insulting religions

[IneedAgoldenNickname]

Hi, I've never posted on this topic before, I tend to hang out in aibu, but don't want to start a bun fight!

So, I am a liberal Christian. I firmly believe that everyone had to right to believe (or not) whatever they want, provided that belief doesn't hurt anyone else.

Earlier today I posted a lighthearted status on Facebook, which had led to me being called mindless, stupid, stuck up, thinking I'm better than everyone else. I've been told God is a c**t (sorry I hate that word so much I won't type it) and that the Bible is only God for loo roll!

I'm just really angry that people think its ok to insult me/my religion like that, when I haven't once preached or insulted others.

Obviously the easy solution would be to delete them off of Facebook, but they are people I get on with other wise.

Don't really know the point of my post, just hoping id feel better writing it down.

Found this, which is quite interesting. What's this the dictionary definition of? Supersition or religion?

Noun

1. Excessively credulous belief in and reverence for supernatural beings.
2. A widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice.

@lebfg I think the difference is transparency actually. And I htink that is a big difference.

If you go into a RC Catholic Church, a mosque or a Gurdwara etc, and ask what they are doing, what their beliefs are and how they practice their religion, you will be told.

If you ask Scientologists (or any other cult) those same questions then you will struggle to get an answer.

SGB - there is a difference between father Xmas/tooth fairy and god/Allah though surely?

I mean I know that the £ under my kids pillow and the presents in their stocking are not put there by a supernatural being because I know I went up there and put the presents in.

Whereas people who say they feel a supernatural presence when they pray etc... are not playing out an active deception on themselves.

It's not quite the same kind of thing.

Hanikam Sat 12-Jan-13 11:46:40

Funny how atheists seem to be copying the old-style TV evangelists in their approach!

Are they begging for money which they spend on prostitutes of either gender?

I think it's a shame Dawkins is seen as the spokesman for atheism. He doesn't speak for me, he's far too strident. I would much prefer that Hitchens was still alive, his arguments against the Catholic Church were the embodiment of righteous anger. He could also run rings round anybody without personally attacking them, which Dawkins has been guilty of.

ethylb - but wasn't christianity seen as a cult in its early days?

HImalaya: But your kids (at least up to a point) believe that a supernatural creature did it. People who 'feel a supernatural presence' might believe that it's actually happening, but they are fooling themselves (partly because they have been told to expect this by the authority figure peddling the particular imaginary friend they are 'feeling'). To a rational outsider, there's no difference between the child believing his/her parents' tales of Father Christmas and the gullible adult believing the witchdoctor/televangelist.

Dunno if I agree with you there, Nicholas.

I think that Hitchens was so amazingly erudite & articulate that he could insult someone in such a way that they didn't realise they'd been insulted. Or, he could be very, very unambiguous about it:

• "If you gave Jerry Falwell an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox"

• "He is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.? About George Bush when he was, obvs, Governor of Texas"

And I've truly never understood the "Dawkins is strident" stuff. He's passionate - aren't we all a bit "strident" when we feel strongly about something?

A religion is just a cult that's accrued more power, money and followers over time. L Ron Hubbard was a chancer who got lucky with his daft sci-fi mythology, but the same could be said about whoever invented Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest. Inventing a religion is a bit like being a pop star or novelist: plenty of people try, some are a bit better at it than others, but whether you end up becoming a success or disappearing back into obscurity is as much to do with luck as anything else. Scientology is no more or less bullshit than any other superstition: the aggression of its organisers is nothing new apart from their tendency to fight by throwing lawyers at their critics rather than bombs. Give the Hubbardistas a couple of hundred years and they might be just as 'respectable' as Catholics/Hindus/Muslims/whoever else.

I think most "outsiders" do know the difference between say
Father Christmas
TV Evangelist
witchdoctor
Toothfairy
Fairies etc

Himalaya I think the tooth fairy analogy alludes to human penchant for believing the claims of those they see as superior without any evidence.

For anyone who was wondering ........
Uncertainty principle

Room marked God

No Grimma it was a personal statement of belief.

Simple example - Q why did Newton pursue his search for the laws of the Universe? A IMU because he believed that the world was governed by a set of rules which made it repeatable and predictable.

Now I'm quite prepared to accept an argument that "religion" was just a scaffolding which helped the modern development of science and the resulting technologies etc, but the 'fact' (dare I use that word?) remains that many many investigators and puzzlers were motivated and indeed comforted and inspired by a belief that the God of the new (and old) testaments made the world and continued to regulate its operation. Plenty of them are around today.

BTW did anyone see the ancient-looking 'Prof' that Brian Cox wheeled out to accompany his unveiling of the new stargazing live Herschel reproduction telescope a couple of nights ago. The Prof had on his lapel - prominently displayed on the side facing the camera - a silver Christian Cross.

Why would he do that I wonder?

Gotta go - still got a life - teaching all your (plural) children how to get mobile and stay alive on the road

Grimma my last post didn't seem to be posted so it got out of sequence. Sorry.

Ellie I'm stlll hoping for your 'exposition' re being an atheist.

However during the past 24 hours the quality of debate seems to me to have taken a turn for the worse. Pity. I'm planning one last post (pun half-intended) picking up one or two of OPs original points (some of which I have noticed during the thread). Thanks to all for keeping it going civilly for so long. Did you know it runs to about 80 pages?

Before we meet again can I suggest we all read/reread Thomas Dixon: Science And Religion? I've just had a speed read and noticed he deals succinctly with a lot of the issues we've been exploring. Certainly doesn't support all my POVs but it seems to me tries to be balanced.

Would the last person to leave this thread please turn out the lights?

FWIW anyone interested 21 scientists who believe (first published 1984) - Kindle

I'm secretly pleased that this is my longest thread to date, I've never had this many replies before (even though most of them have no direct bearing on my OP)

That is the nature of a lot of threads, they meander. I know precious little about FB, so I for one have been unable to keep on topic for long. Has anyone said anything about you hiding them, or whatever you did?

Look, no one has ever been able to come up with any kind of proper argument as to why their imaginary friend is really real and not just imaginary like all the other imaginary friends. This is, of course, because none of them are real. Mythology is a combination of pre-scientific 'explanations' for things that weren't previously understood, and an excellent tool of social control.

But the superstitious always end up like toddlers, red-faced, stamping and crying, with an argument that consists of nothing more than 'You're being meeeeeeeaaaaan to me, my SPESHYL friend really is real, because I say it is, waaaaaaaaa!'

I've enjoyed the discussion even thigh I haven't partaken in it.

They don't know that they can no longer see my statuses so they haven't said anything :)

Ineed

SolidGold. do you believe in miracles?

Do you believe in ghosts,things you cannot see?
Do you always have to see something, to believe in it?
Do you believe someone, for instance, if they say they have a bad back?

Do you believe in ghosts,things you cannot see? Nope.

Do you always have to see something, to believe in it? See it? Not necessarily. But it should be detectable somehow - the wind is detectable, air is detectable & measurable, radio waves etc. There's nothing I believe in that is not detectable.

Do you believe someone, for instance, if they say they have a bad back? Depends. If they are jumping on a trampoline or dancing a jig when they tell me, then probably not. But a person exists, Amillion, you can talk to them & make judgement calls.

Ellie do you think there might be things that exist but that we don't have the means to detect them yet?

Ah, but how do you know they are telling the truth about their bad back, assuming they are not jumping on a trampoline?
[not at all making aspersions about people with bad backs btw]. That is rather the point really, I believe them, even if I cant actually see it.

This is all something I learnt on MN recently. There was a thread about ghosts, I think it was, and I noticed that a fair number of the same people who said they did not believe in God, were on the thread on ghosts saying they didnt believe in them either.
Which, perhaps naively, massively surprised me. I dont know why exactly, I had somehow thought that if they didnt believe in God, they would definitely believe in ghosts.
So then I realised, I had rather massively missed the point.
That maybe, the same reason they didnt believe in God was the same reason they didnt believe in ghosts.
So it sort of wasnt personal about God
Or have I still got that all wrong?

Why would you think someone who didn't believe in god would believe in ghosts?