Someone did that to Jesus, too. Until he became a believer. (YouTube video restored)
This is the modern Democratic Party: anti-religious, anti-freedom, anti-liberty and anti-Israel. Truly an extremist party if ever I’ve seen it.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
On God, or Israel? Well, maybe both. It is kind of poetic that they were wrapped up in one convenient proposition, for half the Democrats to shout “No!” to.
Bruce – Going off topic, but I think Fauxcohantas’ speech is also worthy of some comment, perhaps in a new post: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/06/elizabeth-warren-the-system-is-rigged-yes-yes-it-is/
She says the system is rigged against the middle class. She should know: Democrats rigged it.
ILC – RE: Fauxcahontas. Yes! That was my instant reaction on the radio show last night. I think I screamed it into the microphone. Unlike last Admin (Enron, for example)… Obama has charged NO ONE with 2008 Economic Collapse. Probably because if anyone is responsible — it is those Democrats (Dodd & Frank) that propped up Freddie & Fannie.
Back to topic at hand. I’m glad Allen West did this. This ad should run in EVERY Congressional District in all of the major battleground states.
The Democrats are a left-wing extremist party that has become anti-American. Period.
Hmmm.. the video has been removed. Gonna go see if YouTube has it somewhere else.
I personally think the boos were more about Israel and Jerusalem being its capital than God, but I love the comparison, it is rather powerful.
“Are those your values?” (asks the ad)
Yes. Because my values include the freedom of Americans not to believe in God if they so choose and to voice their opposition to one particular sect’s version of God dictating public policy, even when I disagree with their religious/non-religious views.
“Are those your values?” It’s the wrong question to ask. Typical of some politicians, it conflates values with religion. And there are plenty of religions, including some Christian ones, whose “values” I don’t share.
Also, having finally seen the video, this whole issue is completely disingenuous (IMO). The speaker called for those who were opposed to say No, and they did. The situation is being marketed as if the No’s drowned out the Yes’s. Disingenuous, but not surprising in the least. This is what passes for political discourse anymore. (Though really, it kind of always has, hasn’t it? I think secretly or unconsciously we like it that way as Americans. :-))
truly amazing, turning their backs on everything this country was built upon. The new democratic party – intolerance and think like us or else
I agree that they probably didn’t. But I think they were about equal, which is why I say “half the Democrats”.
I agree with “just me” about the nays being mostly about the juresalem question.
From now on the Democrats will be known as the party that first voted against God before they voted for God.
We all watched as it went down yesterday. Now people are asking why did this happen? The truth is we may never be told.
On the question “why”, the Democrats are gonna try to render obscure, unclear or unintelligible their response as much as they can. After all, their convention is suppose to be simplistic, just another sordid soirée chalk full of scary punch lines.
Mr Obama and the Democrats see everything, every situation there is, only in the terms of the Oppressed and the Oppressor. And of course He is the One to come and fix it. – He sees himself as the one who brings justice to the world. That’s the real reason he wants America to be playing the field with other countries. And this is “why” he says one thing to Israel in front of the cameras, yet throws the jewish state under the bus every chance he gets….. but of course, only when he thinks the microphones are turned off.
The situation is being marketed as if the No’s drowned out the Yes’s.
Well I don’t think they were at the same time, but the no’s were clearly more than 1/3 of the delegates so it is difficult to say they had a large enough majority for the rules change.
I would say it was about half and half although the no’s got louder each time the vote was taken.
You know, it is possible to believe in god and not want to mix religion and politics. That’s actually one of the basic principles of the country.
We all know that most of the people in that room and in the Democratic Party are religious, do we really have to pretend like they all hate god? Isn’t that more than a little desperate on your part?
Levi-
Don’t pretend to sweep this under the rug until you read EVERY word of the Declaration of Independence.
Then come back and tell me why this is such a big deal.
Until then, zip it.
Straw man alert!
Straw man. Although it’s an implied one. The implied straw man is that people who take note of this incident with the Democrats somehow are trying to mix religion and politics – in ways that are unprecedented. Nope.
What’s shocking about this incident (apart from the Israel stuff, and apart from the Democrats flagrantly ignoring their own 2/3 majority requirement) is that the tame, generic generic Judeo-Christian-Deist God that has traditionally been part of American public life for 250+ years, is now controversial within the Democrat party. About half the Democrats have, evidently, become anti-God enough that they can’t even handle the tame, generic God that their party has always had.
I don’t.
I don’t.
I’d like to invite Levi to my neighborhood, in fact I live a block from the largest synagogue in my hometown. It is the only issue and the issue that has turned probably 75% of the neighborhood against Mr Obama. All of them voted for him last time around. You’re fooling yourself, Levi. Its not just votes for Mr Obama that are drying up fast around here, it’s about the money, or the lack there of, too.
You know what’s interesting? This DNC has celebrated abortion every night, took the last mention of God out of its platform, booed when the last mention of God was put back into the platform, called for massive Government intervention in every aspect of our lives, called for enormous tax increases, endorsed gay marriage, endorsed illegal immigration, and said that the massive regulatory and spending binge of 2009-2012 was just the beginning.
And Levi complains that the party isn’t liberal enough.
I thought you were Jewish? Whatever.
Anyway, the first amendment makes clear that government has nom role in religion and vice versa. There is no mention of god in the Constitution. Not even one. Then there’s the “no religious test of office” thing. And really, you would have your government officials swear fealty to Israel, a foreign frigging country?!?! You haven’t yet realized that what Israel thinks is good for Israel matters more than what’s good for America and that sometimes what’s good for Israel is double plus untold for the United States.
We don’t “hate god.” Even the many atheists among us don’t “hate god.” That is entirely, as it always is with you folks, projection. You’re the All Projection All The Time party.
Don’t pretend to sweep this under the rug until you read EVERY word of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence is great and all but it has no legal authority. It is completely meaningless except in its context as historical document. The only legal authority in this country is the Constitution which not only docent mention god at all, it explicitly bans government from getting involved in religion.
Even though I am agnostic (maybe atheist), the Dems made a huge mistake taking out God and Jerusalem. The former will cost them in the Midwest, and Florida is now harder for His Majesty to win as the Jewish vote will be more like 60% Dem instead of nearly 80% Dem. And the LA mayor was mortified and couldn’t figure out what to do as the delegates voted evenly to keep out those two planks.
No, it says nothing of the kind. It only states that Congress can’t establish a state religion, and cannot prevent people from “the free exercise” of their religion (a clause modern liberals, in their zeal to eliminate every vestige of religious expression from the public sphere).
This “Acknowledgement = Endorsement = Establishment” nonsense is nothing but a creation of the courts; led by Hugo Black, the Klansman Justice who wrote the “wall of separation” into law because he hated Catholics and couldn’t stand the thought of Catholic schoolchildren riding on public school buses.
The only people using Government to force their religious views on the public are atheists.
I thought it was worth noting that the liberals held a vote, the people disapproved and then they did whatever the hell they wanted anyway.
Fine example of your poor reading skills.
“Funny, You Don’t Look Druish.”
Umm…Is god going to provide you with health care or help the economy? Is god going to pay your heating bill? No. The tooth fairy won’t either. Many people are spiritual and believe in a higher power but don’t necessarily agree with or are disciples (robots) of an organized religion and don’t need or want to invoke the word god in every sentence. I like sex but I’m not going to insert the work “cock” into every other sentence at my company board meeting. Get real and get a grip.
why would you want to invoke God’s name when your tea-bagger co-patriots use his name to disparage gays and cause a rift in the party? god has nothing to do with how the country is run. If god was so important to Mittens, why did he rape thousand of workers out of jobs with families on the street so he could off-shore their jobs and rake in a few more millions for himself? Is that “christian” behavior? You also do know that Mormons such as Mittens were in the forefront of voting against gay rights/gay marriage in California?
So sad that you all hate yourselves so much that you will vote for the bullies that want top beat the sh*t out of you. Don’t you get it?? Seriously, what is wrong with you??
It says nothing about taxpayer funded abortion on demand, welfare or free condoms and it’s meant to keep people like the SCOAMF from doing whatever he wants. Never has stopped the liberals, has it?
A basic difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives who are non-believers still respect people of faith.
Why is that conservatives think when people exercise their right to have freedom from religion, it’s somehow anti-religious? Also, if freedom of religion is so important, why is it that (for conservatives) it eventually comes down to worshiping a judeo-christian God, but not other religious beliefs?
The only thing I want to hear from any political party is that individuals are free to practice (or not practice) the religion of their choice. Period, end of story.
A basic difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives who are non-believers still respect people of faith.
[citation needed]
Projection. U haz it.
It says nothing about taxpayer funded abortion on demand, welfare or free condoms and it’s meant to keep people like the SCOAMF from doing whatever he wants. Never has stopped the liberals, has it?
I assume “SCOAMF” is another childish insult of the sort dittoheads repeat ad nauseum but I have no idea what exactly it is nor do I wish to know. When the Bill of Rights was being discussed the representative from Georgia said, if I may paraphrase, “We should not list explicit rights because some damn fool will come along and think that if something isn’t listed then it’s not a right.” You are a damn fool.
Oh, right, there is no “taxpayer funded abortion on demand.” Also, you should listen to Willard’s mother talking about the times when George Romney was on public assistance. G’head, you can find a link without much effort at all.
Mainly because conservatives don’t go around suing people to keep them from expressing their religious beliefs.
And:
And yet, their Barack Obama Party openly endorses and supports government discrimination based on public expression of belief.
And then endorses people who want to murder gays and Jews.
The “no” vote and boos may also hurt Obama in Virginia.
And the real issue on this one is more the issue they handed the GOP, the ad above can easily be shortened for TV and carry a message the DNC doesn’t want conveyed.
It won’t play well in a lot of places.
Mainly because conservatives don’t go around suing people to keep them from expressing their religious beliefs.
Everyone is free to express their religious beliefs. No one has been sued for that. The lawsuits to which you allude are about taxpayer funded expression of religious belief which, as has been noted, is not Constitutional. “Government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”. Why do you hate the Constitution? Why do you hate America?
Childish insults directed at people who are demonstrably intellectual and emotional children.
Actually, the Constitution exists to limit the power and scope of government, and specifically, the Federal government.
Your problem is that that prevents you from using government to force other people to pay your bills and do your bidding.
The Founders were much smarter than you, PeeJ; they were aware that spoiled self-entitled brats like yourself would, could, and did pervert a government to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and they therefore limited the ability of government to do so.
Wrong.
Didn’t read what you and your Obama Party are doing, did you, PeeJ?
And also, PeeJ, we need only repeat what you and your Barack Obama Party call intelligent discourse.
Nicely done. Nothing like comparing Jews to swine.
Dear North Dallas Crazy,
Please seek out professional help. Seriously, that shit is rotting you from inside. Let it go, you’ll feel much better.
Damn, ND30, Are you TRYING to drive traffic to Sadly, No? The one link I click on of yours … and THERE it is.
What you also will find from that link:
There is no such thing as “freedom from religion.” That would infringe on freedom of speech, freedom to practice religion, and probably other things.
So, is there some sort of war on people’s freedom to practice Buddhism being led by conservatives?
I keep telling you rattlesnake: you have to READ THE MEMOS. We don’t fax them to you every day because we don’t have anything else to do you know.
all the leftist gays here obsessed by ‘freedom from religion’. So why you want to force churches to celebrate gay marriages?
I keep hearing that Democrats are more sane, reasonable, and tolerant than videos from the DNC suggest, but the comments of Democrats/liberals on this blog don’t support that assertion.
It’s conservatives that are pretending that this means the Democrats are turning their back on god and religion and are anti-God. You don’t think that’s mixing religion and politics?
That’s shocking? I would say that the blowback is more shocking. Religious people think religious freedom is okay just so long as some form of the supernatural is invoked, but uh oh, if someone wants to stop paying lip service to magic fairies completely, then it’s time to be outraged.
Carrying on with some political gesture for no other reason than momentum and inertia is stupid. Putting god in the platform makes the platform exclusive, leaving god out makes it inclusive. This is called progress, and again, some people prefer to leave their personal religious preferences out of the public square.
Shorter Cinesnatch: “You guys at SN are really not bad at what you do.”
So far, these are all compliments to SN’s skill in carrying out its intent. I feel certain that when the SN guys read it, they thought “Yeah, that’s just what we were after. Good, so far.”
“Oh, the humanity!” The SN guys would think “In our world, obviously. What kind of question is that?”
Twirling in empty space. The words officially say that Dan is “not fair game”, but work out to a back-handed put-down of Dan (emphasizing his smallness of stature in the speaker’s eyes). The words officially tsk-tsk at SN’s “pesonal attack” on Dan, but ends up absolving SN; “I don’t know [this site’s] history with Dan” is a way of saying “There is a possibility that your hatred of him could be OK, so I won’t take a position on it.”
I count 65 words in that paragraph. Five express disagreement with SN. The other sixty express either some form of neutrality, or outright praise for SN and/or put-down of GP and Dan. 12:1
I could finish, but the rest of it is in basically the same vein. It impressed me, the first time I skimmed it. But on closer inspection, I realized it amounted to nothing. It’s just like a Cinesnatch “apology”: Far, far less is really there, than meets the eye. You have to get two or three of them, or think about what Cinesnatch is really saying (or more accurately, NOT saying) in his apology to you, to realize how ‘there is nothing there’. No moral position, coming from no moral center.
Criticizing SN’s writing for “sounding dated” or being “poorly worded” or “harsh”, as you gleefully quote much of it back to them; ooh Cinesnatch, that will really leave a mark on SN and let them know where you stand.
Freedom from religion is an inherent part of freedom of religion.
I have yet to meet anyone who was coerced into becoming a Christian by the sight of a crucifix in a public space or a Nativity Scene in a public park.
I have yet to understand why religious people have such a hard time keeping it to themselves. Build your monuments on your own property. You guys hate government, why are you so desperate to put your stamp all over the government?
(It’s because you’re desperate to incorporate the government’s credibility into your religion.)
Oh, yeah, that’s it. God needs credibility, especially the government approval type.
What an epiphany. Government. Hitler, Mao, Castro, Nero, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Idii Amin, the Mongol Horde: all of them government. Yep, for better or for worse, God needs government credibility.
Levi, your thinking machine is kind of slow. You should proof read yourself and take a little break and then ask yourself if you have any idea in the world what you meant by what you just wrote.
Oh, yeah? Then does that mean the government can censor religion? Since this is First Amendment territory you must believe that there is an inherent right of freedom from speech, peaceable assembly, petitioning government and freedom from the press.
You have total freedom from religion. You do not have to establish one. You do not have to participate in one. You do not have to be held captive by one. You do not have to bow down to one. You do not have to enter any house of worship. You do not have to bow your head and pray.
Now, your chosen religion, the government, can compel a person to swear an oath to it. It can put a gun to your head and take the earnings of your labor and creativity. It can drag you to court and jail. It can shut your mouth.
And you think God needs the government’s “credibility.” Whew!!!
No one forced the Demonrats to take God out of their Platform except the fringe left that wants to be totally divorced from anything smacking of religion. Except, of course, the religion of political correctness, the religion of consensus science, the religion of social engineering, the religion of government, the religion of Marxism, the religion of forcing the people to think “correctly” and act according to the dictates of the government religion. The religion of the plantation.
You are a worm that can not abide to allow people to go in peace with their religion. You are so daft that you sincerely believe that you can expunge religion and the influence of religion from the legal code, the moral code and the system of ethics. You are the Lord of the flies.
heliotrope,
Levi said ‘religion’ not ‘G-d’
Religion is like a penis. You may be very proud of yours and it’s very important to you but don’t wave it peoples faces.
Freedom of religion is not in danger. No one is less free to practice their religion today than in years past. What has changed is that we no longer allow taxpayer monies to support any particular religious viewpoint. What has changed is that we no longer allow you to inflict your religion upon us.
Which you should be in favor of because if there is a state religion it may very well not be your religion. I will also point out that the notion of “the Judeo Christian god” is absurd. Not only do Jews and christians worship different gods – according to the Jews god did not have any children; the Jewish god and Xian god are not the same god. What’s more, the Catholic god requires you to confess your sins to a priest but the Protestant god does not. The Mormon god lives on a planet called Kobol and put his garden of Eden in Missouri. The god of some Xians sends hurricanes to punish people for being nice to gays but other Xians worship a god that does not do that. The Xian scientist god heals with prayer but many other Xian gods use doctors for that. The Seventh Day Adventist god bans blood transfusions and organ transplants. Which god, exactly, is the one you would have us all bow down to?
Oops, forgot to mention that if you are going to insist that there is a Judeo-Christian god then using the same logic you would have to call that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god. They all claim to be the god of Abraham.
Most are not according to Rasmussen
Among those who rarely or never attend church or other religious services, Obama leads by 22 percentage points. Among those who attend services weekly, Romney leads by 24. The candidates are even among those who attend church occasionally.
Romney leads by seven among Catholic voters and holds a massive lead among Evangelical Christians. [Ed.: Remember when one of the chief worries about Romney’s candidacy was that evangelicals wouldn’t support a Mormon?] Among other Protestants, the Republican challenger is ahead by 13. Among all other Americans, including people of other faiths and atheists, Obama leads by a 62% to 26% margin.
And by “wave religion in people’s faces” he means “ever mention it ever.”
So, why do gay people get to flaunt their sexuality in parades and public places all the time, but Christians are supposed to keep their faith in the closet.
When you have A Government that aggressively clamps down on religious expression, it send the message that religion is wrong, and therefore inherently endorses and advances the viewpoint of atheists; which Levi and Work are OK with because their religious viewpoint is being advanced.
The real solution would be for courts and the feds to butt out entirely and let individual communities decide for themselves about religious expression. but that would mean giving people more freedom to run their own lives; leftists hate that.
Rusty,
Which religion does not have God or gods? Levi’s freedom from religion is parallel with the First Amendment which also does not mention God or gods.
That is a distinction without a difference. Unless, of course, we are talking about the leftist religion of government in which the gods are the politburo and the political elite.
Forgive me heliotrope, you are just too clever. Of course when I said ‘government’s credibility,’ what I was really saying was ‘Hitler’s government’s credibility.’ Thank you for pointing out what I really meant to say, you are contributing to the discussion in a fruitful and honest way!
In this country and with our government (must I forever and always make it explicit when I’m not talking about Hitler’s government?), these things generally do not happen unless you’re breaking laws, and even then you’re given an opportunity to prove your innocence. There’s never going to be a perfect system but ours seems to work decently. And I’m sorry you think you’re getting a raw deal by paying taxes, I guess?
Rewind a few hundred years, and religious governments were doing all of the above. It is to your direct benefit that religion was relegated to the private sphere when this country was founded. Our secular government does more for your religious freedom than religion ever did.
Religion is all about leeching off the credibility of other institutions, and since it can create no credibility on its own, that’s the way it’s always going to be. A sterling example is the argument I’m sure you’ve heard about how the theory of evolution confirms how clever and cunning was God when he created the universe. People say that because they want the credibility of science to stand in for the credibility of religion. It’s the same with plastering the Ten Commandments all over courthouses and carving out praying time in the classroom. Government and schools have credibility with people, and so religion, lacking all credibility I remind you, is desperate to be associated with those institutions.
Is this supposed to be a broadside? I will never understand why religious people, when defending religion, will accuse others of subscribing to other kinds of religion. If I did adhere to a religion of political correctness, and I provided no supporting evidence and said that my religion was revealed to me, what’s so wrong with that? Isn’t that what you do?
I don’t care about your little hobby and how you want to spend your free time. If believing that you’re immortal makes you feel better, fine.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are working on creating a better system than one that gets the ethics of slavery wrong for thousands of years, or can’t abide gay marriage, or requires that everyone feel terrified about going to hell if they’re not devout enough. Please, eat your crackers and howl at the moon for all I care, just stop trying to get in the way of the effort to improve upon your side’s terrible track record.
Sorry, Levi, but you did not specify a particular government in your foolishness.
You chose these words:
You chose to “sanctify” the government’s credibility. I have zero understanding of what “the government’s credibility” means or is. You didn’t say. You just said that I am “desperate” to “incorporate” the “government’s credibility” into my “religion.”
So, I took your putz logic and answered you in kind. Your Godless religion is government. So I gave you other Godless governments as models of government credibility styles.
Now you are all hurt. You create a meaningless blob of words and I deign to add a little clarity to them and you get all in a huff.
Tough.
What are, pray tell, the parameters of “government credibility” in your high and mighty government; your religion without God?
And what is your evidence that I am desperate to incorporate your mystical, magical government’s credibility into my religion?
You continually say your government religion is better than my God religion, so have at it, mystical wonder boy.
Under the Judeo-Christian ethic that undergirds our law, you have that EXACTLY backwards.
You are presumed innocent by the law until the government proves your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Learn it, love it, live it.
You have a persecution complex. The government isn’t clamping down on religious expression.
It would mean ostracizing and alienating people that aren’t part of the main group. What are they supposed to do, go suck an egg?
Exactly (freedom from religion would require religion to be censored, which would infringe on freedom of speech at the least).
No it wouldn’t. I really have no idea how you came to that conclusion.
You totally ignore, if not deny faith, until it comes to worshipping your idols, such as Barack Hussein Obama and socialism and social engineering and political correctness and moral relativism and situation ethics and other such faith imbued aspects of your fervent non-religion religion.
You deny my core beliefs and insist on yours. It was ever thus between the faithful and the faithless. You place boundless faith and idolize science theory consensus, but not the scientific method which requires the theory to be proven. Nope, there you will forge ahead on theory and damn those who don’t share your horde enthusiasm.
Levi: You hate faith-based religion. You cleave to faith-based secularism.
Doesn’t that annoy your own sensibilities in some fundamental way? Now go pray for your Obamessiah. Put your faith in Wall Street as regulated by Dodd-Frank and in 7-11 as regulated by City Hall and in Obamacare as regulated by the endless government bureaucracy.
Yessiree, you have endless, hopeless faith. Faith in all the right places. Faith that people can be monitored and regulated and coerced into doing the right thing. You don’t need no stinking God faith.
So, why do gay people get to flaunt their sexuality in parades and public places all the time, but Christians are supposed to keep their faith in the closet.
You poor, poor persecuted Christians! Look, sexuality has nothing to do with religion so your question is inane. For another thing, the first amendment applies to gays too.
For yet another thing, Christians aren’t being told to keep their faith in the closet except by anti-theists. For yet another another thing, the Constitution forbids government endorsement of any religion or religious viewpoint. Why do you hate America? Now for one other another thing, if you are so big on freedom of religion then why were you (generic you) so determined to prevent Muslims from practicing their religion in New York and Tennessee and, well, seemingly anywhere.
When you have A Government that aggressively clamps down on religious expression, it send the message that religion is wrong, and therefore inherently endorses and advances the viewpoint of atheists; which Levi and Work are OK with because their religious viewpoint is being advanced.
The only government “clamping down on religious expression” is the government obeying the law by not allowing any governmental entity endorse a particular religion. Individuals are as free as ever to express their religious beliefs outside of government. Kids can pray in school any time they want as long as it isn’t disruptive. The public school – a government entity – may not endorse any particular religious viewpoint. A student is free to present religious convictions in her graduation speech as long as the school did not schedule it. And as long as it is respectful of others who may not hold similar beliefs.
And really, atheism is not a religion. Atheism is not a religious belief. Atheism is lack of belief. Atheists do not necessarily share any beliefs. No, atheists do not necessarily believe there is no god, although some certainly do. Atheism is a religion in exactly the same way that OFF is a tv channel. Atheism is a religion in exactly the same way that a 404 error is a web site. Is “bald” a hair color? Is not collecting stamps a hobby?
Maybe people who “aren’t part of the main group” can grow a pair and stop bitching.
There’s nothing wrong with being outside the main group; only fascists want to use government to force everybody into one collective.
Gee, do you think that in America, I could have been talking about American government? Did that not occur to you? If this is how you choose to behave, I’ll henceforth consider any discussion of your religion to be synonymous with Heaven’s Gate and the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project. Would you please explain why you support killing Congressmen and poisoning babies with cyanide?
The government is credible because it works. I know, I know, you’re a conservative and you’ll disagree with that mightily, and there may be some interruptions due to the political climate, but government is functioning pretty seamlessly most of the time. You have schools, police, fire, roads, clean water, electricity – most of this stuff is on demand for the vast majority of Americans and you barely have to lift a finger for access. And having these services allows people to do a lot, and so government has credibility, it has cache. It works, and there is evidence that it works.
Religion doesn’t have that kind of credibility because it doesn’t work. You’re not going to pray your cancer away and God isn’t going to mete out punishment on the guy that rear-ended you. Now that we know a little bit more about astronomy and biology, religion can’t even make credible claims about the origin of man or the universe. There is less and less that religion is good at, so religion is desperate to be associated with institutions that are good at all kinds of things, government being one of them.
Is atheism a religion? Absolutely it is. It’s based on a blind faith since the nonexistence of God can’t be proven. It comes with a dogmatic belief system. And it has fanatics who insist it is the only valid way of processing the universe and that anyone who doesn’t adhere to it is stupid and deluded.
And, like Islam, its fanatical adherents seek to repress all other belief systems.
The government is credible because it works. Yeah, how bout those awesome public schools!
Exactly (freedom from religion would require religion to be censored, which would infringe on freedom of speech at the least).
I know you all aren’t too bright but i didn’t think you were that dense. Freedom from religion doesn’t mean protecting people from being exposed to any religion, it means no one can be coerced into participating in any particular religious activity. It means you can’t force your religion on others.
I forgot to mention earlier that no one is trying to force churches to perform same sex marriages. In every case thus far and in every proses case, there are clear and explicit exemptions for churches. And besides, some churches do perform gay marriages. Many Christians have no objection to gays and gay marriage. Reformed Judaism does not condemn gays. Why are you so intolerant of religion?
We aren’t trying to force anyone to do anything in particular whereas you want to tell us what we may and may not do based on YOUR religious beliefs. F that noise. You conflate loss of hegemony with persecution. We will no longer let you inflict your religion on us.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I have no problem with allowing Muslims to practice their religion. It is when their religion infringes on other people’s rights (which it often does) is when I have a problem with it (and the same goes for every other religion).
Atheism may not be a religion, but it resembles one at times.
That’s agnosticism.
The Simpsons?
Utah is one of the more successful societies in the United States; certainly more successful than any communist country (although, communists actually do deify heads of state and live in a fantasy land where communism works, so I suppose it is, too, a religion in the specific sense).
Well, I’m glad to know now that believing in an alternate meaning of a term (that is both reinforced by the ACLU at times) makes me “not too bright” and “dense.”
That is a very small segment of the Christian “right.” And I’m not sure if you are addressing this to me, but, for the record, I have no religious or spiritual beliefs whatsoever.
What we object to is the anti-religious minority using government and the courts to advance their viewpoint to the exclusion of others.
And, yes, Christians have been put in legal jeopardy for refusing to participate in gay weddiwngs, photographers and caterers for example, have been sued for declining to serve gay weddings. So much for freedom of conscience and choice.
That should be “that is both reinforced by the ACLU at times and can be reasonably inferred from the term itself.”
The sight of a Nativity scene in a public park or a display of the ten commandments in a couethouse doesn’t force religion on anyone. #commonsense
Do you have to try to be so obtuse or does it come naturally? You are flat wrong – atheism is not a faith or belief in _anything_. it is the lack of belief in any god. You don’t believe in Zeus, do you? How about Odin? Osiris? Mithras? Ahura Mazda? Didn’t think so. Can you prove they don’t exist? No, you can’t. You are atheist with respect to them. The only difference between us is that I don’t believe in one more god than you don’t believe in.
Atheists dont generally give a rat’s ass what you believe as long as you keep it to yourselves. You believe that a magic being created the earth 6000 years ago and made a person from mud and another person from said first person’s rib then they had lunch with a talking snake so the magic being tossed them out and later killed off everybody with a worldwide flood (which was not noted in other places by other people) except for 6 people on a boat of impossible dimensions and then killed off a bunch of other people but then magically impregnated a woman with his seed so that he could sacrifice himself to himself… Have at it! Read your myths to each other in your churches all you want. You can even have whole tv channels just to promote your beliefs. You are free to go on all you want about how Darwin was wrong (he wasn’t). WE. DONT. CARE.* You can even have schools where you teach that to your kids. WE. DONT. CARE.** Just don’t inflict it on all the other children in the public schools. If you have a business you are free to say whatever you want and profess your religious convictions all you want. Just don’t try to make your customers and everyone else live by your convictions. And if you say hateful things then expect to get called out on it.
* we do care but only because we think belief in magic is a bad thing.
**We care that our tax dollars subsidize it but we don’t complain about it all that much.
Yes it would. It does. Religion divides people into little groups and then the people in those little groups get upset with each other. There’s two ways to do it; you indulge everyone’s insecurities and give everyone a chance to erect their monuments and statues and icons, or you let nobody do it. I wonder which of those options is more practical, inexpensive, and fair?
The sight of a Nativity scene in a public park or a display of the ten commandments in a couethouse doesn’t force religion on anyone. #commonsense
No ome is saying it is. The problem is that it is government endorsing a _particular_ religion. That is not allowed by the Constitution. Why do you hate America?
And, I hate to bring this up, but forcing Catholic employers to provide birth control to their employees (whether indirectly or not) is another recent example of this. And, just to preemtively counter what I can guess the leftists are going to say, not providing birth control to employees is not equivalent to restricting it.
So, are you saying religion should be banned so people don’t divide themselves into groups? If not, what is the alternative?
Exactly (freedom from religion would require religion to be censored, which would infringe on freedom of speech at the least).
So it’s an obviously stupid thing to propose. And you take it to mean precisely that because … ?
Freedom from religion means only that no one can force you to take part in their religious rituals or otherwise believe as they do. It doesn’t mean you have the right to never, ever be exposed to religion under any circumstances.
I’m saying that certain religions shouldn’t be favored over others by the government by being allowed to build religious monuments on government buildings and property.
The alternative is that the government OBEY THE LAW and not endorse or sponsor any particular religion. Why do you hate the Constitution? Why do you hate America?
One can be against religion on principle, as Levi seems to be and which I am as well. That has nothing to do with our animosity to your ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL efforts to have the government get involved with whatever religion you support. Two very different things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other. Do you have to work at being so obtuse?
And thus, by that logic, banning it from the public square is government discriminating against religion and favoring the anti-religious.
Furthermore, PeeJ, your Obama Party is openly banning people from operating businesses because of their beliefs and stating that their beliefs need to be punished.
You are a bigot, PeeJ, just like your friends Levi and Cinesnatch, and you are hell-bent on using the power of government to punish and harass Christians and others.
“52.Religion is like a penis. You may be very proud of yours and it’s very important to you but don’t wave it peoples faces. ”
wrong, showing your penis around is a felony (indecent exposure felony or misdemeanor). Not so much true of religion, not even of fringes cults.
The indecent display of vulgarity of your average gay pride is also against the law, but you get the special right of flaunting it anyway for fear of reprisal (homophobia and the typical victimhood tacticts you are known for).
Levi, are you laughing as much as I am at all these anti-government types arguing AGAINST less intrusive government?
So it’s an obviously stupid thing to propose. And you take it to mean precisely that because … ?
Comment by PeeJ — September 7, 2012 @ 1:11 pm – September 7, 2012
Because, PeeJ, fools like yourself are stupid enough to scream that government should punish and suppress people based on their beliefs.
One should remember that fascists like yourself believe in freedoms for yourself, but not for everyone else.
For example, you believe in your freedom to say this about Dan, but scream “racist” and demand that people be fired for criticizing the explosion in people on food stamps in the United States.
Your fascist Levi provided a great example of this. Under the fascist Levi system, everyone is guilty until they prove themselves innocent, with Levi the Fascist acting as judge, jury, and validator of the evidence. That is exactly contrary to the rights enumerated in the Constitution, but the Levi Fascist doesn’t believe those apply to anyone he dislikes, such as those with religious beliefs.
LOL. Or so says the fascist PeeJ that insists that government should rule on and ban any religious beliefs or expression that PeeJ and the fascist Levi don’t like.
Peej: If you seriously have a problem with that, just wail ’til Sharia comes. You’re going to love it. (Not)
P.S. You can preview Sharia’s arrival if you’d like, in (say) England or Holland. Talk to the gays there, about how safe they feel walking the streets.
Religion is not being banned from the public square. You may go to any plaza or park or streetcornwr and preach your religion as long as you don’t create a nuisance or harass people or otherwise break the law. There some godawful number of religious teevee and radio stations. Your persecution complex is downright pathological.
The acts of one person have nothing to do with the party platform. That is one person acting illegally there, not the party or the President. He will get his ass shot off when it goes to court and that’s a good thing.
The funny part of watching fascists like Levi and PeeJ scream and cry about how awful religious beliefs are is realizing that it’s because they cannot stand the thought that there is something higher, better, more valuable, and broader than they.
Hatred of religious belief is directly proportional to self-centeredness. That is because the core of religious belief is acknowledging something greater than yourself and beyond your comprehension — and that is something neither PeeJ or Levi are capable of doing.
PeeJ and Levi hate religion because their belief is that they should have no gods before THEM. As we see, Levi insists that everyone is wrong and guilty until they prove otherwise. Levi has set himself up as the ultimate authority in the universe, and we are all filth until he deigns to treat us differently.
Nothing is more effective at conveying atheist tolerance and openmindedness than dismissive and insulting comments about “magical sky gods.”
Peej: If you seriously have a problem with that, just wail ’til Sharia comes. You’re going to love it. (Not)
That’s exactly my point, you idiot. Except that sharia won’t come for many reasons not the least of which is that it is unconstitutional. Calm down son, your fears are getting the best of you.
Well, ILC, we should keep in mind that PeeJ and his Obama Party already endorse the Nation of Islam and channel taxpayer dollars to religious organizations run by Obama Party supporters who keep women in religious subjugation.
So in short, their hissy fits are pretty darn hypocritical.
Nope, sorry. Todd Akin rule: the one represents the whole and proves that the party endorses x.
You lose, bigot PeeJ. Not surprisingly, little bigot PeeJ doesn’t want to live and can’t live under the rules he imposes on others.
Oh boo effing hoo! The meany atheist called me names and made fun of me! That’s like HITLER TIMES A THOUSAND!!!!
Atheists are the most hated group in the country. Atheists are frequently blamed for all things bad. Atheists receive death threats from so-called Christians all the time. Get over yourself.
Yes, because we know Obama Party supporters like PeeJ would never openly carry out unconstitutional actions against people with the full endorsement and support of the Obama Party.
You’ll figure out a reason why sharia is a good thing, PeeJ, just as you and your Obama Party figured out that opposing gay marriage and calling for gays to be killed was fine when it garnered Obama Party votes and donations.
Your objection to any of these things is not principled or based on the Constitution. It’s raw hatred and bigotry against Christians and conservatives, and you’re trying to use the government to implement it.
And why was Sandra Fluke speaking at the DNC again?
The Todd Akin rule would be apt if not for the fact that the republican house tried to make that very sentiment into law. It would apply except that Paul Ryan and many other republicans endorsed the same idea. It would make sense except that what he said does in fact represent the beliefs of a large number republicans.
ROTFLMAO 🙂
You seriously think that’s going to stop them? And you call *me* an “idiot”… LOL 🙂
It does seem to be quite the contradiction, doesn’t it?
FWIW… I have no doubt, Peej, that if the day came when Muslims had enough strength in (and over) the United States to proclaim Sharia here, you would be among the first to convert. I bet that, if faced with a real and present death threat from people who mean business, you would even ‘forget’ your homosexuality.
And what Joe Moreno did is what several Obama Party officials tried to do and represents the belief of the majority of the Obama Party, especially gays and lesbians.
Akin rule applies. PeeJ and Levi are antireligious bigots who want to use the power of government to discriminate against religious beliefs in violation of the US Constitution.
We already know they won’t criticize the Palestinians or Iranians, or hold kiss-ins in the Nation of Islam’s restaurant.
Yup, they’re cowards.
Because she was savaged by the bloated gasbag probably pedophile boy-renting spokescritter of your party. Really, my insulting your religion in this tiny space is EXACTLY THE SAME as speaking as a de facto leader of the party on a national venue, calling her a slut, demonizing her for things that are simply untrue in a deliberate and calculated act of demagoguery. Gotcha. How you manage to survive is a mystery.
Who is “them” who will not be stopped? That’s a rhetorical question – they exist only in your febrile, fearful mind.
Your words don’t hurt my feelers PJ, They only demonstrate your ignorant hatred.
I am constantly amused to find that you all know what I think better than I do and also know just what i would do in any hypothetical situation. All based on pseudonymous comments made on the Internet, many of which appeared in a snark blog.
You guys really are all projection, all the time. It’s sad, really – I *almost* feel sorry for you.
Well I’m sorry, but your implausible, make-believe stories that you would like to inform public policy are absolutely worthy of ridicule. If you think your religion entitles you to tell other people how to live their lives, than you’re going to have to put up with some mockery, especially with stuff like Noah’s Ark and talking snakes and walking on water. I mean, what if I pranced around saying we should have universal healthcare because a leprechaun riding a unicorn that I only I could see told me so? Would you be open-minded about that?
Judeo–Christian teachings built a pretty amazing civilization, and for that, they have earned respect. When I look at what atheist statism has produced, all I see is misery, oppression, and a pile of 100,000,000 skulls.
Keep in mind that Republicans were pretending like this was an issue because of religious liberty. Rush gave the game away when he called her a slut and a prostitute that should post video of herself having sex on the internet, didn’t he? Is that what you would say to someone who was infringing on your religious liberty, or is it something you would say to a dumb woman that doesn’t know her place?
Sandra Fluke is both actually. She’s a spoiled woman going to one of the most expensive schools in the country, but she wants someone else to buy birth control for her so she can have recreational sex without consequences, and she is happy to trample on religious freedom in order to get that result. I also think she and her supporters enjoy asserting the power of the state over the church.
Hitler was a Christian. Dats da fact jack. Google “Reichskonkordat” for more fun facts.
Yeah, those awesome Judeo-Christians [Cf. supra] with their inquisitions and crusades and the witch burnings and the almost continuous religious wars in England and on the continent for a thousand years and the televangelists with their privatenjets and rolls royces preying on poor people and Pat Robertson with his hurricanes and Texas wanting to outlaw critical thinking. Truly awesome and worthy of enormous respect.
Yeah, all that misery and oppression in statist places like Norway and Sweden where they have better health care, more upward mobility, live longer, suffer less stress and so on than us.
How is her paying money to her insurance company for her health care coverage “having someone else” pay for her birth control? The University is not a church. It doesn’t have, as its primary mission or even secondary mission, promulgation of the church’s teachings. It is a business and receives government funds. If they want to make everyone follow their religious rules then they can damn well stop taking government money.
One other thing – the birth control is to treat a medical condition she has. Even if she did want to have recreational sex without consequences she would probably be smart enough to protect against STDs by using other contraceptive means. And finally, even if she wanted to have recreational sex without consequences WTF is it to you? It neither breaks your arm nor picks your pocket. There you go again, forcing your religion on others.
She can screw around all she wants, but she has no business making anyone else pay for her accessories. I don’t make anyone else pay for the ammo I use on the shooting range, even though my right to hear arms is explicitly in the Constitution.
“Except that sharia won’t come for many reasons not the least of which is that it is unconstitutional. ”
PissJ, you are so stupid, any constitution of any modern democracy can be amended.
Take a note next time you see your american constitution against the Koran (the word of god, immutable and unamendable) and see in how many seconds it is destroyed, together with your silly fantasies of gay marriage.
It is a pity to debate with ignoramuses like you and levi… you call religious people believers in fairy tales, but look at yourself in the mirror and you are so much worse than that.
“Keep in mind that Republicans were pretending like this was an issue because of religious liberty. Rush gave the game away when he called her a slut and a prostitute that should post video of herself having sex on the internet, didn’t he? ”
Not true, not even a sex starved man would get off watching such an ugly dog. Rush has got standards.
Pee J @ #17:
Pee J @ #52:
Pee J @ #52:
Pee J @ #95:
Pee J @ #98:
Pee J @ #107:
Pee J @ #115:
There is not much to say about this type of projection and demagoguery except that if you read the entire posts, it is quite sad to see a relatively logical mind so corrupted by hatred.
I am particularly unimpressed with the rejection of so much because of flaws admitted and amended. If is safer to have no faith and ridicule those who do than to deal with human error.
Will atheists ever get past their insistence that the non-existence of God is proven by God not fixing every human frailty, including misunderstand God?
Pee J. says being an atheist is a cypher. Then he proceeds to prove his point by having no patience, understanding, or association with faith and by demeaning those who do have faith.
The government santized and scrubbed of faith is in for a big project. First, lets see Pee J. and Levi scrub the underpinnings of the Judeo Christian ethic and morality from the law codes.
Whether unscrambling eggs or putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, these leftist loons claim to be able to do it by banning the statutory influences of faith from the government square.
Once again, please explain how her buying an insurance policy that includes contraception (which many do, btw, because it costs them less than a pregnancy so they are actually eager to offer that coverage) is having someone else pay for it? I know Rush said it but that doesn’t make it true. Rush deliberately lied about it and you continue to promulgate the lie. You are a liar.
Still about the dog sandra fluke
“One other thing – the birth control is to treat a medical condition she has.”
Excuse me genius, I live in a European socialist country (I have actually lived in 4 different countries in Western EU that all have nationalized health care, your wet dream). None of them actually passes any form of birth control for free.
Care to explain why the USA should be the first one to try this silly experiment? especially taking as a poster dog a wealthy, slutty, mentally deficient self proclaimed woman.
What would be the incurable ‘medical condition’ she has? pimples on her face at her age? the rest of the women on the planet can survive their pre-menstrual syndrome without government assistance (still talking about places with socialized medicine).
Heliotrope, do me a favor and review my comments and see if I said anything similarly hateful about the beliefs of atheists. I have criticized the behavior of atheists, but have I, in any comment, insulted or demeaned their belief system.
I admit to having a negative view of atheism, but I have faith in my ability to make an argument without resorting to childish insults. (I try to only engage in childish insults for sport, not for flailing in aj argument)
That’s a matter for her insurance provider to decide, not a politician.
In a free market, insurance providers should have a choice to provide or not provide contraceptives. Consumers should have a choice of health insurance providers. Keep the politicians out of our private health care choices.
heliotrope, I demean you because you are delusional and your religion is absurd nonsense.
Will atheists ever get past their insistence that the non-existence of God is proven by God not fixing every human frailty, including misunderstand God?
And because you are stupid. No thinking atheist tries to prove the non-existence of god. If we did, we wouldn’t try to do it that way because it is logically inconsistent. The statement is a perfect example of the logical fallacy known as “begging the question.” that’s right, “begs the question” does not mean “invites the question” or “leads to a question being asked.” I bring thatnup because I’ve heard a lot of people misusing the phrase lately. “Begging the question” is the logical fallacy wherein the proposition relies on an implicit premise within itself. Any atheist will recognize the error immediately because we see it made so often.
I would be happy to explain the reasons why I’m pretty sure there is no god but if you are going to stumble all over yourself making silly assertions and being illogical I see no point in doing so.
Order cannot exist within chaos unless there is a force and a will to impose it.
It is so tiring explaining things to you children. The insurance companies, as I have already explained, are eager to include contraception coverage. The insurance company _wants_ to include contraception for those who choose to purchase it. The university refuses to let the insurance company do so because their religion forbids adherents from using contraception. Which most of them do anyway and the church knows it. If the church wants to assert their moral authority (what a joke that is, the same church that protected pedophiles) they can instruct their members not to buy or use the coverage.
Ms. Fluke is not an adherent of that religion. The university is not a church but a business. If they don’t want to let their insurer offer contraceptive coverage to students who are not adherents and keep government out of their hair then they merely need to stop taking government money. Problem solved! Or they can convert the university into an actual church and only admit students who profess that faith but then they wouldn’t be able to attract many students.
Order cannot exist within chaos unless there is a force and a will to impose it.
[citation needed]
Also begs the question.
And, the “Ignoramus of the Thread” award goes to… Peej! (applause)
Bzzzzzzzzzzzt, wrong answer.
Nazi ‘support’ for Christianity was utilitarian (tactical) and highly conflicted, with many Nazis preferrig a State paganism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_aspects_of_Nazism
And Hitler personally was what we today would call a “non-practicing” or “lapsed” Catholic – you know, kind of like Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry, paying lip service for political reasons – who hoped to purge Christianity of its historical (Jewish) roots and re-construct it on Nazi philosophy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_religious_views
It’s also worth noting that the Nazis were a Socialist party. Kind of like “social democrats” minus the democracy. The socio-economic part of their platform was strikingly similar to that of today’s Democratic Party.
Before I go walk the dog I’ll leave you with this: I can not state with certainty that there is no god but I am completely certain that the god of the bible does not exist.
I think the Democrats shot their own hoof on the GOD thing. No wonder the Media is trying to bury it like a big turd in a catbox.
Like it or not, many people prefer to vote for someone that has FAITH…even if it’s only superficial.
Then don’t, ignorant jackass. Get lost.
Or, even better. Fluke can exercise her choice and choose another university.
That’s where your argument vanishes, PeeJ. If you don’t like the coverage your employer/university offers, find another one.
But that’s not what you want, is it, fascist? You are using Fluke as an excuse to use governmental power to punish religious institutions and religious belief.
And you then do it completely hypocritically.
Notice how this works. Fluke and PeeJ scream and cry that their not getting government money is hate and discrimination. PeeJ insists that it is a RIGHT to receive government money and that anyone who demands you change your behavior to receive government money is discriminating.
And then they turn around and insist that government money is not a right and that it’s perfectly OK to demand others change their behavior and inconvenience themselves to receive government money.
You are shown to be a bigot again, PeeJ. A hypocritical lying bigot, just like your liar Fluke. You are desperate to attack and destroy religion and religious belief using the government. That’s why your arguments are contradictory; you are a desperate bigot who is trying to pervert the Constitution to get your way.
Loser boy. Bigot. Idiot.
It is logically impossible to prove a negative.
Therefore, your assertion that the God of the Bible does not exist is not rational or logical, but is in fact irrational bigotry on your part.
And we already knew that. You and Levi are irrational bigots who hate Christians and Jews and want to use the power of government to discriminate against and destroy them. You haven’t arrived at your conclusions through any pattern of deliberate thought or review; you just started with blind hate of Christians and tried to stitch together a crazy quilt of contradictions to justify your hatred.
Hitler was a devout Catholic. He often spoke of doing “god’s work.” He wote about his faith I can’t be arsed to find links using my phone. The merest effort of your part however will lead to the truth. But then, you don’t seem able to read, or comprehend anyway.
It is possible to prove a negative, but not a universal negative. It is impossible to prove there are no gods, that is true because that is a universal negative. Nor did I claim to prove that your god is a myth. Read carefully, if you can. I said I was completely certain (not that I had proof) that one particular god is non-existent. So once again, you have failed miserably at reading comprehension and logic in one swell foop, as it were.
PS – it is possible to prove a universal negative but only in mathematics or when the posited thing/entity/idea is contrary to physical law.
“Before I go walk the dog I’ll leave you with this: I can not state with certainty that there is no god but I am completely certain that the god of the bible does not exist.”
instead it is the allah of the koran that exists. This is why it should be only fair that you submit to your fate like it happens to a lot of your peers in Iran.
BTW you can tell your friend Sandra Fluke that the pre-menstrual syndrome that afflicts her so much is mostly a psychological factor. Therefore she should favour a good analyst instead of tax payers’ founded contraception. I bet her insurance covers psychotropic drugs.
PS: talking about notable pedophiles what happened to gay activist Larry Brinking caught with pedo pornographic material. I guess everything was swept under the carpet since the San Francisco police doesn’t want to be called homophobe…
“The merest effort of your part however will lead to the truth. But then, you don’t seem able to read, or comprehend anyway.”
also searching that showing your penis in front of a minor (as it happens in your average gay pride parade) is a criminal offence in all civilized countries. Care to explain why the moral equivalence of showing your penis (albeit minuscule) and showing a symbol of faith should be considered on the same ground as you asserted in your posts?
It’s also worth noting that the Nazis were a Socialist party. Kind of like “social democrats” minus the democracy. The socio-economic part of their platform was strikingly similar to that of today’s Democratic Party.
HAHAHAHA You believed that ridiculous bullshit the Doughy Pantload wrote! You are dumber – or perhaps more gullible – than I thought! And I thought you are pretty darn dense and extremely gullible. I swear, I may actually pity you.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt, wrong answer. From the articles linked earlier:
He did try to get along with German Christian leaders and pay lip service to Christianity, as I noted earlier, and it was largely political:
And so on.
We could go on all day with this: There is no question, as I already conceded, that Hitler did say a good many pro-Christian things. But you, Peej, claim he was a “devout” Catholic. Devout? Really? Do you even know what the word means? Would you recogize a *devout* Catholic, if one rammed their car into you?
You wouldn’t. Big, big hint for you Peej: *no Catholic can be considered ‘devout’, who stopped practicing Confession and other sacraments as an adult*. Those people are “non-practicing” or “lapsed” Catholics, and Hitler was one.
Of course you are certain; irrational bigots by definition are certain of whatever they happen to hold as their bigoted beliefs.
But you attempted to again prove a negative — logically impossible — and do so without evidence.
So you’re still an irrational bigot. Furthermore, you have admitted that your hatred of God and Christians is based, not on logical or evidential proof, but on your own irrational beliefs and opinions.
Spoken just like the ignorant jackass you are, Peej. 🙂
Oh and pissJ
since you believe yourself to be soooo intelligent (and frankly it is only a self belief), let me tell you that your ‘belief’ that you can not state with certainty that there is no god equates AGNOSTICISM and not ATHEISM as you wrongly assume.
But your level of reasoning is so poor.
Your assumption that Hitler was Christian is not more founded that the notion that Zerobama is Christian. If you say this for the ‘shock’ effect, let me remind you that the empty chair ordered illegal drone warfare in Libya, among other things.
I guess I could equate Hitler with the empty suit.
PissJ, yes, the Nazi Party was socialist.
The complete name was National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
Same goes for the Fascist party in Italy.
We pity you for such a blatant display of ignorance in history, law, philosophy, logic and common sense.
no wonder you vote for Bama
North Dallas Crazy doesn’t understand that if you don’t want government telling you what to do then don’t take government money. Period. You want taxpayer money you play by taxpayer rules. I want to see how your head asplodes when someone inevitably claims they don’t have to follow the rules to get the welfare check because their religion forbids them from this or that.
Here’s an honest question: Should a business owned by Cheistian Scientists be exempted from offering health insurance? How about a business that only wants to exclude blood transfusions?
Indeed!
I would say it is rare to come across a commentor as blatantly lacking in basic education as PeeJ is (or perhaps, as mis-educated); except we do also have Levi.
oh bless your pointy little head susan! One can be an agnostic atheist or a gnostic atheist. See, agnosticism and atheism are two separate things. Braqaasppppp. Try again.
one can be also retarded, isnt it pissj?
or retarded retarded, like you are pissj
Unlike you I actually read Loadpant’s book. And I’ve read quite a bit of history, especially 20th century stuff. I also read some of the numerous smackdowns of his laughable argument, written by actual historians. Thats why I find it so funny to see you echo “their NAME had socialist in it” stupidity that was, in his own words, central to his point. Norway is a socialist country. So is Sweden. Are they nazis? Criminy, you folks continue to say dumber and dumber things – you must be approaching peak idiocy.
So many Dunning-Kruger poster children all in one place! Why, the goalposts in here arent just mo ing, they are DANCING!
So let’s see.
PeeJ screamed that Hitler was a Christian, so all Christians are Nazis.
By PeeJ’s impeccable logic, then, Norway and Sweden are Nazis, since they are socialist and Hitler was also a socialist.
The reason you keep running into brick walls, PeeJ, is because you isolate yourself on websites with your fellow bigots who are automatically conditioned to agree with you on everything and will never point out the blatant and obvious hypocrisies and contradictions in your arguments.
You’re intellectually retarded. But really, it’s by your choice; you prioritize websites where you can spout your bigotries without challenge. We prefer websites like this one where bigots like you come by constantly making challenges and getting consistently shot down.
Projection.
As is typical of bratty children like you, PeeJ, you really aren’t mentally or emotionally capable of acknowledging that anyone else is right. Therefore, your only response to facts and other arguments is to constantly attempt to shift your worldview, contradict yourself, apply rules to others than you won’t follow, and spout information that you later ignore or repudiate.
In short, the goalposts ARE dancing in your worldview. But that’s because you’re standing at the fifty-yard line spinning.
So you won’t stop lying about Fluke. That really does a lot for your credibility. I suspect you would like for businesses to able to not hire black people.
Note the difference in how I say that and in how you make blanket statements of what I believe. You are a petulant, childish, hateful person.
I’d happily concede your being right if you ever were. you haven’t been factually correct, for the most part, and illogical for the whole part. You don’t understand logic, that much is clear. Your rhetoriciwould be abysmal for a 10 year old. You make blanket, unwarranted claims about me.
Grow up, kid.
So what? We know you want government to ban Christians from operating businesses, that the Obama Party supports and endorses this, and that the majority of Obama supporters like yourself agree.
Furthermore, the screaming liar Fluke demanded that Georgetown be forced by the government to pay her abortion bills instead of her simply choosing another school. That, again, shows that her primary motivation is bigotry and hatred of religious beliefs and that she’s a lying fascist wannabe.
And of course, you play the race card. The last sign of desperation among the Party of Slavery.
And this was classic:
And all that needs to be pointed out is what you say and do.
Fully endorsed and supported by you, PeeJ, and a window into the degree of hatemongering and bigotry that you and your fellow Obama supporters practice.
And let’s post what you claim, PeeJ:
PeeJ @ #128:
So, boys and girls, Sandra Fluke sets out to support liberals in Congress in forcing the Catholic owned and operated university to offer contraception as part of the student health insurance.
Now Pee J tells us that Georgetown Law School is a business and, apparently, being owned and operated by the Catholic Jesuits has nothing to do will the school philosophy and its standards.
Furthermore, apparently, a business can be forced by the government to carry on according to the dictates of the government. [That is a separate point, but PeeJ is making a point of it. Maybe he is opposed to the whole concept of gay bars.]
Sandra Fluke chose to go to Georgetown. Sandra Fluke chose to claim in the Democrat press op staged as an official committee meeting that contraception cost the average vagina $3,000 a year. Sandra Fluke made no mention of free condoms from Planned Parenthood, $10 CVS pills, or other ways she could have handled protecting her vagina through self responsibility and personal control.
PeeJ is trying to twist the facts to accomodate the activism of Sandra Fluke. Well, Sandra Fluke should have enough ethics to quit that crappy Catholic prison and jump into a liberal law school where they have condom machines in every dorm room and the school nanny is forever putting birth control pills on your pillow.
Sandra Fluke and PeeJ must be real world class imbeciles not to be aware of the Catholic stance on contraceptives.
How socialist was the OL’ National *SOCIALIST* German *WORKERS*’ Party? Let me count the ways:
– In 1924, Hitler stated that “basically, National Socialism and Marxism are the same.”
– In 1927, Hitler said “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries… we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
– In 1932, Goebbels said that the Nazi Party was a “workers’ party”, “on the side of labour, and against finance.”
– In 1932, Goebbels wrote in his diary that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, “it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism.”
Most important fact is simply that the fascist economic model is, in its essentials, indistinguishable from so-called ‘social democracy’: Keep much private property ownership, but burden firms with so many regulations, directives, mandates, restrictions, and programs to allegedly “help” them that the economy is, in fact, centrally planned and run for the benefit of the Big Government – Big Banking – Big Labor electoral coalition. (Remember, Hitler was democratically elected.)
Now let’s look at the evidence for that idea. Did the Nazis call for, and implement, the same socio-economic program as so-called ‘social democrats’? What the Nazis were into:
– “Stimulus” (deficit spending and government works programs), which some New Deal programs were modeled after: check.
– Expanded social reinsurance systems, which some New Deal programs were modeled after: check.
– Inflationary money printing: check.
– Wage and price controls: check.
– Private property existing in name only; actual government direction of the economy, as government exercised the substantive powers of ownership through regulation and mandates: check.
– Strong belief that the function of the State is to provide a livelihood for its citizens: check. (Point 7 of the Nazis’ “25 Point Program”)
– Strong belief that the common good comes before the private good and the individual must work for the State: check. (Points 10 and 18) (cf. Hillary Clinton, “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”)
– Government confiscation of industry profits: check. (Point 14… and, as Peter Schiff recently showed, something that today’s Democrats get behind.)
– Belief in government control of all education: check. (Point 20)
– Belief in government control of the media: check. (Point 22)
– State interference in personal health habits: check. (Point 21, and something Michelle Obama is big on.)
– Actual persecution of religion, despite professions of religious freedom: check. (Again, so much for Hitler being a ‘devout’ Catholic.)
– Policies to actively promote dependence on government rather than the nuclear family: check.
– Classifying people by racial categories and privileging some over others (as the Obamunists do today, just in a different form): check.
– Elevating the national government further above regional and local governments, believing that federalism is antiquated and irrational: check.
All you have to do is add a) opposition to Israel as a proxy for anti-Semitism, and b) a crude/cynical willingness to appeal to people’s nationalism/patriotism in order to bring about any or all of the above policies, and you have… the modern American Left.
The truth is, Hitler was AT LEAST as much socialist, as he was Christian. If you want to degrade the word “devout” and use it to describe his conflicted, tenuous and politically-motivated Christianity: then fine, that makes Hitler an *ultra-devout* socialist.
Now watch Ignoramus PeeJ stick his fingers in ears and go “LALALALALALALLALALALAALALALALALALALALALALA!” As we all LOL 🙂
As for what I mean by “socialism”, I go with Kevin Williams’ view:
By the way, in 2011 we had a rash of Democrats calling basically for dictatorship:
– NC Gov. Perdue calling for suspension of elections.
– Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. calling for suspension of the constitution.
– Left-wing “economist” Paul Krugman indicating that a massive, World War-scale rearmanent program would be just the thing for the economy.
– President Obama periodically whining that the U.S. isn’t more like China (a repressive dictatorship).
I think that in 2012, there was more whining from left-liberals about why couldn’t the U.S. be like China.
So… distrust of elections and the Constitution… increasing opposition to Israel, combined with widespread belief in conspiracy theories (9-11 Trutherism) which blame problems on Teh Jooz… crude/cynical attempts to appeal to nationalism and patriotism… racism, albeit implemented as white-hating racism rather than white-adoring racism…. and the Nazi version of socialism (some private property, but a centrally planned economy with confiscation of profits)..
…today’s Democrats have it all!
And let’s post what you claim, PeeJ:
I didn’t write that. Fallacy of guilt by association. Nexxxxxt!
LOL.
So you try using a guilt-by-association with Hitler to Christians, while screaming it’s a logical fallacy when people are linked to a claim that you directly endorsed and supported:
Good thing you’re taking the idiot Levi down with you, showing how Levi supports and endorses these claims as well.
Agreed – “Fallacy of guilt by association” is all over Peej’s comments, including his silly comment about Hitler’s religion. And it is a fallacy. But I’ve had a great deal of fun here, showing how Peej can’t even get his fallacies right!
Did someone say that the government should endorse or sponsor a particular religion? I don’t remember seeing that.
Who is arguing against less intrusive government?
What about that judge in Pennsylvania who lectured the atheist who dressed up as “zombie Mohammed” and was harrassed by a Muslim or being offensive? Surely a judge, speaking from a position of authority and power, isn’t constitutionally mandated to lecture someone due to that person exercising his freedom of speech.
This is from one of PeeJ’s comments:
That is all the Christians are doing; calling the hateful atheists out for their bigotry.
I wonder if that has anything to do with some atheists constantly ridiculing religious people. That doesn’t excuse death threats, but you get treated how you treat others (and it is unfortunate that the image of all atheists is tainted by the actions of the a**holes. That shouldn’t happen).
I’m pretty sure a devout Catholic wouldn’t ever commit genocide.
Sweden isn’t a purely socialist country. I don’t know about Norway, but it has oil.
I have to wonder why, if everyone here (except Levi) is such an idiot, why PeeJ bothers commenting here at all.
“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..” – Mein Kampf
“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man […]” -Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922
“The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life…. The National Government regard the two Christian Confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality. ” -Adolf Hitler, in his speech to the Reichstag on 23 March 1933
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
Providence has caused me to be Catholic, and I know therefore how to handle this Church. – Adolf Hitler, reportedly to have said in Berlin in 1936 on the enmity of the Catholic Church to National Socialism
I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright. – Adolf Hitler, in a speech to National Socialist women at the Nuremberg Parteitag of 1936 [11 Sept. 1936]
This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I so often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity– and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds. -Adolf Hitler, speaking of the Winter Help Campaign on 5 Oct. 1937
The National Socialist Movement has wrought this miracle. If Almighty God granted success to this work, then the Party was His instrument. – Adolf Hitler, in his proclamation to the German People on 01 Jan. 1939
I] never lost my belief, in the midst of setbacks which were not spared me during my period of struggle. Providence has had the last word and brought me success. – Adolf Hitler, speech of 23 Nov. 1939
But he who dares to use the word “God” for such devilish activity blasphemes against Providence and, according to our belief, he cannot end except in destruction. – Adolf Hitler, speaking about Jews and international “warmongers,” on 04 May 1941, before the Reichstag
Few people can begin to imagine the fate which would have overtaken Germany had the assassination attempt succeeded. I myself thank Providence and my Creator not for preserving me – my life consists only of worry and work for my People – I thank him only for allowing me to continue to bear this burden of worry, and to carry on my work to the best of my ability.
Once again I take this opportunity, my old comrades in arms, to greet you, joyful that I have once again been spared a fate which, while it held no terror for me personally, would have had terrible consequences for the German People. I interpret this as a sign from Providence that I must continue my work, and therefore I shall continue it. – Adolf Hitler, speaking about the attempt to kill him, in a radio broadcast on 20 July 1944
God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work….
[…]
In vowing ourselves to one another, we are entitled to stand before the Almighty and ask Him for His grace and His blessing. No people can do more than that everybody who can fight, fights, and that everybody who can work, works, and that they all sacrifice in common, filled with but one thought: to safeguard freedom and national honor and thus the future of life. -Adolf Hitler, in a radio address, 30 Jan. 1945
SOURCES:
Baynes, Norman H. Ed. “The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939,” Vol. 1 of 2, Oxford University Press, 1942
Cornwell, John, “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,” Viking, 1999
Steigmann-Gall, Richard “The Holy Reich: Nazi conception of Christianity, 1919-1945,” Cambridge University Press, 2003
Online:
Adolf Hitler Speeches from http://www.adolfhitler.ws/
If an employer doesn’t like black people, they should be able to not hire black people. Anyone in the private sector should be able to hire or fire anyone at any time for any reason.
– Left-wing Nobel Laureate
“economist”Paul KrugmanFTFY.
indicating that a massive, World War-scale rearmanent program would be just the thing for the economy.
Yes, he noted that. Just as the massive government spending program known as WWII finally broke the great depression. Not that he called for it to happen, mind you. So there you go again with the deception and dishonesty.
If an employer doesn’t like black people, they should be able to not hire black people. Anyone in the private sector should be able to hire or fire anyone at any time for any reason.
Comment by Rattlesnake — September 7, 20
At least you’re not hiding your racism.
I’m pretty sure a devout Catholic wouldn’t ever commit genocide.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy. You guys trying to make sure you use every known fallacy?
Did someone say that the government should endorse or sponsor a particular religion? I don’t remember seeing that.
The government putting a nativity thingy on the courthouse lawn is endorsing Xianity. The school administrators, by scheduling a prayer, are endorsing religion. And so on. The courts have held it to be true and unconstitutional since 1947.
Who is arguing against less intrusive government?
Most of the people in this thread. Oh not in so many words, but that is effectively what they are doing. Seems you don’t realize it either.
What about that judge in Pennsylvania who lectured the atheist who dressed up as “zombie Mohammed” and was harrassed by a Muslim or being offensive? Surely a judge, speaking from a position of authority and power, isn’t constitutionally mandated to lecture someone due to that person exercising his freedom of speech.
He gave him a good talking-to! We’re on the slippery slope to sharia! Suppose he had dressed up as zombie-Jesus. He would have been harassed or, more likely, assaulted or killed, by christians. But supposing he was merely harassed, would the judge have been justified in lecturing him?
Actually, PeeJ, the facts are quite different.
The entertaining part is that the person who was blaspheming Christians, in particular Catholics, was NOT assaulted.
Which demonstrates your bigotry. And your hypocrisy, since you aren’t making any such cracks about Muslims. That is because bigots like yourself are cowards, who know that you WILL be assaulted if you blaspheme Islam — and that your Obama courts will protect the assaulters.
See, that’s where your hypocrisy becomes obvious, PeeJ. As I pointed out above, you don’t care about taxpayer funding and support of violent Islam; you only care about attacking Christianity.
And ILC is right. That’s because you’re a coward.
hateful atheists
I know you are hurt when people don’t share your beliefs. But it isn’t just atheists saying it. Yes, we are saying you are wrong about god. That is SO HATEFUL! Every Staurday when the Jews go to synagogue the Xians call for them to be ostracized, or executed because they are hatefully saying Xians are wrong about god. And vice-versa on Sunday. Except that doesn’t happen.
I see the Pope hatefully saying John Haggee and his followioers are worng about god. And John Haggee … wait, John Haggee DOES call for the pope to die. Oops.
Okay, how about Pat Robertson hatefully saying the Lutherans are wrong about god – that is SO HATEFUL. And those hateful Lutherans hatefully say that the Baptists are worng about the hatefully hating Jehovahs Witnesses who …. And then there’s the Mormons, those hateful haters.
And those hateful atheists with their hatefully insisting on saying hateful things before every public ceremony. Why, they are worse than the Xians who insist that their particular flavor of being wrong about god is cast into law! Those hateful atheists hatefully yell at you that you’re not going to hell! HOW HATEFUL!
And let’s once again point out the facts:
PeeJ supports and endorses the government and governmental officials endorsing militant Islamic organizations.
PeeJ supports and endorses the use of taxpayer dollars to fund militant Islamic organizations that abuse women and children.
So again, PeeJ, your problem is with Christians. You want the government to openly discriminate against Christians and Jews.
These examples prove that you endorse and support government endorsing and giving taxpayer dollars to one religion while openly discriminating and denying others based on your personal bigotry and hatred toward them. This puts you and your Obama Party in violation of the Constitution, given that you clearly endorse and support one religious belief over others.
Actually, PeeJ, we can show exactly the statements that atheists like yourself make and endorse against Christians and Jews:
By the way, the desperate spinning by you and your fellow bigots like Levi is proof positive that your hate frenzy at the DNC is NOT selling well. This is about the time where the Obama Party desperately tries to pretend that it isn’t a bunch of hypocritical anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigots.
Yep. There’s no voter fraud at all, the economy’s doing just fine and nobody builds their own business.
Why do YOU hate America, dickhead?
“bigotry” “hypocrisy’ Those words do not mean what you think they mean.
He instead dressed the victim down for failing to appreciate how sensitive Muslims — including the judge himself — are about Islam. Um, that’s what I said – his action was inciteful. That the zombie pope was not asaulted has no bearing on the matter. Put on a zombie Jesus (it just occurred to me that zombie Jesus is redundant) costume and walk down a bible belt town. Go ahead, see what happens.
Now FYI, Islam is every bit as idiotic as christianity. If any of you were Muslim I’d be bashing your religion but since you profess to be Xians that’s what I talk about. Well, none of the major religions is quite as idiotic as Mormonism, it takes Scientology or the Raelians or maybe Heavens Gate to match it.
I’m not racist. Since you’re such an ass, I’ll throw in that you are an idiotic child with reading comprehension problems if you actually inferred from my comment that I’m racist. Idiot.
No, actually it isn’t. You can’t just claim to be a devout Catholic without living by its teachings.
Dear boy, there are NO atheists like me. It is funny how you not only won’t abandon your guilt by association fallacy, the associations exist mainly in your head and nowhere else. Did you lose your stalker’s list of bookmarks to things I actually said? Oh, about that stalker thing – I’m just not into you so quit hoping.
Well, you can claim to be a devout Catholic, but that doesn’t make you one.
Of course not. And you completely missed the point of my comment. Judges don’t always abide by the constitution.
Okay. Would you mind citing a specific example?
I highly doubt that.
Please provide links to documented cases of vote fraud. You can find them because we know that it happens. The point is that it _rarely_ happens and even more rarely is it in-person fraud. In-person vote fraud is the only type of vote fraud that voter ID laws combat. The point is that republican backed voter ID laws are intended to disenfranchise many voters. In other words, they are an attempt to commit vote fraud through legal means.
By the way – could it be that Rmoney won’t relase his returns because they show him to be a resident fo California when he voted in Massacghusetts, claiming rather implausibly that he, a massively wealthy man was living in his son’s unfinished basement at the time? Such good reason to think that Rmoney committed … wait for it … vote fraud!
Then too, there was real vote fraud committed by the Republican Secretary of State of Indiana Charles White.
Now then, “the fundamentals of the economy are sound.” Gee, I wish I could remember who said that!
The nobody builds their own business thing is a flat out lie as you well know. Liar.
No, actually it isn’t. You can’t just claim to be a devout Catholic without living by its teachings.
So all those supposedly celibate priests aren’t Catholic. The 73% of American Catholic women who have used birth control – they aren’t Catholic. Those 90 or so percent of people who have had pre or extramarital sex, they aren’t either. I dare say that by your accounting there aren’t more than a handful of Catholics in the whole country.
But aside from that, you just tried to refute my accusation by RESORTING TO THE VERY FALLACY! That is so precious!
“I’m not racist” said the guy who thinks people should be able to not hire people due to their race. ASpparently you also suffer the case of words not meaning what you think they mean.
Again, I am not religious. I might as well be an atheist. I’m not hurt by Christians, though, and I don’t share their beliefs.
Your temper tantrum is highly amusing considering there is evidence of hatred directed towards Christianity in this very thread.
Do you think that perhaps a Christian would find that statement offensive? If so, why do they not have the right to “call out” the person espousing that viewpoint without being accused of having a persecution complex? Would you also say a gay person who said opposition to gay marriage is homophobic has a persecution complex?
Even the devil can quote scripture. Hitler in no eat behaved in a manner consistent with Christian teaching. He was a cynical politician pandering to religious element of the electorate… Much like the DNC.
Are you really equating those things to genocide (if not, your whole point is invalid)? And those people obviously aren’t devout Catholics, either, if they don’t abide by the Catholic Church’s scriptures.
No, I didn’t commit a fallacy there. If there is a given qualification for being something (as there is with a devout Catholic; i.e. not committing genocide is a qualification for being a devout Catholic because committing genocide violates one of the ten commandments), then the “no true Scotsman” fallacy does not apply.
The idea of employers having freedom to employ whom they choose is as offensive to leftists as any other freedom. The Government will tell us whom we may employ, ad well as tell is where and when wesu express our religious beliefs.
But don’t call it fascism.
That is, if there is a given qualification for being something (as there is with a devout Catholic; i.e. not committing genocide is a qualification for being a devout Catholic because committing genocide violates one of the ten commandments), and one is not that thing because he or she does not meet those qualifications, then the “no true Scotsman” fallacy does not apply.
I have no problem with black people. I just don’t think the government has the right to tell businesses who they should hire.
Ratttlesnake, peejay, like most leftists, confuses religion with ethnicity or some sort if quaint hobby. He is incapable of understanding why Hitler was no Christian.
He is more to be pitied than anythimg rose, such sad ignorance and hatred. He had no idea how ugly it is,
I love how the desperate screaming PeeJ insists voter fraud doesn’t happen, then tries to attack Republicans by citing a case of voter fraud.
So what we see here is that PeeJ supports voter fraud — by Obama supporters. PeeJ screams and cries and whines that laws to stop voter fraud will prevent he and his fellow Obama supporters from committing voter fraud.
Next:
Actually, this happened in Pennsylvania, which Barack Obama claims is full of religious bigots who would assault and murder anyone who criticizes their religion.
And it didn’t happen. So instead of acknowledging that you stereotyped and acted in a bigoted fashion, you tried moving the goalposts to a theoretical.
Duplicitous lying bigot boy. What a sign of your bigoted hate that is, that you can’t be a man and admit that these people did NOT assault one of your fellow blaspheming atheists.
And also, what that case proves is that atheists like yourself deliberately set out to incite and attack Christians AND Muslims. So your whining about how atheists “don’t care” is once again proven to be a lie.
PeeJ screamed that Hitler was a Christian, so all Christians are Nazis.
Once again you assail me for something I never said. I said it (not screamed, there’s that projection thing again) in direct response to your claim about “statist” something or others. Boy, you just keep poking yourself in your eye.
Meanwhile, since PeeJ wanted to go there, we can point out how he and his Barack Obama are proven employers and endorsers of tax cheats and those who commit welfare fraud.
LOL.
Then we can prove DNC speaker Tammy Duckworth committed voter fraud, since she represented herself as living in two different precincts and voting locations.
And we can show that Obama Party leader Charlie Rangel committed voter fraud.
But since PeeJ supports and endorses both of these individuals, as does the Obama Party, once again we can show PeeJ and Barack Obama screaming and crying over alleged behavior that they support and endorse themselves.
I love how the desperate screaming PeeJ insists voter fraud doesn’t happen
oh now you’re getting desperate or completely deranged. What I actually said:
Please provide links to documented cases of vote fraud. You can find them because we know that it happens
Wow. Just wow.
This is hilarious.
PeeJ whines:
Followed by:
So he screams and cries that he “never said” — followed by “I said”.
But that’s the typical pathology of the desperate boy who is cornered and is throwing a tantrum to try to get away. He’s no longer rational or capable of intelligent thought; he’s just screaming and kicking like he used to do to his parents.
Nope, you are, as is made obvious by the quote:
And there we have it. You’re an ignorant and desperate Obama boy who doesn’t even realize that his whines and screams that voter fraud doesn’t happen are disproved by his trying to cite a case of it to attack Republicans.
Funny how the rational atheists who really don’t care about religion have driven this thread to 200 comments.
Oh, and PeeJ? Do you think you and your fellow atheist Obama bigots still have credibility after everyone has seen what you post and do?
I never said anything about hitler with respect to all Christians. You inferred that, probably because you are obsessed with screaming guilt by association character assassinations. As evidenced numerous times in this very thread. As I was replying directly to your previous comment, even quoting it, and since I am obviously well aware of the fallacy you seem to love so much, only an idiot could think I was equating Hitler with all Xians.
But you just keep poking yourself with that stick.
So “we know voter fraud happens” equals “THERE IS NO VOTE FRAUD.” That’s some mighty fine logic you got there, mighty fine indeed. I think I’ll try it out. Black is white. Up is down. Hey this is easy!
Wrong.
Poor desperate boy is starting to believe his own delusions. No wonder you hate this website so much — it stores your words in an easily referenceable form where everyone can see what a complete and total hypocritical bigot you are.
In your mind, definitely.
But of course, that’s what happens when you combine a complete and irrational hatred of Republicans with a desperation to block anything that would prevent the voter fraud on which your Obama Party relies.
What is really hypocritical is that your stealing absentee ballots is disenfranchising minorities directly. That’s what makes you so hilarious, PeeJ; for all your screaming about “disenfranchisement”, YOU’RE the ones stealing ballots and stripping peoples’ votes.
I did not write that. But I do agree that his Uncle Tom antics, selling out gay people, is loathsome. You do understand that Tintin wasn’t calling Dan a c*CI-sucking-etc, yes? Tintin was pointing out that’s what you Republicans call Dan that. I have seen that sort of thing happen in person on several occasions. I may have said at some point or other that Dan is a piece of sh*t when i was particularly angry with his loathsome kapo bullshit.
If you want to insist that black is white you are free to do so but you should probably expect people to point at you and laugh. I’m not pointing at you but I am laughing. Out loud.
What’s the matter, PeeJ? Your credibility going up in smoke with every time that it’s posted what you and your fellow Obama bigots endorse, support, and say about Christians and Jews?
And now you’re screaming like the tantrum-throwing child that you are that it’s DAN’S fault that you and your precious Tintin write and say such things.
You really are a child. Helpless and irresponsible, frenzied, emotionally immature, and just plain stupid.
things like
?
Hey, since you’re so hot on quiting that post, let’s take a look at what preceded that tirade.
Yep, he hates Dan. Not for what he is but for what he _does_. That’s one difference between people like us and people like you: we hate people for what they _do_, you hate people for what they _are_.
Ignoramus Peej is so cute, the way he prattles on about fallacies, while committing them right and left! Someone should keep a tally. We’ve already seen him use Guilt By Association, demand that people prove negatives, and that Peej simply does not respect facts or evidence, or even know the basic meaning of certain words. There’s also this:
Which is the fallacy of Argument From Authority (Peej added the “Nobel Laureate”, as if that means we should listen to such a destructive fool as Krugman). Plus Peej’s general hypocrisy, and more, I am sure. Just don’t have time to tally them all myself!
That reality you inhabit – does it involve drugs? Seriously, I’m beginning to wrory again that you are a danger to yourself and others.
Awwwww…. Did I hurwt yow fweelings, Peejy? Man, it must suck to be you! ROTFL 🙂
Nope. Once again you are flat out wrong. Hugely, massively, hilariously wrong. I made no appeal to authority in an attempt to establish the relative merits of a proposition. I simply noted that as he is a Nobel Laureate in Economics, the scare quotes were inappropriate. I could have noted that his doctoral degree in economics and his tenure as a professor of economics point out the inanity of the scare quotes but I thought the way I did it was cuter.
Yep, people who claim Paul Krugman is not an economist or maybe that he’s a dumb-ass economist or whatever are not exampls of Dunning-Kruger. Not at all, nope. But it’s your continued demonstration that you have no knowledge of or expertise in rhetoric while claiming – totally, completely, utterly incorrectly – that I am making the mistakes gives me a hearty laugh. Dunning-Kruger thy name is North Dallas 30IQ
Awww, and widdle Peejy fills his diaper again screaming and crying that it’s all that mean Dan’s fault for making rational and logical PeeJ and his fellow Obama supporters write and say this:
Dan Blatt is a loathsome piece of sh*t who will sell out other gay people in order to curry the favor of straight Republicans who pat him on the head every now but then call him a c*ck-sucking heels-in-the-air fudge-packed girlie-boy behind his back (even though only the girlie-boy part is actually true). Dan says all this stuff because the probability that any gay man would ever give enough of a sh!t about Dan to visit him in a hospital, much less to have a relationship with him, is remote — as remote as the possibility that Dan will ever have sex with anyone other than a blind leper in a darkened truck stop in rural Alabama, and even then the leper will have to down a fifth of Jack Daniel’s before he can bring himself to do it. F*ck you, Dan, you wretched, illiterate prick.
So what’s that again? PeeJ whines and screams and cries that it’s OK to make these kinds of attacks against people if they offend you?
But didn’t PeeJ already whine and scream and cry that it’s WRONG to insult and attack people, even if they offend you?
That’s why you hate us so much, PeeJ; we actually call out what hypocrites and liars you are, and show people just how bigot atheists like you and Levi really act.
Once people realize that you’re an insane bigot who tries to justify saying such things about people and screaming that you can do whatever you want by claiming people provoked you, your screaming and crying fits about other people calling YOU names and attacking you violently just explode and expose you as a worthless spoiled brat.
I will admit that your “I know you are but what am I” is getting tiresome so I’ll say tata, sweetcheeks. Don’t think about my co*k too much when you masturbate tonight please. Your secret desire to be on the receiving end of it just squicks me out.
Except that I didn’t make that comment.
Looks like imbecile PeeJ can’t even read correctly.
But that’s typical. PeeJ has spent his entire life among leftists, and therefore is about as equipped to debate and think logically as a donkey is to play upon a harp.
Ooooh, projection! I forgot to add, Projection!
Because you want us to RESPECT HIZ AUTHORITAY! LOL
Peej: Looks like you are a projecting loser, a delusional liar, AND a hypocrite – all at once!
No worries. I don’t have sex with lying cowards.
Heh 🙂 And isn’t this about the third time Peej has claimed to be leaving?
Yup. And he’ll be back, ILC, because tantrum-throwing children like himself are spiteful and always try for revenge against those who discipline them.
Two more of PeeJ’s ‘phallus-ies’.
PeeJ @ #126:
Did I ask why you demean me? Do I feel demeaned by the likes of you?
Do I care a whit about why you are “pretty sure” there is no God?
Do I want a brilliant person like you to waste his most valuable time and intellect on a me when you have determined that I am delusional, stupid and that I stumble all over myself making silly assertions and being illogical?
You slam every door at hand in the face of anyone you demean and that is pretty much anyone who ruffles your prissy plumage and moon bat infested belfry.
What is your game plan? You shift the topic, ignore the core points and name call as if everyone in the basement with you is keeping score and you have a strong chance of winning a night out with Obama’s pet mule.
What he REALLY wants is a night out with Barry himself.
VtheK,
I have not “Fisked” your comments because there is no need. I have been following this incredible slime show in awe and wonderment. Where the source of all this high testosterone self-esteem which PeeJ feeds on is a mystery to me. In truth, I have never seen ILC get so exasperated.
Such truculent ranting and certitude belongs in a Community Organizer Social Engineering Seminar where they can all calm down on weed and Krispy Kremes and then get their take of the Tides Foundation money for attending.
I didn’t think PeeJ could say anything dumber, but then he throws out “Uncle Tom” and “kapo.” He then makes an immature insult about sexuality. And he’s been insulting people’s intelligence for much of this thread. Wow.
#136:
A DEVOUT Catholic old Hitler was. PeeJ has declared it so.
It is time to chuckle myself to sleep.
heliotrope: I wouldn’t say I’m exasperated. Becuase the term as I understand it implies more than annoyance, it implies anger. If you think I’m angry, maybe you’re aware of something in me here, that I’m not. I just find myself thinking Peej deserves to get what he dishes out – such as his name-calling, which you’ve noticed – and I found myself willing to be part of that. So long as it’s fun; and so far, it has been!
ILC,
I take your point and agree that I do not detect anger in your words. I was struck by your mocking: “Awwwww…. Did I hurwt yow fweelings, Peejy? Man, it must suck to be you! ROTFL” and I assumed a nose twisting that was a little rough on the cartilage. Call it projection!
Oh yes, I was twisting!
There is a good argument to be made for not sinking to Peej’s level. And maybe I should have remembered it. I find that my patience for people matches the level of goodwill that I sense in them; in other words, I have no patience for people who have no goodwill. Maybe it is a fault to begin with, and then, maybe I went a little far with it!
Well, as is doubtlessly obvious, I do not suffer fools gladly. But I was paid to suffer fools, so I developed some strategies along the way to help them hang themselves is full view. From a St. Augustine perspective, that is a sinful sort of thing to do. But, I always want to keep a little something in reserve to repent for.
Fluke is a professional ACTIVIST. Everything she does is calculated. Every step is the one she wanted to make. She recently got engaged to a rich man that could cash for her crotchcare. Mutterperl should be more than willing to make sure she keeps the playground disease free, for his own health, and he can only HOPE she isn’t going to use him as a sperm donor someday.
She also thinks that the nation’s taxpayers should pay for sex changes. Why stop at free sex changes? Why not free facelifts boobjobs, hair plugs or tummy tucks? How about free dental crowns, and lasik surgery, a free personal trainer and chef. Some could use a free shrink, drug treatments, and while we are at it, let’s just open the doors for WHATEVER an individual WANTS to do.
PJ says ” I said I was completely certain (not that I had proof) that one particular god is non-existent.”
Expressing a leap of faith.. while spending hours and hours and wasting tons of energy (Al Gore will not be happy with your carbon footprint) making fun of people who express a leap of faith that there is a God.
Why is is that people who condemn Christianity have no real knowledge of Christianity? They seem to think being able to reference a few pieces of the Old Testament is all they need to know about Christianity.
I also find it interesting that anti-religious people rant on incessantly about Christianity making no mention of Islam until the opposing voice brings Islam into the conversation. Then you get the standard, “Oh I meant all religions.”
I am still waiting to read the stories of a Mosque kiss in.
God said, “Let there be light.”
The brightest event in the history of the universe was the big bang. I see no contradiction there.
Excerpts of Cardinal Dolan’s stinkbomb prayer at the close of Demonrat Convention:
[Dedicated to PeeJ and Levi who take no offense whatsoever since religion is absurd nonsense.]
A bit late, still on vacation, but I thought I’d add more facts that PeeJ and Levi won’t understand.
1) Insurance companies write policies for the plan sponsor, who pays for them. Unlike the government, insurance companies are very tolerant, allowing for plans that allow for abortion, or plans that only allow it for the ‘big three’. Levi and PeeJ have no qualms about forcing employers to violate their beliefs for their benefit.
2) Georgetown does cover contraceptive for ‘health issues’. Sandra Fluke lied. But that’s ok…
3) since she never testified to congress.
4) Standard disclaimer applies.
5) I find it funny that an admitted racist like Levi accuses others of ‘putting people in little groups’. Given his belief in killing children that are inconvenient and mental limitations of ‘Arabians’ after all.
That is a great summary of atheism (in the narrow sense, at least).
As do I; if he is so concerned about people being put into groups, he should be focused more on the left who incessantly classifies people into groups based on skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, income, et cetera than on private religions.
It occurs to me, looking over this thread, how many of these conflicts disappear if the Federal Government and the Courts keep their big fat greedy fingers out of them.
Insurance companies write their own policies. Some cover contraception and baby-murder. Others don’t. People decide for themselves which policies to buy. Problem solved.
Some communities put Nativity Scenes in their parks for Christmas and have prayers in school that students can choose to join or not to join. People who don’t like prayer or Christmas can move to communities that don’t do those things, or simply decline to participate. Problem solved.
It’s only because fascists like Levi and Peej want to force their views on everybody, everywere that these problems exist.
With defenders like these, religion hardly needs enemies.
After contributing nothing, Iggy sits back and passes judgment.
(Just an observation, as I myself made no effort in this thread either to defend or attack religion. Only to engage Peej on some historical facts that he’s gotten quite wrong.)
Back at #52 PeeJ went on a riff about the Xian God/Xian gods. I was immediately confused. (I have been to the Taoist temple in Xian several times and spent many interesting hours talking theology with the monks.)
So, I went Googling and I found this which blew my eyelids wide open.
My naivety knows no bounds. Somehow, I never thought to study “assertive” or “aggressive” atheism. But, in reading the page at the link, I have discovered a window into how really ignorant of religion some people can be.
In the Xian telling, the Dìxià zhǔ (Agents Beneath the Earth) can escape their position if they successfully keep things contained for a long period of years in the Taoist Hell. That is to say, the Taoists believe that in the immortal life, it is possible to escape Hell by containing the devil.
I think that any open-minded individual would be interested in the belief system(s) of a people and be respectful of how they express their faith.
The atheist use of Satan is nothing new. Here is Saul Alinsky’s dedication in his Rules for Radicals: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer”
Ever since the Tower of Babel, fools have been posing as learned men. I am fairly certain that Alinsky’s reference to Lucifer was a mocking one, not one of respect. I label him a fool, because he mocks evil even though his work is firmly rooted in utilizing evil. He is, in essence, Lucifer’s agent.
Joseph Campbell wrote endlessly about “the power of myth” and to him everything that required faith was myth. For your total confusion, here is Joseph Campbell’s thesis: “These mythic figurations are the “ancestral forms,” the insubstantial archetypes, of all that is beheld by the eye as physically substantial, material things being understood as ephermeral concretions out of the energies of these noumena.
No, you do not understand that. Nobody does. It is babel, straight from the fools babbling at the Tower of Babel. But it is meant to dazzle you with impressive intelligence you can not quite comprehend.
Oh, but wait! Campbell tells us of the tower of Babel: No one of adult mind today would turn to the Book of Genesis to learn of the origins of the earth, the plants, the beasts, and man. There was no flood, no tower of Babel, no first couple in paradise, and between the first known appearance of men on earth and the first building of cities, not one generation (Adam to Cain) but a good two million must have come into this world and passed along. Today we turn to science for our imagery of the past and of the structure of the world, and what the spinning demons of the atom and the galaxies of the telescope’s eye reveal is a wonder that makes the babel of the Bible seem a toyland dream of the dear childhood of our brain.
That is what the atheist needs to feel empowered and to deny faith. You see, if Campbell and other atheists were to pose the conclusion above as their premise, they would have to prove the fallacy of faith.
All they have is theory, or, in Campbell’s terms, their faith in the scientific creation myth. They turn to Freud, Nietzsche, Darwin, Dostoevsky, Marxism, progressivism, modernism, and pseudo-scientific theories of the “id” and “false consciousness” and “unconscious impulses.” There are no absolute, universal or timeless truths which guide us in how we ought to conform. True freedom is self-defined and not culturally created and is created by following one’s impulses in asserting one’s own unique individuality.
Just how all of this comes together to manage the peace, provide security, pursue happiness and manage wealth is not defined except by an irrational dependence and trust in “government.”
Government becomes the character and embodiment of all creation myth. Government controls you for your own good. Only government can contain the people. It is both God and Satan, depending on where you stand.
This is actually what is taught in the liberal canon. If you have never understood Cornell West or Van Jones or Bill Ayres or leftists in general, it is because you let morality and ethics cloud your thinking. They don’t.
Nietzsche dreamed up the Superman (Übermensch) who would not be bound by the chains of “mediocre-industrial-scientific-bourgeois-Judeo-Christian culture” of “thou shalt not.” No, the Superman affirms: “I will.” “Yes We Can.” The Superman takes, strives, creates, struggles, dominates and lives instinctively, fully, recklessly and thoroughly enjoys it.
God implies a structure that is anathema to such people.
Do you honestly believe Peej or Levi have spent any amount of time in Christian churches? They seem to have a very… uninformed notions of what Christians are actually taught.
Exactly, heliotrope.
Religion is the acknowledgment of that which is greater than you are, beyond your comprehension, and towards which you strive.
Wisdom is all three as well.
For Levi, for PeeJ, for Ignatius, and for others, this is anathema simply because the acknowledgment of things beyond their ken, or the idea that they are not already perfect, is striking at the very core of their belief system. Their belief in their own perfection is why they feel that they should be in charge, that they should be our leaders, and that they should drag the rest of us “kicking and screaming” into their utopia.
The existence of God challenges their godhood. The existence of values not theirs threatens their power.
My BF is justifies his atheism by saying he can’t imagine God caring about each and everyone of us anymore than he can care about the millions of bacteria living on his body. His rationale excludes the possibility that God could have an intelligence orders of magnitude greater than his own. He is essentially limiting God to his capacity to understand God. I think that’s wherein lies the flaw in his rationale.
Just saying, while I am sure there are atheists or other non-religious people who fit NDT’s description in #243, not all do. If I had been raised in a religious household, I have no idea if I would be agnostic as I am now, but the reason I am agnostic is simply Occam’s razor. I can’t see how it would be possible to prove that God or some spiritual force doesn’t exist, but most of the evidence I am aware of suggests to me that there is no God. Having said that, something I’ve been learning about recently is challenging my current beliefs: quantum physics. What I’ve learned from quantum physics is that, among other things, there is much more to the universe than is apparent with just classical mechanics. And, something I think that is important in science is to always keep an open mind and be willing to challenge what you previously accepted as truth (and a flaw that is apparent in many people who claim to be “pro-science” or something is that they don’t seem to live by that).
Of course, rejecting religion doesn’t necessitate the rejection of morals. [Real] Judeo-Christian morals (particularly Mormonism (suck it, PeeJ)) have created some of the most successful civilizations in the history of the word, and my experience and observation indicate that they contribute to personal happiness and success. It would be foolish to reject those morals just because you don’t believe in the spiritual aspect of Christianity.
Exactly. If God were completely comprehensible by humanity, he would not by definition BE God; humanity would be.
You I don’t worry about, Rattlesnake. 🙂
Jesus said that Christians should be like a little child. Part of that is trust; the other part of it is always asking, “Why?”
Lose both and you become static and tyrannical. Levi and his ilk are an excellent example; they trust no one, and they believe that they know everything. Hence they become, entertainingly, like the medieval Church they affect to despise; bureaucratic, rigid, terrified of freedom, and bringing the full weapon of the state down on heretics.
Jesus, save me from your followers.
I love it when the best response a Theophobe can come up with in response to a debate is to quote a bumper sticker.
Ignatius, practice what you preach.
When you and your fellow bigots actually develop and follow standards other than your own immediate self-gratification, then you may criticize the behavior of others.
But until then, all you’re attempting is the desperate Alinsky tactic of trying to exploit other peoples’ standards to your own advantage.
The fact that you atheists and anti-Christian bigots are allowed to exist is a sign that Christians are better than you are, because as we see from you, PeeJ, and your ilk, you certainly won’t reciprocate.
How, very, very cute.
The proud atheist mockingly calls upon the object of his scathing ridicule to save his proud atheist self from the followers of the same object of ridicule he implores for protection.
This form of contemptuous buffoonery is meant as provocation, harassment, persecution, oppression, and cruelty because the bigot Ignatius delights in and relishes the pleasurable satisfaction he gains from his aggression.
Where is the line between Ignatius and the KKK burning a cross on the lawn of a negro family? There is none. All bigots are the same.
Gosh, I wonder whatever happened to “They will know we are Christians by our love”?
No contradiction here: Love the sinner, hate the bigotry.
Have you ever thought about being a good person? If you don’t know how to be one, Jesus is a good place to start.
We love you, Iggy. We just want you to stop being an ignorant, bigoted prick.
That’s easy, Ignatius.
You and your fellow bigots have made it clear that you will use the power of government to attack, harass, and ban from the public square anyone who disagrees with your hatred of religion.
Christians, despite being the majority and more than capable of doing so……have not.
Showing Christian love does not, nor has it ever, meant accepting wanton abuse as right. What it does mean is that one refrains from abusing, even when one can.
Your statement shows the twisted mentality of the manipulative child in demanding that people prove their love by giving you your way. For you to claim that people do not love you unless they allow you to abuse them is beyond perverse and goes well into the range of sociopathic behavior.
Hells, I love Levi so much i spread his words wide and far, so others can see the true rantings of the racist, child killing socialist.
I’ve been to exactly one church service in my life, but that doesn’t matter. It’s pretty easy to get a sense of what Christians are being taught based on what the conservatives are raving about. When 3 Republican Presidential candidates volunteer that they don’t believe evolution is true, you get a pretty good idea – anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and willful ignorance. Oh yeah, and that gays are inferior to straights. Sure, sure, there’s no doubt some lip service and peace and love and harmony, but I don’t really see any of that reflected by the political opinions of the religious right.
I highly doubt that I’ve walled myself off from Christianity more than you’ve walled yourself off from atheism. I am posting here, aren’t I? I love listening to Christian talk radio and used to watch the 700 Club for laughs. If a university or some other organization recorded a religion-vs-atheism debate in the past 10 years, I’ve probably watched it. I actually seek out religious media – can you say the same about your efforts to understand atheism?
You need to look in the mirror before you start trying to identify flaws with other peoples’ rationales. Even if I granted that god existed, we don’t have any reason to think he cares more about us any more than he cares about bacteria, but you explain that away by positing that he’s super intelligent and we can’t understand everything about him. Well, what can’t you explain with that kind of BS answer?
This is the exact opposite of the real world, wherein the Christians are the ones who actively discourage curiosity and claim to have all the answers already. I mean think about what you said there. Christians would have us believe that they know how the universe came into existence, they claim to know the meaning of human life, and they claim to know what happens after you die. Inexplicably, they think the total absence of evidence for any of these claims bolsters their argument!
Of course, when you ask most atheists these kinds of questions, the first thing they typically will say is, “I don’t know,” followed by a best guess based on widely accepted scientific theories. And yet, you would say that we walk around telling people we know everything. Atheists are the first to admit that there is a lot we don’t know, and most of us are eager to see if humanity can find the answers to these big questions.
Religious people pretending to be full of humility, accusing others of being know-it-alls. What could be more ironic?
The morals of the modern West are based on Enlightenment thinking that was an explicit rejection of much of the preceding religious morality, which I will remind you involved a good deal of subjugation and violence. The common human morality existed for thousands of years before Christianity was cooked up and exists in places where Christianity does not factor. The West is in the good shape we are in largely because of global geography and Europe’s easier access to the New World, which gave us a lot of room to grow and resources to exploit. Yeah, yeah, some people are made happier by religion and that’s all well and good. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that telling people how to live their lives is an important part of their religious beliefs, and those kinds of impulses should be identified and confronted. It’s immoral to force an unwilling mother to have a child (or, just as likely, force an unwilling mother to undergo some dangerous, improvised abortion in a motel bathroom). It’s immoral to not allow two people to get married because they’re gay. These aren’t spiritual questions, this is real-world interference in the lives of actual strangers, and I’m pretty sure there’s some lengthy bits of the Constitution that say we shouldn’t be doing that.
Levi, you amuse beyond belief.
Your attempts to rationalize your bigotry show quite nicely that you have never been educated on or even tried to understand any aspect of Christianity or other religious beliefs.
Your screaming and flailing about “subjugation” and “violence” is nothing more than projection. You are a violent bigot, as you have shown with your statement that anyone who disagrees with you should be dragged “kicking and screaming”, as well as your utterly-insane rationalization of the shooting at the FRC being justified because the FRC is “provocative”.
You hate Christians. You openly support governmental punishment of Christians. You support discrimination against Christians and demand that Christians be barred from voting. And most disgustingly, you have to closet your bigotry behind “gay rights”, when your contempt and hatred for conservative gay people is revealed with every post.
You fool no one, Levi. But you regularly demonstrate that you are a fool.
Silly Levi.
The only person forcing a woman to have an abortion in a motel room is you.
Because you wouldn’t be responsible. You wouldn’t accept no. You wouldn’t wear a condom. And you wouldn’t accept the accountability of caring for the woman you got pregnant, or paying for the adoption, or – heaven forbid – actually raising the child.
You are addicted to abortion for the same reason all liberal men are — it gets you off the hook for your own immaturity and stupidity.
Even if it involves killing another human being.
I don’t think it’s so much to ask that in the 21st century, people making extraordinary claims provide extraordinary evidence. Hell, I’ll take any evidence at this point. This I-Was-In-The-Woods-And-Saw-The-Messiah business just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore, and it seems to me that arguing about whose imaginary friend is the best imaginary friend doesn’t do the human race a whole lot of good. All I’m doing is asking you to make sense, and all you can do is flail around and call me names. I’m a bigot because I call for a little coherence, is that it?
That’s a little too convenient, if you ask me. You get to say whatever you want, cite no evidence whatsoever, and then accuse anyone who disagrees with you of bigotry. For example, you can say something that you know to be a complete lie, such as ‘You demand that Christians be barred from voting,’ provide no evidence that this is anything that I’ve ever demanded (because it’s a lie), and if I take issue with it, what? I’m a bigot. Not being a bigot, in this case, means letting you get away with making up stories and lying about me. How do you argue with somebody like that?
In the unlikely event that anyone cares whatsoever….
When Levi speaks of evolution he means everything proven and everything theorized. If you at not on board with some aspects of the theory, you are an evolution denier in Levi’s close-minded world.
We who believe in God have our counterpoint in Levi. He believes in Darwin. Now, of course, any simpleton can read Darwin and be fascinated by his research and his theories. Many are engaged in proving the theories of Darwin and by all means they should do so. The Darwin jigsaw puzzle is being discovered and given substantiation piece by piece. Like many others, I am fascinated in the discoveries and the postulations that emanate from them. I admire the tough work of accumulating fossil evidence and piecing them together.
However, nothing in Darwin or proven in the study of evolution has made one discovery that makes God an irrelevant cypher of clutching imagination.
But, should Darwin replace God entirely, where in Darwin do we go to learn morality and ethics?
Levi is Godless and, apparently, proud of it. (He goes orgasmic mocking me for my faith.) But where does civilization turn for guidance in matters of interpersonal relationships if there is no faith?
The answer is simple. Since power abhors a vacuum, the power structure of Godless men will impose guidance of their own liking on interpersonal relationships. The Godless imposers on society in history are legion. Among them are H….., S….., M.., P.. P.., G…… K…, C….., etc.
Levi would rather be stupid ignorant than to ever attempt to understand what a vast majority of the people of the world find useful and comforting in simple faith.
Evolution is a problem for religion because it directly contradicts the best argument that religion ever had. There was simply no better way to explain the origin of human beings before evolutionary theory came along. The religious resisted, to be sure, but 150 years of unprecedented scientific discovery has done nothing but confirm evolutionary theory over and over again. Denying evolution makes you look like a crackpot in a society that’s been built to value logic and evidence and testable hypotheses. So more and more, religious people like heliotrope are willing to admit that okay, okay, we might have a pretty good explanation for human origins. Most of the time, the religious will say god created humans by means of evolution, which isn’t evolution at all, really, but it is a sort of progress.
However, in exchange for this admission, heliotrope insists that everyone acknowledge that religion is the source of morality. This is desirable for him because it’s a philosophical question. They won’t be proven wrong again by somebody digging up dinosaur bones or figuring out heredity. This is definitely a retreat, since for thousands of years, religion thrived on using the physical world as the greatest bit of evidence for god’s existence. I’m supposed to take this abandon as a compromise, even though religion had no choice but to give it up, and sheepishly admit that without religion we’d all be killing each other.
Unfortunately for the religious, there is plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that morality is an evolved characteristic of our species. It is hard enough for people to grasp the concept of evolution when it comes to physical characteristics, but evolution goes a long way in explaining the development of behaviors, too. Working together and being altruistic clearly confers a significant survival advantage upon our species, and many other organisms and especially mammals exhibit that kind of behavior. For hundreds of thousands of years, our species did not need a rule book to help us build and maintain interpersonal relationships, neither did our ancestral species for millions of years before that. We knew that we had to treat each other well in order to survive, it comes naturally to us, at least as far as our immediate neighbors are concerned. There is also in impulse to mistrust and out-compete outsiders, which is one shortcoming we’re going to have to move past in the future.
It wasn’t until very recently that humanity had developed culturally enough to start writing down systems of ethics and morality, so it doesn’t really make sense to give religion the credit for those conventions so long after they’d been established. And what good is religious morality, anyway? It seems far more concerned with worshiping and obeying and deferring to a deity, and not so much teaching people how to live moral lives. And if god invented this morality and gave it to us, why is it so malleable through the years? Heliotrope likes to accuse me of being a moral relativist, an accusation which partly relies on the supposed steadiness and permanence of his own moral code. But his moral code excused if not outright encouraged slavery for thousands of years. Slavery is unquestionably morally wrong, but if god’s morality is permanent and unchanging, on what basis do we make that determination? We’re clearly calling on our inherent, instinctive morality, no god is required.
We’re born more helpless than virtually all other animals and require the assistance of other human beings for our survival for many years. This leaves a powerful impression that tremendously affects the way we act towards our fellow humans for the rest of our lives. That has much more to do with becoming a good person than any religious text, especially one that gets so much stuff so completely wrong. Morality is derived from the reflexive emotional states we have towards our offspring and friends. There are certainly moral dilemmas that we all confront that are much more complicated than that, but it does us no good to invoke an invisible, law-giving creator to answer those dilemmas for us.
Atheism is no more a guarantee of moral virtue than religion. A non-belief in something does not define a person, and I have no problem admitting that there have been immoral atheists. Your above list of villains probably shared a non-belief in leprechauns and unicorns – does that mean your moral values are the same as theirs because you also don’t believe in leprechauns and unicorns?
Even if you could prove that all of them were personally atheist (you can’t), I don’t have to take responsibility for them and I in no way can be said to share their morality or values. Each of those regimes shared many characteristics with authoritarian religious regimes in that they squelched dissent and intimidated people and demanded devotion to their cause. I have a set of values that includes freedom of speech and independent thinking and non-violence, just like many other people in this country that both do and do not believe in god.
Religion promises eternal life, what else is there to understand about its appeal to people? Death sucks, no one wants to die, we all know it’s coming, and religion offers a salve for that, even though it’s a scam. You get to live forever and see your loved ones again – this is something that we all want and that’s why religion promises it to us. There’s absolutely no mystery there at all. If anything, I understand that better than you do.
“Death Sucks, no one wants to die.”
Says the boy who wishes to kill the inconvenient.
Levi’s bigotry is well documented.
Levi’s Rules:
No one of religious faith may accept any aspect of the process of evolution and fact.
Anyone of religious faith who accepts any aspect of the process of evolution is a hypocrite and may not be considered faithful.
The process of accepting any aspect of evolution means that the person must believe in Darwin as the true light and accept everything that flows forth as an adjunct to what Darwin opined.
Anyone of religious faith can not have had any connection to slavery in any possible way.
To be pure, one must reject everything that is bad in human history by denying all things with which the offenders were associated, such as the alphabet.
So it is written.
Heliotrope’s Rules:
A desperate fool trying to intellectualize his bigotry is a fantastic thing to behold.
“They Turned Their Backs On God — Three Times” is clearly a headline that gets a charge from our left-wing and/or atheist trolls.
And as for Levi, the answer is very simple; we are all aware how you desperately lie, then turn around and run away when facts are presented.
As you did when last I presented examples of your obvious and hypocritical anti-Christian bigotry.
And last, but certainly not least:
Must we remind you, Levi, of what you stated here?
In short, by your own rules, I do not have to prove your guilt. YOU have to prove your innocence.
Therefore, I can say whatever I want about you and demand that you cough up evidence to prove your innocence.
These are your rules, Levi. Either repudiate them or play by them.
Intellectualized Bigotry – what an apt description.
R•O•F•L.
Gosh but I would love to go down to the local occupy movement crowd and record their explanations of this constipation of vapid psychobabble.
Has anyone thought to emulate Ambrose Bierce and produce The Atheist’s Dictionary ? This entry is too delicious to let the ethernet swallow it whole forever and a day. Somebody has to save it to post on Levi’s exit papers as he dematerializes into the void of meaninglessness and abandoned remembrance.
I hereby thank God (so to speak) that I am NOT one of Levi’s offspring or friends.
A critical premise of evolutionary theory is that the process is unguided. Lots of religious people recognize the the elegance of the theory, which I appreciate, but they are still eager to find some spot in the scheme for god. Based on the evidence, the most you could say is that some intelligence (which may have been god) may have seeded this planet with the conditions and materials necessary for life to develop. The evolutionary process after that has involved selection filters and random genetic mutation, but there is no evidence to suggest that anyone tweaked some genetic sequence or otherwise interfered in order for human beings to develop. You can still posit that god knew he was going to get to humans and didn’t need to interfere since he has all the time in the world, but we should keep in mind that human beings are driven by our egos to think very anthropocentrically about our role in the universe, and that we shouldn’t presume that god was waiting on us. Who knows – a big meteor could be headed our way to wipe out all the medium and large mammals, and the organism that god really wanted – gigantic, sentient, fire-breathing cockroaches – will evolve in kind. Both of those presumptions have exactly the same amount of evidence, which is to say none, so they should both be discarded. Either way, the Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way, and in about 5,000,000,000 years, there won’t be a shred of evidence that any human beings existed at all. That is a fact, and I think it says all we need to know about this idea that god is making plans for us.
It’s easy to tell what bits are useful. Claiming to have the moral high ground and insisting that your religion is the cornerstone of civilization, especially with the track record you guys have on issues of morality, is not useful.
It’s time for a reality check heliotrope. I don’t care what you believe as long as you can have the common courtesy and the civic-mindedness to understand that your preferences and your thoughts are your own, and that you ask too much when you demand that society makes special accommodations to your particular flights of fancy. I wouldn’t care what you think if you had the basic decency to live and let live, but you think your religion entitles you to tell other people what they can and can’t do. You and I talk about religion so much because it’s frequently your justification for political positions that interfere with peoples’ lives. Why can’t gays get married, I ask, and you answer because god says so. That’s despicable to me, and I don’t particularly care about if you take offense when I say it. It’s very cowardly to argue a position as forcefully as you do and pretend like it’s not you that’s signing your name to it, that you’re making the argument because your religion tells you so. If you want to keep invoking your religion, I will gladly continue telling you why that means absolutely nothing to me, and why you should be embarrassed to live your life and think your thoughts based on such flimsy and hateful premises.
Show me where I ever said that.
Show me where I ever invoked my religion.
You will now run away, because you can NOT show anywhere in which I said gays can not marry because God said so. You can not find anywhere in which I inferred a God mandated any ban against gay marriage.
You have zero information as to what my religion is, how I practice it or if I practice it at all. In fact, you do not know if I believe in God. You do not know any of that, because I have never set it out before you.
Long ago, you came after me in belittling tones as some sort of religious person who is anti-science and stuck in the most literal and fundamental reading of Genesis. Whatever you “know” about me is entirely the creation of your own mind, amply fueled by your petty anti-religious bigotry.
Now go to work, tiny man, and cite all the evidence you have on me.
In the course of doing your fact checking, you might take a look at how Jesuits affirm their faith and deal with the contradictions which atheists raise.
Succinctly, Augustine’s famous exclamation in Book I of the “Confessions” says: “For Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
In light of this conditional statement, man is left with two options: (1) One can come to affirm and relate to the God who alone can satisfy one’s ultimate ends; or, (2) one can deny or reject God, and admit that life is absurd, for if God did not exist and human desire is satisfied only by the unrestricted, the human person is destined to be frustrated by the very dimensions of his self-centered nature. He is but a donkey on a treadmill walking aimlessly to his death, decomposition and the ultimate meaningless for ever existing.
There. I cut to the chase in the Jesuit pursuit of rationality, valid argumentation, evidence, consistency, avoiding omissions and ethics which bring coherence to the common good.
Let us take a brief moment to address the unschooled pup on one of his silliest confections:
A premise among many, critical or not, attached to a theory which says the process in the theory is “unguided” is a premise that says there is no “process” because it is random by virtue of being unguided.
You had better learn how to think critically, little Rover, because an otherwise experienced thinker would never write such an absurdity. If you want a shorter version of your critical premise, it is this: Sh*t Happens.
And now for the most monumental smackdown the hypocritical little bigot has ever received.
By simply repeating his own words.
In short, Levi, your attempt to pretend that you are anything other than an insanely-intolerant bigot obsessed with attacking and destroying Christians and Christianity blows completely up when your own words are considered.
You hate Christians. You want Christians stripped of rights, including the right to vote and the right to speak publicly. You want Christians attacked and punished. You justify violence against Christians, as we saw with your justification of the FRC shooting, and you blabber and babble that Christians should be publicly shamed and humiliated in order to force them to comply with your fascist desires and do what YOU think is right.
Insane, delusional, pathetic bigot. You use gays the same way that you do women — as an excuse for your repulsive hatemongering and pathological bigotry against Christianity. And like women, you insist that any gays that would dare talk back to you, or worse, embrace religious belief are scum who should kill themselves.
You lose, Levi. Your filthy lies just blew up in your face. Your own words convict you as the worst kind of hypocrite and bigot. Your own screaming and ranting demonstrates that you are supremely and completely intolerant and want to destroy that which you cannot control.
Now run away, as Heliotrope made clear you would.
Heliotrope,
You accuse me of being a moral relativist. You have argued that my support for gay marriage is derived from this moral relativism, and that I’m an impulsive hedonist who wants what i want when I want it regardless of any other concerns. You routinely warn me that my support for gay marriage creates precedent for pedophiles and polygamists. Would you disagree with any of that?
Now, in contrast to my alleged moral relativism, you present an objective morality informed by religion with which you draw your line in the sand. On one side of the line is acceptable forms of marriage, on the other are unacceptable forms, like gay marriage. I dont know what you would call that, but i would call it invoking religion to justify your political position.
You frequently dismiss my arguments by portraying me as a puffed up know-it-all who justifies my opinions with malleable values of convenience. The implication being that you derive your arguments from a set of consistent, objective values that come from religion. I mean, do you expect me to believe you’ve been playing the devils advocate this entire time?
Heliotrope,
I would like to respond to your above comments about how you argue and your Jesuit quote more in depth, as well as the previous psychobabble and sh*t happens comments, but i am on mobile for the next few days and this is a chore. Hopefully this thread doesn’t fall off the front page and I can post them here, but if not i will be sure to bring it up somewhere else. just letting you know im not running away, you are not that intimidating.
Shorter Levi…
I can’t answer you and will now run away.
Of course this is funny
When contrasted with this.
So we can now conclude that Levi’s ‘morality’ includes killing the inconvienent, since that’s ‘the reflexive emotional state’ he has towards his offspring and friends.
It’s amusing to hear people claim they don’t believe in evolution, because they really do, but don’t realize it.
I think we would all agree that humans are laughably simple beings compared to a god who must be infinitely more intelligent, skilled, and powerful to have created the universe. So, here is an old question that people seem to prefer to expend as little time as possible contemplating: Where did God come from? A common answer is essentially that God is eternal, and thus has always been there. And then they change the subject. I think all the answers I’ve heard are designed to avoid serious consideration of the question.
If you cannot believe that life on earth could have developed via evolution, how can you possibly believe that an infinitely more intelligent, skilled, and powerful God just came into existence spontaneously, or by a form of evolution?
Richard R,
I am a little weary of all of this infantile blather about proving the existence of God. But I am actually even more weary from this:
“Evolution” is a loaded word which became a vague talking point as it did in the Scopes trial in 1925.
In the end, the judge in the Scopes trial had to rule what “evolution” meant in his ruling:
Most people who come after the faithful on the subject of evolution are playing an extended role of Clarence Darrow as they might have seen him portrayed in Inherit the Wind.
Darrow was bombarding William Jennings Bryan, who was the counsel for the prosecution, with a series questions which ridiculed Genesis. After two hours, Darrow as stopped by the judge who also ruled the examination to be irrelevant to the case. When the case was appealed, the defense (not Darrow) went back to the original ACLU strategy and claim that the Baker Act was designed to benefit a particular religious group and not religion in general.
So, along come the ill informed still trying to do battle with Genesis. It was made a loud part of the Sarah Palin attack on how old the earth is and whether man and dinosaurs were simultaneous co-inhabitants and so forth.
But return, please, to Judge Raulston’s first statement for clarifying the uses of the word evolution: “Evolution, like prohibition, is a broad term.”
Anyone of faith can easily believe in evolution, but be skeptical about the “missing link.” The “missing link” is the keystone to a certain theory in which it is postulated that man evolved from apes. It is an interesting theory, but only a small part of evolution. Here is the Catholic Church statement of evolution:
Any silly games you and Levi want to play concerning evolution and the faithful need to address this learned and stated playing field.
Otherwise, you are just baiting people with rather tired old movie-driven ridicule.
Yes, I do.
Ugh! (1.)=True; (2.)=True to impulsive and (3.)= Maybe to hedonist (how would or could I know that?); (4.)=Certainly seems that way; (5.)=no basis for judgement, but seems Unlikely.
You write these horrible stacked and loaded statements as a way to destroy common sense and rational argument. Whatever you write nearly always has to be unpacked and sorted out, because you are such a judgmental bigot that everything for you is about the jugular vein.
Mostly true. Morality is a function of the culture and as culture changes, so does morality. But the Judeo-Christian ethic underlies our culture and so I adhere to it. “Drawing the line in the sand” over issues of morality is a bit of the baroque way of adorning what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. Nude beaches are not a place I would take a group of horny teenage boys on a class trip. I would likely be on the side opposing the genius teacher who arranged such a trip. My first question of ethics to him would be: “What were you thinking?”
You, sir, are exposing yourself as a fool, pure (perhaps) and (definitely) simple. The Judeo-Christian ethic undergirds our morality. I don’t “invoke religion” in supporting the ethic. I ask to see the “other” ethic for my intelligent and learned consideration. You, sir, can not produce the “other” ethic and so you babble on and on about what is “right” according to your thinking which is unfettered to any known ethic whatsoever. So, you cast the Judeo-Christian ethic against your own superior self. I am not impressed.
(1.)=True and accurate; (2.)=True, it is called the Judeo-Christian ethic; (3.)=???
Levi, I have always stood on the ground of the Judeo-Christian ethic. I have never wavered. You are the one who has ridiculed me with your sky mystery man and believing in slavery and really juvenile stuff.
I sent you to the Jesuits, because they are trained to deal with smart ass skepticism in reducing atheism to its core elements. At #272 your threw this brickbat at me:
I asked you to show me where I said that. You can’t, because I didn’t.
It is you that hates God. It is you that takes the Judeo-Christian ethic as your enemy. It is you that can produce no other ethic to support gay marriage. Do you know why? Because only Godless, statist governments have begun to accept gay marriage on this planet.
Your greatest need and drive is to get God dead and buried so that you and yours can determine the culture, the political correctness that will be abided and the hate that you will censor and punish. That is who you are. You are a bigot for statism and a bigot against faith and all religion. You might keep an aborigine in a zoo for your entertainment, but you would never respect his religion beyond some quaint markings and fun to watch ceremonies.
Your crowd wants to free Tibet and hang with the monks until you discover how very serious they are about their faith and belief system. You are a National Geographic couch potato who loves to peep at crazy stuff in other cultures and then ridicule the people.
Your lack of respect for faith is spread across these links like manure on a newly planted field.
Devil’s advocate, my big toe. You stand on nothing and for nothing and are going nowhere fast.
Heliotrope, your reply contains lots of words, but not one of them addresses the question of how God came to exist. So, your reply seems to support what I wrote in #279:
“. . . here is an old question that people seem to prefer to expend as little time as possible contemplating: Where did God come from? A common answer is essentially that God is eternal, and thus has always been there. And then they change the subject. I think all the answers I’ve heard are designed to avoid serious consideration of the question.”
Actually, Richard R, if you could read, you’d see that heliotrope dismissed you as not being worth the effort.
Fortunately Science! has no answer to the question where Religion does.
God, IS.
Science however cannot point to where the material of the universe came from.
Richard R,
Your point concerning the proof of God and/or how God came to exist is at the core of faith. Do you understand that? Atheists deny God or live with the idea that God “very probably” does not exist. Fine.
What is behind the insistence that the faithful must prove that God exists in order for faith to be permitted among the faithful by the atheists? We of faith have no need to fill your demands. But, neither are we stupid. I quoted the Catholic position above, which, apparently you did not read. So here is part that is salient to your chiding:
Now, Richard R, what preceded the Big Bang? Where did the “stuff” of planets and stars come from? How can you imagine and convey the concept of a boundless universe that has been here forever and will go on forever and all the facts of infinity?
Science vs. faith? You wish. You don’t want God cluttering up your moral relativism? For for it. Live guilt free. Just remember not to cross the lines of the Judeo-Christian ethic which informs our law code.
God created man and man used his mind to create science and God has not stood in the way of scientific inquiry. Or, conversely, an ape randomly became man and over time, man created science and eventually, man will be able to take an ape and create a man all on his scientifically blueprinted own, or not. Or, man was trapped in one special ape and eventually, man emerged. Or whatever theory you wish to posit. At what point, however, did evil emerge and how does science explain it? Oh, there is an “evil” center in the brain? Can it be bred out or neutralized? Do we actually know the complexities of the interaction between the evil center in the brain and the successful functioning of other parts of the brain? Do we? Or shall we just postulate on it and do Jurassic Park or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster or Hitler’s final solution? Banish evil by doing evil. Cool.
Here endeth the rambling. My purpose is to present you with the challenge of your scientific infallibility. Hiroshima to you and happy Thalidomide. For you, there is ooops! and move on. For the faithful, there is circumspection, guilt, concern and faith to the ethic. For you, preventing gay marriage is evil. For the faithful, gay marriage is a non starter. You will not go forth and multiply to propagate the ethic. So, gay marriage is begging the question. Do you want cultural respect and acceptance? Earn it. After doing so, humbly beseech the faithful who overwhelmingly outnumber you to fold you into the laws of the state so that your partnerships can be equivalent to married people.
Thanks, Livewire, for the clear explanation towards this whole “prove God” crap.
Richard R has a void when it comes to the concept of faith. I can’t handle the concept of infinity, so I sort of understand that he is stuck on stupid.
But Levi, Iggy, Richard R and rest really do want to throw mud over Genesis and shell fish and yarmulkes and Tibetan sky burials and reincarnation and reaching the Zen level of having arrived in the middle of the Relative and the Absolute where Form and Emptiness interpenetrate and the Aboriginal Dreaming in which people possess and pass through periods of spirits which originate from the dreaming, etc.
Yep. It is a waste of time to tilt at the windmills the atheists erect, because they are so controlled by their ignorance that nothing will take on most of them. And then they get rapped up in the Matrix. Go figure.
I saw that movie!
I honestly don’t think RIchard R, Levi, Ignatius, or AJ have a clue what happens in a Christian church. They probably envision it going something like: 1. Ain’t no evolution, t’were God. 2. Let’s kill all the gays. 3. Pass the collection plate so we can get on with the snake-handlin’
Complete ignorance, however, doesn’t stop them from having very strong opinions about the subject.
It’s more amusing that theophobes can seriously pretend that God and evolution are inherently in conflict.
Or that Hitler, a ***non-practicing*** Catholic who committed genocide and was famous as a political chameleon who would tell people what they wanted to hear (kinda like Obama that way), was somehow ‘devout’.
Or that Hitler was somehow not a socialist. Etc. Lefty/theophobe bigotry, stupidity and ignorance never cease both to amuse, and amaze.
(BTW, theophobe is an interesting word. As it literally means “God-fearing”, it could be used to describe someone devout. But of course, I mean it in the sense of someone with a reactive, irrational type of hate/fear of Western theist traditions.)
ILC, as I see it, there are casual “live and let live” atheists who don’t believe in God, but don’t make a big deal out of it. And then, there are irrational Theophobes whose hatred of God and those who believe in Him compels them to do things like Spam comment threads on religious topics or sue to prevent the display of the Ground Zero cross in a Museum devoted to 9-11.
You guys are a great relief to me.
I have dumped a lot of words on this thread and felt like I was spitting into a hurricane of imbecility. Which made me wonder why any one but an imbecile would spit into a hurricane of imbecility!
I really do wonder whether Richard R and Levi and Iggy and AJ have any concept of faith whatsoever. Are they so self-certain that they escape humility altogether? Can you imagine them as power brokers?
heliotrope,
If it ever becomes a possibility, I would welcome the opportunity to sit with you, share some wine and chat.
Adding your name to my bucket list.
Not knowing the answers to those questions is not evidence that god exists. The answers may be beyond the scope of human comprehension, but that is not evidence that god exists. If you take science as far as you can, you shouldn’t just stop when the problem gets too hard and just attribute the mystery to magic. Science has an excellent track record when it comes to providing further insights beyond what religion insists is the final stop in human understanding of the natural world.
Your problem is that you aren’t addressing these questions for the sake of finding the truth, you’re addressing them because you want to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion – the existence of god.
Levi has no problem believing that the universe magically popped into existence out of nothing. But the idea of Universal Truth and religion as a path to that truth, he mocks and ridicules.
I dont believe the universe magically popped into existence out of nothing, you do. There is scientific work being done on that question, and it involves lots of assumptions and theoretical math and therefore we have very little idea of how close to the truth this work is, but scant evidence is better than no evidence. Admitting that we don’t know the whole picture and admitting that we might never know is not your cue to make up stories. Again, you arent looking for universal truth, you’re looking for a story you can tell that has an ending that comports to your obviously man-made religion.
Once again, Levi demonstrates a kindergarten-level of understanding about religion. Religion is not merely a collection of myths to explain the physical world. But by confining religion to that space, he puts it in a box small enough for his wee intellect to handle.
If it is ever absolutely proved that God does NOT exist, can we all agree that Christianity must crumble, and cease to exist?
If it is ever absolutely proved that God DOES exist, I’m prepared to acknowledge it. But for now, I’m continuing to accept reason as my personal savior.
Followed by:
Followed by:
Do you think that the “answers may be beyond human comprehension”? I do.
You don’t think the universe magically popped into existence out of “nothing.” Really? Well, neither do I, Levi. If the universe magically popped into existence out of nothing, there would have to be an endless, boundless area of nothing for the universe to “magically pop into.” Right?
I am delighted for the scientific work and lots of (scientific?) assumptions and theoretical math being applied to the “question.” You know that geometry is full of theorems, don’t you? Do you know why? Because there is no way to run parallel lines to infinity and know for an absolute certainty that they never intersect. The weak little human brain can not work out the formula to account for infinity.
Silly boy, you are the one who says God does not exist. We all know you have no faith. We know that the proof that God exists or does not exist is beyond the scope of science and math. You and your ultimate faith in science crowd are dismal failures. You can’t prove God is a silly figment of the weak minded. Na-na-na-na-na-nah!
So, there you stand in a complete draw, babbling about all the wonderful assumptions and math underway to finally kill and bury God once and for all.
Thanks, Levi, but my faith serves me much more fully than your anxious worry about when human cleverness will out think God and relegate Him to the Ripley Museum of Oddities.
I can move forward with the Judeo-Christian ethic as my guide and you are left fumbling around with your moral relativism, situation ethics and reliance on the Men of M.I.T. (Or, womyn. It is a distinction without a difference, unless you are a silly-putty liberal stuck on political correctness.
Levi. Why do we of faith have a greater obligation to prove the core of our faith than you, who provide nothing of substance, have the obligation to disprove the core of our debate? Get it? Show me that God can not possibly exist.
You have insulted me, personally, to the max. Now, I call on you to show that you have any grounds on which to make that continuous, demeaning assault.
Of course, you won’t; because you can’t. BIGOTRY is always the same. When your head is stuffed so far up your anal canal looking for polyps to lay off on me, it is clear that your eyes will end up full of Levi offal.
You may speak for “all” in your self-appointed role as emperor, but I can not.
I welcome the absolute proof that God does NOT exist. That would bring an end to faith and usher in the eternal age of eternal “reason.” How, pray tell, will you weigh the “reason” of MS-13 against the “reason” of, say, Obama?
Don’t run away, Richard R. I am excited and antsy to know how you will form you moral code and ethics. Please, please, edumacate me. I am so very needing in how to operate without a well formed and tested code of morality and ethics. Only you and Levi can be brilliant, compelling and thunderously obvious on this appeal.
Do answer soon. Save us from ourselves.
300! Tonight we dine in HECK!
Christianity teaches that each individual life is worthy of dignity; that we have a special place in the universe.
Atheism teaches that people are nothing more than animals who scored a little higher in evolutionary Frogger.
Which is, I think, why mass murder and genocide come so easily to atheistic regimes like those of Fidel/Che (liberal icons), Mao (liberal hero), Pol Pot (put into power by liberals, and Stalin (supported by liberals).
V,
Frogger? That was the only thing I could make my Apple IIe do until I bought ClarisWorks and overwhelmed the MotherBoard.
However, seeing Levi and Richard R as one click “above” Frogger is a positive gem in the epiphany lottery.
Silence on the science is the answer to all things front. Maybe they are rounding up a consensus. That would be impressive. Then we would have to bow down to the superior faith and religion of theoretical science for sure. Or not.
Christianity teaches that each individual life is worthy of dignity; that we have a special place in the universe.
Atheism teaches that people are nothing more than animals who scored a little higher in evolutionary Frogger.
Atheism doesn’t teach anything. There’s no sacred text, no priesthood, no rituals. Its an absence of belief and that is all, no different than your absence of belief in leprechauns and unicorns. For someone griping over what others say about what Christians are taught, you should probably not be babbling the way you are.
Science teaches that we are nothing but animals, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t special or lacking in dignity or dont have a unique role in the universe.
Unless they’re inconvienent, then we can kill them.
No, because I don’t get so freaked out by a depiction of a unicorn in a public space that I sue to have it removed.
No, because I would never spam a post about leprechauns with over 300 comments, repeatedly and ignorantly denouncing those who believe in them.
I don’t go nuts because other people believe things that I don’t.
I’ll leave that to Atheists, and their spirit-brothers, the Islamists. Who also like to kill people who don’t believe what they do, and who also throw hissy-fits over displays of Christian faith.
It is comforting to think that Levi will cease to exist at some point, leaving behind nothing but a large number of snotty and ignorant comment posts.
Great use of life.
@V
I realized last night, tracing our faiths’ histories, we’ve survived the Babalyonians, the Helenization, the Romans, the Muslim invasion in the middle ages, the stain of the inquisition, and the Protestants.
My faith has gone on to survive having most of Europe against us, excommunication of the Catholic church, and still been able to strongly influence other Protestants, including the CoE and the Methodists.
Yours has survived the scorn of a nation, death orders, exile, and continued ridicule clear into the modern day.
Maybe that’s why Athiests like Levi and Richard R are so scared of religion? When they die they are gone, dust in the wind. The hypothetical Levi offspring (much like the hypothetical Levi girlfriend) may turn from his ignorance, even denying him the legacy of prodigy.
Meanwhile because we accept the existence of something greater than ourselves. Because of our “sacred text, beliefs and rituals”, our faith will endure long after we ourselves have returned to our L_rd and our mortal bodies are nothing but dust in the wind.
We are blessed to touch on something truly immortal and Divine, the same thing people like Levi run from, like a child running from a parent trying to help him.
Okay I’m back. Lots to catch up with.
Human physiology is distinguished by two extremely advantageous but conflicting adaptations: large cranial capacity and bipedalism. Walking upright on two legs requires the pelvis to be a certain shape, and unfortunately for our women, that means a smaller opening for the birth canal. Female anatomy has compromised as much as it can by initiating birth before the skull grows too large. When humans our born, our brains haven’t even begun to develop, and this means that our infants are completely helpless, without even the wherewithal to grasp onto their mothers. For the first 3 to 6 months, human infants are measurably dumber than chimpanzee infants of the same age. Most other animals, especially mammals, are up on their feet within minutes of being born and are moving with the herd. Human babies are so weak and vulnerable that they must be attended to round the clock. This is seemingly a disadvantage forced on us by our physical bodies, but it actually allows for an extended period of required parent-child bonding that is the cornerstone of our social organization, which is the greatest adaptation of our species.
So by the time a child is able to start doing things on its own, it has been doted over continuously by its family members and friends. Babies trust their parents implicitly, and get used to the idea of relying and receiving assistance from other human beings. Parent do the providing instinctively. At no point is there any need for them to be told to do this. As babies grow into children and young adults, they begin to recognize their parents not only as providers, but as repositories of knowledge about the world and how to survive in it. The value of cooperation and information exchange is obvious to them. They eventually become parents, and the cycle continues. Throughout the maturation process of our species, humans are practically learning the value of living with other species, and it’s no surprise that our emotional development reinforces the concept. With few exceptions, human beings hate being alone. We get used to having people around when we’re kids and it sticks with us.
If you want to know where morality comes from, look no further. We owe the fondness we have for one another and the solidarity we feel with our neighbors to dueling physiological constraints. Of course, not every parent is the best caregiver, and even the best caregivers can spawn complete assholes, but on the whole, this system produces very good results. The emotional underpinnings of morality and ethical codes – cooperation, compassion, empathy, sympathy – are all right there, and from them, we develop concepts like justice, freedom, and equality.
Now, as our social organizations became more complex, we took a number of unfortunate morality detours, prompted mostly by our ignorance of the natural world and our corresponding attempts to explain it. Can you imagine how frightening a lightning storm or an earthquake or a drought or a sickness must have been before we knew anything about climatology, plate tectonics, or germs? Superstition and magic and religion were our first attempts to explain those phenomena, and along with them came a bunch of prescriptions for how to avoid them that frequently involved some very poor treatment of our fellow human beings. Sheer terror is usually enough to rip apart the bonds people have with one another. It became very easy to blame other people for angering the gods or not being devout enough or being a witch whenever something unfortunate would befall a community. That’s why so much of religious morality is focused on worship and devotion and enforcing nonsensical prohibitions, and not sufficiently on being good and decent to each other. Now that we’re a little smarter, we should discard all of these silly explanations that only serve to cloud real morality, don’t you think?
Money quote from Ignatius of Loyola; “We sacrifice our intellect to God.”
Now that that’s out of the way…
If you derive happiness and if you think it gives meaning to your life to be a slave, then I will leave you to it. I will freely admit that life and existence is definitely a kind of absurdity, and I enjoy not feeling restricted by an inescapable, galactic taskmaster who created me so he can order me to think and feel a certain way, which always comes back around to groveling for forgiveness from him and being over-effusive with praise (how much more insecure could this creator of yours be?). The religious idea about the universe being created for our benefit is what is self-centered, and our impending total annihilation as individuals and a species, as well as the burning out of the sun, collision of our galaxy with a neighboring galaxy, and the theoretical heat death of the universe does not mean that our existence is meaningless.
You mean like Hitler and the Jews?
Context, please.
We knew that. Maybe this is your declaration of being a hedonist.
So, anthropologists are wasting time? And poor old Jane Goodall with her attempt to bridge the social gap between man and apes really only needed the above statement for perfect understanding. Astounding!
Oh! The Big Bang “humanity” theory of “humanness.” Cool. Does evolution play any role, Dr. Levi? How about man-made climate change?
So, where are you with Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, Avicenna, et al on Tabula Rosa?
Are with eugenics crowd of social Darwinists or do you think that Planned Parenthood war on black babies is a bit unjustified?
It’s as I said – some religions have read the writing on the wall and are beginning to agree that evolution most likely occurred, although the form of evolution they describe incorporates a belief in god that isn’t necessary for the theory to work. Still, this is an improvement. I am thankful that the Catholics aren’t trying to force creationism upon schoolchildren the way evangelicals are. I appreciate that Catholicism is a bit more scientific than some other sects,and it’s not surprising that this constituency leans Democratic. It comes down to marketing. You can attract people to your religion by denying reality and creating a really hardcore base of supporters, like the evangelicals do, or you can accommodate some science and appeal to more reasonable people. When I say that religion leeches off of other institutions’ credibility, this is exactly what I meant.
Fixed it for you.
Your insistence of faith based belief as being devoid of reality is well noted and understood.
You have come to this site with your rules based on the paucity of your ability to have any faith or belief system. You have malevolently and consistently mocked faith and belief and dismissed those of faith and belief. Your bigotry is noted, catalogued, understood and about as subtle as the neck on a giraffe.
So, Levi, what are you selling and why are you constantly trying to sell it here?
If there were a bigotry filter for your remarks, what would be left of your rants to post?
Your Juvenile attempts to explain the issues that have challenged the great philosophers of the ages is verging on the pathetic. Whether you realize it or not, you rule on the great questions of the ages as though you have been appointed to be the god of reason. Your narcissism begins to rival that of Obama.
And even those will be gone, once Skynet becomes self-aware.
I have to assume that the current violence in the Islamic world is another example of how people receive their moral and ethical standards from religion.
Of course they are in conflict. There’s no evidence that god is involved in evolution whatsoever. Why do all the science and exploration and discovery if at the end of the day you’re just going to make up a silly story anyway?
Dismal failures? Of course, the cause of human freedom and the amount of information that human beings have gained about ourselves and the universe has been advanced tremendously in the age of science, while religion is forced to resort to dragging on our heals and bleating about bronze age prophecies. People don’t have faith in science, science works, over and over again, every time you do it. And need I point out again that the faithful shouldn’t be going around using ‘faith’ as an insult?
There is a tremendous amount of evidence that god is a figment of the imagination. I could imagine an omnipotent, benevolent creator of the universe, I really could, and it wouldn’t look anything like the god that Christians describe. The Christian god sounds petty, obsessive, vindictive, and sadistic – these are very unimpressive, very human qualities, and I’m reasonably sure that’s because god is a character created by human beings. The descriptions of god that I’ve heard and read sound exactly what I would expect if god was created by humans who were trying to control other human beings.
My anxious worry? Oh rest assured, I’m not anxious or worried about it at all. Religion loses every time.
And as for relegating god to Ripley’s (or a trash bin), that is coming. I’m sure you’ve heard statistics about how 99% of all species that have ever existed on this planet have gone extinct, right? Well, 99% of all gods and religions that human beings have ever worshiped or prayed to have also gone extinct. Do you think that in the long run, Christianity will prove to be any different? Our short little time spans and our egocentric nature compel you to think so, but that’s fallacious. There was a time when no one could conceive of the Greek gods being shelved, but it happened. It may take 1,000 years or 10,000 years, but how blind to world history do you have to be to think that Christianity will stand the test of time?
I guess you’re going to keep calling it that, whatever. I think the far more relevant influences on our morality come from the Greeks and from the Enlightenment, and as I described earlier, all of it is predicated on the cooperative survival behaviors that evolved through natural means, but you go ahead and pretend that magic had something to do with it, if you must.
An elementary concept known as the burden of proof. If you’re making the wild claim, and particularly if you’re insisting that I change my behavior or accommodate you in some way based on that claim, then you have the burden of proof. The default position is non-belief, and we could go on and on forever about what might not exist, so let’s be efficient about this and talk about things that do exist. Can you provide any evidence for god? No, you can’t. Asking me to prove that god doesn’t exist is as silly as asking me to prove that leprechauns and unicorns don’t exist.
You can’t go on about political correctness and then cry like a baby when someone calls upon you to make a little bit of sense. You’re always asking why I don’t like religion and this is one of the best reasons – people like you who get wounded and hurt and feel trodden upon when someone confronts you about your ridiculous delusions which you believe the rest of us need to accommodate. People think that their religion entitles them to interfere in other people’s lives, and then here come the waterworks when someone doesn’t feel like sliding out of their way and letting them do it. Back when you were strong, there were ways to force people to accommodate you, but now, thanks to the Enlightenment values by which we truly derive our morality, you can’t do much of anything except claim persecution and accuse people of bigotry. How are you supposed to have a meaningful conversation about right and wrong when one side is relying on the authority and credibility of an invisible man, who when questioned, compels the other side to feel insulted?
Be a grown up, leave aside your fantasies and fallacies, and argue like you live in the 21st century and not a cave in the stone ages.
All I see when you accuse of me of bigotry is desperation. You want me to be cowed and would prefer that I be intimidated into giving you and your beliefs some nod of respect, since it certainly can’t earn that respect on its own. Being called a bigot by someone who argues against gay marriage by talking about how it would legalize pedophilia does not put me on the defensive. But again, what else can you do? A few hundred years ago, you could have easily had someone like me rounded up and tortured for the things I’ve said about your god. Force and violence and control is the legacy of religion, after all, and now that civilized society has removed that capability, you’re left with more embarrassing options like begging and insulting and coercion. You certainly can’t rely on evidence to make your point, can you?
Science may not be the answer to all things, but at the very least it’s the answer to some things. There are questions we wouldn’t even have thought to ask if it weren’t for science. But religion can’t answer anything! There’s nothing less reliable than religion and you just have to look at their track record to see it. Even when religion is right, it’s right by accident.
If you had to pick between religion and science, you’d pick science and you know it. You want religion and no science? Say hello to a 30 year lifespan and starving to death.
And if you want ‘science’ and no religion, say hello to North Korea.
Then again, Levi believes invisible rocks and fake cavemen are part of science.
Levi,
I do NOT exclude science.
YOU exclude God and faith.
Now, kindly, try to figure out the source of your endless bigotry. From my perspective, you a scared, insecure, incompetent little worm that can not dare to believe.