I actually hate Christianity!

[Pappa]

Most christians are actually quite nice despite their religion, they reject the nasty bullshit and only keep the quite nice but still bullshit bits. How anyone could hate the Church of England is beyond me, laugh at it sure but hate it?.

That's pretty much my view.

[floppit]

Christianity has a fairly limited impact on my life.... I really can't see how I could actually hate it.

Yup.

There are no end of batshit beliefs and folk who'll follow them - I can't see the point of investing emotion regarding a myth among many.

So could never be arsed.

[egbert]

Christianity has a fairly limited impact on my life.... I really can't see how I could actually hate it.

Yup.

There are no end of batshit beliefs and folk who'll follow them - I can't see the point of investing emotion regarding a myth among many.

So could never be arsed.

I don't care either if the tards want to worship Zeus, or play with rattlesnakes, or wait on a mountaintop to be raptured.
But I get angry when their "faith" requires them to kill their children by with-holding medical care, or they think they have the divine right to censor my reading material, or what's taught in school, or what movies I can see, or stop me from having a beer or playing baseball on Sunday.

[floppit]

Where do you live? If I had that kind if pressure i'd hate my community first, pound to a penny if it wasn't christanity there'd be some other twaddle. Twaddle is endless, infinite, but fundamentalist places are thankfully less so.

[hadespussercats]

Christianity has a fairly limited impact on my life.... I really can't see how I could actually hate it.

Yup.

There are no end of batshit beliefs and folk who'll follow them - I can't see the point of investing emotion regarding a myth among many.

So could never be arsed.

I don't care either if the tards want to worship Zeus, or play with rattlesnakes, or wait on a mountaintop to be raptured.
But I get angry when their "faith" requires them to kill their children by with-holding medical care, or they think they have the divine right to censor my reading material, or what's taught in school, or what movies I can see, or stop me from having a beer or playing baseball on Sunday.

Wow. You're not from Massachusetts, are you?

My mom was a school librarian. She could tell you some stories about censorship. Never mind encounters with children of Christian Scientists, sent to school with strep throat, begging the school nurse for something to make their throats stop hurting (apparently, at least at the time, school nurse was legally obliged to refuse.)

Oh, and let's not forget the blue laws-- which I think finally got voted out. But in college there was many a mad trip up to New Hampshire to buy booze from the state packies for Sunday parties.

[JimC]

Most christians are actually quite nice despite their religion, they reject the nasty bullshit and only keep the quite nice but still bullshit bits. How anyone could hate the Church of England is beyond me, laugh at it sure but hate it?.

That's pretty much my view.

Agreed, but I also agree with Rum that there is much built in to christianity that makes it worthy of hatred...

Even if it's only the arrogant certainty that the only path to salvation is via the jewish zombie...

[Seth]

Christianity has a fairly limited impact on my life.... I really can't see how I could actually hate it.

Yup.

There are no end of batshit beliefs and folk who'll follow them - I can't see the point of investing emotion regarding a myth among many.

So could never be arsed.

I don't care either if the tards want to worship Zeus, or play with rattlesnakes, or wait on a mountaintop to be raptured.
But I get angry when their "faith" requires them to kill their children by with-holding medical care

But presumably it doesn't bother you when they use medical services to kill their children...

or they think they have the divine right to censor my reading material, or what's taught in school, or what movies I can see, or stop me from having a beer or playing baseball on Sunday.

That's politics, not religion.

[MrJonno]

If someone uses their religion to justify changing laws of a country that opens up their religion to attack ,ridicule and abuse. If adults keep their religion to themselves then I would ignore it like any other silly hobby. (Children is a different matter as the state in the end has the ultimate responsibility for their welfare if the parents arent capable).

Religion in the political sphere should be treated like any other belief system, capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, christianity etc

[Seth]

If someone uses their religion to justify changing laws of a country that opens up their religion to attack ,ridicule and abuse.

Depends, I guess, on whether the laws of the country permit that sort of thing, now doesn't it? In places like Iran and Pakistan, attacking, ridiculing and abusing Islam will get your head cut off.

If adults keep their religion to themselves then I would ignore it like any other silly hobby.

Why should they? They have as much right to let their religion inform their political judgments as you have not to. If you don't like democracy, go live in Cuba.

(Children is a different matter as the state in the end has the ultimate responsibility for their welfare if the parents arent capable).

Depends on whether a belief in religion is thought by the state to be a manifestation of incapacity.

Religion in the political sphere should be treated like any other belief system, capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, christianity etc

Generally it is. People who live together in a society decide how they want that society to operate, and what moral, ethical and yes religious principles will be dominant in the culture. That's their fundamental human right. If you don't happen to like the expression of religion in one society, then you can fuck off elsewhere and find another society that better suits your belief system. But just because you don't like one or another expressions of religion at the societal level doesn't mean that you are inherently correct and the society is inherently incorrect, because people, as a group, have a right to form their society, and their government in whatever way they believe best suits their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and you don't get a dissenter's veto.

[MrJonno]

People not individuals get to say what is acceptable and what isnt. People can practice their religion as long as it doesnt conflict with the laws of the land. If the laws of land say you must do X but your religion says you can't then you either campaign to change the law or you accept that society ethics trump yours

[Gallstones]

Individuals don't have to accept anything except consequences.


I had been assuming that people of the political left had great admiration for grass roots efforts to cause change and that they were not advocates of majority dictates. There was a time when discovering that they don't would have surprised me, it no longer does.

Historically there are many individuals who did choose to buck the prevailing status quo--or the one that other individuals were coercing on the group--they suffered for it too, but change happened due to their efforts. For example, Frank Little and Normal Rae, Mahatma Gandhi.

[MrJonno]

Individuals don't have to accept anything except consequences.

Yes, they can campaign through democratic means to change things, but if they fail they obey the law

[Seth]

People not individuals get to say what is acceptable and what isnt.

Incoherent nonsense. Do you mean by "people" "THE people," as in a democratic expression of majority opinion? If so, I'd generally agree, with the proviso that, as the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence states, there are some individual rights that are beyond the control of democratic rule...like the right to freely practice and express religion.

People can practice their religion as long as it doesnt conflict with the laws of the land.

Yeah. Duh.

If the laws of land say you must do X but your religion says you can't then you either campaign to change the law or you accept that society ethics trump yours

Precisely correct. On the other hand, if the law is an expression of majority religious belief, like "you cannot kill children in utero," the same rule applies, does it not?

[Seth]

Individuals don't have to accept anything except consequences.


I had been assuming that people of the political left had great admiration for grass roots efforts to cause change and that they were not advocates of majority dictates. There was a time when discovering that they don't would have surprised me, it no longer does.

Historically there are many individuals who did choose to buck the prevailing status quo--or the one that other individuals were coercing on the group--they suffered for it too, but change happened due to their efforts. For example, Frank Little and Normal Rae, Mahatma Gandhi.

The people of the left are only accepting of grass roots efforts on the left side of the political spectrum. They are absolutely intolerant of grass roots efforts that oppose their leftist ideology.

I watched an interesting documentary on TV last night from some leftist Australian documentary filmmaker about the supposed "astroturfing" of the Tea Party by the Koch brothers that falsely claimed that the entire Tea Party movement is nothing more than a grand oligarchical conspiracy funded by the Kochs, and that all Tea Party members are merely deluded dupes of the corporatists.

Funny thing was, I agreed with almost everything everyone the filmmaker interviewed from the right side of the political spectrum, and disagreed with the lefty loons who see the whole movement as a giant conspiracy.

The filmmaker derided the Koch's participation in groups like Americans for Prosperity while completely ignoring, for example, George Soros and his Open Society institute, which is doing exactly the same thing, and I mean EXACTLY the same thing on the left. The filmmaker was clearly biased and not a "documentary" filmmaker at all, but was rather a leftist propagandist who was decrying political activism on the right that's been effective in countering the leftist propaganda from Soros and his ilk.

The brutal irony is that he failed utterly to even see that all the right, and the Koch brothers are doing is duplicating the tactics and techniques that the left has been using for a century or more, but with much greater success, because the message resonates with most Americans, while the socialist mantra of the socialists and communists, and the one-world-government mantra of Soros and his ilk, does not.

[MrJonno]

Freeodm to 'practice' religion is utterly meaningless. A religion is anything a person wants it to be so its pretty obvious that no one is free practice anything they feel like.
What there is freedom of belief but that is not freedom of action, if you want to believe that sacrificing children will make the sun come up the next morning than you have that right, try practising that then you are in serious trouble (but you will still probably get the sun)