1) The speaker doesn't understand the concept of REspect versus respect. Respect is "esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person" and is usually learned, earned and sustained. REspect is a basic acknowledgement of others' humanity. You may dislike or even hate someone for holding beliefs opposed to yours, but if they collapsed in front of you, it's still your duty to seek or administer aid. A lesser but no less important example of REspect would be not going out of your way to make things difficult for others, because your very existence may do that anyway.

Respect is conditional and voluntary, but without REspect you're a failed human being with or without the provocation of religious beliefs.

2) In any other endeavor, the conclusions reached by the speaker would brand him an idiot. Every atheist is smarter than every religious person? Is that what this guy really believes?

3) Not all religions condemn all other religions as being false. It's not possible for the maker of this video to understand this as s/he is incapable of acknowledging the goodness wrought by religion as well as its evils.

4) The atheist is as delusional as anyone else, it's just expressed differently.

"'I'm not touching you' on a cosmic level."

Priceless.

@quantumushroom

I think you're looking for the word "empathy" when writing REspect.

1) Strawman attack. Nothing in the letter suggests what you're accusing it of.

2) No, replace "religion" with "white supremacy" (or any other form of stupid ideology) and the conclusions remain the same, without the speaker being an idiot. Atheists are smarter than religious people within the domains mentioned.

3)You have two points here that have nothing to do one with the other. First: most religions (including the worst of the lot, i.e. the Abrahamic monotheisms) do exclude all other religions. The farther one moves from this exclusivity, the closer one gets to a religion being a philosophy (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism), or woo (e.g. New Age).
Second: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg

4) Care to explain how atheism is delusional?

Wow, where do I start...
Point 1).- Of course he is an idiot, why? I bet it takes a "Smart" person to judge other by they difference, ohh yea is very "smart" to keep an argument when you know the other part is stupid, yea very "smart"

Point 2).- Ok, lets keep the word game "If you dont belive as I, your an Idiot" (and before you start whining, I know those are not the exact words, but he is saying "If you belive in a religion you are and Idiot" so he is implying that "If you dont belive as I" youre an Idiot) and where do I have heard those word...Ohh I know I know RELIGION!

Point 3).- Stalin, Mussolini, Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, Slobodan Milosevic, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, sure were/are some very nice atheist

as a personal note about the "smart atheist" I have 2 very close frieds of my one, is a Mechanical engineer and the other one barely finished High School, can you guess who's the religious one and who's the atheist?

PS
What do you call some one that does not belive in religion but strongly disagrees with what the atheist are trying to shove it down our throats
Well may be Im the idiot...

hmm my religion teaches love your enemy, love your neighbor, forgiveness and faith.

I suppose this athiest will never be learning these things from a christian.

You could say the same thing about sports fans. I don't respect anyone who doesn't support team-X.

Also, by assuming what "every religious person believes" he's judging us. Another youthful arrogance IMHO.

Yawn. Other videos on the Sift have said pretty much the same thing with much sounder logic and, frankly, better insults (see pretty much any of Christopher Hitchens videos on the subject).

Downvoted for:

1) Starting the argument with the premise that anyone who disagrees with his argument must be stupid. Can't really claim to represent informed and rational intelligence when you don't even understand the basics of logical fallacies.
2) Being apparently unaware not every religion believes the same things as Christianity (the only actual arguments made against religion are in fact specifically made against Christianity).
3) Promoting disrespecting people. Don't like their ideas? That's fine. But even Hitchens respects the person, if not the beliefs they hold or the argument they're making. Disrespecting people isn't going to get them to see your point of view and only makes the problem worse.

@hpqp

Have you read about the Stanford Prison experiment or Milgram's experiments? Both of these quite clearly prove Steven Weinberg wrong--there are in fact several things that will get good people to do bad things. And you can easily turn Weinberg's quote on its head by pointing out that religion (but not only religion) can get "bad" people (whatever that means) to do good things.

For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.

who pissed in this dudes cheerios? probably one of us mean, dumbshit, superstitious, religious peoples, huh? Grand generalizations are hilarious.

the teenage angst in the video was quite palpable

>> ^Sketch:

For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.


"if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in things only idiots do, thus making you an idiot"

thats basically what you said

It's not, but if that's how you want to put words in my mouth, then so be it. Smart people can, and do, believe stupid shit sometimes. It happens.>> ^smooman:

>> ^Sketch:
For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.

"if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in things only idiots do, thus making you an idiot"
thats basically what you said

i think its high time the "religion is the cause of all malice in the world" bullshit to stop. Stupid people do stupid things, mean people do mean things, assholes do assholey stuff. doesnt matter if theyre religious or not. if you were to rid the world of any and all religions, murder, genocide, oppression, war, and all the other bad things you seem to insist are direct causalities of religion will still be around. as long as humans are aloud to be human we will live in strife. religion is irrelevant to that end.

but what do i know im a stupid religious idiot

PS: i meant the "you's" in the plural, particularly anyone who thinks religion, specifically and exclusively, is the bane of man

>> ^Sketch:

It's not, but if that's how you want to put words in my mouth, then so be it. Smart people can, and do, believe stupid shit sometimes. It happens.>> ^smooman:
>> ^Sketch:
For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.

"if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in things only idiots do, thus making you an idiot"
thats basically what you said



well it does actually. the modifier of superstitions, in this case, idiotic, explicitly implies that the believers of such are by association, idiots. This is further enforced by your choice of diction indicating that all persons of religious persuasions believe in what you would describe as "idiotic superstitions". this is merely a debate in semantics but.....whatever. i think i know what you were trying to say. you just said it in the most absolute, presumptuous, generalized way

I stopped watching this vid after 90 seconds because it was, well, idiotic.

I find hard-core atheists to be just as irrational as hard-core religious types. Just as dogmatic and sure that they are correct.

Life is not black and white.

He actually nails it on the head. He states early on in the vid: "Your comforting little world view matter[s] more to you than the truth."

Well, yes. It does. That is why people are attracted to religion. It comforts them. "Truth" doesn't. They are scared. Humans evolved with this tendency.

You can rail and rail and rail all you want, but you can't "logic" people out of a trait that stayed with us as we evolved over thousands of years.

It is profoundly irrational to try to argue people out of religious faith.

Stick to keeping religion out of schools and out of laws. That is rational.

Invading people's hearts and minds and trying to control them is just what fanatically religious people do.

I love Hitchens and Sam Harris. I love their logic.

This vid? Blech.

I think you're looking for the word "empathy" when writing REspect.

>>> That's correct. REspect is the treatment resulting from empathy.

1) Strawman attack. Nothing in the letter suggests what you're accusing it of.

>>> The Bozo in question wrote, "I have nothing but contempt for you (the religious)." Therefore I would not expect REspect or empathy from such an individual. He's set himself up as an enemy, needlessly, I might add. Look at all the angry responses here. Probably what he was after.

2) Atheists are smarter than religious people within the domains mentioned.

>>> What "domains" are we considering? Science? Famous Scientists Who Believed in God There are plenty of dumb atheists as well as dumb religious people. There are also atheists who have not a whit of curiosity about the universe.

3)You have two points here that have nothing to do one with the other.

They're close cousins.

First: most religions (including the worst of the lot, i.e. the Abrahamic monotheisms) do exclude all other religions.

Bozo said "you realize all the OTHER religions are wrong" in blanket condemnation.

The farther one moves from this exclusivity, the closer one gets to a religion being a philosophy (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism), or woo (e.g. New Age).

You forget Hinduism, a dynamic, evolving faith older then Christianity, with billions of gods. It accepts other paths as legit. But even as Hinduism is weighted down with a caste system, Christianity has broken barriers around the world across all nations and races and even within itself.

Second: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg

Weinberg needs to read up on communism, a much more potent enemy of human dignity and worth. Communist countries are run by a--holes who believe they are the only true gods. Religion can be abusive, insulting and dehumanizing in the wrong hands, just like politics and language. However, there is no atheist tradition declaring 'All life has value.' Einstein once said 'Either everything is a miracle or nothing is.' The lack of sanctity endemic to atheism places it on the side of nothing being miraculous. It doesn't mean atheists are bad people, it means they have no reference outside of their own feelings, which leads us to...

4) Care to explain how atheism is delusional?

I said the atheist is delusional, not atheism, and I'm not referring to what atheists think of deities at all.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it? This means you and I can rationalize anything at any time. We lie to ourselves ALL THE TIME to preserve our own egos and pride, with a subconscious dominantly seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. A single human is not even a unified consciousness but a collection of competing desires and savage impulses. It's a miracle in itself that anyone ever stops to look outside of themselves.

The atheist has as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as anyone else, but I'm still siding with Ben Franklin: If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?

^concerning the above comments, I will concede two points: first, this is obviously an angry rant that is not to be taken too seriously (cf. the comic it is transcribed from). Second, the author clearly has Christianity (and the Abrahamic monotheisms in general) in mind when using the term "religion", causing its use to partially exclude certain religions.

That being said, the sentiment of contempt and disrespect for people's refusal to use their "god-given" brains in the domains of ethics, superstitious beliefs, etc., is perfectly understandable, and does not mean that the bearer of such sentiment has no empathy for the human being, even when considering said human being an idiot.

An extreme example: I have nothing but contempt and not one iota of respect for the WBC gang, and yet I would rush to their guru's aid (as probably any one of you commentators would) if he were to be hit by a truck. Does that mean I think he's not stupid? Or suddenly have respect for him? NO. Only basic human empathy.

As for the Weinberg quote, yes, I am aware of the Stanford and Milgram experiments, which show the effect of authority on human behaviour. Weinberg's quote implicitly integrates those experiments; indeed, what greater and more unquestionable authority is there than God(s)? How many disgusting, unethical and barbaric actions and wordlviews are continually sanctioned by religious authority (and the weight of the sheeple's adherence thereto), that no self-respecting ethical and empathetic person would otherwise accept?

As for Communism, it is nothing but a state religion, with the Party replacing God. I won't bother addressing the moronic argument of "Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc...", which has been thoroughly debunked by many speakers far more eloquent than myself (e.g. Hitchens).

Finally, @quantumushroom, your answer about atheists being delusional not only makes no sense (unless you're teetering into solipsism), but quoting the Bible does not help your case in the least. Benjamin Frankin's comment seems to be a cynical criticism of the masses' stupidity and immorality, not a sanction of religion's merit.

"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it." Benjamin Franklin

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Benjamin Franklin

>> ^bareboards2:

I stopped watching this vid after 90 seconds because it was, well, idiotic.
I find hard-core atheists to be just as irrational as hard-core religious types. Just as dogmatic and sure that they are correct.
Life is not black and white.
He actually nails it on the head. He states early on in the vid: "Your comforting little world view matter[s] more to you than the truth."
Well, yes. It does. That is why people are attracted to religion. It comforts them. "Truth" doesn't. They are scared. Humans evolved with this tendency.
You can rail and rail and rail all you want, but you can't "logic" people out of a trait that stayed with us as we evolved over thousands of years.
It is profoundly irrational to try to argue people out of religious faith.
Stick to keeping religion out of schools and out of laws. That is rational.
Invading people's hearts and minds and trying to control them is just what fanatically religious people do.
I love Hitchens and Sam Harris. I love their logic.
This vid? Blech.


I doubt the point of this vid (or the comic it stems from) is to convince theists, but rather to vent and let viewers vent by proxy. That's the impression I got anyway.

I guess I am ranting back. That's fair, isn't it?

[edit] I'm not a theist. I am a humanist who thinks that atheists can be as controlling and zealot as the worst theist. Hence the rant.


>> ^hpqp:

>> ^bareboards2:
I stopped watching this vid after 90 seconds because it was, well, idiotic.
.

I doubt the point of this vid (or the comic it stems from) is to convince theists, but rather to vent and let viewers vent by proxy. That's the impression I got anyway.

Moving this video to Sketch's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

>> ^bareboards2:

I guess I am ranting back. That's fair, isn't it?
[edit] I'm not a theist. I am a humanist who thinks that atheists can be as controlling and zealot as the worst theist. Hence the rant.

>> ^hpqp:
>> ^bareboards2:
I stopped watching this vid after 90 seconds because it was, well, idiotic.
.

I doubt the point of this vid (or the comic it stems from) is to convince theists, but rather to vent and let viewers vent by proxy. That's the impression I got anyway.



Fair enough.

One other rational act that I think atheists should concentrate on, rather than berating the truly faithful.... (other than the supremely rational fight to keep religion out of the schools and out of the laws.)

Speaking up that being an atheist is a moral choice. Putting up billboards, especially in the Bible Belt, announcing that there ARE atheists out in the world and giving hope to all the atheists in the closet who feel pressured to go to church to "fit in".

An It Gets Better Project for Teen and Adult Atheists.

That is rational.

Fighting thousands of years of human evolution and people's personal choices? You look like idiots and no better than the worst fundamental Christian railing at the heathens.

You are right, I am not going to get into an argument about semantics with you, because that would make me a complete idiot. If it helps for me to compartmentalize it for you, then yes, where your beliefs in religion, superstition and the supernatural are concerned, I actively think that you are an idiot. Does that clear it up and make you feel better? Now you can go do rocket science, or brain surgery or any number of things that probably make you a great deal smarter than me in a possibly infinite minus 1 number of subjects in peace.>> ^smooman:

>> ^Sketch:
It's not, but if that's how you want to put words in my mouth, then so be it. Smart people can, and do, believe stupid shit sometimes. It happens.>> ^smooman:
>> ^Sketch:
For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.

"if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in things only idiots do, thus making you an idiot"
thats basically what you said


well it does actually. the modifier of superstitions, in this case, idiotic, explicitly implies that the believers of such are by association, idiots. This is further enforced by your choice of diction indicating that all persons of religious persuasions believe in what you would describe as "idiotic superstitions". this is merely a debate in semantics but.....whatever. i think i know what you were trying to say. you just said it in the most absolute, presumptuous, generalized way

>> ^Sketch:

You are right, I am not going to get into an argument about semantics with you, because that would make me a complete idiot. If it helps for me to compartmentalize it for you, then yes, where your beliefs in religion, superstition and the supernatural are concerned, I actively think that you are an idiot. Does that clear it up and make you feel better? Now you can go do rocket science, or brain surgery or any number of things that probably make you a great deal smarter than me in a possibly infinite minus 1 number of subjects in peace.>> ^smooman:
>> ^Sketch:
It's not, but if that's how you want to put words in my mouth, then so be it. Smart people can, and do, believe stupid shit sometimes. It happens.>> ^smooman:
>> ^Sketch:
For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.

"if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in things only idiots do, thus making you an idiot"
thats basically what you said


well it does actually. the modifier of superstitions, in this case, idiotic, explicitly implies that the believers of such are by association, idiots. This is further enforced by your choice of diction indicating that all persons of religious persuasions believe in what you would describe as "idiotic superstitions". this is merely a debate in semantics but.....whatever. i think i know what you were trying to say. you just said it in the most absolute, presumptuous, generalized way



its amusing to me that you like to think you know my beliefs and my deepest convictions, or superstitions as you call them, based on the mere fact that i am religious. cuz we're all the same right? perhaps to you. by that fact, it is you who are foolish, not me.....or are all atheists the same? (hint: theyre not, and neither are we religious types)

if its more comfortable for you to paint with such broad strokes, then by all means, keep using that sweeping brush, but dont expect me to admire your haste to color all religious peoples as bumbling neanderthals clinging to ancient fairy tales and superstitions that you vehemently insist we are.


but what do i know, im just a superstitious, religious, idiot

I don't know a damn thing about you. I don't claim that you are anything like any other religious person in existence or in history, except for one thing - a belief in a supernatural higher power that there is no real basis for believing in. And in that very specific aspect of your personality, yes, I generalize you. No matter what kind of monster you yourself try to paint me as being, I just don't feel bad about that. Sorry that I can't catalog the personal details of billions of individual believers for anonymous online discussion purposes. I'm sure you are otherwise a wonderful human being and I certainly bear you no ill will.>> ^smooman:

>> ^Sketch:
You are right, I am not going to get into an argument about semantics with you, because that would make me a complete idiot. If it helps for me to compartmentalize it for you, then yes, where your beliefs in religion, superstition and the supernatural are concerned, I actively think that you are an idiot. Does that clear it up and make you feel better? Now you can go do rocket science, or brain surgery or any number of things that probably make you a great deal smarter than me in a possibly infinite minus 1 number of subjects in peace.>> ^smooman:
>> ^Sketch:
It's not, but if that's how you want to put words in my mouth, then so be it. Smart people can, and do, believe stupid shit sometimes. It happens.>> ^smooman:
>> ^Sketch:
For the record, in my estimation, if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in idiotic superstition.

"if you are religious it does not necessarily mean that you are an idiot. But it does mean you believe in things only idiots do, thus making you an idiot"
thats basically what you said


well it does actually. the modifier of superstitions, in this case, idiotic, explicitly implies that the believers of such are by association, idiots. This is further enforced by your choice of diction indicating that all persons of religious persuasions believe in what you would describe as "idiotic superstitions". this is merely a debate in semantics but.....whatever. i think i know what you were trying to say. you just said it in the most absolute, presumptuous, generalized way


its amusing to me that you like to think you know my beliefs and my deepest convictions, or superstitions as you call them, based on the mere fact that i am religious. cuz we're all the same right? perhaps to you. by that fact, it is you who are foolish, not me.....or are all atheists the same? (hint: theyre not, and neither are we religious types)
if its more comfortable for you to paint with such broad strokes, then by all means, keep using that sweeping brush, but dont expect me to admire your haste to color all religious peoples as bumbling neanderthals clinging to ancient fairy tales and superstitions that you vehemently insist we are.

but what do i know, im just a superstitious, religious, idiot

>> ^Sketch:

and I certainly bear you no ill will.

besides thinking me an utter idiot.........so agree to disagree i suppose =)