hipster Atheist

[jstrodel]

Religious and spiritual use of cannabis

That is not the same as "tolerating sex and drugs". Every religious faith in the world more or less condemns intemperance and hedonism regarding sexuality and the use of psycho-actives. That is different from spiritual use of cannabis. The spiritual use of cannabis is very debatable, but it is definitely not the same as "tolerating sex and drugs" which is pure hedonism. You are grasping at anything to make your point, obviously that was not what I meant.

You would say that tolerance is advocacy in another context.
Prove the statement tolerance is not the same as advocacy.

tol·er·ance
[tol-er-uhns]
1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.

2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own.

3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.

---

ad·vo·ca·cy
[ad-vuh-kuh-see]
the act of pleading for, supporting, or recommending; active espousal

Simply not condemning something is not the same as encouraging it.
[/quote]

You completely missed the argument. Of course they are different words. My argument was the tolerance entails advocacy, not that they are exactly the same definition.

Are we talking about five year olds here, or about adults? You say "very young people" so are you claiming that atheists are okay with "very young" people doing drugs and having sex? (And by doing drugs, I don't mean hard drugs)

Teenagers, such as those reading about whether if atheism is true nihilism follows and right after that reading about sex.
You don't see any problem with that?

Only if they are irresponsible. People have known that drunk driving is bad for years. People still do it. You can't drink and drive responsibly. You can have sex, perhaps use some light drugs (?), and listen to music in ways that won't hurt you. If you are irresponsible, you're going to mess yourself up no matter what others tell you. I understand you've had some bad experiences, but whoever you were friends with was obviously irresponsible, and to blame atheism...well there's no reason to do that. You continuously state that atheism is at fault and promotes hard drug use, unsafe sex, and...somehow dangerous music, but you haven't supported it.

Why do you accept what the scientific world teaches when it supports the lifestyle that you want to have and reject it when it disagrees with your culture? It is almost like science has a great deal of authority when it comes to disproving Christianity, but it has very little authority when it comes to a question like whether or not you can use marijuana or ecstasy responsibly. Science, in the form of the medical establishment, the food and drug establishment, the pharmacological community has said that you cannot use illegal drugs responsibly and you cannot abuse alcohol responsibly either.

Do you see any problem with you defining the quantity of danger of activities that will probably end up killing a few of your friends in your life? I am just going to be honest with you, but as you grow up, you are going to know some people that get killed from drugs. I have, everyone has. Do you really want to make yourself responsible for giving other people advice about what you can do "responsibly"? Why not leave that to a doctor?

By atheists telling them to use hard drugs? And this is common, or just happened to you?

Atheism create a culture among young people that is friendly to drug use and the older atheists do nothing to stop it.

The wiki link at the top of this post showed examples of religions supporting drug use, and however you define "sexual immorality" is subjective. Religion by definition can't tolerate sexual immorality because religion is what decides what is considered sexually immoral in the first place.

No, it shows examples of religion showing acceptance of marijuana for religious reasons, which is rare and irrelevant because that is not at all what I am talking about, I am talking about the atheist acceptance of youth culture.

How you define sexual morality is not subjective. It comes from the sexual act itself. The nature of birth and the economic realities of parenthood establish sexual morality as a basic issue every single religious group in history should care about.

Can people have children whenever they want and have as many as they want? NO. OF COURSE NOT.

Do you know how much poverty is caused by peoples poor decision making? Go in the inner city and see how many single families you will see. Of course, you could argue that the poverty is responsible for the single families to some degree, and that is true, but the reverse is true.

I don't really follow your argument about religion not being able to define sexual morality. You could rephrase it.

Rock star lifestyle? Who is living a rock star lifestyle? Do you really think atheists are living like that...or is that the result of the bad company you placed yourself in years ago?

Have you ever been to college? You know what you see? Drugs, liberalism/socialism/immorality/atheism and popular music culture. I don't care if Sean Hannity and everyone else at Fox News talks about that, you know what the genetic fallacy is, right? Or have you learned to step out of your "free thinker" training wheels and actually appreciate the very different cultural forces at play between liberal/atheist and conservative/Christian cultures. The differences are staggering, as someone who has been in both, although many Christians are in between both worlds, the strength of the secular culture is through Christians it is through all these other ideas.

Because it isn't. One would think Satanism would be much more rebellious anyway... And why would this culture you claim exists lose belief in god rather than simply act rebelliously to spite him?

You are missing the point of the objection and the nuance is completely lost on you (no offense). The point is not that young people are doing drugs and sex because they hate God or want to be atheists, the point is that people don't care that much about atheism, it is an issue, but the real issue is that the atheist culture draws people away from God with the lure of drugs and sex and freedom.

It is not that the people that are atheists are atheists because they are so knowledgeable about the Bible, because they have painstakingly studied and researched and questioned and looked and looked and looked and studied more and gone through and questioned, certainly some have, but the masses of people, their atheism or agnosticism is the product of accepting the simultaneous decision to cast off restraint and pursue hedonism and follow a movement that tolerates and/or encourages it and at the same time have some sort of intellectual/ethical justification for believing that God does not exist.

The responsible atheist would see these issues and realize that much is at stake. He would see that although he may not believe in God, as a moral person he recognizes that the risks of drug use and worldview that accepts nihilism as an acceptable way to see the world should not be mixed and consideration of either at the very least should be separated. A responsible person would not try and convinced young people that atheism is true, he would not minimize the many difficulties that exist in attempting to defend atheism, he would not use aggressive propaganda tactics, he would not intentionally blaspheme religion in order to separate people from cultural prejudices and make them feel as if they have no duty to obey God. He would not dangle before people drugs and sex and a hedonistic lifestyle and he would not rely on those things to run his organization.

Projection much?

I swear that I never lie, nothing that I do is ever deceitful. I have not told a lie in probably 6 or 7 years. I promise you that. You can believe me or not. I train my mind all day long to try and be more clear in how I express my ideas.