String the terrorists up! Nice job...

[Wumbologist]

I mean.... militant atheist??? What the fuck..... "I reject your claims and I have a gun."

[AshtonBlack]

I mean.... militant atheist??? What the fuck..... "I reject your claims and I have a gun."

Well quite a few of us MAY have had real military training in one form or another, but that's got bugger all to do with me rejecting a given faithhead's unsupported twaddle.

[Valden]

If someone claims to be a Christian, I'll believe them.

You shouldn't. You should demand evidence. Belief without sufficient evidence is faith, remember?

What should I ask for, a Bible?

Only certain parts. For a fee, I'll show you which.

[charlou]

Look, a Christian is someone who follows Christ, this we agree on. But the interpretation of the dogma allows different flavours of membership. (How many official sects are there?) I can see how having people like this would embarrass those who interpret the dogma in a more peaceful way, but it still does not alter the fact, that these people call themselves Christian and pre-port to follow their interpretation of dogma.

Being an atheist, there's no dogma to follow. No books to interpret and it says nothing at all about the person, other than he/she rejects the claims of people who profess a particular knowledge for the existence of a god(s).

Atheist is to theism, like baldness is to hair colour, or not collecting stamps is to hobbies.

But the interpretation the status of not believing in God can have some consequences. You don't want laws based on any religious belief. You don't want religion interfering with anything in the public sphere, including education and government. The interpretation of what atheism entails separates non-believers into strong or weak atheists. The strong atheist is, IMO, more likely to be more radical in his approach. Harris vs. Shermer is perhaps an example. Shermer refers to himself as agnostic and is a teddy bear compared to Harris or Hitchens when it comes to militance. The spectrum can go from "I don't know if there's a god or not - let's look into that issue," to "there is no god - let's burn churches." You would say that "atheism" as a concept has nothing to do with burning churches, so in describing someone who did that you would probably want to call them criminals, but would object to the atheist label as being irrelevant. Likewise, I see the militia group as terrorist, and object to the "Christian" appellation, regardless of what they call themselves. This, of course, calls the whole idea of labels into question.

Nope. Sorry, adding prefixes and the like strong, millitant, fundamental etc, is adding extra meaning to "atheist". I'll say this slowly this time being an atheist says nothing at all about the person, other than he/she rejects the claims of people who profess a particular knowledge for the existence of a god(s).

All else is either self imposed or media imposed "extras."
Anyone who wants to shut religion down are more commonly known as an "anti-theist" as Hitch described himself. But they can STILL be an atheist, agnostic blah blah...


I mean.... militant atheist??? What the fuck..... "I reject your claims and I have a gun."

The way I'm reading both of you, I think you're in agreement. I think Bruce is making a good point about how we ascribe values and actions to everyone, based on labels and our error in doing so.


Bruce, I'm a strong atheist, but I don't want to burn churches. There are some beautifully converted ones in the city of churches, Adelaide.

[Warren Dew]

Looks like this was just a witch hunt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

[amok]

Looks like this was just a witch hunt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

From the story:

He had bizarre beliefs: Stone suspected Germany and Singapore had aircraft stationed in Texas, and thousands of Canadian troops were poised to take over Michigan. He said the government put computer chips in a flu vaccine.

[Coito ergo sum]

He has a point about Canada. It seems the Canadians have massed themselves right on the Canadian side of every bridge from Canada to the US. Coincidence....?