By now, we've all heard about the horrific acts that happened in Norway over the weekend. What a deplorable loss of life. The fingers are all coming out as well as everyone trips all over themselves to point the blame at this group or that group. We do know that he belonged to a xenophobic group (right wing) that was afraid of Muslim immigration since the Muslims would all come and over-run the country and make everyone submit to Sharia law. And, he's not the only person afraid of this happening.
This is exactly why we need to have a secular government that keeps a strict separation of church and state. Not only does it protect the poor Xians from Sharia law, but it ensures that such will not happen. Of course, ironically for the Xians that want to enact a Xian government to keep out the Muslims (move to Iran if you want to see a theocracy in action) the best defense is also what keeps them from imposing their religion upon the rest of us. Only when all of our rights to freedom of religion (and freedom from religion) are honored will all of us be truly free.
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Update: This post deserves a serious shout-out.
6 comments:
HI,
I saw your comments on GetReligion.org, the right-wing site that I occasionally monitor. I thought you might be interested in this article, "Confessions of a Blog Addict. Or Why I Love to Hate GetReligon.org and FamilyScholars.org" at glbtq.com, which gives some information about its funding. Here is the url: http://www.glbtq.com/sfeatures/confessionsofablogaddict.html
Jay,
Thank you for bringing that to my attention (I guess something good did come of my reading that blog and arguing with those idiots over there). When I moused over the "Philanthropist" link and saw "Roberta Green" I didn't make the link to the Dominionists. Now I want to try and disseminate this information far and wide.
Hello!
I came across your site through a friend of mine, who was trying to persuade me against my belief in Jesus Christ.
I'm not here to argue with you, and I also hope that I do not offend you in any way when I tell you that you're kind of doing the exact thing you appear to stand against. From what I've gathered (And I haven't read your whole blog, but a lot of it) from here, you believe that Christians are hateful religious bigots here to suppress the world...or something like that. The thing is, in your hateful (I'm sorry, but that's what it is) literature directed at Christians, you are taking on the role of the hateful supressor, even if you apparently stand against it.
I came in here with an open mind, willing to listen to what you had to say, as I believe that listening to other people's arguments can either set you on the right path, or reaffirm what you already believe. However, most of the credibility (You had a couple good evolution arguments that I will be looking into) that I gave this site dissolved when I realized that, for the most part, the blog was more about annoyed rants rather than using credible evidence to dispute Christianity.
Anyways, thank you for the interesting read, and I will look into those evolution arguments you posted. Hope I didn't ruffle your feathers, but I tried to express my opinion in the most respectful way possible.
~TJ
Well, TJ, you're entitled to your opinion, but it's simply wrong and colored by your religious privilege. There is nothing hateful about saying that Xianity is wrong and harmful. If it were hateful to say so, then it would be hateful to point out that the KKK is a hate group. And, I fail to see how I'm suppressing anything. In case you didn't notice, Xians are the majority of this country and many of them are not above wielding their religion like a club to try to stamp out anything they disagree with (for instance, see my posts on the Dominionists). To try and turn that around to claim that I am the one who is "suppressing" is rather dishonest and frankly insulting.
Secondly, the vast majority of posts here deal with the insufficiency of Xianity to explain the world, be consistent, or even be correct. And, if you're looking for credible evidence against Xianity, I've posted quite a bit of it, as well as logical arguments against, but that's neither here nor there. Where is the evidence for Xianity? There isn't any. Before one can rationally accept Xianity, it must present some evidence in its favor. Else, it is just as rational to say that one believes in any other unevidenced idea, like leprechauns, unicorns, or any other god.
TJ says: -- " ... the blog was more about annoyed rants rather than using credible evidence to dispute Christianity."
You seem to think it is the responsibility of the rationalist (the one making no supernatural claims) to prove your supernatural world view wrong.
This isn't how it works.
You believe in supernatural things for which there is no objective evidence. It is not the rational person's job to talk you out of your groundless faith in the supernatural. Rather, it is you who must demonstrate a good reason why rational people should believe AS YOU DO.
(As GCT points out, you would not accept someone else's faith in leprechauns, or Zeus, as valid without some sort of evidence.)
Can you offer any evidence?
Something objective?
(Good Luck)
Women and homosexuals are just two rather obvious examples of groups of people whom religion "suppresses" on a regular basis.
Christianity is based in the "argument from revelation" theory of theology. It maintains that a supernatural being entered into human history in the past, revealed himself to certain chosen persons, and conveyed messages to them, which have been accurately transmitted to us.
The theistic argument from revelation is quasi-inductive, inferring the existence of a supernatural entity on the basis of its allegedly historical interaction with humans. Unlike other, less tangible assertions about god's existence, this is an empirical claim, whose factual content we are able to examine to determine the strength of its evidence and the probability of its truth.
But there are many similar revelations in competing religious traditions. Moses, Mohammed, Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy, to name but a few, all claimed revelatory communication with a unitary deity. But that the content of the revelations so dramatically contradicts one another indicates they cannot have originated with the single deity whose existence is postulated by monotheists. It is not possible to reconcile all these internal contradictions within the entire body of revelatory experience; nor are there any objectively reasonable grounds to assert that certain revelations are "true" while certain others are not.
Logic suggests that none of the revelations can be genuine, because of these irreconcilable contradictions, but additionally because their content egregiously violates certain elementary canons of common sense and inductive evidence, as the latter are used in ordinary life and in science.
The fundamental premise of religion is that there are unseen powers in the world that are responsible for what occurs within it. This hypothesis introduces the presupposition that there are exceptions to materialistic or physical causality. Hidden spiritual agencies are held to be responsible for what occurs in nature.
Such magical thinking is the natural state of prelogical cultures. In seeking to explain natural phenomena whose causal mechanisms were not apparent, ancient peoples attributed them to animistic causes, theorizing that other animals and even material objects possess an inner consciousness just as humans do, separable from the body, which effects causality in the physical world. The most famous magician-faith healer who asserted he could control these entities was the Christian deity Jesus.
Then came science, and causality is no longer occult, and theism is no longer a tenable hypothesis.
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