latimes.com— Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural. An attempt to deflate those myths.
Dec 24, 2006View in Crawl 4
Gotta laugh at this one: "Atheism provides no basis for morality."Just remember that it was Christians who dropped nukes on Japan, Christians who sprayed 12 million gallons on Agent Orange on Vietnam like the people were bugs. All I know is that Christianity has been very profitable throughout history as most of the European empires used Christianity as an excuse to slaughter millions of non-Christians for their land even though it was disguised as a Bibles-for-land program. The Native-Americans knows this all too well. Iraqis and Palestinians are learning this now, but with Iraq, it's the Bibles-for-oil plan.BTW, Christians have the highest divorce rates second only to Jews. Atheists are dead last. So for the Christians who are so afraid of children having "two daddies", who does the kid of divorced Christian parents call daddy? His biological dad, or his stepdad, or whomever the divorced mom brings home to her bed? Worry about your own immoral flock before creating fear about a measly 2% gay population.
I assume you are referring to SEMW with these comments:"Ah yes, because if one atheist is arrogant, then logically, all atheists are arrogant. On a related note, there is at least one paedophile priest; so logically, all Christians are paedophiles, right?(Just to clarify for the logically challenged: I am NOT saying that all Christians are paeodophiles, I am drawing an analogy with that, flawed, assertion in order to illustrate how a different, similarly flawed, assertion is flawed)."I do agree with both of you; however, I think you need to re-read what was actually written by SEMW.I provided the text above for reference. Please stop trying to be a troll in saying that the comment was made in a derogatory way, when the comment was only stating exact what you believe. That one bad person from a group does not imply that all people of the same group must also be.It would help their case if the church would just allow marriage for priests, whether gay or straight. I think there would be less controversy, and less cover-up when their clergy F*** up.
"Of course I deny evolution... if you want to know specific reasons why I do, I can tell you that too."Please, do tell how you deny scientific fact (people confuse the fact that life changes over time (evolution) with Darwin's theory of evolution, describing how this gradual change in life occurs). How do you do it? Do you simply ignore the constant changes in life from generation to generation?
>ROFL!!!!! you have no idea how funny that is. here you are trying to show that religious people just as reasonable and logical as atheists and go and write this rediculous line. you had me going up until i read that little gem. you might as well say that 2 + 2 = 10.The article says that 1=0. The atheist said the monotheist was an atheist. Check out the second comment with the more than +200 diggs. Says the same thing. This absurd, funny idea that anything less than infinity is equal to anything else less than infinity is apparently supported by more than 200 atheists, not religious people.I'm not saying atheism is right or religion is right in this regard. I was just pointing out how stupid the article went about going on with its points. Apparently, there were also over 200 atheists who were also so logically-deficient in this thread as to choke on this vomit of attempted reason.
"We do not get our morality from religion."I don't believe anybody ever got their morality from religion, but that many had their morals corrupted by religion.
@mozi470:"Much--if not most--of the founding thought, philosophy, and law upon which morality is built was done by religious people. "You are committing a logical fallacy, assuming causation while demonstrating correlation. "Much--if not most--of the founding thought, philosophy and law upon which morality is built was done by right-handed people". Does that mean that right-handedness is the source of morality?Not only that, but the very correlative assertion upon which you base your logically flawed conclusion is itself deceptive.You may believe what you wish, but shame on you for falsifying history and contributing to the excision of atheist contribution to human and American history from public knowledge. You may not know of many of the prominent atheists who contributed what we commonly consider "Western" morality and values, but you certainly know of some of them. Asa Philip Randolph, "father of the civil rights movement and Chair of the 1963 March on Washington, stood aside MLK and literally gave him the platform to deliver his "I Have A Dream" speech; Without atheists Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi would not have succeeded in his efforts to liberate and then transform India and his message of (this according to Gandhi himself);James Madison and John Adams were as adamantly anti-clerical, not to mention anti-Christian, as Thomas Jefferson, who explicitly wrote about the falsehood that morality comes from religion, and wrote scholarly treatises on the secular origins of morality and spoke eloquently on the need for the laws of man to supersede any claimed "laws of God".There are many other prominent atheist and agnostic philosophers, politicians, civic activists and jurists who were instrumental in the development of modern concepts of morality and justice, such as Thomas Paine, Oliver Wendel Holmes (Chief Justice, US Supreme Court), John Dewey (educator), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Voltaire, David Hume, Albert Camus, Andrew Carnegie, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger , Denis Diderot, Robert G. Ingersoll, Susan B. Anthony, TH Huxley (who coined the term "agnostic"), Percy Bysse Shelley, Rabindranath Tagore, Rudolph Carnap, Joseph McCabe, and tens of thousands of others - not to mention Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus, who lived 300 years before Jesus.So it is hardly a fact that modern concepts of morality and justice come from religion, and that atheists and secular thought played no role in it. How do you think it feels to hear this kind of hateful blood-libel all your life? Imagine that you had said the same thing about Jews, or other minorities. Would you have dared? I doubt it.
OpCzar:"Atheists aren't an organized group so it's kind of difficult to believe that none of these myths apply to a particular person that happens to not believe in god."I'm sorry, but your logic escapes me. Are you saying that, since, Christians *are* an "organized group", that a single example of a bigoted Christian (like, say, you) is enough to indict all Christians? After all, if you are arguing that stereotypes about atheists must be true about some atheists, because we are all different, does it not follow that stereotypes about Christians must be true about *all* Christians, because you are all the same?Red-heads are not an "organized group" either. Does that make it OK to make prejudicial generalizations about redheads, because they must be true about some of them?Or are you just not thinking at all when you make these comments?
The description on this Digg sounds more like many "good" Christians I know. Either way, it is about beliefs and opinions; not facts. Forget all that nonsense. Pay complete, non-judgmental attention, being choicelessly aware of what there is, and what is there now, Then you will see and feel ,what you see and feel, which is beyond description.
This whole differences between theist and atheist arose because people try to Understand God intellactually with their mind.God is not a concept to understand but rather a realization or enlightenment. Sadly there are only a few enlightened 'souls' in Earth and people are busy making God, a social product. God is not dead but Godliness is !
jesusissatanDec 25, 2006
Gotta laugh at this one: "Atheism provides no basis for morality."Just remember that it was Christians who dropped nukes on Japan, Christians who sprayed 12 million gallons on Agent Orange on Vietnam like the people were bugs. All I know is that Christianity has been very profitable throughout history as most of the European empires used Christianity as an excuse to slaughter millions of non-Christians for their land even though it was disguised as a Bibles-for-land program. The Native-Americans knows this all too well. Iraqis and Palestinians are learning this now, but with Iraq, it's the Bibles-for-oil plan.BTW, Christians have the highest divorce rates second only to Jews. Atheists are dead last. So for the Christians who are so afraid of children having "two daddies", who does the kid of divorced Christian parents call daddy? His biological dad, or his stepdad, or whomever the divorced mom brings home to her bed? Worry about your own immoral flock before creating fear about a measly 2% gay population.
looselipsDec 25, 2006
I assume you are referring to SEMW with these comments:"Ah yes, because if one atheist is arrogant, then logically, all atheists are arrogant. On a related note, there is at least one paedophile priest; so logically, all Christians are paedophiles, right?(Just to clarify for the logically challenged: I am NOT saying that all Christians are paeodophiles, I am drawing an analogy with that, flawed, assertion in order to illustrate how a different, similarly flawed, assertion is flawed)."I do agree with both of you; however, I think you need to re-read what was actually written by SEMW.I provided the text above for reference. Please stop trying to be a troll in saying that the comment was made in a derogatory way, when the comment was only stating exact what you believe. That one bad person from a group does not imply that all people of the same group must also be.It would help their case if the church would just allow marriage for priests, whether gay or straight. I think there would be less controversy, and less cover-up when their clergy F*** up.
gustave5436Dec 25, 2006
"Of course I deny evolution... if you want to know specific reasons why I do, I can tell you that too."Please, do tell how you deny scientific fact (people confuse the fact that life changes over time (evolution) with Darwin's theory of evolution, describing how this gradual change in life occurs). How do you do it? Do you simply ignore the constant changes in life from generation to generation?
sh4desDec 25, 2006
>ROFL!!!!! you have no idea how funny that is. here you are trying to show that religious people just as reasonable and logical as atheists and go and write this rediculous line. you had me going up until i read that little gem. you might as well say that 2 + 2 = 10.The article says that 1=0. The atheist said the monotheist was an atheist. Check out the second comment with the more than +200 diggs. Says the same thing. This absurd, funny idea that anything less than infinity is equal to anything else less than infinity is apparently supported by more than 200 atheists, not religious people.I'm not saying atheism is right or religion is right in this regard. I was just pointing out how stupid the article went about going on with its points. Apparently, there were also over 200 atheists who were also so logically-deficient in this thread as to choke on this vomit of attempted reason.
veritateDec 28, 2006
I had to digg you down for that use of "literally". It's disgusting.
wclementJan 2, 2007
"We do not get our morality from religion."I don't believe anybody ever got their morality from religion, but that many had their morals corrupted by religion.
rationalistFeb 5, 2007
@mozi470:"Much--if not most--of the founding thought, philosophy, and law upon which morality is built was done by religious people. "You are committing a logical fallacy, assuming causation while demonstrating correlation. "Much--if not most--of the founding thought, philosophy and law upon which morality is built was done by right-handed people". Does that mean that right-handedness is the source of morality?Not only that, but the very correlative assertion upon which you base your logically flawed conclusion is itself deceptive.You may believe what you wish, but shame on you for falsifying history and contributing to the excision of atheist contribution to human and American history from public knowledge. You may not know of many of the prominent atheists who contributed what we commonly consider "Western" morality and values, but you certainly know of some of them. Asa Philip Randolph, "father of the civil rights movement and Chair of the 1963 March on Washington, stood aside MLK and literally gave him the platform to deliver his "I Have A Dream" speech; Without atheists Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi would not have succeeded in his efforts to liberate and then transform India and his message of (this according to Gandhi himself);James Madison and John Adams were as adamantly anti-clerical, not to mention anti-Christian, as Thomas Jefferson, who explicitly wrote about the falsehood that morality comes from religion, and wrote scholarly treatises on the secular origins of morality and spoke eloquently on the need for the laws of man to supersede any claimed "laws of God".There are many other prominent atheist and agnostic philosophers, politicians, civic activists and jurists who were instrumental in the development of modern concepts of morality and justice, such as Thomas Paine, Oliver Wendel Holmes (Chief Justice, US Supreme Court), John Dewey (educator), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Voltaire, David Hume, Albert Camus, Andrew Carnegie, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger , Denis Diderot, Robert G. Ingersoll, Susan B. Anthony, TH Huxley (who coined the term "agnostic"), Percy Bysse Shelley, Rabindranath Tagore, Rudolph Carnap, Joseph McCabe, and tens of thousands of others - not to mention Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus, who lived 300 years before Jesus.So it is hardly a fact that modern concepts of morality and justice come from religion, and that atheists and secular thought played no role in it. How do you think it feels to hear this kind of hateful blood-libel all your life? Imagine that you had said the same thing about Jews, or other minorities. Would you have dared? I doubt it.
rationalistFeb 5, 2007
OpCzar:"Atheists aren't an organized group so it's kind of difficult to believe that none of these myths apply to a particular person that happens to not believe in god."I'm sorry, but your logic escapes me. Are you saying that, since, Christians *are* an "organized group", that a single example of a bigoted Christian (like, say, you) is enough to indict all Christians? After all, if you are arguing that stereotypes about atheists must be true about some atheists, because we are all different, does it not follow that stereotypes about Christians must be true about *all* Christians, because you are all the same?Red-heads are not an "organized group" either. Does that make it OK to make prejudicial generalizations about redheads, because they must be true about some of them?Or are you just not thinking at all when you make these comments?
rationalistFeb 5, 2007
@vhold:"A bunch of people arguing towards an opponent that barely exists."You mean "God?"
jedikvAug 16, 2007
poor u?
jedikvAug 16, 2007
One of the few intolerances we could accept
alwaysawakeMay 9, 2008
The description on this Digg sounds more like many "good" Christians I know. Either way, it is about beliefs and opinions; not facts. Forget all that nonsense. Pay complete, non-judgmental attention, being choicelessly aware of what there is, and what is there now, Then you will see and feel ,what you see and feel, which is beyond description.
bulletstormJun 6, 2008
Great article<a class="user" href="http://www.cumberlandatheists.com">http://www.cumberlandatheists.com</a>
marciecastilloSep 8, 2008
tell that to your -164 diggs
kiamzattuOct 23, 2009
This whole differences between theist and atheist arose because people try to Understand God intellactually with their mind.God is not a concept to understand but rather a realization or enlightenment. Sadly there are only a few enlightened 'souls' in Earth and people are busy making God, a social product. God is not dead but Godliness is !