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sprocket · 11-27-2007, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

I will never understand why it is so very important for an Atheist to try to convince there is no God and their constant need to belittle those that do believe.

Some want us to believe that by being Atheist they won't have to fight in the name of God. And yet, they will be as verbally offensive and degrading, and can be as violent in their own beliefs.

They claim they are above the "religious" because they are smarter, more scientific, more knowledgeable, more rational...... and yet, they will do all they can to shove their beliefs down your throat... in the name of "nothingness" "Science" whatever whichever Atheist wishes to claim is their reason for "disbelief".

Atheism to me is still a religious/spiritual belief and quite possibly the only one I can truly say I cannot agree with any anyway. Not the fact that they don't want to believe in a spirituality, that is a very personal decision to begin with and I can respect that.... it's the fact that they (the vocal and somewhat militant) choose to be very condescending, far more judgmental and self serving than the vast majority of believers in a God or Spirituality.

How fucking ironic is that?

I will refer to an excerpt from a speech given by Douglas Adams, where he talks about this.. he being an author and all (and most likely much smarter than me) he echos my feelings on the topic... just much better than I ever could

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Quote:

Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, "Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? ' because you're not!" If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says "I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday," you say, "I respect that."

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking "Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?" But I wouldn't have thought, "Maybe there's somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics," when I was making the other points. I just think, "Fine, we have different opinions." But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody's (I'm going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say "No, we don't attack that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it."

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows ' but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe... no, that's holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we've just got used to doing so? There's no other reason at all, it's just one of those things that crept into being, and once that loop gets going it's very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furore Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.