UBC study finds believers distrust atheists as much as rapists

[Thor]

Just for the hell of it, you guys want to click on CP chat for once, might be fun

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/chat/flashchat.php

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Thor

TC who's the guy in your Avatar? Always wondered

Legendary German Old Testament scholar Julius Wellhausen. The author of Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels and one of the framers of the original documentary hypothesis.

[Thor]

OMG valo shows up and leaves..

[valo403]

Ha, sorry about that. Closed the laptop to go scream at Time Warner for my here one second gone the next internet connection.

I'm also scared to be in the same room as the Icelandic, even a chat room. It winds up in 3 day hangovers.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

Millions have been killed in the name of my God. Most without the approval of God or sanction of scriptures. Certainly there is no mandate for Christians to kill in the name of God.

Except, you know, the bible. It's everywhere in there.

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

That doesn't change the inappropriateness of raising a temple unto Allah in the ashes of the 3000 lives that were killed in Allah's name and in accordance with his scriptures.

"By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane," he says. "Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide."

It is called herem, and it means total annihilation. Consider the Book of 1 Samuel, when God instructs King Saul to attack the Amalekites: "And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them," God says through the prophet Samuel. "But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."

When Saul failed to do that, God took away his kingdom.

"In other words," Jenkins says, "Saul has committed a dreadful sin by failing to complete genocide. And that passage echoes through Christian history. It is often used, for example, in American stories of the confrontation with Indians — not just is it legitimate to kill Indians, but you are violating God's law if you do not."

Jenkins notes that the history of Christianity is strewn with herem. During the Crusades in the Middle Ages, the Catholic popes declared the Muslims Amalekites. In the great religious wars in the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries, Protestants and Catholics each believed the other side were the Amalekites and should be utterly destroyed.

-http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124494788

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

There are Arab Muslims who are still distrustful of christians because of the crusades which happened centuries ago. We are talking about something that happened 10 years ago.

When were the two holy books of wisdom and morality written?

And there are atheists that are distrustful of all theists only for what they've done today, what fallacious argument do you have to dismiss them?

[Calgaryborn]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

You are going to need to elaborate on the bolded section for me. As I understand the accounts of herem warfare from the Old Testament in their actual cultural and historical context, the mandate to completely obliterate every living thing in the Canaanite city-states was indeed issued by God, and championed by the Torah.

I said most because clearly God sanctioned the people of Israel to start wars to gain land he decided was Israels. These were site specific orders rather than general orders to kill all unbelievers everywhere. He also sanctioned capital punishment and war for self protection.

Having said that, I believe that both the expansion of Christian states spreading out from Rome and certainly the crusades caused more deaths than those tribal wars of ancient Israel. In both cases, we have men claiming they were doing God's work when clearly God nowhere calls them to war. You could also throw in the tens of thousands of deaths of Jews, anabaptists, christian splinter groups, ect within christian nations.

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Much like your insistence that there is no Christian mandate for Christian's to kill in God's name, I suspect that such opinions as they are derived from the Quran are a matter of interpretation. As usual, you seem to be of the opinion that the Muslim scriptures are just like the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and that their meaning and correct application is a straightforward, simple and plain matter. I know there are Muslim posters on this board, and I would be very interested to hear their take on your generalization. I suspect that they would take issue with this characterization.

I'm not going to post the specific Koran scriptures which both I and apparently many Muslims believe sanction the killing of non-believers. I have in the past and only got that I was taking them out of context. When I protested that I did look for context they then point to the fact that there are several different translations into english and some are not very good. The conversation usually ends when I ask for the name of a reliable translation.

Do you deny that the jihadists of today behave a lot like the followers of Islam in Mohammed's day? It's not like its founding was one of peace and tolerance.

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Are you attempting to draw an analogy between the reaction of the population in a secular nation with that in an Arab theocracy? Do you really think that these responses are comparable?

I think people are people. There are human responses that are natural. Like the old Willie Nelson song; "Forgiving you is easy but forgetting takes the longest time".

In an Arab theocracy innocent christians would have died for what others did in the name of God. In America many tolerant Americans thought that a new Mosque shouldn't be built so near the site of so many innocent deaths in Allah's name.

[Wiggum_PI]

Originally Posted by Thor

Isn't that the crux of it.

Atheists are not out there telling governments how to treat people, we fight for equal rights for gays, women, and minorities.

Often we fight against people who hold beliefs from whatever religion that go against these modern secular ideals, and we're treated as we are scum of the earth..

Glad I'm on this side, honestly, every day I see more and more reasons why faith is such a cancer on this world and why questioning everything is so much more satisfying.

Its not unusual that well over 90% of astro physicists are atheist or agnostics... The ones that understand the universe we live in to such an incredible degree have such an easy time to dismiss religion, and maybe a bit less a diety... I mean honestly all of the current religions subscribed to by believers like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, etc is so laughable and obviously the creation of a male dominated ignorant ancient society that its so tough to listen to people take this shi%t seriously.

Sorry, with Hitchens dying today I felt a need to be extra militant

This is a pretty unfair statement considering there are many organizations around the world dedicated to helping people in need, that were started by people of faith.

The Mustard Seed which provides shelter for homeless people and helps them find employment and become self-sufficient again, was started by a Christian. The Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, ....(there are tons more that could be listed), are all Christian organizations that try to help people and make the world a better place to live in.

It seems like bashing Christians is the "cool" thing to do on CP, and everyone is so focused on the negatives that they forget all the good and positive contributions made by people of faith.

[Calgaryborn]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

How do they rationalize that belief? The earliest Christians, including Jesus himself, were Jews. Christians didn't switch gods, they just believe Jesus to be the son of Yehweh and the messiah.

There are some who believe christians have surplanted Jews as God's chosen people because they rejected him and had him killed. It is the justification for some antisemitic behaviour. I don't know of any christian who believes that the Jews worship a different God than us. I suppose some might exist.

The Jews remain God's chosen people. We worship the same God.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by Wiggum_PI

It seems like bashing Christians is the "cool" thing to do on CP, and everyone is so focused on the negatives that they forget all the good and positive contributions made by people of faith.

If you want to boil it down to social work: Hamas and Hezbolla deserve the same credit for their charitable acts.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Wiggum_PI

This is a pretty unfair statement considering there are many organizations around the world dedicated to helping people in need, that were started by people of faith.

Right, but the important and telling question is are they helping because of faith in God or because like biologically has been shown, empathy and concern for others is beneficial to a species as a whole.

But more clearly to put it like Hitchens does, what ever had been done only for the sake of religous belief that cannot or has not been done by secular values.

The fact that its only been decades really that secular charity could operate over the last 2000yrs has us at a disadvantage.

So I put it to you, what makes religious charity different from a secular charity, say like Doctors without borders, Red Cross, and unicef. All secular organizations.

The Mustard Seed which provides shelter for homeless people and helps them find employment and become self-sufficient again, was started by a Christian.

If it was started by a Bhuddist would it matter? How about a Scientologist?

The Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, ....(there are tons more that could be listed), are all Christian organizations that try to help people and make the world a better place to live in.

Yup, while also having view that deny rights to Gay's and even in a few instance of these utterly attack those groups.

So again I ask, what makes religious charity better than a secular charity, other than religious charity groups have about a 2000yr head start.

It seems like bashing Christians is the "cool" thing to do on CP, and everyone is so focused on the negatives that they forget all the good and positive contributions made by people of faith.

Nope, we are fully aware of the good things. I'm sure on some middle east message forum Muslims are bashing Christians or atheists about their criticisms of the harm those religions bring.

The one thing that I find is the WEAKEST argument for religion is, religious people do good things! Look at the charity work.

Ok, fine.

But then lets look at their other projects. Fighting tooth and nail against every attempt worldwide to give gay couples rights equal to married couples. Claiming religious rights to the word "married."

Oddly enough, atheists and agnostics are having no issues getting married. The word married is not religious in nature, the history of Christian marriage is polygamy and women being married off in property exchanges.

So yeah, lets not kid ourselves, the only reason Christians today care about gay marriage is it offends them, much like it offended them when blacks were given the rights to vote and marry.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

It's complicated. But for most of these people cosmic forces often play a big part in it. Jews were "blinded" and "deceived" by forces of the devil for hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, and so much so by this time that they were incapable of seeing the truth.

There is a long and well established history in the beliefs and writings of the early Church which promoted demonizing "the Jews". For fun, read through the four gospels in their chronological order: Mark –> Luke –> Matthew –> John, and pay close attention to how "the Jews" are portrayed in each account. You will notice that they tend to be progressively vilified.

Yeah, I get all that, and I'm familiar with the socio-political reasons why Jews were vilified in post-Constantine Rome (and consequently Europe as a whole). What I'm completely incapable of understanding is how some modern Christians would think that the Christian God and the Jewish God are not one and the same. Both religions believe that their God is the God of the Torah/Old Testament, the deity who appeared to Moses and led the Jews out of Egypt and all those other stories, right?

When the original Jews accepted monotheism, they did so by rejecting the old polytheistic gods. When the original Christians accepted Jesus as their messiah, they did not reject the god of the Jews; they merely believed Jesus to be his son (or his earthly incarnation for Catholic-like sects that believe in the Trinity).

[Wiggum_PI]

Originally Posted by Gozer

If you want to boil it down to social work: Hamas and Hezbolla deserve the same credit for their charitable acts.

So Christians are no better then terrorists now according to you? What a ridiculous exaggeration.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

There are some who believe christians have surplanted Jews as God's chosen people because they rejected him and had him killed. It is the justification for some antisemitic behaviour. I don't know of any christian who believes that the Jews worship a different God than us. I suppose some might exist.

The Jews remain God's chosen people. We worship the same God.

I'm glad you posted this. How dare you anyone believe that there is a "chosen people"? Honestly. How dare you or anyone believe that there is a chosen people? How dare anyone believe that God chose the people of the Middle East or Utah or anywhere over the Chinese or the First Nations people of Canada (etc., etc.). I find the idea deeply offensive. It is fascism. Answer for that.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Maybe you'll be more tolerant if you appreciate why they do it. Those folks believe it's their responsibility to go into the world and witness to unbelievers.

Make no mistake. 99.999% of the time their real reason is to get money for the church,don't believe me? tell them your in a real hurry and have no time to talk right now but would be happy to make a donation to their church...watch their eyes light up!

And the more these thumpers feel the responsibility to show me their truth the more I feel it's my responsibility to show them just how dense they really are.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Makarov

I'm glad you posted this. How dare you anyone believe that there is a "chosen people"? Honestly. How dare you or anyone believe that there is a chosen people? How dare anyone believe that God chose the people of the Middle East or Utah or anywhere over the Chinese or the First Nations people of Canada (etc., etc.). I find the idea deeply offensive. It is fascism. Answer for that.

Don't be too hard on him, it's called brainwashing...cults do this.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by T@T

Don't be too hard on him, it's called brainwashing...cults do this.

You're right. I suppose I meant to direct those comments to religion in general rather than Calgaryborn personally.

[MacGr3gor]

Originally Posted by Wiggum_PI

This is a pretty unfair statement considering there are many organizations around the world dedicated to helping people in need, that were started by people of faith.

The Mustard Seed which provides shelter for homeless people and helps them find employment and become self-sufficient again, was started by a Christian. The Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, ....(there are tons more that could be listed), are all Christian organizations that try to help people and make the world a better place to live in.

It seems like bashing Christians is the "cool" thing to do on CP, and everyone is so focused on the negatives that they forget all the good and positive contributions made by people of faith.

Depends on your definition of a better place. For one, the Salvation Army actively fights same-sex marriage, all while claiming it opposes "those who vilify homosexuality."

http://salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_...D?Opendocument

http://www.salvationarmyethics.org/p...ian-sexuality/

EDIT- Also, I hear about how the Church always gives money to charities and the like, which apologists use as evidence for how the Church is a positive influence in the world. My question is: Since Religious institutions get the most donations, why not cut out the middleman and donate directly to the charities? Seems like an easier way to help those in need.

[Daradon]

Well I guess we proved the believers here are more tolerant than the study. Hate to give props to the fundamentalists, but I give them props. They deserve it.

At the end of they day, they are good people. Calgaryborn would dive into the water for you, and I would dive into the water for him.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Daradon

Well I guess we proved the believers here are more tolerant than the study. Hate to give props to the fundamentalists, but I give them props. They deserve it.

At the end of they day, they are good people. Calgaryborn would dive into the water for you, and I would dive into the water for him.

Are you sure that wouldn't be against god's will. Maybe you should just pray.

[Doctordestiny]

Questions for atheists. Did the universe come out of nothing? What existed before? Did matter exst? Did it come about be randomness?