Originally posted by Dragonsreach
Mattrock in direct reflection of your statement, here is mine.
First, as many of you know, I make no effort to hide the fact that I\'m an Atheist/Humanist. The thing is, I don\'t expend a lot of effort patronizing Christian or any others for that matter who disagree with me. Even when I consider their arguments are flawed.
That said, I am always overwhelmed by how many forum denizens are not just Christian (which is certainly acceptable) but are, in fact, antagonistically anti-Atheist. It\'s very easy to discount all people without faith (be they Atheist, Humanist or another version of non-theistic thought) as ignorant narrow-minded twits, but to do so completely disregards some of the great thinkers of our time.
So....as an Atheist/Humanist among you, I have to ask: why the animosity?
Myself, Finn17(18) and others that participate here and are otherwise accepted as intelligent contributors to the community are all people who do not depend on faith...are we considered narrow-minded and cognitively handicapped?
Personally I don\'t really care what your belief system is, it is your right to pursue whatever belief system you wish.
A right I will continue to defend even if I do not follow.
I just wish some people who proclaim themselves to be christian would extend to me the same courtesy.
Can I ask how many times you\'ve had Atheists or Humanists knocking at you door peddling their point if view?
How many times in the street have you seen Humanists or Atheists protelising our point of view?
Or why schools in the UK have religion as a mandatory subject and not cover non-theistic veiwpoints?
Or why the BBC will allow christian, jewish, islamic and bhuddist presentations on their Radio Programme \"Thought for the Day\", but refuse to allow any Humanist presentations? Despite this being a breach of their own charter and European Law.
Now in your original statement Mattrock you made a comment which indicated that you thought Atheists and Humanists based their point of view on ignorance. Which is quite the opposite of most Atheists I know, who, like myself, have developed their views after careful consideration and rational thought processes.
Now despite what people may think about my point of view, I am both pleased and proud to number amongst my forum friends, Airhead, Supervike, finn17(&18), reverend, Starfyre and Wiccanpony. Which grouping covers a huge spectrum of belief systems.
I won\'t debate with you that there are some ignorant twits among Christians as well. In fact, I\'d go as far as to say a potential majority of them would fit into that category. With that said, you wont\' find those that I\'d mentioned before making blanket statements about the narrow-mindedness or ignorance of athiests on
this forum. Or at least not that I\'ve seen. I\'ve found that intelligent and objective conversations can be had on this forum about just about
anything without much in the way of personal attack or over-generalization. I\'ve commended our group of participants on multiple occasions because of their thoughtfulness of objectivity when it comes to matters of debate. But even here when Christianity is brought up the claws come out. NSA and others have been very respectful in their conversations with me on this topic but there\'s no question that even in the tone of their responses (and yours) animosity can be felt. Either that or I\'m just reading it wrong (it\'s so much easier in person when you can see a persons expressions and hear their inflection). When I asked my \"why the animosity\" question, I was asking it particularly of those participating here. Please feel free to correct me because I haven\'t been around that long, but I haven\'t seen too much animosity from my side of the fence on this issue on this forum. So my answer to your \"why the animosity\" question I guess would be, \"what animosity?\". If you are addressing that questions rhetorically to Christians in general, well, my answer would be: \"I can\'t really say because I don\'t understand if from this end either.\" And I fully agree with you (me) that some of the greatest thinkers of our time fell on both sides of the fence.
To your (my) next question: I do not at all consider you and others like you to be cognitively handicapped. In fact, it is my esteem for your intelligence (which I actually believe is much higher per capita on this forum than maybe any other I\'ve ever been on) which causes my surprise at what I see as bordering on reverse bigotry (if there is such a thing). I have admired your reasoning ability in other threads and have enjoyed the antics of WP and others throughout and not given much thought at all to their religious affiliation. But I can say that should someone post information on secular humanism here, or wicca, or any other religious group, you would be very hard-pressed to find my comments about their \'blinkered little mindset.\' With that said, and after having visited theology online yesterday, I have to say that your comments are perfectly understandable in light of the level of intelligence present there but do your views extend to all who wear the title: \'Christian?\' I ask in earnest because that\'s the impression that I get and I\'d like to think otherwise.
I can only speak for me but I will
always extend to you the courtesy of having your own beliefs and I\'ll never insult you for believing differently from me.
And then to answer your questions:
- Athiests and humanists don\'t knock on my door peddling their point of view. For that matter, at least for me personally, neither do Christians. I for one have never knocked on a door to share my faith with someone. That\'s primarily a Jehovah\'s Witness thing and there\'s a special place in hell for them. (kidding...sheesh. lol). I will say that the athiestic/humanistic worldview is HEAVILY peddled in my local public school and university system and in much of the public world around me. People get offended these days when you wish them a happy Easter or Merry Christmas. It\'s silly if you ask me. As a Christian if a Muslim wished me happy Ramadan it wouldn\'t offend me...I\'d consider it just another well-wish.
- So to answer your next question: The secular/humanist view is almost
constantly proselytizing new adherents through public education and increasing societal \'sophistication.\' Athiesm and Humanism are the new religiosity these days. It may be different in the UK but it\'s all the rage here.
-I can\'t answer for schools in the UK, but I can say that religion is rarely taught at all in our public school system and when it is it is typically an elective course. Philosophy (of which humanism is one) is required subject matter for practically any university degree these days in the states.
-Again...can\'t answer for the BBC. Don\'t watch them, and never really have. There\'s no such restrictions here that I\'m aware of. In fact, I\'m not even sure that our public airwaves are allowed to play Christian material though about that I may be wrong because I don\'t watch PBS either.
And to your closing comments: I did not say that I felt that the athiest position was based on ignorance. That was a misreading of what I wrote. What I
did say was that even an argument that has its roots in ignorance being posed by an athiest would not generally cause me to expend a lot of effort affronting them. I was making the point that many of the arguments pitched against Christianity reveal a fundamental ignorance of the same. Case in point would be Freak\'s post of the top ten. Several of them reveal a fundamental ignorance of the Christian worldview. That\'d be for another thread though. I in no way believe that athiests (particularly those like you who I\'ve had the pleasure of debating with) begin their thinking from a point of ignorance. In fact, to the contrary, I\'d say that most Christians
do and therefore have a very difficult time articulating their true belief and the valid basis for it, resulting in many resorting to personal attacks on atheism and other belief systems rather than empirical argument. I believe the same can be said of atheists, albeit I\'ll concede to a lesser degree.
I will never intentionally insult your intelligence, Mike and I\'ll always strive to show you the respect you deserve as another thinking human. That doesn\'t mean that I\'ll always communicate clearly so if you ever feel that I have, please let me know so that I can correct myself.
And to wrap up my response: I\'d love to be one of those numbered among your forum friends. I admire your work and I admire your intelligence. I hope that conversations like this one don\'t drive a wedge between myself and others like you here on the forums. I\'d like to think we can argue over matters of origin and still go over and drool together over ultraforge\'s new draconian miniature.
