(May 25, 2012 at 5:09 am)Aiza Wrote: Can you really pretend like you have it the worst, when atheists haven't suffered half the persecution as most other groups, and almost no violence at all?

Atheist isolation is a result of a society that has been completely over-run by an "ideal" victimizing those who don't buy into it and to say we have not been persecuted is a gross mistake. No violence? Are you kidding me? We get threatened with violence by religious types all the time. There was no holocaust against africian americians either, are you going to say they weren't victimized? Because thats more or less what its like; we got fanatic bastards openly threatening us if they get a hint of who we are, we got the media constantly putting out propaganda against us, our kids are victimized in schools and to top it off we've got people like you turning round and going "oh don't be silly :-)" when we're pissed off about it.
Don't pretend you understand, you have your nice safe bubble where you're the norm and no-one will attack you for what you are. Atheists are the last segment of society not to have that and if you had your way they never would.

We have avoided persecution by being invisible. Pretty steep price.

---

Got this in my inbox, this morning. Apparently the fact that soldiers are fighting for our rights means we shouldn't use them.

http://www.womenswatchinc.org/blog/a-ver...n-the-usa/

Well people hate on them because SOME atheists are hypocrites....they're not against all religion, but only one or two in particular (whatever religion they choose to attack), but say they are atheist (or well THAT type of Atheist) to avoid looking like bigots. SOME other atheists are dumb as rocks, but try to appear intelligent. It is fine until you try to actually have a conversation with them about academia and all they can come up with his some anti-religious babble they read on the web. The few ruin it for everyone else because idiots are often the loudest and most vocal, so they stand out apart from the rest....same goes for the religious folks who tend to make the news...neither side makes the news for their kindness, but their shallowness towards their fellow man.

The only thing all atheists have in common is they dont believe in gods.

To hate all athiests because hey have this one inconsequencial stance is pathetic and rather blinkered

Polaris Wrote:The few ruin it for everyone else because idiots are often the loudest and most vocal, so they stand out apart from the rest...

The ones that ruin it for everyone else are the ones who can't distinguish between the characteristics of an individual and the characteristics of the group as a whole.

(May 25, 2012 at 9:41 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: LOL, Aiza, are you seriously turning to communist countries to justify stereotypes about atheists in America? Y'know, what I have against theists is all those human (inluding babies) sacrifices they like to do. Sheesh!

You know who opposes state atheism as much as you do? Us.

Except I've repeatedly denounced atheist stereotypes, and just said as much in the last post.

Its atheists who seem to want to say that what Christians, Muslims, Buddhists had to go through under state atheism was not as bad as what atheists had to go through during the...um.

Maybe atheists really did need to go invisible to avoid persecution. All persecuted groups need to do this: Christians were driven underground (sometimes literally) during state atheism. And a lot of them were still caught and killed in spite of this. Maybe atheists are just way better at hiding.

(May 25, 2012 at 10:29 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: Atheist isolation is a result of a society that has been completely over-run by an "ideal" victimizing those who don't buy into it and to say we have not been persecuted is a gross mistake. No violence? Are you kidding me? We get threatened with violence by religious types all the time.

I get threatened by violence too. I think the internet age makes threats of violence pretty easy.

Who actually gets victimized by real religiously motivated violence? Primarily Jews, Muslims and the occasional Christian (though Christians are still underrepresented). Not atheists.

Also, well...yes black people did experience a holocaust of sorts, well over a million-2 million people were killed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Again, what is the death toll for these terrible and scarring atheist persecutions? Give me a rough estimate. My total for atheist persecutions is so laughably low its a crime to even begin to compare to genuine persecutions where thousands of men, women and children were killed off, driven from their homes, had their culture destroyed, etc. I have a grand whopping total of maybe 1, 1-3 if you count general hate crimes on top of state-sponsored persecutions--and thats for the entirety of human history, I'm not even limiting things to our recent history, but literally all of human recorded history and I found 1-3. Please tell me if I am missing any more.

And as for "media putting out propaganda" against you I haven't seen too much honestly. Doing a Google News search for say Muslim, gets me "Muslim soldier convicted in failed plot to bomb Fort Hood troops..." as the 4th result. Searching for "Catholic" gets me "The Catholic Church's inquisition of American nuns" (lol oh geez) as the second result. Atheist? I get "Atheists get religion all wrong" as the 6th result. Most of the results seem neutral. The media is sensationalist in general, sure, but in terms of media victimization I don't think they have it worst than anyone else, probably even better.

Also I was an atheist kid throughout jr high and highschool, I was never victimized. Many of my peers were atheist or irreligious, and maybe 1 was a devout Catholic (he is now a priest). Personally, as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid to tell my athiest friends that I converted to Catholicism and am planning to become a sister.

(May 25, 2012 at 7:25 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: So, we are arguing that atheists aren't demonised, because the major faiths are all too busy murdering and persecuting each other?

No. I am pointing out that atheists haven't been persecuted half as much as any other religion--but also that the bulk of anti-religious persecutions of the last 100-200 years were committed by atheists, not "each other" as you say. (Though Muslims possibly come in second, at least in terms of anti-Christian persecutions).

Quote:The issue cannot be No True Scotsman, nobody is denying they are atheist. We are denying they committed the atrocities BECAUSE they were atheist.

No, Creed certainly said that the government itself was a "religion" and therefore it did not count. And they certainly wouldn't have committed said atrocities if they were theist. You think a theist would have set up the Militant Atheist League? Come on now. I won't say they did it "because of atheism" (nor should you say people commit atrocities "because of theism"), because there is a large mixture of issues going on, the biggest culprit being anti-theism.

(May 25, 2012 at 7:30 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: When was the last time you heard of a democratically-elected government [one-person party "republics" do not apply, I mean a genuine democracy/republic of multiple competing parties] opting to murder people solely based on their religion?

The nazis. You know who supported the nazis during their campaign of genocide?

The catholic church. Yes.

Wow. So many lines of wrong right after the other, I cannot keep up!

Starting off with the obvious:
1) The Catholic Church did not support the Nazis.
2) Let ALONE "during their campaign of genocide".
3) The Nazi killing of Jewish folk was ethnicity-based, not religion-based, as it was a product and outcropping of 21st century racialism and eugenics. The Catholic Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was killed for being a "Jew" even though by that time she was a full-fledged Carmelite Nun.
4) The Nazis weren't really democratically-elected, they didn't receive enough votes to have Hitler become chancellor, Hitler got the position through back-room dealing. You are stretching the definition of "democratic" here.

Quote:Uh, yeah, did you not read the 48% being uncomfortable with their son or daughter marrying an atheist, which is a higher number than blacks, muslims, and homosexuals?

Yes I did. And again, I hardly see how it makes it up to "loathing", because I would also be uncomfortable with such a thing. It has a pretty solid logical basis: mixed marriages being less stable.

Quote:The reason we don't hear about many atheists in the middle ages is because if you were smart you shut the hell up and didn't tell anyone about it, but one of the highest crimes to the church was unbelief.

Don't hear about MANY? Lets be 100% clear here: you don't hear about ANY, not in the modern sense of the term "atheism" anyway.

"WOULD HAVE persecuted us, IF" hundreds and hundreds of years ago is a hell of a lot different than the actual genuine persecution that Christians faced at the hands of atheists quite recently.nd you seem to have more emotion for the former than for the latter, which is sort of discomforting.

And the Catholic Church didn't burn historical records of the trials they conducted. Some were lost, but even if we take what death sentences we do get we don't get any atheists. Are you seriously trying to say that the Catholic Church went on a burning spree and got rid of all evidence that they persecuted atheists (and yet neglected to do so for any other group legitimately persecuted by the Inquisition, ie Jews and Protestants?) Can we say that Hindus were persecuted by the Inquisition too?

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Except I've repeatedly denounced atheist stereotypes, and just said as much in the last post.

It's nice that you denounce them. It'd be nicer if you didn't perpetuate them.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Its atheists who seem to want to say that what Christians, Muslims, Buddhists had to go through under state atheism was not as bad as what atheists had to go through during the...um.

Care to quote someone saying that?

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Maybe atheists really did need to go invisible to avoid persecution. All persecuted groups need to do this: Christians were driven underground (sometimes literally) during state atheism. And a lot of them were still caught and killed in spite of this. Maybe atheists are just way better at hiding.

It's not a matter of better, it's a matter of easier. We have no observances we're supposed to keep, meetings we're supposed to go to, and so on. All we have to do is keep our mouths shut. I was 40 before I knowingly met my third atheist.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: I get threatened by violence too. I think the internet age makes threats of violence pretty easy.

Good point, it's easy to shoot your mouth off.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Who actually gets victimized by real religiously motivated violence? Primarily Jews, Muslims and the occasional Christian (though Christians are still underrepresented). Not atheists.

Invisibility is a good defense. Note that in places where the danger of religous violence is highest, atheists are most invisible. We look like you and unless we're in an environment where our rights are protected and secure, we sound like you. Although Hitler did brag about stamping out the atheist movement in Germany, he didn't find too many to execute.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Also, well...yes black people did experience a holocaust of sorts, well over a million-2 million people were killed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Again, what is the death toll for these terrible and scarring atheist persecutions? Give me a rough estimate. My total for atheist persecutions is so laughably low its a crime to even begin to compare to genuine persecutions where thousands of men, women and children were killed off, driven from their homes, had their culture destroyed, etc. I have a grand whopping total of maybe 1, 1-3 if you count general hate crimes on top of state-sponsored persecutions--and thats for the entirety of human history, I'm not even limiting things to our recent history, but literally all of human recorded history and I found 1-3. Please tell me if I am missing any more.

Since your argument in large part also applies to gays, I assume I can predict your attitude toward prejudice and discrimination against them. And it's an interesting argument, similar to the one that you have no business posting on the internet while there are children starving in Africa unless you're a compassion-free monster. You're not being murdered, so suck it up! Really?

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: And as for "media putting out propaganda" against you I haven't seen too much honestly. Doing a Google News search for say Muslim, gets me "Muslim soldier convicted in failed plot to bomb Fort Hood troops..." as the 4th result. Searching for "Catholic" gets me "The Catholic Church's inquisition of American nuns" (lol oh geez) as the second result. Atheist? I get "Atheists get religion all wrong" as the 6th result. Most of the results seem neutral. The media is sensationalist in general, sure, but in terms of media victimization I don't think they have it worst than anyone else, probably even better.

Argument from weak Google-fu? You might find more if you googled 'murdered atheist', but we haven't claimed atheists have been subjected to genocide, you're the one who made it about that. It's the simple observation that all many people need to know about a person to know they don't like them is that they're an atheist. You know, the topic, which wasn't 'why do people kill atheists?'.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Also I was an atheist kid throughout jr high and highschool, I was never victimized. Many of my peers were atheist or irreligious, and maybe 1 was a devout Catholic (he is now a priest). Personally, as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid to tell my athiest friends that I converted to Catholicism and am planning to become a sister.

What do you think they will do to you if you tell them?

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: No. I am pointing out that atheists haven't been persecuted half as much as any other religion--but also that the bulk of anti-religious persecutions of the last 100-200 years were committed by atheists, not "each other" as you say. (Though Muslims possibly come in second, at least in terms of anti-Christian persecutions).

One of the ways in which anti-atheist prejudice is demonstrated is lumping us all together and holding us accountable for the actions of atheists we have nothing in common with. It's properly ludicrous to try to hold Christians accountable for the offerings of human hearts by the Aztecs, but holding humanists responsible for communist pogroms is somehow fair game.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: No, Creed certainly said that the government itself was a "religion" and therefore it did not count.

Fair cop, I think many of us are defensive on the topic since Christians bring it up so often. They're atheists, it counts as killing by atheists, although the characteristics of the victims seem to mostly have been 'perceived threat to the regime' rather than 'Christian identified, put them in a camp!'.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: And they certainly wouldn't have committed said atrocities if they were theist.

If only Stalin had been a Catholic communist, he would have been much nicer? Can you hear yourself?

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: You think a theist would have set up the Militant Atheist League?

Um, no. Some things are too obvious to say out loud if you want people to respect your thinking.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Come on now. I won't say they did it "because of atheism" (nor should you say people commit atrocities "because of theism"),

We certainly shouldn't, if you would cite the post of anyone here saying people commit atrocities 'because of theism' I'll be happy to give them what-for for saying stupid things.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: because there is a large mixture of issues going on, the biggest culprit being anti-theism.

The biggest culprit was totalitarianism.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Wow. So many lines of wrong right after the other, I cannot keep up!

Starting off with the obvious:
1) The Catholic Church did not support the Nazis.
2) Let ALONE "during their campaign of genocide".
3) The Nazi killing of Jewish folk was ethnicity-based, not religion-based, as it was a product and outcropping of 21st century racialism and eugenics. The Catholic Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was killed for being a "Jew" even though by that time she was a full-fledged Carmelite Nun.
4) The Nazis weren't really democratically-elected, they didn't receive enough votes to have Hitler become chancellor, Hitler got the position through back-room dealing. You are stretching the definition of "democratic" here.

Agree that it's not a good example of a democratically-elected governent. Jews were hated and oppressed in Germany centuries before eugenics ideas (and I strongly suspect you meant '20th century racialism and eugenics). Catholics (and Lutherans) were Nazis and Nazi fighters. It would be more accurate to say that the Catholic leadership did not consistently oppose Nazi policies.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Yes I did. And again, I hardly see how it makes it up to "loathing", because I would also be uncomfortable with such a thing. It has a pretty solid logical basis: mixed marriages being less stable.

I won't argue that. How about the study that shows atheists and rapists are equally trusted?

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: Don't hear about MANY? Lets be 100% clear here: you don't hear about ANY, not in the modern sense of the term "atheism" anyway.

"WOULD HAVE persecuted us, IF" hundreds and hundreds of years ago is a hell of a lot different than the actual genuine persecution that Christians faced at the hands of atheists quite recently.nd you seem to have more emotion for the former than for the latter, which is sort of discomforting.

Your 'if we're not torturing you, stfu' attitutde is pretty discomforting, too.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: And the Catholic Church didn't burn historical records of the trials they conducted. Some were lost, but even if we take what death sentences we do get we don't get any atheists. Are you seriously trying to say that the Catholic Church went on a burning spree and got rid of all evidence that they persecuted atheists (and yet neglected to do so for any other group legitimately persecuted by the Inquisition, ie Jews and Protestants?) Can we say that Hindus were persecuted by the Inquisition too?

I doubt anyone admitted to the Inquisition that they were an atheist. I'll take your comment about the 'legitimate pesecution of Jews and Protestants by the Inquisition' in the way I think you meant it. I think you can make a convincing case that the Inquisition would have persecuted Hindus if it could identify them and had power over them.

(May 25, 2012 at 1:56 pm)Aiza Wrote:

(May 25, 2012 at 10:29 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: Atheist isolation is a result of a society that has been completely over-run by an "ideal" victimizing those who don't buy into it and to say we have not been persecuted is a gross mistake. No violence? Are you kidding me? We get threatened with violence by religious types all the time.

I get threatened by violence too. I think the internet age makes threats of violence pretty easy.

Who actually gets victimized by real religiously motivated violence? Primarily Jews, Muslims and the occasional Christian (though Christians are still underrepresented). Not atheists.

Also, well...yes black people did experience a holocaust of sorts, well over a million-2 million people were killed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Again, what is the death toll for these terrible and scarring atheist persecutions? Give me a rough estimate. My total for atheist persecutions is so laughably low its a crime to even begin to compare to genuine persecutions where thousands of men, women and children were killed off, driven from their homes, had their culture destroyed, etc. I have a grand whopping total of maybe 1, 1-3 if you count general hate crimes on top of state-sponsored persecutions--and thats for the entirety of human history, I'm not even limiting things to our recent history, but literally all of human recorded history and I found 1-3. Please tell me if I am missing any more.

And as for "media putting out propaganda" against you I haven't seen too much honestly. Doing a Google News search for say Muslim, gets me "Muslim soldier convicted in failed plot to bomb Fort Hood troops..." as the 4th result. Searching for "Catholic" gets me "The Catholic Church's inquisition of American nuns" (lol oh geez) as the second result. Atheist? I get "Atheists get religion all wrong" as the 6th result. Most of the results seem neutral. The media is sensationalist in general, sure, but in terms of media victimization I don't think they have it worst than anyone else, probably even better.

Also I was an atheist kid throughout jr high and highschool, I was never victimized. Many of my peers were atheist or irreligious, and maybe 1 was a devout Catholic (he is now a priest). Personally, as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid to tell my athiest friends that I converted to Catholicism and am planning to become a sister.

I was talking of the civil rights movement as you well know and thats exactly what this is. Is the ages past where people have been butchered for not believing in a particular God not enough? Just because the inquisitions ended doesn't mean you get to act like they never happened. We endured a period of violence like those of Africian descent, now we are in our civil rights period and we demand that we not be persecuted. That we not be told we're going to burn or that we are not morale or that we are less for not being religious. We are not devil worshippers and some of the most morale and intelligent have been atheists. Atheists are one of the least violent minorities, thats a fact. If incidents of violence are low then maybe you should thank the fact we're practically invisible when it comes to announcing our views and our passive nature in the face of aggression for that. We are humans and good ones at that, we should not be treated as less. Stop acting like you're too stupid to realize that violence doesn't have to be involved to subjugate a minorities rights as has been proven throughout history. Its insulting to both of us.

If an atheist is brave enough not to hide the fact he is an atheist he is victimized, if he stands up for himself he is threatened and if he responds to the threat then he is assaulted. Thats facts.
Two words in the case of media, fox news. One of the most powerful media companies in America. Owned by Rupert Murdoch who goes to great lengths in all of his many media companies spanning from Australia, to America, to England to discredit and shun atheists whenever possible. The only thing you've managed to prove is that we should be grateful he has little control over the internet.
An "atheist kid", really? Tell me, did you tell anyone you were an atheist? I sincerely doubt it. What changed your mind about evidence being a better alternative to faith? What age were you when you abandoned relying on your faculties to discern reality?

I cannot fucking believe this. I'm glad you guys have the patience to deal with this because this level of cognitive dissonance is blowing me away.

I wouldn't take the 'I was an atheist' thing too seriously either way. There's a lot of confusion over the exact meaning of the term, although we internet atheists have come to a pretty solid consensus on it, not every atheist is an internet atheist, so there's room for honest disagreement. Unless Aiza was a rational skeptic, she would have no good reason to not become a Catholic.

It would be an interesting experiment to put up a sign in a front yard in a small town here in SC that said 'Home of a Proud Atheist' and film the results. It would be statistically insignificant, but I think it would be viscerally more understandable to the 'atheists have it easy' crowd.