But it helps.

But it helps.

But it helps.

So?

--imm

It's simply nonbelief.

So?

I've always wondered about the motives of people who aspire to create or lead national organizations that represent the interests of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Why do we even need an organization like American Atheists? How does its president serve my interests as an American atheist?

Anyway, the point I was trying to sneak up on is that I suspect a certain degree of narcissism from people who chair organizations that seem to serve little purpose other than creating a framework for their president to pontificate. Silverman does not speak for me, and I think his statement about atheists never being homophobic is ridiculous.

than the general population, but bigotry can be seen in any group. No one is immune.

His personal experiences are a little shocking, though.

And then there is Silverman, who I would hope would be moving his organization towards supporting liberal/progressive principals, but seems intent on going in the opposite direction.

I think we are going to see more agenda driven groups arise in the near future.

standard for what the 'faith community' can get up to. I doubt any upstart atheists are going to be able to take that first place honor from them.

Give him time.

nt

not all.

were / are officially atheist, proclaimed a ban on religious material (and lumped it together with pornography), proselytizing, and most churches, AND still persecuted gays big time.

For that matter, the Nazi state, not particularly religious, killed gays in death camps.

Do we really have to break out the "God Mitt Uns" belt buckles and Catholic priests with swastikas on their arms again?

about which I don't have a strong opinion either way.

Hitler talked about providence but not really about God. He curried favor with the Catholics, but at the same time, had priests and nuns sent to death camps.

Welcome to DU!

Yup, heh--The National Socialist party was a bit socialist at first, but once H came to power, he purged all those folks out. The name Strasser comes to mind--I think he might have been an actual socialist.

According to William Shirer IIRC, it didn't take Hitler long to co-opt the big money interests to his cause.

They were strongly religious. they had a stylized cross for their symbol, and iconography everywhere, and they were looking for Christ artifacts in some of their crazier moments.

Priests were sent to camps, but they didn't send priests to camps, there is a difference. They also sent Aryan ideals to camps too.

Gong anywhere with that non thought?

That's a lot more telling than a belt buckle.

Stalin claimed to be communist, so I guess he wasn't an atheists either, huh?

Provided, of course, that you belonged to the "Volk".

For all that, they were about as socialist as Lord Beaverbrook.

Don't be so gullible as you hurtle into prejudgment.

they were religious, I don't understand what is the big deal stating that. It's historical fact, and I have no idea what you keep going on about, unless we're just listing historical facts about Nazis.

Nazism itself was based on spurious race science.

Like many political movements before and since, it harnessed religion (along with the universities, broadcast networks, newspapers, and virtually all of the cultural superstructure) in advance of its decidedly nonreligious goals.

It's historical fact only in the same sense that the Roman Empire existed to serve its gods. Which is to say, it's not.

The whole Aryan ideal is based firmly in religious concepts.

and your last line may as well read something like "It's historical fact only in the same sense that the Roman Catholic Church exists to serve it god. Which is to say, it Doesn't."

They've been making very little sense lately, I'm trying to guess what you're actually trying to say, because it sounds like you just called yourself a peddler of evil conspiracies.

It applies to every day discourse as well as to religious writings..

No, I wasn't calling myself a peddler of evil conspiracies. I was referring to those who see the malevolent hand of religion behind every unsavory human activity.

I was correcting a factual error, and you jumped in with your new found mysteriosity and have run around in circles with it. Do you have a point?

To say that the Nazi party was driven by religion is not only historically wrong but it's preposterous on its face.

Is that clear enough?

I said that they were religious, and had tons of religious imagery, and operated on many religious principals. To deny that is to deny history.

I'm a bit of a student of the 2nd World War. Shirer wrote the definitive book with his "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," (a massive work which I have read), and the dude was a war correspondent in Germany until it declared war on the US. Shirer believed that Nazisim itself became like a religion for a lot of Germans, but Hitler in no way allied himself with established religion.

He writes: "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists."


WIKI cites historians such as Richard J. Evans for this entry: "Hitler said that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on science.[23] In a diary entry of 28 December 1939, Joseph Goebbels wrote that 'the Fuhrer passionately rejects any thought of founding a religion. He has no intention of becoming a priest. His sole exclusive role is that of a politician.'[24] In Hitler's political relations dealing with religion he readily adopted a strategy 'that suited his immediate political purposes.'[25]"

As for the swastika being a "stylized cross," that's absurd. A swastika (reversed from the Nazi's) has been used in Buddhism for centuries as a sign of good luck and in Chinese as a sign of long life.

Hindu child with swastika drawn on his head:

Being a bit of a student of WWII myself I too slogged my way through that book. Interesting title isn't it? "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" It implies there were two prior Reichs. The first one was the Roman Empire, we all know about them, expanded through most of Europe, and east, founded Christianity. Second Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, which was the predecessor to Germany, and very Catholic, and did all the things medieval Catholics did, crusades, inquisitions, exterminating old religions, etc.

You are right, the Nazi's did try to revive old German culture, which they felt had been corrupted by Jews. Among that was aspects of the old Germanic faiths. (IE old religion)

Our shared avatar, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote in his autobiography "Fates Worse than Death" (I believe it's that one, I don't have it in front of me right now) that when going to the western front he felt like a Saracen fighting against crusaders.

Yes, they did borrow a religious symbol, because it played many roles, including resembling a cross (Look at some of the threads in this forum, particularly the one about the 9-11 cross to see how far some people go to make something cross like (Not comparing any of the 9-11 people to anyone of Germanic origin in this example, just pointing out the pattern recognition, so ignoring any derailments focused on this point)) it also tied into the belief in the Aryan ideal, which comes from that part of the world as well. And again, this point still comes back to Religion, so if you want to, for some reason, argue that they weren't Catholic, they still had many religious beliefs.

The Second Reich was the unification of Germany under Bismarck.

it has no dogma of oppression as religion does. Sure, some atheists are homophobes, but that has nothing to do with atheism. Homophobia is openly taught and proudly spread by religions as part of their belief system.

As part of their belief system.

Atheism isn't a belief system, and requires no bigotry.

And the article is about atheists who are bigoted, not atheism as a bigoted ideology.

Which is why you're deflecting. In what way making women second class, requiring everyone to worship you or to burn in hell, condoning and encouraging the enslavement of non-chosen peoples, etc. etc. not some form of bigotry?

The title says atheists can be bigoted too, but it's not the same as religion, and I was pointing out why.

Which is why saying Abrahamic religions are not based on bigotry is shallow nonsense meant to buttress a worldview that pretends Abrahamic religions are not bigoted. Anyone who says the Abrahamic religions are not bigoted are either in blind denial or just plain dishonest.

Intellectual dishonesty does seem to be opposed to the truth. That combined with stubbornness make for a terrible combination.

Burden of proof and all that.

Now the burden shifts, but I expect no response to my examples. Just more deflection.

Woman is to blame for original sin, and man shall rule over her. Oh, and child birth will be painful because, you know, it's woman's fault.

That's God speaking. Not some dolt on FR, but who could know the difference. Some good ol misogyny.

Abrahamic religion promotes bigotry was my point. Explicitly. Your response does not address that. It certainly doesn't say "yeah god was wrong, women are equal". You have a lot impossible work ahead of you, get to it. Or deflect. Or just stop this "game" of,pretending these religions don't promote bigotry.

The whole notion of the Fall is that it was the result of human sin, not female sin.

I hope you have more compelling evidence than that. I feel like I'm in a bizarro Bob Jones world.

Do go on. As for me, I can point out passages that explicitly blame it on women. I don't really care about the excuses you present. What you don't do is counter explicit sexism, you just quote other parts of the Bible that seem vaguely tolerant. Well, the Bible contradicts itself a lot, so what? It's still explicitly bigoted.

Quite a few Christians interpret the Bible to mean Eve is more at fault, and they have good reason to do so. I mean, the Bible explicitly says that woman is property of man in quite direct and indirect ways.

You can't really pinpoint what all Christians believe about the Bible, since it is completely contradictory and open to a million interpretations, not to mention hilarious apologetics. All you can go on is that they think it's the word of God, which is scary stuff.

but many bigots find refuge in religion, be they believers or non-believers. Religions are merely devices that some use to seek comfort, fellowship and spiritual growth and others use to instil fear, hatred and divisiveness. I had never witnessed such animosity towards believers before joining DU. Even during my youth, when I despised the Church and organized religiion in general, I never felt any animosity toward people on account of their faith.
Now it seems that the self appointed leaders of the atheist "movement", whatever that is, are the new bigots. They are exemplified by a handful of loudmouths who frequent, and try to dominate conversations on this board. These cyber fascists hide behind a cloak of "progressive liberalism", yet they are as bigoted as the worst of the religious right.

Extremism promotes bigotry, and it stems from fear. You don't fight bigotry by becoming a bigot.

Namely, by having specific bigoted beliefs explicitly stated in their own dogmas and texts.

Who said I have animosity towards religious people? Only the bigoted ones. Most I know ignore the bigotry of their own religion, but still identify with it. Which is pretty shitty, but not bigoted.

Anyways, got anything other than strawmen to attack? Calling atheists bigots for rightly criticizing religion is such a dishonest, ignorant, and privileged position. I remember those days well.

Acts 17:21

Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.

the text and the church's interpretation of it is some sort of honorific for women, that elevates them in some way, or illustrates some special relationship between man/woman or woman/god.

But to the rest of us? It's sexism. Quite plainly so.

“There is no bigotry like that of 'free thought' run to seed.” - Horace Greeley.

Fascinating.

Would you like to hear a passage from the Gettysburg Address?

who had the support of the Democratic Party at the time?

Of course this was long before the current incarnation of the Republican & Democratic parties were even glimmers in someone's eyes.

The real flip was around the time of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

such that you were implying that Rug was quoting some 'bad' Republican like a modern Tea Party member?

I have observed him (such as in the CPAC/Atheists America thread) use the 'rethuglican' type smear without regard to the target's *actual* party affiliation, behavior/track record, etc.

Basically its a callback.

I must have missed that sermon.

And have lots of cognitive dissonance. Those are the two most important things to have if you don't want to be a bigot while "believing" in the Bible.

And I assure you I am honest about my faith and so is my church.

Nice try but no.

And it's quite possible to believe the Bible is all hunky dory with no stress. Humans can compartmentalize and deny reality like no one else.

Which still says nothing about the fact that the Bible commands and condones all sorts of bigotry as a fundamental part of its belief system.

I don't doubt there are people out there who think Mein Kempf is a wonderful guide to life, and that none of it is racist or bigoted, they are quite stress free in this idea. But, they're still wrong.

If a person doesn't care about the truth of their belief system, then nothing I could say would convince them. If their belief is based on some other motivation, then pointing out evidence will do nothing.

You don't have to believe all of the bible to be a Christian.

I think it's intellectually dishonest to say a belief system chooses to incorporate into it's foundational texts passages that it really thinks are false, but never let's on to that fact.

I wonder how often you hear ministers say that many parts of the Bible are false, and specific examples of which are false? It also begs the question of how they know it's false?

In my experience, many people that identify as Christian are not. They're more accurately deist or very vague theists. Their approach to the Bible is to pick parts that are morally appealing to them while discarding parts which aren't. This is just personal morality, nothing religious about it.

What I find objectionable is that when a deist or theist identifies as Christian, they are bewildered that they are asked about the beliefs they identify with. It's the most dishonest tactic there is.

People can identify themselves however they wish. You are identifying yourself with a belief system that holds the Bible as the word of God, and which has a lot of terrible morality promoted in the Bible. You're surprised when people think you are being honest and consistent with your label?

You can identify yourself however you want. I don't think you're a Christian myself, which is why it's pretty easy to be comfortable like you are. You don't defend what you don't believe in. I just find it a really dishonest answer when people tell me they are part of belief systems they don't believe. "I'm a Christian! Oh, the Bible? I don't believe that!"

I am a Christian and I don't care when an evangelical Christian tells me that I am not a true Christian and I don't care if an atheist doesn't think I am a Christian.

You can't do either if you're dishonest and define words to have whatever meaning you personally want to fit your worldview. I think it's fundamentally dishonest to identify with a belief system and then say you don't believe it. I don't really care how such dishonest people excuse it. There's a million ways.

Good night!

Good night.

to which Justin belongs, bases itself quite explicitly "on reason, tradition and Scripture." Notice which comes last.

I'm a pagan. You"re an atheist. Neither one of us can with any honesty define who is or is not a Christian. That is the prerogative of Christians themselves.

People identify as things they aren't all the time. They can get called on it too, it's no big deal. It's dishonest to say you believe something you don't. When it comes to belief systems, it's easy to point out liars. We do it here on DU all the time with respect to ideology.

pointing out your false belief that sll religioud people suffer from psychiatric illness? Let us know when any Christian body defers go you on questions of membership.

He's the Energizer Bunny when it comes to denigrating folks who don't agree with him.

But he's still only in second place.

We need to set up a betting pool for Win, Show and Place.

We would have a ton of honorable mentions.

Dishonorable Mentions.

of major religions that fit under definitions of mental disorders aren't, maybe I'd consider it a false belief? But I rarely get any sort of answer involving addressing relevant points. It's mostly just deflection, personal attacks, or statements with no reasoning. Not even bad reasoning, just no reasoning at all.

I don't care what people think of my definition of Christianity. I do care about open and honest discussion, which is impossible without some sort of definition. I find people that identify with belief systems they don't actually follow, on some of the broadest definitions possible (the Bible is the word of God), to be dishonest.

People can identify however they want, I don't really care how they identify, I just want an honest discussion of beliefs. That's rare to come by with religion, because the beliefs are so screwed up, no one wants to honestly defend them. That's why intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance are so necessary to believe.

more helpful.

If you are going to diagnosis people, I would suggest that you would need the education, training, experience and credentials to do so.

Otherwise, you are just employing a laymen's tool of ascribing psychiatric illness to those that you don't agree with. That is not pretty. That also requires intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance, probably born of privilege and childhood indoctrination.

So define mental illness.

Except for the last part, which says socially normative behaviors are not mental disorders. As far as I can tell, that's the only reason many religious beliefs aren't officially classified as that, yet at least.

Why should socially normative beliefs not be mental disorders? Sure, any definition of a disorder will be subjective, but is like definitions that point out it is maladaptive, bad for society. Something socially normative can be maladaptive.

I think many of the core religious beliefs cause suffering and impaired abilities to function. I think most self-identified religious people ignore and don't believe the worst. When I believed in an invisible place of eternal torture that may await me, it caused lots of suffering and impaired ability to function. When I believed in original sin, it caused lots of suffering and impaired ability to function. When I believed you should wait until marriage to have sex because an all-powerful invisible being with my eternal fate in its hands disapproved, it caused suffering and impaired ability to function.

It's offensive to me that these beliefs are shielded because of privilege, and people continue to suffer with these beliefs with little to no support, because they're "normal".

What's worse are the other believers who are much more intellectually dishonest, ignore the texts of the religion they claim to adhere to but really believe things based on their own personal morality, who then turn around and defend these harmful beliefs because "religion".

In fact, you get lots or blame the victim here, lots of "how could you honestly believe those things you were indoctrinated into and which are laid out explicitly in texts? Obviously, you're supposed to ignore those parts, what are you, stupid?"

Gave three very basic beliefs of Christianity as examples, which have explicit support in the Bible. Those ARE ALL terribly harmful beliefs. At least to me, and most others in the US, which is why most "believers" don't really believe most of them, they're terrible beliefs that lead to all sorts of self-loathing, fear of natural things, disgust with one self, etc.

Which of those three religious beliefs are normal and healthy to you and why? I explained why I think they're terrible, harmful, and maladaptive. I could go into further detail if you want.

You can look at places which believe those three beliefs I mentioned above much more fervently and see how healthy of societies they are. Not quite as healthy IMHO.

That just indicates that it is your fear that drives you.

Thinking that what others believe is terrible, harmful and maladaptive is the basis of bigotry.

I don't need you to go further into anything. Your position is perfectly clear. And its untenable.

because what is a disorder is completely subjective. However, a lot of people agree with me. You seem to as well, since you never described what makes them healthy or normal.

If thinking what others believe is terrible is the basis of bigotry, then DU is just one giant bigotry site. We think conservative beliefs are terrible. In fact, all of psychology is bigoted. Labeling something a mental disorder requires stating that what other people believe is bad or maladaptive.

Your constant deflections have painted you into a ridiculous corner.

Where on earth do you get that idea?

What names people call each other is completely objective.

You said definitions are important. You chose a definition. Your belief system that leads you to the claim that religious people are mentally ill in no way meets the criteria of that definition.

I may think conservative beliefs are terrible, but I don't think all conservatives are mentally ill.

And thanks for pointing out that we are on a site that encourages the rallying around a common enemy. There are lots of sites for attacking religious people. You seem to think this is one of them. It's not.

OMG, now all of psychology is bigoted??

You are so out of your depth here.

Good luck with your crusade. It's worked so well in the past.

I got the idea that what is considered a disorder is subjective by the definition of words.

There is no objective truth for what is and isn't a disorder. All definitions of it are based on preferences. You certainly haven't shown what the objective source material would be.

Conservative beliefs, for the most part, are claims about this world. They aren't claims about the supernatural. If they were, I'd dare say they'd fit the definition as well. Actually, many conservative beliefs are based on the supernatural, and those beliefs are mental disorders to me.

If someone holds a mistaken belief but is open to the idea of changing their mind as they learn new information, that is normal to me, that is how we all learn. What I find abnormal is holding a mistaken belief that cannot be changed by the very nature of the belief. Then the belief is not merely harmful, it's a disorder IMHO.

Of course, our society is set up in such a way that quite a few harmful beliefs that are disorders won't hurt you in society, because they are so widespread. They hurt society as a whole and individuals, but they're "normal". Those are always the most dangerous ones, and they change over time, thank goodness.

Do you think believing hell is real and following certain rules will allow you to avoid it is normal or healthy behavior or thinking? I don't.

Well, it's one of the most intellectually dishonest and cognitively dissonant things I have ever read. That most likely occurred because it came through some very thick filters of privilege.

It is a very good idea to be able to change your mind when presented with new information instead of just repeating the same thing over and over again despite being given said new information. If that's your definition of a disorder, I think you may need to have an honest discussion with yourself.