Put the first bit another way, though: ' Palestinian political leader publicly tortured and executed by the colonial administration gets up and walks', say followers! Oppressed people go over to new movement en masse! Emperor has to pretend to join to prevent total revolution!' Feels different, and is true.
6 Types of Atheists
- Thread starter Timshel
- Start date
Disillusioned
New member
Im not saying what christians do isnt weird. But pagans have a variety of weird that encompasses entire pantheons and stretches from the absurd to the hardcore weird to the just slightly strange.
FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
If you wrote down all of the people tortured and executed for political reasons by the Roman empire on little sheets of paper and tried to stack them on top of one another, you would suffocate in the void of space before your task had been completed. Jesus's treatment was far from special or unique. I mean, really, the Roman empire killed half a damn million Jews in the Bar Kokhba revolt alone, who were fighting for their freedom and independence. You'd think that'd be a much larger outrage than the killing of single really stupid Jew who ran around telling everyone he was the King.
The term "en masse", I think, implies a sense of expediency which a 300 year time period lacks. As well, Christians were in the single digits as a percentage of the population when Constantine converted. Constantine was kind of a big deal for Christianity. And the Christians, as they were, were hardly in a position to intimidate the emperor into converting anyway. A Christian revolt + Constantine's legions = a bunch of dead Christians. You must remember that Rome was basically a military dictatorship, nobody in the ancient world could match the Roman legions, so as long as the emperor maintained their loyalty, he was in pretty good shape. And the loyalty of Roman legionnaires largely depended on the payment of their salaries. Really, no one could've successfully pulled off a revolt against Rome unless they were a general and had some legions themselves. I suppose you could try the Christian way, and convince them to join your cause. But evangelizing Christianity to a Roman soldier would be difficult, you'd tell them about some Jew who got crucified, and he'd immediately point to the corpses strapped to crosses lining the road as far as the eye could see and say "What, was he one of these? We just got done finishing 'em off a few days ago. I might've killed him myself - sweet, right?"
Haha, you hit the nail on the head.
My critique of religion is a kind of petty, moralistic one. Its a kind of individualist view on the authoritative presumptions of the believers.
But you are right. This should not be forced on people. It should be done, much like anything of its kind, as a cultural shift. We should be vocal, prolific, involved in activism and civil discourse, and so on. And maybe then we can change the collective conciousness when it comes to faith and authority. In this way, Hitchens and Dawkins, were a positive force.
As for my generation? To plagarize Gramsci: I'm an optimist out of will, pessimist out of intelligence. Hopefully, I'll play a role in changing that fact.
Rose, I don't know how old you are, but you are gifted. I hope you are using this to achieve great things, how did you get to this board, if I may ask?
It astounds me that there is this one step forward, two steps back. Fundamentlism seems to go in and out of style. I fear the day we don't recover from it.
Here's to science and reason.
So?
OH WHAT A SHOCKER!
I love when you get your Adderall, is that wrong?
It was the women and slaves that spread Christianity. It was similar to other religions in the area, but it was really Constantine that gave it strength.
/MSG/
Uwaa OmO
Yes I suppose they could go for shocking people too.
Members of the Bolshevik Party in Russia were an insignificant proportion of the Russian population in 1917 too. What matters is always which way the masses are moving, and whether the 'leaders' are fish in that sea or out of it. Obviously Jesus was one of millions tortured and murdered by the exploitive swine - so what's new? Outrage is to be taken for granted - victory not. The Empire was buggered if it didn't replace its pagan bossman crap with something people - a lot of people - believed in. The legions, like all the troops who keep the bullyboys in power now, were made up of people, and the cost of keeping them happy was going through the roof by Constantine's day. People believed that in this one case the CIA of the time had fallen down on the job, that's all, and human beings were winning.
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I'm Watermark
Diabetic
Thank you, Rana.
I got to this board through a Google search; I thought it would be pleasant, with plenty of folks trying to prove me wrong, to discharge some of what I've gotten from independent study.
As for fundamentalism? It's hard to say things about that. The fundamentalists of today, I think, are divided into groups. The first being the fundamentalists who live in communities and really don't bother anybody - the Amish, and the Mormons in Provo. Then there are the populist fundamentalists. They lead mass movements (the Taliban even engineered a class revolt), playing on the grievances of ordinary folks who've been hit the hardest, and taking steps against existing regimes. Whither we're dealing with the tea parties or the Taliban, the religious fundamentalism of today has given itself a form of immense political significance and sentiment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/07/31/varieties-of-atheist-experience/
My biggest disappointment about the study is that it left out the largest category: closeted atheists. They are the elephants in the room and the ones most likely to change the culture by coming out. However, many of them feel they have good reasons not to, including potential ostracism from family and friends as well as loss of income or employment. Another unmentioned category is what I call functional atheists, those who may or may not have vague supernatural beliefs that play no practical role in their lives. They live as if there is no god, just as all atheists do.
An atheist is simply someone without a belief in any deities. But disbelief in gods doesn’t describe individual atheists any more than disbelief in the divinity of Muhammad, Krishna, and Zeus describes individual Christians. Everybody disbelieves in some gods; atheists just disbelieve in more gods than theists do.
What I like best about the study is that it recognizes a variety of atheists. Moreover, atheists can have good and bad traits, as can Christians, Jews, Muslims, and whoevers. I hope the takeaway from the study will be that we must not stereotype or prejudge based solely on religious affiliation. And of course that means atheists, like other minorities, shouldn’t be stigmatized or marginalized in their communities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/07/31/varieties-of-atheist-experience/
My biggest disappointment about the study is that it left out the largest category: closeted atheists. They are the elephants in the room and the ones most likely to change the culture by coming out. However, many of them feel they have good reasons not to, including potential ostracism from family and friends as well as loss of income or employment. Another unmentioned category is what I call functional atheists, those who may or may not have vague supernatural beliefs that play no practical role in their lives. They live as if there is no god, just as all atheists do.
An atheist is simply someone without a belief in any deities. But disbelief in gods doesn’t describe individual atheists any more than disbelief in the divinity of Muhammad, Krishna, and Zeus describes individual Christians. Everybody disbelieves in some gods; atheists just disbelieve in more gods than theists do.
What I like best about the study is that it recognizes a variety of atheists. Moreover, atheists can have good and bad traits, as can Christians, Jews, Muslims, and whoevers. I hope the takeaway from the study will be that we must not stereotype or prejudge based solely on religious affiliation. And of course that means atheists, like other minorities, shouldn’t be stigmatized or marginalized in their communities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/07/31/varieties-of-atheist-experience/
evince
Truthmatters
my sons girlfriend says he saved her life.
Catholic upbringing that she had to FAKE believe all her life.
She thought there was something wrong with her because she could not make herself truly believe.
He at 14 taught her to believe whatever she believed and NOT what people told her she had to believe.
I told her she was beautiful just like she was when her family was goading her to lose weight non stop.
She was NOT fat.
her mom just wanted her to be skinnier than her cousin who did not have the same body type.
She calls me MOM
Catholic upbringing that she had to FAKE believe all her life.
She thought there was something wrong with her because she could not make herself truly believe.
He at 14 taught her to believe whatever she believed and NOT what people told her she had to believe.
I told her she was beautiful just like she was when her family was goading her to lose weight non stop.
She was NOT fat.
her mom just wanted her to be skinnier than her cousin who did not have the same body type.
She calls me MOM