The Rise of Atheism in America

And where in that does it say that Atheists aren't growing?

I have no idea what that means.

Religion made the God claim from the start.


Fancy forms of Deism come after.

If we knew Darwin, Einstein, and Hubble, before religion hit the scene, would we believe any of it?

Doubtful.

They're growing at a much slower rate than is evident from the OP. Subtract the agnostics, and it's a much smaller number.

The Defender wants to put all non-believers into one of four boxes - it's in one of his posts upthread - regardless of whether we fit or not.

speaking of showing where you've made points in this thread?

seriously

you gave your model, I showed that it was incomplete and not universally applicable, you've danced ever since.

and c'mon... nasty as a smoke screen? put off by your lack of ability to respond with anything other than your weakest schtick perhaps. maybe a bit insulted that you'd try to play the dawkins anti christian shit with a couple agnostics and a heathen... but nasty?

next you'll tell us that you're being persecuted and there's a war on pi day.

Yeah, if you strawman it.

Projection.

No, if you continually deny the differences among religions, quite possibly because the only one you know is the Judeo-Christian model.

Must be a group delusion, then, because several of us are observing it.

show the strawman...
you can't, it doesn't exist

and no, observation

Growing slower than if agnostics is included is not the same as 'not growing.'

Glad we have that settled.

I think you are so paranoid about maintaining your special snowflake status that you didn't bother to understand his point. Instead of looking at boxes, consider it being two axis. On one you have believe in higher power, with Atheist at one end, Theist at the other. On the other you have knowledge of a higher power, with Gnostic at one end and Agnostic at the other.

While perhaps not a perfect diagram of the issue, it is much more useful than the usual one axis scale used, much as a two axis political diagram is more useful than the normal 'left-right' scale.

Depends on the differences.
Are they ones that matter?
Like, different hats, doesn't matter.
Different diet restrictions, doesn't matter.

I don't think I've denied a difference that mattered.
If I did, feel free to point one out.

did that already... several times.

try again.

Which one?
John's "you deny the existence of peaceful religions", which I showed to be false?

Been doing it all thread.. or is it simply not a religion if it isn't about the fear mongering and oppression that you claimed in the early pages is endemic to them all?

Okay. But the repeated effort to classify agnostics as either atheists or snowflakes should show you that not all human behaviors are reducible to diagrams.

And there are still more of us than there are of you.

You're doing an Uncle Albert here. "It doesn't matter to MEEEEE, so it doesn't matter, period."

I never claimed that, I'll go back to the post, and prove it...

There you go.
Non-violent religion does exist.

Okay, make the positive case for why the magic hats, and diets matter as a difference

So, now, can you stop talking about religion for a little while and talk about the larger picture?

That being?

We're not going to go back to Grey-wobbly-thing-that-can't-be-defined-with-words-to-even-talk-about are we?

They matter to the people who subscribe to them. That's all you really need to know, unless and until they try to legislate their beliefs, and then you stop them at the gates.

You have no right to dictate to anyone else's thoughts, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Lovely.

But is an argument against anything I've said? I'm not seeing it.

Until you understand the difference between staging a Santa Claus Strangling on, say, SNL or the Simpsons, and staging it in front of a group of preschoolers, you have no frame of reference.

And you're still hung up on religion. You have yet to get to God.

How about staging it in front of preschoolers on SNL as a skit?

Which one?

How about you get over the "cutes" and you might have more credibility.

[action=Paladin]imagines showing The Passion of the Christ to a group of preschoolers...[/action]

Interesting thought, but any normal child would react that way to the sight of anyone being tortured. It's only adults who'll argue that it has its uses.

I don't know that it'll cheer the kid up much when he finds out it was his own naughtiness for which the man in the video was getting beaten up.

"Yes, Justin. Jesus took all those whippings and beatings, was mocked and humiliated, got nailed to a board, stuck with a spear, and left out to die...all because YOU are a naughty, naughty boy."


Not taking sides in the current debate, just having some fun. As I said before, religion can have value to people even if I think it isn't based on anything rational. A human institution can still be a force for good even if it's unlikely that one of its core beliefs is true.

But I would advise anyone whose life is constrained by those beliefs to question them.

When I saw The Passion of the Christ in theaters, I had to turn away during many of the more brutal moments (of which there were legion). In that same theater was a church group, and lo and behold, in the front rows, children who couldn't have been older than 10 at the oldest, and most were holding their heads in their little hands, trying to hide their eyes from what was on that screen. I was appalled. A child seeing an exposed breast is verboten, but watching a man get eviscerated until the blood pours down his back, where thorns are shoved onto his forehead? Where flesh is ripped away by a studded whip, in slow motion? That's okay! Those children shouldn't have been there to see that.

The movie disturbed me in that I have only seen it once, and have no intentions of ever seeing it again. Still, I have friends who saw it a dozen times and kept going back, and they would go as a part of church groups. Ye gods.

So would I, and I did. Remember, 12 years of Catholic school here. But somewhere in the middle of all that, I thought , and here I am.

Which is one of myriad reasons I will *not* cede my ground as an agnostic, not an atheist.

It fascinates me that this has never been an issue among the atheists I know IRL, but some of WF's atheists are as zealous as many of the Christians I've met.

You couldn't pay me to watch that movie.

there's part of the problem...
they aren't reactions or derivations.
most of'em came first, and then you give examples of secular community service groups.
starting to see why i think you have no clue and worse, don't want one?