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Since when did God start controlling the outcome of boxing matches
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A lot of the time it has much more to do with culture than religion.
I certainly agree with this. Growing up as part of religious minority (CoI) in Ireland, this was very apparent. I was told many times over the years that I couldn't be Irish and protestant
Having spent years identifying as atheist I also get that view point. The RC religion is deeply ingrained in Irish culture much to it's detriment. But thankfully that's changing and witnessing my kids and their peers show such total indifference to it all gives me great hope for the future.However I can express my opinions here, and do not see any reason to hold back, short of abuse and, I hope, bigotry.
To be fair looksee, I may disagree with you at times but i've never found you abusive or intolerant. Hence we can discuss it rationally.People are entitled to believe anything they wish, and I am entitled to not believe those things. There are newspapers, magazines, website, grand buildings, an employed (if diminishing) army of people, all promoting religious belief, which at times seeps into the lives of people who do not believe.
Agreed. I just don't believe it happens to the extent that many claim it does on this forum. I grew up literally surrounded by religion. My father and both my uncles are clergymen so I still am surrounded by it. Yet it plays absolutely no part in my life whatsoever. Point being, if I can keep it out of my life, anyone can.On the atheist side there is very little - almost no - structure. What there is is voluntary. There is little more than discussion groups such as this one. It is not structured atheism that is undermining religion, it is growing disillusionment and lack of interest and relevance.
Again, i agree with you. But i do think atheism needs to be careful not to fall into the same pitfalls regarding intolerance to other beliefs as religion has over the years. There can be an intolerant edge to this forum at times that makes me very uncomfortable. I understand where the anger comes from but it doesn't make it right. The deafening silence from the more reasonable posters when it happens also speaks volumes. I would be every bit as uncomfortable if it was a religious intolerance and that was really all i was trying to say..0 -
I completely understand the contempt atheists have for religion. I can even understand why the feel superior and more intelligent. I don't agree with it but i can understand it. What i don't understand is the absolute contempt atheists have for those who follow religion. You have no idea what hardships and battles those people have fought or are fighting in their lives.
Intolerance is intolerance with or without a God. Just live and let live folks. Makes for a much more pleasant experience for all..
I also think that the influence religion has on the lives of individuals is wildly overplayed on this forum. With the exception of school enrolment policies, which are being dealt with,
School enrolment issues are not being dealt with. Current policies will perpetuate discrimination against non-catholics for decades to come.religion will only really effect your life if you let it. As a 42 year old dad of 2 teenage children, it has zero effect on my life or that of my family. Zero.
You have heard of the Eighth Amendment I take it?In Cavan there was a great fire / Judge McCarthy was sent to inquire / It would be a shame / If the nuns were to blame / So it had to be caused by a wire.
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Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
If you think the manner, tone and content of what I've posted is comparable to the superior attitude of some one who claims to be more intelligent because of their lack of belief then you've missed the point completely while illustrating it perfectly.Hotblack Desiato wrote: »School enrolment issues are not being dealt with. Current policies will perpetuate discrimination against non-catholics for decades to come.
We'll agree to disagree but they are and they will. These things take time.Hotblack Desiato wrote: »You have heard of the Eighth Amendment I take it?
Ah so you're also making the mistake of assuming that everyone opposing abortion is some right wing religious nut. Good luck with that. This issue goes way beyond religion. Way way beyond.0 -
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Why should they have to explain them to you ?So again, why should anyone have to explain their beliefs to you ?
I have read his posts again and again and I have not once seen him claim they HAVE to do so. He merely asked them to do so. Huge difference, but then again I have noticed recently the points people make, and the points you actually reply to, tend to be quite different to each other. Often by a rather wide margin.
I myself understand jumping in to protect people who are being accosted badly because of who or what they are. I understand the live and let live mentalities and accepting people for having faith even if you do not agree with that faith. My own motto is "Respect people not ideas".
That said however, I see nothing wrong with merely asking people a question and you jumping in like a knight in rusty armor to protect those who neither require it nor deserve it is telling. There is NOTHING wrong with asking a person of faith how they explain/reconcile some apparent inconsistency or contradiction in their world view. In fact I respect people too much myself NOT to ask them at times.
I do not think "Why should I have to explain it...." is a valid answer to asking someone CAN they explain something. No one is forcing them to answer or saying they have to. They are merely asking CAN they or would they be so kind as to do so. But those, such as yourself, keen to reaction or turned on by hyperbole will do it anyway.You see, as long as you, and a significant proportion of your athiest friends on boards, continue to cast judgement on other peoples beliefs
The issue quite often, and you demo it well on the thread, is that merely asking them a straight forward question is misconstrued (often willfully) as being a casted judgement or disparagement.
It is not just religious sporting icons that display it. As another user pointed out people who survive catastrophes/disasters attribute their survival to a god quite often, but not so often do we see them blame the deaths and horrific injuries on the same.
I often wonder what it must be like to be the parent of a dead child in an earthquake to hear someone beside them claim the survival of THEIR child was gods will. Not only is your child dead but now you are being told some god specifically planned to do it to you while sparing others.
At which point how many of those people go into a spiral of depression thinking things like "Did I sin? Did I err? Is my childs death/disfigurement/disability MY fault somehow???". What an AWFUL thing to put into the mind of another who has suffered enough already. For shame.while adopting a righteous and superior stance up to and including calling people gullible and unintelligent because they don't think like you, you are in fact guilty of everything you all despise so much about the worst aspects of religion.
And yet the user you are replying to did not call them such names in any posts so far on the thread. You appear to have a record to play, and are happy to play it no matter how irrelevant it is to the person you are PRETENDING to actually be replying to!
The vast majority of First Ups posts are asking how they reconcile this world view. Nothing else. And it is done without name calling or much of the other tone and stance you have invented for it.
That is not to say there is not a lot to disparage about such world views. Some of them are patently ridiculous and entirely unsubstantiated in ANY way. No one, least of all people like yourself, have offered the single shred of evidence, argument, data or reasoning EVER that lends even a modicum of credence to the idea a non human intelligence is responsible for the creation and/or subsequent maintenance of our universe or anything in it.
And I can disparage IDEAS without at any point attacking, insulting or targeting the people who hold them. Quite the opposite in fact as I have taken the ANTI side to many threads on this forum on the subject of religiosity correlating in studies and research with things like lack of education or intelligence.It amazes me that those who consistently claim to be the intelligentsia of the species miss this glaring hypocrisy time and time again.
Well maybe if you stop finding it when it is not there, you will find that while it does happen, it does not do so as often as you pretend.Again, so what ? Why are you so concerned with her personal beliefs ? They are her beliefs. Leave her at it.
Why? He is genuinely curious how religious people reconcile or explain what appears to be a glaring contradiction/issue in their world view. I see nothing at all wrong with him questioning it. You appear to. Yet why is not clear, especially when you have to invent tones and stances that he does not appear to have in order to attack him doing it. It seems less that he is doing anything wrong with his inquires, and more that you WANT him to be doing something wrong for which you can moralize at him.
Which makes this from you quite funny indeed:I think you'll always find problems if you go looking for them..I have no issue with the general topic. I only take issue with the judgmental and personal approach of some posters on here...
Then would it not show some level of decorum to take it up with THOSE posters rather than reply time and time again to a user, moaning about them, and not actually engaging directly with anything that user you are replying to has actually said. You are talking at him and past him, not at all WITH him. And while doing so you have the gall to moralize at others about how they interact with those around them? Get a mirror some time and clean up your own house before running a dust checking finger over the sideboards in someone elses.Yes that's it. I want to stifle all discussion. You have me rumbled. Damn !!
How do you stifle discussion on a discussion board anyway
Come to think of it, how do you encourage it
Well as I said above one way to encourage it is to reply to what people are actually saying honestly and with civility.
Rather than, to use you as an example, attacking people vicariously through replies to others......... or, as you did to me on another thread, changing their points to the point of pretending they were EXACTLY the opposite of what they were, and then running away......... or as you did on this thread attacking a dyslexic for their spelling.
And you encourage discussion by asking questions. Which is exactly what you are trying to stifle another user for doing, given he has done little else to attract your misdirected ire and your ongoing pretense that there is some reason he should not be asking it without a single move to explain why he should not be.I'm far more interested to learn why other people's personal beliefs bother you so much...
Yet again I have to point out he has not indicated he is bothered. He has indicated he wishes to ask questions. So perhaps what you need to learn would be better served by introspection..... by learning why it is you need to apply positions and tones and emotions to people who have not actually expressed them.I suppose where we diverge is that i just accept their beliefs as theirs, shrug my shoulders and move on. I have no need to understand them or question them let alone make them try and think like me.
Then dont. I do not see anyone asking you to. But some of us in the world ARE curious about the world views of others. Because by understanding them we learn from them. Just because you do not share that interest or curiosity this does not mean there is ANYTHING wrong with those of us who do.
If I see a problem or contradiction in someones world view, I am quite likely to ask about it. For my own interest. And regardless of whether people like you want to pretend it is some kind of judgement or affront or insult.As you know, most people of faith would approach it from a more middle of the road perspective. They don't get overly hung up on the nitty gritty of their religion at all. They just try and live good lives and get through as unscathed as possible. Same as all of us really.
That is one of those things I find hard to understand myself and would occasionally question people on, ignoring as ever the people like yourself who act like the questions themselves are the problem.
I mean to give one of many examples I could draw on....... if one genuinely believes there is a god, your ETERNAL well being is dependent upon it in some way, and it has written a book that is essentially a handbook on understanding this gods will and plan.... you would think at the very minimum you would move to have a read of the book........ if not study it DAMN closely.
Yet what I find personally is that not only do Christians not own a Bible...... in fact not only have they never read one........... a huge number of them have not even SEEN one and were genuinely shocked when I showed them one at how big it was. Because they had heard the same cherry picked passages in school and church and so forth they merely assumed they had heard it all, rather than a mere tiny fraction of it.
Which leaves me with one interesting question in my head....... how many of the people who CLAIM to be of a certain religion or faith actually are. Or do they, to take Daniel Dennetts take on it........ merely "Believe in belief" and simply make the "right" noises when necessary on the subject. How many people actually ARE theists I would love somehow to know. And how many merely want, need, or feel cajoled to have.... the label.
Fundamentalists get a bad rep for obvious reasons in the world and I do not argue with much of that. But one thing I can NOT say about them is that I doubt how genuine they are in their beliefs. Not something I can say with much confidence about your average theist.Because frankly it's no one else's business but hers..
Which is the choice of the person being asked a question to make, not you. There is nothing wrong with asking the question. There is nothing wrong equally with her answering "That is my business and is personal and I do not wish to answer it".Likewise even with the few born again Christians i've met. I've never found them to be even remotely as judgmental, preachy or downright abusive as some atheists on here can be.
Then you are lucky. MY experiences and anecdotes are not so rosy. Everything from personal threats against my soul, to actual physical violence (threatened and offered). And that real gem of a Christian who accosted me at length about what an awful hateful evil parent I am to have had children out of wedlock and to lead them on an atheist past in life to what will be eternal hellfire and torture and that all of their pain and suffering in the after life would be blood on MY hands.
Yeah I have anecdotes too. I do not extrapolate from mine except to acknowledge that there IS bad apples in theism and in atheism. And the best we can do is confront them when we find them. And I do that as readily with atheists as I do theists when I find them.I can even understand why the feel superior and more intelligent.
The number of atheists I have met who think themselves more intelligent or superior to theists I could count on one hand. And in my work with AI, AAI, and atheists associations here in Germany I have likely met more atheists than most users on this forum..... with the exception of people like Micheal Nugent.
The number of atheists who have been PAINTED by others (usually by theists) as feeling superior or more intelligent however is a significantly larger number.What i don't understand is the absolute contempt atheists have for those who follow religion. You have no idea what hardships and battles those people have fought or are fighting in their lives.
And alas, as with most charlatans, our religions are only too happy to sell their product to the needy, vulnerable and traumatized. I do not hold the "contempt" you describe nor do I know many (if any) you do. But I do hold the contempt for religious who profit from the "hardships and battles those people have fought or are fighting in their lives.". That is much more deserving of all our contempt.What i don't get however, is how that justifies the all too common attacks and abuse directed at individuals for their personal beliefs.
Quite often, especially on forums like this, no such thing is actually happening. What IS happening is people are attacking the beliefs themselves. And some number of people rush in with the narrative that this is an attack on the people who hold those beliefs. I could not even ESTIMATE the number of threads on the forum suffering from this issue.
People take offence vicariously on behalf of their ideas, which take no offence themselves. That is their right to do so of course, as ridiculous as it is. But I for one will NEVER respect that, pander to it, or be silenced by it. Not now. Not in the past. And, I have "faith", not ever.Calling someone else unintelligent because they hold different beliefs is wrong. Plain and simple.
But how many people are ACTUALLY doing that here? Do a count over a few threads and come back with a rough % of it. I fully expect you will find the number quite low. Both numerically and as a %.These individuals are not your enemy. Religious bodies and the states that support them are. Stop going after the soft targets and direct your rage at those who deserve it.
I agree to a point, but one also has to acknowledge that the majority of these people ARE supporting and funding the organisations with which we DO have genuine issues.
Nor is the direction of our efforts (efforts not "rage" which is just a mild propaganda spin attempt from you to belittle the genuine concerns people hold) towards them in any way mutually exclusive to the people are actual issues are with. We can do both.
So yes I agree we should be directing all the arsenal we can at those who are the source of our issues and concerns and horror. But we ALSO need to reach out to those who are putting bums on seats, names on memberships lists, and coins in coffers that are funding these horrors. Some level of culpability has to be identified there.As a 42 year old dad of 2 teenage children, it has zero effect on my life or that of my family. Zero.
Yet you are an anecdote of one. I can list many anecdotes and stories of people affected by it. Not just in Ireland. From abortion and sexuality issues all the way up to people dying for lack of medical treatments the research into which has been curtailed by purely religious thought.
If religion does not affect your life, great. But that has literally no relevance..... zero..... to the validity of the concerns of those who do feel the affects.Yet for some strange reason it appears to influence every passing moment of an atheists life. Maybe it's part confirmation bias, maybe it's manifestation but honestly, the less time and energy you give it, the less it will bother you.
Yes I think it is confirmation bias. YOURS. Because you have this idea, and it is likely supported by coming to forums like this. It would be like me inventing the idea "All people in Ireland are alchoholics, and alcohol appears to influence every passing moment of their life" and then simply spending all my time in night clubs at 3am to confirm it to myself.
Half the atheists you know you probably do not even know they are atheists. Because it does NOT "influence every passing moment of their life". But if you want to pretend that is what atheists are like, then certainly coming to a forum specifically for and about atheists is going to allow you to massage your confirmation bias quite well.0 -
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