So I'm in a bit of a debate over on another forum...
There's a thread about Noah's ark on there... in response to CNN running an article about an anomoly in the snow on Mt.Ararat.
As usual, I had to step in and try to talk a little sense... but given the general mentality of the people on that forum, I wasn't as diplomatic as usual... *cough* ;)
One of the moderators made the comment that she believed in God, and someone else commended her for her courage in stating that belief... to which someone else responded that in the US, it was ridiculous to say that it took courage to state your belief in God. A very good point.
Before I got around to replying to that comment though, I had saw some comment from another moron about using the Bible as a guide for morality or something... to which I posted my usual list of fun ways to murder friends and loved ones per God's commands in the bible... with the relevant bible verses, so that they could read along.
Someone else said something about the Ark itself, and about fitting 2 of each animal in it for 40 days or something... to which I left a scathing comment about actually reading the bible and seeing that the whole story is much more in depth than that... it's 7 pair of every bird, 7 pair of every clean animal (for food), 2 of all the rest, food for all the animals, enough for the entire trip, plus samples of ALL food at the time, to reseed the earth, as they spent about a YEAR under water deep enough to cover the highest mountains on earth by over 20 feet. And then they repopulated the earth from just Noah, his wife, and their 3 kids and their wives. Little incest action populating the world for the SECOND time, according to the bible... if you again ignore the fact that Adam and Eve weren't the first people on earth for the first time... but this second time leaves little doubt that we all are supposedly descended from less than 10 individuals, seeding the entire earth, in just a few thousand years.
Sorry... I'm getting off on a rant because the BULLSHIT is getting so deep in here... it just gets me fired up.
I told the jackass to go learn his own fucking religion.
I told the moderator that she was a fucking idiot, and that rather than run off and avoid the topic, why doesn't she even make a tiny attempt to defend her ridiculous beliefs against the flood of damning evidence straight from her own bible that I'd presented. And that courage wasn't what she'd done, stating her belief in God in a nation whose motto is "In God We Trust", I said that COURAGE was what my post was... standing up in this Christian country and stating that you don't believe in the man in the clouds just because everyone else says they do. Courage is being an open unbeliever in this day and age.
The last thing I covered (before that last part actually), was the fact that the same guy that had commented about how it wasn't courage for her to state a belief in God in the United States today, that he didn't have anything against her faith etc.
I made the point that if you believe someones beliefs are fucking retarded, but that they have a freedom to believe those things, that somehow you don't have the right, or shouldn't state that their beliefs are stupid. I said what was the fucking point then? If someone has a right to believe something stupid in this country, then let's not forget that we also have the right to tell them they must have been sucking on a tail pipe or something to be that stupid.
It's not just the religion that's the problem here, it's the faith in that stupid religion, and we need to start holding people accountable for believing fairytale nonsense that wouldn't remotely pass the test of credulity in ANY other aspect of their lives! This faith, which is in conflict with the very cognitive functions that enable a person to live the rest of their lives outside of religion, corrodes a persons ability to think rationally... it creates the mental partitions, the lack of critical thinking skills... the inability to grasp certain concepts because of the self-induced short circuiting of their reasoning skills in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance of conflicting ideas... within one's self even.
I've covered all this shit before... suffice it to say, people need to be held accountable for ridiculously childish and ignorant, if not downright stupid, beliefs in regards to their religion, the same way we would if they believed that Black people were descended from Mud, and therefor were not human... or that the Holocaust of the Jews didn't happen at the hands of the Nazis... while some people certainly believe those things, the vast majority of us don't even give them the time of day... we see the body of historical and scientific evidence that completely crushes any rational notion of entertaining those ideas as remotely true. How is it so difficult to carry that same thought process on to this other area of ridiculous belief?
Hell, I even went on to talk about how pathetic it was that people would argue for the infallibility of their bible... of the inerrant word of God that could not be questioned... and then have them try to worm out of killing their friends and family and numerous other people as God very clearly COMMANDS them to do in the bible. They are all about trumping up the perfection and power of God's word when it suits them to need that type of contrived authority... but when it comes to actually obeying what that God commands?... that's when you hear the hemming and hawing... "well... those aren't really serious... and Jesus died for our sins, so we don't have to obey those anymore.."... Oh really. So you don't have to obey the Ten Commandments? Or you get to pick and choose which of God's commands to obey? And what makes one be absolutely binding, but in the very next verse, you just brush over it? And let's not forget that Jesus was very specific that you had to STILL obey ALL of God's law, until the end of time! Every Jot and Tittle. Your own bible very clearly refutes your pathetic excuses. You can't have it both ways... which is the very reason these people end up with muddled thought processes... they have to allow this area of their lives to be riddled with contradictions and stand in stark contrast to the rest of their lives... they have to numb themselves to the irrationality of it in order to maintain a belief in it. And the reward for this shutting off of their faculties is the feeling of being loved and safe... that they'll go to heaven when they die and that God loves them no matter what etc. Those warm fuzzy feelings, which are nothing more than a result of their own imagination and are scientifically understood, are the reinforcement they need to continue believing this way.
I'll have to track down some of the studies on the neurobiological effects of religious belief. Simply put, it's about the same as falling in love. Same chemical reactions in the brain. Positive reinforcement through basically having your brain dope itself up.
Fun times. *grumble*
2 comments:
Hey this is Vorador666 from Shoosh. Don't get me wrong from my comments on shoosh, I wasn't even trying to go that path I just wanted to make my point about it not being courage (seeing how she replied I really should have said more) I agree with you about how wrong christianity really is I just kind of got used to keeping my mouth shut about it as my entire family is very very christian and I've spent my whole life doing just that I am still working on changing that part of myself.
As someone who was raised as a right wing christian untill the age of 17, believe me when I say that it is brainwashing, if you don't believe me then try to change your religion as I have done, that shit gets embedded in you and it's a long hard fight to get away from that shit. I remember praying in school (back when the teachers could still try to force you to) and looking at the kids not praying with complete disgust, I remember having a hatred of homosexuals and people of other races embedded in my head, I hate and am disgusted with that aspect of my life and 10 years after my realization at the age of 17 I am still trying to clean my mind from that shit. It's just as bad as any other addictions, they addict you, take your money and have you train your kids to be addicted as well
Trust me, I know how you feel. Even years after the fact I would still get spooked sometimes when I was doing something that I'd been taught was taboo. For instance, 3 years ago I read THE INTRODUCTION TO the Satanic Bible. It wasn't even the actual Satanic Bible itself, just the introduction that some magazine author wrote... but that fear that had been ingrained in me that I was going straight to hell for even touching it or thinking about it... that kind of stuff gets ingrained in you deep. Primal fear type stuff.
I remember when I was a strong Christian and a youth group leader... I remember the same kind of things you're talking about... about looking at my neighbors that way because my parents told me they weren't Christians... and that they were intellectuals, and how that made them think they were smarter than Christians. And the way my parents talked about it made me really think there was something horribly wrong with these people. Or Atheists or people that didn't believe in God etc etc... all these people seemed like outcasts, unclean... like they were accursed and going to hell and they must be the last people on Earth that I'd want to associate with etc.
It took me a number of years myself to overcome a lot of this brainwashing. I was probably around 22 when my brain first started heading in that direction... but it wasn't pronounced until my later 20s.... around 26 or so probably. I'm 32 now and am obviously a lot more pronounced and learned about this part of my life and how I see the rest of the world, and my own family, who are still devout Christians to this day.
Thanks for your comment here and sorry for being a little hard on you on the forum. I get a little frustrated sometimes and really just cut loose on people when perhaps I should be a bit more patient and soft spoken with people who are at least on the right track. :) I think it was the other posts that I replied to that really got me worked up, and it was all downhill from there. ;) I think maybe it was a good think that CGal locked that thread and I started a new one. The conversation seems much more level headed and informative on there.
Thanks again.
Oh crap... I just noticed. That cunt just locked the new thread as well. Way to try to stifle any conversation you don't agree with. >:F !!!! God, I hate people like that. ;) (and find it oddly humorous to continue to purposefully use God's name in vain, just to show how it's become second nature as part of our vocabulary)
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