The Lonely Athiest, seeking support and companionship

I'd rather shoot you in the head, then hold a seance to get your views on the afterlife.

That's great. I'm not the one stupid enough to walk around with a closed mind, though.

you aren't?

This seems like the confession of someone with a closed mind:

That's the confession of someone who made an erroneous generalization, not someone with a closed mind.

The majority of atheists are scum sucking vermin.

It seems that opposites attract: militant believers and militant atheists find each other and commence to provide evidence to the other that all that exists of the opponent are "scum sucking vermin" since all the rational ones on both sides tend to stay out of the shitstorm knowing that their temperance will be ignored anyway.

So if I say the majority of christians are simple minded bigots, I don't have a closed mind?

No, that would be an accurate statement. Want an experimental proof for that?

Simple. Wear an item of clothing indicating you're Wiccan. Walk down the streets of Kennesaw, GA with it. See what reaction you get.

uh wiccans tend to dress kinda normal. If this is an attempt at humor you should include a laugh track.

No, put on a T-Shirt with a nice big pentacle on the front. See what happens.

They would think I'm Jewish?

C'mon, do it!

Well this is far from a religious discussion.

Strange that Dan isn't involved.

I'm sorry...but it tickles my funny bone that people would need more information on not believing something. And why would people need support for non-belief?

It just seems so....ludicrous.

For people who live in a mostly religious environment where they are seen as being lesser to other people because they don't believe in God having the support of other people that they are not alone in those beliefs could be supportive.

Or you know, exactly what it said in the original post.

There isn't even any logic to what you say, if anything it could be turned around to ask why people form religious groups to support each other when the power of God when you believe in him is apparently so great...

Please correct me quickly if I am wrong, but wouldn't you be closest in belief to Catholic?

People go to church at least partially to understand the holy book better...what part of non-belief needs "shared information"?

I don't need help not believing in the flying spaghetti monster. I don't need more information about how it doesn't exsist.

It just seems funny on the face of it.

I think it's more of a support group type thing. As demonstrated by Bear's bigotry towards atheists, it's hard to be an "out of the closet" atheist in our society.

Edit: also

lol a jew majoring in money

That brings up an interesting question...

How can we gauge how impressive human understanding really is? Personally, I don't think we have anything nearly comparable enough to say that our own understanding is impressive. We're our only possible judge.

Well, the only thing we have to compare it to are the other animals on this planet. I think I've heard that dolphins, pigs, and elephants are pretty close to us in intelligence. But when you compare human intelligence and understanding to an ant's, it is pretty damn impressive.

I don't have faith in the common man, so it stands to reason that I equally turn my nose at their vaunted "priesthood of all believers".

I am Catholic, yes.

And yet, here we are, taking over an electrical ether in an age of jets and rockets, ready to reach out into the stars.

Just because some people give into their baser instincts doesn't mean the human race as a whole is doomed to ignorance and sin.

Have a little faith, Daniel.

Dolphins...pigs...and elephants.

I think in order to scale ourselves on the impressiveness of our intelligence, we'd need to know of a species that is MORE intelligent than we are.

There's no way to judge. The best we can say is that we're the most intelligent species on the planet.

Matthew 7:1-5

Too bad more of you Christians don't actually pay attention to that one. A lot of people I hang with would be able to be open about their faith if they did.

Hm?

I'm a Pagan, not a Christian. Small minded Christians tend to react badly when they find out about such things.

Do tell...