nhojsmith said:
feel you. it definitely attracts "crabs" and some sad miserable chubby white kids listening to esham wearing black lipstick. but look at the conversion rate to christianity and islam for prisoners if you want to talk about what mode of htought attracts what kind of people. atheism also attracts those not content with the prescription of religion.
The conversion rate in prison(if genuine), usually results in a changed individual, (hence Malcolm X, etc.)..
yeah atheists do get pissed off that some religious people are so content with their nicely packaged answer to existence. but whats wrong with that. when you were an infant parkboyz you were content shitting in your pants and drooling for food, were your parents miserable insecure creatures because they wanted you to rise above that?
It isn't nicely packaged and I actually have a real problem in accepting responsibility for various things that I am accused of and threatened by in the various scripture but I painfully believe based on my faith and rationale, there is nothing neat about this package. The difference between me and an infant is that I'm an adult like many other theists who is open to criticism, but not judgment and there are a lot of miserable and insecure Christians also who force their beliefs on other people.
and thats the way many atheists feel about theists. its like grow the fuck up, learn to think on your own, and stop being dependant on your parents (god) to change your diapers and feed you (answer all your questions).
In this case theists feel that we don't have a choice and a transcendental God can in no way be compared to our parents. Even with this knowledge of God we know nothing, so I don't know how you feel that God has answered all of our questions, people ask him/her different questions every night, while others seek out their own, others do both.
and if atheism is a "losers" religion, i suppose theism is the "winners" way out. but you gotta understand that that is what drives skepticism in the first place. what are we talking about here: (1) god suddenly spoke to a select group of men in one region of the planet from a booming voice in the sky a few thousand years ago (even though man had been around for a couple HUNDRED thousand years) telling them the rules to dictate how people live, which coincidentally fell in line with the wishes of the ruling elite, and if you follow those rules and believe it then even though you are living in terrible condiitons and being taken advantage of you will go to paradise FOREVER and see all your dead relatives and every thing you ever wanted will come to fruition, but if you dont beleive it, then you will be scorched in hell and live in torment forever. (2) that isnt really true.
1) I seriously doubt that "God" revealed him or herself first and only to some people in the Middle East, as we have traditions in India, Australia, the Americas, Africa, and all over the world of one supreme God. A lot of these people have been culturally isolated for thousands of years from each other, there is no justification in assuming that they all came to this conclusion by chance. Also I'm not a bible literalist, some people are, but I can reconcile my knowledge of God while not taking the Bible at face value.
even if there is a god, most religions teach he is all powerful, so he would have known that he gave me the brain to have these thoughts and would not punish me for it because he made me in his image, so if youre in fact going to heaven along with all the aborted fetuses, then i believe i am too, and i bet that would piss a lot of theists off to see me rollin around in heaven on a segway.
^I don't believe in hell and yes I believe that Atheists shouldn't be forbidden subsequent life simply due to their confusion if they were good people. Leading people away from God however, should indeed be considered a sin, as it is I believe. I just don't like crab atheists, neutral atheists are cool I guess..
