RE: Ex-theists are often like ex-smokers, sanctimonious and insufferable.
July 21, 2015 at 4:52 pm
Quote:Of course the good deeds done due to religion count. Now, tell me, how many good deeds does it take to balance against a beheading? If you need more examples of the deeds caused by religion, you don't have to look very hard for them. All you need to do is keep looking at Minimalist's threads in which he keeps adding atrocity after atrocity to the lists. Or, if you want, you can search on your own.Indeed, how many? is this about quantity or quality, after all? BTW, why should people who do nothing wrong be taken into account by what others decide to do? Do you think marxist sympathizers should be blamed for what some communists did? I am very aware of the hazardous effect of believing dogmatically, and I don't need further explanations on that - Trust me - I also know that nothing happens merely because of one variable but by a mix of causes that lead people to commit horrible actions. There isn't a correlation between any belief and violence, there is a correlation between fundamentalist dogmatism and violence/crime.
Quote:Maybe you think it does not matter because the example to which I link above is about some brown-skinned woman in a poor country. I say, religion needs to be combated, as it is a danger to civilization. Religion may be mostly tamed in your country, but that is not how it is elsewhere. And it has not been tamed by its choice in your country either. Given the chance, we can expect the same actions as were the case in the past. After all, they still have the same texts and organizations of the past that inspired such things.Oh please, I feel sorry for all the horrible things people go trough daily, but more than caring about the X or Y doctrine criminals claim to follow I'm worried about the suffering of people. yes, religion is under control in my country - By the way, with the support of both Christians/religious people and non-religious ones, so it's not like religious people want a theocracy (at least sane ones).
They do, but so what? Organizations change, or have different leaders - Books are just books, who cares? The bible is a book, the Quran is a book, you can read it and use it for whatever purpose you please - There is no one (I hope) pointing a gun and telling you that you can only use the bible with a literalist interpretation.
Quote:Edited to add:Pyrrho, you're too smart for this - Are you seriously arguing that because one side does it worse, the other is ignorable? isn't that what anti-feminists do about women's issues in the west (that they even claim don't exist)? Tell me why I shouldn't feel bad about smokers being marginalized, just because some people have it worse? How many people do behead? Are they a majority of theists? Again I ask, are communists responsible because one day some older communists decided that everyone who was a "traitor" should be executed and sent to gulags? Why should a Christian living in France even care or feel bad about what a retarded pastor in America says about gays? Why should a successful middle class Muslim living in Europe feel bad about what ISIS is doing? Why is religion special when it comes to harm, when it is merely one of the things that causes it?
When smokers and drinkers start beheading others due to their smoking and drinking, then we can start to talk about how such things compare with religion. But otherwise, it is a bullshit analogy.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you