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Originally Posted by Yasa
I actually haven't met a single atheist that hates Christmas from a religious standpoint. I haven't met anyone really that feels that way. Lets just say, hypothetically, that atheists did "attack" Christmas. How is that worse than what religious fundamentalists have done to each other for centuries? As SebC pointed out, planes into buildings. If you want to keep going back through history, atheists never coerced Christians into their beliefs under punishment of torture and death. There is no "you started it" and it shouldn't even matter. Holding a grudge is not a step forward into making things better for each other.
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Does your history include the old Soviet Union's treatment of Christians and Jews? They were the first official atheist State. How about China's treatment of Christians and Tibetan Buddhists? They are officially an atheist State. There are millions of christians in China meeting illegally is house churches. China has only allowed a few sanctioned churches and these have to submit their sermons/instructions to government censorship. They are also openly monitored with a government agent sitting in services.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yasa
This is what I don't understand about you, CB. You don't agree when people blanket the entire Christian population by using small examples of extremism and intolerance from groups such as the WBC and such, and yet you're completely fine with doing the same for all atheists.
Some people seem to have difficulty differentiating between the individual and the group (and this goes for people on both sides of the fence.) One bad experience labels an entire group which leads to the perpetual unneeded distrust of one another.
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I thought the survey's results were not surprizing and commented on that. If you lived in a Southern State that had a high occurance of black or Hispanic crime I might be nervous if I met a group of them while alone late at night. Your reaction would niether be racist or uncalled for. The fact that the majority of blacks and hispanics are law abiding doesn't change the experiences of your neighborhood. Now if a black man commited a crime here where I live in Creston I wouldn't associated it with black men everywhere because there is no pattern of experiences. The fact that he happened to be black wouldn't even matter.
The Westborough Baptist church has something like 50 members. Even if you lived in the same community as the WBC you would have 10 times the examples of Chistians who don't behave as they do and won't associate with them. Comparing the WBC to all Christians would be like me comparing one black crime in Creston to the general behaviour of black men. It would be unjust.
The crimes that Muslim fundamentalists have committed in dozens of country is a little different. First of all they have been extremely violent which brings them to our attention. Secondly, there has been tens of thousands involved directly and many more involved indirectly. Millions more within the Muslim faith hold some level of support for these fundamentalists. This in perspective is a religion of something like a billion people so it is a fraction of the faithful involved. On the other hand, their religious book does appear to call for holy war against non-believers. That is of some concern to me.
I think the reason why Muslims didn't score higher on the survey is because our personal experiences is with the peaceful majority.
Our personal experiences with Atheists however aren't positive. Atheists have filed lawsuits to control christian expression in public space. Atheists are intolerant of crosses, prayers, statues of the ten commandments. They attempt to reframe American history to remove its rich christian heritage; Highlight the abuses of priests and religious leaders if you will but, don't ignore the work in orphanages, education, medicine, soup kitchens, prisons ect.
Just look at the amount of threads that have been started on this site ridiculing religion and especially Christianity. Look at the books that atheists have published in recent memory. In this neighborhood and the one the survey was taken in there isn't much positive to say about atheists. if your the kid on the school ground always picking fights don't be suprized if your victims don't like you.
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Originally Posted by Yasa
Aside from all that; how can you possibly consider atheists to be worse than rapists? (I'm not saying you in particular, CB, but you sidestepped the question last time it was posed to you.)
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I suspect the survey gave a scale of 1 to 10; The 10 being the most negative. If both atheists and rapists scored a ten it doesn't mean they are equal.
And for the record I can't respond to every post directed to me so when confronted with several I just pick one or two.