Hardships of Being Atheist

[denuseri]

Well he uses sophistry much more subtly than you; I will give him that Throne, but then again, he is after all a well known professional sophist now isn't he..

"The key problem with Hari’s approach... and with his justification of it... is that he has deployed the Noble Truth defence – the idea that it is okay to play fast and loose with the facts, and with reality itself, just so long as you end up telling a “greater truth”. The notion that one can reach “the truth” by manipulating reality should be anathema to anyone who calls himself a journalist."

The main problem here being that his 'truth" is the only one that's acceptable to him or for others, even though he carefully tries to tie his propaganda with the concept of free speech, (which there is nothing wrong with btw, we should all be able to speak freely) and he condemns those who work against it, his claims to truly support secularism fail when he turns right around and calls for people to be forced to take a comparative religion class run by people with an obviously open atheist agenda which actually does nothing to promote secularism or tolerance.

Though now I see finally where you get a lot of your technique from.

You do realize I hope the irony: when you say that you respect someone but then you turn right around in the same breath and demonstrate how you really do not actually respect them at all by deriding what they believe in with open scorn and ridicule.

Human beings in general are often discriminatory creatures...its basically hardwired into us to a certain extent and helped us to survive at various points in our history, but its also a two sided sword that all too often leads to counter productive activities. Such intolerance for that which is different from ourselves is the real culprit here when people attack or insult each other for their beliefs or lack thereof...not "religion" in and of itself.





Without mutual respect for each other and each others beliefs you don't have an environment in which secularism can thrive let alone prevail.

The fact of the matter is (as discussed numerous times in too many threads) that none of these beliefs have any more validity in and of themselves than anyone else's and ergo by default are equally deserving of the same respect.

[Thorne]

The fact of the matter is (as discussed numerous times in too many threads) that none of these beliefs have any more validity in and of themselves than anyone else's and ergo by default are equally deserving of the same respect.

Which is exactly how I feel! I treat all unverifiable beliefs with the same degree of disrespect. They are all the same to me.