1. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57541 by Shatite on July 19, 2007 at 5:39 pm

dgr8test97:

The fact that your posts are filled with ad hominem attacks is telling that you are/were personally offended by Hitchens. Perhaps his attack on Buddhism touched a sensitive nerve related to your ancestry?

First, you call him an arrogant idiot. Then you turn around in Fox News fashion and refer to studies in humanities as BS as if to invalidate him as a whole. Perhaps he was wrong about that aspect of WWII Japan. Perhaps he lacks subject matter expertise on certain topics. But that in no way invalidates his primary arguments against religion and its many followers. If you agree with those main arguments, but wish to correct his errors, please state as much and leave the ad hominems and poor debating to the religious.

This sounds to me that you simply don't like him as a person, and as such are unwilling to lend any credit. I can understand how he can be offensive to people, and I agree that he does come off as arrogant at times. However, if you can imagine the types of people he has to deal with on a regular basis, it becomes more understandable. The devout are the toughest and most stubbornly ignorant people to debate, and he does this essentially full time.

If he offended you in the way I suspect, please just ignore it and move on to listening to someone you enjoy.

2. Christians and Atheists to Debate Existence of God in First-Ever 'NIGHTLINE FACE OFF'

Comment #37125 by Shatite on May 3, 2007 at 12:36 pm

The fact that the media is in business to make ratings and money rather than to inform people rarely gets any more apparent than when discussing religion. Time and time again atheists are either misrepresented if not left out altogether. I am still waiting for a nationally broadcasted program here in the states that gives people like Prof. Dawkins more than 3 minutes of time.

I wish the best for the RRS, but I fear that this is going to be more of the same. We shall see.

3. Army to EO Reps: 'Discrimination Against Atheists OK'

Comment #36313 by Shatite on April 30, 2007 at 10:35 pm

When I went through Basic Combat Training at Fort Leonard Wood several years back, they took us off post for a "day off" in a rural town nearby. We were led to believe that it was simply going to be a mini-R&R experience, but it turned out to be one long sermon as they herded all of us into a Church and kept us there for the majority of the day. Funny, I don't remember them asking if anyone wanted to participate or if everyone was even Christian for that matter.

The reason things like this happen is simply because the military draws its ranks from society. As such, most people in the military reflect the religious demographics of the nation by being overwhelmingly Christian. Unlike society, however, soldiers in the military have hardly any authority to oppose institutional religious bigotry, especially those amongst the enlisted ranks. The religious know this, and take every advantage of it.

When given the opportunity, the Christian majority in this nation can and would dissolve the rights of others as they pridefully shove their garbage down the throats of everyone else without batting an eye.

4. Then Call it God

Comment #30802 by Shatite on April 9, 2007 at 10:14 pm

I believe a more accurate depiction for much of history would be:

"I don't understand"

"You WILL call it God, or burn at the stake"

5. The Case for Teaching The Bible

Comment #27778 by Shatite on March 26, 2007 at 4:47 pm

It is no secret that the U.S. is at the moment overwhelmingly Christian and numerous times has our Constitution been violated by zealots taking advantage of this popularity.

That said, I am convinced that most "Christians" living in the country today are mainly if not specifically associated with it simply because they believe in God. They are then, in my opinion, associating that single belief with the religion that is most familiar to them and so it perpetuates like a plague to successive generations who are taught that faith is more important than knowledge.

The overwhelming ignorance of what exactly is in the Bible and even the most basic tenants of the religion such as the ten commandments seem to substantiate this, in my view at least. Though it may be a small sample of the population, I have personally seen and known many people to espouse Christianity yet seem uninterested in actually reading the Bible. Those that do seem to focus on only the "positive" aspects of it and cherry pick what rules which they will abide. It also seems that many people who try to interpret their dogma in efforts to coincide with science only do so to fulfill a psychological need to believe.

Unfortunately, Christianity and religious revivalism have taken such a hold on this country that the question of whether or not one believes in god is automatically assumed to be synonymous with whether or not one is a Christian. Throw in some revisionist history, a lack of education, and especially the sheep mentality bred in Church and you have ingredients for what we now face.

6. 'They Tried To Teach My Baby Science'

Comment #26553 by Shatite on March 20, 2007 at 9:58 am

Venator, your avatar is hilarious.

7. Beyond Stones & Bones

Comment #25303 by Shatite on March 11, 2007 at 10:32 pm

The history of human evolution and indeed evolution in general is fascinating to me. However, I am more interested in what our future might hold. For us, life today tends to be much less brutal than in the past given our developed technology and ability to manipulate the environment. Will evolution yield as dramatic changes to our species in the coming millenia as in the past?

What will future humans be like? I suspect that the next major evolutionary changes in our species will come about in the distant future when we start exploring and living in space for extended periods of time to include permanent settlements.

Even several months in space can yield changes in bone density and muscle structure. Imagine what a human would look like who had been living in a zero or low gravity environment for years - or even a human who had been born and grown up in space. Would such a human ever be able to come back and survive on Earth?

8. U.S. Mint goof creates 'Godless dollars'

Comment #24945 by Shatite on March 9, 2007 at 12:13 pm

There has been an incredible amount of revisionist history on part of the Christians. Living in the bible belt, I can say from personal experience that many if not most Christians don't even know the history behind the national motto's much less the reasons for their inception.

I think it is assumed that because most people in America are Christian today, then it must have been that way if not more so back when the nation was founded. This then must somehow extend to believing that we were founded on Christianity.

It is amazing to me that religious people feel like a component of their freedom is to shove their dogma in everyone's face to include government institutions rather than confine it to private property in a legal manor.

9. How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam

Comment #24766 by Shatite on March 8, 2007 at 11:44 am

The attempts at rationalizing the bloodthirsty, genocidal, homicidal, oppressive, misogynistic literal texts of Christianity and Islam are absolutely frightening.

I don't know about the lot of you, but I am sick of the pathetic attempts of the religious to interpret their way around these issues. I can understand trying to derive symbolism and meaning out of some of the stories but I just don't see how you can rationalize direct commands given by god to kill and similar such instances.

Then again, these are the same people who espouse the belief that those not adhering to their faith will suffer for all eternity.

Most Muslims and Christians living around the world can indeed be good, peaceful people. That does not automatically mean that their religions are so. This, in my opinion, is because of their willingness to turn a blind eye or worse, explain away all of the horrors contained within their religious texts. And eventually, after years of fine tuned indoctrination, there will then have developed a psychological need to believe which is then fulfilled by their ridiculous attempts at interpretation - one of the last straws keeping religion alive in the face of science and reason.

10. Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places

Comment #23879 by Shatite on March 3, 2007 at 10:03 am

The problem is that the world is full of religious apologists who seem to think that religion is off limits to criticism and scrutiny. People are used to having their backsides kissed and are allowed to go on willfully ignorant. Then when RD comes into the picture, his blunt criticism has a shock effect on people which typically results in a slew of ad hominems as we have seen.