I knew a kid who had a rabbit. He used to leave raisinets around on the floor, then when people would come over he would say, “Uh oh, Bunny got out again and shit on the floor.” Then he would eat the raisinets. As far as I know, it never actually led to him actually eating rabbit shit.

What morons voted me down twice?

All agnostics are atheists.

…

If you have faith that gods exist, then you are a theist. All others are not theists and are atheists.

The problem here is the difference between Denotation and Connotation.

You are completely correct, from an etymological standpoint; theos (Greek for god) + ist = theist, or one who believes in a god or gods, and thus atheist would be one who does not believe in a god or gods. But there’s also the fact that atheist came over from the Greek atheos, which meant to deny the gods; the Greek form on that has an implication of against, rather than just not believing in.

There’s also the fact that in general connotation, Atheist, Theist, Deist, and Agnostic all have vastly different meanings that are significant to those who hold those beliefs. Reductionism only serves to make people believe that you hold no respect for the person who holds intermediate views. (Maybe you just don’t respect their beliefs, but if feels no different to the recipient.)

Besides which, your false dichotomy completely misses out on people who do not believe in an external Theos, but do believe that there is a spiritual life force within humanity and/or nature. Examples of views like this include certain forms of Animism and Wicca, some strains of Buddhism, pretty much anyone who understands and believes in Chi (Ki, Qi, or however you translate it), and Shirley Maclain.

#32 | max | April 19th, 2009
Unless Oregon is completely unlike the 12 states in which I’ve had experience, private schools for troubled children are solidly regulated by the state and held to higher standards than for public schools for the same children .

You should look into Hyde School here in New England and DC. This is a boarding school for troubled teens. My mom works in the kitchen of the one in Woodstock.

This school is not required to hire certified teachers. Many of the teachers are Hyde alum who have gone to 4 years of college (or less in some cases because they can’t hack it in the real world) and then come back to Hyde as a teacher. They have a teacher living on the campus who divorced then remarried a man who was sued (and lost) for fondling a female student. He still lives on campus.

One kid went on a long “wilderness weekend” up north and came back with frostbite. There’s a video on youtube about it somewhere.

Here’s another fun one. There’s a girl on “2-4″ (what they call punishment, being taken out of the general population). When asked why she was on 2-4, she said because she’d had sex with her boyfriend (she’s a junior so she’s ~17). When asked who turned her in, she replied, “Oh we turned ourselves in.” Kids who have sex are required to go into graphic detail with the admin on their case, who is often only 4-5 years older than the students themselves. It’s wierd, to say the least.

It makes me so angry I have to restrain myself from murder sometimes. It’s a school that teaches following the orders of authoritarians no matter what. I’d love to open a school across the street that teaches nothing but how to successfully question authority and put them in their place.

If you want to read more, check this forum out: http://fornits.com/wwf/viewforum.php?f=43&sid=ef79d4ceee38a30d8df13d07a6b16ca5

UCrawford:
Nothing really, except that taking the effort to reject a meaningless ritual (baptism) indicates an obsession with that ritual. If you weren’t obsessed, you’d just ignore it.

I understand your argument. I made similar arguments myself in the past, quite likely for similar reasons.

But I don’t think it is correct for a few reasons: (1) it’s not universal, because various atheists and anti-Christians have various motivations for doing things; (2) when, even in enlightened cultures, theists still bully open expressions of non-belief, being timid and ineffectual only enables the continuance of such bigotry; and (3) under Christian dogma, the flip side of baptism is eternal damnation for little babies who die, or for millions of Chinese peasants or undiscovered tribesmen beyond the reach of missionaries, which should strike any rational, civilized person as exceedingly unfair.

Another thing I overlooked in my previous comments was the fact that the NSS certificates specifically address people baptized at birth, primarily with the goal of reducing the church’s census count, which affects their proportionate political power. That doesn’t strike me as smug, but defensive.

“…He will need to be put in front of the class and his good ear in direction of teacher. He will also have to pay extra attention. Your child will be fine, as I told my son this is just a small hurdle God gave us to overcome.”

What they’re talking about is unilateral deafness (Which I have, I’m profoundly deaf in my right ear)

Here’s the problem with this scenario… Who is the ‘Us’ that this alleged ‘God’ gave the hurdle to overcome? Oh. The parent. NOT THE CHILD. The parent who has no comprehension of unilateral deafness and has no incentive to learn anything about it. After all, it was GOD who did this… who are we to question HIS will?

I have a lot of personal experience with unilateral deafness that this kid really needs to hear about. But that’s not going to happen because this was just “A small hurdle God gave us”. Woman, it’s NOT a small hurdle. It’s huge. But you won’t know that because you aren’t willing to accept responsibility for the situation.

“I became an atheist when I was 18 but I never really shared that with anyone from my family until the last year or so (I’m in my late 30s).”

Let me get this straight. You were an atheist for 20 years before you told your family? This is huge! It’s not like preferring 1% milk over 2% milk.

And you don’t think that’s a big deal? That you felt that you should hide this from your own family for 20 years? No only hide it… but subterfuge it by continuing to attend church as if you were still a believer?

You strike me as “The good cop”… the one that’s rendered impotent by the thin blue line, the one that can’t say anything bad about other cops because “Cops don’t squeal on Cops”

That you felt compelled to hide this for 20 years tells the tale.

Let’s compare this with something from my life:

I’m an engineer. I discovered I wanted to be an engineer when I was 18, in a classroom at the Navy’s Nuclear Training facility in Orlando, Florida. My math instructor, Chief Sorenson, carefully explained to me how a micro processor based board he was building worked. And it clicked… I finally understood… that moment changed my life.

Now.. WHAT IF I FELT SO ASHAMED THAT I COULDN’T TELL MY FAMILY THAT I WAS NOW AN ENGINEER?

What if I had to keep that from them for 20 years? Acting at family get togethers as if the STONE AGE was still here? Carefully hiding my schematics and mechanical sketches so I wouldn’t be caught in a lie.

But no… MY family was highly receptive! They told me I was a genius and that I should try hard. They supported me. Not once did I think I should hide this for… 20 years or so.

As such? Yeah, I support the ‘debaptism movement’, not because it actually affects the status of your life in any cosmic way, but because it points out the irrationality of religion.

The idea that atheists should just ignore religion is like saying libertarians should just ignore the government. Except, libertarians can’t ignore the government, and atheists can’t ignore religion. After all, it’s religious people who work to outlaw evolution in science class, make gay marriage illegal, outlaw abortion, and, of course, fly planes into buildings.

Atheists focus on religion for the same reason libertarians focus on government: so our kids won’t have to.

Brian

I don’t see the de-baptism thing as anything serious as you do.

I don’t see it as serious, I see it as childish and pointless. But whatever floats peoples’ boats, I guess.

What is wrong with rejecting an irrational belief? What is wrong with rejecting irrational rituals?

Nothing really, except that taking the effort to reject a meaningless ritual (baptism) indicates an obsession with that ritual. If you weren’t obsessed, you’d just ignore it. Personally, my baptism means nothing to me. Someone sprinkled water on my head as a kid, my family took a bunch of pictures, and aside from this conversation I can’t say as I’ve ever thought or cared about it since then, and probably won’t in the future. It’s a meaningless ritual and having a “de-baptism” ceremony only adds credibility to baptisms.

But hey, it’s a free country, so if you want to go pick a fight with religious folks by targeting their personal ceremonies go ahead. But don’t pretend you’re doing anything more than picking a fight for the sake of picking a fight.

I have already written to him … and made the point that if it was not for people taking photos, we would not know about the death of Ian Tomlinson or the woman who was hit by a police officer.

Dear, I do believe they are well aware of this point. Their reply is surely a quizzical look accompanied by a simple, “right!”

The first student to be arrested for “dealing” smarties..

It also serves a valuable measuring tool, if one thinks about it. Every person who deregisters themself probably serves as a useful measuring stick for ten or twenty others who are every bit as atheistic but can’t be arsed enough to make it formal.

In the mid-1960′s, when beehive hairdos were in fashion, they told the girls that spiders would nest in their hair. I remember an urban legend of a girl dying from a black-widow bite

UCrawford: It’s a tactic that’s unlikely to have any positive effect, it’s certainly not going to build any bridges when it comes to debate…

A positive effect for whom? Honest expressions of conscience, including parodies of the absurd, do have a positive effect for me. I am amused, and my heart is warmed knowing that there are other like minded individuals, and that I need not slink around in shadows for fear of being ostracized by hateful bigots.

I don’t feel obligated to “build bridges” either. Giving special consideration to actions and ideas which derive from utter faith is one of the sources of the problem. That’s a tool to protect intolerant, hateful ideas from proper skepticism.

…and it’s more likely to just polarize religious opinion against atheists because they’ll see it as us profaning their rituals…which it kind of is.

Like I said above, quit kowtowing to the lowest common denominator. If the more irrational, hateful bigots feel more irrational hatred towards people for honest expressions of conscience, the fault is in the bigots, not their victims.

But look at the ritual of baptism. Why do it? Because you fear that if you don’t engage in this strange rite, you will actually burn forever, even after you die!! And, you teach children that this is so, cruelly instilling fear in them. (Your friend who died in the car accident was only five years old, but since he wasn’t baptized, he is now being cooked and will be forever! Not only will little Jimmy not be able to play with you, he is right now screaming in agony! But God loves you.) Do you really, really think that such a ritual needs to be ridiculed to be any more profane?

People think that atheism means you absolutely deny the existence of gods.

That’s not true. It’s just a lack of faith in them. If you say “Well, there may be gods and there may not be,” then you are an atheist.

All agnostics are atheists.

If you think you are a deist, but you have doubts, you are an atheist.

If you have faith that gods exist, then you are a theist. All others are not theists and are atheists.

This isn’t complicated, people.

UCrawford: The whole de-baptism thing strikes me as not just unnecessary but actually kind of rude and hostile…sort of like “Not only do I reject a belief in God, but I reject your stupid church rituals and spit on you.”

What is wrong with rejecting an irrational belief? What is wrong with rejecting irrational rituals?

But who, besides you, said anything about spitting on people? How do you make that leap? It’s like saying that an “uppity” minority is spitting on white people, when a white person acting the same way is not judged likewise. Or saying that an openly homosexual person is spitting on heterosexuals, when a straight couple acting the same way are not judged likewise.

Why is the fear of upsetting bigots so strong that daring to be free in front of them is judged hostile? It isn’t. It’s being free. To hell with them if they don’t like it.

I have a very similar background to yours, UCrawford. I used to view overt expressions of atheism to be too provocative. I got over it, and I now realize that I was not wanting to upset people who teach children contemptible lessons in hate: treat your slaves a certain way, kill people who work on a certain day of the week, kill those who follow the sexual instincts allegedly instilled in them at birth by their creator (Leviticus). Yeah, I know, modern Christians don’t actually follow those rules, even though many claim those rules are the literal word of god and the actual basis of morality.

Your trepidation can be traced historically back to a time when heretics and infidels were tortured and murdered. Sure, we live in an enlightened culture, but you still better watch your step!

Hogwash. Quit kowtowing to the lowest common denominator.

If you don’t have faith in gods, then you are an atheist.

So wavering between certain beliefs means that you are an atheist.