Its perfectly acceptable to be rude to religous people...

[startrek90]

Definately going to get flamed here but oh well.

I get the feeling that this is perfectly acceptable to be rude about religous people. From reading the threads on this forum, and my experiences in RL, the amount of rudeness and sometimes plain nastiness is awful.

I am religous. I don't care if people are not, if they go to church or how they live their own lives or raise their children. As far as I am concerned as long as you obey the law, do what you want.

So far I have seen people imply that all religous people are closing their childrens mind, are ignorant, bigots.... its horrible!

I don't deny that there are people who are that way and use religion as an excuse.... but quite frankly you can be ignorant and rude without religion.

I am being unreasonable to be offended, but it really bothers me that its culturally acceptable to be rude to and about people of faith. You wouldn't do it to someone from a different culture or race would you? I have never bothered anyone with my faith so please stop taking it as an insult!

(Just venting, been lambasted in RL for daring to buy my son a Noahs ark toy. I thought it was cute with all the animals etc... but apparently I am raising him to be ignorant, bigoted and stupid. He will hate gay people and women and generally be a horrible person.....apparently grrr )

Good grief antumbra - have you been watching too many historical dramas?

No. My family are religious. My sister is a pastor. I know more about religion than I care.

Suggest you read the New Testament. Main stream Christians don't believe in hell ( unless of your own making) but then possibly you see heaven as a place above the clouds!

Must be a pretty odd bible thumping, hell Fire sort of Christianity.

So we can discount the Old Testament?

Of course. It was people of the time making sense of their world. We have come in from the days people thought the earth was flat. Do you really think the REd Sea parted? That an 'eye for an eye' actually has anything to do with 'turn the other cheek' , love your neighbour' or 'he that is innocent cast the first stone'?

We accept that hanging someone for stealing a sheep 200 yrs ago wasn't correct thinking and yet you are telling me that we accept someone's thinking of over 2000yrs ago. Mad!

People are so literal! Do you read all books so unquestionably - or reserve it for the Bible? It was why it was so important to have it translated to English - before that priests could say what they liked. It was assumed that people use their experience and critical faculties and realise that thinking moves on as we develop.

There are plenty of Christians who do take the bible literally, though. I agree that most don't- although even amongst the ones that don't there are those who do select bits of the OT to support their particular views..........

Common sense tells you that animals didn't line up two by two and the lions became vegetarians and didn't eat the zebra! ( or perhaps Noah fitted a lot more on so that some animals could be eaten on voyage!)

A religion can't avoid the mad element- we have freedom of choice.

So if we forget the old testament does that include dropping the 10 commandments?

I also want to hear the evidence for Jesus rising again.

As far as I'm aware there is evidence that the average IQ of someone who is religious is a bit lower than someone who isn't, but this is a correlation. I think I just heard that on a pod cast though, so hardly rigourous evidence! I think it also said that on average religious people are happier.

Obviously it doesn't mean that any given religious person is stupid or that a religious person can't be very clever.

I would not be rude to a religious person, but would question their beliefs if they were impacting me/others or if the sort of forum where things were being discussed. Questioning the belief isn't rude.

However I think the problem may be that some religious people think religion is an integral part of them, whereas atheists view it as a belief and not part of the person in the same way. So to an atheist they're interrogating the belief, whereas to the religious person it feels as though they themselves are being questioned.

If we are discounting the OT, why the hell did JC die on the cross to sort out all that Eve/original sin nonsense? Eh, eh, riddle me that!
The NT wasn't written much later than the OT - let's just discount it all, seems the best thing to do.
I find it so odd that you all just cherry pick what you want. May as well make it up yourself.

It was why it was so important to have it translated to English

and why it was the man who first did it, was strangled and burnt at the stake, mehitabel6

William Tyndale

84% of the KJV so beloved by English-speaking Christian nutcases
literalists was written by a man burned to death.

By Christians!

Christianity: when it comes to wanton cruelty, Islam has a lot of catching up to do

I can't see anything wrong with 10 commandments if you bring them up to date. I don't think anyone is likely to covet their neighbours ox.
Are you saying that modern Christians are responsible for burning William Tyndale at the stake?
The New Testament was the thinking of people at the time. If I wanted to explain something I would use language and concepts that people understand today. It will no doubt look stupid in 100, 1000 yrs time.

I don't think anyone is likely to covet their neighbours ox.

Coveting neighbours oxes is pretty much all British people do nowadays, i.e. being envious of others possessions, and seeking to outdo their neighbours.

Are you saying that modern Christians are responsible for burning William Tyndale at the stake?

Er......no? Did I give the impression that I did?

It seems odd that modern-day 'Christians' would favour a text mostly written by a Christian who was betrayed and murdered by other Christians, and which was authorised by man whose son was decapitated by other Christians, but most Christians seem to be capable of believing many, many contradictory things at once.

Are you saying there is nothing wrong with envy?
I really can't see why Tyndale is relevant - of course people in power didn't want the ordinary man able to challenge them. It wasn't yesterday. Lots of dreadful things were done hundreds of years ago. We have moved on and are just dreadful in different ways. It all boils down to money and power- it always has.

It always amuses me that of the 10, the first 4 are about how he wants to be worshipped, the 5 is about filial duty and then we get to not killing people.........

The New Testament is also the thinking of the time. You are going to have huge problems if you have to be literal over everything!

I can't see anything wrong with 10 commandments if you bring them up to date.

If you bring them up to date they aren't the ten commandments!

most people on Mumsnet will find it next to impossible to keep

III. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain

and most of them and their children would be incapable of

V. Honour thy father and thy mother

and I don't think the government is going to disarm the military and police to comply with

VI Thou shalt not kill

The problem I have with Christians is the evangelising.

Those who don't, I have no issue with. Those who do, can often be rude. They seem to feel they can say anything about us without a faith, but then go mad if you say anything to criticise them. It works both ways.

I work with a lot of Christians. Our firm works with a lot of churches. Most of the time it is fine. Now and then someone at work 'discovers' I'm an atheist and decides it's their mission in life to convert me. And then when I get fed up with this, I'm the one who gets told off by Biggest Boss (I'm also a Big Boss by the way). sigh

I got told off for saying that in a sense they are all atheists as well, I'm just atheist about one more god than them. None of us believe in Zeus, Krishna, Thor, Herne, etc etc for hundreds and thousands of gods. I don't believe in them, they don't believe in them. The only difference is I also don't believe in their god. They can't stand the comparison to what they think of as 'fictional' gods and get offended that theirs is exactly as fictional to me. Lots of offended spluttering and scowling.

I bored with getting invited to a lovely 'event' at their church. I'm not Christian, why would I want to go to church? I'm not such a saddo no-life that you can tempt me there with promises of cakes and facepainting for the children and have me think 'oooh sounds like a great time'. And then when there presumably see the error of my ways.