.

Like today I probably heard "pray for Houston" like 20 times at work.

Doesn't sound oppressive maybe. But if just once I say you know praying doesn't actually help the scorn and derision thrust upon me by will be incredible. Why are you so angry blah blah blah. I'm forced to live in a twilight zone episode where people think they can telepathically help people hundreds of miles away and they become furious if I try to explain to them it doesn't work. So are they up in my ****? Well I don't shove my **** down people's ****ing throat. I'm sick of them basking in their self-righteous stupidity. I'm sick of their expressions of faith. I'm sick of not being able to respond appropriately without drawing so much ire.

And it's every ****ing day.

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It seems like the same ****ing thing to me but I'm in Jesusland. Which is ironic because people here fanatically hate the Middle East. If they really saw some brown hippy from Jerusalem they'd profile him a terrorist lol

When Christians are being Christians in a group and you're just there, you tend to feel like an alien. So you just let them have their little thing cause you know they won't appreciate my atheist ass butting in, but then you'll always eventually come across that delightful question, "Why don't you believe in God?", as if your godlessness deserves an explanation if they're going to tolerate you. They don't even realize that they're being entitled, so that's really when I want drown them.

Pray for rain

Apparently it works

.

Nah

It's white trash
Poor white trash and
Black white trash

No mansions. Mc or otherwise.

So you are not as bold irl as you are online ... interesting. And you want to drown them ... also interesting. Sounds like someone is reading the Bible, especially the part about Noah.

Oh I'll mock your religion if I know you and we're just bantering, but in any serious context I just let you people do your thing. And after all the begats in Genesis I have zero desire to read the Bible.

When you're as odd as he is just walking in the room takes courage

Bat that isn't a dis

I mean that with mad respect

Why do you think I'm so abrasive and jokey? You need a buffer between you and the world when social situations are such a confusing minefield.

.

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So let me get this straight, it's only actually evil if people are killed?

On the list of bad guys, yes, ISIS is empirically worse than WBC. Why? Because they murder people for religious and political reasons. Why doesn't WBC murder people? Lack of public support; a vanishingly small percentage of people agree with their rhetoric; strong federal, state, and local law enforcement; and, and I'm not discounting its importance, a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is less intrinsically violent.

It's not "the truth vs what you wish was the truth". It's 'why is it true and are those conditions the same across countries'. Actions don't happen in a vacuum. Rhetoric is a reflection of the society in which it's developed. How is it different to suppose that if the WBC was based in Syria that they would not behave the same as ISIS? Hasn't stopped any of you from ascribing the dark motives of fringe groups in those countries to all Muslims in the West.

None of you have answered the question on "what to do" regarding Islam in the West. But please, continue to think 1.5 billion people are bloodthirsty monsters. You're totally not contributing the the climate of fear and mistrust that breeds even more violence.

How do you survive the holidays? I imagine "Merry Christmas" triggers PTSD or something in you.

Sadly, nobody's listening. They don't seem to think standing at some poor soldier's grave as close to his grieving family as you can and exulting over his death, and praying for more, is evil for some reason. Go figure. :banghead: Guess it might be different if it happened to be someone they knew.
He probably shoots them in the face. Isn't it all "Happy Holidays" now anyway?

I don't say happy holidays or merry christmas or goodbye even. That's too fake for me. Most of the time I opt for "you're going to die alone and your other fears will probably come true too" as a send off.

Prejudice is a terrible thing, because it means that you can't say sensible things against a religion without unintentionally taking sides in a cultural war represented mostly by *******s. Islam is garbage for many reasons, such as it being nonsense just like any religion, not to mention that pretty much any religion also codifies backwards beliefs from centuries or millennia ago. I'd kill all the Republicans if it meant I could **** on a religion that deserves to be **** on as much as any other.

Thank God you don't have kids! Imagine telling them that every time you see them off at school!
Imagine .... a world without organised religion!
http://i.imgur.com/ywOpPB7.gif

I'm with you. I find Islam morally repugnant. Even more so than Christianity. At its core, Christianity preaches that to love God is to serve God. There's a bunch of other stuff too, but Jesus gave two commandments and, at least the second one, is an ethically admirable thing, if impossible (love thy neighbor as yourself). At its core is love, or at least, the Christian conception of that. They'd answer the question proposed by The Prince as love.

Islam, at its core, preaches obedience to the word of God/Allah. It's a religion built on submission to divinity, and through submission one finds peace (the concept of inshallah). They'd answer the question proposed by The Prince as fear.

I'm totally in agreement with most people here that Islam is, from a humanist perspective, the more objectionable faith. THANK GOD/ALLAH/SCIENCE that the overwhelming, truly gigantic, brobdingnagian (there's an SAT word for ya), majority of practitioners DON'T follow the words as written. They take the parts that work for them and skip or ignore the rest. LIKE EVERY OTHER BELIEF SYSTEM.

Hell, humanism has some objectionable elements. I was turned on to the writing of Michel Foucault a couple months ago when a similar topic was raised in my friend group - he put forth the notion that a universal definition of 'human' or 'human nature' or 'human morality' necessarily will exclude some elements of humanity and can therefore provide a justification for war, prejudice, etc. if certain groups don't comport with our established definitions.

It's sad that we don't extend the complexity of human experience much further than ourselves or our 'tribe'.

I'd agree that Islam is probably worse than Christianity, but I don't know that it's worse than Judaism, which is pretty repulsive. It does gall me to admit that Christianity is probably the best Abrahamic religion, but Jesus really was a pretty okay guy as far as Biblical figures go. Too bad Christians have historically done their hardest to be just as disgusting as any other religious ****s. Kind of the point about religious extremism I suppose. No matter what the actual texts say, it will not really make any of the sociopathic adherents be any better or worse than the others. Sociopaths will sociopath.

I don't know much about humanism, but I doubt that any philosophy that becomes a philosophy that a significant amount of people practice will be immune from human douchebaggery. This is why I refuse to align with any ideology of any kind as much as possible. Even the best ideologies (religious or otherwise) are just screaming to be abused.

Yeah. Have you seen my neighbour? Hawt hawt hawt! :tramp:

It's a good point about Christianity though. Christianity, though I don't follow it, does allow for "unbelievers" (gentiles?) to go their own way. They can be brought into "the light of God" if they wish, but nobody is going to force them, unlike Islam, where if you don't follow Allah you're an infidel and to be killed, apparently. Of course, there's the Spanish Inquisition, various corrupt popes, but we won't go there. Yet. At its heart, it would have to be argued that Christianity is quite a tolerant religion, and one of peace.

It's the interpretations of it that ****s everything up.
As usual.

Note: Not everyone has read Machiavelli, so maybe you might want to explain what "the question in The Prince" is?

No. He's saying that this...

...does not happen in the United States or anywhere in the world as much as is portrayed in the media.

Christianity like every other religion preaches the same thing that if you don't believe in that particular faith you are going to die/go to hell. Christians job is to convince others just like every other religion. The most that you get to actually verging on trying to force people are the JW consistently knocking on your door and pass out their pamphlets.

Jesus was an okay guy in the New Testament but God was a vengeful ******* all throughout the Old Testament. There are some ****ed up things in Revelations as well but I don't dare read it. I was too scared ****less when I was younger to venture into those chapters and refuse to now as an adult.

Is it better for a ruler to be feared or loved. Machiavelli came down on the side of fear (I happen to think he was right for the time in which he lived).

I'm not familiar with objectionable practices in Judaism outside things like circumcision. From what I understand the ultra-Orthodox are very insular. What makes Judaism repulsive to you?

The Book of Revelation was the only thing that kept me awake in church. Best. Fever Dream. Ever.

Granted, some people take the rantings of a (and I'm just speculating here) syphilitic lunatic, known to have drifted across Judea with a recently executed preacher who claimed to be the literal son of God and ultimate arbiter of morality, seriously. But c'mon, we got The Ninth Gate out of it, right?

"Tis easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Paradise".

That's not as easy as it sounds! The amount of camels I went through: the League Against Cruelty to Dromedaries is still after me!

I always took this to mean that the rich have to die and be put through a blender before they can reach heaven.

Christianity and Islam both have some moral evolution from the fear god of the Old Testament/Torah. That god is pretty terrifying and the worst kind of god that could be worshipped. The straight old school barbarism.

That, too. And the number of blenders I've ruined on THAT experiment...
Oh ****! Didn't see the bit about having to die first.... ;)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1...dists-migrants

I knew about the Jesus as prophet thing, but not the Original Sin thing. Nice to know that an Abrahamic religion doesn't start out by calling its followers subhuman scum who should all burn in hell but God's such a nice guy that he's still looking out for us despite his better judgement.

Not true. In the Old Testament you can see normal people, longing for normal life ( to have a spouse, property etc). In the New Testament there are only dreamers with 'spiritual' pipe dreams and illusions.

And there are also people willing to murder their children just cause God said so, but it's okay he really didn't mean it, he just wanted to traumatize the poor guy to stroke his ego. And... that one guy who got eaten by a whale... that sounds pretty not cool.

Please read this Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain: Letter X

tldr, Marky Mark

So gay.

Jonah. And don't forget Job, on whom God inflicted every kind of suffering to test his faith. What kind of sicko does that, just to confirm someone still believes in him?

Well it was the devil who wanted to inflict Job. In the story God allowed it, but then God return the wealth that was taken from Job.

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Yay for God! :rolleyes: It was still a bet on the lines of
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"Well we'll see who's right!"
"I know we will!"
"Good!"
"I'm glad you're good!"
"I know you are!"
"I'm glad you know!"
etc.

****ing peurile.