Atheists destroy churches, attack the faithful

[kellyb]

I live in the "Bible Belt" in America.

Me, too.

You may know a couple of people who are nominally Christian.

He knows a lot of Scandinavian Christians, for whom their religion is a minor part of their thinking about life, and more akin to a "working hypothesis" than the totalist belief system here.

I think one of us is a lot more familiar with believers and how priests, pastors, and preachers influence their followers.

You and I are familiar with Southern Baptists and southern Evangelicals, some of the (if not literally the) most radical, extremist, fundamentalist Christians on the planet. The ideological roots of this local religion is found in turning human neighbors into factory farm animals for profit during the slavery era.

 

[dann]

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.

Yes, priests or preacher actually tell their congregations what to believe, and if the congregations want to believe it, they do, otherwise they don't. It's not a law of nature, it's very willing suspension of disbelief.

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.

Yes, if they want to continue to believe, they do so. If they don't, they don't. Some of them switch to a different branch of religion, some give up on religion altogether. Some pretend to carry on believing even though they no longer do because they enjoy the company of the others in the congregation and know that it would upset them if they knew about their irreligiousity. Your claim that they "aren't choosing what to believe" is absurd. They choose to continue to believe in what they were taught to believe. And they do so every day.

Ok, you believe that religion had little to do with the 9/11 religious fanatics.

No, I don't believe. I know that you won't find any place in the Quran demanding that people fly planes into buildings. I also know that very few Muslims actually do. And that many Muslims condemn those who do.

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?

Psychopathic pedophiles are very good at getting the confidence of their victims and their parents. And if they can get a position as scout leaders, preachers, teachers, school-bus drivers etc., it becomes so much easier.

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.

Your argument is actually: I disagree with you, so I'm not familiar with believers. Yeah, right.

Oh, another 'atheism is a religion' claimant? What scripture or screed are atheist fundamentalists adhering to?

I can see that Kelly already showed that your claims are absurd lies. This is one of the worst.

 

[jimbob]

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.

Me, too.


He known a lot of Scandinavian Christians, for whom their religion is a minor part of their thinking about life, and more akin to a "working hypothesis" than the totalist belief system here.



You and I are familiar with Southern Baptists and southern Evangelicals, some of the (if not literally the) most radical, extremist, fundamentalist Christians on the planet. The ideological roots of this local religion is found in turning human neighbors into factory farm animals for profit during the slavery era.

It's similar to Denmark in the UK. A lot of people are "probably Christian". Twenty-five years ago, "Of course I don't believe in any of that rubbish, I'm CofE" was a fairly common position.

As the children of such parents grow up, who didn't really bother going to church with their kids, except maybe at Christmas, a lot don't even bother, so are atheists almost by default.

I do know several devout Christians, and most are not fundamentalists - but as you say, it's more of a working hypothesis - or at least where most of the influence is in the afterlife, not in the real modern world. It's not for me, but I have no worries whether they'd reject any interpretation of their god that violated the golden rule.

I do know a smaller number of fundamentalists as well - but they have far more rigid beliefs and they do scare me due to their lack of critical thought about their beliefs. With them, it seems that submission to authority is key, and that includes having an authority informing oneself as to what to think on various subjects. Or a totalist approach, as you describe it.

 

[dann]

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.

I know what you mean, but still: There is no such thing as "total thought control." The major difficulty seems to be that you have to give up not just your belief but also the people you consider to be your friends and family and sometimes your livelihood as well. That is what you actually risk. Giving up on the idea that Hell exists is probably much easier!

 

[dann]

I do know several devout Christians, and most are not fundamentalists - but as you say, it's more of a working hypothesis - or at least where most of the influence is in the afterlife, not in the real modern world. It's not for me, but I have no worries whether they'd reject any interpretation of their god that violated the golden rule.

No, you don't. You don't know anything about Christianity! (I'm just trying to emulate wareyin! )

I do know a smaller number of fundamentalists as well - but they have far more rigid beliefs and they do scare me due to their lack of critical thought about their beliefs. With them, it seems that submission to authority is key, and that includes having an authority informing oneself as to what to think on various subjects. Or a totalist approach, as you describe it.

Some people feel it as a relief that they don't have to make up their own minds. It's a little similar to the masochists who describe it as freedom that the master orders them to do what they want to do. The contradiction in terms of a psychological relationship of this nature, cult member to guru, masochist to sadist, in most cases, is that the sub still has to choose to be a sub and obey the master, and the dom still has to figure out what the subs would like the master to order them to do.

 

[kellyb]

I know what you mean, but still: There is no such thing as "total thought control." The major difficulty seems to be that you have to give up not just your belief but also the people you consider to be your friends and family and sometimes your livelihood as well. That is what you actually risk. Giving up on the idea that Hell exists is probably much easier!

No, the evangelicals here have this..."mental boobytrap", where any questioning of the church's theology is presumed to be the work of the devil/demons. They start the brainwashing when you're really young, and it's absolutely brainwashing. We couldn't watch "secular" tv or movies or read secular books, etc. The earth was 6K years old, the rumored "fossil record" was planted by satan, and while the speed of light was "legit", god had created the universe with age. We were not allowed to learn the Pythagorean theorem, because Pythagoras was demonically possessed. We were not allowed to have friends who were not True Christians. We spent an hour a day on religious studies at school learning the correct theology.

The social consequences of deconverting was the easy part, I promise.

 

[kellyb]

Some people feel it as a relief that they don't have to make up their own minds. It's a little similar to the masochists who describe it as freedom that the master orders them to do what they want to do. The contradiction in terms of a psychological relationship of this nature, cult member to guru, masochist to sadist, in most cases, is that the sub still has to choose to be a sub and obey the master, and the dom still has to figure out what the subs would like the master to order them to do.

People can be made to not question if you catch them as small children and never give them exposure to the larger world, and they are forced to believe, starting as little kids, that demons are everywhere trying to capture your soul via "the wisdom of this world" (aka, being curious, or thinking critically).

eta: and it's not like the D/S thing. Similar, but this religion I'm describing is a political-religious system, literally the one that kept plantation slavery running on a societal level in the US south, and while the slavery is gone, the theology/religion remains.

eta:
I went to this church sometimes as a kid, and knew the guy this wiki is about, and heard this stuff all the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Rogers

Cecil Sherman (the Coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of moderate Baptists who separated from the Southern Baptist Convention)[5] writes in his autobiography that he once questioned Rogers about biblical inerrancy with reference to New Testament passages that seem to support slavery. Sherman reports that Rogers replied: "I believe slavery is a much maligned institution; if we had slavery today, we would not have this welfare mess."[6][7]

 

[dann]

No, the evangelicals here have this..."mental boobytrap", where any questioning of the church's theology is presumed to be the work of the devil/demons. They start the brainwashing when you're really young, and it's absolutely brainwashing. We couldn't watch "secular" tv or movies or read secular books, etc. The earth was 6K years old, the rumored "fossil record" was planted by satan, and while the speed of light was "legit", god had created the universe with age. We were not allowed to learn the Pythagorean theorem, because Pythagoras was demonically possessed. We were not allowed to have friends who were not True Christians. We spent an hour a day on religious studies at school learning the correct theology.

The social consequences of deconverting was the easy part, I promise.

I had a student once who was a JW. He wanted to leave them, but whenever he tried to make friends with people his own age, his awkwardness turned them off, and he always ended up returning to his circle of JW friends because he knew how to behave among them.
I don't know what happened to him, but I hope that he managed to get out.
It probably requires a pretty strong degree of cohesion in a group for it to work the way you describe it. In a society as massively irreligious as Denmark, it's probably difficult to maintain the level of control that you describe.
It sounds a little like the (secular!) pseudo-left-wing group Tvind in Denmark.

 

[dann]

this religion I'm describing is a political-religious system, literally the one that kept plantation slavery running on a societal level in the US south, and while the slavery is gone, the theology/religion remains.

Southern Baptist?!


ETA: You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
Who's talking about multiplying it?! Dividing it is fine!

 

[kellyb]

Southern Baptist?!

Yep.

 

[kellyb]

I also went to a technically nondenominational church even more often (it's where I went to school in grades 3-10).

THE BASIS OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL is the whole counsel of the infallible Word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as widely held and interpreted in the major evangelical confessions, doctrinal statements and documents. In accordance with these confessions, we hold unreservedly to the sovereignty of God, revealed in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, over the world and thus over every department of human activity, and submit unconditionally to the authority of Holy Scriptures, thereby recognizing these scriptures as the supreme and final standard for Christian education and all matters of faith and life.

This place. https://www.capturememphis.com/photos/117959 It used to be called "Central Church" and was an ECS campus.

 

[wareyin]

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.

Nonsense. I am pointing out that I currently live in a society that is saturated in religious belief, while you live in, as you say a "massively irreligious" society. As such, it should be obvious that one of us is a lot more familiar with believers. You know some people who merely go through the motions of belief without actually, deeply believing, and think that this has any bearing on people who base their lives on and around their belief.

 

[wareyin]

Me, too.


He knows a lot of Scandinavian Christians, for whom their religion is a minor part of their thinking about life, and more akin to a "working hypothesis" than the totalist belief system here.



You and I are familiar with Southern Baptists and southern Evangelicals, some of the (if not literally the) most radical, extremist, fundamentalist Christians on the planet. The ideological roots of this local religion is found in turning human neighbors into factory farm animals for profit during the slavery era.

I am also quite familiar with more moderate versions of American Christians, the Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, etc. I have attended many services in those churches. I rather doubt that dann has ever attended a single church service, but here (s)he is, proclaiming himself an expert on believers.

 

[kellyb]

I am also quite familiar with more moderate versions of American Christians, the Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, etc. I have attended many services in those churches. I rather doubt that dann has ever attended a single church service, but here (s)he is, proclaiming himself an expert on believers.

I'm just point out that the believers he knows are merely "believers", whereas a LOT of the believers we know are in a totalist, apocalyptic cult that somehow is considered completely normal and representative of theists in general, in spite of the fact that it's very much a Christian Taliban hellbent on world domination.

 

[jimbob]

Nonsense. I am pointing out that I currently live in a society that is saturated in religious belief, while you live in, as you say a "massively irreligious" society. As such, it should be obvious that one of us is a lot more familiar with believers. You know some people who merely go through the motions of belief without actually, deeply believing, and think that this has any bearing on people who base their lives on and around their belief.

That isn't my take on Dann's point.

It certainly isn't my point. Yes there are those who went through the motions, but were functionally nonbelievers. That was probably particularly common in England (not sure about Scotland or Wales, due to slightly different histories).

However there are also people who are actually devout and sincere believers who nevertheless do not allow their faith to subsume reason. When talking to one such colleague, he was of the opinion that God gave us the gift of reason, and failing to use it was a sin. He was (is) of the opinion that the bible has been written by men, but that God wrote the story of the World in the very rocks, so has no problem accepting evolution, for example - God created the universe with the conditions that allowed life to arise in the first place. (A paraphrase, but reasonably accurate).

As far as I know he does believe in the resurrection, for example, and certainly tries to live his life according to the teachings of the New Testament. By any reasonable measure, he is a Christian, and an admirable example as far as I can tell. I know several people like this.

 

[The Big Dog]

"Pay attention to me! Lookit at me saying baiting inflammatory stuff! Somebody get angry at me! JUSTIFY MY RAGE!"

Well, pay attention to the actual human rights abuses, anyway.

Not that the apologists care about them. Too many are weeping and rending their garments because someone had the temerity to show that the abuses were caused by atheists protecting their atheist turf.

 

[Aridas]

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.

There's also an old general truth that I've heard about being passed on between pastors that most of the members of a congregation will end up thinking about things like what they intend to have for lunch instead of actually listening to a sermon or making any serious effort to actually directly put recommendations into action.

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.

Again, even within a religion, there can be significant variation. As for choosing what to believe versus being taught... it's not a distinction without a difference, but your rendering of it seems overly simplistic and leaves out the part where a person can certainly choose to believe the things that they were taught as a child and that those beliefs start any evaluation with the incumbent advantage and frequently also benefit from the selection of values that the parents worked to instill into their children.

He knows a lot of Scandinavian Christians, for whom their religion is a minor part of their thinking about life, and more akin to a "working hypothesis" than the totalist belief system here.



You and I are familiar with Southern Baptists and southern Evangelicals, some of the (if not literally the) most radical, extremist, fundamentalist Christians on the planet. The ideological roots of this local religion is found in turning human neighbors into factory farm animals for profit during the slavery era.

I, on the other hand, am most familiar with the Brethren in Christ and the like, which are distinctly less radical and extremist, even if they are still somewhat fundamentalist. I'm also familiar to some notably lesser extent with a number of other significantly varying branches of Christianity and a few other religions.

No, the evangelicals here have this..."mental boobytrap", where any questioning of the church's theology is presumed to be the work of the devil/demons. They start the brainwashing when you're really young, and it's absolutely brainwashing. We couldn't watch "secular" tv or movies or read secular books, etc. The earth was 6K years old, the rumored "fossil record" was planted by satan, and while the speed of light was "legit", god had created the universe with age. We were not allowed to learn the Pythagorean theorem, because Pythagoras was demonically possessed. We were not allowed to have friends who were not True Christians. We spent an hour a day on religious studies at school learning the correct theology.

The social consequences of deconverting was the easy part, I promise.

Ugh. It's not as bad for the BIC, but yeah, it's still pretty much brainwashing. I, at least, was raised in a congregation where the pastors usually preferred a somewhat more intellectual and good morals approach, regardless, rather than directly embracing YEC (some of the other congregations embraced it more, though), the Omphalos hypothesis, and general ignorance. Of course, I also went to a public school that only specifically taught about religion in a somewhat secular way, even if students were not especially restricted from gathering to practice their religions. It still took a couple years to largely undo what brainwashing had been done to me, though, and the social consequences for me were quite mild, really, as far as I'm concerned (but then, I'm also mostly a hermit by nature).

ETA: You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
Who's talking about multiplying it?! Dividing it is fine!

Ehh... to answer this a bit more seriously than you did, long term, it's a good thing for wealth to multiply, for the sake of all. Partial division is almost always necessary for the healthy and sustainable growth of wealth, though.

I also went to a technically nondenominational church even more often (it's where I went to school in grades 3-10).


This place. https://www.capturememphis.com/photos/117959 It used to be called "Central Church" and was an ECS campus.

Again, ugh. I reject the validity of schools like that on a rather fundamental level and am glad for the public schooling that I had.

I'm just point out that the believers he knows are merely "believers", whereas a LOT of the believers we know are in a totalist, apocalyptic cult that somehow is considered completely normal and representative of theists in general, in spite of the fact that it's very much a Christian Taliban hellbent on world domination.

It's also not especially representative even of Protestants, much less Christianity as a whole, for that matter. It's a major subset, but I wouldn't rate it as even a majority.

 

[Aridas]

Well, pay attention to the actual human rights abuses, anyway.

Yes. Attention paid. Have any suggestions regarding viable courses of action for us related to it?

Not that the apologists care about them. Too many are weeping and rending their garments because someone had the temerity to show that the abuses were caused by atheists protecting their atheist turf.

Rather, that someone had the temerity to show off how much they don't understand what they're dealing with in a place focused on truth and skepticism and is unwilling to accept the truth of the matter, which, in this case, doesn't even remotely support the narrative that they tried to push. Given this unwillingness to face truth, much more of the focus ends up on that than on an issue that those here are largely powerless to intervene in anyways. That's related to the truth that reliably effective intervention and general choice of action and reaction requires understanding what's actually going on.

 

[The Big Dog]

Yes. Attention paid. Have any suggestions regarding viable courses of action for us related to it?



Rather, that someone had the temerity to show off how much they don't understand what they're dealing with in a place focused on truth and skepticism and is unwilling to accept the truth of the matter, which, in this case, doesn't even remotely support the narrative that they tried to push. Given this unwillingness to face truth, much more of the focus ends up on that than on an issue that those here are largely powerless to intervene in anyways.

Yes, earlier I called for all nations to join in the human rights watch’s recommendations.

Not surprised that people missed that given how much time has been devoted to off topic nonsense.

 

[aleCcowaN]

You appear to have seen a very different version of the movie than the rest of us. You have seen a version where Forrest Gump is giving "the most poignant speech against the Vietnam war." The rest of us have seen the version where he gives some kind of speech, but nobody (nobody in the movie theatre, that is!) knows if it is for or against the Vietnam War. (Or if it's about the Vietnam War at all!) That is the cowardly trick that the director of the movie plays on us: Everybody is allowed to imagine that he gave a speech that we would have applauded, Conservatives as well as Liberals, militant anti-communist U.S. American patriots as well as make-love-not-war hippies.
You have told us about the version of the film that you didn't actually see but imagined that you saw!
I think you should watch it again and tell us exactly what Forrest says "against the Vietnam war."

He doesn't say a single word against the Vietnam War!

You're told by the public reactions, the scripted speech ("Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing. That's all I have to say about that".) and the reaction of the feisty organizer ("That's so right on, man. You said it all... What's your name?"), and everybody chanting "Forrest Gump" after that.

And another one:

Best Conservative movies

That's why I anticipated this your comment when I wrote:

No, Forrest Gump is one-dimensional!
And, no, I wouldn't.

Good to know you haven't got the faintest idea what magic realism is.

And, it's true, like The Simpsons during its first 10 seasons, Forrest Gump is also appealing to 9 y.o. children, that's why it could be declared part of the top 100 Conservative movies while still remaining apolitical for grown-ups.

I think 9 y.o. anti-Conservatives will find faults in it. Because of that one-dimensional thingy.

And thanks for totally avoiding the Fred Rogers topic.

...

By the way, I make a living teaching English Lit! I know about magical realism ...

Is this going to wind up voir diring you? But that may be the cause it was SB and not you who denied that in that picture.

Finally, I lived Argentina during the 70s so your dialectics are well known to me. Why do you think I became such a sceptic and consider scepticism a discipline to be promoted everywhere?