Charlie Hebdo

[Farbin Kaiber]

^They do, and they are just as vocal about it as religious people. I'm pretty sure I know Atheists that talk about a God/lack thereof more than I do.

[BraveUlysses]

How many times have you had an outreach atheist come to your front door?

in your face atheists pretty much only exist on the internet.

[CorvallisBMW]

Your right too much nationalism can be a bad thing and stagnate a culture, but with that said being devoid of it to a point where the culture does not see its own uniqueness can lead to its own host if other just as troubling issues.

+1000. Well said.

While this is true, there were many groups (germans, irish, italians, anyone catholic really) of people that came here in the 1800 and 1900's that were from Europe and not accepted with open arms, but eventually assimilated into the population.

Also very true. The US has gone through various periods of fear/hate/resentment for all kinds of groups and nationalities. First is was Irish, then Catholics, then Germans, then Puerto Ricans, then Communists, and now Mexicans. People love a good outlet to push their insecurities on.

^They do, and they are just as vocal about it as religious people. I'm pretty sure I know Atheists that talk about a God/lack thereof more than I do.

I don't agree. There may be a few who are vocal, but it's still 1/1,000,000th as many as the religious folks. Ever had an Atheist put a leaflet on your door or come knocking? What about their own TV channels or radio stations devoted purely to atheism? Anyone ever started a war or committed an act of terror in the name of atheism?

How many times have you had an outreach atheist come to your front door?

in your face atheists pretty much only exist on the internet.

True. The anonymity and safety of being "untouchable" tends to make people less restrained or civil.

[decay]

That's why I said worshiping, if you don't worship any sort of god then you are not a part of that statement, as I was saying that Christians, Muslims, Jews, and maybe a host of others effectively worship the same deity. Frankly, I have no problem if you wish to worship, believe, doubt, or not believe, all the same to me.

well when you said "all of us", that sounded like a blanket statement on humanity- remember atheists have to live in the same world as everyone else ;)

I do have a question, do agnostics and atheists have an active community in the same sort of way that Christianity used to or Islam does now? Seems very relevant to this discussion.

define "active community".

do they gather and talk about belief or non-belief? i never have, but it happens.

is there an active internet community? certainly.

do you hear on the news about how an army of agnostics has a town's worth of atheists corralled on the top of a mountain and is starving to death anyone they didn't take away to be a sex slave? unequivocal no.

[Farbin Kaiber]

I don't agree. There may be a few who are vocal, but it's still 1/1,000,000th as many as the religious folks. Ever had an Atheist put a leaflet on your door or come knocking? What about their own TV channels or radio stations devoted purely to atheism? Anyone ever started a war or committed an act of terror in the name of atheism?

http://freeatheism.org/download-printable-atheist-pamphlets-fliers-and-tracts/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists

http://atheists.org/AtheistTV

http://www.freethoughtradio.com/

http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/podcast

http://dailycurrant.com/2014/07/29/radical-atheists-kill-29-in-middle-east-suicide-bombing/

Charles Darwin Martyr Brigades(CDMB)



I used Google to answer your questions.

[decay]

Farbin, come on, fact checking... dailycurrant is a satire site.

[lti_57]

Really!! Dang near ever war ever started in Modern History is a secular war.
Any critical thinker can figure this out in a few minutes on the interwebz



Now let's look at the number of killings attributed to non-Christianity, including atheism and other anti-religious forces. To be conservative, we will limit the count of anti-religious killings to the last seventy years or so.
First, from the early 1930's to 1945, Hitler's Germany exterminated 6 million Jews and killed about 9 million Christians. Although Hitler was an occultist, he chose the swastika for Germany's emblem; a symbol ancient German Christians used (as did Buddhists). The swastika appeared in the brick work of an old boyhood school he attended of which he had fond memories ("The SS, Alibi of a Nation" by Gerald Reitlinger). But Hitler loathed Christianity as much as Judaism, as he stated in one of his shrill orations,

Historically speaking, the Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect... After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically... We are fighting against the perversion of our soundest instincts. ...That poison with which both Jews and Christians have spoiled and soiled the free, wonderful instincts of man and lowered them to the level of doglike fright. 3

Second, the Stalin purges in the Russian republics prior to and continuing after World War II killed roughly 40 to 60 million people; nearly wiping out every Christian church under Stalin's domain. 2
Third, following World War II, China saw to the end of more than 24 million lives during the first ten years of Mao's takeover 4, another 25 million killed or intentionally starved between 1959 and 1962 5, plus an additional 22 million killings in the 1970's Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. 6
Fourth, Cambodia suffered more than 2 million killed in its own bloody transition to anti-religious communism after United States forces suffered the fall of what was called Saigon and then largely withdrew from the region.
Fifth, the more recent rulerships within Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, and Iraq have each killed, systematically starved, or chemically or biologically poisoned hundreds of thousands of their own citizens. It will likely be decades before full numbers are tallied for these ongoing situations. (Since some would argue these are attributable to Islam, I will omit them from the tally.)
And sixth, for those who accept abortion as intentional killing (it clearly is, but the debate is over what is actually being killed), an additional 30 million or more cases in the United States alone could be added to the number of irreligious killings (the estimate for the total number of abortions worldwide over the last century is approximately one billion). 7
So to everyone familiar with the Bible's instructions for human conduct, it is obvious which actions throughout history have been truly representative of God and the Bible, and which have not. Any murder in the name of Christ is wrong. But as we have seen, the greatest acts of crime and killing have not been instigated by people professing to follow Jesus. The numbers:

• Judaism and Christianity throughout history: 17,000,000
  
  
• Anti- or irreligious forces over the last 100 years:

6,000,000 + 9,000,000 + 40,000,000 + 24,000,000 + 25,000,000 + 22,000,000 + 2,000,000 + 1,000,000,000 = 1,128,000,000

Thus it is erroneous to state that organized religion, or the name of Christ, is the cause of all or even most of history's killings. Quite to the contrary, modern history shows that the killings associated with the denial of divine authority outnumber the killings of professing Jews and Christians on an order exceeding 66 to 1.

[decay]

you've gotta be fucking kidding me.

first: critical thinkers typically type out their own arguments, rather than filling a screen with copypasta, so you might not want to claim to be one.

second: abortion and war are not the same thing, no matter how badly your source wants to inflate his numbers by a factor of nearly 8.

get the fuck out of here with this shit, you idiot.

[Farbin Kaiber]

Farbin, come on, fact checking... dailycurrant is a satire site.

You see, I left it at the bottom after real stuff as a joke. I know it's a satire. At least I know people are checking my links.

[CorvallisBMW]

http://freeatheism.org/download-prin...rs-and-tracts/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists

http://atheists.org/AtheistTV

http://www.freethoughtradio.com/

http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/podcast

http://dailycurrant.com/2014/07/29/radical-atheists-kill-29-in-middle-east-suicide-bombing/

Charles Darwin Martyr Brigades(CDMB)

I used Google to answer your questions.

I think you misunderstood. Of course you can find atheist stuff on the internet... you can find anything on the internet!. Literally anything. The question I asked was, 'has an atheist ever left a pamphlet on your door?' I'm guessing the answer is still no. We have an OTA Christian TV station here in Portland and a Catholic radio station, but no atheist stations. Can you find an atheist podcast on the internet? Sure you can! Does that mean it's the same as a 24-hour OTA TV station? No fucking way And while plenty of wars have been started for non-religious reasons, and terrible things have been committed in the name of things other than religion, that does not mean it had anything to do with atheism. C'mon Farbin, you're smarter than this :)

Really!! Dang near ever war ever started in Modern History is a secular war.
Any critical thinker can figure this out in a few minutes on the interwebz
...

Just because something was NOT done in the name of a particular religion does not mean that it WAS done in the name of Atheism (i.e. I did NOT have an orange for lunch today, but that doesn't mean that I DID have an apple). If you can't understand why that is, you're pretty hopeless.

[decay]

You see, I left it at the bottom after real stuff as a joke. I know it's a satire. At least I know people are checking my links.

i'm very offended and will be at your house with an ak47 shortly.

(and correction: you know *i'm* checking your links.)

[Farbin Kaiber]

Well, I'm in the middle of a meeting, maybe you could wait to drop by until after I'm done?

















Too soon?

[CorvallisBMW]

Well, I'm in the middle of a meeting, maybe you could wait to drop by until after I'm done?

Too soon?

If I have to drive all the way to Idaho I'm going to give you more than a pamphlet

[smooth]

Just because something was NOT done in the name of a particular religion does not mean that it WAS done in the name of Atheism (i.e. I did NOT have an orange for lunch today, but that doesn't mean that I DID have an apple). If you can't understand why that is, you're pretty hopeless.

Atheism is not an ideological movement so asking if things have been done "in the name of" atheism is bizarre, at best.

Plenty of atheists have done monstrous deeds throughout history and often done it to religious folk on the basis of them being believers. Similarly, just because a religious person ends up slaughtering one or many people does not automatically mean that the person is doing so in the name of his or her religion.

Add to that the reality that religious based wars are ideologically driven, not religious driven, and more often than not fought against other ideologues *and* the simple fact that the amount of militant religious folks are orders of magnitude less than just normal, everyday believing folks, and the setup of this question that you've asked becomes nonsensical.


As for the pragmatics: no I haven't had any self-identified atheists place a leaflet on my door. I believe I've had one or two home visits from religious youngsters and possibly a leaflet or two on my car or door--so infrequently that I can't really remember and can't conceive of why it would bother someone. Certainly can't conceive of why it would make an atheist buddy of mine purposely let his dog shit on the local church lawn near his house.

I've also had to suffer far more over the top discussions from atheists than religious folk and in the end of the day, except for the most vicious right wing types that couch a whole lot of angst and hatred in religious terms, I'd much rather be stranded on an island with some sunday goers than atheists.

[Farbin Kaiber]

smooth has been removed from your Ignore List

But serious, I don't use the feature. As I stared down the block of text, I prepared for a smooth post and was surprised. Now I need to go back and rethink everything.