It just means that given a choice between two liars I will be happier to have the one that lies about their belief in god as well as everything else than the one who fervently believes in god but lies about everything else. As far as bigotry goes, I have rational reasons for being prejudiced against religious fanatics, like the fact that religion has been responsible for more death and destruction in human history than anything else and it is still going on today all over the world. Unlike religious bigots who have irrational made up reasons for being bigoted. See the difference between the progressives and those who believe in fairy tales.
No, it means you have found a way to justify your bigotry to yourself. See, all bigots find comfort in believing they are "right" to believe the way they do. They always explain their rationale to others. For example Mel Gibson saying Jews are responsible for all wars. That is what he "believes". You are no different then any other bigot. I'll give you credit for at least admitting your are a worthless bigot who passes judgement on others simply because they don't have the same beliefs as you. Most pos bigots just pretend they aren't. Kudos to you Mvic.
Thanks Mav, coming from someone who believes in ethereal nonsense your admiration means a great deal. The fact that it stems from an argument that has as much logic to it as most religions doesn't phase me as I wasn't expecting someone who embraces the irrational to come up with anything logical. Thanks anyway though, you did your best and I appreciate it
Yeah, I take pride in not being a bigot like you. But you go on attacking the messenger.......I guess that is all you got.
False pride I am afraid. You are religious and that is synonymous with being a bigot. Sex offenders cause great harm. They have their own system of beliefs that make them dangerous and I have real rational reasons for not wanting them to live near me and my family. Religious fanatics cause even greater harm. They have their own system of beliefs that make them dangerous and I have real rational reasons for not wanting them to have any control over any part of government. Yes I am prejudiced in both cases based on the empirical evidence of their past actions and their nature. You can use the word bigot all you want but to call someone a bigot for not wanting an irrational person at the country's helm or irrational people in charge in any capacity is common sense even if from the irrational person's point of view it may seem like bigotry.
Bad example. A sex "offender" is someone that does not just believe in hurting others, it's someone who HAS hurt others. He is an OFFENDER! Big difference. When you judge someone on their beliefs, you are already convicting them BEFORE they have done anything. This is specifically why we have a rule of law in this country. And this is specifically why we judge people on their "actions", not their "words". All US Presidents believed in GOD and were religious. In fact, 80% of the people in this country say they are religious to some extent. Now, that on it's own is meaningless. What people say and what is actually the truth are two different things. Someone could say they are religious and not be religious. How many convicted murders for example say they found God in prison right before their parole hearings come up? See where I am going with this? You are using religion as an escape goat and you know it. For example, say I hated Black people. Say I hate Obama. It's very easy for me to just say I dislike Obama because he is a muslim because that is more pc then saying I hate him because he is black. You are passing judgement based on what you "think" people believe. You have no idea who is religious or who isn't. What you are doing is attacking religion itself and using that as an instrument to defend your bigotry. And I'm not buying it.
What? You believe in an omnipotent omnipresent being who actually gives a rat's arse about us specks of dust in this seemingly infinite universe and its a stretch for you to buy my completely logical argument, just kidding . All my family and most of my friends are religious and I was myself for most of my life, devoutly so, so I really have no problem at all with religious people in private life. My experience is that most of them are good decent people. Now that the scales have fallen from my own eyes I just see their religion and faith as their hobby or passion, nothing objectionable in that per se. What I find objectionable is religion in public life mostly because religion seems to find so many things intolerant. Religious people in power in many cases try to translate their irrational religious beliefs in to the basis for law and policy. It really is no different than if some cult member (take your pick) got in to the oval office and started using his cult's belief system as a basis for policy. If you were another cult member you might well cheer, but if you thought the cult's belief system was irrational you might have a problem with it too, especially if in the past the cult's beliefs had resulted in a great deal of harm and devastation when mixed with political power. Yes, past Presidents have been religious and yes the US is a great country in part because of the direction of many of those men and many other religious men and women. I just think that we are far enough evolved that we don't need to rely on religion any more to keep our humanity intact and that at this point religion is a hindrance to a progressive society. We would be an even greater country and world with a lot less religion or at least a lot less of the God/bible/koran etc based religion guiding the beliefs and psyche of our public officials. Anyway I should apologize for the derisive comments made in the past few posts, a sophomoric reaction to your attack on me with the bigot stuff. I really didn't mean to attack you or religious people and certainly don't support any government sanctioned intolerance based on a person's religion. As there is no evidence that I can see for the existence of god, though plenty of evidence that would suggest otherwise, I think that humanity is better served by a POTUS that is free from that particular fantasy than one who isn't. Put yourself in the position of a non believer (which should be the default position in the same way gravity is accepted as the default theory) who sees the whole religious belief system as a fantasy, wouldn't you too rather a POTUS not afflicted by this fantasy than one who was?
I always get a laugh out of the folks who 1 don't know how we got here 2 don't know why we're here 3 don't know what our purpose is for being here 4 don't know what happens when we die tell us "religious" folk that we have no logic. Actually, the biblical account provides logic to all of the above questions. And, it fits like a well oiled glove. I can see the gears turning now. "What about that virgin birth stuff? That's not logical." Well, when you tell me the logic of a rock suddenly springing to life, maybe we'll have something to talk about. By the way, Mvic, did your great, great grandmama, the rock, have a husband, or was it a virgin birth?
I am religious, very much so. I also have a PhD in Physics. I remember back in graduate school, those dicussions we used to have: some people called themselves atheists, but they admitted that they too believed in a series of unexplainable "laws of nature" or "logic" or whatever. That's a religion too - what we call "scientific approach" nowadays, an arbitrary set of rules that we agree to go by in order to build stuff. Some may argue that "pure logic" is not a religion. However, what makes it a very bad religion is when, totally arbitrarily, one starts believing that it is the only valid way to deal with the world - instead of anything that has any degree of intuition in it. Yet, we all know that there's no "objective truth" that we can get our hands on, in the sense that there's no way that we can prove that something is correct and make it so that EVERYBODY agrees. In that sense, there's only "inter-subjective truth" where the majority of people agree that electrons (which no one has ever seen) exist, and dreams (same thing) exist, and Mozart's music is great (although I know an uncle or three of mine who would violently disagree with that one.) In this inter-subjective way, the great religions fare very well because so many poeple believe in them. But this is not what we all have in mind when it comes to a national election. Our concern is about the extremes: is he SO blindly religious in a fanatical way that he has lost his independent rational faculties? or, is he SO violently not religious that he has lost any sense of compassion and fairness in his heart? The extremes are the scary places that we all avoid, and we should.