Why are so many people offended by my signature?

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Will you criticise your own beliefs? Intolerance exists in everyone, to different extents.

Way to stereotype.

I would probably consider myself an atheist, but I would not actively seek people who hold religious beliefs and tell them that I'm right and they're wrong. That's hypocritical. And I'm sure I've got lots of things wrong, I would not deny that.

However, believing in a God, or any supernatural being, just doesn't do it for me. Consider the Bible. Genesis says that God created the world and the entire Universe in 6 days, and using the genealogy given in the Bible, the world can be worked out to be around 6,000 years old. According to the Big Bang Theory, the Universe was formed around 13.7 billion years ago, with planet Earth forming 4.54 bya (billion years ago.) As far as is known, life began to appear about 3.5 bya. These two theories are pretty much incompatible, which leaves you with three options:
1) The Bible is right, the Big Bang theory and Evolution are wrong.
2) The Big Bang theory and Evolution is right and the literal interpretation of the Bible is wrong.
3) Both are wrong.

Now, I find it hard to believe in a being/force that nobody has ever seen, and to reject the ideas of mainstream science in the process. Maybe there is a way of reconciling science and religion, by accepting that some parts of the Bible cannot be taken literally, but in that case, the Bible loses much of its power. What other parts of it have to be taken metaphorically? I won't even go into the whole issue of the existence of thousands of different creation stories from across the world.

So if you hold religious beliefs, great. But please don't stereotype atheists.

Dude Islam and Bhuddism don't say anything about when the exact date the earth was created. I don't really know why the Christians chose to say that or for that matter to calculate that, which is obviously wrong. I can't say the same for Judaism although I'm not 100% sure I think Judaism doesn't say the exact date too.

Where did I say that all religions have a set date for the creation of the world? Even Creationist Christians disagree on this: some say the world is as old as 12,000 years. But that's still young.

Judaism has the Torah as their holy book, which is the same as the Old Testament that Christians use. So I presume that Orthodox Jews take the creation story literally.

But even if you believed that God created the world through the Big Bang and Evolution, then surely you can get rid of God's role in the creation of the world through Occam's Razor. Of course you can't prove that God doesn't exist by this logic, it just means that he (or she, or it) isn't very powerful.

I wouldn't say I'm an atheist. I just don't care enough to believe in god(s). Good for you if you do, but you don't need to be an a**hole and say sh*t about the people who don't. Does it really matter? Many lives have been lost in wars and disputes about religion, among other things. Religion can be a very controversial discussion topic, which is a good reason to hate it. If someone ask me about my religion, because I don't have one, I'll ramble on about the Flying Spaghetti Monster because that is just as plausable as anything else. like intelligent design. I've heard the bible is a great piece of fictional literture. Is that true? (of course it is)

I think the problem is that you attack the integrity of atheists as people, whereas atheists generally attack the ideas themselves.

BTW, two wrongs don't make a right.

(If you don't see a difference, it could be because your AS prevents you from empathizing or seeing things from others' point of view)

Huh. I didn't think those existed. To be honest, I thought atheists only got their jollies from attacking Christianity, because that seems to be their favorite past time.

Christianity is their primary target, but some of them are equal opportunity. It's amazing that they get offended by Someone they think doesn't exist.

Because you're bashing us with your sig?


Us atheists are people too and we are entitled to our own beliefs about god. Why do religious people have to feel so threatened by what we think? I don't care if you believe in god or anyone else. I just don't want anyone shoving it in my face by criticizing me about not believing in god and telling me I won't go to heaven if I don't get saved or start praying, going to church, etc.
I don't go around telling religious people there is no god and they are being stupid for believing in the bible because they are just stories and going to church is a waste of their time because it's all lies there the priest tells and the Sunday school teachers. I bet you'd be very annoyed if atheists did that to you.

You may not be one of the participants, but quite often atheists are given to name calling.

Again, two wrongs don't make a right. If someone criticizes your ideas, then either don't join the debate, or meet them on their own ground.

There's no reason for adhoms.

Whenever anyone tries to play on someone's emotions--as Stimshieme does--that's when they've lost the argument.

Last edited by IpsoRandomo on 17 May 2008, 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Or as Quatermass said once "Christians are to turn the other cheek." Doormats R Us...

Okay I read the rest of the thread and see the OP is stereotyping us. I hate stereotypes.


Sarcasm:
I can start hating religious people since they keep shoving it in my face and they also attack us too for not believing in god. Who died and made them be in control over my thoughts? :End sarcasm:

Jesus did [sarcasm]!

No, being a doormat means letting people insult you and not correcting them.

You're not talking about criticizing people's ideas or focusing on particular individuals who are rude.

What you're talking about is criticizing people's *character* as a *group* because they don't agree with you.

Back last year in August the PPR forum was full of Ad Hominems. To a lesser degree there are still some offenders in this trade, but most have moved to Zomg or I2.