Atheists: Get A Life!!!!!

Yeah man!
I believe you!

nothing bad happens, yes ...... if the assumption that god doesn't exist works out to be correct.

 

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Whine a little more ... here's some cheese

Yes, let us presume that atheism exists in a vacuum, that it developed as this strange and antagonistic symptom of the Universe that, like flatulence, we all must suffer with quiet dignity.

The problem I have with this sort of note to the atheists is that it presumes any number of inappropriate things.

If somebody sneezes? One can certainly wish a person health. "Gesundheit," for instance. God bless you? Well, let's look at it both ways: As a matter of custom, one presumes to put in front of another a potentially problematic assertion. As a matter of faith, it's just rude.

For a Christian to say to another of the faith, "God bless you", that's all well and fine. But if he says it to someone else, there might be a question. My last religion was witchcraft; my friends of the Craft greet one another with the expression, "Merry meet." We offer blessings with the words, "Blessed be". And we sometimes plead abstractly or literally with the phrase, "Goddess grant".

If I say those things to modern pagans, all is well and fine. But treating other people that way as a matter of custom is regarded as intrusive and even threatening. Ah-choo! "God bless you." Oh, thank you. Ah-choo! "Goddess grant"? I might as well say, "Allahu akbar", or "By Satan's balls!" The atheist might look at it just the same as any other shared religious sentiment, but for those who have spent years reserving their faith expressions so as not to offend common presumption, it doesn't seem that atheists who object to the phrase "God bless you" are asking people to behave any way we haven't been asking people to behave for a while now.

As JDawg noted, "It's actually the other way around". But this is a strange habit in conservative life: History only begins when it can no longer be ignored. That is, for decades, at least, atheists have been asserting more and more firmly their right to be treated equally, to not have to hide in the closet, to not have to fake through toasts, seasonal blessings, and office parties. And in the off years, it's enough to remind them that they're making a spectacle of themselves, as if we would prefer they reflect something of the infamous polite-Brit stereotype. But when matters finally reach the level of public discussion, it's as if it's suddenly out of the blue. "Stop your atheist jihad!" plead the weary persecutors. "Live and let live, after all!"

And what's the big fucking deal about nativity scenes? Well, frankly, after centuries in which decent people have had to suffer with a bunch of zealous prigs, the big fucking deal is that Christians see equality as some sort of hateful discrimination, as if they are suddenly suffering some great injustice by the proposition of being treated equally. This faith, which is largely a discommoding rabble of extroverted insecurity, has long enjoyed the presumption of the law. Standards are not invoked logically, but derived from faith. Every evolving social custom seems to collide in some way with Christianity. And you know what? We get it. Christians have been in charge in the Western world. When torturing witches, selling Heaven, hauling the women half-naked through snowy streets, stacking stones on old men, advocating slavery, denigrating women, and even marching off to righteous war, common sense and decency have always had to answer Christian faith, not the other way around. If you really need to ask how someone else's superstitions affect a person, just remember that it's other people's superstitions that need to be assuaged before certain of your neighbors will be treated decently and fairly.

Christians have burned books and records, coordinated and advocated the forces of censorship. All customs are expected to undergo Christian review; the supreme law of the land in the United States is insufficient insofar as any developing custom can be shot down at the ballot box on the basis of superstition. So perhaps reminders of divisive politics and supremacist theology don't hurt those who sympathize with such tyranny, but they are harmful to others. We've taken a religious holiday and made our economy so dependent on it that eliminating the imbalance threatens our quality of life. So people like your Muslim associate have two choices: get used to Christian dominance, or pitch a fit about it. And anyone who has tried already recognizes that there's no point in pitching a fit about it: Ask nicely, no reply; ask more firmly, no reply; interrupt to make the point, and be told that you're rude; shout, and people will ask who you think will listen to you if all you can do is yell at them. I celebrate Christmas. Does this mean I'm converting to Christianity? No. Rather, it means that it's not worth alienating my entire family in order to get out of a stupid ritual designed to remind people to stop, smell the roses, and be nice to one another from time to time. Fuck, if the superstition was worth anything, why would they need to be reminded at the same goddamn time every goddamn year?

And I'm just as critical of people seeking to make intellect-free justifications for poor conduct as I am of the idiots who conduct themselves so poorly. If you are unaware of the sociopolitical power of a mere "word" like God, then no wonder you're confused. Think of how many people a word like "fuck" offends. What's the fucking problem? It's just a word. So when we measure a word like God, that is a symbol of everything from genocide and rape to the slavery of salvation—especially when the word is defined by a book whose believers can't even treat it as a straight read—we should not be surprised to find that it is nothing more than a buzzword for an overblown social club with a well-crafted central assertion, and whose purpose is nothing more than to be an otherwise dead weight dragging humanity down while providing the elite, the accepted, the elect, with a club to beat other people over the head.

Nobody ever tried to tell me I couldn't listen to heavy metal in the name of Fuck. It wasn't Fucking morals that prevented me from buying a goddamn King Diamond album when I was seventeen. It wasn't some lady's sense of Fuck in the 1990s that led to the Salem-Keizer (Oregon) PTA arguing over whether a Robert McCammon novel (Demon Walk) should be allowed in the school library, and she certainly wasn't arguing that the presence of a character in the story called Demon offended her fucking Fuck. It wasn't a bunch of dumb Fuckers who asked me in 1991 to support their initiatives to ostracize homosexuals, and it wasn't because the great Fuck-All was grossed out by buggery.

Do you know why people are so offended by Fuck? Because they want to be.

Do you know why some people are so offended by God? No, really, there's no punch line here. Do you actually have a clue?

Aside from equality, since that's already covered here, would you care to make a list of what else the majority of Americans should not have to be burdened with?

Ah, yes. Live and let live. In other words, shut up. Keep on smiling. Keep being polite every time someone thrusts their Christianity into your life. Because asking them to be decent, honest folks who are equal to their neighbors is just so goddamned oppressive.

Wipe your tears. Blow your nose. Get the religion off the ballot. Get it out of the laws. Because right now, "live and let live" is a one-way equation. That is, everyone else is expected to "live and let live" by continuing to grant a bunch of sniveling half-wits exercise the "right" to exercise their supremacy over everyone else. So you want to live and let live? Then stop advocating for supremacists.

That's definitely a start. But as long as your solution to bigotry is, "It's unfair to annoy bigots with horrible things like equality!" you're only going to stir up even more hostility.

 

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OK, where to start? Well, first I suppose it would be best to tackle the notion that just because people are "used to" having the term "under God" in the Pledge. My first thought is that you're positing a really weak argument here. Plantation owners were "used to" slavery, does that mean you would have been on their side of the argument if you lived back then? It makes some people uncomfortable saying it, and it's their unalienable right to demand it be taken out.

As for the old, tired argument that somehow freedom of religion means that the majority religion has the right to force their own on everyone else...it's got to end. You can't have it both ways. And it's important to remember exactly who was persecuting the folks that came to create this nation. (hint: it certainly wasn't the atheists)

And finally, tradition does not = right. Just because it's a tradition to open congress with a prayer means that we should.

You have to look at the whole picture. If it really was the intent of the founding fathers that the Christians have their faith dominate all other officially, then there would have been a state church. But there isn't. Concessions were made, yes, but our founding fathers understood the importance of people being able to freely choose their religion--or no religion at all--and making sure that government is muddied by it.

I can only assume you're giving lip service here, because you only really seem to be pissed about atheists taking the zealots to church. You even call the debate over the Pledge and Nativity scenes as "trivial issues". Truth is, they aren't. They very important issues in this debate.

And try swinging that judgmental pendulum the other way; what's so wrong with the religious keeping their god out of politics? Why is it so much to ask that they keep it in church and at home, rather than in the public forum? You are so quick to condemn atheists for being upset about it, but you don't for one second ask why theists won't budge.

 

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atheism isn't a belief. the majority of the world is religious because it had an evolutionary advantage. the majority of the world practices organized religion because they're brainwashed at an early age.

we don't assume god doesn't exist, we lack belief in them. but if some god did exist, we have no idea how it/they would be like. what if they rewarded atheism? what if they liked it when you kill someone? nobody has any idea and every hypothetical god is possible (except for contradictory ones like christianity's) so why bother clinging to one of them?

 

Wizard

I think you miss the point slightly.

If god exists, it also means that god occupies a central position of governing the affairs of the universe.

The details of reward and punishment is perhaps an issue of further discussion, along with the knowability of god.

 

no, god could just be watching, or not even notice our universe if there are many others. i don't know, you don't know, nobody does. but until we observe something god-like, there is no reason to believe in one

 

Agree 100%.

The aggressive fanatical atheists (similar to the fanatical feminists) need to lighten up a bit. Just imagine how sad, boring and restrictive society would be with them in charge. Crazy.

 

i knoooo. homosexuals would be equal to humans, there wouldn't be any more of those fun and exciting religious wars, and there wouldn't be any more religious philosophy. all we'd have is stupid science and the boring particle accelerators, computers, and medicine that comes from it.

thank god for religion

 

so in otherwords there could be a god that bears no influence on anything...... sounds remarkably similar to atheism

 

look up atheism

 

OH GOD THANK YOU FOR YOUR MERCY GIVEN TO US THROUGH THE PROPHET MADANTHONY.

 

Some religion like Christianity and Buddhism make our society a lot better. Atheists doesn't have a religion to keep them in line.

 

Religion is also good, because if it turns out that god doesn't exist, religious people have nothing to lose. If it turns out there is a god I won't be in trouble.

 

Clearly it does since the implication is that to be "American" one must be Christian or Jewish. The unpatriotic form of The Pledge excludes Hindus, [arguably] Muslims, many Native Americans, Buddhists, Jains, Wiccans, Zoroastrians, and others not to mention rational non-believers. It establishes a state religious concept. To say it doesn't is to reside in ignorance.

Cool. I wasn't aware of it. Indeed, that alone suggests that you might actually dwell a bit too much on the whole "atheist thing" since you've found a single lawsuit of a few atheists. It isn't as if atheists are an organized body who are attempting to dominate the world. The term simply refers to those who don't chose to be deluded by the superstitions of the theistically religious.

Your fixation on atheists and the desires of one or a few of them (which you fallaciously appear to assume is true for all or most) seems to say otherwise.

This is evidence of your fixation. What evidence do you have that the lawsuit represents even a significant minority of atheists? Moreover, why would you take such an anti-American stance as being anti-free speech? Shouldn't individuals or groups have the freedom of litigation or speech when they want to speak out against that which they see as an injustice? Aren't you free to ignore them? Refute them? Instead, what you seem to be advocating is shutting them up -censoring them for questioning your precious superstitions. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But if the best argument you have against them is "waaaaaah! stop pushing teh atheist agenda on my superstitions!" then it says more about your "faith" than you probably care to admit.

Their argument is valid: overt acknowledgment of a specific religious cult or doctrine by government is wrong and should be interpreted as unconstitutional. It's anti-American and unpatriotic.

Ah. I see. The implication is that those opinions that differ from your own must, therefore, originate from juveniles who haven't the benefit of your "adult" wisdom. Or is the implication that superstitious thought is more mature than rational thought? Hmm... if its the former you've already lost the argument. If the latter, then you haven't even begun the argument.

Right. Status quo. Don't fuck with it. We get it. You have superstitions and you don't like people pointing out how silly they are. And you want others to "grow up" and "get" lives.

Said the "uncle Tom" to his uppity black friend in 1950.

Said the cannibal to the meal.

 

What is it that either of these cults do which a non-religious organization could not do? In addition, what about the crimes and atrocities (i.e. the Holocaust, slavery, 9/11) which were done in the names of these religions. Apologists and whiners can scream Stalin and Pol Pot until they're blue in the face but the facts are that no one has risen to their level in the name of atheism (which would be akin to saying, I'm killing you for that which I don't believe in).

It would seem that theists don't have a religion to keep them in line when you look at the crime figures for religious areas in the United States and the world compared with more secular regions. Indeed, the incidences of rape, theft, adultery, abortion, etc. are higher among the religious than the irreligious. Therefore, there is no reason to conclude that religion is either sufficient or even effective in keeping anyone "in line."

Really. How do you know you've chosen the correct god? What if the real god is one that most people don't still believe in? What if the real god hasn't revealed itself to mankind? Do you still follow the religious doctrine of your parents just in case? Pascal's Wager has long ago been shown to be logically unsound.

 

How about Lenin? Or Mao?

you're comparing apples to oranges. A political ideology.

 

Yeah, but I also dislike having people consistently lecture me about god. I like to figure things out for myself. So, I'm not really torn, but ambivalent.

 

I know that, but your whole argument was that it should stay in because people are used to it. My point was that people being used to something isn't a legitimate reason to prevent change.

So you're agreeing that being tradition doesn't make it right, but you want to maintain the tradition...because it's tradition? And get over the prayer being unconstitutional. It isn't, and I know that. I never tried to argue that point. But that doesn't mean we can't move away from it.

They also didn't say that the congress had to be opened with a prayer. If they really felt it was so important, they would have put it in the constitution, right? So all we are left with is that it is a ritual, and not something that has to be maintained for any reason.

Wait, you're saying I have a radical interpretation of the constitution? Wow, are you even paying attention? I simply said that we have to look at the whole picture, not just the constitution. Look at the writings of some of those founding fathers and know their real beliefs before you pin them all as Christians (which they weren't). I mean, you're all over the map here. You say that we should honor the tradition of the prayer because the founding fathers didn't exclude it from the constitution, but then you say it was right to abolish slavery even though the constitution didn't outlaw it. Make up your mind. You're arguing both sides against the middle.

Here you go again trying to compare Christianity in America to a fucking Indian rain dance. You and I both know that Christians are the most influential group in this nation. It's about more than what they're allowed to say; it's about keeping this country from becoming a Christian theocracy.

Oh please. American Christians don't even follow the actual teachings, so if I tell them to shut up, they should take that time to actually read the Bible. They've managed to bastardize a barbaric, irrelevant text into some pseudo-faith based on shit Jesus didn't even teach. They emphasize family and love and marriage, despite the fact that Jesus pretty much preached the exact opposite.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, right? Whatever happened to that? If they wanted to be true to their faith, they'd follow that clue.

What defines right and wrong? Religion? Dude, religion has never defined right and wrong, and has always gone against society's morals. That's why preachers have always been talking about "these troubled times" since the first church was built. Religion has always been a set of narrow ideals that are at odds with society.

And don't credit the liberation of slaves to religion. That's nonsense. The Bible teaches that slaves should obey their earthly masters. The basis of the idea of slaves being free in this country originated from the idea that all men are created equal--words written by OUR founding fathers, not Jesus Christ or his followers. That sentiment isn't biblical, it's American.

And yes, everyone has a voice. And to hear you say that is actually pretty laughable, considering that the whole point of this thread was to serve as a soapbox for you shout at atheists to keep their mouths shut!

 

Hmmm... wish I had something to add but Skinwalker and Tiassa pretty much did all the work (good jobs btw).