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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 7, 2011 at 7:47 am
(This post was last modified: December 7, 2011 at 7:52 am by Rokcet Scientist.)
(December 6, 2011 at 4:54 am)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Pro tip: It's physically impossible to procreate with one's self.
That doesn't stop anybody trying...
(December 6, 2011 at 10:34 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: Does mine count? Because I really don't have the money right now to renew it.
Yep, if you're also between 16 and 36, you are now licensed to parade around Piccadilly Circus in the buff and demonstrate procreation techniques.
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 9, 2011 at 8:50 pm
This is certainly true. It's funny; if you say you're an atheist in the wrong company, you end up with a dozen 'wtf is this baby-eater doing here?' stares. From what I hear, it gets a lot worse down south as well, and I'm pretty far north.
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 9, 2011 at 8:58 pm
It's bad in the south. Living in the south, among these irrational un-thinkers is what makes me feel alright when they tell me I won't see them after we die, because I'll be in hell, and they won't.
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 9, 2011 at 9:01 pm
(This post was last modified: December 9, 2011 at 9:13 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
It's bad in the south, but there are surprising wellsprings of rational people. It's where the TV show "The Atheist Experience" (google it) is (austin, TX) so there are plenty of outlets.
Other than that though, the south is a few laws away from being one giant megachurch.
Espeically Florida, but luckily, the very climate change that they are deniers of will take them first thanks to all the low-lying land.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 10, 2011 at 2:29 am
(December 9, 2011 at 9:01 pm)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: Espeically Florida, but luckily, the very climate change that they are deniers of will take them first thanks to all the low-lying land.
Florida will have disappeared by 2100. 'Taken by the Lord'...
But its other problems – like idiotic religious nuts – will simply pop up elsewhere. It's like a waterbed: push here, and it comes up there.
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 10, 2011 at 3:25 am
(This post was last modified: December 10, 2011 at 3:58 am by Anymouse.)
(December 9, 2011 at 8:58 pm)aleialoura Wrote: It's bad in the south. Living in the south, among these irrational un-thinkers is what makes me feel alright when they tell me I won't see them after we die, because I'll be in hell, and they won't.
@ TheDarkestOfAngels: Thank you for the Clarance Darrow quote in your tagline, a poignant reminder of censorship at work. And I used to live in Florida, I will not miss it (nor my ex-wife, who still lives there).
@ Miss Aleialoura, I have lived in nearly every region of the USA, primarily as a Wiccan, but now as an atheist.
In -every region- I lived in, I was condemned (and in Virginia Beach my home publicly picketed and my wife and baby son's lives threatened) for being a Wiccan.
At the height of the Persian Gulf War, as a Navy Recruiter I had anti-nuke (not anti-war) pickets outside my station in Pittsfield, Mass. (world hq of General Electric, which at that time owned Martin-Marietta, purveyor of fine nuclear weapons for the USA). (I don't know why they didn't picket GE on the other side of town, they picked on me.)
But at my home three blocks away from my station, I was not being picketed as the evil recruiter for the techno-military-industrial complex. I was picketed for being Wiccan. (I was given early transfer orders out of Mass. to Rota, Spain over that.)
And damn, recruiting in the uber-wealthy Berkshire Mountains of Mass. was not exactly a spring picnic with a war on. No help from the rah-rah patriots, they were too busy damning me for my religious faith, whilst my Commander-in-Chief was condemning atheists and Wiccans and saying we should have our citizenship stripped.
Yes. There is discrimination, for anyone who does not believe -exactly- the version of Christianity in force in a particular location.
"Be ye not lost amongst Precept of Order." - Book of Uterus, 1:5, "Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her."
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Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 11, 2011 at 4:55 am
Living in upper-Midwest and in a smallish city of 100k. Pretty conservative here and difficult to find other like minded individuals. Don't feel hated, other than by some of the in-laws, but don't think open and honest conversation about religion has had the taboo pulled off of it yet.
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 11, 2011 at 5:15 am
I'm scared to come out as an atheist because of the public perception of atheists.
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 12, 2011 at 1:37 am
(December 11, 2011 at 5:15 am)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: I'm scared to come out as an atheist because of the public perception of atheists.
The problem with that mentality is that it allows the theists to think there are fewer of us then there really are and athiests think there are fewer of us then there really are. There's no downside to admitting to who you are outside of the usual jerks being jerks.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?
December 12, 2011 at 5:20 am
Yes.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.
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