Posted on 01/26/2005 9:46:21 AM PST by 7thson
When I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I saw a car covered with sacrilegious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention. I’m sure he was also seeking to elicit anger from people of faith. The anger helps the atheist to justify his atheism. And, all too often, the atheist gets exactly what he is looking for.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
> I saw a car covered with sacrilegious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention
Oddly enough... I saw a car covered with religious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention.
I don't believe in athiests...
I think atheists can be some of the most interesting, intelligent people around, as long as it's not Christianity or moral issues being discussed.
I'm an atheist, but I don't have ANY bumper stickers on my vehicles, much less sacreligious ones. It's my opinion that every person's beliefs with regard to religion are that person's beliefs and that they ought to be left alone about them.
I don't encourage anyone to disbelieve, and I don't particularly welcome people encouraging me to believe. My atheism is the product of a great deal of study and thought, and slogans are not going to change my mind.
But I don't mind if others believe in deities. It doesn't affect me.
There's no future in athiesm.
It was a great book...Read "The Great Divorce" too!
I'd use a hidden P.A. system with lots of reverb and speak in a slow deep voice.
: ^ )
I think the system is smart enough now such that, if we are required to excerpt it and we don't, the system will not let us post it until we do. Unfortunately, it can be discouraging to put a lot of effort into properly formatting the article, only to find out at Post time that either it must be excerpted or cannot be posted at all. ;)
Actually, I think, to be fair, there tends to be a difference between religious and atheistic bumper stickers. Those religious are usually in the "Hurrah for Jesus" mold, whereas those atheistic tend to be along the lines of "Ditch Religion and Grow Up." I think it is accurate to say that the atheistic ones are more designed to irritate and provoke.
Although I am a very lapsed Catholic, you pretty much sum up what I believe. Although "agnostic" is probably a better term. Also, I might be something of a Deist, depending on what I just read, but officially, I claim publicly to be an athiest on religous issues.
I find I am much more able to engage liberals with that background. They seem to think that all conservatives are bible-thumpers. It is quite satisfying to destroy any straw men right up front. It leaves them quite disarmed.
Not strictly true.
Since the author mentions C. S. Lewis, I'm minded of a story about him. He's said to have seen a tombstone, engraved thus:
Here lies an atheist
All dressed up, and no place to go.
Lewis is said to have remarked, "I'm sure he wishes that were so."
LOL, that's one of the funniest things I've seen here in a long time! LOL
Your tag line is the cyber equivalent of a bumper sticker and it tells people the one thing that you want them to know above all other things about you. Hard to see that you want to be left alone about it.
Someone who does a great deal of study and thought can see in a second how ludicrous your statement is.
LOL, good stuff.
>>I think atheists can be some of the most interesting, intelligent people around, as long as it's not Christianity or moral issues being discussed.<<
Ug. Not me. I have a BIL who is an elitist, libertarian, atheist. (basically has a problem with rules) He literally tilts the top of his head back when he speaks at you. Since meeting him, I now know what "looking down one's nose at someone" is.
> I think it is accurate to say that the atheistic ones ...
... have a sense of humor. There are some nasty ones, of course, but that's true for both sides. ON the atheist side, you *never* see any that basically boil down to "If you don't believe waht I believe, then you're not a *real* American."
Ditto to MineralMan.
I think that talking to atheists is like talking to anyone else. If you do so with respect, you're likely to earn respect in return. I love having philosophical conversations with my church-going friends (one of whom is a Baptist minister) and wouldn't dare disrespect their beliefs. I do, however, ask the same in return. ;)
"I still remember the night I publicly declared my atheism. It was April 3rd, 1992. I was a long-haired musician, playing guitar at a bar called “The Gin” in Oxford, Mississippi. The subject of religion came up in a conversation during one of my breaks. An Ole Miss Law student, who had been an undergraduate with me at Mississippi State years before, asked me whether I was still dating my girlfriend, Sally. Then he asked why I had broken up with my previous girlfriend two years before."
I was at Ole Miss the same time. Not at the Gin, but the BSU.
The Oxford don's book is not for light-weight readers, it takes some intelligence and rationality to read through it. And it's the greatest of all non-Biblical explanations for Christianity, IMHO.
Warning: Mere Christianity makes you think about what you really believe, and why you don't believe what you don't.:)
You beat me to that one, I was too busy laughing to post any faster.
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