Letters to the Editor
walter_map
Published Letters: 1444 Editor's Choice: 20
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neurotobot
[Read the article: The atheist delusion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please do not cherry pick my statments
I am under no obligation to address your entire statement. I am pleased to address only those elements which I find to be particularly wrong-headed.
. . . the greater threat at the current moment is posed by religious institutions.
Implying that some threat is posed by the non-religious. Like what? The non-religious aren't the ones who have persecuted the Jews. No, that would be the Christians.
Next you'll be picking out an extreme example of an atheist madman, like Stalin, and applying his characteristics to all non-believers. But your list of such people is extremely short.
By contrast, all you have to do is glance at the news to see hordes of intolerant religious extremists. History is loaded with them. Intolerant atheists are far and few between, because non-believers ignore religion until you get in their faces and start issuing threats.
All I am trying to say is that dogmatic extremism on both sides ...
Again, presumption on your part, and you're again wrong. Atheism and agnosticism are the absence of dogma. Non-believers are rarely extreme and try to be reasonable, which is not a claim the religious can justly make.
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neurotobot
[Read the article: The atheist delusion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I do think it rather dangerous to assume that just because atheists have historically been on the sharp end of the stake, that if given greater power and authority, they would behave the same as they did when they were subaltern.
A dishonest presumption on your part, since unbelievers have been shown to be characterized by tolerance, and religiosity by intolerance.
Besides, you're contradicting yourself:
I believe that atheists are compassionate, upright, and astute individuals, and I respect them because of their great faith in the capacity of human beings and their strong commitment to preserving human dignity.
You know what I think?
I don't think you're an agnostic at all. I think you're a 'Christian' dishonestly pretending to be an agnostic for the purpose of giving some credibility to your thinly-veiled cheap shots against unbelief, and that your platitudes to the contrary are just a cover.
We see this tactic with radical right-wingers pretending to be 'liberal moderates' all the time.
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Darby
[Read the article: The atheist delusion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How do you address the violence of unbelievers during the French Revolution, the violence of atheistic communists during the Russian Revolution, Mao, etc.?
I think you're just making this up.
Show that these people were unbelievers. I don't think you can do it, because I don't believe it's true.
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6Stringer
[Read the article: The atheist delusion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anybody thinking that atheists would not be prone to vioelence, coercion and force if ever given the power just need read these letters here.
You're making this up. Show us examples of unbelievers threatening violence and engaging in systematic coercion. You can't because it doesn't happen.
The same cannot said of 'Christians', which clearly shows that you're dishonestly projecting your criminalities on your adversaries.
With very few exceptions, religious intolerance is perpetrated by the religious, and not by the non-religious.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
--Ann Coulter, This is War column, Sept. 13, 2001
"The Jews of Temple Beth Sholom are sinful, greedy, Hell-bound, money-grubbing sodomites; and they have dedicated their synagogue to be a gay and lesbian propaganda mill and recruiting depot, soliciting young people to sodomy."
--Rev. Fred Phelps - Sept 7 1998, Westboro Baptist Church press release, re: protesting Jewish groups
"Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody's pseudo-right to worship an idol."
--Rev. Joseph Morecraft,Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, Marietta, Georgia, quoted in "the Public Eye," June 1994
"A civil war is brewing in which we must deal with the Jews. It is a time of reckoning for their pact with the devil."
--Robert G. Millar (1925-2001) http://www.adl.org/learn/Ext_US/Elohim.asp
"The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ."
--D. James Kennedy, "Education: Public Problems and Private Solutions," Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993
"The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."
-- William Rehnquist, Dissenting Opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985
"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good.... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."
-- Randall Terry, quoted in The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, August 16,
"Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus."
-- John Ashcroft, Commencement address given on May 8, 1999, upon receiving an honorary degree at ultra-right-wing and ultra-fundamentalist Bob Jones University, also known for its anti-African-American segregationist policies
"We are going to remove the mythical separation of church and state."
--Bishop Carlton Pearson
"We are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody that gets in our way."
--Jay Grimstead, February 1987
You don't lie well, 'Christian', no matter how much practice you get.
But thanks for demonstrating once again the immorality of 'Christians'.