Atheists destroy churches, attack the faithful

Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Just as most people who follow leaders like Kim, Mao, and Xi will not have read philosophical works on atheism but will instead be accepting what they are told about it by those in authority.

And there are differences between different gods, and between different human leaders.
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Even for fanatics a charismatic leader is not a god. Don't take metaphors literally.
 
The Big Dog said:
There has been numerous pieces of evidence, including the statements of the leadership and the fact that they are cracking down on all faiths and the monstrous history of totalitarian attacks of atheist states against religious. I have also submitted the statements of experts on the subject, including most recently from Amnesty.
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You have not presented any evidence that atheism is the main cause of the attacks on Chinese underground churches. This is what you intended in the title of this thread.
You have not presented any Amnesty International report that mentions atheism. Neither of Human Rights Watch.
Only biased opinions of experts without any explanation. You try to endorse these opinions as arguments of authority. We do not swallow that.
 
The Big Dog said:
Another point, if I were to say that the obvious cause of the Inquistion was because non-Catholics were a danger to the States of various Catholic countries, you would of course agree, but would find it laughable if I asserted Catholism was not a cause.

That is just the case here. Think of atheist attacks on religious people as the Atheist inquistion (just much larger and industrialized in its viciousness)
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Argument failed. The express aim of the Inquisition was to eliminate the enemies of the Catholic Church. The explicit aim of the attacks on underground churches in China is to eliminate threats against the Chinese state, not atheism in particular.
 
dann said:
No, they don't.


I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.


It would be a contradiction in terms for an atheist to have gods, obviously.


No, not at all. You know too little about all religions and almost all sacred books and prophets. Your sweeping generalizations are what appeals to T2, which should make you suspicious. It's a sign that you're on the wrong track.



If we stick to the one thing that you got right, i.e. that atheists don't have gods, then, yes, that is the main difference between most atheists and most believers, I guess. But what was your point again?! It doesn't seem to have much to do with my post:

"T2 seems to be unable to grasp the fact that believers choose what to believe and what to dismiss from various scriptures - be that "detailed instructions" or general nonsense."
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I don't know if there's any marginal religion without gods, sacred texts and prophets. I have studied a little anthropology. And all the religions I have known are based on the same thing. What's more, all the discussions I've had with believers end in the same thing: they say they have a special experience or knowledge that comes from their god. Irrationality. This does not happen with atheists.
I hope you accept this difference.
 
David Mo said:
They're probably not trying to create confusion. They are confused. Some atheists are dogmatic. All religion is dogmatics. They are two very different things. They don't realize that.
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Please, spare us the ********. Not only are we "not trying to create confusion." We also aren't confused. Where do you see confusion?!
Nobody has claimed that religion and atheism are the same thing. Nobody has confused religion with atheism.
Notice that what I've done is to compare T2 to TBD. What the two of them have in common is their attitude to their respective beliefs.
 
David Mo said:
I don't know if there's any marginal religion without gods, sacred texts and prophets. I have studied a little anthropology. And all the religions I have known are based on the same thing. What's more, all the discussions I've had with believers end in the same thing: they say they have a special experience or knowledge that comes from their god. Irrationality. This does not happen with atheists.
I hope you accept this difference.
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1) You confuse religion with theism.
2) When you have somebody (almost anybody) cornered in a discussion they tend to simply insist on whatever they believe in. Atheists too. Irrationally too. However, they wouldn't insist on their special experience or knowledge coming from their god since they don't have one. That one is pretty obvious.
 
The difference between the religions of Europe and the U.S. lies in their social strength. In Europe they are weaker.
To change religion does not mean but to change dogma, prophet or god. Only rationality and incredulity come out of it.
The problem with China is that they have changed from religious dogmatism to political nationalist dogmatism. In that nationalism atheism is secondary. That is why they have no problem in reaching agreements with controlled religions such as the Catholic or family cults. Their problem is with those that they cannot control.
 
David Mo said:
Even for fanatics a charismatic leader is not a god. Don't take metaphors literally.
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I didn't say they were literal gods.

I'm beginning to remember why I never engage you in conversation - you're simply not interested in an honest and fair debate.
 
dann said:
1) You confuse religion with theism.
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This is exactly it. The opposite of atheism is not religion, it's theism. And it's certainly not "these particular religions".

Not only is there the framing of religion as the opposite of atheism, but also in a seeming lack of acknowledgement that not everybody who is religious is fanatical about it. Being British, I'm well accustomed to the few people I meet who I've managed to identify as religious being fairly apathetic about it. It being more a vague belief in some form of God, and the labelling of this belief as Christianity because that's what the state religion is, than it is the kind of dogmatism that's usually touted here as being typical.

I'm sure much of this is cultural, but I'm also sure that some of it is that a more nuanced, less (if you like) dogmatic approach to such issues would make the ranting and wailing less easy to justify.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
You believe his professed atheism is entirely separate from all other beliefs and doctrines connected to him and his government? On what do you base this belief?
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He's also a self-proclaimed Marxist who has embraced a pretty radical version of capitalism. He seems to be very good at compartmentalizing.
(= He's not a Marxist at all. He probably doesn't believe in any gods so to that extent he's also an atheist. But atheism has nothing to do with his persecution of (some) religious faiths.
Can't you imagine how Xi and his followers would react if a group of actual Marxists (atheism implied) insisted on class struggle and began to fight against the current exploitation of workers in Xi's Chinese version of capitalism?!
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I'm sure much of this is cultural, but I'm also sure that some of it is that a more nuanced, less (if you like) dogmatic approach to such issues would make the ranting and wailing less easy to justify.
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As a Marxist apatheist I never felt any need to join the organized atheists in Denmark. And I was even more convinced that it would have been a bad idea to do so when they invited this racist atheist (Wikipedia) to speak at one of their meetings.
 
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dann said:
You shouldn't generalize like this. Even in the least religious countries in Europe, we do have Christian fundamentalists and cults, but they are very few and very far between: Evangelist (Wikipedia). You can live a lifetime in Denmark without ever meeting one.


ETA: I forgot the Jehovah's Witnesses. There are 15,000 of those (population in DK: 6 million). However, they tend not to be as in-your-face as the ones I've met in the USA or Cuba.
Compared to:
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I spoke poorly in an over-generalization there, but you hopefully see my point. Your "Evangelists" are the sort of way of being a theist which is ubiquitous in the US. And like the JWs, they have total thought control over their members.
It's a little easier to get out of being a JW, though, because they don't believe in hell, as in eternal torture. With the evangelicals, any heretical thought is presumed to be an actual demon in your brain putting your immortal soul at risk of the fire and brimstone.
 
dann said:
No, I'm very familiar with both theists and other believers. What you and T2 don't seem to be familiar with is that believers pick and choose what they want to believe in - just like you do!
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And this is a good example of how you appear to not be familiar with believers in general, and religions in general. Priests or preachers actually tell their congregations what to believe. They guide and shape the religious views of their followers. If you have never listened to a sermon or attended a church, it's understandable that you wouldn't be familiar with the idea of a priest instructing or teaching the congregation in what to believe and how to apply that belief to their lives.

Further, the majority of people raised in a particular religion stay in that religion. They aren't choosing what to believe so much as believing what they were taught as children to believe.

dann said:
Muslims are an obvious example, one that T2 loves and always misunderstands because he's as blind a cherry picker as most religious fanatics. He loves to refer to the handful of guys who flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, the most extreme fanatics you can find, but he tends to ignore the 1.8 billion Muslims who abhor the fanaticism of the fundies - and who are the main victims of them.
Let me give you just one example:


(My transcription from the short documentary The Internet Warriors[/url. It's a wonderful documentary! They're all there: the racists, the anti-communists, the Trump worshippers ...]
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Ok, you believe that religion had little to do with the 9/11 religious fanatics.

dann said:
In Denmark, you'll have a hard time finding a Christian fundamentalist, but they are still around, usually in small congregations outside of the State Church. [url=https://www.thelocal.dk/20180306/denmark-to-deport-priest-to-us-after-finding-him-guilty-of-sexual-assaulting-minors]Denmark to deport priest to US after finding him guilty of sexually assaulting minors
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dann said:
(The Local, March, 2018)
(1. When Danes speak English they tend to call any preacher "priest" because it's so close to the Danish word for preacher = præst.
2. It was a Christian congregation, but it's doubtful that the perpetrator was ever a Christian. He was probably an ordinary psychopath who had donned the robes of the clergy because it served his purposes.)
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Your link doesn't seem to support your No True Christian claim here. What exactly makes you doubt that the man wasn't a Christian?

dann said:
However, most members of Folkekirken/The Church of Denmark don't believe in Adam and Eve, in creationism (not even in the 'intelligent design' version), and we have vicars who don't believe in God (Wikipedia)! And this is not unique to Denmark. You find them in other countries, too!
Two per cent of Anglican priests don't believe in God, survey finds. As many as 16 per cent are agnostic. (The Independent, Oct. 27, 2014)

Why do you think that T2 never mentions these guys? (I mean, there are many more of them than there are Muslim terrorists!) Why do you think that T2 is such a cherry picker -just like the religious fanatics? And why do you prefer to think that I've never met any believers? Why do you prefer to think that I am "completely unfamiliar with any theist/believer of any stripe," even though it's so obvious that I'm not? In this thread, for instance, I've met TBD!
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Allow me to answer why I think you are not familiar with believers. You display an obvious lack of basic knowledge or familiarity with them, which leads me to think that you are unfamiliar.

dann said:
The answer to my question is very simple: Atheism has fundamentalist cherry pickers, too. They are not something that you find only among people of a religious faith. They probably only have adverse effects on the attempts to wipe out religion, and guys like T2 appear to be in as much denial about certain aspects of the world we live in as the religious nuts. Don't join him!
The Death of Religion – not with a bang but a whimper
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Oh, another 'atheism is a religion' claimant? What scripture or screed are atheist fundamentalists adhering to?
 
dann said:
That does not at all describe the Christians I know on a personal level. (I don't consider the knowledge I have of TBD to be particularly personal.) You and T2 are the ones that toddle along thinking whatever you have convinced yourselves of by ignoring major parts of reality.
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I live in the "Bible Belt" in America. You may know a couple of people who are nominally Christian. I think one of us is a lot more familiar with believers and how priests, pastors, and preachers influence their followers. Feel free to claim that others are ignoring this major part of reality that we are obviously more familiar with than you are, but I hope you won't be too upset when such nonsensical talk gets you lumped in with the TBDs of the forum.
 
Ok, you believe that religion had little to do with the 9/11 religious fanatics.
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No, he just noted that they were:
the most extreme fanatics you can find,
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...and that most Muslims are not fanatics like that.

Oh, another 'atheism is a religion' claimant? What scripture or screed are atheist fundamentalists adhering to?
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He never said atheism is a religion. He's talking about "fundamentalist" atheists as people for whom their atheism is such an enormous part of their worldview and sense of self that it causes bizarre stuff like xenophobia towards believers and a strong desire to "evangelize" theists out of their theism.
 
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wareyin said:
I live in the "Bible Belt" in America. You may know a couple of people who are nominally Christian. I think one of us is a lot more familiar with believers and how priests, pastors, and preachers influence their followers. Feel free to claim that others are ignoring this major part of reality that we are obviously more familiar with than you are, but I hope you won't be too upset when such nonsensical talk gets you lumped in with the TBDs of the forum.
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The irony!
You appear to be incapable of grasping the fact that there are several kinds of Christians. You seem to think that your fundamentalist version of Christians in the Bible Belt are the only true Christians, which, by the way, is something that you have in common with them.
 
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