everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[downbeatplumb]

Well the suns out, but my mums in the hospital waiting to die, so swings and roundabouts.

[KichigaiNeko]

Well the suns out, but my mums in the hospital waiting to die, so swings and roundabouts.

We will ALL be there eventually sweetheart...(waiting to die) but for now...the sun is High in the sky...the weather is mild...and all's good with the world..YES?

[kılıç_mehmet]

Well the suns out, but my mums in the hospital waiting to die, so swings and roundabouts.

I hope she gets better.

[Jesus Pipes]

Have you been to jesus pipes' website? I'm not at all clear what beliefs are being espoused other than that smoking a pipe (of anything) will somehow help you meditate on Jesus' teachings. A distinction is made between what the bible says and what Jesus says.

Jesus pipes,

If Jesus' message was that man could know God without the Old Testament, I assume you would say man can know Jesus/God/whatever without the New Testament too? Afterall, Jesus had no part in putting it together and knew nothing of it. If he thought it important to leave specific instructions behind don't you think he'd have put a scribe to work? If you agree that neither the NT nor the OT is needed to know God, would you also agree that Jesus too is superfluous? When he is quoted as saying "I am the way", do you think he meant his personhood/essence or did he mean the way exemplified by his life?

What do you think Jesus would have said is important? That you win his favor or that you follow his example? Do you think Jesus would have thought his personal history was so important?

I'd be curious to hear you say more if there is anymore to say.

Good thought provoking questions. I posed this to a few people and put it on the JP forum.

David -
I'll take a crack at it....

I'd say it's pretty clear that, if Jesus didn't believe in his outright divinity, he definitely believed he was the Exemplar toward a new way of worship and spirituality for the Jewish people primarily (he brought his message to them first, but also to others when the opportunity presented). And no, he didn't employ any scribes to record his teachings, but he did have followers, and some of them he knew were educated enough to probably record at least some of his teachings. As far as specific instructions, he taught us how to pray ("Lord's Prayer"), how to remember him (on Nisan 14, passing bread and wine), and how to take the good news to the people.

As far as "knowing God"... I feel that in order to know God as he is espoused by Jesus, yes, you need to know the New Testament. This, however, leads to what is I think the ultimate question, and that is, can one know God without Christ, without the Bible? Can one lead an essentially righteous, Christ-like way of life without ever knowing him? I say yes. I believe his example is more powerful than his supposed divine personhood, and seeking his favor. To say anything else would be to relinquish the power of our own will, since that alone will keep us on the path following his example. I believe how he treated and interacted with his disciples is how he would treat and interact with us. I believe any allusions to his divinity were trumped up by others after his death, as his teachings were used to construct a religion with congregations and all sorts of rules that suddenly prescribed how people were to implement His love instead of letting their faith take its own form.

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.

---

There are quite a few atheists who do not approve of the confrontational antics of some of the more hardcore Atheists because they rightfully believe it paints a negative image of their views. Instead of showing atheists (well non-spiritual atheists in this instance) as good people who do not need a belief system to tell them how to live a righteous life , it paints a picture of them being as backward and vile as the Evangelicals.

for me, it's not only that it paints a negative view, it's that i'm new to being around other atheists at all, so i'm learning what terms mean and how people communicate their lack of beliefs as well as how theists came to believe what they believe. it's a learning deal for me. once the general convo degrades to solely name-calling, there will be nothing more of value to me and i'll be gone. never was much of a groupie anyway, i do my own thing.

I think theists got that way because they were born and raised in it. It is hard to get out of a system when your whole network is entwined in it. I know some ex jehovah witnesses whose families won't even talk to them any more because they don't share the same faith. Again, a lot of these religions are tough on a person if they start thinking a different way.

A lot of atheists became that way because they hated the dogma of organized religion or they just started thinking that nothing about religion made any sense. Whatever you believe, I think the most important thing is to become more educated on the subject and do whatever makes you a better person to others.

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

[Mister Agenda]

Kinda interesting. If you put 'should Christians' on a Google search, the first thing to come up as a suggestion is 'should Christians get tattoos?' If you put 'should atheists' on a Google search, the first thing to come up as a suggestion is 'should atheists be killed?'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MCsoEkF3A

[Mister Agenda]

This is meaningless, because in order to make a genuine comparison between religious and irreligious you need to control for location.

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.

"In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder. "
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/cont...61/12/2303

"Relative to their peers, religious youth are less likely to engage in behaviors that compromise their health (e.g., carrying weapons, getting into fights, drinking and driving) "
http://heb.sagepub.com/content/25/6/721.short

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.

OK then? The only reason I even brought it up was because it is probably one of the largest factors in anti-atheist sentiment, just like 9-11 or the "War on Terror" are the largest factors in Islamophobia. Maybe my tone was more accusatory than I intended.

Perhaps it was the combination with the studies you thought indicated we were mentally unstable.Perhaps it's the way you seem to be justifying hatred of atheists rather than just explaining it. People in general don't form their opinions about minorities based on history and facts. They form their impression from their culture, then try to find history and facts to justify the opinion they already hold.

Max Sievers actually was a Soviet Communist (as in the type of government he advocated), as such he was executed for treason, not atheism.

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.

No, thats what sensationalist news headlines say.

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

I only expressed any sort of concern at all when I was directly asked.

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?

What? Yes, the Inquisitors shared a religion with me, just like various state atheist regimes (both communist and not) share a religion (or lack thereof) with you.

You share theism with Aztecs and Baal-worshipers, and lack of theism is all I share with communitsts. It's ludicrous to lump theists or atheists together when it doesn't give you more information than their opinion on a single topic.

Communism is an economic/political theory. The Inquisitors were probably monarchists, and I am not a monarchist. Why do you lump all Christians together regardless of economic/political views, but for atheists its OK to subdivide them based on their economic/political views? Do you not see the hyporisy?

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? It's not hypocritical to respond to the sewage that you bring up. Bad people did bad things for bad reasons, whether religion or ideology. Dueling body counts means nothing and accomplishes nothing and is irrelevan; except to the extent that the first person to bring it up needs to be reminded that particular issue cuts both ways. Maybe you should consider that the next time you're thinking of bringing it up.

Less than 500 Orthodox Churches, out of 29,584, survived the period between 1927-1940, and I don't think many of them were "left alone".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution...viet_Union

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.

But yes, the state atheism of say, Cambodia or Albania makes the USSR look tame in comparison.

State atheism is horrible. I've never encountered someone who supports it, and I would have words for someone who did. But it's no more relevant to my position than sacrificing babies to Baal is to yours, and LESS relevant than the Crusades/Inquisition (not to mention recent issues) are to being a Catholic.

I have many times. The US government does not track prison population by religious affiliation,

Actually, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does keep track, and the US government does allow studies of the prison population.

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

, which but in nations which do, such as Scotland, those without religion are quite overrepresented.

Again, not claiming a particular religion is not the same thing as claiming to be an atheist. What you want to know is if they believe in God. You don't have to have a religion to believe in God and a LOT of people fit the description 'believes in God, not religious'. 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'. Which is irrelevant to me, when Unitarians and humanists start to commit crimes at the same percentages as Christians and Muslims, THEN I'll worry.

I already know you are probably thinking of a 1997 email forward which tries to say atheists are .2% of the prison population.
1) Its not anywhere on any official government website, so its origins are rather specious
2) It is from 1997, so its already 15 years out of date.
3) Its actually edited down so that way they counted the people who answered "none" separately from those who answered "atheist"...and as any atheist can tell you, atheism is not a religion at all. When "nones" are factored in, we are left with 20%.
http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison.html

I actually agree with you on this one. The provenance is too uncertain to trust, although I once verified that the puported source was a statistical researcher for the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the time. 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.

But like I said, since it is from such dubious origins I prefer looking at nations with official tallies, like Scotland, which has
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/...064616.pdf
34.1% of the prison population having no religion as of 2007, compared with:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_11_05_bbc_faith.pdf
19% of the general population.

Which also doesn't distinguish between 'not religious' and 'atheist' and is therefore useless for making claims about atheist criminality.

And I'd be willing to say they are even more overrepresented in terms of new arrivals, since religious people do devote themselves a lot to ministering to those in prison (and as far as I know atheists not so much), so some atheists (famously Ted Bundy) convert while in prison.

Many, many people who aren't religious are theists. The reason you think atheists are overrepresented despite not having relevant statistics is because you are bigoted against atheists.

Not that it matters though.

Not unless you'd be willing to make the same argument for why many white people dislike blacks.

Its fair enough to talk about unfair non-violent forms of prejudice, but just reading your post you have very little room to complain about the prejudice of others when you sound so hateful yourself.

Bigots often have trouble distinguishing the anger and frustration of the minorities they despise from hate.

[Whateverist]

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.

---

Kinda interesting. If you put 'should Christians' on a Google search, the first thing to come up as a suggestion is 'should Christians get tattoos?' If you put 'should atheists' on a Google search, the first thing to come up as a suggestion is 'should atheists be killed?'

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MCsoEkF3A

---

Geez, what an idiot. People who live in the myth and take it all literally are really threatened by us, aren't they? What the guy says makes a lot more sense if you imagine him asking why doesn't he and people who think the way he does just kill themselves if what we atheists think is true. That would be too vulnerable a thing to say when you feel threatened so it gets inverted with much tortured logic. Ahh well.

[Justtristo]

What atheists assert about life, the universe and everything is deeply threatening to everybody else. Because they who have completely different conceptions about life, the universe and everything. So as I see it the antipathy displayed by a lot of people against atheists is not unexpected. However consider that antipathy as a good thing, since they (probably) know deep inside the atheists are right. Although they will not admit it, even to themselves.

[downbeatplumb]

Well the suns out, but my mums in the hospital waiting to die, so swings and roundabouts.

I hope she gets better.

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

She died less than an hour ago.

[KichigaiNeko]

She died less than an hour ago.

Oh DBP I am so sorry. Are YOU OK??