Atheism

This. ^^^^

There's this call in show, The Atheist Experience, based here in Austin. Once in a while I watch some of their past episodes on YouTube.
It's happened more than once the a Christian will call in and accuse them of, in so many words, "ganging up" on Christians. The callers will be irate that this show is offending them and denying them their rights, etc.

There are literally hundreds of Christian TV stations in the US alone, and thousands of Christian radio stations in the US. Not to mention publications, churches, organized meetings, ad infinitum.

Yet, this not for profit show and podcast that is run out of (I actually drive by the place sometimes) 600 square foot bungalow where a few shows are produced, with after the show pot luck dinners or ordered in food, is endangering and ganging up on all of Christiandom.

That's some powerful fear.

These believers have unlimited outlets to talk about their beliefs, but they have to begrudge an entity that barely has a budget, where the people on the show are volunteers. They're just regular people taking call ins and providing a platform where questions can be asked, and things discussed.

Like here. I'm sure I'll have to listen to someone soon telling me how out of line I am suggesting they start their own damn thread, when there's a perfectly good one here they can take over.

Christians (and I'm qualifying this once saying I don't mean all Christians) just ******* love to assume you agree with them. They must be taught in the cradle that partiular lip purse that indicates the other person isn't playing by their rules.

Here's a non-believers vent for you.
I can't even remember how long ago this was, maybe a year. It was when I had to rush the mister to the ER, and he threw a grand mal seizure when I was pulling up, and had another one in the ER while I watched. Not to make this all about me, but the few days before that had been rough, I was already exhausted, and this put me over the edge.

Yet, once he was knocked out, taken up to telemetry, hooked up to dozens of wires on his head, and everything else, I was expected to politely respond to the telemetry tech telling me all about his damn church and how some well known actor goes there, and oh my god who the hell cares why are you telling me this **** when I am at the end of my tether.

Next the nurse comes in and I ask if she's all squared away so I could go home. Of course not. I have to sit there 45 minutes while she does her duties because "I need to get info from you". That turned out to be the same old same old stuff that they obviously already had from multiple prior hospitalizations.
But I thought. "It's ok, just answer the questions. She's just doing her job"

Until she gets to the "Religion?" question, and I respond "none".
She brightly says "Ok, I'll put Non-denominational"

I replied. "That's not what I said. I said...NONE"

So there the lip purse from her, and the "some well known actor goes to my church" guy does that glance over like "oh. that's what a devil worshipper looks like" crap.

Yet, if the situation was reversed, just imagine.

So literally tens of thousands of outlets available for you to discuss whatever all you've been going on about for pages now just isn't enough. You've just got to dig in here too.

You just cannot let others have their place without sticking your big nose in, especially with your pretentiousness.

And yes, this goes for non christian believers too. You're all a pain in the ass.

Your post reminds me of a time I sat in a doctor's office. I thought it might be a long wait and had a book to read. It involved Tibetans, I think. Can't recall the title. This tight assed guy sitting a few seats down saw the cover and spoke loudly to the receptionist. "I never allow eastern thought to enter my mind," he said, obviously for my benefit. I don't recall every word he said. But I was minding my business, barely aware the turd existed, but I was perceived as a threat to his way of life.

Standing inside a car wash, looking at the cars going threw. Woman next to me with small kid. Kid was standing between me and the woman.

The woman was point out to the boy how their vehicle was going now getting washed saying "Look! Thank you Jesus! Say thank you Jesus for making the car clean! Say thank you Jesus"

The boy was looking intently at the rollers that were on the conveyor belt. While mom was going on about Jesus, I heard him say something about "the orange wheels"
Conversationally I said to him, "yeah, that's what makes you car move ahead"

Since apparantly Jesus was busy getting their car cleaned, he wasn't there to prevent me from abducting the kid, even though he was leaning on his mom, and maybe 3 or 4 feet from me.
She grabbed him, glaring at me.
I guess she sensed I was planning on making roast baby for dinner.

I'm an Atheist, and I'm gona speak here if I want to, and to whom I want to speak. Thanks for your patience. You can spray the thread with chlorox now.

This man I knew at work many years ago was one of those who just assumed that I was "normal," i.e., a christian. I had gone out that morning (I worked evenings) to a book store near the local university. I had gotten several books of history, which included religion, and religious origins. I got Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People; Einhard's The Life of Charlemagne (with lots of bogus religious nonsense); Notker the Stammerer's Gesta Karoli Magni (The Deeds of Charlemagne), with even more religious nonsense, flying bishop and the like; and, finally, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Well, this joker was cool with the books about the history of English christianity and the lives of Charlemagne--but Gilgamesh mystified him. Without even thinking about it, I explained that Gilgamesh lived (if he ever actually did--and most historians agree that he did) about 5000 years ago, long before the bible was written. I said that the flood myth as one example, came from The Epic of Gilgamesh. I didn't get any further, though, because he actually leapt out of his seat, saying: "You're one of those, aren't you?" and mumbled a name. Huh? I finally figured out that he meant Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Well, he would have nothing to do with an atheist, so I was spared any more of his dull company. You would have thought that I was the vile secret agent of an enemy nation.

Why didn't you tell him it was what a smurf character was based on. Maybe he would have read it.

I would have married at age twenty, but once the object of my affection learned about my atheism it all unraveled. She stipulated that I would attend a church of my own selection faithfully if we were to be wed. Somewhere in there she worked in that she expected to have as many children as possible. I knew it would break my spirit to go to church at all and I believed that more than a couple of children would be out of the question. So it was ten more years before I finally did get married. To someone else.

So nice when like minded people get together for fun, fellowship, and story telling.
No, really, I mean that.

I'm going for clarity mostly, and not so much wit.


Intervention is a subjective interpretation of occurrences that relies on dividing reality into separate categories and then declaring they they interact in different ways.

E.g. if you are about to step on a frog, your friend could intervene by alerting you, but if you saw it on your own and avoided it, you would not consider that your mind intervened because you think of your mind as part of yourself. Yet if you were about to go somewhere without your mask and you suddenly remembered you wouldn't be allowed in without it, you could say your memory intervened and prevented you from wasting your trip, i.e. because you remembered suddenly after already having decided to leave, it seems like an intervention; whereas if you had just remembered it before deciding to leave, you wouldn't call it an intervention.

Everything that happens as part of the whole universe of creation, the 'tao' if you want to call it that, happens together as part of a grand overall ecology of everything, so anything that you experience as divine intervention can occur within the laws of nature.

You are assuming that if nothing violates the laws of nature/physics/causation/etc. then that means God didn't intervene (which is how Hawking thought about it), but the reality is that intervention can happen without violating the laws of physics/nature/causation, i.e. because omnipotence is capable of that.


No morality is plastic/evolutive/flexible except to the extent you make it so. The question is what the underlying spirit is in changing moral rules. Is it because you have truly discovered a truer principle (or a truer application of a principle) than the previous one; or is it a way of rationalizing sub-moral choices for the sake of expediency of some kind?

In Christianity, we have salvation/forgiveness through Christ so we don't have to rationalize sin by changing rules and otherwise whitewashing it. We can seek earnestly to discover the truest answer to our moral questions knowing that when answers are revealed to us that show we're even worse people than we previously realized, God still forgives, saves, and is redeeming us. In fact, revelation of sin is central to the ongoing process of confession/repentance. That is how Christianity deals with the 'inconvenient truths' brought by moral revelation.

All in all it sounds like you dodged a bullet.

Before marrying K, we had I guess a couple/three "just came up in converstion" talks about God.

He had some sort of idea that reincarnation made sense to him more than anything.
My thinking on that was "that's nice" My words were basically nothing.

At the beginning when we met, I had some kind of vague "well there must be something" idea going on, a remnant of catholic school upbringing. K would joke that in his town it was well established that catholics stole and ate babies.
That was interesting, as well as funny, because I had never realized before that many people with beliefs had something against catholics.

Nobody tried to indoctrinate me into religion as a boy. When I first heard the word "god" seriously considered, my internal dialog went, "There's not any god. If there was -" And I counted off all the negativity that could not exist if such a wonderful entity were real. But it wasn't simple or easy as it sounds. I struggled over some things. Once it was accepted by me that when we die we are extinguished forever I was beyond Christian redemption.

I don't understand why the religionists fear extinction. Who in their right mind would want to live forever? Arthritis, senile dementia. failing eyesight, failing hearing--who needs that ****? Of course, they come up with some horseshit about how we'll all be perfect if we get to heaven. Yeah right, and then eternity singing the praises of the puerile, narcissistic egomaniac on his big throne. No thanks.

Fear death? hell, I’m look'n forward to it.

There sure is a lot of religious commentary going on here - by people who have asked others not to post religious commentary...

Point out some.

The regulars feel entitled to do it.

Less is more when you write. This is because mental clarity is what is determinant. You keep contradicting yourself because your ideas are confused. No manner of convoluted writing will solve that problem. You need to try and be consistant conceptually. And being breif helps being consistant, because your contradictions become obvious in a short text but are diluted in a long one.

Besides, nobody here reads beyond the first paragraph.

And do it on theist threads too.

Not that I mind. The religious bore the hell out of me.

What utter horseshit. Talking about the implausibility of the pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by-when-you-die crapola of the religionists is no more religious commentary than discussing snake oil salesmen constitutes a sharing of recipes for snake oil.