*religion

Adding video to channels (religion) - requested by sometimes.

I wouldn't necessarily think that sifters hate religious belief as such - it would be unreasonable to deny a person their own pursuit of meaning to existence. What I think is more the case, is the distaste for those who would claim to know the will of a supreme being and force upon you a way of thinking about how society should run. This is a guise for a power-monger, who would more want to assert their own values upon the faithful (and faithless, it seems), than be a spiritual guide. I think we would rather that everyone of all faiths just live and let live.

I don't really hate religion, but I've got a beef with the way some people practice it. I wish more Christians were like Jesus, I wish more Jews treated non-Jews as equal human beings, and I wish that more Muslims would decide to advance their views into at least the 20th century.

I live in a town with 1 bookstore, 13 bars, and 120 churches and it's about as backwards as backwards gets.

I think there are many persons that try to push their beliefs on others. Including atheists. My beef isn't with someones religious practice. It's with the anger that some express when they say "your going to hell because you don't believe in God." Or "Your all idiots because you believe in God." It's all these petty little pissing contests that are engaged in.

It's petty because neither side can prove their point. Yes they both have evidence, they both have a cannon they subscribe to, albeit different. What gets my gall is the Atheists or Religionists saying "I can prove it!" Bullshit. We each subscribe to a method for searching for truth. No one has any right to say "I know better then you." It's bogus.

What I know, I've learned from personal experiences. Some you wouldn't believe if I told you. And some I hold sacred, Those I will not share because of the mockery that would follow from those who hold the options of a religious man in contempt. And because they do not understand them, or can explain them.

My beef is with people telling others what they should believe. It's one thing to help someone understand your viewpoint. It's entirely different to compel them to it.

Wow roughy, I live in a town with 1 church, 120 bars, and 13 bookstores.....kinna sounds like Alaska, innit???

Most of the folks who express their religious distaste with the most gusto, have a long way to go towards authentic, healthy, actualization. Most folks (this includes fundies of any kind) don't even know what God is, concept of or personal relationship, notwithstanding.

All ideaology is your enemy.

Brilliant diatribe. Christianity and Islam makes about as much sense as the Greek/Roman Pantheon or Egyptian Pharoah/God worship. Its the usual mumbo-jumbo fairytale crap fed to the common people since early recorded human history (and beyond).... to 'keep them in line' and justify the existence of dictatorial or neo-dictatorial leadership.

Religion was created to answer the unexplainable through made up fairy tales in a time when science was unable to fill such space within the sphere of human knowledge and understanding.

Put simply. People need to justify their measly existence as 'common paupers' among the masses. The logical solution to satisfy everyone's need to justify their own existence and simply 'make one's self feel better' (ultimately a selfish goal), was to associate with an organized religion touting uniqueness in one's self and everlasting life in exchange for mental slavery. Thus, the masses immediately gave up their only remaining valuable asset. Their minds.. to those very cults. Simply to be absorbed, deluded, and ultimately prevented from true individual thought and self-expression. Instead, the practice of programmatic expression and group mindedness surpassed logic.

Eh...this guy desperately wants to be Bill Hicks, yet doesn't nearly have the skills to pull it off.

And YouTube slide shows are the worst. This is a live performance; it wasn't videotaped?

I agree to Theo47. I really liked his talking, but i hate slideshows. This is video, welcome to the 21st century ;-)

Hail Satan.

@honkeytonk73 Well... you totally missed the point of this soapbox. Brigstocke is in no way arguing against the validity of religion (or the non-existence of God for that matter). Gorgonheap has more of the right idea. Brigstocke is saying, stop trying to use your religion as an excuse to adversely affect the lives of others. Whether that be through jihad, crusades, missionary, or law making.

Over-simplified his argument would be, "can't we all just get along?"

Nebosuke , no we cannot just get along . it would be nice but it hasnt happened yet, ever for a very long stretch of time . However i do have a nice one-liner ,
" I am an atheist because i have never heard on the news, 76 atheists killed today in heavy shelling from the agnostics . "
well that and a belief that if god does in fact exist,which is slightly less likely than layoffs and the lottery , he's a total shithead.

Loved it. And Nada, don't act like atheists and agnostics aren't violent. We can be just as bad. We just use wholly different things that we find central to human life -other- than faith. Things like ideology and material.

Agreed StoodUp , I mean stalin was an atheist and he was credited with 20 million kills .
But that mean the second point is correct ?

Stalin wouldn't have gotten 1 kill if people weren't previously subjected to 100 years of canonized Czar worship making themselves ripe for a dictatorship. If he inherited a society of reasonable critical thinking people, he wouldn't have lasted a year.

In fact, the Church hailed Stalin as "the divinely appointed leader of the nation." and has since officially apologized for that.

I wrote this elsewhere and am pasting it here, edited slightly, because it's fairly topical (note, I am unabashedly anti-theist):

I say lets remove religion from the world so that we can take away at least that one huge label that serves to do a damn fine job of separating us into even more tribes than are already apparent. Would we find other reasons to kill each other? Sure we would, whether it be skin color, geography, economics, resources, whatever.

But even so, don't you think it would be worth it to remove inflexible dogma that only serves to make us fight and bicker over ancient stories and mythology just to lessen the number of reasons? It's even more ridiculous when you realize that the major monotheistic religions are really all based on the same God, and even worse that there's so much infighting within each of the religions on how their God should be properly worshiped. Sunni fighting Shia, Catholics fighting Protestants. Enough already!

Remove God(s) from the table and then, just maybe, we can actually get down to the business of getting past our other differences and then maybe we can all coexist.

There are much more subtle ways of solving conflict, without trying to remove religion from the world, Sketch. Your idea sounds nice and clean, but look at any country that has tried to 'remove' anything (culture, history, learning, religion) and you get enough pain to last another century or two.

I'm just saying that it's yet another label that we don't need. Don't get me wrong. I'm under no delusion that it would ever happen, because religion is far too entrenched, but we could certainly live without the extra strife it causes. It's just frustrating for many of us atheists to see that kind of struggle over what we see as nothing at all.

Someone had better let this guy know the position for tirade-loving-British -atheist has already been filled, several times over. Previous applicants need not apply.

Right. No one else is allowed to speak out besides Dawkins and Hitchens. Every other atheist should keep their mouths shut.

I dont' think he's necessarily an atheist.... it's not the point anyways... the point is those who use religion as an excuse to hurt others are mucking up life for anyone who doesn't agree with that "logic"

I'm not an atheist at all and neither are any of my friends but damned if we don't all feel outnumbered and outgunned by the very types Brigstocke is talking about.

Plus, he's funny. Dawkins gets tiresome and Hitchens is seriously insulting to anyone who isn't a die-hard atheist.

Yes and while were at Sketch it lets start removing everyones silly emotions, and feelings. I mean those can really lead to some unhappy times. Perhaps instituting a ban on alcohol since it only leads to regretted actions. Then we could also have mono-doctrinal education systems and make sure everyone learns and understand exactly the same.

Hey maybe in a couple of years we can all grow wings and fly too. I say the following because it is a true statement. Anytime someone with great worldly power has tried to remove religion from the world, it results in the death of millions and destruction of civilizations.

For as much bad as some would like to put on theists, there is abundant examples of how much good religion has done for the world. It's such a narrow and pessimistic thing to say: "Getting rid of religion would make the world a better place." Quite frankly, it's pure BS! You know it, I know it. And those who fail to admit it are too self-centered and too misinformed. People would still find ways to kill others without finding a justification in religion, it's just a handy scapegoat.

Brilliant!

You folks who don't see the dynamics created, good or bad, true, false or meaningless for theism, atheism, religions of all kinds, can't seem to see the necessity and beauty of your own place in the dance......there is a place for, and nothing wrong with, theism or atheism....they do co-exist for good reason, and poor folks like Dawkins, deny themselves part of the experience.....just as poor folks like the Bible-thumper next door, or the emotional basket case walking the cube in Mecca for the first time, deny themselves.......Hosea 4:6..."my people perish for lack of knowledge....."

woohoo! i got to third place! i am so overly-excited!
p.s. hooray for dialogue
p.p.s. no hooray for no real christians having anything to say.

All I'm saying is, how many tirade-loving religion bashers does the Sift need? I heard enough with the first. How about some more positive messsengers with something hopeful to say?

For perhaps the first time ever, I agree with Rougy to at least some extent.
I'll say though that extreme radicals in each religion are given the most press...hands down...by a landslide...without a doubt... which makes just about every religion look completely bums-up loonytoons. I'll say straight up that those people who hold those "GOD HATES [WHOEVER]" signs speak for no one but themselves and plainly haven't read or remotely understood their Bible. ALL the rest of us agree on that, and yet THEY get all the press and people cite them constantly as the "example" of the Christian, which is nonsense, plain as day. Meanwhile, those that honestly follow the Bible (for real) and contain a good bit of faith, but a good bit of reason as well are generally ignored by the media (and such) and wind up looking at the whole debate and getting horribly frustrated and depressed at the unfairness of it all. Personally I'm a career scientist and a Christian... and generally people--when they hear it--go "What? You must be a lousy Christian/scientist!" (you can pick which) Ridiculous! Not all of us have given the matter no thought. See C.S.Lewis, etc.

In rhyme with what has been commented here already, my "beef" is not with those who disapprove of my religious beliefs. My beef is with those who deliberately (or ignorantly) LIE about it in order to discredit it in a [conscious or unconscious] attempt to justify their philosophy. I'm not talking about revealing charlatans; that's fine. I'm not talking about revealing cults; that's fine. I'm talking about accusing a religion of being false or wrong based on only those charlatans and cults.

One more comment that I feel like mentioning:
An atheist will cite one religion after another for inciting war after war... and I will not argue with that. I will argue that the religious/spiritual belief system that a person chooses to believe is the single most important decision of his/her life. This is a decision that defines the character of a person and the purpose of his/her entire life. Naturally dissent here causes problems. Attempting to erase this dissent by erasing religion is identical to attempting to erase racial discrimination problems by eliminating all but one race... I don't think I need to say more about that...

I'll say though that extreme radicals in each religion are given the most press...

Extreme radicals in anything are given the most press. Radicals sell. We're buying.

As for the clip - brilliant

Hey gnargnar, the reason there are no "real" Christians having anything to say, is that the number of real Christians, who engage in discourse on such subjects, is smaller than the number of hairs on a turtle......A true Christian?? A true Muslim?? A true Jew??? These are constructs, of individual perception, and do not actually, physically, exist in time and space for longer than brief, unquantifiable moments.....

Absolutely amazing

/cracks knuckles



Actually, fuck it.

I interrupt all debate for congratulate the fact than his actually a believer who post this video, proving to the world the existence of the legendary religious left, who his too much ignored by those who think than atheist is the only way to democracy

Haha! That's exactly how I feel about it at this point, lmayliffe!

*british

Adding video to channels (British) - requested by Zifnab.

upvote because he focussed on war between abrahamic religions, and lighting candles.

if you want to bash religion and get me to upvote it anyway, here's how.

can we have our planet back? LOL

*dead

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