Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Respect: Atheist Style

1001 Atheist Reasons To Respect Disrespect:
Respect for Religion

"Respect” is Religion’s Cover to do what it Wants

How many times have you been in an argument with a theist, either in person or via the Internet, and they’ve at some point spoken the magic words...

“If you’re an atheist that’s fine, but you should respect my beliefs.”

Argh! A nightmare situation! Political correctness is pulling us away; something tells us that for some reason, we have to respect their beliefs. It’s like kryptonite to us; it is their magic umbrella that they whip out the second a little drop of logic wets their heads. Through those words, they can strut about like a triumphant peacock, safe under their respect umbrella, knowing that polite social convention prohibits us from taking further action. Well I am here to pour acid rain on that umbrella, because I don’t think we do have to respect people’s beliefs, and the beauty of this is that most theists agree with me. They just don’t know they do.

Case in point: the Westboro Baptist Church, the largest collection of nutters that Kansas has to offer, is run by possibly the most hated family in the world. At what point do people, Christian or otherwise, stand up and say,

“Yes they think all soldiers are burning in hell, as is Ghandi. Yes they think homosexuals consume faeces, yes they honestly believe that Barack Obama is literally the antichrist but...You have to respect their beliefs.”

No one says that or thinks that! No, we all treat the WBC how they deserve to be treated, and that is with ridicule. However, I will say this about the Westboro Baptist Church, they actually follow the scriptures; they’ve read them, understood them and follow them as much as the law will allow. They are the least hypocritical Christians out there, which goes to show that you’d have to be bananas to actually follow the scriptures.
Do All Cults Deserve Respect?

Nazism is another example; it wasn’t just a political movement, it was an ideology. It could be described as quasi-religious, a belief that the Aryan race was the perfect race and social groups such as homosexuals, Jews, Blacks, Slavs were inferior and needed exterminating. It’s funny, I can’t quite recall Winston Churchill giving a speech on respecting Nazism. As far as I know, almost the entire world was highly critical of Nazism. It just didn’t float our boat. We just weren’t keen on it. I’m sure poor Adolf was heartbroken the second we started persecuting his beliefs. What about the Aztec religion? Should we respect that? What if a load of people suddenly converted to Aztec belief and started sacrificing people to appease the Sun God? Should we respect that? Their religion does say they are allowed to take the beating heart out of someone before killing them by decapitation if the Sun is angry. Who are we to say that is not okay? Is it too much? Who gets to say what acceptable behaviour is?
Don't let Them Guilt You into Leaving them Alone

The reason I bring this up is because religious leaders are hiding behind this invisible shield of undeserved respect whilst enforcing laws that prohibit the movements of non-believers. The situation in Russia is a fine example of this; Putin has managed to take away the rights of LGBT citizens on grounds of religion, and his blasphemy laws restrict any backlash. Islam is carrying out horrendous tortures of women and children on a daily basis under religion’s protective wing. Christians are marching on abortion, trying and successfully managing to make it illegal in places, and falling back on “respect my beliefs” when challenged on it—which only results in desperate women doing desperate things. What makes the Holy Trinity immune to criticism? Why can we challenge Nazism, bizarre cults like Scientology and the WBC, but not Islam? Why is Islam free to do what it wants? Why can’t we point out the flaws in Christianity? In each book of the Holy Trinity there are blatant passages of hate, untruths, and complete bullshit, but for some reason we are to respect that. Both major religions are very clear how they feel about homosexuals yet for some reason I have to respect that? No I don’t respect that...I don’t respect a book that says,
“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)”

And this little gem from the Qur’ran:
“Slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out... If they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.--2:191”
I don’t have to respect books that promote this. Is there good stuff in the Bible and the Qur’ran? Sure, but there was good stuff in Nazism too. For example, Hitler was very kind to animals. Nazis made the first highway. I liked Nazi attitudes towards the working man, too. But that doesn’t mean I have to respect Nazism, and it doesn’t mean I have to respect the Holy Trinity. A line must be drawn so that religions cannot back people into a corner, hiding safely and offensively behind their phalanx of respect. Too easily and too widely is that formation arranged.
Respect Humanity not Theocracy

We weren’t respecting religion when DOMA was broken as made clear by the Republican response nor were we respecting religion when we stopped burning witches and if we are going to continue to break down the restrictive walls religion has built, we need to do a lot more disrespecting. I am NOT saying we should get out our torches and set fire to churches while chanting “atheism rules!” We need to handle this calmly, rationally and politely. Education and debate; those are the atheist weapons, and it is only with those weapons can we make people see the folly of religion. We need to
let the religious in power know they do not have the right to lord their religion over us.
If they want to go without sex, alcohol or gambling, that is their choice—but don’t make it so other people have to do the same.

Because
there is nothing quite like drunken fornication on a poker table..."
Actually, I agree with a good part of this: the parts concerned with freedom to choose (but not the rants about how abused Atheists are - they are not abused except in their fevered minds). But these days the "restrictive walls" this Atheist so fears and loathes are not built by anyone but Atheists in their Leftist personas. These days no one dares distress an Atheist/Leftist, who might faint at the microaggression of being in the presence of someone who is different - say an actual cis-white person who obviously has "cis-white privilege" regardless of actual economic or social birth status. Or gender privilege if one has not yet changed one's gender-clothes back and forth, and yet still goes into the opposite cis-lavatory. The resulting Leftist/Atheist bruhaha can lead to loss of jobs and lawsuits for those who object or even dissent.

But yes, it has been religion which, in now dimming memory has not accepted abnormal behaviors as normal. Now the abnormal is protected and the normal is "privileged" and shouted off the stage. And why not? There is no Atheist moral code, no unifying principles for acceptable behavior, much less principles for logic. Thus there is no "immoral code" either, and no Atheist standards for the maintenance of order in a civilization. And that is the actual objective of the iconoclasts, the standards destroyers, the removers of all restrictions which hamper their movement: destroy all barriers to their behaviors which they hate in civilization. With no one's behaviors judgeable or judged, all behaviors are EQUAL and not to be restricted -- and equally likely to be beyond libertine, and well into anarchy.

But total immunity is not the intent of the Atheist/Leftist either. It is only his own behaviors which are immune, and we learn that from this Atheist article above. Only those who actually subscribe to libertine anarchy are to be allowed immunity from judgment of their behaviors. Anyone who prescribes, or tries to prescribe limitation on behaviors (whoa, that would be morals: choke, gasp, swallow vomit in mouth) will be attacked, and by that he's not recommending torches this time around, just non-torch attacks (I think; maybe it's just British flashlights he means). And that, on his part, is ill-advised because no Atheist/Leftist can win a war of reasoning with an educated... um... non-Atheist.

Atheism is based in the anti-logic and hate rhetoric which infests this author. For him to claim that "education and debate" are their weapons is ludicrous. The Atheist can provide neither reasons (logical arguments based in first principles and Aristotelian deduction) nor empirical experimental, replicable, falisfiable data (real material science) which provides even a shred of evidence for Atheism. And further, the necessary support philosophy, Materialism, is demonstrably false due to its rather obvious and simplistic internal contradictions. So the poor Atheist might rant, but has no chance in a rational, logical head-butt.

Well this has been fun, watching yet another Atheist cherry pick verses and cults in order to produce a Literalist Atheist faux-analysis by which to denigrate and depreciate those who would "put restrictions which hamper the movements" of his poor, self-pitying, restricted self. It's just not clear which movements of his that it is which are hampered. Certainly not slobbering sex on a pool table.

In today's western society the main thrust in hampering is provied by AtheoLeftists who, for example, can't stand the presence of conservative arguments on their campus, so they get that microaggression stopped before it can even happen; who become ill at the sight of crosses and demand their removal for their health (gastric problems, ideologically triggered); and if anyone prays outside the confines of their own basements, the FFRF lawsuits fly in order to stop that atrocity. The concept of personal hampering is, well, relativistic, when it is asserted by an Atheist.

Still, there remain some areas of hampering, like group marriage, animal rights marriage - human/goat for example, lowering the age of marriage to 9 years old in order to accommodate those lovers who "were born that way" and are still without their New Rights, and the acceptance in the military of Trans-roaches or whatever abnormality is next. So yes, some "movement" is still "hampered", I suppose. But not much.

It appears to me -- no, it is obvious to me -- that what the author really can't stand is the actual existence of any remaining Christian (with Muslim thrown in too, because: equality). Because there might leak out of such a creature awful concepts of anachronistic (dead white man) civilization and its necessary need for restrictions on destructive behaviors, hated restrictions at least to some extent above and beyond total libertinism and behavioral anarchy (the Atheist default VOID). And that would ruin the Atheist's fragile digestion.

One last observation. I loved the author's vision of "desperate women" being deprived of shredding their progeny. Desperate women. There must have been 57,000,000 desperate women since Roe v Wade. What a mental image. And if you lay 57,000,000 dead fetuses end to end, they would reach roughly no Atheist conscience. Interesting.

H.T. to Richard Jefferies for the link.

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