I do abhor organized religion with a passion, but I don't try and convert or pre-judge someone solely based on their religious views....
I am an atheist, yes there are a lot of myths about us, and I find myself getting quite frustrated at times because I get a lot of shit from some religious people, but at the same time I recognize that some religious people get the same shit from over the top atheists...
My feelings on the matter: Believe what you want to believe because that is YOUR right, and just because you may see things different than another does not make them or you any better/worse. I have some great friends, some which are catholic, protestant, muslim, etc... all wonderful people, and I don't let our differences of religious opinions get in the way of our friendships or my love for them....just my .02
Originally Posted by Valerie
The only problem with that is, religion currently shapes a lot of our foreign policies, and is used to create laws that are harmful, and is the major factor in political discourse, to our public policy, and to our reputation in the world. You as an atheist should be very concerned it is not simply "live and let live" when it comes to religions.
Again quoting my favorite author on what you are describing:
The problem with moderate religion:
Whenever nonbelievers like myself criticize Christians for believing in the imminent return of Christ, or Muslims for believing in martyrdom, religious moderates declare that we have caricatured Christianity and Islam, taken "extremists" to be representative of these "great" religions, or otherwise overlooked a shimmering ocean of nuance. We are invariably told that a mature understanding of scripture renders faith perfectly compatible with reason, and that our attacks upon religion are, therefore, "simplistic", "dogmatic", or even "fundamentalist".
But there are several problems with such a defense of religion. First, many moderates (and even some secularists) assume that religious "extremism" is rare and therefore not all that consequential. But religious extremism is not rare, and it is hugely consequential. The United States is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet 240 million of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers. This hankering for a denominational, spiritual oblivion is extreme in almost every sense--it is extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration--but it is not extreme in the sense of being rare. Of course, moderates may wonder whether as many people believe such things as say they do. In fact, many atheists are confident that our opinion polls are out of register with what people actually think in the privacy of their own minds. But there is no question that most Americans reliably
claim to believe the preposterous, and these claims themselves have done genuine harm to our political discourse, to our public policy, and to our reputation in the world.
Religious moderates also tend to imagine that there is some bright line of separation between extremist and moderate religion. But there isn't. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while He may be many things, the God of the Bible and the Qur'an is not a moderate. Reading scripture more closely, one does not find reasons to be a religious moderate; one finds reasons to be a proper religious lunatic--to fear the fires of hell, to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homo-sexuals, ect. Of course, anyone can cherry -pick scripture and find reasons to love his neighbor and to turn the other cheek. But the more fully a person grants credence to these books, the more he will be convinced that infidels, heretics, and apostates deserve to be smashed to atoms in God's loving machinery of justice.
Religious moderates invariably claim to be more "sophisticated" than religious fundamentalists (and atheists). But how does one become a sophisticated believer? By acknowledging just how dubious many of the claims of scripture are, and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerizing it if need be, and allowing its assertions about reality to be continually trumped by fresh insights--scientific ("you mean the world isn't 6,000 years old? Okay".), medical ("I should take my daughter to a neurologist and not to an exorcist? Seems reasonable..."), and moral ("I can't beat my slaves? I can't even keep slaves? Hmmm..."). There is a pattern here, and it is undeniable. Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit that the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings?
Another problem with religious moderation is that it represents precisely the sort of thinking that will prevent a rational and nondenominational spirituality from ever emerging in our world. Whatever is true about us, spiritually and ethically, must be discoverable
now. Consequently, it makes no sense at all to have one's spiritual life pegged to rumors of ancient miracles. What we need is a discourse about ethics and spiritual experience that is as unconstrained by ancient ignorance as the discourse of science already is. Science really does transcend the vagaries of culture: there is no such thing as "Japanese" as opposed to "French" science; we don't speak of "Hindu biology" and "Jewish chemistry". Imagine a world in which we could have a truly honest and open-ended conversation about our place in the universe and about the possibilities of deepening our self-understanding, ethical wisdom, and compassion. By living as if some measure of sectarian superstition were essential for human happiness, religious moderates prevent such a conversation from ever taking shape.
No. Not WTF! He is an Angel in human form. Seriously, didn't you just bring up a thread about God and songs WTF? You didn't strike me as the altar boy type...or maybe...
Originally Posted by Sa_artman
Except when it comes to reviews
Make-up drama is the best drama ever!