You Christians scare me...

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by LeoDV, Mar 14, 2002.

  1. LeoDV Obstinate idiot Registered Senior Member

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    I knew I was going to get a lot of Christian readers with this one.

    Seriously, you guys scare me.

    Nietzsche once said if Christians looked more saved then maybe he'd take them seriously (couldn't find the exact quote).

    Now, I am a Christian. Roman Catholic. And not a moderate one, if that's what you think - well, in that that I believe firmly in everything the Church says and has said, and most people take me as a Christian fanatic.

    Yet, the Christian people - most of the time American Protestants - I've seen browsing through the web are Scary with a capital S!

    Now I'm talking to you guys, you Christian fanatics!

    Have we let ourselves sink down to the point where an atheist tells us, rightly so, how we misbehave!

    Stop being so narrow-minded! Stop being so stuck! God's message is about love among all men, especially sinners, and ESPECIALLY atheists.

    I don't know why I said that. I'm new here and now the christians well consider me as some kind of weirdo and the non-Christians will consider me as some kind of die-hard Christian fanatic.

    But the people like that I see make me really sad, because they give the rest of Christians a bad name, but most of all because they walk the wrong path...

    And I just couldn't help clicking the 'New Thread' button to try and send you guys a message. A message of love and open-mindedness.

    </rant >
     
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  3. LeoDV Obstinate idiot Registered Senior Member

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    What shocks me, is that I am, and have always lived amongst hardcore, fanatic Christians, and yet they were always open-minded and respectful of other opinions - like the Pope.

    And yet, the American Christians do horrible things.

    The most likely explanation is that my faith is catholic, and theirs is Protestant. That's the only thing I see.

    See below for account.

     
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  5. LeoDV Obstinate idiot Registered Senior Member

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    *sigh*

    Yes, third post, but I have many things to say on this matter, and many thoughts too long held back.

    This post is adressed to the non-Christians who are going to see that.

    The reason why those Christians pose problem is because they're Protestant puritans. Though I won't argue about Protestant dogma, I'd like to say that Protestant values seem quite irrational and, to say the least, frankly stupid to me, and I regret that they have stained the way of thinking of a people that is now the only true power on this planet.

    Sad, huh?

    I'd just like you guys to make the distinction between their morality and their religion, and between their religion and Christianity as a whole - please.

    The more I spend time on it, the more I think this thread is useless and stupid, and did not express what I meant and this is all going to become a misunderstanding because what I wanted to mean is not in the things I typed.

    But before it goes worse and I start talking to myself in this thread, I'll leave.

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  7. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Leodv,

    Why did you post the whole of tiassa’s post as a quote and then not really comment on it? That was confusing.

    Most of us here don’t see any real distinction between Catholics and Protestants; they are simply 2 different sects of many hundreds of sects of the same religion, and equally irrational.

    I’m not sure of your syntax here but I think you are implying that atheists are narrow minded.

    So just in case, I’ll emphasize why atheists are not narrow-minded? Most atheists simply maintain that you haven’t proved your claims and if you can show some credible evidence then they would be happy to believe.

    Atheists are usually open to any and all possibilities providing what is proposed is credible. On the other hand Christians like you have locked themselves into one very narrow view that God is the answer. Once you limit your choices and refuse to accept the possibility that gods do not exist then those limits clearly show a narrower view than the typical atheist.

    Not only are atheists not narrow minded but also it is you who qualify as narrow-minded by way of your limited view of the world and life.

    But perhaps you were talking about especially loving atheists? Please don’t. That is a very condescending and offensive approach to take with other people. If you want to love others then do so because they want you to not because your religion tells you to. Otherwise leave people to enjoy their freedom without interference from evil religions such as yours.

    Cris
     
  8. bubbl3 Registered Senior Member

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    Hi, I'm new to this forum too...

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    I agree with you that the most important thing is to love ourselves and others. But I don't think that Protestant religion is a problem. There are Catholics and Protetants who spread the message of love, while there are also so called Catholics and so called Protestants who worship their religions instead of doing what God wants them to. I think the problem lies within those people, but not the religion. It actually applies to other religions as well (such as Muslim, Tao).
    I am not a Christian and don't know much about it, but I know that most religions' message is love.
     
  9. bubbl3 Registered Senior Member

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    Then you are not an atheis but an agnostic. You think that God cannot be proven exist without material phenomena. You hold open the possiblity that God exists. An atheist is someone who believes that there is no God and there is no possiblity that God could exist. An atheist thinks God cannot exist.
    But I guess this is not related to the topic...

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  10. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Hi bubble3,

    Welcome to sciforums.

    Well no not really.

    I’m first a Transhumanist, then I guess you could call me a Secular Humanist, and then I guess a materialist, and also an atheist.

    But there are two primary types of atheism, strong and weak. And agnostics are either atheist or theist, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

    All atheists have one thing in common: They lack theistic belief, taken from [a][theist], where [a] means ‘no’ and [theist] means ‘belief in a god’. So put simply atheist means ‘no belief in a god’. The important thing to note is that ‘no belief’ is not the same thing as a ‘belief’ about something, should be obvious right?

    So to say that an atheist BELIEVES that gods do not exist is a very different proposition than simply not believing in a theism claim.

    Or IOW disbelieving a proposition is not the same as believing it is false.

    For example, I might claim that I am a billionaire, and you might choose to disbelieve my claim because you really don’t know me, and that would be perfectly reasonable. However, if you said that you positively believe that I am not a billionaire then that implies that you know my claim is false and you might have evidence to prove it. But since we have never met and you know nothing about me then there is no way you can hold to such a positive belief, and your belief would be technically illogical and irrational.

    Now if you chose to believe my claim, then again that implies that you have knowledge of me and can prove it. Do you see that BELIEVING something is TRUE or FALSE is a positive belief and is very different from a disbelief in the claim?

    You should also be able to see that a belief in a god where there is no evidence is also illogical and irrational.

    Weak atheism maintains a disbelief in the claims made by theists.

    Strong atheism, on the other hand, does take the position of believing that a god does not exist. Usually the belief is directed at a particular god and is also usually supported by evidence and proofs.

    You also say
    Cannot exist is different from saying does not exist. Proofs showing that a particular god cannot exist usually revolve around showing a paradox, an impossible condition. Once the paradox is shown then it follows that the god does not exist. The claims made for the Christian god, for example, form a paradox, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, and human free will, cannot coexist, leaving the only conclusion that such a god cannot exist and therefore does not exist.

    Agnosticsm:

    Everyone is either a theist or an atheist. There is no middle ground. If you have a positive belief in a god then you are a theist, if you have doubts, disbelieve, or believe otherwise, then you are an atheist.

    Agnosticism is usually concerned with knowledge of god rather than knowledge of his existence. An agnostic theist is content to believe that a god exists but it is impossible to know anything about such a being. An agnostic atheist says there is no way to have any knowledge of gods and therefore it is also not possible to know if they exist or not.

    However, common misconceptions of the word combined with common usage have tended towards people thinking that agnosticism is about someone who has doubts about the existence of gods; this is often combined with many dictionaries that erroneously state that atheism is a belief that gods do not exist as the only meaning.

    And hence we have widespread confusion about what the words agnostic and atheist really mean.

    I hope that helps a little.

    If you want to know more about the correct meaning of atheism then visit the growing number of atheist websites.

    Cris
     
  11. Godless Objectivist Mind Registered Senior Member

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    4,197
    Hmmm....

    So quick to judge: Quote bubb3 "quote:
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Originally posted by Cris

    Atheists are usually open to any and all possibilities providing what is proposed is credible. On the other hand Christians like you have locked themselves into one very narrow view that God is the answer. Once you limit your choices and refuse to accept the possibility that gods do not exist then those limits clearly show a narrower view than the typical atheist.

    Cris [/B]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    Then you are not an atheis but an agnostic. You think that God cannot be proven exist without material phenomena. You hold open the possiblity that God exists. An atheist is someone who believes that there is no God and there is no possiblity that God could exist. An atheist thinks God cannot exist.
    But I guess this is not related to the topic...


    Na!!! Man Chris is an athiest, he has proven this here many times.
    BTW, Welcome to Sci-Forums!!

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    Thiests need to prove their assertions, it is not to the athiest to disprove thier god, we are not making claims of a supernatural existence. The claim made by thiest must have concrete evidence of such an existent. None has been made for the past 3 milleniums.

    To claim that god does not exist is just as fruitless as claiming that there is one, one has to have emperical evidence of what god "is", in order to prove it's non existence. Since there exists no know knowledge of what god is, other than religious assertions, which their explanation, plainly estates "god is beyond man's comprehencion" than we can agree that we don't actually know what god is. Therefore one can't claim it's existence or lack of.
     
  12. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Godless,

    I forgot those aspects, but I'd probably said too much anyway.

    So, well said.

    Cris
     
  13. Xev Registered Senior Member

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    Bubbl
    This has been well covered (thanks Cris!) but I should add:

    This is a common straw man of athiesm. We athiests really do not agree on much.

    I am an athiest, in that I think that believing in God is irrational, does not benefit, and that all religions are false.

    But, how can you argue that there is no possibility that God could exist? Bloody stupid to try to prove a negative!

    Welcome to Sciforums. If my welcome proves acerbic, so do I.

    Cris:

    While I hesitate to call Catholicism evil, I agree. It is rather annoying to have one's arguments ignored with a simple 'Jesus loves you' and, I must confess, I do not like being patronized.

    It is what pushed me into the arms....or rather tentacles....of Great Cthulu. "Cthulu loves me more" proves an....amusing comeback. (As does "He loves me long time" <---- wish I'da thought of that one)

    LeoDV:

    I would not feel to superior to Protestantism. It is, after all, the Catholic church that was involved with the Inquisition, burned Giordano, persecuted the Hugenauts, helped start the witchunts, advocated the Crusades and is, at this moment, having a little *ahem* trouble involving alter boys and covering up crimes.
     
  14. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    Bubbl3, welcome.

    I'm an atheist. I believe in people, and in possibilities and probabilities. Whether from monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, or any other kind of religion, deities seem very improbable to me. However, I can't discount them entirely because I have no proof. The flipside of that is that I don't see how people can still have these irrational beliefs in myths without any supporting evidence. Personally, I think the only rational path is to put the entire gods/spirits/dragons thing in the Undecided tray until you have some form of evidence one way or the other. Until that happens, get on with stuff that matters, like mowing your lawn or studying or travelling or whatever.

    But... As I said, I can not discount the possibility of spirits/gods/dragons et cetera. In fact I would not be surprised at all if we eventually find that "spirits" of some kind exist, possibly just a change of energy form when people die, maybe we all join some great big universal subconscious "pool", maybe there's a Force like in Star Wars... I have no friggin idea. Again, it's in the Unidecided tray.

    As for Christians... Well, my opinion of the nuttier christians I've met fits just as well for most religions. While many of my favourite people question the universe and wish to learn, many religious people I have encountered have answers and The Truth (tm) and refuse to see otherwise. I even know one christian who seriously wouldn't mind being allowed to run about shooting homosexuals because some part of his bible says homosexuality is wrong or something. He has his Truth, he doesn't need anything else (like morality).

    I think it boils down to one thing for me. If someone has more answers than questions, they are probably dangerous.
     
  15. LeoDV Obstinate idiot Registered Senior Member

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    Hmm, the debate has drifted.

    Atheist, or Gottlos in German, means without God. Not one without God because he doesn't believe, but one who excludes God off his life because he doesn't believe in one.

    An agnostic is what Cris believes to be an atheist - someone who doesn't have evidence and searches for one.

    A|theist : one who excludes God.
    A|gnostic : one without *belief* and who seeks for one.

    Now you said I thought atheists are narrow minded.

    It is my personal experience that most of them are, but also one of my best friends is openly atheist and is also one of the most open-minded people I know.

    It is also my personal experience that atheist is the most in your face and misionary religion on earth.

    However, that has nothing to do with what I meant.

    I said that our love was to go to sinners, and especially atheists, not because they're narrow minded, but because they're poor.

    To be atheist is to be devoid of spiritual life, and that's the worst thing that could happen to someone. Our love must go out to them because deep down, they're all terribly alone.

    But that also wasn't my point.

    My point was this :

    To Protestants : stop being intolerant and start loving.

    To non-Christians : Catholics and Protestants are NOT, repeat NOT "same sects of a same cult." Out of all the Christian religions, Catholicism and Protestantism are the two most far apart from each other.

    I think I have an example of what I mean.

    In one of the short stories of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, Protestant, american priests, described by a Protestant-influenced, american writer, go to Mars and, under the influence of what a minister should be (I especially loved the part about God having a sense of humour - someone who thinks that has a great understanding of faith as we believe it), start to go out for light spheres that have been sighted in mountains.

    They eventually make contact with them, and the priests realize the spheres are incapable of sinning, and thus they have nothing to do there and they leave.

    What a load of crap!

    That example reveals a truly deep insight on the Protestant mindset. That means that Protestants have the firm belief that man is in essence a sinner (it isn't false in itself), and that the sole purpose of a minister is to keep him from sinning.

    Once again, what a load of bullpoopy!

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    First of all, the point of a minister isn't to keep people from sinning, it's to teach the teachings of the Church to his people, and lead them spiritually, both things that could have been achieved with those 'light spheres.' A normal minister would have stayed anyway, and explained them how they are creatures of God, and how he sent his only Son on earth to redeem them with his blood, not say "Those can't sin. NEXT!"

    Do you get my point?

    An other example : it's because of Protestant morality that in some states teenagers can buy guns, but not violent video games. :bugeye:
     
  16. Xev Registered Senior Member

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    Doi, how can we exclude God because we don't believe? I mean, if there was a reason to exclude God, that would mean there is a God, and then we wouldn't be athiests......

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    No.

    Athiesm: Disbelief in or denial of the existance of God

    Agnosticism: Theology: A theory that does not deny God but denies the possibility of knowing him.

    American Heritage Dictionary, I am sure there are dictionaries of philosophy that do better but......

    How is that possible? Dosen't 'missionary' rather exclude the 'in your face' part.

    *Ahem* I do not know what that means.

    In any case, we are not a religion. And we don't prosteletize.

    "Excuse me m'am, I know it is 5 am on a Saturday and you are nursing a hangover, but did you know that there is no God?"

    I have never been handed a tract by an athiest, I've never been damned to hell by an athiest (I like the thought!), in fact, most athiests are rather quiet and sweet and nice and just want to have our Constitutional rights upheld.

    Look sweetheart, you wanna diss Protestantism, explain this:

    Bruno, John Calas, Galileo, Huss, Wycliffe, Ridley, Voltaire, and all those who died nameless at the hands of the Catholic Church, or, like Voltaire and Galileo, were merely harassed by it.

    Your religion is special? You have commited no atrocities? Funny, I think Protestants have commited fewer atrocities...and I am hardly one to defend any religion.
     
  17. bubbl3 Registered Senior Member

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    atheism n. [MFr athéisme < Gr atheos, godless < a-, without + theos, god: see THEO-] 1 the belief that there is no God or denial that God or gods exist 2 godlessness
    atheist n. a person who believes that there is no God
    SYN.--an atheist rejects all religious belief and denies the existence of God; an agnostic questions the existence of Go, heaven, etc. in the absence of material proof and in unwillingness to accept supernatural revelation

    - Websters's New World College Dictionary ©2001 -

    Critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or divine beings. Unlike agnosticism, which leaves open the question of whether there is a God, atheism is a positive denial. It is rooted in an array of philosophical systems. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus argued for it in the context of materialism. In the 18th cent. D. Hume and I. Kant, though not atheists, argued against traditional proofs for God's existence, making belief a matter of faith alone. Atheists such as L. Feuerbach held that God was a projection of human ideals and that recognizing this fiction made self-realization possible. Marxism exemplified modern materialism. Beginning with F. Nietzsche, existentialist atheism proclaimed the death of God and the human freedom to determine value and meaning. Logical positivism holds that propositions concerning the existence or nonexistence of God are nonsensical or meaningless.

    - The Britannica Concise -

    It seems that different people have different meanings for atheism/atheists. my "agnostic" = your "atheist". my "atheist" = your "strong atheist". I think both theist and atheist (your "strong atheist) need to explain why they have that belief.
     
  18. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    buble3,

    I agree.

    As for your dictionary and enc quotes: Try Encarta, that gives quite a different explanation, and my Collins English Dictionary, again shows the disbelief definition. Sadly your quoted sources are out of date and they should be updated at some time.

    Also try this link to some definitions from an actual atheist site. This should be considered significantly more authoritative then either dictionaries or encyclopedias.

    http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html

    Also, if you are really interested, then read ‘Atheism – The Case Against God’ by George H Smith. This is seen by many as probably the most authoritative discussion and description of atheism available.

    The key seems to be that when someone says they are an atheist or an agnostic then one should not assume a particular definition but should ask that person what they mean by their accepted label.

    Notice both your quoted sources are USA publications.

    Take care
    Cris
     
  19. munim_786 Banned Banned

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    yeah, good ppoint, true christains are peace keeping but there are crazy guys oyt there everywhere mashing up the religion. its the same with Islam. Islamgrants women rights, promotes racial equality and is against violence but there are fanatics like the Talabin givng us a really bad name. i hope one day everyone ca see religion for what the truely are not just stupid fanatics!
     
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Buddhists are atheists. It is a mistake to equate spirituality with a belief in god.

    Christianity is not the religion of Jesus, just the religion about Jesus. The church wrote the books of the new testament around the year 382 AD in the senate of Rome (the very belly of the beast), in order to consolidate its political power. Since then the church has demon-strated its degenerate nature at every opportunity. The most recent example I can think of is its refusal to acknowledge the holocaust during WWII while they knew it was happening.
     
  21. okinrus Registered Senior Member

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    It's incorrect to consider Catholiticism a sect since a sect implies that the Catholic church broke away.

    Webster
    1 a : a dissenting or schismatic religious body; especially : one regarded as extreme or heretical b : a religious denomination

    While definition b could apply, denomination is used to refer to other Protestant groups. I also never use sect to refer to Protestants, since I consider them Christian. Thus, I will only use sect to refer to "unchristians" such as Mormons or JW's.

    As for who considers each man a sinner, you are referencing the Protesant's belief in the depravity of man's nature verses the Catholic's belief in the fall of grace. As you've probably notice this is small distinction. Both religions must believe that without God man is not good.
     
  22. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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  23. rainbow__princess_4 The Ashtray Girl Registered Senior Member

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    I really don't think that "American Christians" as mentioned doing "terrible things" exist. Sure there are americans who happen to be christian and christians who are american but what is the difference between "American Christianity" and other christians? Aren't they just all as awful as each other?
     

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