Letters to the Editor
Taliesan
Published Letters: 942 Editor's Choice: 19
-
Oh?
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"it enables us [believers] to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves."
Actually, it enabled you believers to burn women at the stake for being overly pretty, ugly, smart or stupid for centuries.
It also enabled you believers to tear down Rome and set human knowledge back centuries.
It enabled the crusades, the spannish inquisition, and if you are honest about it, Iraq and Gitmo.
It enables you believers to claim that you have some sort of monopoly on caring about others, on morality, and on every virtue that over a thousand years of hate, bloodshed and murder your religion has shown almost nothing of.
When Christianity could dictate who ruled what country, when the village pastor could be judge, jury and executioner, when a lack of faith meant being sentenced to years of hard labour, torture and in some cases even death, slavery was legal and the church was sheltering its pedophile priests.
It was America's most religious ever president, who invaded a country for what appears to be simply sharing roughly the same racial stock as Osama Bin Laden - and who claims God is telling him what to do.
And Christianity is not alone in bad behaviour "inspired" by their religion. Hindus in India are sending death threats to Ashish Khetan, a frigging Hindu hero, for exposing the genocidal rightwing Hindu freaks that make up India's leading opposition party. Their religion told them to go out and massacre Muslims in 2002.
In Saudi Arabia, you have a woman being sentenced to 200 lashes for being raped. Their religion told them that was acceptable.
In South Africa you have animists kidnapping Xhosa children in order to force them to go through a rite of adulthood involving exposing them to the elements, beating the heck out of them, and cutting off their foreskins with sometimes less then hygenic instruments and no anaesthetic.
And lets not forget that witch hunts are still alive and well in Africa.
And for the Jews? Just read the old testament.
Religion just gets in the way of us caring for each other as humans, it provides excuses for war, hate, and terror when in truth, its all in people's heads. Sure, history has bad guys without religion, but at least they didn't have the excuse of some higher power telling them what to do.
It is trash to claim your religion inspires good in you. It is trash and it demeans your basic humanity to claim that it inspires your good actions - just like it is trash, when you do something wrong, for you to claim the devil made you do it.
You are responsible for who you are, and if you are a good person it is because of you choosing to be a good person. If you are a bad person it is because you choose to be a bad person. God has been used as an excuse for long enough.
-
LW: Old saying
[Read the article: I'm an existential artist. People just don't get me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]don't know who said it first: There is nothing more lonely then being in the middle of a crowd.
That said, you sound kind of like a fun argument.
-
Here is what the nativity asks us to believe.
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can get the whole star thing, heck it is supposed to be a miracle. Virgin birth? Strikes me as unfair, but hey, its a miracle and God has never been known for being a nice guy. Him being an inconsiderate lay, well we can live with that.
He did after all, take away Saul's throne for Saul not killing enough Amelkites. Never mind him practicing some good old genocidal infanticide on the Egyptions.
But its the nature of the Romans that puzzles me. Here you have a highly advanced nation of beauracrats setting up a census where people have to travel to the lands of their distant, pre-Roman ancestors to fill in a form.
Just to illustrate something here: Imagine a census being declared where all the white guys in America had to go back to Europe. Yeah, didn't think it made sense.
Now, the nature of god and all of that, I can sort of accept. Sort of. But for the Romans, who had writing, provincial offices, city districts and garrisons all in places probably infinitely better located for this sort of thing to even care about Jesus' papa being descended from David? He was a carpenter for crying out loud!
And anyway, the whole schtick about Jesus being descended from David? Not if God was the biological parent he wasn't.
The nativity doesn't teach people love, it teaches them to believe in stupid shit.
-
theoaks128
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One, I don't believe in mutual respect as being more important then truth, and two:
"it enables us [believers] to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves."
If you guys are even going to begin to try to pull a "Mutual respect" argument on us then you can bloody well get the "Mutual" bit right.
-
pacificwhim
[Read the article: Away in an awesome manger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, because we are supposed to sit quietly and take it while an American president proclaims all atheists non-citizens and non-patriots.
We are supposed to take it when TV pundits declare a culture war against us because some cashier wished him a happy holiday.
We are supposed to take it when most Americans will not elect an atheist as president - no matter what the atheists stance is on anything else.
We are supposed to take it when deeply Christian figures like Hitler are termed "Atheists" by the popular media.
We are supposed to take it when even the more liberal voices out there imply that we are incapable of love.
And we are supposed to take it when they march us off to the frigging gas ovens.
Well you can take your frigging opinion of us and shove it up your arse. We aren't taking it.