[b]WARNING:[/b] Since this isn't a thread where I'm being a neutral arbitrator, I'm going to happily spout my own rhetoric about the universe and everyone and everything within it. This includes openly questioning the legitimacy of a two thousand year old book written by people who seriously thought that forcing a rape victim to be married to their rapist was a good idea. If that previous line offended you, I recommend you steer waaayyyy clear of my posts in this thread, you will probably turn into a raging fit by the end of this one. I promise you.

[quote=Dark Wind]Please, please, please, keep it cool. Don't be over-aggressive. No insulting each other.[/quote]

Good luck with that. :lol I'll do my best to keep it chill though. That being said, mega quote-apocalypse post incoming.

[quote=Omega]
People are dumb when it comes to religion, and I include atheism and agnosticism in there when i say that. Religion is not something I feel should generally be discussed a central topic as it only takes 1 strong opinion to turn the whole discussion into something terrible.
[/quote]

Atheism is to religion what not collecting cards is to card collecting. The antithesis, and I would humbly request that before you decry others for failing to understand religion, that you don't confuse atheism with religion again. :hehe

As for the discussion of religion, there's nothing inherently wrong or harmful with the topic. On the old RPG I managed to run discussions about religion and politics and kept them fairly civilized, so... It's more just about when the topic host steps in to cut out abuse and primal savagery. Just like how most professional debates occur: With discussion timers for each side, a moderator who is there to step in and stop problems before they spiral out of control [i]and[/i] to control the line of questions, etc.

[quote=Chapatrap]
Be tolerant of people that are religious and people that are not. Atheists and fundamentalists both need to understand this.
[/quote]

So long as people have opinions there will always be bigotry against one faction or another for one or more traits. This can include but is not limited to: Religion, race, sex, sexuality, culture, politics, and mustaches.

That is, people as a whole will never understand, and in my personal opinion, the more fundamentalist one goes, the more likely they are to blindly follow one side or another... Even into darkness, terror, murder, and pain.

It really says something when the Westboro Baptist Church is one of the most fundamentalist take-the-bible-literally groups out there. How is it that following a book supposedly holy and unquestionable more and more literally causes one to be more and more [i]deranged[/i] and [i]aggressive[/i]? O.o

Unless of course the book is flawed in morals in comparison to modern morals from whence the time it came... Or you cherry pick it. A lot. Like ignoring the entirety of the Sodom and Gomorrah stuff and most of the stuff involving Samson and Delilah, as well as the genocidal rampage against Egyptian children and thousands of innocent people that likely had nothing to do with slavery and just really fuckin' farmed along the Nile river n' shit...

Anyway, in all seriousness, when I'm not openly engaging in a philosophical discussion about religion, my stance tends to be that so long as my rights as a human being are respected, I will respect the opposite's same rights. That is simply: You can go to church, I will stay at home. You can pray to God, I will thank the doctor. You can dance and sing tunes worshiping God, and I might even join in if the tune is really catchy and I'm in a good mood. When I'm in your home I'll respect your rules, and if you're in mine you'll respect mine, and so on and so forth... Because this planet really is large enough for the two of us, and all of society is diminished when you tell an entire group of people who hold a different point of view that their beliefs are not allowed to be spoken. 

After all...

For all I know Cthulhu the flying space pony birthed from the cadaver of Zeus and his farts power the universe, and as he gets further away, entropy increases. I simply choose not to believe it because I find insufficient evidence for it. Someone else might believe it on the principle of faith, or because it makes them feel more comfortable. So long as they're decent people and I'm a decent person their personal beliefs about how the universe is are irrelevant so long as they don't make it one of their goals to stop science from doing its thing and making the world a significantly better place to live.

Most Christians do not attempt to stop science from being a thing or otherwise.

So I'm pretty chill with most Christians, and happily count a few of them as my friends. Even if I think their beliefs are a bit silly. I'm sure they think the same of my non-belief.

[quote=mdk]
There is no word in the english language that describes malicious anti-religious zeal (in the way that 'Bigotry' describes malicious religious zeal). That's led to a sort of societally-acceptable...... 'persecution,' I guess, I don't like that word, but 'discrimination' doesn't fit either. What I mean is, Homophobia is BAD. Racism is BAD. Sexism is BAD. But 'generalizing religious people according to negative stereotypes and passing judgment' isn't even in our lexicon. We can't even have a conversation about that, because there isn't a word for it -- unless we're talking about 'Mooslims,' because Islamophobia also has racial implications, which puts it on the radar.
[/quote]

Bigotry? Well, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigotry]according to Wikipedia[/url], bigotry is... [i]"the state of mind of a bigot: someone who, as a result of their prejudices, treats or views other people with fear, distrust, hatred, contempt, or intolerance on the basis of a person's opinion, ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics."[/i]

So technically speaking, if a person who self-identified as atheist proclaimed that all Christians are bad people and was bigoted towards them, dehumanized them, spat on them and treated them as lesser individuals because of their faith in God, [i]that[/i], would be bigotry. The reason why it isn't often seen as such is because for a very long time Christianity (in Europe) was the predominate force that often enforced its will and dominance through torture, murder, and misery. Heretic is a word unique to religion as well, you can't be a "heretic" in terms of atheism, and that is a widely known form of bigotry in the modern world.

Basically, it's hard to call atheism bad when the thing it often fights has been single handedly used to justify anything from Hitler's regime and hatred of the Jews, to the horrifying levels of mass murder that were The Crusades. Even though most of the modern view of Christianity is nothing like these things, they're permanently stained by this history.

There's also the factor of tyranny of the minority. Christians picking on atheists is bad because atheists are in the minority in numbers, but the reverse isn't true. People always tend to identify more with the underdog and right now that's atheism in terms of sheer numbers both financial and population-wise.

There is such a thing as bigotry towards Christianity though, I won't deny that. When some dude is walking along wearing a cross and gets mocked for it, however rare, that's bigotry in the same manner that a group of Christians mocking a guy wearing a shirt that says "atheist" on it is bigotry.

Though, to be absolutely, brutally frank... The number of events of atheists being openly dehumanizing and cruel towards Christians is still massively outweighed by the sheer gravitas of the voice of Christians that decry atheists as [i]evil child molesting satanist socialist communist anarchist pigs that will burn in hell[/i].

Give it time. I'm sure it'll balance out after a while, like most things do. It takes generations to find a balance, mend old wounds, and normalize what is now radical thinking.

Oh, and if it means anything, I find Christianity to be far more tolerable than Islam right now. At least Christianity is somewhat adjusted to the modern world and the vast majority I meet tend to be very civilized people that prove to be very similar to me save in whether we believe a supernatural entity is or isn't a thing. Islam... [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia]Well[/url]... Eugh...

[quote=razell]
All praise be to Sofia Vergara
[/quote]

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! LET THE GALAXY, [b]BURN![/b]

[quote=Magic Magnum]But I more expect those I were debating to simply come here and continue it, so people will be able to see my stance on the matter anyways.[/quote]

Gwazi I'm pretty sure everyone knows exactly how you feel about religion. Whether they want to or not.

[quote=Jannah]
I'll respond here since it's the proper thread. Well I don't ignore the vile parts of religion, I just recognize that not everybody chooses to act on them. There are religious people who are capable of being decent, even if it does take massive cherry-picking to get there. I'd rather have decent half-assed followers than a bunch of Bible literalist fundies.
[/quote]

Plus you have the literal and metaphorical camps and what not. Yeah I don't have much to say... [b]*Record skip*[/b]

[quote=Jannah]
I'll also let it be known I'm no fan of the "New Atheism" movement, because reasons I'd rather not reveal here since it'll certainly devolve into political discussion.
[/quote]

Oh for fucks sake. I hate that movement. Just do that thing where you like... Stop believing in God and like... Stop giving a shit. The fact that people feel the need to attack other people's belief in a deity is just kind of... Wow, sad, like... We're talking to the level of staring so long into the abyss that you become the abyss level of sad. Consumed by mindless hatred.

[quote=Magic Magnum]
If you mean Atheism+ I agree with you 100%.
[/quote]

New Atheism =/= Atheism+. Atheism+ is a really, really pathetic attempt by the hyper feminazis to try and feminize everything that has absolutely nothing to do with sex or sexuality really. :lol

[quote=mdk]
You know, us literalist fundies tend to be the ones who sit quietly and listen to organ music and sing hymns, and contemplate the laws of god and nature.But I don't expect you to get that, I mean.... if anybody can name an example of a fundamentalist christian being portrayed in pop-culture (of any media) in a positive and respectable way, I'll paypal you five dollars.
[/quote]

[url=http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0003820/quotes]Shepard Book[/url] from Firefly/Serenity.

Where's my five dollars?

In all seriousness though, it's easier to find positive Christian role models in modern media than it is to find positive examples of the mentally unstable. Like me. I just learned it's best to try and not let it bother you. Bible bashing Christians in a negative light is popular because everyone has had to deal with at least one of those people in their lives, so everyone instantly gets it in the same way that, say... Bambi's mom dying had most children bawling their eyes out, or the death of Mufasa's dad.

I may or may not be on a Disney binge. Shh.

[quote=Jorick]That's not just true of media, it's also the perception in general social interaction. The quiet and contemplative ones of any group are rarely the ones who get seen because the loud and stupid ones grab all the attention. Take a look at how poorly vegans are perceived because of the loud and stupid ones, but then you have all the vegans who just do their thing and don't cause any problems. It's one of those shitty things about how humans work, generalizations happen based on what we see.
[/quote]

Also this. This contributes a lot. It's a big part of the reason why when I mention I'm atheist most immediately recoil as though I'm about to bombard them with endless streams of irreligious spew... When in reality I usually mention it, might make a wise crack about God, and then move on to other topics because it's just a piece of who I am. I'm happy to discuss it, to answer questions about it, to be challenged on it...

I'm also more than happy to clear up misconceptions about it. Both to other self-labelled atheists who don't quite get what it means yet and use it mainly to describe their pure, unadulterated hatred of religion, [i]or[/i] to Christians that like to perpetuate illogical or simply wrong versions about what the term does and does not mean.

To clarify for everyone here just to be sure: Atheism is merely the state in which a person rejects the idea or concept of a higher power or deity. Nothing else. It does not incline a person to believe anything. It is the off switch. The metaphor of not collecting anything versus various types of collectors is aptly suited to this.

Anything else added afterwards is purely that person's own self-identity merging with the term. Like one person may use their atheism to spout hatred about religion. Another might use it specifically to state that they don't think a deity is real, but ghosts and spirits are.

In my case, I identify as Freethought. That is, I go so far as to reject anything that cannot be proven in the physical world, and accept it only when evidence surfaces that shows it to be true. Works for me. Doesn't work for other people. I'm fine with this. :hehe

[quote=Jannah]
Well that's exactly it. I don't like Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. However, I do respect Dawkins for his work in evolutionary biology. He should have just stuck to that though since it's what he's actually good at. There's many dogmatic atheists and I don't like them either. Like there's that whole "atheist church" thing. That just seems weird. Why set up something that is almost universally a symbol of the exact group you claim to oppose? I have also noticed there tends to be a lot of conspiracy theorists in the atheist community. I suppose "free thinking" for them is taken a bit too literal. *shrugs*
[/quote]

Hitchens, Dawkins, & etc, are people I admire for one reason, one purpose: They opened people's eyes. They were aggressive because they had to be. Look at the history of religion, you do not fight religion with amicable peaceable communication. You fight it with equally aggressive statements and non-stop assaults on credibility. And yes, they fought it, and through them I stumbled onto the wondrous world of atheism.

It's the same reason I can admire ancient Rome. They were very brutal conquerors that raped entire cultures into oblivion, but without them, the western world would have been a very different place. They brought the first continent-spanning empire to Europe, and from there, a lot of new cultures sprang up that based themselves off of Latin ancestry and ideas.

All Hitchens and Dawkins did was aggressively challenge the authenticity of religion. That's not a crime. They went too far sometimes but by no means were they culture raping savages that most of society admires to this day. :hehe

The atheist church is a giant running joke in the same vein as the flying spaghetti monster, except it grew upon the realization that churches breed communities, and communities are very comfortable places to be, they give you a sense of belonging, of a home away from home.

It's one thing I admire about churches. They're not just beautiful pieces of architecture, they serviced as the primary grounds of holding a community together for hundreds of years. That's pretty impressive.

I haven't really noticed any conspiracy theorists myself... Then again I tend to stay away from nutbar extremists no matter what flag they wave.

[quote=Jorick]"Atheist church" feels like an oxymoron, and I really detest how some have tried to put forth various texts as being worthy of becoming the "holy text" of atheism. The whole point is a lack of belief in a deity, why must they try to build a belief system around that one lack of belief? It's just awkward.Eh, I haven't seen any great number of atheist conspiracy theorists. I've seen more religious ones, but I account that just to pure demographics more than anything else. Crazy fucks come in all shapes and sizes, so no surprise that some would be drawn to atheist things. Maybe they think that free thought means atheists want to free their minds from the control of the aliens/robots/lizard people, so they won't have to wear their aluminum foil caps for protection any more. 
[/quote]

Take any system and make it popular enough and it will eventually and inevitable schism. Especially if said system is significant in scope and size, like, say, [b]the entirety of the spectrum of non-belief[/b]. This is normal. Sad, but normal.

[quote=mdk]
Are you familiar with the story of the christian fish? I mean besides that it's a fish, do you know about it? Homework assignment.Okay, I'm gonna do us both a favor and delete what was about to go on here. There is some..... unsafe things happening with my medicinal situation, and it's not gonna .... make for like, you know, ah..... a good read. But the long and short of it is, that that, which is to me, is not INNATE ENOUGHand therefore it's not a big deal, I mean, it's not like you were BORN with a soul, right? So who cares?this is like ten paragraphs beyond the place where I should really stop. Okay. But that's exactly what I mean, right? 'It's not okay to hate this this or this, Walking away. I just zoned out and had a conversation with littlefinger. We'll revisit this later.
[/quote]

The "christian fish" was, as I recall, a symbol that Christians in the Roman Empire used to identify themselves secretly. I don't really remember the specifics.

I don't believe I was born with a soul, no. I don't believe souls are real.

It's fine to hate an ideology. It's not fine to hate the people who worship it blindly because you hate the ideology. In the same manner that you may dislike socialism, but don't dehumanize or murder socialists.

Same logic applies to questioning Christianity. I can dislike the ideology without disliking the people who worship it.

[quote=HeySeuss]
I'm way more suspicious online of religion than I am in real life. It's worth noting that because I've worked alongside preachers with no problem but then I go online and it's a huge contentious problem. DItto with working alongside muslims. You take it in more context when you actually know the person involved. Absent that context, it's easy to go off the deep end and put the magnifying glass on everything a person of faith/no particular faith might say.But then you get online and the people talking about it are usually taking it to an extreme that makes everyone look bad. Go fig.
[/quote]

The rule of anonymous on the Internet, really. Say what you like without the usual social repercussions.

Though, again, disliking ideology =/= disliking the person.

[quote=Magic Magnum]Ok, so I'm part of an atheist community and just went ahead and asked them what's the difference between normal atheism and new atheism.In the meantime though, from the info I gathered (from here and a simple google search) is accurate, it seems to mean mostly agreeing with stuff Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins say. Stuff like you don't need religion to be moral, not using religion as an influence in decision making etc.And with that info, I would call myself a new Atheist.And I don't see what's to dislike (outside of religious reasons) for an atheist saying that they can be moral without a religion.So I'm assuming there's more to the term of New Atheism than has been revealed to my searches on it so far.[/quote]

I dislike it vehemently because it completely contradicts what the original surge/movement was... That I could be allowed to not believe in God and be accepted in society anyway was all that I asked for. It's all I need. Christians don't barge in my home, they don't harass me when I go out in public, they don't do anything like that. Yes, there is the occasional fucking nutbar on the public bus that will loudly read his bible about how everyone who doesn't repent will get stuck up the ass with some jolly red dude's personal flaming pitchfork, but that person is not representative of the entire spectrum of believers of Christianity.

The "new atheism" movement that most people reference is where people can't just be content to be accepted as atheists. No, they have to go so far as to try and disprove religion and what not. Bloody hell, a few people doing that is fine, an entire movement is just... Ridiculous.

Though, I fully admit, it is fun sometimes to engage in philosophical battle. :hehe

[quote=Jorick]I wouldn't be surprised to see such a term (or maybe a specific one for anti-Christian hatred, since the two other big ones in the western world already have their own terms) arise in the near future though.[/quote]

I thought we already had one. :lol

[img]http://www.yoism.org/images/WarOnChristmas-WWJD.jpg[/img]