I can see why MAGA hates and fears these Americans

[RAB910]

[Ligyron]

1. All religions are equally INvalid BS

would be a more radical left belief.

[DippyDem]

2. +1

[getagrip_already]

7. not so much....

It is a widely held belief. You may not like it, but that's democracy for you.

It is not a radical thought. It is a belief just as valid as those that believe in what their religion preaches.

Why does it offend you that other's don't think like you do?

[Ligyron]

9. You are right, it is not a radical thought

Which is why it should not be classified as such.

I seriously doubt many religious people feel that other religions are as equally valid as theirs.

I think everything from murder and hate bombing to all out war has been started over this

[getagrip_already]

11. to clarify slightly...

I don't believe that individual beliefs in religion are invalid. People have every right to be able to observe their faith peacefully and in their own ways.

I don't extend that view to corporate religion however. The leaders are corrupt and immoral. To them, religion is a tool to control and fleece others. That is neither noble nor sacred. Trump was a perfect example. He had zero belief in religion, other than what it could do for him personally. Falwell, and dozens of others are further examples.

[Ligyron]

26. +1

[azureblue]

14. understand

the difference between religion, spirituality, cultism, and social groups. Most religions are the latter.

[lastlib]

37. "If history did not record the tragic fact....

it would be almost unbelievable that men have gone to war and cut each other's throats because they could not agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut.”
--Walter Parker Stacy

[wnylib]

50. Really? A man robs a store to get

money for a drug habit. In the process, he shoots and kills an employee. You would chalk that up to religion because you believe that religion is the root cause of all murders?

Stalin, an avowed atheist, murdered millions of people. Do you believe that he was motivated by religious beliefs?

Religions have been used by people as excuses for wars when the root causes of the wars were political power and greed for land and resources. And some wars HAVE been based on religious differences, but with political power as the motivation behind them, e.g. the European wars between Catholics and Protestants, or the Crusades in response to Muslim conquest wars spreading into Byzantium.

And yet, some of the strongest advocates for peace have also been motivated by religious beliefs, e.g. Quakers. But sometimes wars are necessary, having nothing to do with religion. The US entry into WWII was not motivated by religion. Neither was the US aid to the UK prior to getting into the war.

Across the board generalizations just don't fit every circumstance in life.

[multigraincracker]

12. Too much emotion in the anti religious crowd.

I'm an Atheist, but not emotional about it. I try to look at it like an Anthropologist and not let my emotions interfere with my observations.

You might want to check out what the Urbandictionary says about the Angry Atheist.
Years ago I use to follow Madalyn Murray O'Hair on tv and radio. I basically agreed with much of what she said, but was put off by her anger. She didn't have a good ending.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Angry%20Atheist

[Ferrets are Cool]

15. I know very few atheist who are angry, unless our beliefs are being trampled upon

And even then, we mostly just seethe inside. Most of the ANGRY emotion comes from the religious crowd. I think think of a single war which was started by an atheist "because" of their religion.

[multigraincracker]

19. Humanism is a Atheist religion

here in the West. No Gods or magic. Many of the Eastern philosophies/religions are mostly Atheist, no real God or magic. These include Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.
I question general statements about religion. Most of those may apply Davidian religions. Religions are a very gray area, not a black and white subject.

[ShazzieB]

45. Unfortunately, there are some atheists who are VERY vocal and never miss a chance to mention it.

And those people don't just mention their atheism matter of factly; they do it in a way that is hostile and insulting to those who don't agree with them and gets people's backs up. It may just be a small number of atheists who do this, but they are so vocal and so hostile that they draw a lot of negative attention to themselves, and to atheism in general. Imo, they give non-atheists a negative impression of what most atheists are like and what atheism is is really about.

The kind of people I'm talking about are the ones who make categorical statements about religion being THE cause of EVERY BAD THING that has EVER happened in human history and claim that ALL organized religion is 100% bad and terrible and ALL followers of EVERY religion are also bad and terrible. All of which is at best a vast oversimplification of an extremely complex topic, and at worst highly insulting to those who hold differing viewpoints.

I'm sure that there are lots of non angry atheists such as yourself, and I can well believe that only a minority of atheists behave in the manner I just described. But unfortunately, all the attention tends to get focused on the loud, vocal, and angry (or at least angry sounding) ones.

As an agnostic, I feel I have a lot of common ground with atheists, but the attitudes I described above are a major turnoff to me. I do not practice any particular religion currently, but I have in the past, and I regard religion and spirituality as having been positive influences in my life in many ways. I don't belong to any particular religion at the moment, but if I can find one that I can be a part of without having to appear to support teachings I disagree with, that could change.

I understand why atheism makes more sense than religion to a lot of people. I'm not there myself, but I get it, even though my personal experience and (for lack of a better term) "intuituion" pull me in a different direction. I do NOT believe in a "sky daddy," I do NOT believe in a literal heaven or hell, and the idea that there is one "true" religion with a lock on THE truth whose adherents will receive some special eternal reward that is denied to everyone else is repugnant to me. I don’t think anyone or any group has a lack on THE truth.

I respect ethical atheists just much as I respect ethical Christians, Jews, Buddhists, or any other religionists. If we could all extend that kind of respect to each other, and refrain from blanket statements about each other, such as "ALL religion is [fill in the blanks]," "ALL Christians are [fill in the blanks]," "ALL atheists are [fill n the blanks]," etc., that would please me greatly

[Ferrets are Cool]

48. Very good post!!

[Beartracks]

49. +1

[eallen]

17. She was not a likable person. But, that had nothing to do with her murder.

The three victims were killed for money.

[MiHale]

20. I'm pretty sure that she gave me my go to saying...

about atheism. I’ll quote the way I say it but I think it is one of those passive memories that erupt from time to time, don’t know for a fact from whom or where I heard it first.

“There are many religions in the world, many gods. You believe in one god, one religion.
You have dismissed all those gods…you are one god away from being an atheist.”

[multigraincracker]

21. Very good.

Replace religion with philosophies. There are religions without gods.

We kind of get stuck with Western culture.

[MiHale]

22. True. Great idea...thanks!

Ironic thing is I’ve been spending a lot of time at…

https://reasonandmeaning.com/


Essays from various philosophers about a wide array of subjects.

[multigraincracker]

23. My minor and favorite subject

in college was Cultural Anthropology.

[MiHale]

24. Promise I won't bug ya with questions...

[wnylib]

52. Same here. It would have been

my major if I had started college out of high school. It's been a lifelong interest. But since my interest area required so many years of study and field work, with teaching as the only likely career for it, and I started college later than most people, I opted for an anthropology minor instead.

[wnylib]

51. Religion in the West is sometimes associated

with philosophy. When I was looking for a college many years ago, I considered three Catholic colleges, although I am not Catholic. Their required courses included religion for Catholic students. Non Catholics could opt for philosophy courses instead.

[multigraincracker]

54. I went back to college in my 40s.

Working long hours in a rail yard, school was great.
One of my favorite classes was Anthropology of Religion. The basic question was, is this religion adaptive to its changing environment. Like the prohibition on eating pork in a desert environment. Swine would have destroyed those oasis in the desert of North Africa. That prohibition saved those oasis.

[wnylib]

55. Interesting. I used to think that people

had made the association between pig meat and trichinosis. Or, that they were reacting against pig worship in the religions of some societies around them.

My German born maternal great aunt lived with us when I was a child. She came to the US when she was 6 years old, but German was her first language. She had German speaking Hungarian friends that used to visit with her on our front porch, all of them speaking German. We had a few Italian immigrant families in our neighborhood who came after WWII. They spoke Italian among themselves. Our family and theirs had different religions and customs.

My father and his family were mixed, Native American and European American. He grew up on a farm and showed me Native artifacts he found on the farm as a child. His sisters told me about our Native heritage, and family history. He worked in a factory where several African Americans worked. They had moved North after WWII. I made friends with their kids at company picnics and holiday parties.

So I was very aware of and interested in differences in cultures, beliefs, and customs, but also of
commonalities. I discovered that I could pick up languages easily. So I wanted to major in cultural anthropology, in linguistics, particularly the preservation of Native languages.

Instead, I studied European languages - Latin, German, and Spanish, with a major in Spanish and a minor in anthropology, focused on Native cultures.

[Ligyron]

27. I did check it out.

I would not classify Sam Harris as an angry atheist. Or Hitchens, f.i.

Dawkins maybe...

[multigraincracker]

29. I never see them question those

From Humanist or Ethical Society Movements. These are modern organizations formed as churches. No God or magic, but focus on morals and ethics.

[Ligyron]

35. That's interesting.

I’ll have to check them out.

[soldierant]

41. I wouldn't blame almost anyone for being angry, and certainly not atheists

but I really struggle with the "holier than thou" attitude that some display, and I would definitely but Dawkins into that category.

[drmeow]

39. I kinda felt the same way

about Greta Christina. While I often agreed with her views, I also often felt that her militant anti-religion stance felt too much like the Mormon pro-religion proselytizing. It is as disrespectful and arrogant to say someone's beliefs are wrong because they believe in a god and a religion as it is to say that someone's beliefs are wrong because they believe in a different god than you do. None of us can possibly know whether there is a god or not or whether there is an afterlife or not until we die.

Personally I'm agnostic (something some atheists have told me is not possible to be).

[multigraincracker]

40. I'm waiting for peer review

paper for proof. None now, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be new information some day. I just doubt it for now.
I’m interested in movements that deal with ethics and how we can interact peacefully with others.

[Shermann]

28. Not from an epistemological perspective

It's easy to objectively demonstrate the invalidity of large swaths of mainstream religious beliefs.

From that perspective, the assertion that all religions are equally valid seems like dubious apologetics.

[reACTIONary]

42. If all religions are largely invalid...

... then all religions are largely equally valid. QED.

[Shermann]

44. Largely equally valid?

I'm afraid you can't get to that nonsensical statement from my clear one.

[reACTIONary]

47. Rather than validity...

.... Let's use "truth value" since technically validity is independent of truth... An argument may be valid while the argument's conclusion is false.

So let's say religion A has a truth value of FALSE. And religion B has a truth value of FALSE. And religion C has a truth value of FALSE. All the way through to religion Z. Let's say they are all FALSE. They all have the same truth value, making them all "equally true".

That's the basic point I was making. Having the same truth value or "validity" doesn't mean any of them are true, or "valid"

Now a religion is probably conceived of as more complex than a simple true-false statement. That's why my verbiage was a bit more indirect. So let's assume that a religion can contain some degree of truth or validity. Let's say it can be scored between 0 and 100 on the truth-o-meter validioscope. And let's say science is way up there at 98, 99, 100, while most religions do poorly and are down around 10. So while none of them are anywhere near "as valid" as science, they are all pretty much "just as valid" as one another. They are largely equally valid.

Hope that makes some sense. But if it is nonsensical at least it is equally sensible as any other nonsense.

[wnylib]

53. Depends on how literally people

take religious beliefs and stories. They can be understood by some as expressions of values rather than of literal facts.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. wow that's a statement to shock us awake /nt

[Budi]

4. President Joe Biden's "Radical Left"? 😅

That's not radical, that's every Democrat I've known as far back as I remember

[NoMoreRepugs]

5. If that's "radical" count me in. Seems more like a decent person.

[Mr. Steve]

16. Agreed

+1

[sarge43]

6. That radical agenda: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. n/t

[lastlib]

38. next thing ya know, them durn radicals will be sayin'.....

...that we have govmint to PROTECT those rights! An' I'll bet at least SOME of 'em will say that if govmint don't protect 'em, we can toss the scoundrels OUT!

[wendyb-NC]

8. Well said.

[Wounded Bear]

10. K & R...nt

[Jon King]

13. It really angers them when POC and immigrants succeed.

They get incensed when a poor immigrant family lives 7 to a house, work 80 hour weeks, get their kids to study 3 hours a day after school, send them to college, and they come out and become engineers and doctors.

Wow, imagine that, people living the American dream through sacrifice and honest hard work!

[BlueWavePsych]

18. K&R

[housecat]

25. All religions are equally valid is like saying all alternative facts are equal

[reACTIONary]

43. From the point of view of validity...

... if all alternative facts are invalid, then they ARE equally valid. Same with religion.

[housecat]

56. From the point of view of religion and alternative facts, i.e., bullshit, they have much in common

[Iggo]

30. "...equally valid."

I’m definitely using that one.

[Shermann]

31. Other than the religion one it is a good list

Let's just change it to "That all religions can be practiced without persecution" and move on.

This is basically a list of common sense approaches to problems and pitfalls which can be demonstrated to exist.

The right wing agenda is basically a list of excuses not to do those things.

[Tommymac]

32. Thanks! This inspired my OP here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215500922

I was looking for the link to the image so I could share on Social Media and found John Pavovitz's site. Lots of great reading there.

Much appreciated!

[MustLoveBeagles]

33. K&R

[Niagara]

34. KnR

[liberalla]

36. "I think humanity feels radical to inhumane people."

Wow!

That last line really is great! I mean, I like the whole thing, but that last line really got me.

[alfredo]

46. Same here