To wonder why some atheists are so obsessed with being atheist?

[Fanfeckintastic]

I say this as an atheist myself, so many people seem obsessed with "not believing"! I don't mean just being vocal in their disgust at the Catholic church etc (completely understandable) I mean Ricky Gervais for example, somehow I have "liked" him on Facebook and he never stops posting skeptic stuff.

Why do non believers put so much effort and thought into "not believing"

On a side note, I'm in Ireland and sometimes get very pissed off with how much control the church still has, it sickens me actually. But I'm talking about just atheists almost making a hobby of being atheists?

AIBU in my observation?

Joysmum, I think you'll find that (whether you like the term or not) you're just a liberal feminist rather than a radical feminist.

Thurlow, call whatever you want. But I stand by my position. The other two example are still OK in your books, or will you just ignore it?

is it not possible to have charity that is both? why is charity bad because it is based in a church? Who do you think is giving out food parcels, who is raising awareness of the effects of cuts on families, who gave me shelter and a warm bed when our camp was attacked at Greenham all those years ago

Organised religion can do good and bad - just like everything and everyone else in the world - it doesn't make it wrong all the time nor is everyone with faith wrong or bad or causing wars

This is where I do get really exasperated with other none believers - they can not see how oppressive and offensive they are being in their attacks on people own personal beliefs and faith - it makes you as bad as the fundamentalists you actually have the issue with

Are people really asking why they have to respect other people?! Respect doesn't mean agreeing with someone or supporting them. It just means that a person can believe the sky is purple for all they like and they should not be treated badly for thinking so.

While I've never had an aggressive discussion in real life, online these debates are very heated on both sides.

oh and 'calling Godwins law' is a bit petty when the issue of Nazi Germany is actually pertinent to the debate

some ardent anti belief people make me sad to be humanist

I've never actually seen 'aggressive atheism' in real life. I think it's purely an online phenomenon. As such I bracket it squarely with all the other variants on the theme of 'self-important keyboard warrior' that you get on the internet and ignore, then carry on rubbing along just fine with the believers and non-believers I know. I suspect most people do likewise.

In real life, respecting the belief (or absence thereof) of people you interact with is about good manners, not some abstract principle. Very few people keep hectoring other people about their convictions past the point of natural courtesy, at least not once they're past undergraduate age.

Online, you can be as much of a shouty twat as you like - Christian, atheist or whatever - because it's anonymous, so you can get away with it. Some people seem to really enjoy that. Each to their own

I don't know any aggressive Buddhists though. All the Buddhists I know are lovely gentle people.

Here's one for you.

Suchinda Kraprayoon.

Are people really asking why they have to respect other people?! Respect doesn't mean agreeing with someone or supporting them. It just means that a person can believe the sky is purple for all they like and they should not be treated badly for thinking so.

But the sky is not purple, just the same as gravity is a thing, and fossils are millions of years old, and a child born to a virgin 2000 years ago would have been biological impossible. Some things are simply facts, not beliefs.

I don't think people are arguing you shouldn't respect other people. They are asking why should they respect every crackpot religious belief those people follow? You can think someone's beliefs are stupid and misguided and yet still not be rude to them. I am not going to be rude the Muslim guy in Western dress, who strides ahead of his wife while she follows behind completely covered from head to toe, and boiling hot in this weather, but in my head I think that particular belief deserves no respect at all. Nor am I going to respect the belief of people who believe that women who are raped and go on to bear a child are unclean and deserving of derision, for example. Why should anyone respect beliefs like that? Just because someone's beliefs are "religious" why are they any more deserving of respect than someone's political beliefs, for example?

Society gets confused between respecting people as people, and respecting any stupid superstition they follow in their life which can also affect other people. The problem is that people who are ardent followers of particular creeds often allow it to colour and shape their behaviour and interaction with others. Therefore we end up with a society in which people are terrified of making a moral judgement in case they are labelled as somethingorother-ist.

I respect other people, I respect that they have a right to believe whatever they like as long as it does not harm others, I do not respect the nature of the belief itself - just as I do not 'respect' homeopathy because some people believe it works.

Respect, as a term, is becoming so overused in society as a bendy-catchall that it's becoming a wee bit meaningless, to be honest.

Gordys, there was a really interesting thread a while back about church-run food banks. There was no question about whether it was right or not for the church to be in that line of work - the discussion was all around the offer of prayer to every recipient of food aid, and whether the recipients would feel obliged to accept an offer of prayer even if it made them feel uncomfortable / went against their beliefs / would dissuade them from seeking help in the future.

Charity that comes with any strings attached based on the beliefs of the givers, rather than the recipients, makes me really uncomfortable. Firstly, it doesn't really feel like true charity, and secondly the line between charity and proselytising can become rather blurry. Religions aren't alone in this field - the strings attached to foreign aid from many governments are frankly despicable.

I agree with you hester.

Charity that comes with any strings attached based on the beliefs of the givers, rather than the recipients, makes me really uncomfortable. Firstly, it doesn't really feel like true charity, and secondly the line between charity and proselytising can become rather blurry. Religions aren't alone in this field - the strings attached to foreign aid from many governments are frankly despicable.

And yy to this as well.

why is charity bad because it is based in a church

Did anyone say it was? I missed that. Usually it comes up in response to someone suggesting that all charity is Christian. I remember one time we pointed out to a poster some secular organisations that ran charities and she just said "yeah, but I bet some of the people working for them were Christian". Just couldn't get past the whole "religion=good, non-religion=bad" thing.

MyFairyKing speaking about the right to respect: I hate to use this as an example because he never actually got a trial, but it's one most people here will get. Do you personally respect Jimmy Savile?

it's not coming with strings attached it's a leaflet - and not one that puts down other views or faiths - at least not in the food banks I use for clients

it's not like operation Christmas child which has a massive and well publicised anti Islam agenda

it's not a line of work either - it's charity - which most 'religions' are expected to be involved in

Gordys, I wasn't the OP in the thread in question it was ages ago. In that thread, the OP said that prayer was offered to the recipients and that it made her uncomfortable.

It opened up a much broader discussion about the nature of charity and what people consider 'strings' and what people see as the purpose (and sub-purposes) of charity. What surprised me on the thread was a significant number of people saying 'why would the church get involved if there wasn't something in it for them'. Again, I am not saying that all Christians, or all people who volunteer for or work for charities, think that way but it was an eye opener for me, having been very involved in both religious and non-religious charitable work in my past.

I didn't say anywhere that it was like Operation Christmas Child - that's ridiculous hyperbole. And 'line of work' was a turn of phrase intended to be 'doing this sort of activity' - if you don't count a food bank as work.

I am an atheist. And vocal. The reason why I speak out is because I just don't buy into people's right to a faith. Now, I would NEVER punish anyone for it ( unlike religion, globally) but I think that it should be challenged to create a better, fairer more equal world.

Re the online vs RL thing, of course the nature of debate is going to be different, I'm confused as to why anyone would think otherwise.

A thread on MN (for example) is created for the express purpose of debating certain issues, and posters can choose to partake or not partake - type just one post or hundreds - it's totally a matter of free choice as to whether you join in or not. This creates an environment where people are much freer to speak their minds.

Your relationship with the other posters on the thread exists (usually) only in the context of what you are debating - you don't also have to get on with them as a relative, friend, colleague, employee etc.

*Backonlybriefly:

Have you experienced that on MN?*

No

How exactly did the other person 'refuse to let you state your position' or 'force a debate'?

Not sure why you're turning my general remarks into personal experience, but still...

The example I had in mind was when I chose a vegetarian option while on a course and had to sit through a very uncomfortable meal with the trainer doing exactly this over what he perceived as my vegetarianism. I just wanted to get on and eat my lunch - I'm not even a vegetarian! - but I couldn't get a word in. I think manypeople will know this kind of person. Rather like him, you're assuming I'm talking from a religious point of view and I've had a problem on MN.

*"it does limit the arguments to disproving someone else's beliefs"

You don't need to believe in something else to point to something and say "see that? that contradicts what you just said". It's not a case of "my belief is stronger than yours" except when two religons fight.

Atheists just need evidence, or in the case of religion, to simply point out that there isn't any evidence for religion.*

You're actually paraphrasing what I said

Oh dear, the thickos have been bringing out the 'nazis were atheists' lie again, eh? Despite the fact that all their policies, but especially their anti-semitism were grounded in centuries of teutonic Catholicism and the then-endemic Christian hatred of Jews. The Nazis could not have existed without Christianity, FFS.

And as for rolling out the 'check out how shit Stalin was!' crap - communist Russia, the Khmer Rouge, Maoist China et al, operated under a CULT OF PERSONALITY. They operated exactly as religions did but used a living leader instead of a deity. Their atrocities happened not due to Atheism, but due to using a religious model of control and power.

So, dear religious bods who think you're making some great point when you mention communist Russia and so on, as examples of Atheism=bad, what you're actually doing is highlighting that the religious model of power is so dangerous and seductive and appalling and damaging and inhumane that even the most irreligious of people can be corrupted by it and use it to kill, abuse, dominate and destroy. Slow handclap.

Great point about the cult of personality, oxford.

I made the Godwin's Law comment (that seemed to piss some people off) as a bit of a joke - heated debates will always end up mentioning the Nazis at some point etc etc.

But most of the examples given really don't fit with the debate in question.

Not all wars are caused by religion. There are always more sides to every story than a simple black and white view. Hell, even the Crusades were about more than simple religion.

The Nazis were about so much more than atheism. They weren't even atheists in the traditional sense. They did not start wars, or murder millions of people, because of religion. Even the Holocaust was not remotely about atheists v a particular religion.

Stalin is a more appropriate explanation but you cannot ignore the important of the cult of dictatorial personality and the wish to remove a rival idol by destroying organised religion. Ditto with Mao.

Open, active atheism is still relatively new, which equally makes the debate very difficult. To date there have been countless examples of people killing other people because of nothing more than religion. So far there hasn't been an equal reaction by atheists.

And YY to what Jassy said - far from finding charity in the name of religious all wonderful and some sort of proof that religion is great, I not only think that charity with strings attached is not true charity, but actually a form of manipulation and bribery, I believe that if people only donate to charity or do charitable works because they believe they have to as part of their religion, then I find that actively immoral, even if the result is positive.

Why the lie exists that Atheists can't be moral without religion, I do not know. If people need to be coerced into being decent and caring via religious manipulation (ie fearing God's wrath), or they need to have it explained and reinforced constantly, then those people are deeply inadequate, probably amoral, possibly even sociopathic.

Of course, the truth is that nobody normal and decent needs any spiritual push, motivation, or threat in order to be a good person. When a religious person claims that they need (or others need) religion in order to be moral or charitable, or whatever, they are actually making themselves look incredibly weird, pathetic and dodgy. It is an INSULT to suggest that any adult without serious problems of some sort needs help to know right from wrong.

This is another reason why religion is annoying to many atheists; it infantilises adults, it actually demeans and diminishes not only the truth about individual and collective possibility for good, but inhibits the possibility itself, it stymies the potential, breadth and reach of that possibility with its disgusting and inhumane proclamations on who deserves it and who doesn't, etc., and it actively works to prevent people using their minds and intellects fully, to develop and strengthen rational and logical capacity, perception, analysis, and serious thinking of any sort, and it diminishes people's lives by giving them an incredibly narrow focus and framework with which to operate in. I know loads of religious folk will want to wax lyrical about how it opens their world up and so on, but trust me, when you're observing it, that is so far from the reality that it's heartbreaking. I'm not just an Atheist because there's obviously no god, I'm personally an Atheist because I'm a humanitarian and to see how religion limits and infantilises people and their intellects, morals, lifestyles and personalities, is genuinely heartbreaking.

Thurlow, your point about nazis is baffling. The Nazis were Catholics. The Catholic church, including the Vatican, openly supported them. You couldn't even be a member of the Mazi party if you weren't a Christian ( Catholic). They persecuted and killed Atheists. Soyeah, they weren't "atheists in the traditional sense" BECAUSE THEY WERE CHRISTIANS.

And damn right the Holocaust wasn't about Atheists vs the Jews, because it was about CHRISTIANS VS THE JEWS.

As for saying that Nazis didn't kill people due to religion - are you fucking high?!?!?! WTF, dude?

You also couldn't be a member of the NAZI party if you weren't a Christian, as well as the Mazi party. Curse my appalling Atheist typos!

No, the Nazis were not Catholic or even Christian in the traditional sense. The Church was simply much lower down on their list of rival power centres to deal with, below socialists and communists. The Church was entrenched enough in German society for the Nazis, being a minority party as they were in 1933, to know that they could not deal with them immediately.

You did not have to be Catholic to be a Nazi; many would have been, as Catholicism was a popular religion.

Do you really think Adolf Hitler, a dictator with his own cult of the personality, would have embraced and encouraged a religion which asked its followers to owe their allegiance to a foreign power? Mussolini and Franco supported the Catholic Church to varying degrees. Hitler did not.By the late 1930s the Nazis had closed down Catholic trade unions and Catholic schools, as one example.

And imo it does a massive disservice to Jews to not view the Holocaust, and the repeated mass expulsions and murders of Jews over the centuries in Europe, within its proper historical, societal and cultural roots. Of course religion played a significant role. But other factors did too. The tragic hatred of Judaism over the centuries is far more complicated than "you worship a different god to me."

Where have you got the idea that you had to be Christian to join the Nazi party?

On Hitler's Christianity