[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

However, you missionize against religion (even if you don't call it missionizing "for" aetheism) as evidenced by your first post in this thread. You openly mock it through that picture alone. In other threads, you generate long cases against it, and then you insist that people of religion should be silent, just as you are doing here. In no other area of discussion is this considered acceptable except for hacking and the like.

I am reacting to relgious poeple making claims and sermons in name ofn their relgion. And I said that I reserve the right to react to them. If people would not try to push their faith into the public sphere and make others aware of how much they are in love with their deity(ies), then you would not hear me cojmplaijng about religion. My problem with does not start before others do not show up and think it is a good idea to missionise for it.

Click on my name, profile, and there is the option to show all threads started by me. then see hoa many threads you find that have been started by me to propagate atheism.

Since last new year'S eve, I have started/initiated 146 threads. I just checked the first three pages with results for what threats I have started. Threads started on christianity, atheism, church, mocking religion: zero. rien. nada. not a single one. none. Threads I started on Islam since Decembre last years: 3; one on a cartoonist shot, one with a "reprint" of an old essay of mine, one on the French football team. So these three even were not even intended to illuminate islam itself, but where motivated by events that cannot escape to be seen in context with Islam. there are also several poltical threads, where one cannot escape to link to islam as well. As I said: Islam IS politics, much more and more troublesome than the churches cause political mess these days. islam is a political ideology more than anything else.

Here again, you actively proselytize against religion, despite your purported platform of reciprocity. The thread title is "Religious Poll". It seems to me that such a thread would hold interest only for people who wanted to know something about a religious poll. Unlike a loud radio, you did not have to listen to it. But you went in anyway for the sole purpose of attacking religion.

You will not see me doing such a poll on atheism, nor have I ever done that. But I claim the right to react to people making the first step to bring relgion into the public sphere. And that is the case if you start a thread on religion. Possibly I would have just red the thread without reacting - but that was only before I reached Castout's posting with the sermon of his.

Ypou see, the porblem with pro-reilgious people is that they claim the public sphere for themselves, like naturally. they actively engage and go after other people trying to bring them under their religious umbrella. The claim the free speech for doing so - but when people not sharing their views start to fell distorubed and nerved becasue they do not want to leave the public space they are in just becasue the relgious have made it a platform for themselves - then suddenly the sky is falling, and it is claimed harassement and lacking tolerance. In brief: the rlegious then accuse antirelgious people of doing what the relgious often explicitly do themselves. I reject to accept this happening, here, and in real life as well. and I made serveal early remarks in this thread and in others as well begging for the "other side" to not poush further then i would not need to take opposing stand and the way this thread is going now could be avoided. But no, it is religion that must be pushed, the prwachign started, inevitably the reminder came in that I am free to leave the place to that, and in general, it is free speech anyway, isn't it? Well, then you also have to live with people taking the opposite stand for the sake of balance. It is a bad habit of mine from real life to not fall back from religions' claims to get special status unopposed and without being criticised.

I don't want to give aetheism a bad name, and if I did, I wouldn't choose religion. In any case, it is kind of like a religion because it is a belief based entirely upon faith in the non-existence of a higher power, when really, nobody knows either way. Atheism has a guess. It's a pretty convincing guess to many, but it's still a guess.

Atheism is the natural state, to which religion adds an artifical effort of adding soemthing to it by making a c,laim that it just - well, that it just claims. no leaf of a tree, no animal, no drop of water and not cloud in the sky cares for relgion'S made by homo sapines. No supernova and no black hole, no star and no pkanet, no proton and no electron knows or cares for claims made by relgion, nor is it effected by such claims. So, relgion is the cause of something artifical that is uniquly attached to humans, and humans alone. that mans, this quaolity it adds to the forms of existence, called "god", is to be proven by religion, because relgion causes the disoute - not nature, or a way of human thinking not following the concept of religion. the burden of evei9dence mis upt to relgion, jot to atheism. And this - the claim, and thus the burden of evidence - is what sets athei9sm and relgion apart. If oyu mean athei9sm is drivejn fanatically by some so that it compares in style to relgion, then you may have a point with some people who may be fanatics indeed. But atheism is not like that by nature and real origin. atheism just says: you say there is a god, well if you want to convince me you have to come up with evidence, and if you cannot, then I leave thing the way they are and will not subscribe to your claim nor will I sit and watch you trying to turn over society to depend un your unporven claims and hallucinations. And that is not fanatism at all.

You may remember that I strictly differ between spirituality, and religion. Man is a reflective creature capable to put itself into question, and to wonderabout its own existence. that is what is his spirituality, it is a modus operandi of our life. It is the reason why we search and research, why we try to leanr and find out, try to discover and widen our knowledge. Religion claims to know ultimatel final answers whose concepts it never has tested and refuses to ever test. Both could not be more apart.

Oh, I'm serious about freedom, and that includes freedom of religion, and the freedom to assemble. We can discuss that when I have more energy to type if you wish.

I relate to my last diuscissio0n with Steve where I defended my opinion that any freedom and tolerance that does not know limits (in the face of tolerating that which tries to destroy tolerance by absuing freedom) necessrily and ultimately must lead to the destriuction of freedom. I am in rejection of absolute freedom concepts, therefore. where the other uses his freedom to destroy freedom, the fun and joking is ending for me.

What this nthread and my early recommendation to skip it comes down to, is this: every action has reaction. In case of relgious threats the pattern and utcome is known by experience, and it hardly will result in new insights or anything pleasurable for anyone. So I fail to see the need of having another threat on it. If it were a political issue that has seen new develoepments recently, pokay, then there would be soemthign new. But this religious versus atheists thing is - the same procedure as everytime, without anything new at all.

So why?

Damn, I forgot the clock.