Anti-religious sentiment is as real as anti-atheist sentiment. Every Christian has the right to believe what they like, and to communicate those beliefs freely, but people like me who consider all forms of religion to be very harmful will also retain the right to argue against those beliefs.

I think most Christians would agree very strongly with me that no genuine tooth fairy has ever paid coin for teeth, and that the ancient Greeks were not correct in their understanding that dionysus was a real godly power who wanted people to get drunk and fuck.

Where I disagree with Christians is where they believe in their specific god and a spirit world that enables people to have everlasting life after death, whereas I believe those ideas are unbelievable and certainly false: obviously a result of a tradition of belief based on wishful thinking, fear of death, and a very conceited process whereby some people used tall tales to manipulate others into adhering to a desirable code of conduct lest they be punished by some sky-bogey-man.

I reserve the right not to respect those particular beliefs. I find it difficult to give politicians respect and consideration where they believe in god, just as I would have difficulty voting for a politician who believes that Santa Claus is real.

So, I can understand some members of the public mistrusting people like me who have very different basic views about reality. I think it's scary that so many people believe in gods, but I acknowledge that they do, and that they are entitled to vote however they choose. The fundamental problem with democracy is that the average person is idiotic.

You see, the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing. Talking to God. Watering pot plants.

They have pot in heaven?

Well yeah, but you still aren't getting my land.

Best line from the article:

(Hello, European readers. Please stop laughing at us.)

Seriously. I'm a Christian. A Protestant. I consider myself religious. Where I live, that means that you do your best to act in the spirit of the faith you follow. I believe the guy I consider the shining pinnacle of that faith said "Love thy neighbor", so I do my best to follow that creed, because I think it's a good creed that, if more people followed it, would make the world a better place.

I don't give a fuck if someone wants to be elected and says he doesn't think there is a god as long as he also thinks that loving thy neighbor is a good idea.

Why is religion so different on your side of the Atlantic ocean?

A lot of people use religion as an excuse for bigotry.

Bigoted thinking lends itself to believing of lies and assumption about everyone else.
i mean religious thinking...

Not from me, but still quotable:

"I think God is somewhat like Robert Pattinson. You don't really have anything against the guy himself, but some of his fans totally freak you out."

I think following the "love thy neighbour" part of religion is good for everyone. But, seriously, do you believe there's an entity up there that chooses what prayers to answer, sends people to hell and causes disasters? Something that made the universe 6000 years ago?

Forgive me if I know nothing of the Protestant faith, because I don't. I have no idea what sort of beliefs are involved in Protestantism.

I'd honestly think that the large majority of SEers are atheist or agnostic and that we'd have few religious members. I just try to wrap my head around how a seemingly intelligent person can put their, well, , in faith.

If I'm remembering right we had a ask se on the topic of religion, and got a few people who said they were religious. I might be overestimating things because I consider my self religious. I would imagine that higher rates of intelligence would correspond with things like deism or agnostic theism in the religious community.

Protestant generally means "Not Catholic", and assuming author is English this would lead towards more Anglican than say Baptist or Evangelical.

You've got a good 500 years of splintering within Christianity under that particular umbrella starting with Martin Luther. But the biggest (IMO) schism is the belief that the Pope is the human embodiment of the Metatron (voice of God). For Catholics, what the Pope says, God says, the Bible is literal, and you can only be "saved" through a combination of belief, acts, and dogma. Protestants don't require anything but the bible and acceptance of the central tenets to be "saved", but of course Baptists want you to be Baptized, different groups have different views on the Trinity, blah blah blah. The NIV vs KJ version of the Bible, while Catholics tend to ignore the Old Testament, and Jews ignore the New...

What I find so sad is that between all the world's Christians, Jews and Muslims, they are all arguing with each other over the *same day religion* - I mean seriously folks, get over it. You're all wrong.

"Protestant generally means "Not Catholic""
This is also an oversimplification; The Coptic Church, the various Orthodox Churches, and several others are neither Catholic nor Protestant, being strains as old as the Catholic Church but not schismatic from it.*



*Catholics might argue that the Orthodox Churches are Catholic schismatics, but the Orthodox have just as good an argument that the Catholics are Orthodox schismatics.

Don't forget sects like Mormons and such. Using a strictly traditional definition they would be, however Mormons do not view themselves as Protestants and mainline Protestants do not view Mormons as protestants.

And then there's the Pentecostals, who would be Protestant Evangelical Revivalists if not for the fact that their more serious churches believe denominations are the mark of the devil.

Those Pentecostals call themselves something else, and I forget what now.

What? Papal infallibility comes from the promise of Jesus to Peter, not metatron. Its why the pope is only infallible when he is making a Ex cathedra decree, and why ecumenical councils can be infallible. (asides from the canonizations of saints, the last time i think that happened was in the 1950s).

I would of said the biggest split in Christianity over the Magisterium,(the part of the church that has the authority to interpret scripture), would be Lutherans belief that you don't require a priest for confession.

Its also a bit of a oversimplification to say that Catholics ignore the old Testament. The "New Covenant" set the new testament as law, but much of the old testament is considered to be implied in the new testament. there is also the historical aspect.

but yes, they're all worshiping the "god of Abraham", which makes religious conflict of the sort seem particularly stupid.

For a particularly stupid example of religious belief, look up the church of the holy sepulchre, the Christan churches that worship in the church fight so much that the clergy sometimes get in fist fights and a Muslim family was put i charge of the keys because they were the only ones that were impartial enough to be trusted.

*Lutherans do have priest perform confession. It's that the confession is not mandatory.

"Protestant generally means "Not Catholic", and assuming author is English this would lead towards more Anglican than say Baptist or Evangelical."

Author is German, and thus, "Protestant" means "Lutheran, mostly".

Same day religion is way overpriced. Unless you're SURE you're going to die and go to hell in the next 3-5 days, you're much better off with the free super-saver religion.

I do believe in a higher power. I just don't believe it's "up there". I believe it's within myself, and within everybody else who follows the Christian faith. It's what inspires you to, irrationally and illogically, think of other people than yourself and be nice to them if you're able to do so. And it's the warm and fuzzy feeling you get for doing that.

I don't read the Bible literally. I read it as the words of other people who lived long ago and who also thought there was a higher power. The day and age they lived in, though, was different from ours, which is why they used other words than we use today, and why they wrote down the things they thought noteworthy in the form of stories and sagas, rather in the form of strict moral codes, because that was how things were taught in that day and age. (I also believe that they guys who decided what should be in the Bible and what not did a lousy editing job back in the early days, or the Bible wouldn't contradict itself in so many places.) Aside from that, the New Testament is, in my opinion, much more important to Christians than the old, first because it's NEW, and secondly because Jesus Christ is quoted in there saying specifically that the old rules (such as Eye For An Eye) no longer count, because there is exactly one new rule that comes in their place: Love thy neighbor.

Faith, to me, means believing that you should stick to one moral code, even if makes no sense, rationally speaking, to do so, even if you get absolutely nothing out of it for yourself. You choose to do so, because you believe there's a higher power within yourself that WANTS you to.

I hope that's a good enough explanation.

But loving thy neighbour isn't religious. It's a moral choice that tons of us atheists make all the time.

To a certain extent, all religions revolve around morality. Consider being religious my excuse for following a moral code.

It seems to me there are lots of excuses one could come up with for following a moral code and not all of them need to be religious. Sure, you can say that the warm and fuzzy feeling you get from being nice to others is "God", or "Odin", or "The Force", but you could just easily characterize it as "a natural part of being a member of a species that evolved altruistic traits", or as "humanity's tendency to invent meaning in a universe that has no intrinsic meaning."

Personally, I don't think anything that leads to humans treating each other better is all bad but I do think religion is a really dangerous way to get there, since the exact same stories that inspire "love your neighbor" can just as easily inspire "death to the infidel."

You're right, they can. And I think it's the responsibility of the communities generally known as churches to keep people from going down that path. By reminding them what "adhering to the tenets of your faith" means.

Religion is a personal choice, yes. But choosing yours also makes you part of a community that shares the same values you do. I think that's what makes some of the weirder churches so attractive - they offer the companionship of people who will look down upon others together with you and give you a feeling of superiority, moral or otherwise.

Churches who do that and still call themselves "Christian" forget, in my opinion, that the very Christ whose name they bear consorted with criminals, outcasts, sick people and prostitutes, washed the feet of the people who considered himself his disciples and servants, rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and constantly reminded others to look at their own faults before looking for faults in others.

I would argue against that.
A - I could think of a few religions that dont talk about morals, like deism
B - many of the morals in religion are just reflections of the culture that spawned them.

Also, just because religion and morals are often tied doesn't mean that the morals in a religion are good ones, or that you couldn't get morals from something else, like pride in your country or philosophy.

Never said that. I said it was MY excuse, my personal reason. Other people may have other reasons that are just as good to them.

That's exactly why I don't get why, apparently, to a large number of Americans, it matters whether a person's morality comes from religion or from somewhere else.

I was just trying to make a point that while religion inspire good morals, its not always the best at doing so for everyone.

And not just ANY religion, either. Tell a typical religious American your morals come from Wicca or Buddhism and see how far that gets you.

The American notion of religious tolerance started with the Puritans (who came here seeking the freedom to practice their own intolerant religion) and hasn't changed much since.

Basically, it works like this: I'm right and you're a jerk. Unless I need something from you, then I'm OK and you're OK (I'm more OK, though), but those guys over there are jerks. Unless we need something from one of them, then we're all OK (I'm still the most OK!), but those other guys are jerks. Tolerance is a slowly, grudgingly widening circle of OK-ness; everyone in the circle is OK, their level of OK-ness corresponds directly to their degree of similarity to whoever is in the center, and anyone even an inch over the line is a bad, wrong jerk.

Yeah, you don't have to be a Christian to believe that it's nice to be nice, or that killing is bad. You also don't need to be a Raelian to believe that sex is enjoyable.

Lately, for the first time ever, I've been seeing TV spots espousing atheism. Ron Reagan, son of the late President, does a pretty good ad (see it here).
He concludes with "Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell."
Ad is sponsored by Freedom from Religion Foundation

I'll we got to do now is round up those 5% who want to elect a pinko, commie, bedwetting, Godless heathen to lead greatest country God ever made and ship them off to club Gitmo. We will make an example out of them for the other 47% who are a bunch of libtards and think it does not matter if the president wants to hand the U S of motherfucking A over to satan.

Well, yeah. I think anyone remotely involved with US politics could've made that call. It's getting better, but the US will need at least another 50 years for the current closed minded boomer generation to die out.

Progress happens when old people die.

Which means that I won't live long enough to enjoy it.

Live as long as you want, just don't get old.

I'd love to have an age breakdown of the data.

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A friend?

Oh piss fuck :(

Well there you go, just wait for the 50 to 64 take their dirt nap and things will be fine.

Even better, everybody over 30. What a wonderful world it will be!

My jewel's flashing...should I run?

You just want a glimpse of Jenny Agutter's tits.

not anymore :(

CARROUSEL!!!!!!!

40 percent? I expected somewhere around 75. I call that progress.

I wouldn't vote for me, but that's just me.