Rude W*nkers I have met - Atheism & Religion in the Social Context 2

[Lord Toblerone]

It is a bit hard to rise above when they then decide to kill you for your "offence"

An extreme example yes but isn't that exactly what causes a so called "christian" to blow up an abortion clinic?

Certainly it is not faith in a loving and forgiving God, nor is it the teachings of that faith, heck one could make a decent case for saying that it is instead on the "opposite side".

Or when they battle like mad to stop gay marriage....... hell you can go on and on about pretty much any religion for example apparently the Delai Lama beleives that sex in the afternoon is a sin.

And then you get the atheists who claim that their lack of "imaginery friend" is better than your acceptance and if you don't happen to agree then your an idiot.

Feck it all I am off to the pub!

Personally I think most people who believe in God have never really questioned or examined it.

I'm not saying everyone has to come to the same conclusion when they do. Atheists/Agnostics can become believers as well as vice-versa.

But I do think most people raised within a religion will simply answer "Yes I believe in God" without thinking.

I'm not out to castigate or dismiss believers though. They're not harming me by continuing to believe.

I used to know this girl. She was kind of a diehard extremist. I say extremist because she had a variety of beliefs and some of them were extremely conservative, some of them extremely liberal, and a few that were even downright anarchist.

One of them was religion. She was a hugely vocal atheist. She had zero respect whatsoever for religion, and none for anyone with even a mild association with it. I did one of those stupid little surveys on Facebook and when I sent it to her, she copied about half of my answers. One of the things I said was, "The atheism-religion debate is irrelevant," (or something to that nature. I was trying to say that it's an argument that only flares tempers). She copied that particular answer with the amendment, "The atheism-religion debate is irrelevant. God is dead."

After I graduated high school, I heard that she got into a car accident (no one was injured). Suddenly, she found God. She didn't just find God. Being an extremist personality, she became a truly devoted, dedicated Christian. As I lost touch, I don't know if her past experience as an atheist made her more understanding of other beliefs or if her extremist, righteous personality made her feel superior.

I had another friend on the opposite end of the spectrum. She was milder in high school, but once in college, she didn't just drift from her friends. She knew she was more dedicated to the church than her closest friends, and very actively acted higher and mightier than them about it, even going so far as to out her lesbian friends to the church and get them kicked out, with no remorse at all (friends she'd had since she could walk). This being the same girl who classified herself as "sometimes bi." More to the point, she made everything about her and her struggles, and used her relationship with God to justify it.

tl;dr

To answer your question, there are definitely wankers on both sides.

(I'm sorry if that came off as offensive to one side or the other. I tried to make it as neutral as possible.)

Just going by what you say (there's undoubtedly a lot more to both women)

girl 1 sounds like a bit of a dickhead

but girl 2 sounds like a hypocritical self-absorbed bitch.

[Fragile Bird]

It is a bit hard to rise above when they then decide to kill you for your "offence"

An extreme example yes but isn't that exactly what causes a so called "christian" to blow up an abortion clinic?

Certainly it is not faith in a loving and forgiving God, nor is it the teachings of that faith, heck one could make a decent case for saying that it is instead on the "opposite side".

Or when they battle like mad to stop gay marriage....... hell you can go on and on about pretty much any religion for example apparently the Delai Lama beleives that sex in the afternoon is a sin.

And then you get the atheists who claim that their lack of "imaginery friend" is better than your acceptance and if you don't happen to agree then your an idiot.

Feck it all I am off to the pub!

I agree with you 100%, and your examples are examples of acts that are unacceptable and unforgiveable to me, not "rude". Except I can't go to a pub, I need to go to work. :frown5:

[gryphon strike]

hmm maybe for those raised in a religion it is like that I don't know, I was raised in an agnostic situation. My father was a rocket scientist, the head of the lab who developed the auto pilot. So I think it pretty fair to say that he was a pretty smart fellow. He was convinced that there was a higher power, he also beleived we were the remains of a colony from a species that did not evolve on this planet. I remember asking him once about "UFO" activity during the blue steel experiments etc and he clammed up faster than I have ever seen him do on any subject at all.

My point however is that this was a very intelligent man by anyones standards and yet many atheists would claim he was stupid for beleiving in a higher power and so would many religious people for beleiving in a higher power but not their particular version of such.

He was indoctrinated into a faith yet he broke free, I wasn't and yet I became a priest ( albeit a Pagan Priest ). So despite attempts to oversimplify things it is not all about indoctrination or even proof.

It is really about what a person chooses to believe in regardless of proof or lack of. So then I guess it depends on the choice of do you get more comfort beleiving that something is watching over you or that nothing is watching over you?

When you break it down like that it actually seems stupid to be an atheist, it isn't, it is all about individual choice.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Josscock,

I and my parish priest agree with Thomas Jefferson:

“Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."

[sologdin]

scot--

do you find orthodox christianity to be more thoughtful than y'all's local protestant schisms & heresies? i ask because my wife's people are Very Serious orthodox, but are plenty reflective on it, rather than dogmatic.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sologdin,

No. There are plenty of dogmatic Orthodox. Not a few in my church. It all depends on the individual.

[sologdin]

yeah, am reminded of cetnici during the yugoslav civil wars

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sologdin,

There's a guy at my church, much younger than me, of Serbian decent who is convinced the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Kosovar Albanians are servants of the illumanati and the Anti-Christ. We don't associate much.

[Lord Toblerone]

Is he of recent Serbian descent? Like did his family move to America during the war in the 90s? Or further back?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Josscock,

As far as I know he grew up in the US. I believe they came to the US before the civil war and breakup of Yugoslavia. He's reflexively pro-Serbian and believes all the war crimes are lies to besmerch Serbian nationalism.

[SpaceChampion]

I'm an atheist, but I don't talk about it much at all. Only to friends and such.

This. Most atheists don't talk about their atheism at all, except in certain circles. The wankitude of those you see is a selection bias.

So a minority of atheists talk about it with anyone, and a minority of those are wankers.

[Sci-2]

Josscock,

I and my parish priest agree with Thomas Jefferson:

Ooh Shiny! Here's another one I like:

"Your time has come - So tell us truthfully before you go, what sort of paradise do you expect to discover when you have passed through the veil?"

"In Paradise, the words worship and argument mean the same thing - The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion."

-Enchantress of Florence

For me the whole thing has a relaxed feeling to it. Sometimes I figure there's nothing at all, other times there's a loving God who struggles within human kind, a sort of Gnostic figure.

Mostly I sit at the middle of the pendulum, figure there's something more to the universe than can be captured by materialism.

Beyond that, I've never seen any correlation, so never suspected a causal relationship, being one's belief in atheism/theism/whatever & success, being a rational actor in life, possessing consistency in their position.

It certainly didn't matter in a discrete math class I was a tutor for, that's for sure though some people claimed to rational atheists and others prayed for better grades!

eta: In terms of chatting up possible romantic interests, I find the middle position works best if included with mentions of traveling to Buddhist temples, cathedrals, and New Age crystal gazing ceremonies.

[Eponine]

From last thread, I totally understand what Romney means about the trees.

Scot, my bf told me that former Soviet Orthodox in America were often the more extreme members in the Russian Orthodox church - the ones who had immigrated mainly for freedom of religion.

[Erik of Hazelfield]

Also, this

http://www.cracked.c...t-agree-on.html

He lost me on the first one actually. =)

1. You Can Do Terrible Things in the Name of Either One

While I agree that both atheists and religious people can do horrible things for reasons totally unrelated to their faith or lack thereof - greed, revenge, ideology, sadism or whatever - only religious people do it because of their religion. Atheism justifies nothing and gives no cause to act in a morally reprehensible way. Religion does. I therefore find it highly probable that the world would indeed be far better off without religion.

I more or less agree on the rest though, even though number 7 is unconvincing (notions like "mind" and "free will" are useful abstractions regardless of what they are actually composed of on a lower level).

I don't know what is considered rude wankery. I don't get into people's face about religion unless they bring it up. I don't try to convince others if they have no interest in it. I do, however, not hold back on explaining my views when the subject does come up, and I realize that my views are quite offending to many people (most organized religion is stupid, the god of the old testament is an asshole, the whole sacrifice-Jesus-for-forgiveness thing is sort of dubious and what's the deal anyway with all the rules about sex, etc). Not to be rude, but because I honestly and earnestly believe it's important to say these things. Religion is superstition, the morality of the various holy books are often deeply flawed, and atheists can live perfectly happy and fulfilled lives. If it makes me a rude wanker to bring that up in for example threads like these, then I proudly wear the label.

[Guest Raidne]

Either atheists or the religious can be rude wankers.

Yep, but a lot of what is considered acceptable behavior by - in the US - Christians is actually rude and a lot of atheists are just reacting to that. Christians often do things like give people Bibles as gifts or tell people they'll pray for them. Were it any other religion or system of belief, it would be understood that it's rude to shove in somebody's face. Happy birthday! I just wanted you to know that everything you sincerely believe in is wrong and I believe that you are going to hell! Same with the latter - it's well-intentioned, but, really, there is no understanding there that people might not believe what you believe. If I were a pagan and told a Christian that I would be performing some symbolic ritual on their behalf, they would likely be concerned that I was implicating them in devil worship.

Sometimes, as an atheist, in the face of the constant and persistent message that your beliefs are not respected, you just want to be like, look, fuck you too, you know? On the other hand, where I live now, this kind of thing hardly ever happens. But when you live somewhere where Christianity is prevelant, the righteousness of it all is a bit much sometimes.

3. Is it OK to be intolerant of intolerance (and does that lead to people being considered rude wankers)?

It is not just okay, it is an inescapable and necessary condition of promoting tolerance. To decide otherwise is to say that you are not personally going to be responsible for any intolerance, but otherwise you don't owe anything to the people who are subjected to it and disadvantaged by it due to the actions of others.

Personally I think most people who believe in God have never really questioned or examined it....I'm not out to castigate or dismiss believers though.

This is a head-scratcher. I'm with you through "castigate" for the most part, but you're losing me when you get to "dismiss."

[Sci-2]

Wow, Christianity seems to have left a bitter taste in y'alls mouths.

I wonder if there is a lot of contention between theists and atheists in, say, Japan. It never came up when I was in Taiwan, but then I never really went looking for the debate and sort of assumed everyone was Buddhist/Taoist.

Actually, I should have mentioned those temples. Gorgeous architecture. It's awesome to walk outside your place and down the street is a grand temple with dragons atop it.

eta:

If I were a pagan and told a Christian that I would be performing some symbolic ritual on their behalf, they would likely be concerned that I was implicating them in devil worship.

But these people think they are helping you. I mean, my Hindu cousins in Utah have probably collected hundreds of Books of Mormon that have been slipped into their lockers or handed to them, but they don't really worry about it.

[The Iceman of the North]

But these people think they are helping you.

How is that an excuse for being rude?

[Sci-2]

For me it depends on whether I feel the person is genuinely trying to save my soul or is sort of gloating over my damnation.

Same thing with atheists - do you actually care about changing people's minds or do you just want to stroke your ego-cock by making people feel stupid?

I also like consistency - as I said, my arch-enemy Solmyr* is the one person who seems to truly live in the non-judgemental fashion I'd expect a materialist-athiest to have....though it's interesting b/c he mentions the inner-divinity of humanity.

Most atheist-materialists I know behave like Manicheans, which is why it comes across to me like a religious belief.

*I always exclaim his name like Seinfiled does "NEWMAN!"

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Iceman,

In my opinion it doesn't.

[Lord of Oop North]

Religious people come to my door all the time and try to convert me. Talk about rude and tacky. The only reason that you should be at my door is if you've received a hand-lettered invitation in the mail, with a date and time, and a RSVP card.