928 thoughts on “Open Conversation Part 3”

  1. I am actually glad that she’s gone tbh. I’m sure she’ll think that is because i’m scared of ur debating and argumentative prowess but I think I’m just too tired to see crazy people online.

    I’m sure she’s somewhere gloating that she “won”. I didn’t feel defeated at all, but I did get completely exhausted. It felt like an Abbott and Costello routine.

    Frankly, I’ve enjoyed the conversation and banter among those left more without those interjections.

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  2. well, Ruth, I actually learned some interesting things while here exposing Kathy.
    It has been enjoyable.

    Oh, I definitely learned a lot. So, yeah, there is that.

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  3. Why Atheists Cannot Claim To Be Moral

    I just ran across this website,
    a christian lying about his religion, hating on atheists.

    american christians really do need to suffer some REAL persecution.
    let’s see how their faith holds up under that.

    atheists have got to step up to these frauds and put them in their christian place,
    washing our feet with their hair and bitter tears, just like jeeezzzuuuuussss sez!!!!!!!

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  4. with the exception of a handful, I actually hate Christians,

    reflecting on my past, every act of violence or abuse was at the hands of a Christian,
    no one has told me more lies than Christians,
    no one has caused me more pain and suffering than Christians.
    no one has ever exhibited to me hate, racism and bigotry like a Christian.

    screw them all.

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  5. The page is loading slowly again, so that may be part of the reason there’s been less activity. I’ve been catching up on the latest comments posted the last couple of days and I so wished I hadn’t been so busy on the day you all had a great discussion about your deonversion experiences. Whiles it been about a decade since I was “officially” deconverted, I didn’t talk about nor write about my experience until recently when I started my second blog at the end of June last year. Reading the experiences of others has also been cathartic. I could understand and relate to what Dave said with his wife making a life-long commitment with a Christian. I also tried to put myself in the shoes of my partner. But my partner was not that committed when we married.

    My ex husband was a Christian, and once a deacon for the 1st Baptist church, but I would have considered him a “lukewarm” Christian, meaning he was more a cultural Christian. I never really saw him express any desire to nurture an intimate relationship with the Christian god nor initiate prayer. He definitely never spent time reading the bible. But, interestingly enough, he expected me to abide by the rules regarding my place as a woman (submissive). This wasn’t the case early on in our relationship. However, the more I questioned Christianity the more demanding he became of me. He also had a mini-stroke and though he appeared to have recovered, I believe this also played a role in him becoming more fundamentally religious because of the area of the brain where the stroke took place.

    What amazed me the most about reading other people’s deconverion stories was/is how similar the thought processes were/are. I went through my deconversion pretty much alone. At the time I was questioning, which was several years before I deconvered, there were no online support groups that I was aware of, and certainly none in my community. I did share my concerns with my partner, and that would end up backfiring on me. I have no regrets though. I can’t fathom being back in that life-style ever again. It’s like night and day and I’m in the daylight, mentally, now. As an unbeliever, living in the South, it’s not fun being considered untrustworthy and pretty much hated and/or feared for not believing in the Christian god or any obvious man-made god. Moderate to liberal Christians are not as judgemental. Fundamentalists, which are abundant in the South, are the worst at prosocial behavior. They are the most prejudice, as the studies have shown since the 1950’s.

    Btw, Dave, thank you for your kind words.

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  6. I posted the link to this quote the other day when I was pressed for time but I’ll quote a couple of paragraphs from that Psychology Today article:

    “Even though religions preach love of humanity, decades of psychological research have linked religiousness with prejudice. The relationship between religiosity and various kinds of prejudice has been noted for a long time. For example, studies from the 1950s found that church-goers were more likely to hold racist views than people who never attend church.

    Holding absolutist beliefs that forbid one to question dogma and that regard the world as divided into good and evil tends to be conducive to prejudice. In contrast, religious people who value willingness to question one’s beliefs, who acknowledge that other beliefs might also contain truth, and who are non-authoritarian, tend to be less prejudiced, although not less so than non-religious people.”

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201305/belief-in-god-supports-prejudice-against-gays-and-atheists

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  7. thanks N℮üґ☼N☮☂℮ṧ , I caught that one, too. the placebo effect.
    “Atheism is immoral simply because even if God were not real, the placebo affect alone would have great value to society”.
    how ignorant.

    I have worked myself up into a lather the last 2 days, contemplating the immoral way that Christians treat and speak of athiests.

    last night I watched “I don’t have enough faith to be an athiest” with frank turek.
    http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2011/09/frank-turek-is-liar.html#.VEkRxct0yM8
    what a turd he is.

    whenever he refers to athiests he speaks as if we are all dolts, that do nothing but sputter incoherently when confronted with scripture. same with ray comfort and so many others.

    I would love to personally kick each and everyone of their asses.

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  8. Sure thing, Paul. I’m going to post a comment made by Rautakyy on Violets post. I thought he was excellent.

    “Ha! That conversation reveals what these people think is moral. I can not help it, but to me it is incredibly condescending to assume people are unable to be moral without beliefs about supernatural mind police. Is it not immoral to lie to people?

    What happens when people who have grown up not understanding ethics, so that their only reason to act humane and morally is the fear of an imagined mind police, finally do realize no such supernatural agents exist? That is indeed the wellspring from wich such monsters as Stalin and Pol Pot emerge. Ultimately, their victims and they themselves were the victims of religion, not of atheism because religion had prevented them from learning ethics and instead replaced it by this authoritarianism. Authoritorianism was at the root of their power drawn from religious beliefs. But we have equal monsters who believed in gods who even believed the same gods gave them justification to act inhumanely, like for example genrals Batista and Pinochet and many, many other military governments such as the ones in El Salvador and Greece who did not reject their gods.

    if religion is a placebo to stop the psychopat from acting unempathetically, it has failed miserably.

    But does the notion of religion as a placebo also contain the idea, that these two individuals engaged in the quoted conversation would act immorally themselves, if they lost their religious beliefs? Hear me all atheists, stop making sense with the two of them, by their own admission they might turn into monsters! Or is it only, that they have allready realized there are no gods and hold on to and argue for their religious cultural heritage only to stop other people becoming monsters by spreading the placebo? Or is this merely the last line of defence after all the intellectual arguments for gods have failed?

    Are atheists responsible for telling people that no mind police exists? Yes. If we are unable to also convey, that no gods are required for morality, then we have indeed failed. But the belief that religious delusion should be held only to suppress this is just creating the problem and then waiting for the situation when the lie will inevitably be revealed.

    Atheism is not a position about morals. It is a position about gods and other supernatural agents, that remain unverified claims. Morals has to be drawn from other sources – natural to all humans regardless of their particular beliefs about the supernatural – such as empathy and reason. Whose morals is drawn from religion anyway? Thomas de Torquemada’s? Arbitrary commands from ignorant ancient people are not a very solid base for informed moral. They are merely tribal moralism. But that is what the religious conservatives want and expect – tribal moralism. It is the safeguard of the small and selfish mind.

    If morals is drawn from divine commands in fear of supernatural reprizal, or even in hope of afterlife rewards, it is not ethical and not even moral at all. Moral is to act for what you believe is ethical regardless wether you are going to be rewarded, or punished.”

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  9. N℮üґ☼N☮☂℮ṧ,

    when I was a child about 7yrs old, there were 2 southern Baptist churches in my town, one white, one black.

    the black church had a fire so they didn’t have a church building to hold their services.
    they asked if they could come to the white church to worship until their building could be restored.

    the white church had to debate whether or not to allow that. only one parishioner spoke up for the black church. outside of the church, many in the congregation, including my father and brother, would call that person a “nigger lover”.

    in the end, the church voted to NOT allow the blacks to attend as they felt it would be disruptive to their fellowship with Christ. they felt there would be trouble.

    so much for christian love and acceptance.

    I’m so happy I never bought into their racist views. or any of their views for that matter.

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  10. “I’m so happy I never bought into their racist views. or any of their views for that matter.”

    I didn’t either, Paul. In fact, as a believer, I never thought homosexuality was unnatural or sinful. One of my close friends was gay and he knew it by the time he was 4 even without having an understanding about sexuality. He just knew that he didn’t have the same “boy” interests as his male peers and it had nothing to do with his environment. In other words, his momma didn’t turn him into a “sissy”. His dad tried to take him out and “rough him up”.

    He was never interested in hunting or sports, though his dad tried to push that on him. He was living in Mississippi at the time, born and raised there, so you can imagine how hard it was for him. He stayed in the closet until he moved to Washington, DC to work for the government. That’s where we met. I was around 20 at the time. We worked together. So I felt fortunate to be able to get to know him, pick his brain and gain a better understanding. I knew his heart, and it was beautiful.

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  11. guys, my blood pressure is through the roof thinking about all of this.
    I’m going to have to take a break and do something good for me psyche.
    there is an art show in December and I’m going to hide in my room and paint a painting.

    here’s the rough sketch, it’s a python having a birthday party, with cake, party hat, balloons and a kitten as it’s present.
    it will be 6ft tall and 4ft wide.
    the sketch is rough, but the finish painting will be as photo realism as I can get.

    I need I good title for this painting. anyone have any thoughts on what i can call this?
    I need a really catchy title.

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  12. well, I have a fascination with the Burmese pythons that are overtaking the everglades here in FL.
    snakes represent evil to many people, and fluffy kittens are so cute.
    i’ts mostly about the ridiculous juxtaposition of the evil looking snake,
    is he going to eat the kitten? the absurdity of a snake having a birthday party.

    plus it’s going to be very colorful with the balloons and the present box and the bday cake.

    my thought when I sketched it was:
    “wow, this is some really good reefer I’m smoking”

    LOL

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  13. “when I was eleven, my parents had such a problem with me being so effeminate, they took me to a specialist that cured homosexuality with hormones and scripture, it was a nitemare. no child should have to endure such bullshit.”

    I’m so sorry you went through that. I can remember my friend, ironically his name was Paul, too, going through this with his father who was hell bent on making a “man” out of him at age 4. Him mother and grandmother were more accepting of his personality, but it seemed his father was not.

    I can believe that about the white church not wanting blacks to attend their church. The prejudice and racism is still alive and well among many white evangelicals.

    July 2012

    “Members of the congregation of First Baptist Church in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, have rejected a black couple from marrying in their church. A predominantly white church, this would have been the first black couple to marry there and the congregation raised objections to having the ceremony at its establishment.”

    http://dailyoftheday.com/black-couple-rejected-from-getting-married-at-predominantly-white-church/

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  14. “’ts mostly about the ridiculous juxtaposition of the evil looking snake, is he going to eat the kitten?”

    That’s what I thought. Poor “Satan”, he’s the scapegoat of the “Almighty” psychopath.

    my thought when I sketched it was:
    “wow, this is some really good reefer I’m smoking”

    LMAO

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  15. I am actually glad that she’s gone tbh.” – I was kinda enjoying having her around, now I may have to go out and buy a punching bag. But seriously, I do think she was beginning to mellow her rhetoric a bit. I was hoping that with enough time, she might actually evolve to the point where she had an independent thought for a change.

    Speaking of evolution (and I was), I posted this on another blog, but it seems appropriate here, as well:

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  16. I would suggest heartily, based on my experiences, that it is a good idea to avoid Christian “Businessmen”.

    That symbol of a fish on their bumper (derived from the ancient pagan tradition of Nimrod who was cut up and the fish swallowed his… oh, never mind) more than suggests there is something “fishy” about their business.

    (And never mind the $850 I lost to a “Christian Businessman” this past summer because he never heard of “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness” and “Thou Shalt Not Steal”. It’s a good thing I observe “Thou Shalt Not Kill” for reasons not related to religion at all.)

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