Atheists destroy churches, attack the faithful

Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I would say that someone who has a belief in an interventionist God is a theist. Being religious requires some actual engagement with that idea, like being a member of a religion, observing some kind of religious rituals (be that going to church or praying occasionally), having some of their personal values informed by what they think their God would want, etc.

Let me give a different example to the one I gave earlier - an old co-worker. He and I once spent a while chatting about what a load of old bollocks we thought religion was. A few days later a regular customer came in and talked about how his mother had died. We offered our condolences and he said something along the lines of "at least I know that there's something else and there's someone watching over us", to which my co-worker replied "oh, of course there is!"

After the customer had left I asked my co-worker about this, and he said that it "just made sense" to him that there's someone watching over us and taking care of us, and that it didn't make sense that we'd just come into being. Upon further pressing, he hadn't actually thought about it any more than that. Any arguments against it he agreed with. But, still, he we sure that there was "something more".

I think that to call him a theist would be reasonable, as he clearly believed in a deity. I think that to call him religious would be to stretch the word practically beyond meaning.

It'd be like calling someone who believes that the sun exists religious because religions that worship the sun have existed. To my co-worker he put the same judgement value on the existence of God as he did on the existence of the sun. He just considered it a mundane fact and didn't spare it any more thought than that.
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Thank you for the explanation.
 
MRC_Hans said:
So you take one post that claim that some good might come out of the misery, and use it to claim that "many atheists" appove of human right abuses?

... Yeah. Par for your game, i suppose.

I stand by my word: Liar.

Hans
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A guy openly claims that the Chinese crackdown might make people so miserable that they abandon their faith, and our correspondent calls that "some good."

Well that makes two people, huh folks? Wow. Plus the Atheist from the very first page, and all the other apologists.
 
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No way! The official propaganda outlet of the communist party does not mention the crackdown nor human rights abuses? Well that settles that i guess!

Such glorious "facts."

Oh man.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
You might have to take my word for the fact that I knew my granddad a little better than you did.
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The only thing I know about your grandfather is your description of him and of his behavior. And that's what I quoted: that "the one thing he was terrified of was that God was angry with him for abandoning his faith."
I never pretended to know any more about him, so I don't see why you want to turn it into a who-knew-your-grandfather-better contest. Based only on what you wrote, it is quite obvious that he wasn't an atheist.
 
dann said:
The only thing I know about your grandfather is your description of him and of his behavior. And that's what I quoted: that "the one thing he was terrified of was that God was angry with him for abandoning his faith."
I never pretended to know any more about him, so I don't see why you want to turn it into a who-knew-your-grandfather-better contest. Based only on what you wrote, it is quite obvious that he wasn't an atheist.
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Yet you made a snarky reaction
The one thing!
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(exclamation point yours.)
about his statement that it was the one thing that his grandfather was afraid of. Have you not met elderly people near their end of life who have pretty much come to a place of radical acceptance?
I have, so the story does not surprise me.
 
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dann said:
Based only on what you wrote, it is quite obvious that he wasn't an atheist.
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No, it isn't. And it's because you're claiming to know what he believed better than I do that I feel I have to remind you that I actually knew him better than you did.

He was an atheist for more than 70 years. Nothing I have said contradicts that.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
No, it isn't. And it's because you're claiming to know what he believed better than I do that I feel I have to remind you that I actually knew him better than you did.

He was an atheist for more than 70 years. Nothing I have said contradicts that.
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I'm sorry, but an atheist who is afraid of God is a contradiction in terms, no matter how you put it and no matter how well you knew your grandfather, whom I didn't know at all. He may have been one for more than 70 years, but he had clearly stopped being one when he declared that the one thing he feared was the wrath of God!
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
FWIW, my granddad was Catholic until the horrors he experienced in WWI made him an atheist in his early 20s. He was in his mid-90s when he died and the one thing he was terrified of was that God was angry with him for abandoning his faith.
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Some religions might offer solace to people dying with comforting beliefs. Clearly, not all faiths are good even for that. (I wonder how Aztecs on their deathbeds regarded their coming end.) The misery religions, e.g., the abrahamic ones, seem to be all over the scale. We've all known people dying with faith and saying they were "so glad I know who Jesus is." Your poor grandfather sounds like a sort-of atheist, that is, not atheist at all. He too knew who Jesus is!

Interesting accounts from hospice workers and others. I mean to take this up with a psychologist I know who's worked for many years in old folks' homes. He's seen it all. Sure hope he's kept systematic notes.

He is, btw, a former Presbyterian preacher.
 
dann said:
I'm sorry, but an atheist who is afraid of God is a contradiction in terms, no matter how you put it and no matter how well you knew your grandfather, whom I didn't know at all. He may have been one for more than 70 years, but he had clearly stopped being one when he declared that the one thing he feared was the wrath of God!
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Welp, Squeegee, dann sure has you here! Why, atheists must be "convinced" that God doesn't exist! If an man in his 90's ever has fears or doubts that he might be wrong to not believe in God, his membership in the atheism club is summarily dismissed! Now, who was that that brought up fundamentalist atheists?
 
Come now, folks. Let's have a little sympathy for a dying man. Fear of death, more than any other fear, weakens and exhausts us. It can make us reach back to early things.

And if I was God, I'd blast and damn all those ******* priests and imams who blight once-healthy minds with their loathsome doctrine of hellfire.
 
The Big Dog said:
jimbob said:
Authoritarian + atheist = anti religious suppression.
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Bingo! Exactly what I have been explaining all along.

I can't fathom why atheists are having such a hard time with this.
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As far as I can tell, nobody in this thread except in your imagination disputed that part.

As far as I can tell, you don't seem to accept that the problem is the authoritarianism. Authoritarian state religions also have religious suppression.

The common factor is the authoritarianism, not atheism.
 
jimbob said:
As far as I can tell, nobody in this thread except in your imagination disputed that part.

As far as I can tell, you don't seem to accept that the problem is the authoritarianism. Authoritarian state religions also have religious suppression.

The common factor is the authoritarianism, not atheism.
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We are discussing the actual on-going human rights abuses in China where:

Authoritarian + atheist = anti-religious suppression.

Suggesting that other groups in other places does not contradict what I have been explaining in this thread about the actual human rights abuses in China.

I have explained repeatedly that this "authoritarianism" derail is simply whataboutism.

Authoritarian CCP + Official atheist CCP = anti-religious suppression in China.
 
The Big Dog said:
We are discussing the actual on-going human rights abuses in China where:

Authoritarian + atheist = anti-religious suppression.

Suggesting that other groups in other places does not contradict what I have been explaining in this thread about the actual human rights abuses in China.

I have explained repeatedly that this "authoritarianism" derail is simply whataboutism.

Authoritarian CCP + Official atheist CCP = anti-religious suppression in China.
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It is not whataboutism to point out that your idea is wrong.

If an authoritarian state has an official position on something, then it suppresses dissenting views.

I can't think of any currently Christian states that are authoritarian, however there have been many examples. Most of Christendom when it was called Christendom, for example had pretty stiff laws against heresy, including the wrong sort of Christianity. They also had even worse laws against other religions.

I can think of a very obvious Muslim authoritarian state - Saudi Arabia.
 
jimbob said:
I can't think of any currently Christian states that are authoritarian, however there have been many examples. Most of Christendom when it was called Christendom, for example had pretty stiff laws against heresy, including the wrong sort of Christianity. They also had even worse laws against other religions.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion

For additional reading :)
 
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