In God We Must

[Razgovory]

He can be amusing while he hangs himself.

[Martinus]

Why is it "bigoted" to consider someone else's worldview in raising kids harmful?

Is one a "bigot" if one considers parents who feed their children only chicken nuggerts harmful?

Analogies? Really?

I'm not saying these are analogous. I just oppose a world where you can criticize someone's eating habits but you can't criticize their religion. I think we have become some sort of pussified society where "not being offended" has become one of the fundamental rights, which is idiotic.

[Martinus]

Yeah, it's a dumb analogy, but why is it wrong to bash what is, ultimately, a mutable characteristic and an ideological position?

I don't think it's even wrong to bash someone immutable characteristic - as long as you are not using violence or inciting to violence and everybody has the level playing field guaranteed from a legal perspective.

I think the whole mutable vs. immutable divide is a red herring. It just leads to unproductive discussions whether being gay is a choice or whether "race" exists or whether one chooses one religion or grows up into it. People are different. As long as they don't harm others, law should not prevent them from being whatever the hell they want to be. But none of these makes them immune to criticism from people who think less of them because of that.

Now, I think the problem lies with people wanting to legislate morality (at the both sides of the aisle) and ban or hinder stuff they don't agree with but that do not actively harm other people - but this is the attitude we should fight, and not "bigotry".

[rufweed]

If you can tell me I'm going to a non-existent, evidenceless Hell (usually with a smirk), ...that's all the excuse I need to mock the totality of your superstition.

If I don't know that's what you think, we have no problem. As it should be.

Bibles, Qurans, Torahs and etc. are for your personal delusions, keep it that way.

Thanks 

[Gups]

You've got Dawkins saying that in certain circumstances bringing up a child in a religious environment can be more damaging than sexual abuse (I paraphrase).

OTOH you have thousands of religious types saying that if you don't bring up your child in a certain way you are digustingly immoral and condemning your child to an eternity of torture.

But of course it's the atheists who are the sanctimonious, smug ones.

[Darth Wagtaros]

But of course it's the atheists who are the sanctimonious, smug ones.

Oft times yes.

[Martinus]

I think the root of the problem is really that most people cannot cope with a low-key "internal" conflict on a social level. As a species, we have a hard time going about our business when two or more mutually exclusive worldviews exist within what we perceive as a "community" or "society" - it probably has some old time evolutionary roots.

So whenever we identify a source of that conflict - i.e. people who think differently than us - we tend to escalate this conflict into a war (whether a real war, or a figurative "Phelps-Dawkins war" if our societies have strong enough anti-violence controls) by trying to impose our own worldview as dominant and achieve a total victory.

Which probably makes the unique ability of some people to accept the middle ground to be the most valuable thing differentiating us from animals - there is nothing more beastial than standing by one's principles and rejecting any "rotten compromise".

[Eddie Teach]

Which probably makes the unique ability of some people to accept the middle ground to be the most valuable thing differentiating us from animals - there is nothing more beastial than standing by one's principles and rejecting any "rotten compromise".

Beasts are quite practical and have no principles. In instances where they appear stubborn, it's probably because an alternative hasn't occurred to them.

[Razgovory]

While Poles on the other hand...

[Razgovory]

You've got Dawkins saying that in certain circumstances bringing up a child in a religious environment can be more damaging than sexual abuse (I paraphrase).

OTOH you have thousands of religious types saying that if you don't bring up your child in a certain way you are digustingly immoral and condemning your child to an eternity of torture.

But of course it's the atheists who are the sanctimonious, smug ones.

Immorality and Hell are not matters of law.  Child abuse is though.  So on one hand you have someone saying that teaching your children something is possibly in the same category of a criminal act if not worse, and the other saying it is immoral and they may get punished by for by some kind of divine authority.  I suppose that's not really a matter of smugness and sanctimony on the part of the Atheist but a desire to curtail human rights or a manifestation of extreme hatred.  The smugness comes from the patronizing and insulting attitude that so many atheist adopt.

[Queequeg]

The quality of writing on Slate is somewhere between Maxim and my Grade School paper. This is pathetic even by their standards. And that cartoon is atrocious.

[Gups]

Assuming that your summary of Dawkins' view is correct (it's not but that doesn't matter), he is just a single atheist, hardly representative.

Atheists don't turn up a soldiers' funerals waving placards about fags and the army.

They don't force women to wear burquas or children to strap on explosives.

They don't protect priests who abuse children or blame that abuse on liberalism

They don't make their followers take poison.

We don't really do anything. I've never been at a meeting for atheists. Never knocked on someone's door to bore them about the good news that God doesn't exist. Never made my kids go to atheist school. Never struck up a conversation with a total stranger to tell them they aren't really saved.

I'm not smug or sanctomonious about Christians or Jews or Muslims. I don't really give a shit what you believe in as long as you don't bang on about it. 

[Martinus]

Raz, Christians actually do want to curtail rights of people they consider sinful - e.g. by legislating bans on adoptions by gay people (and not even by gay couples, but also trying to ban individual homosexuals from adopting).

I don't think even Dawkins ever gone so far as to want to ban adoptions by Christians.

[Martinus]

Which probably makes the unique ability of some people to accept the middle ground to be the most valuable thing differentiating us from animals - there is nothing more beastial than standing by one's principles and rejecting any "rotten compromise".

Beasts are quite practical and have no principles. In instances where they appear stubborn, it's probably because an alternative hasn't occurred to them.

Their "principles" are biological imperatives. A wolf cannot decide to live side by side with a sheep and reach a reasonable compromise.

[Eddie Teach]

Humans have biological imperatives too. Principles are artificial constructs that only humans have. It seems rather bizarre to claim that hewing to them is bestial.