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Originally Posted by u crank
Okay, now I understand, maybe. I should have caught on sooner. This church that you speak of is the one with the funny hats. There is a difference. This church in no way represents millions of Christian believers and it does not represent me. They don't speak for me nor I for them. I know this church as I was born into it but have been a 'protester' for many years. Surely you understand the difference. Some of your criticisms of it I might even agree with.
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I do not care what somebody believes in as longas he keeps it in his private closet like I also want people to keep their sexual obessions in their bedrooms - and not posing with the one or the other in public.
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Really, Skybird. You believe this? This reasoning, taken to it's logical conclusion can only mean that a person of faith cannot be a moral, reasonable, tolerant and kind being. This is nonsense my friend. Pure atheist dogma. This can be so easily disputed it's not worth talking about.
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I am not your friend. And the issue is worth talking about and I cannot see you being able to diuspute about it - you just act like any relgiouzs person, while claiming you do not belong to the club. And in this thread ( and the other thread I have mentioned and linked to above) I mentioned and linked to three different more systematic examinations on the issue on how atheism and religious faith effects the morality and intelligence of people for the worse and the better. And this are just two such examples I linked two - I could quote more but I see no point in drownign you in quotes (that I need to type, btw) from for example Dawkins, or Hitchens. Still, I already lead in explanations and giving reasonbs, while you, as any brave believers always does, just dismiss it as irrelevant and imply that you on your behalf must not explain and answer anything.
edit: just for you, since you have missed them apparently:
link1
link2 (good idea to actually read it to the end before blowing up)
link3
link4
It does not make much of a diffrence then whether you are member of the church, formally, or not.
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I think it is you who may be mistaken. If you can in any way infer from my posts the idea that religion or for that matter anyone or anything is above criticism please quote me on it. Far from it I believe that when it comes to free speech everything is on the table. Your version seems to include the destruction of other people's thoughts and ideas that you don't like. I guess you are right. I was never on your side.
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Religious dogma is not in the free speech business, that is not its branch. Far the opposite is true, relgious dogma expects acceptance for limiting free speech and reaosnable questions and examinations of dogma. And that's why I do not tolerate it and wants is structures and symbols of power destroyed, becasue the freedom a dogma allows is always a limited freedom only, a freedom peppered with exceptions for dogma, a special status for dogma, and an implicit demand for dominance of dogma over freedom.
Because where there is free thought and free speech and free opinion and freely run analysis, there cannot be dogma. Dogma replaces free speech and free thought and free opinion and freely conducted anaxlsis. That is the very purpose of dogma.
that'S why you must chose. It's either the one or the other, and always totally. You cannot have both.
And this is the reaosn why nothign else in the history og manklind as we can follow it back over the past at least 2.5 thosuand years has caused more violence, hate, intolerqance, supression discrimination, than religions. With the monotheistic three desert dogmas being the worst of all, considering history, and bringing out not the best but the worst in man.
Freedom is the natural enemy of religious dogma, since inj the light ofd freedom dogma cannot survive. That simple it is. And thats why religious dogma has fought against freedom - at all times, and today.
Some summarising but essential readings, all available in English and German as well. Refering to these would save me from the need to always quote from them or referring to them:
link 1 (watch the video there)
link 2
link 3
The first book demasks especially creationist and fundamentalist claims by which they try to infiltrate science and education and erode and compromise them from within, it counters false claims made and religiuous pseudoscience by giving solid scientific arguments to show the many flawed claims and basic thinking errors there. The second book focusses more on the disastrous record of crime, violence and brutality caused by religion in human history, and uses not scientific evidence or theory like Darwin, but logical and reasonable thinking and argument to rip of the mask of religious dogma. Hitchens is more aggressive than Dawkins, but he is so with a mind formed of laserbeams, I sometimes think. The third book does not engage in the battle between religion and atheism at all, but offers a culture-free alternative attitude towards life and existence and does so by reducing all dominant theories, traditions, schools, arts, philosphy, science etc to the lowest common denominator with an accent set on Buddhist models of mind and consciousness, then examines what this lowest common denominator is. This is probably the most friendly of the three books, which should not mean it makes compromises with dogmas, but it also is the most abstract in the beginning, and the most difficult and demanding to read. After the first third, when needed theoretic conceptions and terms have been dealt with and got sufficiently explained and interlinked, the book becomes easier and more comfortable to read.