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chocmushroom wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
What does that matter to any non-Christian?

What does someone saying “Sky daddy” matter to a Christian?

It's condescending and disrespectful.

And I could say that to me, Christianity is condescending and disrespectful to my intellect and reason.
And I could say that being informed that a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation is condescending and disrespectful to my values how to treat human.
And I could say that the concept that a person is due punishment due to something their ancestor did is condescending and disrespectful to my sense of justice.
And I could say that being told that your own word is not good enough if it's not backed up by an eternal punishment by a god is condescending and disrespectful to my personal integrity.

So, if a person gets upset that I mentioned "Sky daddy" should I care if their whole concept of how the world works in their view, is condescending and disrespectful to myself?

Your belief that Christianity is condescending and disrespectful to you is not the same as a Christian treating you in a condescending and disrespectful manner. You're welcome to dislike a religion, that doesn't mean you should treat its followers poorly for no reason.

Just as a Christian might not like atheism, that doesn't mean they should be demeaning to an atheist. All of those things that you listed, if a Christian said them to an atheist, would be rude. Just like an atheist making a comment about their "sky daddy" would be rude.

I'm not sure what's so difficult about disagreeing with a belief system or a religion and still being kind to its followers who you likely know nothing about outside of some concept of the label you are using to define them. Which is all that you have at this point. Christianity, among others religions, is quite diverse in terms of beliefs, and if you think every Christian believes those things you just posted, well, then you probably don't know as much about it as you think you do.

I'm not sure what's so difficult about disagreeing with a belief system or a religion and still being kind to its followers who you likely know nothing about outside of some concept of the label you are using to define them. Which is all that you have at this point. Christianity, among others religions, is quite diverse in terms of beliefs, and if you think every Christian believes those things you just posted, well, then you probably don't know as much about it as you think you do.

Most..of those are the basic tenets of Christianity that the varied Protestant's worship, while those like Methodists and baptists have different thoughts, most still believe that Christ is the only way to heaven, Genesis happened (Ancestor did), and that you need to be christian in order to be considered 'good'

Can't say for Catholic, I was protestant for the longest time under Methodist and baptist.

I'm pretty sure believing a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation isn't one of the basic tenets of Christianity, nor is telling people that their word isn't good enough if it's not backed up an eternal punishment by a god. The concept of original sin is also not something that every Christian agrees with, and interpretations of it vary widely.

 Hordini wrote:
Your belief that Christianity is condescending and disrespectful to you is not the same as a Christian treating you in a condescending and disrespectful manner. You're welcome to dislike a religion, that doesn't mean you should treat its followers poorly for no reason.

I am pretty sure that when I say sky daddy, it is being disrespectful to a religion, not its followers.

 Hordini wrote:
All of those things that you listed, if a Christian said them to an atheist, would be rude.

So thinking them is okay, saying to everyone that you believe in them is okay, but you should not say them directly. Only say that you believe in a book that says that. Uh.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
Your belief that Christianity is condescending and disrespectful to you is not the same as a Christian treating you in a condescending and disrespectful manner. You're welcome to dislike a religion, that doesn't mean you should treat its followers poorly for no reason.

I am pretty sure that when I say sky daddy, it is being disrespectful to a religion, not its followers.

 Hordini wrote:
All of those things that you listed, if a Christian said them to an atheist, would be rude.

So thinking them is okay, saying to everyone that you believe in them is okay, but you should not say them directly. Only say that you believe in a book that says that. Uh.

I'm saying you should choose your words carefully if you're actually trying to engage someone with a different belief than you in a discussion.

 Hordini wrote:
I'm pretty sure believing a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation isn't one of the basic tenets of Christianity, nor is telling people that their word isn't good enough if it's not backed up an eternal punishment by a god. The concept of original sin is also not something that every Christian agrees with, and interpretations of it vary widely.

The first one is the basis of Original Sin, that all are not purified except through asking forgiveness from Christ. It's pretty much in the bible itself and I'm not sure how it's interpreted differently.

They are not evil just 'unclean' and will not enter through to heaven.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I'm not sure how it's interpreted differently.

Just a quick Google search will answer how it is, and what the myriad of interpretations are, as well as how the idea has changed of the centuries.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
I'm pretty sure believing a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation isn't one of the basic tenets of Christianity, nor is telling people that their word isn't good enough if it's not backed up an eternal punishment by a god. The concept of original sin is also not something that every Christian agrees with, and interpretations of it vary widely.

The first one is the basis of Original Sin, that all are not purified except through asking forgiveness from Christ. It's pretty much in the bible itself and I'm not sure how it's interpreted differently.

They are not evil just 'unclean' and will not enter through to heaven.

Original sin is not in the Bible, it's a doctrine that developed afterwards based on a number of verses by a number of different people. Its interpretation varies widely and there is enough there that it could easily encompass a thread of its own. If you're not sure how it's interpreted differently, I recommend you do some research on the subject. I don't mean that in a snarky way, I mean actually look into it, it's an interesting subject.

 Ahtman wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I'm not sure how it's interpreted differently.

Just a quick Google search will answer how it is, and what the myriad of interpretations are, as well as how the idea has changed of the centuries.

I suppose when you've been within a certain faith for so long other interpretations just don't seem plausible, I suppose I shall look into it later.

 Hordini wrote:
I'm pretty sure believing a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation isn't one of the basic tenets of Christianity, nor is telling people that their word isn't good enough if it's not backed up an eternal punishment by a god. The concept of original sin is also not something that every Christian agrees with, and interpretations of it vary widely.

My original post was about the survey that an Atheists in America is thought of as trustworthy as a convicted rapist. I mentioned that to these Christians all you had to say was that someone was an Athiest, and they would think the worse of you.
So my next point was that I don't care that much if a few of my words upset people (during a discussion) was again in reference to the fact that people will think poorley of someone due to them not having any religion.

Personaly I don't think that most Chrisitans think about the little girl what I said. This does not make me wrong in pointing it out in a discussion, as following the doctrine of original sin, which I would say most Christians should follow (else why did Jesus have to die for your sins?) This is the essentially how I logical reason this 'salvation' with original sin, and what it means to five year olds. This is not how I veiw any christian I speak with, it was just a point in relation to how some christians react to Atheists.

Your point about 'nor is telling people that their word isn't good enough if it's not backed up an eternal punishment by a god' This was in direct response to the topic of the thread, namley that you must swear an oath to God.
I will spell it out here how my mind works through this logic.
Now it seems that swearing to God the ONLY acceptable oath. This must mean there will be consequences for breaking that oath. These consequences must be more due to you wearing to God, so what can God due to the oath which other cannot do? I you betray your country, they can lock you up, maybe even in america sentance you to death. This seems like a pretty bad punishment for breaking your oath. This though is what they can do for breaking your oath, with nothing to do with the God part. To me this means there must be something else whcih must happen for breaking this God oath. In my mind, and knowning the majority of the religious doctorines of the christians, this leaves me with the fear of 'Eternal Punishment by God' for breaking the oath.

Overall I know that no-one had said anything like what I wrote down. All I was doing was doing a logical extrapolation on the topic how I see it, with regards to distrusting people just due to mentioning their religious beliefs, or non.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Had an atheist friend post this picture to his FB wall:

Spoiler:

To which one of our mutual, uber-religious friends basically said "You need jesus no matter what, because only jesus has the power to save"

To my point of view, that is also rude, because it ignored the basic fact of the picture: being of one religion or another does not make one "good" or "evil"

I had also responded with "Or you can believe that Thor gives you all the strength you need, because you already have it. And then there's also the universal, unaligned power, The Power of Greyskull "

Which started off fairly serious enough (until I start talking about Greyskull of course)



@KK, I don't recall ever seeing Odin/Wotan as the "Sky Father", I do know for sure that he's sometimes referred to/named as "All-Father" though.

I find the picture good to start with, until I read it a second time, and I would have to change it if I was being both provocative and truthfull.
I would just need to change the wording, and after the last one we would have to say. Athiesm does not inform you how to live your life, it's just a lack of belief in a God or gods.

Maybe Zeus is the Sky Father. Maybe I have just got a lot of ancient religion stuff jumbled up.

 Hordini wrote:
I'm saying you should choose your words carefully if you're actually trying to engage someone with a different belief than you in a discussion.

Do not worry about me. Back in first year of ÉNS Lyon, I had one friend who was at the same time very religious and obviously very uncomfortable and unwilling to talk about it. I never spoke of “sky daddy” with her. It turns out she did apostasy afterward, she was not comfortable talking about it because it did not actually made sense to her but she stick to it because she came from a very religious family (yeah, by the way, she came from the U.S. ). Going all aggressive on her would have been a real jerk move. But if someone is very arrogant about his believes, I would have no moral restraint toward hurling sky daddy to that person!

Just going to throw this out there, most of this thread has focused on the ramifications this has on atheists and polytheists, but nobody has mentioned those faiths (mostly monotheistic Christian derivatives) which stipulate that one may not swear an oath to God, as to do so violatss the commandment not to use Gods name in vain.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
, has anyone heard of the USAF discriminating against atheists,

Yes, actually, though not in an official capacity. I've known a number of atheists and pagans in the USAF(my wife isn't one, but she is in the AF and one of her best friends is an a-religious Officer) who are all but forced to hide their religious affiliation or lack thereof from their units for fear of unofficial persecution and discrimination. One of the GPS team commanders was actually allowed pretty much preach his literal translation dogmatic and non-evolutionary beliefs ON DUTY even after being complained about numerous times. There's very much a culture of "monotheistic religious belief or GTFO" in many AF units.

You should see the B-2 units, almost the entire aircrew are hyper-conservative christians, if not full-fledged fundamentalists, its pretty disturbing considering the implication that they are nuclear forces...

 Hordini wrote:
I'm pretty sure believing a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation isn't one of the basic tenets of Christianity

The church that I grew up in's take on this was that there's no true hard "age" at which one no longer gets the "babies get a free pass" thing. I think that many churches like the one I grew up in take a stance of "once a child KNOWS right from wrong, then they are old enough to understand the relationship with god and heaven vs. hell" And I always took that a bit further, because knowing right from wrong is a bit subjective, because by the age of 2, most kids know that touching the stove/oven in the kitchen is "wrong" but they really don't know why... and often times, many of them still won't really know why until they are 5, 6 or even 7+ years old.



@chaos, yeah, most modern christian denominations do have a New Testament prohibition on swearing oaths.... But I think that the patriotism in ignoring that, and PROVING beyond a doubt that you are not a pinko commie bastard is worth asking Jesus to forgive you taking his daddy's name in vain

Well I know when one of my friends commissioned into the USAF a couple years back he opted out of the 'so help me God' for that exact reason. I was actually surprised because he was a very religious Catholic (so much so that he was known as Catholic Steve amongst our circle of friends), but then he said he sees it as taking the Lords name in vain and I was like "oh, okay."

At the time there wasn't any issue with it, a lot of my friends opted out during their enlistments/commissioning

chaos0xomega wrote:
You should see the B-2 units, almost the entire aircrew are hyper-conservative christians, if not full-fledged fundamentalists, its pretty disturbing considering the implication that they are nuclear forces...

It was bad enough at the Air Force Academy that a Chaplain spoke out about the problem a few years ago.

I don't much care or have a very high opinion of any of the service academies, but thats neither here nor there.

The relationship between the US Air Force Academy and evangelical Christian organizations has been in the news for years now...to the point where it must be wondered if those organizations have actually infiltrated the Air Force, in which case its a national security issue, and if it weren't for the fact that so many Congressional politicians are beholden to the same organizations, this innapropriate relationship would have squashed a long time ago.

 jasper76 wrote:
The relationship between the US Air Force Academy and evangelical Christian organizations has been in the news for years now...to the point where it must be wondered if those organizations have actually infiltrated the Air Force, in which case its a national security issue, and if it weren't for the fact that so many Congressional politicians are beholden to the same organizations, this innapropriate relationship would have squashed a long time ago.

Ah but infiltration by fundamentalists is only a problem if it's a religion which is not christianity

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
The relationship between the US Air Force Academy and evangelical Christian organizations has been in the news for years now...to the point where it must be wondered if those organizations have actually infiltrated the Air Force, in which case its a national security issue, and if it weren't for the fact that so many Congressional politicians are beholden to the same organizations, this innapropriate relationship would have squashed a long time ago.

Ah but infiltration by fundamentalists is only a problem if it's a religion which is not christianity

So it would seem.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well if that happens again then ask why Hitler has a better chance of getting into heaven (if he repented his sins, then Jesus would forgive him according to the Bible) than Bill Gates, despite Hitler causing the deaths of millions whilst Bill Gates has likely saved millions due to his philanthropy.

Actually, even if he repented, Hitler has zero chance of getting into Heaven since he committed suicide(if you're of the inclination to believe in Heaven and Hell). Many Christian faiths view suicide as the ultimate sin that earns you a one way ticket to Hell regardless of what you did previously because you're taking life and death out of God's hands and only God has the right to determine when someone lives or dies.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well if that happens again then ask why Hitler has a better chance of getting into heaven (if he repented his sins, then Jesus would forgive him according to the Bible) than Bill Gates, despite Hitler causing the deaths of millions whilst Bill Gates has likely saved millions due to his philanthropy.

Actually, even if he repented, Hitler has zero chance of getting into Heaven since he committed suicide(if you're of the inclination to believe in Heaven and Hell). Many Christian faiths view suicide as the ultimate sin that earns you a one way ticket to Hell regardless of what you did previously because you're taking life and death out of God's hands and only God has the right to determine when someone lives or dies.

That probably goes into a theological debate that would require a whole separate thread

 d-usa wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well if that happens again then ask why Hitler has a better chance of getting into heaven (if he repented his sins, then Jesus would forgive him according to the Bible) than Bill Gates, despite Hitler causing the deaths of millions whilst Bill Gates has likely saved millions due to his philanthropy.

Actually, even if he repented, Hitler has zero chance of getting into Heaven since he committed suicide(if you're of the inclination to believe in Heaven and Hell). Many Christian faiths view suicide as the ultimate sin that earns you a one way ticket to Hell regardless of what you did previously because you're taking life and death out of God's hands and only God has the right to determine when someone lives or dies.

That probably goes into a theological debate that would require a whole separate thread

Most likely.

This seems highly relevant.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
I'm pretty sure believing a five year old girl is an evil person who deserves eternal damnation isn't one of the basic tenets of Christianity, nor is telling people that their word isn't good enough if it's not backed up an eternal punishment by a god. The concept of original sin is also not something that every Christian agrees with, and interpretations of it vary widely.

The first one is the basis of Original Sin, that all are not purified except through asking forgiveness from Christ. It's pretty much in the bible itself and I'm not sure how it's interpreted differently.

They are not evil just 'unclean' and will not enter through to heaven.

A child is already clean and innocent by virtue of the fact that they are too young to be held accountable.

 Kojiro wrote:
This seems highly relevant.

@usairforce Sad that we have become so WEAK to make sure someone's feelings don't get hurt!!!!! Weak leadership trickles down!

That tells me this individual is narrow minded and a idiot.

 d-usa wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well if that happens again then ask why Hitler has a better chance of getting into heaven (if he repented his sins, then Jesus would forgive him according to the Bible) than Bill Gates, despite Hitler causing the deaths of millions whilst Bill Gates has likely saved millions due to his philanthropy.

Actually, even if he repented, Hitler has zero chance of getting into Heaven since he committed suicide(if you're of the inclination to believe in Heaven and Hell). Many Christian faiths view suicide as the ultimate sin that earns you a one way ticket to Hell regardless of what you did previously because you're taking life and death out of God's hands and only God has the right to determine when someone lives or dies.

That probably goes into a theological debate that would require a whole separate thread

Yeah, that's definitely up for debate (more about the suicide, rather than the Hitler).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kojiro wrote:
This seems highly relevant.

So now they're like all the other branches again in this regard. Good.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well if that happens again then ask why Hitler has a better chance of getting into heaven (if he repented his sins, then Jesus would forgive him according to the Bible) than Bill Gates, despite Hitler causing the deaths of millions whilst Bill Gates has likely saved millions due to his philanthropy.

Actually, even if he repented, Hitler has zero chance of getting into Heaven since he committed suicide(if you're of the inclination to believe in Heaven and Hell). Many Christian faiths view suicide as the ultimate sin that earns you a one way ticket to Hell regardless of what you did previously because you're taking life and death out of God's hands and only God has the right to determine when someone lives or dies.

My faith holds that only those with perfect, undeniable knowledge of God that rebel against it will go to hell. I am fairly certain Hitler did not have that knowledge.

Relapse wrote:

My faith holds that only those with perfect, undeniable knowledge of God that rebel against it will go to hell. I am fairly certain Hitler did not have that knowledge.

I was raised by Pentecostals. Do I get off too?

 daedalus wrote:

Relapse wrote:

My faith holds that only those with perfect, undeniable knowledge of God that rebel against it will go to hell. I am fairly certain Hitler did not have that knowledge.

I was raised by Pentecostals. Do I get off too?

I was influenced with Buddhism as I was growing up so yes