(July 19, 2015 at 10:57 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: If you know that making fun of someone's beliefs to their face hurts their feelings, and you do it anyway, then you don't care about their feelings. And if you don't care about a person's feelings, I don't know how you can say you care about them.

Well, let's say your beliefs hurt my feelings. Whatever the fuck now? Stop having beliefs, you heartless monster? Thicker skin is advised.

Ideas are not sacred, and they don't deserve to be, otherwise we're heading straight towards totalitarianism. Or, you know, religion. If you can't stand having your beliefs scrutinized, keep them to yourself.

You guys are disgusting!
You cunts don't even respect me enough to offer some serious constructive criticism to my pet chook theory!
Instead you just play along with me, with silly ideas like I'm religious!
Maybe Cath was right!
You guys couldn't even take me seriously! Friends don't do that! My fragile ego is now "literally" shattered!
Now I finally "understand" how it feels to be persecuted!

Careful iggy. You're stepping on thin ice

(And you're theory is bull, it was totes aliens)

hahaha ...you're doing it again! was it? serious?

C'mon, Carson, what do I need to do? Use a summoning? 

(July 19, 2015 at 10:57 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(July 19, 2015 at 10:50 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Honestly, how would you know?  Many of us address religion the way we do because we care a great deal...just not about your religion, or your religious sensibilities.  You may feel that this expresses some lack in -us-, but it could just as easily be pointed to as your feeling that your religious sensibilities should be privileged wherever you go, whomever you interact with.

Food for thought.

If you know that making fun of someone's beliefs to their face hurts their feelings, and you do it anyway, then you don't care about their feelings. And if you don't care about a person's feelings, I don't know how you can say you care about them.

If you have a dear friend who is falling into some pretty messed up, harmful ways of thinking, you can still sit down and have a serious conversation with him and be honest with him. But there is a respectful and disrespectful way of doing it. And how you approach it will show how well you care.

Which is more respectful of a person, challenging their false and silly ideas (while hoping that they might realize their error), or leaving them with their false and silly beliefs?

Some ideas are so silly that it is difficult to seem respectful of the person when one is discussing how completely idiotic and ridiculous the beliefs are.  And pretending that stupid ideas are not stupid gives a very wrong impression.  Do you value honesty and openness, or do you want to pretend that silly ideas are not silly?

If your adult friend believes in the tooth fairy, how do you react?  Do you pretend that there is even a tiny bit of sense to such an idiotic belief?

Let us take the idea further.  Suppose that your friend is not only privately believing in the tooth fairy (which, if it were truly private, you could not know about it all), but also acts on that belief in a manner which is detrimental to society.  How does that influence your interactions with your friend?


And when you come to a web site, which you know is devoted to not believing in your invisible friend (or anyone else's invisible friends), and you tell the people there that you have an invisible friend, what sort of reaction do you expect to get?  The fact that interactions here are different from interactions one typically has in person is in part due to the purpose of the site.  If, in real life, you go to an atheist meeting, what sort of reaction would you expect to get from telling them all that you believe in a god?  What kind of reaction would they get, going to a religious meeting and telling the religious people that there is no god?  Context matters for many things, and when you go to a meeting place that has a specific purpose, you should have different expectations than when you go to some other sort of place.

Now now, this site is actually "devoted" to discussion, but it does provide a place for people to express their thoughts regarding religion openly and honestly....and sometimes, oh just sometimes, peoples thoughts can be insulting or offensive to some other person.  If that's too much to handle, or if a person gets the idea that people ought to curb their tongue on account of their being offended...this aint the place for them -regardless- of where they stand on the god question.

I know. Like I think gun nutters who think of the 2nd amendment as giving every US citizen a way to express their disapproval of the government by shooting someone are a little over the top. Now I know that will rub Rhythm the wrong way but that's okay. He'd shoot anyone who tried to fuck with my right to criticize him. That is the kind of tough hided, open discussion we like to have around here.

(July 17, 2015 at 1:19 pm)KevinM1 Wrote: Please point me to something I did that required redemption afterward.

you where born human. dammit you had the choice. right?