Critical reading and thinking are thrown from the moving train...

Headlines: "Religion Must Be Destroyed, Atheists Say"

Line one: "Science must ultimately destroy organized religion, according to some of the leading atheist writers and intellectuals..."

At least by line one, they've managed to confess that "organized religion" was the target. Yet to be clarified is the fact that the target for destruction is a natural decline in the face of reason. It cannot be helped unless we wish to stop reason.

This is the rub for Dawkins. If you choose to protect religion from reason, you sacrifice reason.

By the way, Thane, I've adopted a new signature in your honor.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

That's very clever hcj. I love you too :-)

On ignore that is.

SSDD

religion should ultimately destroy organized aethiesm.

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www.myspace.com/crusade7

I'm agin you both.

It's not as if Dawkins is suggesting a literal war on religious people. He is arguing that we are sacrificing reason to the unreasonable.

The fact that you both jumped to the conclusion that he was merely intolerant, AND bought the headline disappoints me.

I am intolerant of racism. I am intolerant of willful ignorance. I am intolerant of a lot of things that are unreasonable and dangerous. I am passionate in my intolerance. Is this a bad thing?

What is the difference then between me and say...Hank? Reason. I can and do change my mind in the face of reason. Organized religion prohibits that.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

Neither will "destroy" the other.

EVER.

The idea that that is even possible is ridicuous.

There will always be nutjobs of every stripe.

ALWAYS.

USPO supplies plenty of evidence of particular atheists who are fanatically intolerant of religion.

I'm not one of them.

As a general rule, I do find other atheists to be fanatically intolerant of religion and this disgusts me.

That being said, I have no delusions about the religious. Their intolerance is well known and well documented and far worse than the atheists by sheer numbers alone.

Btw, JHC, if you want to have a serious discussion of the topic, I insist on a new thread. This one carries a certain stench from the OP. Meaningful or serious discussion cannot occur under that poster's name.

Point taken.
I will give some thought to another thread.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

Yeah, that SHOULD have been ridiculous not ridicuous

I take it back Rabbit. No better place than to have this discussion.
I am sorry but if anything represents Dawkins issue better than this thread I don't know what it is.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

As a more or less recent non-theist (that's more or less recent and more or less anon-theist) I too am really bothered by the militancy and derisiveness with which some atheists regard religion. It is similar, or indeed the same, as the way that I was bothered by the way that some religious people regarded atheism when I was still a theist.

I am currently about a quarter of the way through Dawkin's The Ancestors' Tale. I have not read any other of his works, but he does not strike me as exactly the kind of atheist that I have a problem with. Aside from asserting briefly that the "problem" of an omni-potent deity is infinitely greater than the "problem" of the non-existance thereof, and the occasional footnote requesting that creationists refrain from purposely using selective quotation to misrepresent his position he pretty much leaves religion alone.

Regarding preposterous nonsense of religious customs: even when I was a strict theist I considered many customs of religion truly preposterous.

How many of you religious people here consider human sacrifice anything short of nonsensical?

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

True. Something like a supreme being is unknown by either side. The point I've been making, however, is that in the absence of real numbers on nonbelievers and whether their feelings are like the quoted article the point is moot. It again falls to what you BELIEVE to be the case and what I believe is, based on my experience with many atheists online and off, they don't bear any antagonism toward religion as long as it is not pushed on them. It's like the difference between a liberal and a far left fanatic.

And I can't agree that the absence of belief in religion is in any way similar to the belief IN God. Unless you mean it is the difference between believing in nothing or believing in something. The something in this case carries a LOT more baggage than just thinking nothing is there.I figure that's about the same way atheists feel toward the religious.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

Yet I never see you post threads condemning the words or actions of a single Christian who might make a ridiculous statement. Why is that? I ask you again - if you can generalise one atheist as being representative of all atheists (as per your thread title), then why isn't Fred Phelps representative of all Christians?

It would seem so at first exam. it would. But when you observe the actions and words of some of these radical atheists, it seems that the baggage is equivalent at the very least. That is what is strange about them IMO.

There are decent members of both beliefs. There are also very strange radicals on both sides as well unfortunately.

Radicals are the most active and make the most noise.

Like with everything else I guess.

To bad there isn't some sort of quencher like an anti - oxidant for these radicals :-) But this isn't biochem LOL

USPO supplies plenty of evidence of all kinds of opinions almost none of which are representative of anything but that particular poster.

But Thane isn't talking about atheists on this board and neither did I. I specifically spoke of Dawkins and he was the main target of the article.

The difference between the two, is that religion has some special dispensation while non-religion does not.

I have taken you up in creating a thread to expound on this idea. Please do join me. It is entitled "Sacrifice of Reason".

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

That's the key. RADICAL atheists! Not just "atheists" as in the thread title.And there will always be strange radicals, in religion, politics and almost every group in human existence. The point I've held all along is that not matter what group you can name, the loudmouthed minority doesn't often speak for the majority.Too bad. But then again, being a radical isn't ALWAYS a bad thing like it is with religion and anti-religion.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.