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I hope so. I do hope there is not a feeling that there is just a bi too much of me and maybe I should take some time off....
How about a poll - thread ""Ya gotta let me kno. Should I stay or should I go?" . I'd start it myself, but it might look like fishing for messages of support...
Nah. If you get to be too much, I'll tell you to eff off. In a spirit of Christian love, of course.
I've been called a "fundamentalist" by man, and I don't hate anyone. Nor does the term "fundamentalist" define me as someone that hates. It means that I believe in the fundamentals of the faith. That's it.
May I suggest you actually try to get to know someone before judging them? If I stated that all liberal Christians were hateful people or that they were bad people, I'm guessing you would have an issue with it. So why do you do that to others?
I do. There are fundamentalists Christians who I like very much. Friends and family. I just do not like their beliefs that the bible is the literal word of God because that belief leads to so much judgmentalism and cruelty. I don't believe that's what Christ taught.
It doesn't mean I hate the person, but many times, a dark unkindness emanates from those who believe printed words give them a right to condemn others. It's a very real problem.
In other words you hate all that disagree with you, regardless of their motive for disagreement. You can't imagine someone actually having a valid reason to disagree with you and you make assumptions regarding their motivation.
I have to agree with the others. I never tangle with trout for one reason and one reason alone. well, two reasons, he can hurt me.
He is very specific about what he stands against. To me stands against ignorance, selfishness, and intolerance. He demonstrates to me, I think anyway, Personal needs do not determine how the universe works, I actually don't think he much cares about how because he cares about people first. He doesn't much care about the statement of belief about a god. he cares about us.
I could care less about a person's belief statement. I care more about observations supporting a belief. That means teaching people the process in forming a belief. I wish I had as much compassion as trout and many others here.
I do not/would not wish fundamentalist think christianity on anybody.
I do. There are fundamentalists Christians who I like very much. Friends and family. I just do not like their beliefs that the bible is the literal word of God because that belief leads to so much judgmentalism and cruelty. I don't believe that's what Christ taught.
It doesn't mean I hate the person, but many times, a dark unkindness emanates from those who believe printed words give them a right to condemn others. It's a very real problem.
yes. we all have fatal flaws. I feel we should know/understand ours first. Its the people that don't know or understand theirs that are a problem. It doesn't mean that once you know the fatal flaw it goes away, it just means that sometimes, just sometimes, we don't smack somebody over the head with it.
It also means we do not have to hate family. We can love them and be mad at them at the same time. That is normal, frustrating as all get out, but its normal. We just decide if its healthy, unhealthy, or indifferent to our lives as a hole. yes, thats "hole", when ever we detach from family, even with love, there is a hole.
I do. There are fundamentalists Christians who I like very much. Friends and family. I just do not like their beliefs that the bible is the literal word of God because that belief leads to so much judgmentalism and cruelty. I don't believe that's what Christ taught.
It doesn't mean I hate the person, but many times, a dark unkindness emanates from those who believe printed words give them a right to condemn others. It's a very real problem.
Yep ... that's exactly it right there.
Admittedly, there are a smattering of fundamentalists that have earned my undying enmity, but not for being a fundamentalist. No, it's because they're just rotten people.
Unfortunately, their rottenness all too often stems from their religious convictions.
Radicalized religion is almost invariably fundamentalist in nature. Islamic fundamentalism is bad enough with its terrorism, oppression of women, harsh and arbitrary rules, and its desire to live as though it's still 600 A.D. (except for modern weapons, of course). Here in the West, Christian fundamentalism is far more restricted by secular law -- but at some point I got fed up with fundamentalist and evangelical groups that:
1) ... tirelessly crusade to ban books from PUBLIC libraries and who vandalize those books when they inevitably do not get their way,
2) ... scapegoat groups of people they don't like whenever a tragedy strikes, from 9/11 to Sandyhook, blaming gays, liberals, feminists, the ACLU, and atheists for angering God and triggering the Almighty's horrifically bad aim (he never seems to hit the people that supposedly made him angry in the first place).
3) ... try to usurp or supersede the U.S. Constitution by claiming the Bible is, and should be, the ultimate law of the land. Never mind that every last one of our codified rights comes from the Constitution, not the Bible. After all, the Bible would strip us of most of those rights and remains silent about all the others. There would be no freedom of religion (Commandment #1), protection against cruel and unusual punishments (being stoned to death), freedom of speech (blasphemy and heresy), and many others.
4) ... cry persecution and being denied their "religious liberties" when their efforts at oppressing others or legislating their religious laws fail.
5) ... actively and openly use misinformation, junk science, and outright lies to convince the general population that evolution and The Big Bang -- as well as climate change -- are wrong; just believe the Bible because "all you need to know is in the Bible." Science-deniers really irk me since I see it as excrutiatingly primitive thinking.
6) ... continuously try to sneak religion in through the back doors of our public schools in the hopes of converting, indoctrinating, and brainwashing young minds -- especially children who do not attend church -- thus increasing the numbers of adherents to their tribe.
7) ... prey on the most vulnerable among us: the impoverished, the lonely, the desperate, the disenfranchised. This is why you find so many believers pushing their religion around bus stations, military bases, homeless shelters, prisons, rehab clinics, and the like.
8) ... engage in "good" old fashioned gay-bashing as if the entire purpose of the Christian religion is to keep those evil gays from getting married. Strange, isn't it, how churches seem to despise gays while simultaneously protecting all of the child molesters within their ranks. Even having sex with children isn't as despicable in their eyes as two consenting same-gender adults having intercourse.
9 ... claim that both marriage and morality somehow belong to their specific religion. Only their moral compass is the right one, don'tchya know. Yet their slavish devotion to their blood-sacrificing God would have them murdering or torturing anyone if they believed God wished it. Kind of reminds me of a quote from Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS and orchestrator of the Holocaust: "If Hitler ordered me to shoot my own mother, I would do it and be grateful for his trust in me."
10) ... subscribe to far right, often ultra-right conservative politics. Often, fundamentalists are as blindly loyal to anyone with an "R" after their name as they are to God himself. Ergo, they voice almost no opposition to horrific and exceptionally cruel policies such as this latest version of a so-called "health care" bill. I call it the "health I-don't-care" bill because such a bill would literally murder tens of thousands of American citizens every year.
Anyhow, I'll end my list here even though I could continue on with numerous more points. Yeah, I get the fact that not all fundamentalists are rabid about it, not all of them are fighting the neverending fight to deprive the rest of us of our freedoms -- but it takes a surpisingly small percentage of the population to change the world for everyone else.
Well, a true atheist wouldn't camp out on the Religion forum day after day. Because why devote time to something he or she doesn't think exists? The ones who get on here and rant all the time are the ones who likely believe but really fit into this category.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Wheat and tares being raised up together when life/wisdom from the Spirit appears, they must then believe but be in rebellion, else they wouldn't be raised up at the same time, because being raised up in tare mode denotes opposition.
You can't oppose something you don't believe exists really, because if you really believed that, then why bother? I wouldn't waste a minute of my time trying to convince someone that the moon is made of green cheese because I don't believe it is. So why would I waste a minute of my time to try to convince someone that G-d doesn't exist if I believed that? My point is, it's not unbelief we're dealing with as a root, it's rebellion from the garden, pure and simple.
I offer myself as proof of this because when I was an agnostic, I didn't spend a minute trying to convince anyone of anything. Why waste my time debating over an inconsequential non entity, let them believe what they want, was my stance. Peace
I was just thinking about this the other day. Wheat and tares being raised up together when life/wisdom from the Spirit appears, they must then believe but be in rebellion, else they wouldn't be raised up at the same time, because being raised up in tare mode denotes opposition.
You can't oppose something you don't believe exists really, because if you really believed that, then why bother? I wouldn't waste a minute of my time trying to convince someone that the moon is made of green cheese because I don't believe it is. So why would I waste a minute of my time to try to convince someone that G-d doesn't exist if I believed that? My point is, it's not unbelief we're dealing with as a root, it's rebellion from the garden, pure and simple.
I offer myself as proof of this because when I was an agnostic, I didn't spend a minute trying to convince anyone of anything. Why waste my time debating over an inconsequential non entity, let them believe what they want, was my stance. Peace
If someone was teaching (and some were believing) that the green cheese moon is angry with humanity, and will eternally torment anyone who doesn't believe that it was made of green cheese or obey various arbitrary rules set by it, or that the green cheese moon at points in history had commanded it's followers to kill, and utterly destroy those groups who were not followers, and might very well do so again, and that those others were wicked and rebellious, and various and sundry other damaging beliefs -- I would spend time trying to point out to people the heinous nature of their beliefs, because I care about other people.
I do. There are fundamentalists Christians who I like very much. Friends and family. I just do not like their beliefs that the bible is the literal word of God because that belief leads to so much judgmentalism and cruelty. I don't believe that's what Christ taught.
It doesn't mean I hate the person, but many times, a dark unkindness emanates from those who believe printed words give them a right to condemn others. It's a very real problem.
You've only made the statement here that you dislike a certain segment of the population "very much". You're stereotyping. That's not very nice.
The problem is that any criticism of your God counts as hatred. Christians -- indeed, believers of all religions -- have had it easy for the last 6,000 years. Everyone had to tip-toe around religion and at least pretend to show it respect, deference, and acquiescence. Usually if someone didn't, they ended up dead, imprisoned, or exiled.
God can take care of himself. He doesn't need me to protect him from bullies.
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Well guess what. Those days are mercifully over. No one has to respect your gods or your religion. We can criticize it all we like.
It's not OUR fault if you misconstrue a statement of fact with blind, emotion-driven hatred.
I have no misunderstandings. I just don't appreciate bullies saying they hate entire groups of people, while then presenting themselves as the reasonable ones.
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For instance, if I say that God must be a psychopath because he sent bears to tear apart 42 kids for merely calling a prophet "old baldhead," that is a statement of fact. Or, more accurately, it is a fact that this event occurred in the Bible. If you believe in inerrancy of the Bible, one must believe God committed this atrocity.
Thus, we're not saying that God is a psychopath just because we hate God and we're all raving, flaming misotheists. No, we're stating a "factual" Biblical event and drawing a logical conclusion based on the evidence: i.e. only a complete psychopath would butcher 42 children for such a trivial reason.
But, naturally, anyone who says an ill word about your beloved God could *only* be saying such horrible things due to hatred and anger, right? It's the *only* possible explanation -- and I suppose to a believer, that would be how it's perceived. Never mind that you're wrong, of course.
Additionally, even IF someone were to write a post motivated by hatred and anger -- so what? There's nothing unusual about hating a fictional character. It happens all the time. A good movie or book will elicit these kinds of emotions, and everyone loves a villain they can hate. Ergo, saying that it's ridiculous to hate a non-existent God is just your own self-righteousness getting in the way of reality. Your over-protectiveness of your religious beliefs have completely blinded you to the fact that people hate fictional characters in books, movies, plays, operas, television shows, and virtually all forms of artistic entertainment.
After all, if you can't feel emotions when reading about the goings-on of various characters, fictional or not, what fun would there be? I doubt there would even be literature and movies if we all just stoically watched or read the story and felt nothing toward the characters.
This, of course, renders your argument both moot and irrelevant -- not to mention plain old "wrong." I just wish believers would stop trotting out this decrepit old showhorse in an attempt to make atheist look silly because it doesn't. In fact, it makes the believer look silly for proposing something so preposterous.
I'm willing to do my best to get along. Is there a reason you won't offer the same courtesy? You are taking cheap shots at us--our beliefs, not just our religion. Why not try to be nice?
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