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Old 11-13-2011, 12:15 PM
 
Location: Victoria, BC.
33,513 posts, read 37,057,177 times
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These ARE your words, with which you were referring to atheism. Most atheists do not hate religion, but your definition of atheism claims otherwise...
Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre
What other term do you have for a disbelief in god and a hate for religion?
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Old 11-13-2011, 05:09 PM
 
Location: Ohio
13,933 posts, read 12,869,476 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Asheville Native View Post
God's right hand man (according to him and lots of other people) the pope, forbids the use of condoms in a country that is being devastated by the spread of AIDS. And I suppose you are going to tell me that religion is harmless?
I think you answered you own question, these are the actions of the pope, not Catholocism......

Is there anything in the scripture that forbids the use of condoms specificly? { genuinely asking, I don't know } If so then you may have a case.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanspeur View Post
What make you assume that it is an atheist movement? I see nothing indicating that it is.
I was thinking the same but only glanced at the site.

Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
You're right, what I should have said is that it is proof that an atheist can and do cause harm because of their beliefs. Thank you for correcting me.
sounds better.
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Old 11-13-2011, 11:15 PM
 
Location: Washingtonville
2,505 posts, read 2,321,083 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanspeur View Post
These ARE your words, with which you were referring to atheism. Most atheists do not hate religion, but your definition of atheism claims otherwise...
Atheists are either A. don't believe in God or B. Hate religion. Maybe hate is too strong a word. Dislike maybe better. The ones that don't like religion are atheists as some religions have gods. So an anti-religious person is also an atheist.
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Old 11-13-2011, 11:17 PM
 
Location: Washingtonville
2,505 posts, read 2,321,083 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper 88 View Post
I think you answered you own question, these are the actions of the pope, not Catholocism......

Is there anything in the scripture that forbids the use of condoms specificly? { genuinely asking, I don't know } If so then you may have a case.



I was thinking the same but only glanced at the site.



sounds better.
I have no problem admitting I am wrong when I am. But, if you just think I am, well... give me some actual proof and I will look into it. But, a matter of opinion will not change mine in most cases.
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Old 11-14-2011, 03:24 AM
 
7,801 posts, read 6,354,824 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
Ok, how does this work for you: People do both good and bad things in the name of religion. In both cases the act could be done without religion being present.
Not really in both cases. There are things of harm religion causes that I can not see happening without it. Take the recent story of the parents who watched their child die of a perfectly treatable type of diabetes because their religion claimed it was against gods will.

Now I am not saying horrific child abuse can only occur in religion. Clearly both theists and atheists engage in THAT. No, what happened here is something even worse than that. Insidious in fact. These parents were not abusing their child in their eyes, but loving it perfectly. They honestly thought watching their child die was the RIGHT Thing to do.

What religion here did was take the purest love we as a species have... that of a parent for a child.... and warped it entirely. The old saying comes true of "Good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things, but to make good people do bad things... takes religion".

But it goes deeper than that. Religion is in and of itself dangerous. It is dangerous because it is corrosive to the single most important thing we have to aid our survival as a species.... discourse. It is a conversation stopper. Two groups of people who believe a set of propositions based on nothing have no common basis for dialogue. It would be like two children with a shared imaginary friend arguing over what color their friends hair is. They have no common basis for discourse, let alone resolution of the conflict, because their world view is divorced from reality entirely.

Contrast this to.... say.... science.... where a truth in the west is also a truth in the east and if any disagreement arises then the facts can be observed, the experiments done and a resolution reached.

There is an old saying "Where goods do not cross borders armies will". People like Micheal Shermer have changed that to fit the conversation on religion. "Where words and ideas do not cross borders, armies will" and religion has been one of the greatest barriers to the free exchange of ideas our species has known.

So I do not say it lightly when I say that religion causes no good that can not be caused in it's absence, but it causes much harm which could not, or it would be very difficult to, cause in its absence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
And there is no bad done because of religion that is not done without it.
I think I have covered this above, but I will go further here by repeating the original point. The point is not really whether good/bad is done with/without religion. The point is whether you can adumbrate a causal link between the two. The fact is with religion you can, and I did with two examples above but I can do more.

Simply not believing in god however has no causal link that I have thus far in my life been shown. Much less so by this thread or you yourself.

Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
Atheism is a religious viewpoint.
Only in the same way that not playing football is a sport and not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
I could shoot someone and claim that evil doesn't exist so what I did was only natural.
You could, but that would by your actions and your claims. Nothing to do with religion or atheism. Atheists also reach the position rationally that killing is bad. They do not need a religion or a god to reach this position and the idea we are "merely animals" does not seem to compel them to reach the positions you fantasize about.

Further we must also notice that this is a utility argument. Even if the idea we were "just animals" was to be harmful, despite the fact there is no basis to think it is, this would not for one second mean god actually exists or religion is true.

Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
Both can lead to harm.
No. People of both can do harm. Adumbrating a causal link between both and harm however is only easy in the case of theism. That is the crux of my point. You choose to focus doggedly on the fact atheists cause harm too. I have never denied that. What I am denying is that there is a causal link from atheism to that harm. Whatever motivated their actions it was something other than thinking to themselves "There is no god".
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Old 11-14-2011, 03:27 AM
 
7,801 posts, read 6,354,824 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
What other term do you have for a disbelief in god and a hate for religion?
I would actually look forward to a day when we do not NEED a term at all.

Much like we now do not have a term for people who are NOT racist. We have simply reached a point in the development of our species where we have recognized there is no justifiable reason for holding a position of racism and those that do are rightly derided.

The future I would like is one where no terms are needed for people who do not pretend to know things on insufficient or nonexistent evidence, but that people who do so pay the price of social derision and exclusion that racists would today.

In such a future there would be no need for a term like atheism just like we have no need for a term like "aracist". We would simply recognize that people espousing such positions are on the societal fringes and have no connection with the common shared reality of the rest of us.
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Old 11-14-2011, 06:07 AM
 
5,458 posts, read 6,703,039 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
What tactic is this in the handbook?
"Over-generalizing" is #1 in your list of logical fallacies here : http://www.city-data.com/forum/21704235-post1.html. And yet it's all you've been doing in this thread.
Heck, you can't even provide a single example to generalize from and yet you feel justified on blaming a group for these imagined transgressions. And then you start a thread complaining that people generalize too much. A bit hypocritical, wouldn't you say?

Quote:
When you can provide evidence that religion is mostly bad... well, you can't so... yeah. Good luck.
Why would I want to? It has nothing to do with the fact that you can't provide any evidence that atheists claim what you say they do. Where I come from, that counts as dishonesty, but maybe your "mostly good" religions have different rules.
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Old 11-14-2011, 06:12 AM
 
5,458 posts, read 6,703,039 times
Reputation: 1814
Quote:
Originally Posted by raison_d'etre View Post
Atheists are either A. don't believe in God or B. Hate religion.
Even more correctly, all atheists lack a belief in god. You were so close to saying something correct about atheists beliefs after getting them wrong throughout the thread, and then you had to add on some condescending insult to make yourself feel superior. So close, but so far. Bummer, better luck next time.
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Old 11-14-2011, 12:24 PM
 
Location: Washingtonville
2,505 posts, read 2,321,083 times
Reputation: 441
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo View Post
The future I would like is one where no terms are needed for people who do not pretend to know things on insufficient or nonexistent evidence, but that people who do so pay the price of social derision and exclusion that racists would today.

In such a future there would be no need for a term like atheism just like we have no need for a term like "aracist". We would simply recognize that people espousing such positions are on the societal fringes and have no connection with the common shared reality of the rest of us.
So, you want to turn or compare religion into the same pool as a racist? Isn't excluding someone because of their religious beliefs discrimination and a form of racism?

And there technically is a term for the nonracist people out there. Racism is prejudice , and someone who isn't prejudice is.... unprejudiced. Actually, atheism could be considered religious prejudice.
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Old 11-14-2011, 04:21 PM
 
2,469 posts, read 3,122,489 times
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Why is "God" defined by borrowing definitions established centuries ago, for political motives??
Both Atheists & Theists seem to define God according to a grandpa in the sky & argue about it.

God is a word to summarize:
1) What is unknown/mysterious (ie the origins of the universe) - that which cannot be proven or disproven scientifically
2) What is most important to us (ie what we worship or are most concerned about) - can be proven by the fact that we find reason to get out of bed each day & find motivation & passion in many ways, including denying God.
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