time of the month

[Claw75]

If we talk about mainstream religions I can't see why atheists get so concerned about kids having a religious persuasion 'imposed' on their kids. Loving church attending parents are unlikely to leave their kids at home while they go to church. Equally they will accept their kids views if at sometime they choose not to go along with them.

I'm much more concerned that millions of kids have a low-life, secular chav persuasion imposed on them - much much harder to grow out of.

oh dear - my daughter is in trouble then.  Myself and her father have deliberately chosen to raise her without religion.  We can teach her moral values without the need for religion.  Atheism and humanity are not mutually exclusive.  She has questions about religion, and we answer them factually.  Part of that 'fact' is that god does not exist.

Are you a chav ?

I don't know.  'chav' is not a label I like, or use, and I think people attach different meanings to it.  I think we've had a discussion about this before.  As I understand the term, it's a derogatory way of describing working class people.  So yes, I probably am.

[G1BTW]

Acid your way off that anger is a motivation. Religion is a laughable concept, it's fundamentally ridiculous. Belief in a "god" is a form of insanity that for some reason is totally acceptable while other forms of insanity are recognised as being very negative and dangerous. There's no anger, i'm happy enough for people to believe what they like, I just don't understand why religion/belief in god gets treated so differently from different forms of madness.

Obviously religion has historically done significant good as well as well as great harm. I just think we should be ready by now to move on from such a fundamentally foolish concept.

Being human is fundamentally insane, so religion, insane as it is, is a pretty valid response. Like Dawkins, I have no real problem with peeps practising it if they want to.
Most people insanely believe that they are fundamentally something more than a bunch of cells assembled into a programmed reproduction machine. Ironically this belief itself is programmed into them by the very genes that sought their own survival. The fact that the ocassional abberation of humanity can manage to perceive otherwise is merely an artefact of the reflective intellect that was born out of the evolutionary arms race.

[Jon MW]

If we talk about mainstream religions I can't see why atheists get so concerned about kids having a religious persuasion 'imposed' on their kids. Loving church attending parents are unlikely to leave their kids at home while they go to church. Equally they will accept their kids views if at sometime they choose not to go along with them.

I'm much more concerned that millions of kids have a low-life, secular chav persuasion imposed on them - much much harder to grow out of.

oh dear - my daughter is in trouble then.  Myself and her father have deliberately chosen to raise her without religion.  We can teach her moral values without the need for religion.  Atheism and humanity are not mutually exclusive.  She has questions about religion, and we answer them factually.  Part of that 'fact' is that god does not exist.

Are you a chav ?

I don't know.  'chav' is not a label I like, or use, and I think people attach different meanings to it.  I think we've had a discussion about this before.  As I understand the term, it's a derogatory way of describing working class people.  So yes, I probably am.

The definition changes over time.

Originally I'm told it just meant a child.

[kinboshi]

I was brought up as Greek Orthodox (Christened etc) and still consider myself Greek Orthodox even though I'm more sceptical than I am a believer.

I don't understand why people who don't believe in religions have such a gripe and a need to constantly challenge religion and let everyone know they think its bullshit. It's up to each individual. Thats why I get so fucked off when Jehovas Witnesses come knocking.

Believe in what you want to believe but leave it at that imo. It becomes grating when people constantly force the topic.

Interesting.

Why do you believe what you believe (even though you have a scepticism about it)?  Is it because you were born within a certain culture at a certain point in time?  If you'd been born in Israel, what religion would you most likely 'believe' in?  What about Iran?  What about Greece a few thousand years ago?  What about amongst one of the tribes of the amazon?

To paraphrase someone else.  Why should the one religion you had thrust upon you be the correct one?  Why are all the others wrong?  I happen to agree that all the others are wrong as well.  I'd just go one further and say your god doesn't exist either.

However, I do believe that everyone has the right to believe in what they want, but religion shouldn't convey any privileges on anyone.  Privilege for one means that another must suffer.  Faith schools, the power of the 'church' in dictating and influencing policies, the restrictions imposed on the freedom of speech (i.e. blasphemy laws), the persecution of others and the removal of their civil liberties - these are all things that highlight for me what is wrong with religion.  Faith should be a private matter for people to believe what they want.  Religion should not impose itself on people's lives.

[Acidmouse]

Acid your way off that anger is a motivation. Religion is a laughable concept, it's fundamentally ridiculous. Belief in a "god" is a form of insanity that for some reason is totally acceptable while other forms of insanity are recognised as being very negative and dangerous. There's no anger, i'm happy enough for people to believe what they like, I just don't understand why religion/belief in god gets treated so differently from different forms of madness.

Obviously religion has historically done significant good as well as well as great harm. I just think we should be ready by now to move on from such a fundamentally foolish concept.

I was aiming that at atheists that go out of their way to speak against religion and search through biblical texts to seek out contradictions etc..

[celtic]

Smallisnobis will be well chuffed when he comes back from golf and sees how popular his thread is.

[nirvana]

Personally I like the label chav as it sums up a section of our society quite well imo. I don't like class labelling though. However, if we used our traditional class structures I think there would be many upper & middle class chavs & many working class non-c's.

Also Clare, I think yr right this has been discussed before - many deeper thinkers than you or I would struggle to make the  'fact' statement you make that god does not exist.

Personally I'm highly sceptical that there is a god, afterlife etc, but I can't bring myself to make the absolute judgment that this is a fact or tell my kids or anyone elses kids this particualr fact. I'd prefer to say some people believe this, some people believe that, some people believe the other.

[kinboshi]

I think when Claire says god doesn't exist she is merely summarising the long-winded opinion that she has yet to see any evidence that a god exists, but of course if evidence was made available that suggests a god does in fact exist, she'd look at it in detail and then make a rational decision based on this.

The lack of any evidence at all means that it's looking pretty unlikely that one does exist.  DUCY?

[Jon MW]

Acid your way off that anger is a motivation. Religion is a laughable concept, it's fundamentally ridiculous. Belief in a "god" is a form of insanity that for some reason is totally acceptable while other forms of insanity are recognised as being very negative and dangerous. There's no anger, i'm happy enough for people to believe what they like, I just don't understand why religion/belief in god gets treated so differently from different forms of madness.

Obviously religion has historically done significant good as well as well as great harm. I just think we should be ready by now to move on from such a fundamentally foolish concept.

I was aiming that at atheists that go out of their way to speak against religion and search through biblical texts to seek out contradictions etc..

That's not anger or vitriol

That's just good preparation.

If you do want to argue about something, then you should aim to do it well - and to do it well you need to have evidence. (and counter evidence to your opponents arguments obv.)

[kukushkin88]

Good post Kin. If there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of something it is perfectly reasonable to say it doesn't exist.

[nirvana]

I think when Claire says god doesn't exist she is merely summarising the long-winded opinion that she has yet to see any evidence that a god exists, but of course if evidence was made available that suggests a god does in fact exist, she'd look at it in detail and then make a rational decision based on this.

The lack of any evidence at all means that it's looking pretty unlikely that one does exist.  DUCY?

ICY, although  this one time, my car started, and it hadn't been starting, and then it did start and I was very relieved, before I could think what I was doing I offered up thanks (no sacrifices) which made me think that perhaps there was a god, but later I wasn't sure.

[Acidmouse]

Some people dont need to see something to believe it exsists, hence why its called faith.

Funny that..

[kinboshi]

I think when Claire says god doesn't exist she is merely summarising the long-winded opinion that she has yet to see any evidence that a god exists, but of course if evidence was made available that suggests a god does in fact exist, she'd look at it in detail and then make a rational decision based on this.

The lack of any evidence at all means that it's looking pretty unlikely that one does exist.  DUCY?

ICY, although  this one time, my car started, and it hadn't been starting, and then it did start and I was very relieved, before I could think what I was doing I offered up thanks (no sacrifices) which made me think that perhaps there was a god, but later I wasn't sure.

Someone was telling me that they knew there was a god because they walked out of a car crash fairly unscathed.  Two people were killed in this crash.

Belief in a personal god seems a very ego-centric and selfish thing.  I just don't understand it, and see absolutely no evidence to support it.  Same goes for praying.

[Claw75]

but I can't bring myself to make the absolute judgment that this is a fact or tell my kids or anyone elses kids this particualr fact. I'd prefer to say some people believe this, some people believe that, some people believe the other.

I wonder why this is.  I presume you'd have no qualms telling children (above a certain age of course) that santa claus, fairies, pixies and the like don't exist, so why not god?

it is a difficult one, because most of Hannah's extended family believe in god, and say things to her about god/heaven etc as if they are fact.  It's much more socially acceptable I think to state 'facts' such as 'there is a god' 'there is an afterlife' than to state as fact that (although much more highly probable) 'there is no god'. 

Rather than argue with the people that are cleverer than me who will not definitively state there is no god, I will instead say I believe there is as much chance of god existing as there is that a man in a red suit is going to come down my chimney on Christmas eve and leave me a load of presents.

[nirvana]

Clare, I share your irritation at people dogmatically asserting there is a god, or asserting their religion in a monotheistic way.

By the way, in saying what I said, I made some kind of value judgement about what you have chosen to tell your daughter. I didn't really mean to do that but was keen to express how I have done and would, in the future, do things. I should have spoken more generally. Sorry