Religion should me mocked, problem is when you pick out only one and

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

leave the rest alone.

[Mr.Bill]

1. People do that to Scientology all ther time.

And nobody's been killed for doing so. Of course, I guess you could argue that Scientology is not a religion. Oops, I just did it.

[edgineered]

2. A very common occurance, especially

when the mockers are of the original congregation, and not of the splintered sect - or is that stated backwards? Gawd, it's so confusing.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Well we don't have that problem here, we mock the shit out of all the religions.

If this is in reference to Geller, yeah she is an islamophobe bigot, but that is her right, and in no way justifies trying to shoot the shit out of her event.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

4. RIght, no shooting but yes we need to shame her as we do Westboro

[Warren DeMontague]

7. If the people mad about the Mohammed cartoons could take themselves as un-seriously as the

anti-Westboro people do... (and in the process, completely neutralize Fred Phelps' bullshit with humor) then I suspect "mohammed cartoons" wouldn't even be a thing, for much longer.

[Goblinmonger]

16. And the RCC. And all the rest for all their bullshit.

You can't just pick a couple.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

17. RCC? My god is diet coke, and it is gonna kill me someday

[Goblinmonger]

18. Roman Catholic Church.

Try call out their bigotry in Religion.

RC Cola is an abomination.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

20. was JUST going to say THAT Royal Crown Cola

my sister was addicted to it in the 70's, i remember her drinking 6 16 oz bottles a day

NOT diet

gained a lot of weight

[Manifestor_of_Light]

26. Anybody else know about the Minor Sect of Delaware Punch?

My sister and I drank that in the 1970s. It had a lot of grape in it and was pretty good. We didn't live anywhere near Delaware so I don't know about the origins of it.

Dr. Pepper was invented in Waco, Texas, home of the Vatican City of the Baptists, Baylor University. And yes, once Playboy did a feature on the girls of the Southwest Conference, with a few girls from Baylor, they were jokingly called the "Baylor Bares". Baptists tend to be humorless assholes, in my experience as a Texan.

[Tobin S.]

5. "All religion is bunk." - Mark Twain

Or something like that. If he didn't say it, I did.

[Binkie The Clown]

6. Have you read his essay debunking Christian Science? Classic.

Here's a link to the full text: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3187

Excerpt from Chapter I:

This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

There was a village a mile away, and a horse doctor lived there, but there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter, there was no hurry, she would give me "absent treatment" now, and come in the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I thought there must be some mistake.

"Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?"

"Yes."

"And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?"

"Yes."

"And struck another one and bounced again?"

"Yes."

"And struck another one and bounced yet again?"

"Yes."

"And broke the boulders?"

"Yes."

"That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you tell her I got hurt, too?"

"I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look like a hat-rack."

"And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was nothing the matter with me?"

"Those were her words."

"I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience?"

"Bitte?"

It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket to pile my legs in; but I could not have any of these things.

"Why?"

"She said you would need nothing at all."

"But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain."

"She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such things as hunger and thirst and pain.''

"She does does she?"

"It is what she said."

"Does she seem to be in full and functionable possession of her intellectual plant, such as it is?"

"Bitte?"

"Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?"

"Tie her up?"

"There, good-night, run along, you are a good girl, but your mental Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my delusions."

[onager]

14. I've seen that one attributed to Edison

So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake...Religion is all bunk.

Some other Edison quotes, from the atheism.about website:

My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. (Thomas Edison, Do We Live Again?)

All Bibles are man-made.

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. (Columbian Magazine)

I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.

To those seaching for truth - not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.

I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul... No, all this talk of an existence beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life - our desire to go on living - our dread of coming to an end. (Quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, " by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996)

The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them. (Quoted by Joseph Lewis from a personal conversation; source: Cliff Walker's Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations)

What fools. (Commenting on the spectacle of hundreds of thousands making a pilgrimage to the grave of an obscure priest in Massachusetts, in the hope of effecting miraculous cures, quoted by Joseph Lewis from a personal conversation; source: Cliff Walker's Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations]

[Tobin S.]

27. 10-4. Maybe I have my geniuses mixed up. n/t

[LostOne4Ever]

8. Of course not

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]The problem, however, is that people don't want to look at one's position in a broader perspective. They want to make judgements on a single post.

If you are making a critique of Christianity, then you are anti-christian and won't criticize Islam. Make a Critique Islam and you are an islamophobe who doesn't criticize Christianity. Critique Jud....well you get the idea.

No one wants to look at the larger picture or that a person HAS INDEED criticized other religions. And more often than not, those who go "what about..." are bringing up other religions not so much out of concern that one religion is being unfairly singled out, but more so as a way to derail or shut down a conversation.

It is the religious version of "Not all men..."

And when they aren't doing that they are misrepresenting atheists as talking about all members of a religion no matter how many times we say not all Christians, not all Muslims, not all Theists, not all men...It is being intentionally obtuse and putting words into people mouths to make political points while ignoring what is actually said.

If you don't put the qualifier "some" or "fundamentalists" or whatever on EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE, even if you made it clear earlier on that you were focusing on those subgroups, then you are talking about every adherents. Just like if a feminist doesn't put the qualifier "some men" before every sentence then MRA types instantly make it out as if they are talking about all men.

For many it is not actually about not broadbrushing groups, as much as it is about derailing any critique of religion. [/font]

[AlbertCat]

10. Not to mention.....

.....here (DU) and in this country when one says "religion", it is often taken to mean "Christianity".... even when atheists mean, y'know, RELIGION.... like in general.... like any one with a god or two... plus Buddhism, which has no god really (they sorta make the Buddha one tho')


No one even asks what Geller's religion is. She's a Jew, not a Christian.

[AlbertCat]

9. leave the rest alone.

Who does that here? Hands?


Tell it to those Christians who mock Scientology and Buddhism.... and other Christian sects!

[Ron Obvious]

11. In fact, it's the opposite of what's been happening

We can't seem to sound a single critical note about the uniquely awful problems with Islam without first saying we hate all religion, the crusades were awful, mentioning murdered abortion doctors, Fred Phelps, etc. Only then will even the mildest criticism of Islam be permitted without whipping out the Islamophobia and racism cards.

Don't believe there are specific problems with Islam today? Check out the opinion surveys of Muslims in the middle east and Europe, the state of women and minority rights in Muslim-dominated countries, and the completely over-the-top violent reactions in many parts of the world when even the mildest mockery of that extreme right-wing ideology, Islam, is made.

Bringing up thousand year-old history and isolated incidents involving Christians or Hindus is a deflection of the problem at hand, and betrays in inability to face the truth. Some of that mere cowardice. Some of that is misguided political correctness, in which a (presumed non-white) believer would get a pass the way, say, a Mormon never would, and some of that is the soft racism of the left, which will never expect to hold muslims to the same standards as it does anybody else.

[Iggo]

12. It just looks like that because I tend to mock them one-at-a-time.

[nil desperandum]

13. Currently one religion

has been killing people by the hundreds across the world on a regular basis, it's the large body count and the continued oppression of women that make it the most attractive target and one that many will talk about.

I find it absolutely amazing that supposed progressives are continually defending a religion and culture that treats females as chattel without rights to even leave the house or drive a car without permission. As though such a culture and religion were deserving of the same respect as a progressive culture that recognizes the rights of women, gays, minorities as equals under the law.

Catholicism has its sex scandal and continued idiocy spewing from the vatican, and protestants have their own idiots happily engaged in disrupting funerals because their god hates gays and kills soldiers as punishment.

But those religions are not daily, in 2015, rounding up women in a host of locations around the world to be used as sex slaves for jihadis.

We can continue to pretend that islam fundamentalists are no more dangerous than the WBC or recognize the simple fact that holding up a moronic sign at a funeral and acting like a jackass hardly compares to entering a mall and murdering a few hundred people.

Fundamentalist islam is the largest and most dangerous religious issue of our time. Pretending otherwise out of some fear of being perceived as a bigot is simply not being intellectually honest.

I never once said that all muslims are dangerous killers, but out of all the fundamentalists from a variety of religions in the US or worldwide it's pretty clear fundamentalist islam has on qualms about using the murder of women and children as a means to expand their power.

Consequently that religion and its fundamentalist adherents should be exposed under a spotlight and a bullhorn each and every day until either the moderates get control of their murderous fundamentalists or we wipe those fundamentalists out with high order detonations and the use of high velocity kinetic energy.

Note to Jurors: This is the opinion of one atheist who absolutely believes all religions suck and are used to control and ruin the lives of otherwise ordinary people. I despise all religions for their control mechanisms but I have no ill will for their followers, nor do I believe there has been any benefit to our society based on the contributions of any religions. Islam just happens to have the most dangerous fundies at the moment, I have muslim friends and we are quite close as I don't hate muslims. I just hate murderous fundamentalists, and I won't accept that Americans should have their first amendment rights constrained because of those murderous fundies.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

15. Who defended Islam? Me? NEVER, nor will i EVER defend ANY religion

How many Muslims are there?

A BILLION

do you want to fight them all?

Your attitude can lead to that unless you are willing to dialogue with the several hundred million of them who are not radical or dangerous.

[nil desperandum]

19. not as clear

as I had hoped, I didn't intend to intimate that I meant you, but I've seen countless examples here and over at the DI site where supposed progressives struggle to call out islam for its murderous and oppressive ways.

Sometimes violence is unavoidable, I don't believe that's the case with the majority of muslims.

But then again we've not actually suggested that they globally lose their religion.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

21. Christianity went thru their growing pains, crusades, inquisition, etc.

Islam is going thru theirs.

[onager]

22. Not remotely the same.

I'm not quite sure what your complaint is - from the OP on, it seems to be the usual complaint that this group is picking on poor li'l Islam and giving a pass to other religions.

You must be brand new here, and have never read much of this group. At least I'll try to be charitable and assume that. But before you go accusing us of the dreaded Islamophobia, you should read some of the previous threads. This group is wonderfully ecumenical in bashing all religions.

On Islamophobia, as I've said too many times - I lived in Muslim countries for about 6 years. (Saudi Arabia and Egypt.) I have literally put my life in the hands of Muslims more times than I can count.

In that last "growing pains" post, you seem to be comparing medieval Xianity with modern Islam (as many people do). I don't consider that a valid comparison for several reasons:

1. Xianity is no longer allowed to burn witches and heretics because its power was finally broken by the rise of the secular state.

In modern fundamentalist Islam, the religion IS the state. That's the very meaning of "sharia" law - law based strictly on the Koran.

2. Modern Fundamentalist Islam also divides the world very clearly into two spheres: Dar al-Islam, the House of Peace, which means nations living under sharia law. And Dar al-Harb, the House of War. That's everywhere else. Not much room for respectful Interfaithy dialogue in that view.

3. Are you trying to say Islam needs a Renaissance? It's already had several, including the famous Abassid Dynasty. In modern times, Muslim nations have had several Ba'ath parties - "Ba'ath" is the Arabic word for "renaissance." And those political parties gave us such Renaissance men as Moammar Gaddafi, Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein. I'm not sure how much more of that Renaissancing the world can stand.

4. There's always the insistence that we non-believers need to grovel and show "respect" and "tolerance" for religion. Well, I have certainly witnessed "respect" and "tolerance" operating in Muslim countries. In Egypt, riots between Coptic Xians and Muslims were not uncommon. In almost every case, those riots happened because either a new mosque or a new Xian church was being built in a neighborhood. The usual respectful, tolerant response to the new neighbors was to burn down their church or mosque.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

25. wasnt talking about atheists, about american in general, especially christians

christians who love to attack Islam etc

but then they dont mock themselves, do they

[beam me up scottie]

24. What onager said.

We've always been equal opportunity mockers.

And our "intolerance" of religious bigots pales in comparison to the things the religious do to further their cause.

You don't see atheists lobbying to deny women and lgbt people their human rights.

[beam me up scottie]

23. If Geller was smart she'd cite her religion as the reason she hates muslims.

Religious bigotry is perfectly acceptable.

Just look at the hate speech Pope Frankie uses when talking about lgbt people, and he's hailed as a progressive on DU.