Atheism

You know very well the point I was making.

You're delusional--and the evidence is that you're trying to get Napoleon's dictum that history is written by the victors into the idiocy you've been posting. That's not true, and Napoleon is a prime example that it's not true.

To repeat, the topic of this thread is the experience of atheism. People go off topic all the time, but the only redeeming value of that is that it might be interesting.

You're not posting anything of interest.

I know very well that you thought you were making a point--but you weren't.

Wow, remind me not to disagree with you.

If ever you speak with expertise, i won't disagree with it, and probably won't even comment, since i don't challenge demonstrable authority. When it comes to history, you demonstrate no authority.

It was never about history, it was a point about intolerance. People were and are intolerant of mormons. It was yourself who wrote the long historical diatribe, for whatever purpose, which derailed the thread.

This is an example of your historical ignorance. Earlier, you attempted to claim that the Mormons were persecuted by fundamentalists. Having had it pointed out to you that there were no fundamentalists then, you're now trying to claim that it is appropriate to call all christians then fundamentalists. It's not. Modern fundamentalists are a stridently loud splinter group, getting a lot of attention, but nonetheless a minority. Mormons were, first, offensive as a political threat, and second, a threat to mainstream christians, not a radical sect, and not for religious reasons.

The error is one of semantics, how should I term the fact that the beliefs in those days were of the fundamnetal variety, as opposed to more liberal modern standards?

You could avoid the gross anachronism of attempting to compare two entirely different societies. Your original statement was a failed attempt to blame an alleged persecution of Mormons on a religious fringe which simply did not exist in the 19th century.

Why is it so hard for you to acknowledge that you essentially are not well-informed about that era?

Never claimed to be. Are you certain that mormons didn't experience intolerance from the christians of that time? Apparently I am guilty of using a bad example to express my point about tolerance.

Sure they experienced intolerance. But they were the objects of what one might (rather unreasonably) call persecution for political reasons, not religious reasons. They were, as a potential lock-step voting bloc, a threat to the political establishments of the areas in Missouri and Illinois they attempted to take over. Once they got to Utah, they started killing people and challenging Federal authority. As i pointed out earlier in this thread, i have no problem with the intolerance of criminality.

The reason for the reference was I thought it fit well with the idea of tolerance evolving as a necessary trait as we run out of space. It was the most recent migration of that type I could think of at the moment. Obviously it isn't clearcut enough for the purpose. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

Whose criminality? If atheism comes to power, and history is any guide, this thread will be criminal. A term in one of farmerman's famed "re-education camps" for Christians being deemed an appropriate correction.

Scientists sharing their research conclusions has been deemed criminal.

He's a serious conservative is Setanta. A supporter of the status quo and the established order.

There's really no problem, certainly nothing to apologize for. Basically, the United States in the 19th century was religiously tolerant--so long as you were a Protestant. I think the issue is more complex than references to land and resources. I suspect that Spurious introduced into the discussion the notion that this has something to with some historical imperative, although i can't be sure because i don't read his posts.

The Chinese have always been religiously tolerant--until the Christian missionaries from European nations showed up, and they were seen as the thin end of the wedge to take control of China out of Chinese hands. The Romans were religiously tolerant, so long as everyone paid lip service to the civic religion. Most stories of christian persecution are bullshit, but when they were actually persecuted, it was often their neighbors who did it, fearing the consequences of the loud, public refusal to go along with the civic religion game. Or, they were politically unfortunate. We have a letter from the emperor Trajan to Pliny outlining what was basically a don't ask, don't tell policy. Later, christians read the situation very badly, and backed the opposition to Septimius Severus, who, when he took over as emperor, made them pay for their political stupidity, with religion as an excuse. Eventually, christians made themselves odious to most Romans for their attacks on other religions.

History is rarely simple. Human motivations are usually more complex than glib commentators make them out to be. In the historical record, there have been periods notable for intolerance, and long periods noteworthy for tolerance.

I wouldn't want to attempt to draw broad conclusions on the subject.

I agree that Christians are tasked to "save" the rest of us - which reveals a superior mindset among them. It's the absolute belief that they are heaven-bound and you are rightfully hell-bound without conversion to their belief that I referred to.

Thanks for your response. Always appreciate your remarks.

I suspect that Setanta doesn't read my posts so that he can suspect I have said something which he necessarily must have to conjure up in his own head and which then allows him the scope to say anything he wishes in order to associate it with me, despite his not being sure about it, and thus insinuating into the minds of his unfortunate fans, much as Dr Goebells did in days of yore as most of the world sat and watched, that I might have said it which he presumably hopes is then tranfigured, by a sort of corny magic dependent upon them having forgotten about his not being sure, into the fact that I have said it and all the while taking the opportunity, engineered by himself, to remind them all once again that he doesn't read my posts.

The remainder of his post is utterly ridiculous. He has obviously not read Juvenal. He obviously does not know that early Christianity was a Jewish sect prescribing circumcision, askesis and certain dietary rules and is wholly different from the Gothic Christianity of northern, forested Europe which we know today as can easily be seen from the architecture of cathedrals, where our prime symbol of pure infinite space and light, from which calculus and Faustian science derived, and his computer, is not remotely comparable with religious architecture in regions further south the prime symbol of which is the here and now and where the mathematics of Euclid exhausted itself as soon as it was completed.

He's a dabbler in history with a smattering of disconnected facts at his diposal and a seeming skill to parley them into a semblence of expertise for those who are only half attending or are completely stupid. The simple and obvious fact is that history is not disconnected but is a continuous process of becoming and cannot be used, except by charlatans, as an a la carte menu from which can be chosen whatever suits the needs of the moment. The temptation with that is always to be choosing the comforter with the most syrup on it.

I am happily oblivion bound. I shall, as Twain said, be no more inconvenienced than I was for the thousands of centuries in which I had not yet been born.

Setanta has no comment to make on Pythagoras and the severe persecution of his sect by the Pagans because of his treacherous notions about the secrets of numbers which undermined their religious beliefs and explains their intolerance of them.

The Romans accepted other Pagan superstitions for the reason that they did not undermine their own religion/s which varied as the power elite varied.

That is a naive statement. In the period before you were born you had nothing to lose but now you are in the world you have everything to lose by embracing oblivion. Unless you have nothing to lose now in which case a toothache should be enough to jump off a bridge.

Which shows that Mark Twain was happy to regale the public, usually to stave off financial difficulties, with his simple down-home nostrums without his bothering to equip himself as a proper man of letters. His aim was the broad mass of the population one of whose number is colloquially said to be born every minute.

Tasked? Superior mindset? Rightfully hellbound?

Where do you get this stuff from?