Nothing says unconditional love and acceptance like Shunning. lol

I enjoy this group and the discussions amongst atheists but I do find it bothersome when we get religious people trolling this group. I certainly don't go on religious sites and masquerade as a believer, nor do I wish to convert them to rational thinking as it is none of my business until they make it my business by trying to convert me to their beliefs or try to get me to live my life according to those beliefs which I do not hold to be true.

@SnowyOwl You can lead a theist to reason, but you can't make him/her think.

@xenoview Too true, Love it.

I so disagree about being careful not to turn into a religion. That is precisely what needs to happen in order to demand equal footing with religion. I have just as much faith in my lack of a God as their have in their claim of their God. Yeah, you don't have to make sense of it...but you must treat both beliefs equally. Atheists need to start asking for tax exemption like churches, and organize to demand equity. Then social improvements will follow. Imho...

@Shaggy2018 the beauty of the world is we can disagree yet still be friends. My goal is to eliminate religious privilege entirely. It is polarizing and discriminatory at best.

Your approach is to gain religious privilege then compete with them. All that does is legitimize them and they’ve had a few thousand years head start. I see that as a losing game.

That is the best suggestion

I would happily settle for being able to further rational thought but so long as people prefer to believe in their imaginary friend in the sky it is going to be difficult. Magical thinking is much easier and there are fewer hard truths that a person needs to take personal responsibility for compared to being rational in one's thinking.
I have always had a unique sense of humour and found it a useful tool as a JW kid who often had to fight his way home after school. If you make people laugh then you gain popularity which means fewer enemies and if you turn that humour on your enemies and make them the butt of the joke it can be a powerful weapon that hurts more than a punch in the face. Having said that, my sense of humour is possibly more off colour than most, maybe from having seen too much in a career that had me travel a great deal and deal with some rather rough characters in the heavy construction field. Being the boss isn't everything that people tend to think it is.

@SnowyOwl Humour is good and I admire comedians who can relax things surrounding what the religions ban. However more fundamental is that religion people must get an actual benefit from speaking and acting rationally. At the moment they do not see the benefit. However we are the experts in rationality and we just have to work harder. My work here is to get people to NOT rely on being told what to do but rather work it out for yourself. I am of course talking SCIENCE but it needs a lot more people to appreciate sciences and have FAITH in the power of the human mind.

Quite true, and also about the boring part with many UU congregations. It's hit and miss, but you're right, Unitarians are mostly Atheists and Agnostics who want a church simply to enjoy some community and also have a place for their kids to get some form of religious ed and community without going to a Christian or Catholic church for it.

Also, like Sticks would say, for many non-believers, bars are a secular form of church for them where they can enjoy familiar rituals and experience community with like-minded folks....

The Xians have a thousand year start. But we have begun, perhaps more so here in Europe than in the US, we do have secular learning groups, like the University Of The Third Age, public libraries, many secular charities all with shops on the high street, atheist groups, some of which in this county often perform weddings and funerals, perhaps more than church ones now, and web sites like this of course.

Atheist and Agnostic Unitarian Universalists

[uua.org]

@TheMiddleWay Its hard to define a group by a negative. There are not many, we don't play golf societies, either.

@Fernapple The good shepherd tends his flock and his work is made easier by the help of well trained dogs who corral the sheep. With kittens all you have to do is hold some goodies in your hand and they tend to come to you.

I guess that there are some people who would like to promote a new religion under the guise of science. However, that has been tried and is generally regarded, appropriately, as pseudo-science as in Scientology. Yes, it does attract a variety of people whose desire to belong exceeds their desire to understand, hence, its popularity among some people. The Wooden Horse of Troy aroused the curiosity of some people...

@Fernapple Broadly speaking, I agree with you, however, the main difference is nobody decides what another person is going to view or on what platform he or she will air their views, which, like here, will be as varied as the members.

A religious viewpoint is limited by the beliefs of its members.

@ASTRALMAX True, but of course that means that there is no unifying direction for the collective culture either. And sometimes a unity of direction is a good thing even if it is the wrong direction, at the very least it stops dangerous divisions developing. In modern America today we see that happening along lines of race, class, and politics, but the divisions are perhaps made even worse, by the fact that, the same fault line which divides the nation along those lines, is exactly the same fault line which divides those who get their understanding and morals from religion, and those who get their understanding and morals from secular education.

In the end if you want to avoid violent and destructive civil strife, there is something to be said for promoting a single moral direction, perhaps not to the degree of becoming oppressive, but certainly to the point where most people hold enough of an affection for most of it, that they can reach compromise on most things.

And if you are going to promote a single set of values, as the main if not the only, direction for your society. Then unfortunately you are forced to pick one and one only, because the point of directions is that you can never go in two at once. And if you are going to pick one, then I would choose the best one if you can, which to my mind means the ideals of reason, which are philosophy, scepticism, secular education and yes science.

@Fernapple I wholeheartedly agree with you.