http://www.examiner.com/article/pat-rob ... e-shooting
Fallacy Files
Once again right wing nut case Pat Robertson childishly tries to demonize atheists to remain in the spotlight by blaming the Sikh Temple shooting on atheists and "hate of God".
He is right atheists DO hate God, but only as a claim, not as a human rights issue. Just as if someone had a friend who they loved who still insisted that the sun rotated around the earth, you may love that person, but if you know that is false, it would bother you that your friend went around claiming it. Just as you would hate it if someone went around claiming Thor made lightening. The believer has the saying "Love the sinner not the sin". The atheist version would be "love the claimant, not the claim itself".
Now let me make something clear Pat. It is completely false that because we don't believe in a god, that we cannot have empathy for the suffering of people who do believe. Our sympathies for the Temple victims is the same as it was for the theater victims and Va Tec.
Having debated a wide spectrum of beliefs from Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Pantheist, I'd be just as willing to debate a Sikh, not because people believe all sorts of things, but because they have no evidence for such claims, no human has ever had anything but a history of tradition. If that were all it took for evidence to constitute reality then the sun would be a god because people once believed it for 3,000 years.
What IS universal, is our species ability to feel pain and empathy. No label owns a monopoly on what humans have always gone through. The joy and pain we have in life is not the invention or property of Christians, or Muslims or Sikhs or Jews or atheists.
I feel bad for the victims of any type of crime that involves murder, be it a domestic crime, mass shooting, or the genocide going on in Syria. The point is debate and blasphemy is a completly separate subject and has NOTHING to do with the atheist ability, BECAUSE WE ARE, despite your fucking bullshit, the same species.
Atheists go through the same ups and downs in life as believers OF ALL LABELS. We have lost loved ones to illness, accidents, old age and sometimes crime. There were plenty of witnesses in NYC who were godless who lost loved ones, and where just as traumatized by that event as any believer.
We are not a sub species like you'd childishly like to sell the public. We have family members and friends and co-workers who do believe. We do not live on an island. If this had been an atheist convention shooting, rather than a Sikh Temple, do you honestly believe we'd be robots and say "oh well", not not give a shit about the deaths of others?
We are all humans first Pat, which is why you cannot fucking accept that you are not the center of the universe. You devalue the suffering of the victims of ALL violence and you ignore the humanity all of us have evolved from, by making it about you, and your pet god, rather than our common humanity.
A victim is a victim and that person feels pain, and that person's family members feel pain. How dare you even fucking suggest that because we may not like the logic of what ANY person of any label might claim, that because of our objections to use of logic, that we are somehow monsters.
Any person who is witness to a mass shooting, be it in a Mosque or Synagogue or Theater or College or Sikh Temple is going to feel the same pain and suffering, and if it were an atheist event, we would too. You will not get away with this dirty tactic and fear mongering. Atheists feel just as bad for these Sikhs, regardless of what we might think of ANY given god claim in human history. This event is about humans suffering, and that is something to varying degrees, all humans will go through in their lives.
Fallacy Files
Once again right wing nut case Pat Robertson childishly tries to demonize atheists to remain in the spotlight by blaming the Sikh Temple shooting on atheists and "hate of God".
He is right atheists DO hate God, but only as a claim, not as a human rights issue. Just as if someone had a friend who they loved who still insisted that the sun rotated around the earth, you may love that person, but if you know that is false, it would bother you that your friend went around claiming it. Just as you would hate it if someone went around claiming Thor made lightening. The believer has the saying "Love the sinner not the sin". The atheist version would be "love the claimant, not the claim itself".
Now let me make something clear Pat. It is completely false that because we don't believe in a god, that we cannot have empathy for the suffering of people who do believe. Our sympathies for the Temple victims is the same as it was for the theater victims and Va Tec.
Having debated a wide spectrum of beliefs from Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Pantheist, I'd be just as willing to debate a Sikh, not because people believe all sorts of things, but because they have no evidence for such claims, no human has ever had anything but a history of tradition. If that were all it took for evidence to constitute reality then the sun would be a god because people once believed it for 3,000 years.
What IS universal, is our species ability to feel pain and empathy. No label owns a monopoly on what humans have always gone through. The joy and pain we have in life is not the invention or property of Christians, or Muslims or Sikhs or Jews or atheists.
I feel bad for the victims of any type of crime that involves murder, be it a domestic crime, mass shooting, or the genocide going on in Syria. The point is debate and blasphemy is a completly separate subject and has NOTHING to do with the atheist ability, BECAUSE WE ARE, despite your fucking bullshit, the same species.
Atheists go through the same ups and downs in life as believers OF ALL LABELS. We have lost loved ones to illness, accidents, old age and sometimes crime. There were plenty of witnesses in NYC who were godless who lost loved ones, and where just as traumatized by that event as any believer.
We are not a sub species like you'd childishly like to sell the public. We have family members and friends and co-workers who do believe. We do not live on an island. If this had been an atheist convention shooting, rather than a Sikh Temple, do you honestly believe we'd be robots and say "oh well", not not give a shit about the deaths of others?
We are all humans first Pat, which is why you cannot fucking accept that you are not the center of the universe. You devalue the suffering of the victims of ALL violence and you ignore the humanity all of us have evolved from, by making it about you, and your pet god, rather than our common humanity.
A victim is a victim and that person feels pain, and that person's family members feel pain. How dare you even fucking suggest that because we may not like the logic of what ANY person of any label might claim, that because of our objections to use of logic, that we are somehow monsters.
Any person who is witness to a mass shooting, be it in a Mosque or Synagogue or Theater or College or Sikh Temple is going to feel the same pain and suffering, and if it were an atheist event, we would too. You will not get away with this dirty tactic and fear mongering. Atheists feel just as bad for these Sikhs, regardless of what we might think of ANY given god claim in human history. This event is about humans suffering, and that is something to varying degrees, all humans will go through in their lives.
