I just snorted. I’ve never snorted before:
I feel there are so many things wrong with this, I can’t address them all. So who wants to make something mocking homosexuality or atheism? Apparently everything is fair game, right?
i fucking hate this. shut the hell up everyone. you condemn us for mocking homosexuals or other things, but you can mock our whole belief system. there are so many things wrong with this picture. this is what i believe in. if you don’t believe in it, keep it to yourself.
i’m sick of everyone believing they can push Christians around. i’m not standing for this. at least we have faith in something. we believe in something more. we’re not hopeless. keep your ideas to yourself. and stop making fun of people for what they believe in.
i’m sure that if a picture spread around about gays, atheists, or any of that shit, you guys would pounce on it. you guys would destroy us. but you can say shit like this, and think that it’s okay.
you need to go and realize that people do believe in something. and mocking their beliefs is just absolutely disgusting.
and this picture, is just about the most revolting of all.
The Rodent Queen asked my followers and me to respond to this so I’ll start with what bugged me most: “if you don’t believe in it, keep it to yourself.” Well if you do believe it, keep it to yourself.
“mocking their beliefs is just absolutely disgusting” I can’t speak for the person writing, but just yesterday I had the pleasure of hearing two fellow college students mocking atheism. Quite loudly, in a public place. What you probably meant was mocking YOUR beliefs is disgusting.
Religious privelege has existed for thousands of years, sometimes a specific religion, more often belief in a diety or deities in general. Get over yourself. (Oh, and how did “gays” get brought into it anyway? Is that a belief system I am unaware of?)
i’m proud of what i believe in. sorry you can’t deal with it. i don’t force my beliefs down anyone else’s throat. but i’m not going to sit back and deny what i believe in. i am a Christian. and i don’t care what you think about me. i believe in the Lord, and His love. i don’t tell people they’re wrong. i don’t put people down for what they do or don’t believe in. i never said anything of the sort. so don’t put words in my mouth.
and don’t group Christians as a whole for what two stupid people were doing. and how does mocking Christianity make it any better? you are hypocritical. a couple of people mocking atheism doesn’t make mocking Christianity any better. i don’t go around making fun of what people believe in. it’s just wrong. and the fact that i can’t go around, saying what i believe, is terrible. i have so many friends that don’t believe in the same things that i do. and that’s okay. i move on. i don’t make fun of them. i let them believe what they believe in.
you guys need to think about the fact that maybe we’re proud. i don’t go shoving ideas, beliefs and all of my thoughts into other people’s heads. but, i’m not going to deny what i believe in. what i love. and what means the most to me.
I’M NOT TEASING ALL THESE OTHER RELIGIONS. i know we all have freedom of religion. and that’s okay with me. people have their ideas, and i understand. but can’t we have ours and not get made fun of for it? why don’t you get over yourself, and realize that it hurts when you do this to us. or anyone else for that matter. we have feelings. and just because we’re a majority doesn’t mean we’re any less human.
oh, and the gay thing, just another point brought up in the conversation. just another thing that people aren’t allowed to poke fun at, but when Christianity is brought up, it’s fair game. i never said homosexuality was a belief system.
i’m sick of having to stick up for myself. and what i believe in.
“but can’t we have ours and not get made fun of for it?” Nope. Free speech.
“oh, and the gay thing, just another point brought up in the conversation. just another thing that people aren’t allowed to poke fun at, but when Christianity is brought up, it’s fair game.” Everything is fair game when you have freedom of speech. Everyone can make fun of everything, and they will.
In a truly free society, nothing is beyond reproach or being mocked; that was where I was going with the example of the people making fun of atheism. Everything gets mocked, it is a common human way to deal with things we don’t agree with or understand the purpose of. Its also funnier than actually criticizing a belief system. If nothing can be mocked, life would be really boring.
Um. This person may not personally push their beliefs onto others, but the Christian church actively works to do this: It strives to deny people who are homosexual of their human rights. It activiely works to deny women of having full control over their uteri. I could go on, but you get the jist. So, when I hear/see people bashing the Christian/Catholic church, in fact any religious organisation that does any of the above, I thoroughly welcome and understand that.
The core ethics and beliefs Atheism are based around do not consist of denying people human rights and encouraging bigotry. They do however, consist of pointing out blatant idiocy and bigotry when it’s seen.
I am going to leave this convo at this for me because:
1. this response from inherhipstheresrevolutions is perfect
2. a bunch of you have reblogged with equally awesome responses and I know there will be more. You guys rock.
Beliefs are not worthy of respect in and of themselves. That is the difference here. Homosexuality is not a belief system, nor is atheism. Homosexuality is an individual characteristic not chosen by an individual, while by definition atheism is only a lack of belief in a deity or deities. It is not a proscriptive belief system which states you must believe x, y, and z (unlike what a person above asserts), although as an atheist one may be more likely to be a secular humanist or even a Communist. I will note that a lack of belief is also not worthy of respect in and of itself, but it is much harder to generalise about atheists as a set of people as they are not a mass with a relatively homogenous set of beliefs.
Now I’m going to try and go through this once more, given that so many people have such a hard time understanding this.
A theist is a person who believes in a deity or deities. While they believe in a deity or deities, they are not necessarily willing to make truth claims as to knowledge of the existence of a deity or deities. As such, a theist can be either agnostic or gnostic.
An atheist is a person who lacks belief in a deity or deities (lack of belief in a higher power). This does not mean they therefore believe there is no deity or deities. It just means they do not believe. As such, an atheist can be an agnostic or gnostic.
Agnosticism is about knowledge, or more precisely absolute claims about knowledge. An agnostic is a person who believes absolute claims are unable to be made as the absolute truth is either unknown and/or unknowable. In this case, an agnostic believes that the question of the existence of a deity or deities is ultimately unknown and/or unknowable. In other words, they will not make an absolute claim of knowledge and although they may ascribe probabilities to the existence of a deity or deities, the probabilities will be less than one-hundred percent.
Gnosticism is also about knowledge. It is a term that has moved away from its initial definition to encompass a belief that the truth is not only knowable but known. In this context a gnostic can be either an atheist or a theist. Not only do they respectively believe that there are no deities and either a deity or deities, but they also believe this can be known with certainty and they know this.
People tend to believe that agnosticism is the middle ground between atheism and theism. It is not, at least not in the sense that most people believe. I will make this clear. A person can be either a theist, or an atheist. By definition a theist believes while an atheist lacks belief. A person cannot believe and lack belief at the same time, as many believe agnostics do (although they perhaps do not characterise it as such, as they would hopefully recognise that the two states are mutually exclusive). So more clearly, a person can be an agnostic atheist, a gnostic atheist, an agnostic theist or a gnostic theist. There are no other options. There are no fewer options.
How a person chooses to define themself, however, is also important. Most people, even those who understand that atheism/theism is a continuum dealing with belief while agnosticism/gnosticism is a continuum dealing with knowledge claims, tend to define themselves with one term only. For example, I tend to term myself as an atheist when asked, despite being an agnostic atheist, because while I believe the absolute truth is unknown and possibly unknowable, I lean much more heavily to there being very little probability of a deity or deities. Others may even define themselves as ignostic, people who hold the belief that the ideas of what a deity is are too poorly defined to have any relevant meaning; or apatheist, people who essentially believe that belief in god is unimportant - they may not only lack interest in deities but potentially may also believe that the existence of a deity or deities would not change how they live their life. While these terms come under the auspices of atheism and theism, they show there is a certain complexity to a person’s position that may not initially be apparent if only making black and white considerations as to the nature of an individual. How a person defines themself is thus important as it can usually be taken to imply something about their position.
Finally, on the subject of you Christians who are getting upset about this poster, I have a few questions: What exactly is the problem? Is this an accurate portrayal of your beliefs or not? If not, what is incorrect about it? It is all very well getting offended, but you have not actually shown where this poster is wrong, if at all. Furthermore, on the topic of justification of your theism and getting all snooty, consider this: Firstly, as an atheist I am much more likely to be called to justify my lack of belief than you are, despite atheism being a default position - you are born without belief in a deity or deities. Secondly, people are far more likely to look down upon me for my atheism than your theism and believe that I lack a moral compass because for whatever reason and in my eyes wrongly, religion has an association with morality.
Actually, given there is a reasonable likelihood that you believe I lack a moral compass, I am impelled to ask another question predicated on the premise that your belief is true: If all non-believers lack a moral compass, why would they come to God? Would it be based on random chance? If so, why does belief in God have any meaning? Yes, it might change you fundamentally, or so you believe, and undoubtedly your interaction with the religious and the religion will have an impact on who you are - much as anything else, but to come to the actual decision of believing will require no desire to be good if it is the case that non-believers do not have a moral compass, not that I believe religion is a good provider and arbiter of morality, but it seems a reasonable assumption to think that you do.
Furthermore, while I am asking questions, why do you think faith is a good thing? It is belief without, or even in the face of, evidence. It seems odd that this is considered some kind of virtue. Religious belief might give you comfort but so do many other beliefs which you have likely discarded over the years. How can you be proud of faith? Why?
Yes, I realise some of you may have had seemingly inexplicable experiences you have attributed to the God of your religion, but so have followers of Allah, so have followers of Buddha, so have followers of the Hindu pantheon and so have many other followers of vastly different beliefs. Even non-religious people have had such experiences, although they will not attribute them to a deity or deities, but rather more likely physiological causes. How can you rationalise and assert the validity of your belief in the face of such evidence which suggests that you are making fundamental attribution errors as to the cause of your experience? Given the beliefs tend to be mutually exclusive (in a religious sense, you can’t be a Christian and a Muslim, for example), there is a suggestion that the majority of believers are not truth-seekers and, furthermore, that the probability of it being any of the beliefs which do not cover all of those affected by the experience is extremely low. The non-religious experience is the only one that stacks up in terms of attribution as it can fit for all, while presumably from the religious perspective such experiences will or should only occur for believers unless one engages in some form of apologetics (for example, Satan causes the experiences in non-believers and those who believe in different deities). The problem with such apologetics, however, is that it offers a much more convoluted reason. That is to say, it introduces even more assumptions and entities to that which the religious belief has (which is more than that of the non-religious experience already) which again decreases its probability of being correct.
