It is so draining for me to constantly read threads by atheists that assert that those of who are uncertain or have faith have irrational minds. God can not be proven or unproven. The harping is tedious. I understand that for you atheism works. It is good for you. Sometimes it feels as though you will impose atheism on me the way the Spanish Inquisition worked.
Band,
I'm still fairly new here, so I may not have run across many of these threads yet.
Disclaimer: Avowed, baby eating atheist.
There are atheists who are all butthurt and believe there's no god simply because they didn't get dealt the best hand in life. These are bitter atheists, and just plain old bitter people, and you can be sure if they were faithful they'd be just as passionate about the other side of the argument.
What I'm trying to say is, people are dicks. There are christian dicks. Hindu dicks. Buddhist dicks. Atheist dicks. You, as one of faith, simply get more exposure to athiest dicks, since faith and athiesm are polar opposites, and who is a dick gonna go after, but someone who believes something completely opposite to him?
For example, there are dicks who like public transport, and dicks who like using their own car. The dicks on the public transport side aren't going to start harping about public transport to people who ride the same bus as them, are they? Nor are they going to try and preach their message to random people in the street. These are dicks we are talking about, dicks, dude. They're looking for an argument, looking to make people feel bad so they can feel better about themselves. So obviously they're going to go after people who they can rile up the most, who they can hurt the most, and who's pet cause is the polar opposite of their own. In the transport case, the public transort zealots will go after the car drivers, and vice versa. Same is true with the atheism vs faith argument.
You may not be a dick, in fact, I don't know you, so my default assumption, until I know better, is that you're not. But let me tell you, among your fellow faithful, there are a metric shit ton of dicks. It's the same for atheists, we have just as many.
You may not be a dick, but you're still a prime target for atheist dicks. I'm not a dick, but I'm a prime target for faithful dicks.
If there are 100 athiests and 10 are dicks, chances are far higher you'll run across those 10 dicks than you will the 90 non-dicks. Because the dicks seek you out, it's not just blind chance.
So when you see a bunch of athiest dicks doing what they do best, don't start thinking "damn it,atheists are dicks". Just think "wow, these guys are dicks".
In summary: dick dick dicks dick dick.
I respect atheism. My choice and it is very personal is to have faith. Certainly, it is shaky. My bottom line is to believe.
People seem to think atheism is a religion, or a belief system, it isn't. It's a lack thereof. We don't have a holy book, we don't have churches or temples, priests or rabbis. We differ in our morals and values. The only thing that unites us is a lack of belief, and for the majority of us, that lack of belief is caused by science, and a respect for the scientific method.
This is why us athiests find you faithful to be so hard to understand. Evolution and Natural Selection have been scientifically proven. The age of the Earth and the universe have been determined, and they're measured in millions, billions of years. We may be off by a few million years, later discoveries may refine our understanding. But we know the earth wasn't created in 7 days. We know all the animals and plants of the world didn't suddenly spring into being over the course of a week. We know diseases are caused by germs, not demons.
The more we learn and discover, the more unreliable the assertions of faith become. And the faithful react in one of three ways. Either they reinterpret their holy books to fit with science, they ignore science (and by doing so spit on the incredible amount of hard work and effort put in by people who have done things such as cure disease, eradicate famine etc), or they admit defeat on one point, and regroup at a point science has yet to touch. This last one is known as the God of the Gaps phenomenon, and from our side of the fence, it's actually pretty funny.
Most of us (excluding dicks), respect your right TO BELIEVE what you want- but that comes with conditions- being that you don't hamper science, and don't let your beliefs harm anyone else (for example, the JW blood issue).
This doesn't mean we respect WHAT YOU BELIEVE. For us, respecting your beliefs is no different to respecting belief in fairies and unicorns. We respect your right to believe what you believe, but we still think it's fucking stupid, and if we're honest, we'll probably tell you. But only dicks will go out of their way to find you, tell you, and then let you know what they think that means about you as a person.
How is atheism imposed on me by an outsider any different from having JWs imposed on me by my abusive parents?
See what I said about dicks.
