I really don’t understand how people still think Christian == Moral. Not even close.

I grew up a son to evangelical ministers. I left home at 16, but up till then I spent 14 years being a sheep myself. But trust me, sheep only in the sense that we just followed what we were told with mindless ease, in reality we were more like wolfs.

Who else would beat up a kid because he “might” be gay. And beat him badly too. Who else would be so openly hostile to a work we live in, and even more so, hostile to the ideas we live with.

Since losing my faith and leaving my old family far behind I have found that I a great person, but never would have known it if you knew me when I was “following Christ”.

We haven’t set out to change people, we have set out to let people know we do exist and that we are active. We certainly aren’t going to go around telling people they are stupid and there is no God (like the CU go around saying the opposite), but we are going to answer challenges.

You can’t change most people, and opposing them won’t get you anywhere. I think you should avoid sinking to their level.

Although I agree with you somewhat that a world without religion doesn’t mean the world would be any better, I agree with the argument that a lot of tragic events would not have been caused. I can’t think of any reason why 9/11 would have occurred if not for religious fundamentalism, and certainly things like the crusades would have disappeared from history.

I think the Steven Weinberg quote sums it up quite well:

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

There are good people in religion, and they are grouped together with fundamentalists who are the oppressors, which is wrong. I think people should refrain from imposing their beliefs on others, and if that were the case, I could pack up this blog and do something else. Unfortunately, people are insulting atheists, challenging them, and just downright lying about us and the world, and I’ll be damned (figuratively speaking) if I am going to stand for it.

It’s the same reason they feel the need to preach, lecture, and try to “save” us. At least it’s the reason some of them have, or claim to have. From what I can understand, the true believers actually believe they’re helping. The rest are like all the other bullies who simply believe anyone not like them is a “loser” and deserves their scorn. What I wonder about, though, is the ones do it merely to convince themselves. The ones who don’t believe, or aren’t fully convinced, and have to drag everyone else in to make themselves feel better. They’re just going through the motions, believing what they’ve been told, trying not to be too inconvenienced by it but still living with burdens and fears, and when they see someone unencumbered by this it pisses them off. At this point they suddenly become completely sure of their religion and have to do something about these non-believers.

I think some of us atheists do get lost in an idealistic belief that the world would be better without religion and the prejudices it creates. Heck, I still believe that. But in the end, I think the problems religion creates are merely an outlet for problems that exist in human nature. Bullies will be bullies no matter what, and if they don’t have an ancient holy book to back them up, they’ll come up with something else. It’s just sad to see these people lumped together with the ones who genuinely believe they’re doing good with their beliefs.

Well said. I used to think freedom of speech actually stood for something in this country, but when it comes to religion, all guns come out. Whenever another belief system advertises some event, I approach it with an open mind. I even went to a lecture on I.D with an open mind to try and see it from their perspective, but all I heard was a guy who had no idea how evolution worked.

I agree with you though, people who do this are either not confident in their faith and see us as a threat, or they are religious bigots. From my experiences with the Christian Union, I’d go with the latter.

Seriously, though, that’s terribly sad. And it makes you wonder just how confident they are in their faith if they feel it necessary to silence anyone who questions it. How harmful can your group be if they have the absolute truth and you’re lying?