Blah blah...blither. Typical Yoda on his podium.
Do us all a favor and just omit pointless insults like this. I don't know what you think they add to your arguments or the discussion, but in both cases, the answer is "nothing."
What you say should have force through the soundness of its reasoning; if you have to make what you're saying appear more forceful with useless insults, I think it says something about the strength of your argument.
I quite frankly am more than happy to keep myself to myself. In fact all non-believers are.
Wow, this isn't even close to true. I've spent countless hours arguing with skeptics, and some of them are pretty live-and-let-live (so, I should note, are many of the Christians I've known). But I've met plenty of militant atheists, too, who go well out of their way to proclaim their non-belief and antagonize religious people repeatedly, to the point at which their lack of belief is a huge part of their identity. The idea that "all" (all!) non-believers are otherwise is absurd.
Also, I don't recall anyone judging you in this thread, but you still felt the need to jump in to rail against religion. So how's it work? If you think this is going on anywhere in the world, by even a single religious person, you feel you have an open invitation to rant about it unprompted, even when no one is actually bothering you?
Until people who believe in sky fairies (I'll call a ****ing non-entity any damn thing I want THANKS) dictate how REAL people in the REAL world live (or die).
THAT'S the difference.
I would leave all you religious delusionists to yourselves...but you see you just can;t leave other people alone can you?
I didn't say you weren't
allowed to say silly things like "sky fairies" -- I said it was pointless, and contained no argument or insight. And that's true. Defiantly asserting your
right to do so doesn't change that, because that was never disputed.
Women, Gays, no religion...all are targeted for simply existing, whether or not they keep themselves to themselves or not.
There's a difference between having a disagreement, and "target[ing]" someone. I'm not going to defend people who wield their religion like a club; they can't be defended. But those people, despite what you've probably persuaded yourself of, are not the entirety of any religion. They're just the loudest. You're trying to use the worst religious people to represent all of religion, which is completely fallacious.
The day the Pope does not stand up on his (oh so very rich) balcony and and declare to a global audience that Homosexuals (who have done nothing except EXIST) are a big a problem to the world as Global Warming....I'll change my view.
Until then....
I'm not Catholic. I'm not going to defend the Pope, because he doesn't speak for me. If he thinks homosexuality is some sort of major problem, I think he's wrong. I don't know what argument you think you can make against religion in general by targeting individual statements by religious people. See above for my general response to such things.
I call that something to get ANGRY about! As it's real.
It's there to be seen, heard and experienced.
Unlike your Son of God guy who came back from the dead, floated up to paradise and moves in mysterious (indeed) ways.
Ways I notice that are very handily not able to be experienced by any of the senses.
Except that some people, a couple thousand years ago, say they saw exactly that. You don't believe them; fine, but that's what they claim, and thus nobody's saying it's something that is not "able to be experienced by any of the senses."
But regardless, you're sidestepping the point: your senses are physical. You're demanding physical proof of something which doesn't claim to be physical. As I said before, that's circular.
And yes, i want proof.
And you know why?
Because as soon as you stone a person to death, arrest them, persecute them, threaten them, execute them and publically condemn and damn them...you better have proof of that 'being' your doing all that in the name of!
Is that unreasonable?
You're subtly changing your argument. Your original statement was about believing in things without proof, not killing people without proof. Nobody's saying that we should stone people without physical evidence. And you'll notice, for example, that in America at least, Christianity is very common, but is not the basis for our entire legal system. Nor should it be. But should religious people be allowed to disagree with things on account of their faith? Of course.
Racist! Yeah....Sure...Whatever.
Seeing as the most violent, globally destructive (and globally active) religion of Islam is given a free ride like no other belief on Earth and seeing as "RACIST" is shouted out by ****ing idiots towards those who challenge it...i would say my description holds.
Once again you say one thing, it is disputed, and then you defend
not your original statement, but a modified version of it.
Saying that you think Islam is given too many allowances for the transgressions of its followers is not necessarily racist, but that's completely different from "darker skinned religious people are more violent." The way we say things matters, and says something about us.
The day Islam (mostly Black, Asian, Arab...notice though no one race there) is given half the flak Scientology (basically white, western) is, I'll eat my shoes.
Scientology is too absurd and narrow to receive the same kind of treatment as Islam; it's too much of a joke to be taken seriously enough to be condemned.
And as for people fighting people...Yes...people fight people.
But its kind of strange how those people who have supposedly found a wise, peaceful and oh so ****ing right religion actually kill more people (even those people who have also supposedly found the same wise, peaceful and oh so right religion) than anyone else.
Okay, where's your proof of this? Show me that religious people kill more than other people.
When a Muslim plants a bomb in a mosque of another Muslim for example....i think my point about this and all religious belief (let alone supposedly morally superior belief- LOL) is made.
Why would that make your point? People do insane and horrible things with or without religion. Christianity, for example, does not purport to relieve mankind of its sinful nature, only to account for it, and hopefully redeem it. Absolutely no point is made by showing religious people sinning, because I don't believe any major religion disputes that, or pretends it will fix it.
No you're right. The magic goat is not silly at all.
Despite its silly name.
It is of course just as real as the far more sensibly monikered 'God', 'Allah', 'Buddha', 'Krishna'. I guess it's all in a name!
Poor magic goat.
All in a name? No, but they matter. If they didn't, you wouldn't feel the need to use them.
My point remains: making up silly names for these things is pointless and does nothing to advance anything you're saying. It is not clever or relevant, and adds nothing to the discussion. It's a waste of time and words and, I promise you, it does nothing to help your cause. Quite the opposite.
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But I am kind of curious as to what you're getting at here. The Church, indeed, is the people, and not a mere building. But it makes sense for them to congregate, no? And it's sensible to have a building expressly for such purposes, too. In semi-response to MattJohn's scare quotes around the word "holy", nobody's saying that bricks and mortar are holy; it's a symbol, made holy by its use. If you believe anything can be holy, I see no reason why a Church would have to be otherwise.
