I'm not sure how an atheist can troll the religious in a thread that's supposed to be for atheists to express their faith in having none. It would seem to me that it's the opposite occurring here.
But I do think it's incumbent upon people to get along or perish.
Generally, I like people more when they're not pushing their beliefs, whether they are in God or in nothing at all. Atheists who push their beliefs or lack thereof I find equally detestable. But it's rare when I challenge their views because I just don't want to make a situation worse by doing so. I made the exception for one Mr. NiCE GuY years back because I guess he just must've rubbed me the wrong way. lol
my replies to him are in blue:
Religeon.
Base: stuff
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:25:12
From: (Mr. NiCE GuY)
Because most of you probably didn't like the original title, I have retitled it in an attempt to get you to actually read it this time.

. Its important. Here is a low down on a big sceme.
Religeon. The beliefs, attutudes, emotions, behavior, ect., constituting man's relationship with the powers and principles of the univers via a deity or deities.
You can have religeon. It gives you a purpose to live if you don't want one of the basics --- Happyness, Challenge, or Knowledge. But at what cost do people have religeon at? The first cost is obviously that they will gain a prejudiced opinion on events and other beleifs which won't allow them to have correct knowledge. They will undoubtedly become hostile to those who don't believe what they beleive, and, as has been shown in the past and present, will resort to violence. This KILLS, MORTALLY WOUNDS, and EMOTIONALLY SCARS people globally. Don't beleive me? Go to the corner and pop in $0.75 to your local paper box and read within the first fiew pages about some bomb that was set in the holly wars of Ireland. Read about the Bahai being hunted down in Saudia Arabia and Isrial, and being slaughtered if and when they are caught. Take a non-christian child to an all christian school and let that child express his feelings and thoughts to the other children and watch as the boy is rejected by the teachers and parents of the other children, and then those children are taught to hate the different boy. Another cost; division of the factions of the world. People, ultimately separated by their views, can never unite.
***IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, READ THIS***
I will ask all of you religeous people reading this, before you goto your chirch on sunday and mindlessly pray for anything that some fictional being beleives is wrong, before you step into your car or set foot out your door think of this. Take yourself into a different frame of mind. Look at your arm, its a handy little thing isn't it? How would you feel if you couldn't move it? couldn't feel it? or if it was all scarred? or what if it was blown off and all there was left was a bloody stump of flesh and bone. Don't like that? Well, choose some other part of your body. Your leg, foot, hand, your penis or breast, an eye, both eyes, teeth, your head. Think about how you would feel if you lost any of these parts of yourself and were absolutely helpless to stop it. Now. Think of all of the same things, for your wife who is standing beside you. Or your children. Does it sicken you to think of this? Think of dying slowly in a hospital bed over several months, unable to move. Think of being burned alive, or lined up watching all of your family and friends one at a time mutilated and then shot before moving on to you. Think of living in constant fear. It happens every day. Is it worth it? Take a good long look at your religeon. Find anything discusting about it? Find anything sickening about it? Find anything that you know can't be? Find people who share your religeon treat other people poorly because they don't beleive what you beleive? Is it worth it? Is living a ruse worth people dying? Is living a ruse worth people being mortally wounded? Is living a ruse worth people having to suffer all the time?
I am not blaming all the problems of society on religeon. I am just blaming most of the problems of society on religeon. Think of how it would be if people were logical about the way they thought.
Pick up the paper. Look right at the face of a man they found mangled in the refuge of a bombed building in a holy war. Look at him and say, honestly, "I CAN LIVE WITH THAT. HELL, HIS CHILDREN PROBABLY DIDN'T NEED HIM ANYWAY!" Goto his families house, and tell them that its worth it. Tell them that your inability to accept reality is worth his death, and then move on to the next family.
I will share something with you. I am a virgin, I have never had sex, but I'd like to. I enjoy helping people alot, and have alot of factual, helpful insight. I want to go into the stars, and explore. I like to pet my cats and share with each of them something about my day as I hear them purr with joy. I want to find Sarah and tell her that I believe in her, and for her to say "I know".
Read that a couple times. Soak it in. Now, take it all away from me.
If that doesn't effect you, sicken you, or make you literally burst into tears, what will. And its all true.
Responses
... (Sheriff of Nothingman) (8/31/98)
That's it Sheriff... (Festus) (9/01/98)
all this... (Hg) (8/31/98)
... and about Sarah (Mr. NiCE GuY) (8/31/98)
You're the one... (Hg) (9/01/98)
you give yourself loopholes (Mr. NiCE GuY) (8/31/98)
whoa! (Hg) (9/01/98)
re-li-GION <nt> (billabong) (8/30/98)
all this...
Base: stuff
Re: Religeon. (Mr. NiCE GuY)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 16:48:40
From: unknown (Hg)
...because you want to pet Sarah's pussy? Do ya think she'll bite? good luck!
First of all, the title to your prior post said 'please read' not 'please respond'. So consider yourself lucky to get one.
So you finally learned that the world is an ugly place (how old did you say you were?), but don't blame the problems of the world on religion. Blame it on man's inability to interpret the meaning of its tenets. Anyone who truly seeks to understand what it's all about (basically, the application of the Golden Rule) will determine that those people throughout history who wrought havoc upon humankind while pursuing their own selfish purposes in the name of whatever religion, were not in fact adhering to the tenets of their religion, but were duplicitous in their selective use of their holy word, to convince themselves or others into thinking their actions righteous, as a means to their misguided ends.
Do you not realize that many Christians who protested the nazis' persecution of the Jews and others, because they knew it was wrong, went to their deaths right alongside them because of it? Sometimes people pay the price for their convictions, but don't lay the blame for such a price at God's feet. It was their love for God and justice that put them at odds with the nazis, the ones culpable for these atrocities who, in turn, had Hell rain down upon them and the German people for their unconscionable deeds.
Do you not also realize that we might, even today, still have slavery in the west (though it has a mutated form as we are all now enslaved by public debt; and, I'm told, it still exists in places where human life is not valued as highly as we do here),were it not for a majority view of Christians (admit it, there weren't many atheists around 140 years ago), i.e. white Christians (people of colour please take note!) , that slavery was wrong? That if it weren't for the deeply held religious convictions of people like John Brown, who spearheaded the abolishionist movement of that day, and his followers, hammering home the abhorrent impropriety of slavery in a civilized society, that such a consensus might never have come to the fore? As great a man as Abraham Lincoln was, he was still a politician, and if he didn't think the Emancipation Proclamation would fly, he might never have introduced it.
In spite of all the world's sad history that someone's sick notion of religion may have had a hand in, I shudder to think what the world might be like today if it weren't for religion tempering our savage instincts.
Now I bid you look at your own hand and tell me what is it that gives you the power to move it at your will. What is it that keeps your heart beating and your lungs breathing while you sleep? Do you think that this is just man's ingenious harvesting of the laws of nature? That we somehow created ourselves?
Imagine for a moment nothing. I find it hard to do. But can you tell me why, without God, there should be anything at all? Why shouldn't there be absolutely nothing; no matter; no form of energy at all; just a dark empty vacuum stretching from infinity to eternity. But that is not what we have. We have an immense universe filled with all matter and energy...and life. If you don't believe that's a miracle then what do you believe? That this is just some grand fluke of eternity?
And your children? Will they believe you, or the God that they will surely come to know exists, with or without you?
you give yourself loopholes
Base: stuff
Re: Religeon. (Mr. NiCE GuY)
Re: all this... (Hg)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:26:50
From: (Mr. NiCE GuY)
You give me instances - Slavery - that slaves were saved by white christians. Why were they enslaved in the first place? Obviously having something to do with peoples doctorines and fears instilled in them from their religeon, fearing what they didn't understand.
You beleive in Ghosts, Goblins, Spirits, Spectres, in the 'old days of the west' which, beleive it or not, wasn't that long ago, woman were being BURNED ALIVE by chrisians who said they were witches! WITCHES! Yet you support this religeon. You support religeon.
The funny thing about your fragile little mind is that if you start telling yourself something long enough, or are told something long enough but don't have the sense to ask questions, then you will join the emmense lineup of what are basically, and infact slaves and robots seeking to do whatever they beleive some idiot screaming atop a small platform says is the WILL OF THE LORD! I HEAR YOU BROTHER, I FEEL THE LORD IS HERE TODAY! AND HE IS HERE TO HEAL! Grow up. That man could insight people to riots. That man helps kill people. That man, and men like him try and give people a false view of the world in an attempt to give people a false sence of hope and happyness.
The world isn't a safe place - no, not by any means - but it sure as hell isn't getting any safer when you preach that all those of the jewish religeon are evil, or all those who don't beleive in your church and your god must be destroyed, or that the cow who just **** all over your floor wants you to go burn down the mans home who refused to sell you some fruit, or that the great sun god now requires a virgin sacrafise or the sun won't shine anymore. Those are just a fiew, and they exist today, right now. Sure, there are alot of religeons. Close to 5,000 or more I would bet. They can't all be right, Jesus couldn't have been comming around outta Marry when The Great Sun God was on his holiday to the great sward in the sky? All of these elaborate wives-tails can't all be right? Can they? At the very most, only one could be right, and in all probability, none of them are right. More religeon gives more diversity. More diversity ammong people who are taught by religeon to hate people of a different doctorine gives you one hell of a big war, aproximately what, 5000 different factions running around all corners of the earth trying to kill anyone who doesn't beleive in them? Pretty damned stupid. Go out and buy an inversion table to get more oxygen into your body and then come talk to me. I am serious - low oxygen means low cognative ability.
You speak of the formation of existance? What do you know of it? All you know is something that was written in one book in a sea of books, aproximately 2000 years ago. There are books that predate your book by 100 fold or more. Why aren't they right? Newer is better? Then adopt the relitively new ways of something refered to as the truth. Don't kid yourself. I don't expect you to understand, I don't expect you to beleive me, I don't expect you to go out and attempt to read and understand quantum mechanics. To be fair, in all probablity the theories that science has right now are also probably wrong, but thats what they are, theories, but at least they are based on fact, not some fictitious character. I'm no time profit, but its safe to say that some day the truth will be known, there will be no more theories but infact FACT, but right now, fact based theories are all we have to go on. We know how the universe could be formed, through random quantuum fluctuations in a vaccuum forming particles, but that is one drop of water in an ocean, and doesn't really allow for the fact that the universe has a definite mass, matter isn't created or destoryed. As the universe expands, it cools, and matter spreads out a little further. What is beyond this great rim? Who knows? Do you? No. Do I? No. But someday, I think we will.
The fact of the matter is, you have no right to take away anything from the innocence, not there families, there homes, there dreams, there lives, or peices of them.
Will the world stop and actually look around and see what they are doing is foolish because of this message... No, not bloody likely. Even if some people did look at this and realise, others wouldn't. To some people, living without purpose is beyond them. To some people, what I am talking about is all latin, and some people are either too stupid mentally or have built up such a bios, a 'firewall' towards any new ideas that question, that there is no hope for them.
I speak the truth.
whoa!
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 09:28:22
From: unknown (Hg)
That post was too riddled with ridiculous inaccuracies to even dignify with a response. I must be feeling charitable today! But I certainly won't waste my time addressing all of the nonsense you've raised therein.
I couldn't help but notice that along with your poor spelling you also have poor comprehension. If you had read and understood this(go ahead, and this time really try to soak it in!):
don't blame the problems of the world on religion. Blame it on man's inability to interpret the meaning of its tenets. Anyone who truly seeks to understand what it's all about (basically, the application of the Golden Rule) will determine that those people throughout history who wrought havoc upon humankind while pursuing their own selfish purposes in the name of whatever religion, were not in fact adhering to the tenets of their religion, but were duplicitous in their selective use of their holy word, to convince themselves or others into thinking their actions righteous, as a means to their misguided ends.
...then you'd've realized that regarding crimes against humanity, inquisitions, witch-hunts, persecutions, even excommunications perpetrated by people claiming to be religious and thus in the name of God, we are in agreement. Those people were not adhering to the commandment the ones in stone are all based upon; the one that transcends all the others: The Golden Rule. This is the only one anyone need live by, for in it you will find all the others.
You seem to be convinced that I'm some bible-thumping hick. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't believe the Bible vebatim. It was written for the uneducated sheep that were the people of two thousand years ago, but when you read it you have to read between the lines to glean from it the moral as it would apply to today's standards. If you have not the eyes to see nor the ears to hear then don't even try to read or listen to the Word for you shall never comprehend the value of its message. I don't even go to church, only because I'm not interested in having such an intimate relationship with hypocrisy, but I won't deny ever having been a hypocrite. It's near impossible to refrain from being one at one time or another in the course of a lifetime.
But you, on the other hand, are the one who appears to be doing all the thumping. You're the one who seems to need to repeat yourself loudly enough and often enough, as if it lends credence to it, that you might actually believe the garbage you're spewing. So they had books 200,000 years ago did they? Do tell! (your figures: you do the math) And 5000 religions! Well sir, you are obviously speaking from a more informed background than I. It's so hard to compete with your extraordinary acumen. I give up! You win! If you say it will fly, then it just has to! You da man! NOT!
You said, "The fact of the matter is, you have no right to take away anything from the innocence, not there families, there homes, there dreams, there lives, or peices of them." *ugh* Allow me: "The fact of the matter is, you have no right to take away anything from the innocents, not their families, their homes, their dreams, their lives, or pieces of them." *excuse me, it's just easier on the eyes* (gee, for someone with such a vast education I guess you had to skip a lot of spelling lessons so you'd have the time to learn all that other "quantuum" stuff!) Okay, I understand that you were not referring to me directly when you made that statement, as I am just as innocent in what goes on in the world as you are. But you offer nothing in the way of what ought to be done by nations to prevent these things from happening. I mean, we've tried just about everything, but it's impossible to wipe out hatred that's been simmering for centuries, or in some cases thousands of years, with anything short of genocide (no, that's been tried - didn't work), or maybe......LOVE. To me that's the underlying message and root of Christianity -LOVE. The fact that there were and are so-called Christians in the past and present who missed the point does not detract from that message one iota - in my humble opinion. I never said one couldn't lead a life predicated on love without religion. I'm sure it is possible.
You think you speak the truth. In reality you serve little more than to obscure it with nebulous ideas.
... and about Sarah
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:33:38
From: unknown (Mr. NiCE GuY)
Where do you bring Sarah into play here? Because I want to help her, you assume that I am only interested in SEX with her? That is madness. I would hope that at least some humans have evolved to the state where they don't look at other intelligent people and only think of satisfying some great need to have sex.
You're the one...
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 10:06:02
From: unknown (Hg)
...who put Sarah and sex in the same paragraph, not me. Must have been a freudian slip, was it? I don't assume you only want to have sex with her. You assumed I assumed it. Wrong again!
I hardly think Sarah needs your help at all. It would appear to be you who needs her acknowledgement of your existence. Why she would need to cling to such a confused puppy is beyond me.