(May 27, 2012 at 4:28 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(May 26, 2012 at 11:45 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: I hope she gets better.

Thanks for the sentiment but that was never on the cards.

She died less than an hour ago.

My sympathies for you, Plumb. I truly hope her passing was painless and peaceful. :[ Failing or accompanying that, I hope she died surrounded by her loved ones.

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So the biggest concern people who use the most-used search engine on the internet have involving Christians is whether or not they should get tattoos, do yoga, drink, read, celebrate, and/or eat.

The biggest concern people who use the most-used search engine on the internet involving atheists is whether or not they should be killed, have the right to marry, have the right to vote, have the right to be considered citizens, and whether or not they should celebrate easter and christmas. The last two are fine.

Oh no. No, no, there's no bigotry towards atheists at all. Nope. No discrimination.

Well, truth be told, I cannot speak for any other than myself. But if I were an atheist, and I were made president [unlikely to happen in my lifetime it seems] and had the power to do away with the religious institutions in the US...I would not. I would tear down no church, mosque, or synagogue. I'll leave that to the religious. They do a good enough job tearing each others places of worship down. Something that the famous atheistic mass-murderers of history never seemed to get, which shows their ignorance and stupidity, and that their fame would never have come from any intelligent decision-making, and instead had to come from brutality, the weakest, most pathetic, most immoral and stupidest of means of obtaining fame and a legacy.

Perhaps more murder was done to the religious by atheists. But in no circumstance would you ever find any that any of them ever did it BECAUSE they were atheists. They did not kill in the name of atheism. They killed in the name of their own power. But meanwhile, the religious have a long, storied history of killing in the name of their god(s)(ess((es))).

People were killed in communist nations for a lot of different reasons. Some were communists who disagreed with those in power and were killed because of that. Some were anti-communists opposed the government and were killed for that. Some were simply in the way or inconvenient and were killed for that. These are political disagreements that people were being killed over, not murder in the name of atheism.

But weren't a lot of people killed because they were Christian? Certainly — but not simply because they were Christian. Communists typically regarded religious organizations as a hinderance towards the creation of a worker's paradise. Some religious groups also opposed the communists. Once again, we are generally looking at political issues, not a question of atheism.

Even if some people were killed simply because they followed a religion, it does not follow that they were killed in the name of atheism. Why? Because atheism is not inherently opposed to religion: it is possible to be both an atheist and religious and some religions are themselves atheistic. Atheism also isn't a belief system or ideology which can, by itself, inspire people to do things — good or bad.

Now, I compare this with this article that I found.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html

Quote:It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

Whoever wrote the above article is ignorant as you can get, since there are no records of anyone in either of those nations being killed in the pursuit of an "atheist utopia." Such an ideal never existed. The "ideal" of Mao and Stalin was a "worker's paradise," and atheism never had anything to do with it.

To quote another article on Wikipedia:

Quote:Christian writer Dinesh D'Souza writes that "The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth."[64] He also contends:

And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a 'new man' and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.[65]

In response to this line of criticism, Sam Harris wrote:

The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

Mr. Harris sums it up nicely, I think, whereas Mr. D'Souza comes off like a blithering, bleating neoconservative evangelical preaching to his own choir.

(May 27, 2012 at 4:28 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(May 26, 2012 at 11:45 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: I hope she gets better.

Thanks for the sentiment but that was never on the cards.

She died less than an hour ago.

my condolences buddy.

Sorry for your loss, DBP.

(May 27, 2012 at 4:28 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(May 26, 2012 at 11:45 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: I hope she gets better.

Thanks for the sentiment but that was never on the cards.

She died less than an hour ago.

Sorry for your loss. Death is what keeps it real for me. It's a reminder to get your cards out on the table while you still can. When I was younger I didn't easily express affection but now, having lived through the deaths of my mother, my father and two brothers I find the words much easier to say. Hell, I even tell my dogs I love them.

Living with dogs makes the death of loved ones a more frequent occurrence. I have friends who'll say they could never bear to lose some special dog or get another dog after. I feel the opposite. It is much better to bury a great dog with whom you've had a great relationship, than a marginal dog whose loss you can more easily bear. In that vein, I hope your mum is worth much sorrow. Be happy to pay the price.

(May 27, 2012 at 1:07 am)whateverist Wrote:

(May 26, 2012 at 12:24 pm)Jesus Pipes Wrote: Do I think his personal history was important? In a word, no. Inasmuch as it supports his teachings, perhaps, but it's clear our tendency is to dissect things that don't really matter, merely for the sake of argument. So the circumstances in which he was born, his mother, his occupation, the city in which he lived, all this, I believe, is superfluous. Interesting, but certainly not bearing on anything he taught, but most significantly, just contributes to the various forms of mysticism surrounding his life.

So, to sum it all up: No, I don't think Jesus is "superfluous"; but yes, it is possible to lead a righteous life without knowing him, since it is his example that was important and not his supposed divinity. It is possible that the essence of his truth exists in the world apart from him, and I believe he would be the first to recognize it.

...

Let's be honest, no one on this planet can either prove or disprove the existence of a higher power.

The last sentence was from your response to someone else but I wanted to add that I concede it. Nonetheless, I don't find I am inclined to believe in God or a higher power. I think it is great that you can own the belief you nonetheless have that there is a higher power - even though you acknowledge your agnosticism too.

Half the energy that gets wasted on this and other atheist forums seems to be in arguing against the unreasonableness of Christian certitude - the inerrancy of the bible and so on. In the process lots of atheists follow that sort of theist right over the line into making unjustified claims of certainty. Someone once said something like "the purpose of reason is to delineate the limits of reason." I think there is something to that. Science will always remain the gold standard for determining the validity of empirical claims, but it is absurd to think every question of importance is an empirical one.

You have gone further toward acknowledging the non-essential nature of the NT and OT than any theist I've come across. Personally I have no desire to push you toward atheism. You've owned your beliefs as you find them. In the absence of true knowing a hunch is all we have to go on. I can respect yours even if I don't share it.

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Thank you, and that is really what we are trying to promote. There really is a middle ground here that we can exist with mutual respect and not force our negative beliefs on others. I don't want christians telling others they sinning and going to hell for such and such, and I don't want atheists telling nonjudgemental christians that they are idiots for believing in something that may make them a better person. There is a middle, thank you for seeing that.

(May 27, 2012 at 4:28 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(May 26, 2012 at 11:45 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: I hope she gets better.

Thanks for the sentiment but that was never on the cards.

She died less than an hour ago.

I'm so sorry for your loss dude. :c I hope she wasn't in any pain.

If its any help, your mother isn't even aware she's dead, but you probably already know this so I won't insult your intelligence.

We know death when properly understood is nothing to fear. Only ignorant religious buffoons and the power-mad continue to genuinely fear death.

I'm so sorry for your loss, DBP.

Sorry I am a bit delayed, I went on the most amazing discernment retreat of my entire life.

(May 26, 2012 at 10:07 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: So any study that attempts to compare two different locations, for instance, to say which has the denser population or highest standard of living is meaningless? A correlation is not a smoking gun but it's far from meaningless.

Comparing two locations is fine. When you get into territory such as: "Southern states are more religious and also have more teen pregnancy, ergo religion is correlated with pregnancy" that it starts to get sketchy, especially when on that individual level you note that more religious teenagers are less likely to get pregnant than their irreligious peers--Southern states are just poorer in general.

Quote:You sure can switch off your critical thinking about studies when it suits you. The people in these studies weren't identified as atheists. Just not very religious. This has been pointed out to you before. Don't you think you should answer this point before the next time you link these studies? They don't say what you claim they do.

It is a fair point, and yes, there are atheists who are religious--some 1-2% of American Christians (iirc) are atheist, and there are atheist Unitarian Univeralists, etc. Any religion has its share of atheists within it. And of course there are theists who are totally irreligious. Sometimes that line between religious/irreligious and theism/atheism is conflated, probably because so many atheists are anti-religion, and often use the stats of people with "no religion" as the numbers of atheists (which you can actually see on that very freethoughtpedia link you gave me).

So yes, even trying to talk about "atheists on average" being more aggressive, impulsive etc. isn't necessarily true--its "non-religiouson average", but there are religious atheists and irreligious theists. So yes, I think you do have a point and I should be perhaps a bit more care in my wording.

Quote:You asked for executed atheists and I generously left off the obvious atheist prisoners of war and Jewish humanists, and that's still too much, you have to change the goalposts to 'atheists executed for atheism'. Whatevers.

Welll....yes. Yes very much so, because I thought that was the point. If you just wanted to say that atheists have died for reasons totally unrelated to atheism than yes, absolutely, I am sure, in every era atheists have died.

Quote:Sensationalistic news headlines based on studies. There's a difference between 'sensationalized' and 'not true'.

There is a difference, but those headlines are both sensationalized and also not true. Science reporting in the mainstream media is infamously terrible.

Quote:We only expressed concern at the news that we are the most distrusted minority in America. It's also what we experience in daily life. Why don't you go to a Catholic site and chide them for complaining about persecution when other Christians are dying in other countries. Why are you bothering us?

I am sorry for that one? For me those anti-atheist attitudes and state atheism and similar anti-religious forms of atheism are tied together--not rightfully so.

Quote:LOL, YOU bring up the crimes of communist regimes and say we're hypocritical to point out that people with whom you share MANY beliefs (as opposed with our one lack of belief) also committed their share of atrocities?

Oh please. Those "many beliefs" don't include the actual key one worth highlighting, right? The use of force and violence? You know? By all means, criticize me if you find fault in me, but don't criticize me because someone else who believed in the Eucharist thought it was okay to torture.

And yes, it is hypocritical if you do accuse all Christians or lump them under the Inquisition.

Quote:And back up to 25,000 open churches by 1959. The justification for the persecution was that the clergy was organizing resistance against the state. Remember, you are the one who keeps harping on WHY atheists were killed, otherwise I wouldn't dirty myself pointing out how a totalitarian regime rationalized its murders.

Resistance against the state---suppressing religion. The churches "went back up" after rules relaxed during WWII, but you cannot say they were left alone. The Church (or religion in general, if you'd prefer) will always "go back up" when it is allowed to. You can't destroy the human spirit I don't think. Even in the most hateful of times, there are those who keep it alive, and will die to do so throughout all ages.

Quote:http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percent...statistics

.....

Quote:I prefer the criminological studies I previously linked (yes, through a freethought site, but it's easy to follow the sources). As far as I know, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not distinguish between non-religious and atheist.

ANOTHER link to "Freethoughtpedia?" The very same "pedia" that tried to claim Pol Pot was a Buddhist? "Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people"? God help me. But you said you prefer the studies they used with respect to prison populations aaand... okay. Well, that cool, lets "follow the sources". I am nothing if not open to this.

First, they have a random string of info they admit was "floating around the internet", and they literally have no other info on where it came from. They actually are asking for any random reader to step forward and find a source for this info--post first and ask questions later I suppose.

They also cite "The New Criminology" from Schlapp and Smith (not to be confused with a newer book from Taylor et al)..... wow. Its written in 1928. Like....almost 90 years old. Apparently this book was written in order to prove that criminal behavior was caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and not from a lack of moral training.

I don't really have anything to say to this. I get a few thousand results when I google for this book. Apparently it was an unpublished study, and was written in a very sensationalized format. Very obscure paper since we now know that criminology is quite a bit more complex. Atheists seem to like it though, because 4 out of the first 10 results I got were actually from atheists clinging to this particular study. And if you think that conflating "irreligious" with "atheist" is flawed (because some atheists are religious), this (or really, how some atheists have chosen to interpret this article) is to conflate "atheism" with "lack of any sort of religious training". Welp! You seem like a thoughtful person so I hope I don't need to say more about either of these.

Freethoughtpedia is like some bizarro atheist (or "free thinker") version of conservapedia isn't it?

Quote: Since the Scots did not bother to try to distinguish the atheists from the merely non-religous the statistic says nothing about atheists. That said, I believe the reason atheists are under-represented in US and Canadian prisons is that presently atheism is a position that most atheists think their way into, and thoughtfulness is not a typical criminal trait. If atheism becomes a norm, I would expect our prison representation to also become 'normalized'.

Really? I usually think of atheism as sort of a bit of a default (weak atheism anyway), and then both strong atheism and theism are that which you need to "think yourself into" a bit. But now that I have reflected on it some, I suppose maybe weak theism might be the default instead.

But you are right, if they were to study atheism in prisons, it would need to be straightforward "are you theist or atheist or unsure?" type of question. Or do the "Do you believe in God, a higher power, or neither?" question as seems popular in some studies, since actually quite a few (21%) of self-described "atheists" will also turn around and say they believe in God. I can get you the source for that as well. I fear the complexities of studying these sorts of correlations go quite deep.

(May 27, 2012 at 10:43 am)Jesus Pipes Wrote: Thank you, and that is really what we are trying to promote. There really is a middle ground here that we can exist with mutual respect and not force our negative beliefs on others. I don't want christians telling others they sinning and going to hell for such and such, and I don't want atheists telling nonjudgemental christians that they are idiots for believing in something that may make them a better person. There is a middle, thank you for seeing that.

Sorry for butting in, but I wanted to give my 2 cents.

I can only speak for myself, but I think at least a few here can agree with me, since it's put into practice everyday. Debates and discussions can get heated, insults might be thrown around, but show outside these threads that you're a nice person and your belief will be overlooked or ignored. To me there are many theists here that I can't see eye to eye with when it comes to religious topics, but as human beings I like them just fine. This is after all a forum to discuss both sides, it is a small battlefield, but I try not to forget that there is another person sitting on the opposite end.
Unfortunately there will be those, who will come across as insolent, bigoted and mean persons, no matter what they say and no matter what the topic. If it is due to the conversation being on the net or if that person actually is a piece of shit, I cannot say. But those can fortunately be put on ignore
So yes, I agree, there is definitely a middle, just not in the debates.

(May 27, 2012 at 10:43 am)Jesus Pipes Wrote: Thank you, and that is really what we are trying to promote. There really is a middle ground here that we can exist with mutual respect and not force our negative beliefs on others. I don't want christians telling others they sinning and going to hell for such and such, and I don't want atheists telling nonjudgemental christians that they are idiots for believing in something that may make them a better person. There is a middle, thank you for seeing that.

The middle ground may exist, but that doesn't mean people walk it consistently. In my experience, most people happily walk the middle ground most of the time but jump to one end when its convenient and jump back, hollering for it, when their other ground is being questioned.

Personally, I don't talk about religion unless its brought up in my presence. Such as when my family wants to drag me to a temple or my friends criticize my eating beef on religious basis. My policy is - "If you show me yours, you better be ready to see mine".