Question for religious parents

Non-religious people aren't going to tell you how wrong you are for
your beliefs and are not going to try to cram *their* beliefs down your
throat. One is an aggressive stance (proselytization) the other is a
passive stance.

Thats not always true. My fathers family is religiously atheist... they
are not that rare in Denmark, espesially in academic circles. When I
was baptised at 14 everyone of my aunts, uncles, even my dad had to
give me a sermon on how awfull christianity is, how only stupid people
believe in good, and how the church is responsible for poverty,
imperialism you name it - the church was to blame. They still cassually
drop hints on how stupid christianity is - but I don't get sermons any
more, since I ignore them. It's just as invasive on me as a bible
thumper - with whom I would agree just as little.

/Trisse

wrote:

I've been discriminated against for being a religious person and for
not being a religious person. It sucks both ways.

Maybe it's just me, but I've run into WAY more prosyletizing Christians
than prosyletizing atheists. Then again, I do live in Arizona, and the
LDS and the Witnesses knock at our door a few times a year. Atheists
*never* knock at my door to invite me to discuss the Problem of Evil.

--
C, mama to three year old nursling

In article . com,
" wrote:

wrote:

I've been discriminated against for being a religious person and for
not being a religious person. It sucks both ways.

Maybe it's just me, but I've run into WAY more prosyletizing Christians
than prosyletizing atheists. Then again, I do live in Arizona, and the
LDS and the Witnesses knock at our door a few times a year. Atheists
*never* knock at my door to invite me to discuss the Problem of Evil.

The anti-religious folks don't go door to door, and I don't think anyone
has suggested that it is quite as common to run into pushy atheists.

But that doesn't mean the obnoxious atheist zealots are any more fun to
deal with.

There's really two different issues: there's the anti-religion
sentiment, that makes some people make fun of kids for not being
available on the sabbath or say rude things to a woman wearing her hair
covered. I'm a religious person in a very liberal faith -- you should
have heard some of the crap I got for not letting my kids take part in
an extra-curricular school thing that took place on Sunday mornings!

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.

--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

The anti-religious folks don't go door to door, and I don't think anyone
has suggested that it is quite as common to run into pushy atheists.

But that doesn't mean the obnoxious atheist zealots are any more fun to
deal with.

There's really two different issues: there's the anti-religion
sentiment, that makes some people make fun of kids for not being
available on the sabbath or say rude things to a woman wearing her hair
covered. I'm a religious person in a very liberal faith -- you should
have heard some of the crap I got for not letting my kids take part in
an extra-curricular school thing that took place on Sunday mornings!

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.


It seems like you are limiting atheists to those two catagories. I
could be reading what you said wrong. So please clarify this for me.

I'll be honest here, I do think that for the most part that everyone
would be an atheist if they thought critically about thier religions,
but frankly, I don't care. People can live thier lives how they see
fit. And I can live mine. Not all atheists fall into those two
catagories. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused.

wrote:
dragonlady wrote

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.

I'll be honest here, I do think that for the most part that everyone
would be an atheist if they thought critically about thier religions,
but frankly, I don't care. People can live thier lives how they see
fit. And I can live mine. Not all atheists fall into those two
catagories. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused.

So you'd be in the second category?

Caledonia

Caledonia wrote:
wrote:
dragonlady wrote

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.

I'll be honest here, I do think that for the most part that everyone
would be an atheist if they thought critically about thier religions,
but frankly, I don't care. People can live thier lives how they see
fit. And I can live mine. Not all atheists fall into those two
catagories. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused.

So you'd be in the second category?

Two religious people I know have explictly told me that they *don't*
evaluate their beliefs critically. However, they are both
philosophers, and will tell you outright that their beliefs about God
are logically contradictory, but that they hold them anyway.

I am more than capable of believing that many religious people don't
evaluate their beliefs critically *without believing that this makes
them idiots*. Reasonable and rational are two different things; lots
of writing in religious apologetics makes this distinction. Rawls
builds heavily on it in his writings on social contract theory as well.

--
C, mama to three year old nursling

wrote:
Caledonia wrote:
wrote:
dragonlady wrote

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.

I'll be honest here, I do think that for the most part that everyone
would be an atheist if they thought critically about thier religions,
but frankly, I don't care. People can live thier lives how they see
fit. And I can live mine. Not all atheists fall into those two
catagories. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused.

So you'd be in the second category?

Two religious people I know have explictly told me that they *don't*
evaluate their beliefs critically. However, they are both
philosophers, and will tell you outright that their beliefs about God
are logically contradictory, but that they hold them anyway.

I am more than capable of believing that many religious people don't
evaluate their beliefs critically *without believing that this makes
them idiots*. Reasonable and rational are two different things; lots
of writing in religious apologetics makes this distinction. Rawls
builds heavily on it in his writings on social contract theory as well.

Hm...I think I was approaching this after having read Keith Ward's
'Case for Religion' and having a different perspective -- that critical
thought *would* in his opinion indicate the need (I'm wildly
paraphrasing) for an understanding of the etheral.

My last brush with a formal course in philosophy was in 1982, so it's
entirely believable that I've mangled this. I'm more familiar with
Kant's 'reasonable and rational' than Rawls'....

Caledonia

Caledonia wrote:
wrote:

Two religious people I know have explictly told me that they *don't*
evaluate their beliefs critically. However, they are both
philosophers, and will tell you outright that their beliefs about God
are logically contradictory, but that they hold them anyway.

I am more than capable of believing that many religious people don't
evaluate their beliefs critically *without believing that this makes
them idiots*. Reasonable and rational are two different things; lots
of writing in religious apologetics makes this distinction. Rawls
builds heavily on it in his writings on social contract theory as well.

Hm...I think I was approaching this after having read Keith Ward's
'Case for Religion' and having a different perspective -- that critical
thought *would* in his opinion indicate the need (I'm wildly
paraphrasing) for an understanding of the etheral.

Modern rationalism tends to argue that we need some form of empirical
support for beliefs to evaluate them critically. Beliefs grounded on
faith alone have no way to be tested critically against the real world,
especially beliefs about non-material things. There's no way to say
that one religious faith is wrong, and another is right, because
there's no way to *test* those beliefs, or prove to other people that
they are about real things and therefore they should believe them too.

IOW, faith isn't science. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen."

You *can* look at beliefs about propositions and see if they logically
contradict one another, which usually leads to reading things in
religious scriptures allegorically -- "God is Love", "Love is not
jealous", and "I, thy God, am a jealous God", for example. Atheists
will point to the Problem of Evil and note that faith in an omnipotent,
omniscient, good God is logically contradictory given that evil exists
in the world. This obviously doesn't rule out deities that aren't
completely good, or completely powerful, or completely knowledgeable,
the stance most pagans seem to embrace...

My last brush with a formal course in philosophy was in 1982, so it's
entirely believable that I've mangled this. I'm more familiar with
Kant's 'reasonable and rational' than Rawls'....

Like most philosophers, some of what Rawls did is based on some of what
Kant did. Heck, that's where computers come from -- Turing builds on
Whitehead and Russell who build on Frege who builds on Kant...

--
C, mama to three year old nursling

In article . com,
wrote:

The anti-religious folks don't go door to door, and I don't think anyone
has suggested that it is quite as common to run into pushy atheists.

But that doesn't mean the obnoxious atheist zealots are any more fun to
deal with.

There's really two different issues: there's the anti-religion
sentiment, that makes some people make fun of kids for not being
available on the sabbath or say rude things to a woman wearing her hair
covered. I'm a religious person in a very liberal faith -- you should
have heard some of the crap I got for not letting my kids take part in
an extra-curricular school thing that took place on Sunday mornings!

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.


It seems like you are limiting atheists to those two catagories. I
could be reading what you said wrong. So please clarify this for me.

Heavens, no!

I only meant that the obnoxious ones seem to come come in two distinct
categories.

I know many atheists who are not -- both those who consider themselves
religious, and those who do not consider themselves religious..



I'll be honest here, I do think that for the most part that everyone
would be an atheist if they thought critically about thier religions,
but frankly, I don't care. People can live thier lives how they see
fit. And I can live mine. Not all atheists fall into those two
catagories. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused.


--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article .com,
"Caledonia" wrote:

wrote:
dragonlady wrote

Then there's the strong antheists who seem to think that only uneducated
or immature, superstitious people believe in God -- and are more than
happy to tell you what an idiot you are if you express a belief.
Somehow, that seems to be considered (by some) to be more socially
acceptable.

I'll be honest here, I do think that for the most part that everyone
would be an atheist if they thought critically about thier religions,
but frankly, I don't care. People can live thier lives how they see
fit. And I can live mine. Not all atheists fall into those two
catagories. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused.

So you'd be in the second category?


After a fashion -- but only if she feels free to make sure those who are
theists KNOW she thinks they're unthinking.

--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care