njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady
quote:
ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam
I've seen a few folks say that aetheists have no problems with discrimination and it's the poor Christians who are discriminated against.
Tell me folks. Could an aetheist get away with this? http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/it-happened-to-me-my-optometrist-locked-me-in-an-exam-room-and-forced-me-to-pray-to-jesus
Sorry, but she doesn't seem like the type to be unaware of her rights, and the door wasn't locked with a key. Get up and walk out.
And I would have said the same thing had she been Jewish and they tried to convert her to Christianity, or if they locked the door and the optometrist started unzipping his pants.
She foolishly agreed, she wasn't forced. Shit, I'm a born again, and I would have had a few select words for them, even when I was that age. So I don't by the whole, "they had the power" line of crap.
Trying to promote the idea that atheists are "abused" in an equivalent manner to blacks, homosexuals, hell, even Jews is really not promoting your agenda. It is simply making it worse since, after all, we have people like Steel who needs to try to point out his superiority by calling Christians stupid, even when he attempts to do it in an underhanded way.
A couple of things to consider: The Christians on this board have NEVER tried to convert you, or begun the name calling, yet they have been subjected to it every time the subject of religion comes up.
You see, even if we might question our denomination, we are comfortable in our faith. It is part of who we are, and it is a stable situation. We need neither to boast, nor defend what we believe. Not because of some imagined discrimination, but because faith will do that to you.
So I have to wonder if all these belligerent atheists (whether you consider yourself one of them is up to you) need to speak out because they for some reason have this bizarre need to justify their beliefs?
Oh, and I have found that the people who need to try to always prove they are more intelligent (or worse announce their IQs) on a semi regular basis also tend to be fibbing a bit. When you truly have an IQ, just like having faith in God, you just don't need to try to prove over and over.
On these boards you are correct, in society as a whole, not so much. Even the words evangelical and born again Christian have become toxic words, because quite frankly so many who claim that mantle are like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the Southern Baptists, nasty, judgmental people. If you looked at the Catholic Bishops in the US, you would assume that most Catholics were a bunch of anti sex, bigoted morons, when most Catholics these days are fairly liberal (and when the old folks die off, the disconnect is going to be huge).
I think what Atheists on here are attacking is what is in the broader community, like when you can have a sitting US supreme court justice, Antonin Scalia, who can write a dissent in a major sexual freedom case and say that religious moral law can and should be used by civic criminal law, that the state had a right and duty to enforce said morality even when it happened in private (read his dissent on the Lawrence case, and that of the other 3 who voted with him, that made private homosexual acts a crime in Texas...while making sex with animals legal, yeah, Texas).
I think it is unfortunately, I have known evangelicals and born agains (generally non fundamentalist, though, the fundies to a large part are very, very mean,nasty people to those who don't believe as they do IME), who do good works, are deeply religious, but try to love everyone else, saint and sinner, and worry more about trying to make the world a better place for those who are poor and powerless, think politicians are all scumbags, and deeply worry if they are doing the right thing by God in doing what they do, I work with some, really great people, friends.........the problem is that they are quiet, good people, and the assholes besmirch their name by doing what they do...
BTW, I personally have disdain for people like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens, they are right to decry where the religious assholes try to force religious belief as law or science (doesn't work, just as the RC, who gave us the earth centered solar system (officially abandoned in 1922 *lol*), supported the aether theory of why light was transmitted in a vacuum, and while giving us the big bang theory (Le Maitre was a Belgian monk) tried to tie that to Catholic theology to prove that both God existed and that the RC was right (Le Maitre wrote to the Pope and told him that would be unfortunate, that while the hand of God must be part of the Big Bang, it proved nothing about God other than the universe was an amazing place:). Trying to deny evolution is idiotic, at least the broad principles, and making 'creationism' a science even more so, trying to argue that the earth is 6000 years old and science can back that up even more so, and so forth; making law out of religious morality is equally as stupid, and hopefully more of that will happen, too, but the fault isn't faith, it is what people do with it. A lot of very brilliant people had faith, if not orthodox, and something like 90% of people have belief in something. One thing that makes me feel better is the largest category of believer are people who say they don't believe any one faith, but take things from all of them; once you break the stranglehold of one church or one set of scripture, you also break the idea that one religion can explain everything or that only your faith knows the truth, or worse, that it is your duty to force your beliefs on others.
Some of the anti religious posters in a prior post got me to thinking about that, and while I could chuckle at how clever they are, they also miss the point of faith. For example, not all Christians believe in transubstantiation, not all believe Christ was the trinity (or even if they do, what that means), not all even believe the idea of Christ dying on the cross and/or original sin and such, the point being that many believers are not sheep, they aren't stupid, they think through their positions, learn, and change, and find what works for them, and to be honest, I think that denigrating all faith that way is obnoxious. I believe, for example, that Jesus did live, that there was something special about him, that the Bible was attempting to show who he was, yet I also don't believe the orthodoxy, either. I don't see him dying on the cross as the universal get out of jail free card some hold it to be, but I do think it was an image of sacrifice, of caring, of what we are supposed to be; I think Jesus teachings are 10,000 more times valuable then him being the son of God, whatever that meant, or the virgin birth narrative or the story of miracles. People tell me that doesn't make me Christian, well, that's okay, don't really care, to be honest, because if I cared what other people thought, my life would be very, very different then it has been, and thankfully so.
|
RE: Could an aetheist do this? - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread