The statements are trivially disprovable. I know several peaceful muslims. There, done. Your statement is false.

You couldn't find a better example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy if you tried.


"Followers of violent ideologies are not peaceful".

Here's a thought exercise for you, since you seem to pride yourself on not being afraid to think.

Humans are not perfectly rational or consistent. They are, in fact, capable of holding two opposing positions at once. This is called cognitive dissonance (you're a good example of this yourself, in that you are engaging in a logical fallacy while upholding the virtue of rationality).

Saying "there are no peaceful muslims" is like saying there are no divorced Catholics, when such things self-evidently exist.

So, to sum up:
You are not right - your "factual statement" is incorrect.
You are not just - you are making a sweeping generalisation about 1 billion people.
You are not rational - you are engaged in a logical fallacy.

The persecution of others to the exclusion of all but the primary religion is a tact shared with many major religions, and yes, Christianity has left its scorching mark upon humanity as a terrifying blot.

However, it is not, on this day, nor in these recent years, the acts of Christians, or Catholics that most burns a hole in our hearts and minds. Indeed, it is the acts of Radical Islamism, which is no more than a literal taking of their Koran brought to life by hate and malice.

And no, Islam is not a religion of peace, neither is Christainity-based religions for that matter. It is a matter of choice, and now, it is the choice of these Muslims, being great in number at this point in the Human Timeline, to continue the exploitation and caging of Women as sex slaves, to behead hundreds of thousands in the name of their God, and to spread their holy war to every corner of the globe until all is ruled by Islam.

That is fact, sir, as they(ISIS) have stated, as they show their brand of religion to state, as they act, and chose to carry forth action.

Sir, yes, all religions have committed to horrible deeds, but, it is always the purview of those of us that realize this to deny the growth of violence-via-religion, and now, in this day and age, that primary religion which we must stop from continuing violence is radicalized Islam.

I have only been restating my opinion slightly differently to correct those who MISREAD my posts for the last day....like you

Yup, when everyone else in the thread disagrees with what you are saying, or how you are saying it, or the other things you're doing, it's obviously everyone else that has the problem... =)

No, I'm more worried about what the movement actually does, and feminism only works for women's equality.

Wow, talk about painting the world in broad strokes. I guess all Catholics are pedo's too?

You people were all triggered and apparently can't read because of your anger.

*giggle* Yup, it's everyone else. Not you.

PS: The bold (by which I think you mean the capitalized) was not PASSIVE aggressive, the edit was.

No, the bold that I put bold html tags around so it showed up as bold...

And I'm the one that apparently has reading problems. X D

I'm just done with this constant sniping by people who can't or won't read. Bye.

Don't let your ego hit you in the ass on the way out the door. /waves!

ps. You have far more in common with the 3rd wave feminazi's than you would like to think.

Edit: pps. Downvote me more baby, just shows you for the petty little sook that you are. ; )

Somewhat disappointed that he didn't include my personal favorite argument against Pascal's Wager: conflicting faiths.

Instead of a 4-cell chart (2x2 from believe/don't believe and god exists/doesn't), the chart should arguably be a LOT bigger. Plenty of individual branches of Christianity will tell you that *their* specific brand is the only one that will get you into heaven. And that's just relatively minor distinctions -- different sorts of Protestants, or Protestants vs Catholics, etc. We haven't even got to Christianity vs Judaism vs Islam -- all of which fall under the "Abrahamic" umbrella -- but very few Christian faiths think that Jews or Muslims are just as eligible to enter heaven as they are (or vice-versa). From there you can get to things as disparate as Hindu vs Ancient Egyptian vs Zoroastrianism, and everything else.

With that sort of chart, it is just as easy to say that choosing to believe in the *wrong* god could possibly be associated with a more negative outcome than washing your hands of it and going Atheist. Maybe I chose to believe in Ra the Sun God when Zeus ends up being the one true deity. Come to find that Zeus, as it turns out, tolerates people who don't believe in him as long as they don't believe in one of his competitors (like Ra). Therefore I get a lightning bolt to the keyster and a trip to Hades while my nonbeliever buddy gets a ticket to Elysium.

Of course it's all a load of bollocks, but if your argument is a load of bollocks (like Pascal's wager) you don't get to complain when somebody flips it on its head and uses it to argue the exact opposite...

er, by the time of the Last Crusade, Indy has seen:
- the literal manifestation of the power of god melt Nazis faces
- some magic rocks burning an Indian guy

I think it's pretty safe to say that Indy has accepted that in his fictional universe, the supernatural is real. Hell, if I saw what he'd seen by that point, I'd be a god-fearing Christian.

As for Pascal's wager, I've always viewed it as the height of moral cowardice. If you want to believe in God and you're not shoving your beliefs down everyone else's throat (looking at you, ISIS, evangelicals, catholic church in Ireland, etc), go nuts.

But don't believe because you're afraid of hell. If you're a good person and you die and it turns out there is a god, if he condemns you to eternal suffering for not believing in him, then fuck him, he's an asshole and I wouldn't want to spend eternity under his thumb anyway.

Opposite experience: in 4th grade me and a partner were suppose to make a model church (catholic school). I had made stained glass windows with that fake stained glass paint - arts and crafts stuff, we had made brick walls out of clay on wood...for a couple of 10 year olds it was pretty impressive. Then my partner's rather insisted we finish it at his house. His father scrapped everything we'd done and made it himself in his wood shop, letting us do nothing. Thing is, he had a wood shop but he sucked. Made it out of fake wood paneling and it didn't even make sense. It was just a crappy looking box that in no way resembled a building. I hated that thing. His need to take over stole the creativity from children.

You might think what your kid makes will be better for your help and they'll be happier because of it. But what you end up with will never be theirs. Hope you're really proud of your grade school project.

Doing these things as a prelude to proselytizing means they aren't altruistic, they are a part of the indoctrination process. If your church does all these things without ever mentioning religion, asking for donations, or asking for those helped to volunteer, it is incredibly abnormal.

"You dont get to see those kinds of Christians because they don't call attention to themselves"
And yet, here you are calling attention to yourself (and them), so you proved your statement wrong by stating it publicly. Oops! ;-)

Churches are for profit institutions, why shouldn't they pay taxes? The Catholic church is a haven for pedophiles, why have it's assets not been seized under RICO statutes? Many other for profit companies donate food, shelter, and services, yet they also pay their share for the public services they enjoy. Why should it be different for an organization who's product is intangible and invisible?

There won't be an effort to exterminate Christians, there may well be an effort to exterminate Christianity, along with all other divisive religions. I hope I'm around to see it.

Once again I would ask, why do you question your god's clear wish that I (and others) not believe in him? Shirley, you don't think you know better than he/she, right? (that's right, I called you Shirley.) ;-)

Doing 100 good deeds and one incredibly evil deed makes one evil. No church in history has ever reached that level of goodness. Churches are evil. I hope that clears things up.

Very, very interesting -- thanks for the sift!

I'd love to see more, specifically about the US / Cuba talks and the Pope's involvement. As an atheist, I tend to think of Catholicism / the Pope / organized religion in general as generally having a primarily negative influence on world affairs (Crusades, Inquisition, birth control, anti-condoms, molestation, homophobia, etc.), but negotiating peace and better relations between the US and Cuba is a pretty undeniably positive thing.

I knew Latin American countries were highly Catholic, but I kinda figured that some of the USSR anti-religious stance would have rubbed off on Cuba. I guess maybe it did, but the missile crisis and fall of the Berlin wall / end of the cold war was long enough ago that Cuba has greater freedom to make up their own minds on this sort of thing.

Enough so that perhaps the Pope's involvement was necessary, or at least very helpful, to act as a mediator between the two sides. Props where props are due.

Anyway, all quite interesting.

It keeps astounding me how the catholic church keeps evading any kind of charges regarding their child fucking issues. If any other organisation had as many incidents of accusations of raping children as the catholic church, they would've been closed down for good so many freaking years ago. If Lidl, a grocery store chain in my country, had as many complaints regarding child abuse as the catholic church had, it would be illegal to take children into a single Lidl store.
Apparently, Jersus loves you. Especially if you love children. With your cock.

Once again, the Catholic Church is clearly and incontrovertibly guilty of being a criminal organization. Why in the hell have they not been brought up on RICO charges and had every penny they own in each country converted to public property? They are actually more guilty than NAMBLA, who at least admits who they are and what they do, rather than using their considerable power and influence to hide it and continue the abuse in 'secret', or protecting well known perpetrators from prosecution.
Fuck the church. Organized religion is one of the most disastrous ideas in human history.

Will be interesting to see how the Catholic church responds to this. I can't imagine this will go over well with his bosses. Hitting kids is always a tough sell.

@ChaosEngine

Certainly most people who call themselves feminists are basically alright. We might say the same of those catholics from a few comments ago, without owning that the full structure of their faith is a good one. There may even be decent republicans somewhere.

I'm glad that, in the end, we're in complete agreement that 'feminism' is a terrible word.

There may have been smart people, but they didn't have any noticeable effect.

Seriously, do you know when raping your wife became a crime in the UK (a relatively progressive country)? 1991. I was 14. I remember seeing it on the news and being shocked.

It is still legal to rape your wife in large parts of the world. (yes, some of that is disputed, point still stands).

Not sure what you mean by "the modern era"? Women were certainly working, and have been since the dawn of man. Ruling empires? Occasionally, but only ever because their fathers were kings/emperors. Victoria might have ruled over the British empire, but if she was a commoner, she couldn't even have voted. NZ was the first country to extend the vote to women in 1893. Suffragettes are still considered to be "first wave feminists" (although I dislike the whole "xth wave" terminology).

And no, I wouldn't accept that argument, because helping the poor, treating each other with understanding, etc are not uniquely Catholic concepts; they're not even the core concepts of Catholicism. In fact, Catholics have been historically pretty goddamn awful on the whole " treating each other with understanding" front.

OTOH, feminism is, again by definition, the concept of equality for women.

History just wasn't as universally sexist as it's made out to be. There were always smart people who saw through it.

Even in the modern era women were voting, working and ruling entire empires before feminism as we know it even existed.

Would you accept the argument that if you believe we should help the poor, say, or generally treat one another with understanding, then you're a little bit Catholic?

Three ministers were chatting one day about how each faith decided what part of donations went to the church, and which part went to God's Works.

The Catholic Minister said, "We draw a circle on the floor, and toss the donations in the air. What falls in the circle, is for the Church, what falls outside is for the Lord."
The Protestant Minister said, "We do almost the same, only what falls within the circle is for the Lord."
Finally, the Evangelical Minister said, "Every Sunday afternoon, we too throw our donations in the air, and whatever God catches, he keeps!"