addressing the very injustices that come from hatred and polarization, of which athiests in this country tend to not take part.

However, there is always a danger of turning a movement of ideas into an ideology. Fuck ideology. We're all ignorant and we all have knowledge to share; but the preservation of individual liberty comes first, and for individual liberty to be maintained all personal ideologies have to be checked at the door, and anyone with a conscience leaves even their God outside with them.

There are people in America who would turn it into a fascist theocracy, and they have way too much power already. They started accumulating it in the seventies, grew in the eighties with Reagan and his ilk, and have ballooned into a senseless menagerie of hucksters and suckers that constantly demand we alter fundamental scientific principals in our educational system as well as fundamental civil liberties in our government.

I'm all for teaching our kids about religion: in a comparative religion class. America's way too much of a melting pot to focus on Christianity alone, and nobody's "creation" story belongs in science class, not even as a disclaimer before one teaches about evolution, which is the forerunning theory.

Now why would evangelical Christians balk at a comparative religion class? *tapping lips, staring at cieling* Let me think... maybe because if children are exposed to varying beliefs as well as science, math, philosophy and literature, they might grow up thinking for themselves instead of thinking what evangelical Christians would like to persuade them to think?

Eureka! I think I've hit on the treasure trove of all religious power!

Indoctrinate them young and hope the compulsion to believe will be too strong to break.

And, irony of ironies, a science, psychology, provides us with a wide store of information about just how effective indoctrination is in young children who have yet to develop the proper synapses for cognitive thinking. I doubt very seriously that the people who run religious institutions are any more oblivious to this information than you or I. Hell, in a country where the exchange of information is still free, they have just as free access to it as any of the rest of us! What a boon!

If people who claim to have exclusive access to a universal truth were really so confident in this truth that they profess, they would be capable of actually demonstrating it, in Church or Synagogue or Mosque or whatever, I'm sure, and would not need to infect our science classes and judicial processes with it.

 

i don't WANT there to BE "sides" for anyone to be on or off of.
i prefer rather to recognize the every person is a "side" of their own,
and that such sides do NOT posses inherent conflict.

 

They do when you're writing science text books.

 

only if you're lying to yourself.

 

The conflict is external, because the inherent view of the individuals in these cases are prejudiced; and it won't be resolved by letting everyone go their own way. Wish it were so; but the very nature of fanaticism is such that if you don't do something to openly denounce it, it simply goes right in and does what it wants, which is to force its lies down everyone else's throat.

One does not have to take a side to denounce injustice. In fact, the polarization is itself an injustice, and the addressing of the balance is the purpose of any true denunciation: not this or that but this and that.

I can't vouch for every athiest, but I personally don't ask religion to revise its views in lieu of my own (though I'm perfectly willing to argue the finer points, and go our seperate ways), and, for the most part, neither does the scientific community ask this of religion; but the very nature of sectarian religion is such that it must force such issues in order to perpetuate itself, which is telling, to say the least.

Isms make schisms. There has to be an enemy in order for there to be a reason for those prejudiced by such indoctrination to be capable of selling their product. You'd think old splitfoot would suffice, but since people don't seem to hallucinate his unholy presence as much as they used to do, the sectarian community has to put a human face on it, and pretend its not the same old scapegoating act, but a genuine attempt to broaden scientific inquiry, which it is not. Creationism, or intelligent design theory or whatever they will rename it tomorrow, is not science, it is theology.

There's no reason why a person who believes in a personal god should feel threatened by scientific inquiry in general, or the theory of evolution in particular -- unless they literally believe in the scripture they read instead of culling the spirit from the letter, or, and this is really important: unless they want to perpetuate that literal belief in order to manipulate, polarize and ultimately profit off of other peoples' ignorance and prejudices.

This last is what I am sick of seeing, and it's a movement that's been growing unchecked for way too long. I think athiests in America are probably starting to feel the same way, in general, and this is what I believe Maelstrom was trying to indicate, though I should like clarification on that, as I would not want to put words in anyone's mouth.

 

You must be unaware of the history of atheism and atheists. Throughout much of history, and to this day in many places, people have been persecuted and even executed for being atheists. Like any group that challenges the prevailing ideologies atheists have no choice but to organize in order to protect themselves.

 

If the thread is about atheism, it gotta be Maelstrom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC03hmS1Brk"]I Kill People - YouTube

 

LOL, the lyrics were actually pretty funny, if the music was more than from a casio keyboard that would be a youtube sensation

 

It was! Check out its amount of views