Ashamed of what America has become...

[bandaidwoman]

Re: Ashamed of what America has become...

We love how this country defends a person's beliefs, no matter how ridiculous, we don't have such freedom back home. Outside of Taiwan and Hong Kong, I can't post any anti President Hu rhetoric on facebook etc. I can't condemn their pollution problems in Beijing and Shanghai.

The only thing that is strange to a country with mostly athiests ( many brands of buddism are philosophies and do not believe in a God), is how this country views with absolute distrust of us athiests. 90% of scientists in this country are athiests, we are the bedrock of research and development, and the much loved and quoted from the GOP is Ayn Rand, who is herself a athiest, yet we get vilified. The fact that a Scientologist that believes thetans inhabit our bodies has a higher chance of being elected as president than an athiest is ludicrous considering heads of states in countries like iceland, Australia, New Zealand etc. are athiests is strange.

[bandaidwoman]

Re: Ashamed of what America has become...

Good points, well taken. I don't understand how the right wants to control fertility. I consider myself part of the right and I have never felt atheists are incapable of being citizens. I have several friends that I work with who are atheist or agnostic. We work together and go out for dinner or other activities. I know people who are athiest that are better citizens and have better morals than some of my friends who are calling themselves Christians. Its not my job to make anyone believe anything. Its a free Country to believe as you see fit. In my mind God gives us all that free will to believe or reject him. That doesnt make you a good or bad person either way. I dont believe in the god of islam or buddism but I know many of its people live a more pure life than I do.

You sound like my husband who is a southern baptist. Baptists used to be progressive, afterall , they sided with Jefferson on the seperation of church and state and know that no human can judge others but God, but, unfortunately, at least in the South, they have become less progressive and more regressive. Of course I don't lump all christians together, my Quaker father and his religion has always promoted abolition and female egalitariansim ( afterall, Susan B Anhtony started off as a Quaker). It's why he married my mother, who at the time was Buddist and let us find our own way.

[Guest]

Re: Ashamed of what America has become...

We love how this country defends a person's beliefs, no matter how ridiculous, we don't have such freedom back home. Outside of Taiwan and Hong Kong, I can't post any anti President Hu rhetoric on facebook etc. I can't condemn their pollution problems in Beijing and Shanghai.

The only thing that is strange to a country with mostly athiests ( many brands of buddism are philosophies and do not believe in a God), is how this country views with absolute distrust of us athiests. 90% of scientists in this country are athiests, we are the bedrock of research and development, and the much loved and quoted from the GOP is Ayn Rand, who is herself a athiest, yet we get vilified. The fact that a Scientologist that believes thetans inhabit our bodies has a higher chance of being elected as president than an athiest is ludicrous considering heads of states in countries like iceland, Australia, New Zealand etc. are athiests is strange.

Sweety it goes both ways in regards to that though.Scientists think of people who are not athiests as fools who cannot back up their beliefs with science.To me thats just as foolish.Only ignorant and close minded people think they know it all or have the answers to it all because in "todays" world they have what they call proof as to whats real or not.History has proven time and again that what the so called "scientists" and "doctors" of those times thought was fact has since been proven as craziness and dismissed.Not all things at any given time can be proven but this does not mean they dont exsist.

Im not one to believe in any conventional thinking for religion or science but I do believe in thinking anything is possible and try to learn as much as I can on all subjects.I also dont dis-respect anyones elses beliefs if they do not match my own as long as they harm noone.

Being too far on the side of religion OR science is foolish in my mind.

[bandaidwoman]

Re: Ashamed of what America has become...

Actually, most athiests don't think like that. It's just an absence of belief in God. (Remember, most Buddists are athiest but don't condemn the faithful). We don't condemn scientists who are religious, afterall, folks like Michael Faraday was a Sandemonian christian and Mendel, for heavens sake, was a friggin Monk. But when religion tries to stop teaching a branch of science ( evolution ) that has more evidence than the theory of gravity ( which right now is general relativity which has evidence from atomic clocks, gravitational lenses but not sheer volume from molecular biology, embryology, geology etc. as in Evolution ) it infuriates us. We believe religion has a place, but not when it tries to generate a generation of scientific illiterates.

[bandaidwoman]

Re: Ashamed of what America has become...

It is healthy to be skeptical of science in a way that acknowledges it is a work in progress,what is considered correct today may well be modified tomorrow. This is a healthy philisophy although outsiders see our arguing as a weakness. It's not, it's how progress is made. This change, however, is not brought about by cranks cherry-picking data but by rather skeptical scientists probing for weak spots in our current understanding, making hypotheses, and then testing whether current theory or the new hypotheses make the better prediction. It’s how and why that skepticism exists that distinguishes crankery from genuine scientific skepticism, but people have a hard time differentiating the two.

[cb1]

Re: Ashamed of what America has become...

You sound like my husband who is a southern baptist. Baptists used to be progressive, afterall , they sided with Jefferson on the seperation of church and state and know that no human can judge others but God, but, unfortunately, at least in the South, they have become less progressive and more regressive. Of course I don't lump all christians together, my Quaker father and his religion has always promoted abolition and female egalitariansim ( afterall, Susan B Anhtony started off as a Quaker). It's why he married my mother, who at the time was Buddist and let us find our own way.

Thats funny. I am Baptist but not southern. Just because an atheist has not been able to get enough votes to become president doesn't mean they are disliked or whatever. The same could be said for most minoritys right now.