Am I becoming a complete asshole?

[wheelchairman]

Again this got too long, so I'm gonna split it in half.

But wait...

Haven't you been doing the same thing? Now i know (or at least hope) the quote from your old post wasn't meant to be taken literally, it was more of a joke, but it still seems a bit of a douche thing to do. Just a thought.

I don't see the similarity at all. I'm not 'attacking atheists as a whole', for example. And also it was clearly meant to be tongue in cheek. That post took forever to write, and would therefore be one of the most work-intensive I've written on this forum. On top of that, I hate discussing religion. It always seem to be 'religion is the root of all bad in this world' or 'religion isn't science!'.

You're right, Christianity has changed since the time of inquisition and crusades. But tell me, can you think about any other religion, that promotes war in the name of God (by that i mean certain individuals, who use the religion as the only excuse for doing so)? Holds a belief that it's right to stone a woman to death if she has been raped? I think you know where i'm going to.

There have been some rather interesting debates recently on whether or not female circumcision is a product of Islam, or a product of local cultures absorbed by Islam. But I'm not really sure what your point is, that religion has done some bad things? It's not like I'm going to argue against that. However in many things I would argue the need to differentiate between religious custom and local custom. For the two are often very much intertwined.

Christianity has changed. But why? Because of the pressure that came from the outside. It changed when they could no longer deny (some of) their views are wrong. Imagine what would happen if those outside pressures wouldn't exist.

Again, you are presenting an unnuanced view of conflict. Pressure from the outside of course has had quite a bit to do with the reformation of the church (not Martin Luther's, just reforms in general). However this completely ignores the fact that movements for change also exist inside the politics of the church.

People find inner peace in religion. True. But why couldn't they find it without religion? It's not that hard, really - when i do something good (to another person, for example) i feel happy, because i've done something right, and i find my solace in it. It's just one example. And when something good happens to me, i don't immediately thank God for his kindness, because there is no God. I may say "Thank God!", but not actually mean it, since this is just a commonly used phrase. People could find their inner peace by doing what's right. It's not that religion is the only thing that could guide them into doing good deeds, you know?

Why should they? I don't see why people should be forced to change the way in which they find comfort and solace, simply because you don't like religion.

And by the way, why would it make you an open minded person if you defend religion, if you yourself aren't religious? Defending Santa's existance wouldn't make me an open minded person, would it? Religions were created by men, thousands of years ago. Once a belief was held that the sky is painted on the ceiling of a cave. Why? Drops of water fall from the cave ceilings, and sometimes rocks also fall. Same as in nature - meteorites and rain. Rocks and water drops. My point is, religion was created, because people couldn't find any other explanation for natural events. God didn't exist until the first person thought all of it could be caused my some supernatural being (or a few of them). Is it possible? Well, you can't disprove there's no God. But you can't prove there is one, either. And just because a few thousand year old book (written by men) tells me so, it doesn't mean it's the right thing to believe in. I don't find it rational, especially knowing God is just a man man-made concept in the first place.

Being open minded would be to not hold intolerant prejudices. Like all religions are bad and I'm smarter than their proponents. To believe that, would necessarily make you close-minded. Being religious or an atheist has nothing to do with being open-minded.

And your entire second half of that paragraph is pointless. You don't understand why people are religious, so you bring up points that most religious people never even think about. You DON'T go to church for science. There's nothing rational about not understanding why people go to church. (It's not for creationism...)

But you know i'm wrong. Because i'm a douchebag, all-knowing atheist. Right?

Lol what? I wasn't trying to be offensive in my post, however if you insist...

edit: And just another thought that i forgot to write before. The crusades (probably every religious wars so far, or at least those major ones that we know of) were very likely caused by political interests (land, wealth,...). This is true, i have no doubt. However (and i stated it so before), the outcome could very well be different if there were no religion. Tell people they'll burn in hell if they don't listen to God's (your) orders, and they are far more likely to obey, because of fear. If there were no religion perhaps the leaders could use patriotism as an excuse, and it could also work very well, though patriotism wouldn't apply to such a huge mass of people, especially considering that the same religion is spread across different countries, while patriotism doesn't hold them together. And this is a point that can be used as a strong deffence for religion. However, deniying religion had no influence on wars whatsoever is blindly denying how much power it really holds (or held) over masses.

I'm not denying the influence of religion. I'm denying the belief that religion is the sole or largest reason for these wars. Which is silliness. Yeah you could think of what would happen in some weird hypothetical world's past, but my imagination isn't that good so I'm not going to attempt to. I would however argue that the whole 'you'll burn in hell for not obeying orders' (now there's a militant religion I'm not familiar with...) actually... I can't think of an instance where that's happened.... Anyways let's take that example of fear. Because fear is only half the equation, it's the stick.

Also, discussing religion and politics and their influence on wars serves as a pretty good defence for religion, since you can say that evil people would still be evil without religion. It's probably true, but it's all hypothetical. Besides, religious organisations can be pretty powerfull and have a huge influence on politics itself. But somehow i feel all this is a distraction, and we should really be debating the essence of religion instead, existance or nonexistance of God, since that's the main conflict between theists and atheists in the first place. God is something that didn't exist until humans created the concept (it's hard do argue this, if not impossible). And thus i find it pretty irrational to believe anymore.

Alright I'm just gonna quote myself on the part about whether or not religion influences conflicts, since you seemingly just want to misunderstand me. So this is a post I made in response to either Pilz or Coneman, about to which degree you can discern whether a war was religious or political or not:

I have to disagree sort of, that its like the chicken and the egg. For any conflict there are myriad of interests at play, whether we can see them or not. To lay ultimate blame on one factor is stupid. It really is. It's a pitiful justification of militant atheism, and it's not rationale. If you attempted such a paper in Cultural Studies, or whatever relevant studies, you'd probably fail.

In other words, religion is of course a factor. But to say its the only or prime factor is stupid.

[wheelchairman]

Err... that's nice and all, but I meant the video series dealing more with what we were talking about.

I forgot I even posted the Dawkins video in this thread. The one I was talking about is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuzY...eature=related

Cool. I only looked at your more recent posts to find it, and the Dawkins one was the only one I saw.

I don't believe the Church changing it's mind would have a huge immediate effect on the current generation, but I do think it would significantly effect following generations. I also you think underestimate religious devotion. There are millions of creationists and millions of people who would not vote for a non-Christian politician. Something like one half of America believe God created humans the way they are now, while something around 25% believe in the Theory of Evolution. In any case, what I took from Dawkins videos is that atheists aren't out to just rock the boat. We aren't just religious anarchists, it's not just come kind of childish rebellion. Atheists are militant because there is no other way to change things, if all atheists were just apathetic, nothing would ever happen. The thing he says about the intelligent being atheist holds some weight. I don't know if you saw the part where he talks about the percentage of scientist and intellectual leaders who are atheist, but it's a pretty large majority. But none of these people will ever been in a political position to create change because no one will vote for someone who isn't theist and even then, they're not at all likely to get elected unless they are Christian.

I'm just gonna take a leap and say that I think homophobia is going to lessen in the coming generations, irregardless of the church. Would the church help if it changed its mind. Maybe. I think the church preaches to the choir in this case. (We're talking Catholic church right?)

Anyways about atheists being militant because there is no other way to change things. Yawn bullshit. This is the same kind of pessimism that communist parties nurture in order to convince cadres that revolution is necessary. The rise of the evangelicals to power is a surprisingly recent thing. In fact this wiki article states that it was 1979 when it happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christi...d_institutions
I always just associate it with Reagan, he was the first republican candidate to combine libertarian (as in free-market) economics, defense and security conservatism, and the Christian right into a political platform.

Anyways I'm totally side-tracking myself. There are of course much more intelligent ways to promote your agenda, than attacking all religions as a whole. I mean come on, to promote evolution he attacks religions as a whole? Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive? Either way, he's not going to have much success. He's the kind of speaker who works best when preaching to the choir (those would also be the people who would want to hear Dawkins.) But really, this attacking religion thing. It looks more like academic trolling than anything else to me.

Interestingly enough when I grew up in Oregon I went to a Presbyterian church with a lesbian priest. (Well assistant priest.)

Obviously, every decision ever has multiple influences, but I find it hard to believe that religion doesn't make up a huge majority of the influence in plenty of cases. It can certainly make or break a decision.

I rather like what Thi said, so I'm not going to address this, if you don't mind.

EDIT: Ha Christopher Hitchens. Well half the time I like him and half the time he's a complete tool. (He supported the war in Iraq as a means to limit the spread of fundamentalist Islam.... that was well thought out...) But yeah it's the same kind of trolling as Dawkins, I just find Hitchens easier to take for some reason.

[Rooster]

Again this got too long, so I'm gonna split it in half.


I don't see the similarity at all. I'm not 'attacking atheists as a whole', for example. And also it was clearly meant to be tongue in cheek. That post took forever to write, and would therefore be one of the most work-intensive I've written on this forum. On top of that, I hate discussing religion. It always seem to be 'religion is the root of all bad in this world' or 'religion isn't science!'.

I meant it kind of made you look as you're patting yourself on your back for writing such post, even if it was meant to be tongue in cheek, thus doing the same thing Dawkins did.

There have been some rather interesting debates recently on whether or not female circumcision is a product of Islam, or a product of local cultures absorbed by Islam. But I'm not really sure what your point is, that religion has done some bad things? It's not like I'm going to argue against that. However in many things I would argue the need to differentiate between religious custom and local custom. For the two are often very much intertwined.

My point was more along the lines of Coneman - he sees religion as harmful to society, and in some scenarios you can hardly argue that, if that religion teaches otherwise immoral acts are okay. The Bible advocates murdering your enemies and taking their wives and daughters as sex slaves. This was written in the book itself, and don't tell me it's not against morality. Thank imaginary God Christians disregard lines like that. Or God ordering Abraham to murder his son to please him (it turned out to be a prank in the end, but screw the God who fucks with your mind like this). And some (was it you or was it T) defended religion in that way. It can be harmful sometimes, and that was my point.

Again, you are presenting an unnuanced view of conflict. Pressure from the outside of course has had quite a bit to do with the reformation of the church (not Martin Luther's, just reforms in general). However this completely ignores the fact that movements for change also exist inside the politics of the church.

Well, thankfully open minded people exist inside the Church too. But i can't help not to think they are somehow influenced by what's been going on outside organisation. I'm not saying some person from the outside has an influence on them, i'm saying they just keep in touch with reality, with how things (and science) are progressing. And this is a good thing.

Why should they? I don't see why people should be forced to change the way in which they find comfort and solace, simply because you don't like religion.

They can think whatever they want, as long as they don't force their beliefs on me (they did that, and i'll get to that later). I was trying to say that even without religion people could find their inner peace, and perhaps some puropuse to their lives too. I don't believe in God, but do i find my life meaningless or without a real purpouse? No. I think my purpouse is to make the best of my life, to pursue my dreams. Perhaps other people could do that too and would do good things without God just as much as they can now.

Being open minded would be to not hold intolerant prejudices. Like all religions are bad and I'm smarter than their proponents. To believe that, would necessarily make you close-minded. Being religious or an atheist has nothing to do with being open-minded.

And your entire second half of that paragraph is pointless. You don't understand why people are religious, so you bring up points that most religious people never even think about. You DON'T go to church for science. There's nothing rational about not understanding why people go to church. (It's not for creationism...)

Ah, now i get what you were trying to say. Well sure, i'm close minded in that case. I understand there are religious people in the world, and they can stay religious. I'd rather see a world without religions though. Middle ages have set us quite a few centuries back, i think science would have progressed more by now if there were no religions that held it back. Maybe i should say i'm more opposing religion(s) itself than people (though i do find people with extreme beliefs about their religion and their unwillingness to listen to the actual scientific evidences incredibly stupid to the point i want to bang my head against a wall).

I was raised as a Catholic. I didn't believe in God as a kid, but i was always forced to go to church. I hated it. But through the years i somehow started consciously brainwashing myself to believe in God, because of all that "what if there's hell" and such. I succeded, i brainwashed myself into a person that started to believe there IS a God. That period lasted for 2 or maybe 3 years, until i started to realise it was a horrible thing to do. I stopped praying, and found out my life hasn't changed a bit. I started to get deeper in researching God/atheism and so on, and in the end i again became the person who simply doesn't believe in God. I'd be that person all along, if there weren't pressure from my grandparents and local priest (they didn't teach us religion in school, but we did have to go to the priest for lessons once per week). I'd rather make the choice myself, based on facts (which i would learn later when i'd be older), and not to please other people by believing in an imaginary being. This is of course makes me biased, but i can't help it. Because of that i don't quite understand how some people find their solace by going to church.

Lol what? I wasn't trying to be offensive in my post, however if you insist...

This was more along the lines of your old post you linked, only i intentionally made the opposite thing.

I'm not denying the influence of religion. I'm denying the belief that religion is the sole or largest reason for these wars. Which is silliness. Yeah you could think of what would happen in some weird hypothetical world's past, but my imagination isn't that good so I'm not going to attempt to. I would however argue that the whole 'you'll burn in hell for not obeying orders' (now there's a militant religion I'm not familiar with...) actually... I can't think of an instance where that's happened.... Anyways let's take that example of fear. Because fear is only half the equation, it's the stick.

I didn't think it happened exactly. Nobody actually has to say "you'll burn in hell if you don't obey". It comes subconsciously. If you are at risk in burning for eternity for disobeying some rules, why wouldn't the same rule apply to other situations?

Alright I'm just gonna quote myself on the part about whether or not religion influences conflicts, since you seemingly just want to misunderstand me. So this is a post I made in response to either Pilz or Coneman, about to which degree you can discern whether a war was religious or political or not:


In other words, religion is of course a factor. But to say its the only or prime factor is stupid.

Yep, this is what i've been saying too. Religion was not the sole cause for those wars. It was a very strong weapon though. And from one of your posts it seemed to me that you were making excuses for religion, that it had really little to do with wars, while in reality it's not the case. Religion is directly harmful in some cases (an example from video series that Pilz posted: aids bad, but not as bad ans immoral as condoms), and in some cases it's not the direct source of evil, it only helps in that cause. I said i don't care about what people believe. Scratch that. The sooner religions are gone the better. That said, i'll still be tolerant towards religious people i know, because i rather judge people by how good they are as persons. In that aspect, what they believe is secondary in my opinion.



edit: Good job at "re-nick-naming me. I had a few good chuckles

[Budzy]

I actually only read the title of the thread.

[ad8]

I actually only read the title of the thread.

tl, dr (10)

[Rooster]

Err... that's nice and all, but I meant the video series dealing more with what we were talking about.

I forgot I even posted the Dawkins video in this thread. The one I was talking about is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuzY...eature=related

Oh yes! Thanks for posting this. It was actually slightly disturbing, as the Catholic side (the archbishop and Widdecombe) basically ignored the important issues exposed by Hitchens and Fry. Anne Widdecombe didn't give any proper reply about the condoms issue, instead she stated that church was always about family (and thus stated that premarital sex is wrong, people shouldn't do it in the first place, so they don't supply them with condoms, which might have saved many lives). Bullshit. At least reply with a valid argument, bitch. And the archbishop... Well, basically he had even less real argumentsfor his point of view than Widdecombe. He just kept repeating himself why he thinks that Catholic Church is the force of good. Ignorance to such an extent as this is really worrying.

Thanks again for the link.

[Andy]

Asshole maybe. Asshole of Andy proportions... Nah.

[WebDudette]

Oh yes! Thanks for posting this. It was actually slightly disturbing, as the Catholic side (the archbishop and Widdecombe) basically ignored the important issues exposed by Hitchens and Fry. Anne Widdecombe didn't give any proper reply about the condoms issue, instead she stated that church was always about family (and thus stated that premarital sex is wrong, people shouldn't do it in the first place, so they don't supply them with condoms, which might have saved many lives). Bullshit. At least reply with a valid argument, bitch. And the archbishop... Well, basically he had even less real argumentsfor his point of view than Widdecombe. He just kept repeating himself why he thinks that Catholic Church is the force of good. Ignorance to such an extent as this is really worrying.

Thanks again for the link.

Basically, the atheists kept making arguments and the Catholics kept trying to rationalize everything, make excuses, or say 'yeah, but we donate money!'

[jopre]

that seems a bit long

[Paint_It_Black]

I totally forgot about this thread. I need to write a reply later to the people who asked me direct questions.

But for now, here's a link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39251083/ns/us_news-life

I'm surprised this stuff doesn't happen more often. Seems like a logical thing to do if you really believe you go to a better place when you die. Probably would happen more often if they didn't have the "suicide is a sin" clause.

I like how the article talks about these people believing they'll see Jesus and dead relatives like this is some uniquely crazy thing these few people believe instead of something all Christians believe.