Anonymous wrote:I'm an atheist. Why would I care what someone who believes in fictional stories thinks about me? Doesn't insult me, doesn't offend me in the slightest.
Maybe because you use critical thinking and see context. They demonize your identity to make it easier for them as a group to hate you. Then they turn that hate into political action to advance their own interest against your interest.
You have just described living in a society. Congratulations.
I appreciate the insight and the congratulatory remarks. I will only add that I described living in a society with hateful people. Not the kind of society that I find ideal.
Anonymous wrote:I'm an atheist. Why would I care what someone who believes in fictional stories thinks about me? Doesn't insult me, doesn't offend me in the slightest.
Maybe because you use critical thinking and see context. They demonize your identity to make it easier for them as a group to hate you. Then they turn that hate into political action to advance their own interest against your interest.
You have just described living in a society. Congratulations.
I appreciate the insight and the congratulatory remarks. I will only add that I described living in a society with hateful people. Not the kind of society that I find ideal.
I adjure you to leave and move to Utopia.
How about I stay and you put up with me trying to change things?
Anonymous wrote:Geez, are you the same poster who went on and on about feeling duped by that Shen Yun show? Atheist here, and I think you need to get a grip and let it go. Who the heck cares whether your belief system is associated with the devil in some people’s religions? Since I don’t believe in it, whatever, it’s like being associated with the tooth fairy or something.
They 100% are. And for those that are confused, no one in OP’s thread in the Entertainment forum said he didn’t have morals. You do not need to be religious to have morals. Otherwise we wouldn’t have millions of stories of religious men acting without morals.
Thank you for admitting the bolded part. I never claimed anything about what was said on the other thread. I just wanted to separate this discussion from that thread because there were several people saying that atheists should not be offended by any association with the Devil (because the Devil doesn't exist for them). It happens that I personally don't agree with that line of thought.
DP. From a religious point of view, your morals are meaningless. They likely have a teological origin rooted in observations and outcomes. In most, I hesitate to say all because I am not familiar with every religion, morals are derived from a divine source, either through enlightenment or direct communication with their Supreme Being. This deontological origin is troubling to some, because there is no why. It's just the rules that your religion asks you to follow. From a religious point of view, if your morals don't come from God, the only other choice is the hubris of man. To believe you can know the mind of God is sacrilegious in many religions.
Thank you for the additional background. Now back to the original question: should an atheist feel offended by the association with the Devil, or this association is just a tenderhearted, compassionate compliment?
As I tried to explain, your morals are literally offensive to many religions. It doesn't matter that your morals overlap theirs to some extent. You hold them for the wrong reasons. Lucky for you, you live in a country that tolerates religious, including none, diversity. But whether it offends you, is up to you.
Well, they were forced to change their attitude in time. And they will have to continue changing their attitude to keep up with the times. You have quite a few options:
1. You can sit back and pretend that it's just freedom of speech and you can't do anything about it.
2. You can pretend that you have no idea what they mean when they associate you with the devil.
3. You can pretend that you are above all this and their devil is just another comic book character.
4. You can point out that their attitude is hateful and force them to change.
So, your argument is basically, I am an atheist, therefore I am right. People must accept and admit that I am right.
FYI, forcing people to change never works.
Do you still believe that religious people were right when they were imprisoning, torturing, burning, and killing atheists?
Atheist persecution never happened on a large scale.
Would you suggest that atheists prosecution was / is ok because (according to you) it never happened on a large scale?
According to its survey of some 60 countries, the seven where expression of atheist views or defection from the official religion can bring capital punishment are Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
The 70-page report lists no recent cases of actual execution for “atheism.”
Tim Whitmarsh argues atheism existed in the ancient world, though it remains difficult to assess its extent given that atheists are referenced rather than having surviving writings.
While atheists (or people perceived as such) were occasionally persecuted, this was rare (perhaps due to being a small group, plus a relative tolerance toward different religious views).
During the nineteenth century, British atheists, though few in number, were subject to discriminatory practices.[22] The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from the University of Oxford and denied custody of his two children after publishing a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism.
Atheist Charles Bradlaugh was elected as a Member of the British Parliament in 1880. He was denied the right to affirm rather than swear his oath of office, and was then denied the ability to swear the oath as other Members objected that he had himself said it would be meaningless. Bradlaugh was re-elected three times before he was finally able to take his seat in 1886 when the Speaker of the House permitted him to take the oath.
In most of Europe, atheists are elected to office at high levels in many governments without controversy.
Anonymous wrote:I'm an atheist. Why would I care what someone who believes in fictional stories thinks about me? Doesn't insult me, doesn't offend me in the slightest.
Maybe because you use critical thinking and see context. They demonize your identity to make it easier for them as a group to hate you. Then they turn that hate into political action to advance their own interest against your interest.
No. We truly believe many people have the spirit of demons/Satan. It's simply that.
Anonymous wrote:I'm an atheist. Why would I care what someone who believes in fictional stories thinks about me? Doesn't insult me, doesn't offend me in the slightest.
Maybe because you use critical thinking and see context. They demonize your identity to make it easier for them as a group to hate you. Then they turn that hate into political action to advance their own interest against your interest.
No. We truly believe many people have the spirit of demons/Satan. It's simply that.
Anonymous wrote:I'm an atheist. Why would I care what someone who believes in fictional stories thinks about me? Doesn't insult me, doesn't offend me in the slightest.
Maybe because you use critical thinking and see context. They demonize your identity to make it easier for them as a group to hate you. Then they turn that hate into political action to advance their own interest against your interest.
No. We truly believe many people have the spirit of demons/Satan. It's simply that.
You can believe whatever you want, but only speak for yourself.
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