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I live in L.A. and most people I know are atheists or agnostic. You are one of the very few I've encountered that genuinely is tolerant of everyone. Atheists love to talk about how tolerant they are, but in reality they are tolerant of people who agree with them. You are a rarity.
No, I don't care who is tolerant, but I think it's hypocritical for people to complain about Christians not being tolerant yet that same person isn't tolerant of Christians. Jesus is not tolerant so I have no problem with people telling me I'm not tolerant. If being tolerant is what it takes to be nice than I'm not nice. I don't think tolerance is what makes a person nice though.
I could be considered atheist, and I am tolerant. We are not a rarity. I guess my hesitancy for calling myself an atheist is your point! I don't know. If Cristianity helps you and makes you happy in this world then I support you, but it must help you make the right decisions.
Don't lump all us atheists together, I can tolerate anything in a person, but I will not tolerate a liar, thief or drunk/doper. But, in reality, I don't care what a person believes. I am more concerned with their actions and what kind of person they are. I've always felt that there are only two kinds of people on this planet; ignorant and intelligent. I choose to curry friendships and relationships with intelligent folks.
What a great post, I couldn't agree more
Quote:
Originally Posted by CantWait2Leave
Are you tolerant of rape? Child molestation?
Most DEFINITELY not, BTW I saw something that turned my stomach the other day Christian pedophilia forum (http://www.wikisposure.com/CBLF - broken link)
As a non-christian, I am a Deist, I find it immoral, I admit I'm biased towards/ intolerant of Christian pedophiles and rapists(or any other type of pedophiles and rapists), Imagine that
I'm going to go WAY out on the line here and say I feel a great deal of sympathy for pedophiles.
I was going to post why but think maybe I won't yet, just to see if the automatic response will override thinking about why I say this.
Of course, this is not a greatly frequented forum so maybe it will draw very few responses of any kind
I'm going to go WAY out on the line here and say I feel a great deal of sympathy for pedophiles.
I was going to post why but think maybe I won't yet, just to see if the automatic response will override thinking about why I say this.
Of course, this is not a greatly frequented forum so maybe it will draw very few responses of any kind
In some respects, I do, too. For me, this stems from knowing a pedophile. When thinking of pedophiles as evil strangers - it's easy to feel nothing but disgust and contempt. But actually knowing one changes things. I see him as a person with a good heart, someone I learned a lot from, someone I looked up to - but who has a horrible, horrible defect of the mind. I feel great sympathy for him. I don't know what causes it and I don't know that there is a cure. I can't imagine living with it. We didn't find out about that side of him until years later. It was devastating.
Having been the victim of pedophiles in my childhood makes it a little harder for me to be sympathetic towards them, also I've seen the repercussions it has had on people
I also don't believe in the fundamentalist Christians version of "justice" towards them (and the vast majority of the rest of us...that they deem as being tarred with the same brush - we are all evil scum worthy of damnation in hellfire, with no intrinsic value whatsoever)
Becoming sympathetic towards pedophiles and rapists is something I have to work on, I guess
I can be extremely far left on some things and I don't believe in the death penalty... until we bring pedophiles into the picture. Then I go all right-wing.
I never really thought about it but yes, I can see where being born that way would be terrible, or being turned that way as a child, would be incredibly unfair. I can see where someone has sympathy.
On the other hand, that's the problem. There is no cure and it will never change. Sometimes I watch those prison documentaries and there was a guy in there that no matter how much he promised he wouldn't do it, as soon as the guards turned their back he would have a picture of a child in his cell. They don't stop and I will be darned if they are going to hurt my child or someone else's. They have to go.
I was assaulted at 15. My opinion will never change, nor will they.
Whenever I have had to ask for help, atheists have always come through and church-goers have almost always turned their back. The one exception has been the Roman Catholic's Saint Vincent Du Paul Society. The Roman Catholics will help their fellow man. I've had other churches slam the door in my face, including my own previous faith. But ask an atheist for assistance and they will deliver without fail. That includes me.
My two year old needed special help. It would have "cost" the "saintly" Catholic nuns, whose car I washed every other week, 10 minutes twice-a-day. They couldn't help--they didn't have enough time--their prayers couldn't be "cut short" to actually help someone.
My two year old needed special help. It would have "cost" the "saintly" Catholic nuns, whose car I washed every other week, 10 minutes twice-a-day. They couldn't help--they didn't have enough time--their prayers couldn't be "cut short" to actually help someone.
I've heard lots of stories like that, especially from some of my neighbors that went to catholic school, when I was growing up, and my heart goes out to you. I lived with the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, though, when I was in my teens and they were WONDERFUL. But not every order or parish is nice. I am just saying that the only times that a Christian church has helped it was a catholic one.
No other churches have helped including the one that I went to for the first 14 years. When things were bad not one person there, including the pastor, knew my name or bothered to even to try to get in touch with me. I find that to be extremely bizarre. At the time, I didn't think much about that, but when I got older I realized how odd that was.
There are pedophiles, and then there are pedophiles. Some are guilty mainly of violating a technicality, while others are hardly worth the ammunition it would take to kill them. I feel very little sympathy for most, but there are the exceptions, such as an 18-year-old guy being caught in intimacy with his 17-year-old girlfriend who he's been going with for four years. (No, I'm not referring to myself.)
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