You know what I don't get

I'm sorry. I hate when people judge off of religion. I know people that get teased at my school because they're Mormon, and they are definitely some of the nicest people I know. One of my best friends is Christian, though.

 

Really, you don't get that? At all?

Christianity has it's claim to a significant segment of absolute morons. Vast numbers of people who for whatever reason swallow any crap that comes there way and use it as an excuse to hate people different to them.

Are you sitting there as a christian, telling me, an atheist, that you think christianity is the REASON these people are idiots?

The world is FULL of complete arseholes. It's full of idiots. It's FULL TO OVERFLOWING with people who will take anything that 'sounds about right' from someone they've been told knows things and take it as fact.

Those 'Christians' you think give christianity a bad name? They'd still be dumb even without it.

Those people ridiculing you for being Christian? Yeah, we hate them too. They give atheism a bad name.

Some people are idiots. It's not specific to Christian people.

 

This is so true! I'm Catholic and people aren't very happy with that sometimes. One of my friends was in her sociology class and the teacher asked about what she does and her life and whatnot and she mentioned she was Catholic (she goes to youth group and stuff like that) and the class started attacking her because of it.

 

I think, due to confusing syntax in your first post, she read it as you saying "some Christians aren't judgemental until I say I'm a Christian"--as in they call you a hypocrite. What you meant: "I've experienced more acceptance by Christians towards my sexuality than I've experienced acceptance by non-Christians towards my faith," or "Non-Christians are more hostile to my faith than Christians are to my sexuality."

 

I'll try again.

If you had started this thread saying:

"I don't get why some people judge a whole group based on the actions of a few" I would be completely with you. What you said definitely follows this format but it has very different implications.

Now let me change things for a moment.

I'm going to use the example of satanists.

There are some really decent Satanist people out there who don't judge people who don't believe what they believe but as soon as they say they are a Satanist are ridiculed and degraded.

The thing is, I know EXACTLY why a lot of people are happy to ridicule and abuse satanists. Because they don't know a damn thing about satanism. Heck, when I first read up on it my mum went mental at me because she just randomly assumed she was an expert.

I 'get' why people do it. Because people assume they know the person based on what they think they know about the beliefs. SOME PEOPLE ARE STUPID AND IGNORANT.

Now what I meant by my previous post was this.

It seems to me like you are, for whatever reason, trying to claim all the stupid and ignorant people in the world in the name of Christianity.

Why do I say this?

Because apparently, you don't get WHY people would judge GOOD christians for the actions of BAD christians.

The simple answer is because some people are just stupid and ignorant.

Stupid and ignorant people exist within christianity, of course. But they exist everywhere else.

Saying that you just can't understand WHY people would do this suggests that you have ruled out the possibility of people being just being ignorant. You may have a lot of ignorant people on the Christian side, but I assure you we non-christians have more than our fair share as well!

Does that clear things up?

 

I feel like she's degraded for being a Christian not because of its association to bigotry, but because of it's association with irrationality, where the primary antagonists are likely atheists.

So, Christianity and Satanism differ in that the latter is more of a rational philosophy (similar to Buddhism, kinda), whereas Christianity is a faith based upon an irrational worldview--this is why your analogy is not very relatable. Not to degrade Christianity, but a better analogy to flesh-out Cass's problem would be "that one kid who still believes in Santa Claus." Sure, we atheists might think the belief is undoubtedly absurd, but the non-believer can be extraordinarily and unnecessarily cruel to the irrational believer.

 

Well, going into UU I've learned that you should accept all faiths with love and compassion, and work together with them to do good. Some very good people were Christians. That's the main reason I like UUism, you get to learn about all faiths and to respect them, as long as they respect you.

 

I personally can see why Christians have a bad name in some places, I'm not Christian but I was raised up as one and currently live in a huge household full of them........ I won't say what my religious beliefs are because people already know enough about me but let's just say we have a horrible name........ Every religion has people HARSHLY against it, that's sadly just life right now

 

Tis why I just keep my beliefs to myself and never mention them to anyone. I'd rather make someone angry at me for not disclosing what I believe or do not believe in, than to have them start making assumptions of my character or intelligence. The only people who I'd ever talk about this kind of stuff would be close friends and family but that's kind of a given.

 

I think I'm only going to talk to my future spouse about my beliefs........ No need to give people another reason to try to burn me on a stake

 

I'm the exact opposite. Being a newfound atheists, I'd be even more shunned for that than my sexuality by family--I'm pretty sure my parents realize my being gay is not a choice by now. Tell someone I'm gay: "Cool, cool." Tell someone I'm an atheists: "Oh no no no no! I cannot trust a godless man! (SNL reference)"

 

Does that change anything?

If I discover someones sincerely held beliefs are irrational yet they have no effect on me at all, am I not being an arsehole if I point it out?

The people who sit there and proudly announce the stupidity of religion because it is 'irrational' are not much better than the ones who decry it due to the actions of bigots.

If I decide to tell every christian I meet that the are an idiot for irrationally believe in God, how am I any better than the man who calls them an idiot because he saw WBC on TV and declares they are all the same?


As you so rightly say "the non-believer can be extraordinarily and unnecessarily cruel to the irrational believer."

But it doesn't alter my point, that some people are just dicks.

 

Yeah, I see this a lot too. I actually have a lot of mixed beliefs, but I guess I don't really want to talk about them either. It seems that at least the people on this thread are more understanding of uncommon beliefs than most are, but I'm still a bit worried about being judged by others. If anyone was specifically curious I wouldn't be opposed to talking about it, though.

I just wish that people could stop judging others on things like religion, sexuality, gender, race, and other stuff that's part of them. Can't we just ignore all that and only judge people if they're assholes? Honestly, if someone that's a good person is being attacked for their religion, I'll defended them whether they share my beliefs or not.

 

Christianity has its fair share of faults, from all denominations in all countries. And Christianity also has more than its fare share of perpetuating inequalities between sexes and genders, races, sexualities etc. However, the faults are not unique to Christianity; I've met more atheists with a lack of understanding about religion and a lot of other things than I have Christians.

Christianity isn't inherently ignorant; I've met atheists who are just as racist, sexist, and lack an understanding of science as many creationists. Quite frankly, anyone who proudly and vocally identifies as atheist automatically rings a warning bell in my head; I've had too many bad experiences with atheists who are even worse than the creationist bunch who give Christianity a bad name.

 

*Proudly and vocally identifies himself as an atheist* Warning bells, warning bells, warning bells in your head lol ( please don't take this section seriously I'm just being dumb )

Seriously though...please don't play the "Poor Christians are so harshly judged by everyone" card.

I won't deny that a lot of atheists judge Christians without a second thought to their character, but lots of Christians quickly judge atheists and LGBT members the exact same way , and with just as little thought.

Can't we just agree to stop judging each other based on this? =/

 

Actually, it wasn't on the grounds of "being mean to Christians." We can fend for ourselves in that regard, at least most of us can. It was more about the rest of the mentality that comes with that religiously-atheistic attitude. Like Dawkins' thinly disguised racism when he talks about Islam as the greatest evil, a lot of fervant atheists are disgusting people who are just as bad as the Christians they claim intelligence over.

 

1: Islam isn't a race...it's a religion. To consider it a race requires you to be racist actually because you're associating all followers of Islam to a particular race when a variety of people from various races practice the religion.

2: Dawkins problems with Islam are very much valid. If you haven't noticed they do lots of suicide bombings and beheadings...plus the countries under Sharia law are some of the biggest human rights violators around. =/

Disgusting people...I could say the same about a lot of Christians. The worst one around died recently though =/

 

Honestly, it seems that religion is a touchy issue to everyone.

On one hand, Christians want everybody to be saved by Jesus Christ. For some denominations, there's an understanding of the scriptures on how exactly that's fulfilled, and some denominations say otherwise. Muslims want people to convert to Islam so they can go to heaven, and the situation is very similar for Jews. And the same can be said for Hinduism and other theologies that believe in a diety.

On the other hand, Athiests see all this as a huge claim that has to be backed up by facts and sources to be proven as true. To say that there is a higher being is quite literally a big claim. If your doctor phoned you randomly saying you have stomach ulcers and skin cancer on the side and you showed absolutely no symptoms of either, would you believe said doctor right then and there without hearing anything that backs up said claims? Of course not. You'd schedule an appointment ASAP to hear more about it and to see the evidence that your doctor would more than likely have prepared to show you. So, especially in the case of Semitic religions, why automatically believe that there is a higher being? And then in the case of Christianity, the main source is an ancient book written by humans, filled with scripture that at least seems to contradict itself several times over.

I personally have noticed a lot of athiests asking for evidence with nothing less than as a genuine question, asking if there's more to this than they already know because they're curious, not because they think they're smarter than you. Granted, I've seen the other side of the coin as well (this being the case of gnostic athiests), but not nearly as prominent as agnostic athiests who truly want to know what's truly going on and are open to the idea of any other god that may exist, including all gods that have been claimed to exist before.

Yes, there are crazies everywhere. But not everybody is a crazy.

Most people want other people to be happy at the end of the day. However, there seems to be many different ways to get there, when people tend to see it as there only being one way to be happy.