Why would religious believers have so much of a problem with non-believers? Politics!

[MarkCharles]

If people who believe in a supernatural "creator" or "lord" or "God", or force find themselves in a most comfortable place because of their beliefs, why would they find the need to dishonor or disgrace or even to challenge those who have not arrived at their level of belief?

Simple: the same applies to people who are liberal Democrats, who find a problem with Republicans. RIGHT?

Or do I have that backwards? Don't Republicans have more of a problem with logical thinking empathetic Democrats trying to get youth and elderly and minority Americans to vote? Don't Republicans find it more of a problem for people to be thinking freely and skeptically about the banks, the insurance companies, the major "believers" in capitalism?

Democrats, at the end of the day, can go to sleep, knowing that they stand on a solid ground, have evidence for their political persuasions, have more facts and history on their side. Republicans tend to want to believe in their own mythology, rich people deserve to be rich because rich people said so.

Republicans, in their fearful frenzy, work to restrict the rights of some Americans to vote, work to stalemate a Congress when the economic fate of the world depends upon more Americans becoming employed consumers. Republicans want to stick their monkey-wrench in the works, want to stop their supporters from hearing the whole story.

Now let's look at religious believers, where do THEY want to stop science? Where do THEY get all their panties in a wad when we discuss the astrophysical probability of how the Universe came about? Where do many of these believers spend their lives trying to censor the scientific concepts of evolution? Where do some of these religious believers actually show up with placards, (or worse, with guns) trying to inhibit a woman's right to control her own body? We don't see atheists lining up in abortion protests. We don't see atheists insisting that their ideas be part of high school teaching. We don't see atheists insisting that teens be kept out of the morning after pill buying line. The only folks in favor of censorship, in favor of restriction of rights, in favor of limiting freedom of thought and expression... the only ones we see there are the religious believers.

Comments?

[elleng]

1. Good question.

Thanks

[sarcasmo]

2. Because they don't like doubt brought to there fantasy.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MarkCharles]

6. So you don't know what satire and irony is? That's YOUR excuse?

Thanks for weighing in!

[bananas]

7. Look at the replies - nobody thought it was satire or irony.

Because it wasn't.

[MarkCharles]

10. DUH..........it's NOT! But what you quoted (from another thread) was.

You seem to be in a fog each and every day. Try some study and history to cure you of thinking religious folks for over 5000 years have not been about the same scam that Republicans now tout on Fox News: lies, myths, schemes, need I go on?

[bananas]

15. Nope - read the replies - nobody thought it was satire or irony - because it wasn't.

I agreed with someone who said it was "vile",
others said it was "horrifying", etc:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=321739&mesg_id=321757

If we are so willing to lay down and simply let people of religious beliefs, no matter how illogical, have as much of a voice in our politics as people who have actually done some study and achieved some level of education, and have actually advanced the goals of a peaceful world, if we are willing to give the less fortunate, the uneducated, the "faithful" as much weight as the people who have actually worked and studie and achieved, I'm wondering what value we all place on the roulette wheels of who gets enough education to be a good ruler, and which mobs of religious zealots and mindless liars we are willing to submt our next generation to, given that we never have the courage to punish liars if they are talking about their "religious" beliefs.

[bananas]

11. "The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer" - Einstein

Remember - he's not laughing with you!
:rofl:

[MarkCharles]

12. Define bigotry, Miss Banana Einstein. Does it have to do with

prejudice? or just your desire to remain superior to the non-believer?

Can you actually use your brain for once and define "bigotry"?

I have my doubts. To me, your quote is out of context, if you read the entire document, (which I sincerely doubt).

[bananas]

18. It was Albert Einstein, not Bananas Einstein, and he had a lot more to say.

http://einsteinandreligion.com/atheism.html

The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.

— Albert Einstein
in Goldman, p. vii

Atheism
Atheists Irk Einstein

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human understanding, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.

— Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein, Towards the Further Shore (Victor Gollancz, London, 1968), p. 156; quoted in Jammer, p. 97

I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.

— Einstein to an unidentified adressee, Aug.7, 1941. Einstein Archive, reel 54-927, quoted in Jammer, p. 97

Atheists Miss the Wonder of the World
…

You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well a priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in anyway. One could (yes one should) expect the world to be subjected to law only to the extent that we order it through our intelligence. Ordering of this kind would be like the alphabetical ordering of the words of a language. By contrast, the kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for instance, is wholly different. Even if the axioms of the theory are proposed by man, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the "miracle" which is being constantly re-enforced as our knowledge expands.

There lies the weaknesss of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but "bared the miracles." (That is, explained the miracles. - ed.) Oddly enough, we must be satisfied to acknowledge the "miracle" without there being any legitimate way for us to approach it . I am forced to add that just to keep you from thinking that --weakened by age--I have fallen prey to the clergy …

— From a letter to Maurice Solovine; see Goldman, p. 24

Einstein Not a "Freethinker"

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein.

—Letter to A. Chapple, Australia, February 23, 1954; Einstein Archive 59-405; also quoted in Nathan and Norden, Einstein on Peace P. 510

You might also want to look at this reference where Einstein explicitly denies being an atheist.

[darkstar3]

21. Albert Einstein is the most abused person the quote game has ever victimized.

If you had half a thimble of intellectual honesty you would have continued your Google search to find Einstein quotes coming at religion from nearly every perspective.

Of course, the quote game itself is fallacious, so really, why the fuck do you care what Einstein said?

[MarkCharles]

23. I love how the religious believers think their intellectual caliber is equal to the

guy who talked about how all perceptions are relative to the viewer.

How there are no absolutes in human perception. How so much of the human record of the past 5000-10,000 years is a bit off.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[humblebum]

5. Um, well? As I see it, there are by far more atheists on DU complaining about religion

than vice versa. So, I must rephrase the question - Why would non-believers have so much of a problem with believers?

[darkstar3]

8. Message fatigue.

[MarkCharles]

9. If you failed to miss the millions of times believers have bullied, cajoled, threatened

and actually waged war against people who didn't believe as those believers did in the last 5000 years of history, perhaps you need to take a brief tour back into the history books.

I have seen how often folks like you misrepresent the concepts of the philosophy of science, but I guess you really have ignored the last 5000-10,000 years of human history in your campaign to blame all the ills and all the horrific events in human history upon three or four of the most recent, most well documented people whom you CLAIM were atheists, not simply the most efficient modern warfare psychopaths.

But your version of history leaves out thousands of incidents religious folks' raping or pillaging or murdering thousands of others, because we know your agenda is to convert the heathen logical atheists to illogical immoral thought patterns, like those of the Christian religion.

Why do atheists have a problem with the illogical thinking of religious believers? Please, the evidence is right in front of you, and you still want to ignore it. Try some study of history, okay?

[humblebum]

13. So, if I refer to the actions of certain atheists over the past century, it's

characterized as living in the past, but if you refer to believers' actions over the past 5000 years, it's relevant how?

And, referring to the "...illogical thinking of religious believers?... the evidence is right in front of you." - I, frankly, consider your thinking severely limited and logical only within your very narrow paradigm.

[darkstar3]

14. Actually it's treated as exactly what it is, reinterpreting and misappropriating history.

Which fits well into what we talked about earlier...is there anything you won't twist or contradict to get people to argue with you?

[humblebum]

16. Stop playing word games and be specific. I can make the same claims

about you and be just as correct. How does one go about "misappropriating history?"

[darkstar3]

17. Did you just type "stop playing word games" without any sense of irony?

:boring:

Hang on, before I continue talking to you, I want to go purchase some stocks in lube and Kleenex, so I can make some money off your continued purchases...

[humblebum]

19. I'll just answer that question as I did an earlier one of yours:

"As usual, when you cannot effectively argue, you throw out the totally pointless straw man, or red herring, or vacuous response - whatever is handy at the time. Must be one of them Serbian things again."

[MarkCharles]

20. ROFL. way over some people's heads

Some of us see forests, some of us see a few trees.

[humblebum]

22. Since it was only in response to a single person, it really doesn't matter

how many heads it passed over.

[MarkCharles]

24. Yeah, like my earlier thread where I quoted Santorum wanting to get science out of

politics.

No one got the irony of that, just me and Rick.

[humblebum]

25. Don't even try to link me to Santorum. The man is a joke, even to

many Republicans.

[MarkCharles]

27. O T H

Over the head

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[humblebum]

35. deleted

[MarkCharles]

26. A skeleton in a Santa Suit on a cross... really, how is that..

anything close to the original Christian faith?

Yet dozens of people, maybe tens of thousands, offended?

What is upsetting these believers, who claim to have the way and the light and the word and the whatever?

What on Earth offends them about a cheap senseless prank that hurt no plants, animals or people?

[Thats my opinion]

I guess your categorical caricature of "believers"

describes many fundamentalists--as if today and historically this is what Christianity has been all about. But I guess you just don't know what is happening outside fundamentalism. I don't know any religionists who want to "stop science." You don't find them in any reputable seminary or religion department of universities or the Society for Biblical Literature, or the Jesus seminar, etc. etc. etc. The people you find repulsive are the same people who are an embarrassment to most Christians around the world, or in history. So your description of "believers" is a product of your own prejudices. Why don't or can't you all just peek at the other side of religion? Or would that spoil the game?

[MarkCharles]

29. So you have a problem with non-believers because.........um

you don't agree with everything believers do to non believers?

"Why don't or can't you all just peek at the other side of religion?

So you didn't see us "peek" ing at the "other side of religion"? The side that says they don't like parts of what religions have represented for the last 2000-6000 years?

Why, might I ask, do you need to associate with anything as monstrous as what you call "religion", if you don't associate with it?

You seem to still think that there is a reason to call yourself "religious" but only strike out (as so many religious people do) at those that you don't understand when they claim that there is no way that anyone should call themselves such, given that last 5000 or so years of histories of religions.

Why would one continue to kiss that ring that they call "religion" when they disavow so much of what "religion" has become?

Again, WHY?

[darkstar3]

30. YOU are accusing others of shortsightedness?

Classic.

[NMMNG]

32. You're very adept at the No True Scotsman game

The people you find repulsive are the same people who are an embarrassment to most Christians around the world, or in history. So your description of "believers" is a product of your own prejudices.

You call those people an embarrassment, then you have the audacity to claim the OP is "prejudiced". Pot, meet kettle.

[MarkCharles]

34. Part and parcel of religious beliefs, as you well know, is to ...

place one's self above all the rest.

They are willing to throw stones at fellow believers, believing that they, themselves, are the true believers.

So often we see this kind of phenomenon among believers that it seems a pretty universal facet of religious believers, to the eyes of non-believers, and it is one more paramount reason not to be a believer. Really, makes so much sense.

[Thats my opinion]

28. I guess your categorical caricature of "believers"

HELP, HOW DO YOU SELF-DELETE WHEN YOU SEE THAT THE DARN THING HAS BEEN POSTED TWICE?




describes many fundamentalists--as if today and historically this is what Christianity has been all about. But I guess you just don't know what is happening outside fundamentalism. I don't know any religionists who want to "stop science." You don't find them in any reputable seminary or religion department of universities or the Society for Biblical Literature, or the Jesus seminar, etc. etc. etc. The people you find repulsive are the same people who are an embarrassment to most Christians around the world, or in history. So your description of "believers" is a product of your own prejudices. Why don't or can't you all just peek at the other side of religion? Or would that spoil the game?

[MarkCharles]

31. Use the EDIT option, unless you

really intended to make sure your point was made and don't have the where-with-all to find the edit key and delete the post and type, "DUPLICATE POST" in the title.

But I think you really wanted to see more from the non-believers, who continue to ask you why do you need to "believe" when so many do not believe as you do, yet they claim to be "true believers", born again or whatever.

Why associate yourself with this group? Are you afraid to say you are a person of moral and ethical character who can believe without openly subscribing to some mythology about Jesus? Do you have no courage to step out and say you are a moral and ethical person who does not need Christ?

[humblebum]

36. You have finally played your hand here buddy with that statement:

"Do you have no courage to step out and say you are a moral and ethical person who does not need Christ?" You have identified yourself as a radical, militant atheist and one who will tolerate no opinion but your own. You constantly flaunt your supposed education and intellect, and yet you have shown yourself to be ignorant of some of the most basic concepts put before you.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[humblebum]

38. Never did I say that, nor imply it, and my comment was directed solely

at YOUR actions and words.

[MarkCharles]

39. So these words you posted mean what?

"You have finally played your hand"

Challenging people to be courageous without a Christian religion..

How did I "play my hand"?

Let's face it, it's bed time for you... because you are offended by the very simple concept that people do NOT need religious beliefs to be courageous, ethical and have morals. That concept offended you SO much that you had to come out swinging by claiming that I:

"constantly flaunt your supposed education and intellect, and yet you have shown yourself to be ignorant of some of the most basic concepts put before you ."

What part of that is anything other than insults? Anything other than someone offended by an honest question... the question was...in case you forgot

"Do you have no courage to step out and say you are a moral and ethical person who does not need Christ?"

Evidently you do NOT!

[humblebum]

40. Like I said I never did I say, nor imply, that an atheist cannot be ethical or moral.

As far as your question goes. Personally, I will not deny Christ no matter how much that offends you. That is an entirely different matter than pointing out who is moral and ethical. Being a Christian does not guarantee that a person is going to be moral or ethical.

Your question is loaded, and it definitely identifies your POV. that's what I meant by you having played your hand.

[MarkCharles]

41. So hard as this is for you to believe, I am not in the SLIGHTEST offended by your

refusal to deny Christ in your life.

What offends me is your agenda to put down other people who do NOT accept Christ as you do. You seem to have an unending desire to make us feel less deserving of the bounty of our life than you have. That is what offends me. It offends me that you do not live and let live and have to assert your arrogant beliefs as superior to any rational thought, as "another way of knowing" when what it is comes down to, really, is wishful thinking and self-centered fantasy.


What is offensive is not your own beliefs, but your absurd desire to use irrational means to control and manipulate the minds of others like me.

[humblebum]

42. You are making statements about things that I have said or suggested

that are totally false. "You seem to have an unending desire to make us feel less deserving of the bounty of our life than you have." - Sir, you attack religious believers with a passion that is rarely seen here. Does this ring a bell?

"I have a lot of problems with people not thinking logically, and laying themselves out there...
as potential victims of religious leaders who cajole and threaten them into believing what the leader wants them to believe.

I find that so abhorrent to democratic free thought, and I am surprised that others are willing to let people be subjected to such bullshit, and still delude us into thinking that religion has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy, nor anything to do with rational thinking about how we educate children, and pass on the values of our Constitution to the next generation.

If we are so willing to lay down and simply let people of religious beliefs, no matter how illogical, have as much of a voice in our politics as people who have actually done some study and achieved some level of education, and have actually advanced the goals of a peaceful world, if we are willing to give the less fortunate, the uneducated, the "faithful" as much weight as the people who have actually worked and studie and achieved, I'm wondering what value we all place on the roulette wheels of who gets enough education to be a good ruler, and which mobs of religious zealots and mindless liars we are willing to submt our next generation to, given that we never have the courage to punish liars if they are talking about their "religious" beliefs."