Um, no. I didn't "snipe [sic] it out of context". I addressed the first part of the statement (Nowhere did I even come close to considering that Christianity is wrong...) and then the second (shouldn't be allowed, shouldn't have the right to do things, and generally should be punished with eternal torture or torment)...
Yeah, that's right. You "addressed" it by repositioning that clause to make it seem that he was advocating what he was actually criticizing. Real honest, there.
Oh please. Is that the best you can do?
To anyone with any brains it is blatantly obvious that I didn't misrepresent anything, I merely proved that 3-D Master has claimed that Christianity is wrong, bad, evil, dangerous... call it whatever you like - by simply quoting him. And in the meantime, he's repeated the same things over and over, and so did you, and not just about Christianity but religion in general. So what the hell are you trying to argue here?
And here you are, still trying to imply we have drool running down our mouths as we prepare to slaughter Christians.
What you are saying is already so extreme and ridiculously exaggerated that nobody could possibly make an exaggerated caricature out of it even if they wanted to.
No extreme going on anywhere. And you have been busy trying to exaggerate it. You're continuing to try and paint us as blood thirsty evil people who will slaughter religious folks at the drop of a had, or that we'd be busy actively trying to diminish people's rights, and other such things we've been saying from the get go are bad, wrong and shouldn't be done.
While you, on the other hand, are not like that at all.
Indeed not. I couldn't care less that people think not believing in god is a problem. As long as they're not trying to diminish my rights as a human being, they can think whatever they want.
That's like saying "please point me out to one version of socialism that doesn't involve any kind of state interference in the economy. You can't? Well, then any differences between them are irrelevant."
If you consider interference of state in the economy of paramount importance then any differences are indeed irrelevant.
Collins Cobuild Dictionary:
faith, faiths.
1. If you have faith in someone or something, you have a strong feeling of confidence, trust, and optimism about that person or thing.EG I had faith in Al - I knew he could take care of me... You're destroying all my faith in the medical profession...The experience that gave me faith that people can change...I've got faith in human nature. 2. A faith is a particular religion such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam etc. 3. Faith is also a strong religious belief in a particular god. 4. If someone breaks their faith in a belief, ideal, or organization they support, they stop acting in a way that supports that belief, ideal, or organization.
And those fat means are indeed the absence of reason. When those religions are internally inconsistent, don't fit reality as it is contradicted by science - all evidence shows it to be wrong, and yet you have faith in it, you tossed reason out the door, put fingers in your ears and are essentially going, "Nah, nah, can't hear you, I don't care what reason, science and logic say, fillInReligion is right anyway."
Religious faith is believing in things that have no evidence to support it, and even evidence that counters it.
All sorts of beliefs attract people who think it frakked up ways. 20th century history certainly proved it... and frankly, if an alien just came here and read this thread, I'm sure they'd get the impression that it's the atheists who are the intolerant ones.
Only if it has your faulty definition of tolerance.
Please tell me you aren't seriously claiming that communism is not a political philosophy.
Please explain how "The Communist Manifesto" does not denounce religion and suggest that it should be abolished.
Communism is not atheism. Just because it believes atheism is a good thing, doesn't make it atheism. Atheism has got nothing to do with communism. Atheism is just the absence of the belief in any god, it's no more, and no less.
And I never said you did. I said you claimed that religion was a belief system that is bad, intolerant, murderous, dangerous in itself, by its very nature. If that were true, it would make it as bad as nazism and fascism, which are intolerant, dangerous belief systems by their very nature.
The one-god religions are dangerous, bad, intolerant, and murderous in itself; and they're not the only ones. That's because they all claim that they are the truth, the only truth, and that if you do not believe as this books says you do - even if you believe in the same god - you are evil, and shall be punished by eternal torment. They all also tell you it is good thing to slaughter those who don't believe like you, or otherwise force them to believe like you.
It is an inherent part of all these religions, the only exceptions may be Buddhism, Deism, and Wicca. Buddhism because it is essentially an atheist religion that expunges gods and just teaches you how to reach nirvana, Deism because it is a non-organized religion without any holy books that is just: "There's something, it's good, and that's all we now", and Wicca because it is a religion that was created in our more enlightened times of tolerance, and don't slaughter your neighbors if they believe everything you do except one thing.
Um, because there really was a direct connection between atheism and totalitarian communist states. Which doesn't mean that atheism itself is bad. Atheism can exist and does exist with nothing to do with totalitarian communist states. But those communist states still had atheism as an integral part of their underlying political philosophy, and persecuted religion, just as other states persecuted in the name of religion.
Which still doesn't make it atheism, and trying to shove communist crimes into the shoes of atheism is faulty thinking. Communism is not atheism, it never is, was, or will be. Atheism has got nothing to do with communism, it has got nothing to do with any politics, it makes no ethical or moral claims, and says nothing about how a country should be run or how you should live your life. "The absence of the belief in any god" is all atheism is, nothing more, and nothing less. And trying to shove the crimes of political ideals onto something that has got nothing to do with it, is a logical fallacy.
You are.
I never said there was anything wrong with atheism itself. You are constantly claiming that religion in itself is bad.
It is bad, because even when they are not intolerant, it's still having to throw your reason out the window and believing in something that doesn't exist. Worse, that if you just pray hard enough all will work out, if not here, than happily in the after life. It is a system that puts some invisible world, and an invisible non-existing being more important than the world around you and the people in it.
It is a system designed to make people sit down, do nothing, and never work to improve the world - this is worse with those religions that are end-of-the-world cults, like the one-god religions are. Here you have people who not only don't care about working to make the world better, "'cause it is god's will if the world becomes better, and only god can make it better anyway, us mere humans can't do anything to change and improve it", but are actively helping and hoping along the destruction the world and the people on it.
ODO: I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his face when he died. He seemed so content.
KIRA: The last thing he saw was one of his gods smiling at him. If you ask me, he was a lucky man.
ODO: Nerys, please.
KIRA: No, listen to me. I know to Starfleet the Prophets are nothing more than wormhole aliens, but to me they're gods. I can't prove it, but then again, I don't have to because my faith in them is enough. Just as Weyoun's faith in you was enough for him.
(DS9 "Treachery, Faith and the Great River")
Yeah, the placebo effect has been documented. Still just water with some salt.
A person who believes what they want simply because they choose to isn't really an adult capable of dealing with other adults. If someone chose to say, "I know a Communist society is a moral society. I can't prove it but my faith in Communist moral values is enough," everyone would goggle in amazement at the effrontery. The way the religious can do exactly the same thing shows the power of pervasive belief to damage the brain.
Hence why faith is bad, it seeks to expunge reason and critical thought, makes you blind. Todays faith in capitalism is no better, for one, we don't even live in a capitalist society anymore - you can call it the stock market society, or the central bank society. It is every bit as corrosive, unequal, injust and destructive than communism was.
Ultimately, any system is only as good as the people running it. A totalitarian system run by genuinely good man will produce a better society to live in, than a democracy hijacked by those with money and greed.
Atheism is not just disbelief in the supernatural (would anyone every steal or masturbate if they really believed they were being watched?) Atheism if the belief that people should try to believe something for reason, not as an act of will. It is psychologically false to think belief is an act of will. Atheism is the belief that people should reason together instead of resorting to oppression and the repression of critical judgment. Willful belief in the irrational is deadly to civilized discourse.
That's backward. Atheism is nothing but the absence of the belief in any god. Reason and logic isn't believed in by Atheism, reason and logic results in atheism.
SISKO: Sure. I heard about what happened at school. Did Mrs O'Brien call off classes?
]JAKE: No. There was only me and four other kids left, but she still kept the school open. She changed the lesson to teach us about Galileo. Did you know that he was tried by the Inquisition for teaching that the Earth moved around the sun?
SISKO: Tried and convicted. His books were burned.
JAKE: How could anyone be so stupid?
SISKO: It's easy to look back seven centuries and judge what was right and wrong.
JAKE: But the same thing is happening now with all this stuff about the Celestial Temple in the wormhole. It's dumb.
SISKO: No, it's not. You've got to realise something, Jake. For over fifty years, the one thing that allowed the Bajorans to survive the Cardassian occupation was their faith. The Prophets were their only source of hope and courage.
JAKE: But there were no Prophets. They were just some aliens that you found in the wormhole.
SISKO: To those aliens, the future is no more difficult to see than the past. Why shouldn't they be considered Prophets?
JAKE: Are you serious?
SISKO: My point is, it's a matter of interpretation. It may not be what you believe, but that doesn't make it wrong. If you start to think that way, you'll be acting just like Vedek Winn, Only from the other side. We can't afford to think that way, Jake. We'd lose everything we've worked for here
(DS9 "In the Hands of the Prophets")
EXACTLY what I've been saying. People can believe whatever they want to believe, completely freely, without anyone trying to stop them. If you try to force people to change, attempt to block their believes, you destroy the very thing the other side would like to destroy.
However, that doesn't mean you can't speak your own opinion (that disagrees with some, and might agree with others), and point to faults in reasoning, dangerous thought patterns, logical fallacies and the like and argue using reason and logic against them.
You'd think that they'd want to defend their views, rather than let a non-believer do it for them.
(And as a believer that is an argument I do not accept at all...scientific evidence makes it very obvious they existed and how old they are.)
