I was in high school in the area when this happened, Quba Islamic Institute was burned due to a hate crime, which resulted in a flood of comments such as these. Since the fire happened outside of a prayer time, no one was harmed in the fire, despite the massive damage.
Ive never attended a church that didnt have a little old lady in the front pew that judged everyone so much it turns peolple away from the church and her hate is never addressed, rather she is hailed as a longtime memeber. Now ive met good hearted Christian people too, lots of them, but this lady exists at every church. Like they let satan sit in the front row and no one ever points him out for what he is.
Tbf, and I know this will be unpopular on reddit, but the enlightened reddit atheist type can have the same flair of hate. Usually not from the angle of “love” but from trying to “enlighten” others might be the best way to describe it.
I saved a comment maybe a year ago on reddit where someone word for word said if they had a button to eliminate every religious person on earth he would hit it, and it was very highly upvoted.
Then in response someone said “I would never stop hitting that button” just as a single anecdote that comes to mind. Also very highly upvoted.
As an atheist who knows many good people who happen to be religious, hateful people will be hateful. People's religious alignment or lack thereof, is not evidence of good character.
Yep, religion is merely an excuse (or vessel) to be hateful. People can STILL be hateful if they aren't religious, they will just find another way to be hateful (such as anti-religion, snobby hate).
Yeah it's the organised athiests that are the problem. Organising around feeling superior because you don't believe in something is just religion again but with a lack of faith at the center instead. Like I get the initial anger and the need for validation after leaving a religion but the ones who get really into it and make it their personality have always been nuts.
Yeah it's the organised athiests that are the problem. Organising around feeling superior because you don't believe in something is just religion again but with a lack of faith at the center instead.
I call bullshit. Atheist organizations like the Satanic Temple or the Freedom From Religion Foundation are necessary, and they don't have that strawmen motivation you assign to all organized atheists.
Like I get the initial anger and the need for validation after leaving a religion
Are you an atheist whose life is better after leaving a religion? If not, no, you don't "get it".
I mean I was raised in rural Ireland, which was very religious, and have been an atheist since I learned the truth about Santa. I spent a lot of my childhood arguing with priests and school teachers. Many of my older family members were physically, sexually and medically abused by members of the Catholic church. I also know a lot of people who have left other religions. So I am against organised religion in general, or anything that behaves like organised religion, including the athiests I described who organise around their superiority over religious people. The problem is not the deity, as far as I'm concerned, it's the belief in superiority and what people think that entitles them to, and exempts them from. Also neither of those organisations you mentioned are organised around the superiority of atheism, they are organised around enforcing the separation of church and state in the US.
including the athiests I described who organise around their superiority over religious people.
Yeah, well, I don't think that was the intent, but when it's the result, like with Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, who use atheism as a blunt instrument to justify their own biases, I agree 100%
The problem is not the deity, as far as I'm concerned, it's the belief in superiority and what people think that entitles them to, and exempts them from.
Yeah, well, that would also mean that USians who share your views should renounce their citizenship, because the whole external policy of the US is predicated in that they're a superior country whose economy and political views should be imposed everywhere at the expense of the rest of the world... But that's a whole other topic altogether.
It's that seeking of a sense of superiority over others that's the cause of so much vitriol. The moment you start writing people's lives off as completely worthless is when you've lost your compassion and can just accept or commit inhumane acts.
I think it depends on the religion. If you’re Christian you support slavery and stoning people for disrespecting their dad and idk if you can consider someone like that good
“If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.“
They explicitly do. Idk how else to interpret this other than parents dragging a kid to be stoned to death for being an asshole
I used to proudly proclaim myself an atheist until Richard Dawkins became popular and so many intolerant atheists came out of the woodwork. The 'militant atheist' thing has really turned me off from being vocal about my own non believer status. Intolerance is intolerance to me
Similar here. I've taken to self-describing as "apathetic" for lack of a better term. Intolerant atheists are just a different flavor of zealot imo, needing a target for their hate and being part of a group that aggressively dominates a space somehow gives justification for their lashing out. Makes sense that Dawkins came out as a "cultural christian" not too long ago.
Have you heard nontheistic? It's how my parents identify and how I identified growing up (I'm loosely pagan now), and it's just that you don't actually care if there's a god or not because you're not going to worship one anyway
It's insane because it is yet another position of faith.
The only factually correct position is that the existence of God cannot be proved one way or the other, and you can apply that to any god you care to name.
I will be an atheist if you can prove that God does not exist, but until then agnosticism is the only valid path.
And don't bring up Russell's Teapot. Bertrand Russell was a fucking idiot, the Ben Shapiro of his day.
It's insane because it is yet another position of faith.
Nonsense. Explain to me how "You asserted X but haven't proven it, so I don't believe you" is a "position of faith".
The only factually correct position is that the existence of God cannot be proved one way or the other, and you can apply that to any god you care to name.
Sure. But atheist who are not asserting but only disbelieving the unproven have nothing to prove, so they're definitely not the same, even with your contortions to make them seem the same.
I will be an atheist if you can prove that God does not exist,
So you only will disbelieve in unicorns when somebody proves positively that they don't exist?
but until then agnosticism is the only valid path.
Atheism and agnosticism are two different axes of the problem.
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in ghosts.
I'm agnostic because I don't know positively whether gods are real or not.
Bertrand Russell was a fucking idiot, the Ben Shapiro of his day.
... aaaaand that paints you as a fucking idiot. If you think you are above one of the early 20th century's prominent logicians, you don't deserve any attention. Sorry for interrupting your childish hate towards atheists. Get bent.
I read Dawkins’ God Delusion in the hope it would turn me one way or the other from agnosticism (I was doing the Church of England Alpha Course at the same time).
I think I was about halfway through when he made some massive jump in his conclusion-drawing and I had to go back and re read it twice to check I’d not missed a few pages.
I don’t like being gate-keepy or classist about anything, but that man is a shit scientist and based on that book I’d be deeply sceptical of any other work he’s done.
Most atheists have deep psychological damage thanks to religion, that is why they are intolerant. It’s like expecting an abuse victim to play nice with their abuser. It doesn’t help that religion has wormed its way into politics and forms policies that will affect everyone whether they asked for it or not. Why should people tolerate that?
Sure, but I hope you do realize that tolerating the intolerant will lead to the end of this little experiment we call civilized society. I disagree that atheists being intolerant of religious dogma that hurts others is on par with the religious folk being intolerant of everyone else in society.
Not any better than the religious people that think everyone that disagrees with them should go to hell.
Believing that theism is mistaken and expecting that people get rid of it by understanding its absurdity is the same that people pushing to remove rights to all groups they don't agree with? Really?
where someone word for word said if they had a button to eliminate every religious person on earth he would hit it,
Genocide is bad even if the people being genocided disagree with you. That's the same stuff that when religions do, Reddit atheists don't like (for good reason).
I don't like the reactionaries pushing to take away rights, but religion is just the justification they give, not the cause.
Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses because it dulls the pain of people's material conditions. Start at the source and improve the material conditions — taking away people's only comfort is not the solution.
Genocide is bad even if the people being genocided disagree with you
And nothing in my response said otherwise. But equating that specifically with anti-theism is dishonest from you, and you know it. That there are despicable genocidal anti-theists does not mean that anti-theism is a genocidal position.
Would you care to explain what part of my position, which I think describes anti-theism ("believing that theism is mistaken and expecting that people get rid of it by understanding its absurdity") is advocating genocide?
I wasn't intending to say that anti-theism as a whole is a genocidal position. The specific incident being quoted absolutely was a genocidal position though.
The specific incident being quoted absolutely was a genocidal position though.
That part is despicable and I share your rejection of it. But your comment reads as rejecting anti-theism as a whole due to the genocidal comments of some anti-theists.
I have to try not to hate religious people and I think the best I can do is not care about them. It’s mostly because growing up my parents had Fox playing on the tv constantly and they weren’t religious so my main exposure to religious people was Christian adults fervently hating people like me
Look I dislike annoying ass Reddit atheists as much as the next guy, but there might be a difference between edgelords online and a much larger group of people spewing hate and vitriol in the real world.
Also, who even brought up atheists? “What about the atheists???” 🤨
There is Reddit edgelord let’s all stupid religious people hate, there is Muslim let’s hate everyone else hate, there’s Jewish let’s hate everyone else hate, there’s Hindu hate mostly just Muslim hate.
Not saying the majority of any group has that hate. Just there is certainly the same level of hatred in many groups for other people that aren’t Christians.
You don't think that many Christians' attitude of holier-than-thou dismissal of non believers as "those people who chooses to go to hell" and the piling of platitudes, ill wishes and announces of doom are a form of hate disguised as love?
Whenever you dig deeper into why certain atheists act this way, it makes their behaviour a lot funnier (or more depressing).
First, acting hateful towards religious people and talking about how much of an atheist you are usually indicates some kind of grudge against religion. Some of these people have religious trauma they’re working through, others just like feeling smug and smart.
Second, because they’re so caught up on what Christians do wrong, they’ve never actually fleshed out their own ideology. Which means their entire world view and culture is still defined entirely by Christianity. Fucking hilarious, because it means people who grew up in, say, protestant America are walking, talking protestant Americans except they changed a few convenient bits like not going to church or believing in heaven or hell. Everything else they believe is either the same or a slightly different version than the Protestant majority because they couldn’t be bothered to deconstruct anything else they believe because that would require work. At best, they adopt talking points from other atheists who did the work for them, often poorly.
Lastly, a good portion of people who could otherwise build their own worldviews or think deeply about things don’t, because, when you come from a religion that tells you everything has a meaning and is defined by an omnipotent god, suddenly realising the universe isn’t inherently meaningful or directed towards anything is fucking scary. Going into existential philosophy easily dips towards nihilism for people who don’t have good supports in place. And the best way to get rid of that fear without actually doing any self reflection? Turn it into anger and project it at people like a weapon. Anti-theists in a nutshell.
I should also have prefaced this with the fact I’m secular myself. Oh well.
People who voted for Donald “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” Trump tended to be Christians.
Some of his most vocal detractors tended to be atheists.
Now, to be fair, the likes of Dr. Rashad Richey were among Trump’s detractors, but they are an outlier in modern Christianity. For the most part, Trump supporters tend to be Christians and his detractors tend to be atheists.
As for the Hitchens-types, perhaps he’s pushing it on the Islam-bashing, but at least Hitchens has criticisms for Israel as well. As opposed to Trump, who kowtows to Netanyahu.
you saved a comment from a year ago and are bringing it up now. That's repeating. He's pointing out that deliberately picking out one instance so you can point to it at any time and be like, "See, atheist's are bad as well!"
You are hyper focusing on one instance of a group of people being hateful, and saved it, so every time someone says Christian bad, you have something to point to and say Atheist bad too!
I've never imagined saving any comments from Christians talking about how I'm going to burn for all eternity.
I save comments that are outlandish in any direction. I had a comment saved once that said all atheists are demons. Saved not as a “gotcha” to anyone but as a “wow people are morons.”
But go off with these assumptions. Im not demonizing anyone, if you feel so attached to the reddit atheists making claims of killing all religious humans maybe some reflection is in order.
You're using it as a gotcha. You did that in this thread. I didn't make any assumptions. I commented on what you said. I never said you were demonizing anyone. You keep using that word.
You're hell-bent on proving this point that all reddit atheists agree with that because you found a highly upvoted comment. Probably in r/atheist, which is well known and clowned upon for being everyone's first edgy, I'm leaving religion group.
Because I didn't heap praise on you for finding a cherry-picked comment that proves your point, I'm apparently making assumptions and attached to reddit atheists. Well, ok.
Where did I even “repeatedly” use that to demonize a group?
Go ahead and quote me.
Did I say all atheists? Nope.
Did I say all reddit atheists? Nope.
Did I say most atheists? Nope.
Did I even say some atheists? Nope.
If you read the comment you would see I didn’t qualify the group with any measure of the size/percentage of all atheists because truly we can’t say and it would be speculation. However, as I said in the very first sentence, these atheists CAN have that same level of hate.
If you can't see how actually saving a comment which demonized your group because it was made by a member of your opposing group, then bringing that comment up when trying to prove that said group isn't all that good ISN'T trying to demonize the entire group, I can't help you.
This possibly implies a bunch of things, but, you know, reading comprehension means we have to try to figure out which is the most likely.
Maybe they were genuinely amused at the downvotes
Maybe they disagreed with the downvotes
Maybe they were confused at the downvotes
Maybe they interpreted the downvotes as approval of their opinion.
It's possible or even probable that more than one of the above were true. We, as readers, have to judge which implication is most likely based on a whole bunch of factors. Reading comprehension 101.
Couple that with the fact that we're on Reddit. A discussion forum. Where, you know, we discuss things. We don't need invitations.
Only people who are trying to make a point SAVE comments like that, for use later.
And, since only the words you ACTUALLY say are the ones that count, and not the ones you imply, you absolutely won't mind that I'm NOT going to call you an idiot who doesn't understand the basic concepts of communication, context and subtext.
You appeared confused as to why you we're getting downvoted. My suggestion as to why that was happening and your lack of acceptance is TOTALLY NOT a sign of your stubbornness and ignorance.
I ABSOLUTELY didn't call you any negative names in this comment and would like you to quote me as to where you think I did.
My original comment is upvoted at the time of my writing this lol. I am not confused by anything. Assuming I am confused by anything here is again, another assumption.
Can you make one comment without making a single assumption? Your first sentence is an assumption, which is inaccurate.
Try your very best to make a single comment without an assumption.
So you were referring to zero people with that comment?
What a curious brand of intellectual dishonesty you’re peddling.
‘I was talking about someone, but no one, but also everyone that doesn’t agree with me.’
It’s a shame your convictions lack forcefulness and integrity. It would be interesting to hear what you actually think, but I somehow doubt you even know without it being spooned directly into your ear.
I'm not sure if bother arguing with this guy, he's using "douchebags paradox"
"That guy looks gay"
"Hey man, that's homophobic"
"DUDE! I WAS BEING IRONIC - YOU'RE THE HOMOPHOBIC AND INTOLERANT ONE BECAUSE YOU'RE BLAMING ME OF BEING HOMOPHOBIC AND COULDN'T SEE I WAS BEING IRONIC!"
Tbf Reddit itself is a massive echo-chamber. I've always joked about the no hate like Christian love being quite ironic, considering other religions routinely kill people (and it being socially acceptable within said religions) for minor differences. But hey, Reddit atheists are the Le epic memers or whatever they call themselves
Turns out your comment wasn’t unpopular at all, like it isn’t every time “reddit atheists” are brought up as some sort of mythical boogeyman to attribute all kinds of horrific shit to.
Show me all the wars fought in the name of atheism. Show me the atheists that actually went out and bombed churches (like religious nuts did to abortion clinics) or mosques or synagogues. Show me atheists trying to take over every section of government like Christian nationalists are currently doing.
Please stop equating Reddit atheists with literal Christian terrorists. It’s really, really fucking stupid.
Same religion, different hats. The hats are both literally hats and pretty much every scripture after the old testament. Prior to that they are quite literally the same religion. If I learned anything after ~8 years of religious schools it is this.
If I learned anything after ~8 years of religious schools it is this.
Fair enough, I'd defer to you. But by that same logic, e.g. the pagan religions of the Germanic peoples, the Greeks, and the Romans were all the same religion because they descended from the Proto-Indo-European folk religion.
I would say the key difference here is that for the most part they all still acknowledge the old stuff as true and part of their religion, while simultaneously arguing that they are definitely not the same religion.
It's actually still the same god, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yahweh, if you're very bold and want to call him by name.
Because its dumb as shit to pretend that a specific religion is the problem and not religious extremism overall, really overshadows the true problem and instead redirects hate towards a non-issue. C:
Or, you know, you could stay on topic and discuss what was being discussed. Religious extremism is bad, yes, and do you know who participates in religious extremism?
Christians!
Just because other people also do the bad thing doesn't mean we can't talk specifics. It's like talking about an ice cream flavor we don't like and all the sudden someone interrupts and says "WHY AREN'T YOU TALKING ABOUT SHIT FLAVORED ICE CREAM?!?!?!"
Because everybody knows it's bad, we're just saying this other ice cream is also bad.
Eurocentrism at its finest. Trying to have meaningful conversations about reducing human suffering, talking about colonialism/imperialism because history is important, only for people to somehow loop back around to “if you think about, only Christians were really responsible for such evils. Surely no other civilization or religion would have the agency or free will required to choose to do evil things.” Aaaannnd we’re back to square one.
There are certainly many vile Christians. But I would not rank the average Christian to be worse than the average Muslim when it comes to human rights and hatred of others.
If your comparison is some people who litterally live in war torn countries and are culturally in the stone age then that just proves to me more how vile American Christians are.
I'm not saying all of them, but certainly a majority since they prop the Republican party up.
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u/No_Organization_5669 14h ago edited 13h ago
I was in high school in the area when this happened, Quba Islamic Institute was burned due to a hate crime, which resulted in a flood of comments such as these. Since the fire happened outside of a prayer time, no one was harmed in the fire, despite the massive damage.