Yes, it doesn’t seem that one can rationally discuss the terms of their insanity with believers. This has also been my experience on numerous occassions.

It is a better use of time for non-believers to join together formally to be recognized as a force to be dealt with, and I commend you for being associated with other non-believers.

But when someone like Bob comes along, there may be a way to engage without debating the terms of their belief system. Every liberated person I have met has had a waking up point, be it at 2 years or 40 years. That waking up point is not going to crack until a threshold is met if ever; we can hinder it coming along or we can help it to come along. If someone looks at a non believer as a decent sort of chap or lady, it is much more likely that the encounter will have the desired affect. No, I am not reaching out to believers on the terms of their insanity. Perhaps the following will be my first stab at dealing with Bob:

Dear Bob,

Your comment has been a contribution to the freethinker website in so far as it provides a clear depiction of the price a person and society pays for belief in your particular brand of Christianity. Even in the context of the deluded thinking that you have demonstrated, I do not sense a shred of original thought or technique in your post. It is a shame that as a person of European decent, whose ancestors were probably converted to Christianity at the threat of death and against their will, that you have embraced a system of Middle Eastern and Greek gnostic thought that is crippling your intellectual capacity and contributing to misery in the world. It is disturbing that you selectively use this inconsistent body of mythology in order to justify hatreds and intolerances and that you would willingly be an agent for the continuation of the disasters that your form of Christianity as brought to the planet. Your post will be moved to the section “posts by believers” after one week in order to serve as an example of what happens to someone of ill motive who has taken a plunge into the deep end of a dangerous belief system. Perhaps if you are ever healed of your mental virus, you will be able to retrieve this post and put it into the scapbook that documents your recovery and embrace of rational thinking. In the meantime, it will serves as a reminder to us of the misfortune that can befall a peson such as you who has not discovered the gift of critical thought. John

I myself, when I’ve encountered the homophobic type of Christian, have tried to argue that the Bible has to be understood in the context of the time it was written.
Bar the one episode in Sodom (which of course never really existed) all the mention of homosexuality in the Bible refers to the practice of men sleeping with homosexual priests who served in the pagan temples all over the Middle East. When it says in the Bible that this is ‘to’evah’, what has come to be translated as abomination, it meant that it was forbidden to the Jews as being ritually unlawful.

Easy to understand why the priests didn’t want the Jews engaging in the religious practices of competing gods.

In fact, the first time this term was used was when Moses said to Pharaoh that the rituals of the Jews were ‘to’evah’ to the Egyptians.
Obviously he can’t have meant the rituals were abominable. Just that they were foreign, weren’t meant for the Egyptians.
Even the animals that were forbidden to the Jews to eat were mostly sacred to the pagans.
So ‘to’evah’ was actually a cultural rather than an ethical injunction.

Never once have I succeeded in getting one to budge from their own interpretation. I concluded that the reason is that they want to hate. That in fact they look to the Bible for justification for their hatred.

These same people never picket seafood establishments because they sell shrimp, or someone remarrying a divorcée, or attack gardeners who plants two different types of plant together etc., all equally ‘to’evah’. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

This is why Buffy said what she did about getting Black people or Jews to reach out to Nazis or the KKK.
Because the source of their hatred is irrational, they are immune to reason.
I tend to agree with her.

If however, a Christian could admit to even a scintilla of doubt about their scriptures, in that case there might be some profit to be had in reasonable discussion.

Thank you for your replies. My post did not address what is involved when a religious type is actively trying to interfere with one’s freedoms and rights. It would be natural to see such ugliness met with other ugliness, even though this is not a rational response. I think that an organized response by relatively thoughtful means may have a superior long term effect. The means used to respond to the Bobs of the world makes a difference. I admire those who have rationally dismantled the rubish that has been dumped on your site by the likes of Bob without undue emotion. Since Bob is only the tip of the iceburg of bigots out there, and since those bigots are standing in the way of society progressing, perhaps it is a gift for someone like Bob to offer samples of their crap so that we can get a little group practice in the art of skillful dismantling. John Owen PS, has anyone else enjoyed reading a book called “The Bible Unearthed”?

I’m quite reasonable with believers who are decent and act like rational people. My own mother and a sister are ardent Christians and we get on quite well. They don’t preach hateful anti-gay crap at me or tell me I’ll burn in hell if I don’t believe in god. They actually do that stuff Jesus preached like “love your neighbor” and “do unto others”. Other believers who, like them, use religion as a tool to guide their own lives rather than as a battering ram against others find no opposition from me.

The Bobs of this world, who feel the need to preach incessantly and use the Bible as a weapon against specific groups (such as gay people) while ignoring everything else the book says will feel my wrath. For them I have little or no patience, as it is filth like them who have been eroding and eradicating my rights for decades. It is because of people like Bob that my marriage is currently in legal limbo. I refuse to try to “reach out” to his ilk, because they are by choice unreachable. I’d no sooner ask a black man to reach out to the KKK or a Jew to reach out to the Neo-Nazis.

But you deal with them as you please, as is your right, and I wish you the best in your attempts to reach them.

Buffy

Welcome.

The sort of quiet atheism you advocate is how I live my public life. When I visit “The Freethinker” however, I know I’m speaking to people who share my views so my comments can be a little risque.

I do not believe it possible to get the majority of religious folk to renounce their faiths with reasoned argument. Either their brains are hardwired for it, they’re mentally ill or have some ulterior motive for professing it, such as Vatican PLC. The best we can do is persuade the cowering masses to ignore these morons.

Any god-botherer that posts here initially tries to use “reason” so we adopt their faith, usually after criticising someones sexuality or lifestyle. When that fails they often resort to repeatedly quoting scripture and flaccidly bashing at us with their dogma. This is an atheist blog after all so when they’ve finished it’s our turn, and they get what they deserve.

Shortly after I started commenting here a gentleman called “Bob” urged me to “repent”. I thought about composing a response but others got there first and sent him packing. They always seem to gang up on evangelists like that. I’m not very academic about my atheism, I’m more likely to take the piss which is why I keep coming back.

Hope you have fun.

It’s a common belief among Christians that homosexuality is a behavior that can be changed thorough prayer, exorcisms, electrocution of the genitals, shaming by religious peers, and payment of many thousands of dollars to charlatans with an agenda(among other things).

According to all legitimate medical, psychiatric, psychological and medical professionals however, sexual orientation is a natural inborn trait that is not changeable. In fact attempts to change it are ineffective and typically lead to mental, spiritual and even physical harm to the individual. But I suppose your type doesn’t care how badly a gay person his harmed, so long as he pretends to be straight for Jesus, eh? It’s all about controlling people’s minds and behaviors with you guys.

Thanks, by the way, for the link to that site. It looks interesting.

“It may be counterproductive and immature of us to not have a little more tact when it comes to how we interact with those who are still under the spell.”

While on one level there is truth to what you say, on another I think you’re too generous.

I came to this site because I relate to people who are freethinkers and who, like myself, are worried about those who, given a chance, would drag us back in to the dark-ages.
I look for good ideas to fight this and it can also be hard to get all the mental stimulation I need otherwise.

When there is a conversation about attacks on free speech and someone like Bob comes along and all he has to contribute is the fact that he wants to have the right to tell gay people that we are perverts, I maintain the right to tell him he’s a credulous fool.
Why take that lying down or be polite?
If you are rude, to me or others, I will be rude right back at you. I’m not a xtian and don’t have to turn the other cheek. That’s me.

I don’t go along to xtian spaces to laugh at the poor benighted fools, any more than I go out to fetish parties to laugh at people indulging in kinks I don’t share.

Some people like sub/dom play and I have no problem with it. We did evolve from apes with hierarchical structures and instincts and if people want to find a way to indulge, explore and express that, good for them.
However, I am quite vanilla in my tastes. If you come up to me and keep bugging me, insisting I let you tie me up and whip me, I will tell you no thanks. I’m you persist I’ll be more forceful.

For me, religions are just another way for people to indulge in this roleplay, with their god as the ultimate Dom.
Part and parcel of their role-playing is that their über-Dom lets some of them stand in for him while others act the submissive. Fine. If you consent to that and find it satisfying.
Just don’t come to me and insist I have to go along with it.

Where I find religion inferior to the sub/dom crowd is that they don’t like to take no for an answer and will even compel others against their will, under pain of torture and death.

I think the world would be a better place if they could find a more constructive way to get their rocks off.

In an earlier post regarding sinful homosexual perverts you said:

“If they choose not to let Jesus enter them and carry on mocking God in this way they will surely end up in Hell.”

Is this a new tactic by xtians to try to persuade `gays` to give up their lifestyle by suggesting that if they do they can have homosexual sex with Jesus as a compromise? Or is Jesus the name of your local pastor/minister/priest and you’re just repeating what he tells young boys when he gets them on their own?