| 9/5/2008 9:24:56 AM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
duchessa
Yonkers, NY
age: 58 online now!
|
Yes, whenever a person states is an Atheist the people around react by no talking, insulting, yelling, pointing fingers, turning away......Are their doubts in whathever they believe in so strong as to feel the need to become aggressive? Are they afraid they will be proven wrong?
Why they lack for others the respect they demand for themselves?
Duchessa
|
| 9/5/2008 2:51:58 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
classicsfan
Charlottetown, PE
age: 51
|
I think the fear comes from centuries of prejudicial commentary from the religious that atheists have no morality.
Despite their claim to love and tolerance, all religions, have at their base are xenophobic. To preach that we alone have the truth, is to proclaim the rest of the world to be against us. While they can understand and excuse someone 'following a different path up the same mountain" they cannot understand someone who just ignores the mountain altogether.
We atheists are the ultimate 'other'.
|
| 9/6/2008 2:59:33 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
duchessa
Yonkers, NY
age: 58 online now!
|
I think the fear comes from centuries of prejudicial commentary from the religious that atheists have no morality.
Despite their claim to love and tolerance, all religions, have at their base are xenophobic. To preach that we alone have the truth, is to proclaim the rest of the world to be against us. While they can understand and excuse someone 'following a different path up the same mountain" they cannot understand someone who just ignores the mountain altogether.
We atheists are the ultimate 'other'.
Yeah...and their ignorance is as huge as the mountsin they can't stand we ignore.
When the Christians talk about morality and our -the Atheists- supossed lack of I immediately think about the Maffia killing from Monday through Saturday and going to mass on Sunday...I think of the priests raping kids...I think of the very Christian politician cheating on ther wives...
|
| 9/11/2008 3:12:32 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
jrams
Southbridge, MA
age: 42
|
A lot of evil has been done in the name of God.I am especially worried when our president says he talks to Jesus and asks him what to do.Does he expect us to believe that?
I have yet to find any religion that really teaches anyone to accept other people's beliefs.Let's start our own!
|
| 9/11/2008 3:55:25 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
classicsfan
Charlottetown, PE
age: 51
|
I have often thought that if I wasn't so damn honest I would start my own religion. It seems to be a license to print money.
|
| 9/13/2008 4:30:31 AM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
duchessa
Yonkers, NY
age: 58 online now!
|
By using such metaphor -as old as mankind- for what we know is "reasoning" he covers up his weaknesses. Can you imagine if he says "I was reasoning to find the best way to help the Americans." Nobody would believe he is capable of such elevated brain work.
[Edited 9/13/2008 4:32:10 AM]
|
| 9/20/2008 8:29:20 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
grizz67
Bernville, PA
age: 41
|
I just recently had a discussion/argument with a friend about this subject. She told me how the majority, 80%, of Americans believe in god and that the majority has to bow down to the minority in subjects like prayer in the schools. Then she says that the honest god fearing people are becoming the minority. I pointed out she needs to make up her mind...are you the majority or the minority? Then she states she doesn't think religion should be forced on anyone and yet I pointed out she stated prayer should be allowed in the school and that would force it upon those who don't want it. She closed with she is always up for a discussion about this subject, but would not hang around someone who thinks there is nothing bigger than us (i.e. god). I said.....What?!
After pointing out to her all of these points she laughed, said I love you and had to laugh at herself for all of her contradictory statements, all of which I find are typical of the arguments made by the "devout".
|
| 9/21/2008 7:35:45 AM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
baw8324
Kahoka, MO
age: 25
|
I have to put in my two cents here just because this thread intriuged me, let me start out by saying I'm not an atheists I believe in god I just don't believe everything said in chruch plus there are so many religions how are we suppose to know which one is right, so I just don't go cause I don't feel the need to have to choose one or the other then hear other ppl say that or religion is right and their's is wrong (a preacher actually said to my dad one day that ppl who don't believe in my religion will go to hell, lets just say that my dad told him to leave and not to return because he didn't believe that and thought it was wrong of the preacher for saying that) so to answer your question no I don't fear you, or feel the need to insult you. You believe what you believe and thats your right, I might be wrong about god being real and if some preachers are right I might go to hell for not going to church and worshiping him, I guess I'll find out when I die intill then I'll continue to belive in god I just won't ever go to church, and if I ever meet an atheist (outside of here or in here) I'll treat them like I treat everyone else they can be friends with me if they want to or they can hate me, it really doesn't matter  
|
| 10/2/2008 6:56:33 AM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
manykisses
Tonawanda, NY
age: 50
|
It's called intolerance, and in many cases they're taught this through the professed beliefs of the religions they subscribe to.
Christians believe that Christ is their savior and the ONLY way to the kingdom of heaven.
Islamic extremists believe that those who do not follow the teachings of the Koran and the prophet Mohammed are infidels, fit only for destruction (despite the fact that the Koran forbids killing innocent people).
Judaism does not follow the New Testament, only the Old testament, but there too there is the belief that if you do not follow the proscribed path, you are going to get it in the neck somehow.
There are examples of this in most of the major religions in the world.
Obviously, they can't ALL be right. Maybe NONE of them are!
And then along comes someone like me who does not need a system of religious beliefs to explain things to me that I don't understand, or to provide answers to questions that science can't answer (YET). No, I don't how the universe was created or how mankind got to be here; but then, I don't know a helluva lot about neurosurgery, quantum physics, or the application of semiconductors in an alternating magnetic field, either. And none of that has given me any reason to develop any kind of inferiority complex.  I'm comfortable with knowing that there are things in this world that can't be explained, that there are questions whose answers I will probably never know, that I will never know everything there is to know about everything.
I do believe that there is some sort of higher power. I think that what we see around us, and even just our own bodies, the way all the different systems (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, reproductive, etc.) interact - I think all that is too complicated to be merely the result of an accident. I just don't claim to know anything about the nature of that higher power.
I also don't have much time to waste on those who do because truly, none of us knows...and I have the least time of all to waste on those who would have us believe that we are condemned to suffer for all eternity simply because we do not share their beliefs. At one time there were some six billion Chinese who had never heard of Jesus Christ, or of Mohammed. Does that mean they're all burning for eternity now that they have died? I think not, and while those who choose to believe that are I suppose entitled to their opinions, they are not entitled to villify and condemn others who do not share their beliefs.
John in Tonawanda, NY
|
| 11/15/2008 10:37:14 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
radarluv2842
Florence, AL
age: 29
|
I'm not a christain do to the fact I was never baptisted but I do go to a baptist. I do not run from a atheists even though I mite have a question about stuff like that but I will never look down on a atheist. Only thing I look down on is people who lie steals and not true to themselves and to other people!
|
| 12/9/2008 4:01:15 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
slightlycrazy
Iola, TX
age: 66
|
Are they afraid they will be proven wrong?
That's it in a nutshell!
|
| 12/10/2008 5:14:43 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
namanu
Grand Forks, ND
age: 52
|
"I do believe that there is some sort of higher power. I think that what we see around us, and even just our own bodies, the way all the different systems (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, reproductive, etc.) interact - I think all that is too complicated to be merely the result of an accident. I just don't claim to know anything about the nature of that higher power."
Oh, it's not an accident at all. Evolution and natural selection are just difficult to make sense of because the concepts are counter-intuitive.
"Natural selection is a beguiling conterfeiter of deliberate purpose." -Richard Dawkins
Scientific Materialism: There is nothing that we know of in the living world or the cosmos that requires a supernatural explanation. We don't know how life began on Earth, but we have a general idea of how it could have happened. We don't know the origin of the singularity that caused the big bang, but not knowing does not require supernatural explanation. We just don't know.
In fact, saying godidit is a way of saying "I give up". At the end of the 19th century, human beings did not know the stars are organized into galaxies, they didn't know about atoms or how stars work. We did not know the continents move around until the 1960's. Vaccines, antibiotics, DNA, all new knowledge. Godidit is an end to all inquiry, that's why they are called THE DARK AGES.
There's no god, no angels, no devil, no heaven, no hell, no soul. There is not one scrap of evidence that anything of the supernatural is true. Believe me, if there was the slightest bit of evidence for the existence of a god, the preachers would be shouting it on the mountaintop and demanding their 10% tithe.
The scary part is getting comfortable with the concept that when you die, you're dead. It takes some getting used to, but with the adjustment comes a certain peace. No scary judgemental god to answer to, no eternal hellish torture to worry about, nobody reading your mind (oh, I just looked at that woman's behind, Sinner!), no dead relatives tsk-tsking in the clouds. And a rational morality that is innate in humans: be kind, spread what happiness you can, for life is short and precious.
|
| 12/17/2008 12:50:01 PM |
Why people fear Atheists? |
|
davidcohen
Pea Ridge, AR
age: 65
|
Jeebus is mah sandie claws. I lubs jeebus jist becaws. He is big and he is kine. Pass the salt and pass duh wines!
|