Yes I pick on all religions.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Brian. Don't you find you spend most of your life being angry if other people believing differently from you makes you angry. Perhaps after '13 years of being at this every single day' it might be time to accept other people think in a different way to you.

Just a thought.

Oh boy, when you have no argument you demonize the critic as being emotional.

OK, we can go there.

"Anger" first off in what context? You already read my OP so you should know it is in knowing our species can do better than to cling on mythology.

But in a very real sense religion globally does lots of REAL harm. It causes human division. Our world leaders are religious and have their hands on weapons. I think is absurd for you to imply such concerns are not worth being motivated(passionate enough) to care.

Its followers constantly attack science and seek to replace it in education. Or do you think it is ok to lie to kids and tell them adult women pop out of men's ribs? It teaches people to accept not knowing rather than to investigate.

You arguing like this is childish, like "Whats wrong with women not being allowed to vote" "Why wont you let men deny girls and education and force them to submit?" "Why wont you allow religious people to deny gays equal rights?"

And as far as others thinking differently of course they can. I defy you do show me anywhere I said they cant. Do not confuse human rights with ability to demonstrate the credibility of ANY given claim on ANY issue. You have the right to make whatever claim you want, but claims do not deserve taboo status.

Yea I have been at this for 13 years and I am going to do this every day of my life. I hope every atheist reading this cares to say something when absurd claims are made.

For an ABBA fan, that was well done.

Boru

[Brian37]

LISTEN YOU!

[ignoramus]

So basically you're a full time "religious pickeronerer"

[Dolorian]

You need to reject Abbaism to be consistent :p

[Brian37]

So basically you're a full time "religious pickeronerer"

Yea, so?

Religion isn't going anywhere but it does not deserve a pedestal. Blasphemy is the only thing that keeps religion from becoming theocracy.

---

You need to reject Abbaism to be consistent :p

That is another LISTEN YOU!(not you, but someone else picked on TOO)

[psychoslice]

I don't believe in a god, but that doesn't make me better or intelligent than those who do, there is a lot in this universe that we can never know. I love using metaphors for that which we cannot know, this is how mythology came about, and yes there is beauty and much wisdom within the myth, those who strongly don't believe and those who strongly don't believe will never get it, they are too wrapped up in their beliefs. There is so much beauty in music and poetry, they need not be true, but still there is beauty, don't miss out on the wonders of life just because you don't believe.

[Brian37]

I don't believe in a god, but that doesn't make me better or intelligent than those who do, there is a lot in this universe that we can never know. I love using metaphors for that which we cannot know, this is how mythology came about, and yes there is beauty and much wisdom within the myth, those who strongly don't believe and those who strongly don't believe will never get it, they are too wrapped up in their beliefs. There is so much beauty in music and poetry, they need not be true, but still there is beauty, don't miss out on the wonders of life just because you don't believe.

Oh boy, this is well intended sense of fairness pulling at you.

No no one can absolutely know everything in a future no one has lived yet. But that does not make all claims equal, and even with what we have yet to discover it is ok to give up on bad claims.

We do know how mythology came about. Our species ignorance. Our evolutionary drive to seek patterns did not come with our modern knowledge of science. That fear of the unknown caused us to gap fill and we still fall for it today.

And who said we should get rid of art and poetry? I didn't. I simply do not think it helps progress to teach fairy tales as fact. Once you know the earth is not flat you are not helping society by selling it as flat.

they need not be true, but still there is beauty, don't miss out on the wonders of life just because you don't believe.

Harry Potter is fiction, lots of people find beauty in those books, but no one builds political parties or theocracies or murders to protect Harry Potter.

Any good deed or good motif you can find in one religion, you can find in all of them. So the truth is that our morality is in our evolution, not in books or clubs. Our lack of understanding this as a species is what allows us to attempt to form social pecking orders. Doing that creates an in group and out group.

And holy books are not simply taken as art. They are sold as history books and facts to a political level, and that is what makes them dangerous.

don't miss out on the wonders of life just because you don't believe

Thank you for your projection. What exactly am I missing out on? Supertition? Fictional gods that do not exist?

No quite the contrary. Believers miss out on understanding nature and reality. They find comfort in placebos rather than try to understand nature as it is. They'd rather believe in magic, than say the size of our galaxy or the speed of light. They'd rather play dungeons and dragons in their head then know what Adenine, Guanine, Thymine and Cytosine is.

The ancient Egyptians were master builders and their art was most certainly beautiful, but that did not make any of their gods real. If you would rather stay in the past rather than give up on bad claims, you not only hold yourself back mentally, by spreading that bad data as fact, the more it spreads the longer it holds human progress back.

ART is one thing, knowing that religion will exist and should be a human right is another. But do not try to paint me as the bad guy for right fully criticizing bad claims and not giving religion taboo status. If our species never question social norms, women could not vote and blacks would still be slaves.

Religion(all religions) IS NOT harmless no matter what pretty motifs you might find in it. To not keep your eyes on it is like pretending there is no chance of the volcano exploding because it is currently dormant and is surrounded by pretty land.

As I said at the top, your emotional reaction to my bluntness is coming from our species good qualities in our evolution. It is our sense of compassion you are feeling and it is good that you have that. But that good intent blinds people and causes them to ignore conflict and or bad logic. Facts are what matter, what we feel is only what we feel. It is when humans mistake feelings for fact and take it to a political level is that what makes religion dangerous.

[psychoslice]

Yes I do agree with you, but at the same time I feel that many need a belief system such as religion, or even atheism, of course if it goes too far and becomes a problem for others, then yeas we should get rid of it. But I see a lot of beauty in religion, there's a lot more religions that are not Christianity, or those that literally believe in their scriptures. We are all one, we are not separate, to realize this is to be enlightened, or awake, in this enlightenment you see all beliefs no matter what, as illusions, no matter if your belief is right or wrong, to the universe it really means northing.

[Minimalist]

Don't you find you spend most of your life being angry if other people believing differently from you makes you angry.

Hey, Mike. Study this t-shirt....try to absorb its message.




I may think you are a flaming idiot for believing in absurd fairy tales but I'm not going to kill you for it.

[Michael]

Sure, Stalin and his minions used guns and starvation. And Mao Zedong treated all people of religion with respect, did he? The great atheist experiments. Yeah, right. Wonderful. No thank you. It truly beggars belief that people fall for that sort of T-shirt, not recognising the blatant twisting of a dreadful and shameful period in the history of atheist thought and rule. I will acknowledge the dreadful things done by Christians, in the name if Christ even. By acknowledging them we can recognise the dangers that exist and work to prevent them occurring again. But those that blind themselves to the terrible deeds done in the name of their own favoured philosophy are bound to repeat those dreadful things. I'll stay with the Christian pacifists, thank you; those that have acknowledge and learned from history. Give me a Franciscan or a Quaker over a blind atheist ideologue, with or without a misleading t-shirt, any day. Mind you I do have to say I do find Quaker meetings for worship a little too noisy (really!), but I do enjoy sharing in their meetings from time to time. I have a lot of time for Quakers and was very much influenced by their dedication to pacifism.

That T-shirt is a huge and embarrassing own goal for anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of atheist thought and power. I think people must either be either incredibly ignorant, or have absolutely no regard for the facts of history, to wear it.