Why are Atheists so intolerant of Theists.....

Tecumsehsbones

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It sounds a bit cliche, but atheism is such an irrational, closed and reductive system.. that i can't help but feel it makes its proponents miserable. It must take an enormous force of will to ignore the Truths of Creation, that most children can see all around.. hammer them down to stilted sophistry of selective logic.. lost in time and space.. as tiny a micron of absurdity... in the vastness of an omnipresent God.
Some of us don't react to the news that Santa Claus isn't real as well as others.
 

coldstream

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Some of us don't react to the news that Santa Claus isn't real as well as others.

St. Nicholas (270 - 343) is actually quite real. He was a giver of gifts to worthy recipients, including of doweries to young women too poor to marry (prostitution was the only alternative). He was reputedly a militant defender of the faith against heresies (the latter doesn't play that well in those Coca-Cola add so its now usually ignored)
 
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BaalsTears

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I'm not sure what your point was other than people will ultimately decide their fate?

I'm just saying that people will inevitably choose to forsake a belief in god on the grounds that they will realize such a belief is unnecessary for them to do the right thing. This will take another few hundred years, in my opinion, but we will eventually get there.

If your comments are limited to Western Civilization I think you are correct. If your comments are applicable to other civilizations I can't agree.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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Your mother should have taught your the critiquing spelling and grammar on the web is very poor Netiquette, bones.
How 'bout the fact that St. Nicholas (to whom I was not referring, by the way) died over 5 times 10 to the 53 Maxies ago?

Sorry, Mom was mostly too drunk to instruct me on the fine points of pretending imbeciles are worth listening to.
 

coldstream

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How 'bout the fact that St. Nicholas (to whom I was not referring, by the way) died over 5 times 10 to the 53 Maxies ago?

Sorry, Mom was mostly too drunk to instruct me on the fine points of pretending imbeciles are worth listening to.

Fools who've reached adulthood as such, completely free of courtesy and common sense, usually only have themselves to blame, bones.

And Santa Claus is the ONLY St. Nick.. Gemanic i think for 'Saint' and 'Claus' the diminutive of Nicholas.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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Fools who've reached adulthood as such, completely free of courtesy and common sense, usually only have themselves to blame, bones.
Then why were you blaming Mom, stream?

You ain't making a lot of sense here.

And Santa Claus is the ONLY St. Nick.. Gemanic i think for 'Saint' and 'Claus' the diminutive of Nicholas.
Wrong, but thanks for playing. The German for "saint" is "Heilig" and "Claus" is "Klaus" auf Deutsch. "Santa Claus" is a corruption of the Dutch Sante Klaas.

And the contemporary Santa Claus has pretty much nothing to do with the historical (and still dead) St. Nicholas.
 

coldstream

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St. Nicholas is the patron of Russia. You an old closet Bolshevik, Coldstream?

Nicholas is also the patron of children, coopers, sailors, fishermen, merchants, broadcasters, the falsely accused, repentant thieves, pharmacists, archers, pawnbrokers.

I've read Volume 1 of Capital by Marx, quite some time ago.. along with some other classic economic, philosophical and theological texts.. and have developed an independent social philosophy.. that borrows from many, in fact i can't think of one that is totally excluded.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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Nicholas is also the patron of children, coopers, sailors, fishermen, merchants, broadcasters, the falsely accused, repentant thieves, pharmacists, archers, pawnbrokers.
That's quite a portfolio. No wonder he only comes around once a year. The rest of the time he's busy looking after the drug-dispensing arrow fishermen who'll give you easy terms on your jewelry.
 

coldstream

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Then why were you blaming Mom, stream?

You ain't making a lot of sense here.


Wrong, but thanks for playing. The German for "saint" is "Heilig" and "Claus" is "Klaus" auf Deutsch. "Santa Claus" is a corruption of the Dutch Sante Klaas.

And the contemporary Santa Claus has pretty much nothing to do with the historical (and still dead) St. Nicholas.

I wasn't blaming your Mom, bones, i was blaming you.. you just have trouble picking up on the nuance.

I'll take your word for it on the derivation of Santa Claus.. as long as you accept that it is St. Nicholas (also Nikolaos of Myra) who was the original.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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I wasn't blaming your Mom, bones, i was blaming you.. you just have trouble picking up on the nuance.

I'll take your word for it on the derivation of Santa Claus.. as long as you accept that it is St. Nicholas of Bari who was the original.
Sure. St. Nicholas, Voldemort, Aragorn, Capt. Mal Reynolds, whatever blows your skirt up.
 

Dexter Sinister

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Oct 1, 2004
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With a few exceptions, like Pat Robertson, William Lane Craig, and the late unlamented Jerry Falwell, it's not theists I object to, it's the unsubstantiated truth claims they put forward and the conclusions they draw from them.
 

L Gilbert

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"If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
Perhaps. But he seems to be assuming we need a reason to be moral. I'm pretty sure that there are people around who need no foundation to be good people, they just are.
 

Cliffy

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Perhaps. But he seems to be assuming we need a reason to be moral. I'm pretty sure that there are people around who need no foundation to be good people, they just are.
i worry about those who need the ol' "reward and punishment" motivation to be good. Underneath there just might be a seething psychosis waiting to erupt.
 

taxslave

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i worry about those who need the ol' "reward and punishment" motivation to be good. Underneath there just might be a seething psychosis waiting to erupt.

IN some ways it is no different than believing in Karma. Do good and good will come your way. Experience has taught me that no good dead goes unpunished.