Making the News 4

From uk.religion.pagan

If you don't want people to laugh at your sincerely held beliefs -
don't have such funny beliefs.

What funny beliefs? There is a greater life force in the universe, and
what goes around more or less comes around, in one way or another.

That is hilarious.

What goes around goes around. What comes around comes around. Where have you been living?

Your response is meaningless and potentially rather trollish. Do you not feel the need to engage religious/spiritual people in serious discussion?

In order to have your mockery taken seriously I'd focus on justifying your entitlement to mock if I were you, especially as it now seems you have chosen to target a non-evangelising religion/group of religions/whatever.

Generally, relations between atheists and Pagans are very good, precisely bcasue we all tend to share an equal dislike of the "One-True-Way" brigade.
Are you one of those atheists who prefers to evangelise as well?

In which case how, exactly, are you any better, from our point of view, than a fundie who comes in here to inform us that we are all heading for Hell?

I am not an anti-Christian. I don't believe in gods, spirits, souls, fate, destiny or any of that stuff. I don't regard Pagans as allies. I don't subscribe to the 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' school of diplomacy, I am a fundamentalist. Fundamentally all religion is bullshit. The fact that you are freely wallowing in a different religion to the one they tried to force down my throat doesn't cut any ice with me. I reject all pre-prepared answers, all mythology and all spiritual nonsense. I don't have a spiritual dimension or a god-shaped hole.

I put Pagans and Christians into the same category: wrong. My attitude to Pagans versus Christians is rather like Alex Ferguson's attitude to Chelsea versus Arsenal, he wants both to lose, with lots of red cards and nasty career-threatening injuries. Except the Pagans play in the Fido Dog Biscuits Amateur Sunday League, and look like favourites for demotion.

Ahh.. you see, that's where you make a fatal mistake.. you don't have to be a theist, or even religious, to be a pagan.. by assuming that pagans and christians are in the same category, you've just joined a sunday league team yourself..

Ah. So you just have to be a bit of a self-important wally?

You're a natural. :-)

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." -- Through the Looking-Glass

I don't believe I'm wrong. Do you think you're wrong?

Why should I be happy to celebrate people who have different ideas to me? I believe in tolerating the religious. But toleration suggests that putting up with them is a burden rather than a joy. If you love everybody and everything you ain't tolerating. We (modern western liberal societies) seem to have missed out on the middle ground between celebrating something and grubbing it up and burning it. Isn't it possible to let something exist and yet have differences with it and grievances against it? Can't there be a middle ground between putting homosexuals in gas chambers on the one side and subsidizing them to have a Mardi Gras festival consisting of orgies of public sodomy on flat-bed trucks driving down the High Street on the other?

I don't want to burn down mosques and turn nuns into compost but neither do I want to have bloody Thought For The Day on Radio Four every morning without any right to reply or have Christian fundamentalists say what videos the supermarket should stock or a bunch of turbaned thugs decide what plays can be staged. Pretending there are no differences between Christians, Pagans, Muslims and atheists is stupid and it is living a lie.

Incidentally, have you any evidence that Paganism is a shrinking belief system?

Or do you just take that on faith? :-)

Belief system? That's a bit rich isn't it? That's like comparing the crowd at Cardiff City FC with the Waffen SS.

GODWINS!

Thanks for playing.

Oh how tedious, how last millennium.

Doesn't the comparison have to be made in relation to somebody else involved in the thread? I wasn't comparing Pagans to a highly organized ruthless fascistic killing machine I was comparing them to a leaderless rabble with limited consensus on agenda and philosophy.

Because you are happy to live in a society in which we are all free to express our own opinions and in which we don't get killed/sacked/spat on for refusing to follow a specified religion?

Sounds like a cause for celebration to me...

Maybe because you're a bit flaky. I tolerate people who are different. I see no reason to celebrate difference. If somebody says my new haircut makes me look fat and old I don't see any need to celebrate them sharing that opinion with me. There is a much neglected middle way between banning things and making them compulsory. I don't want to see homosexuals murdered or taunted and I don't want to be dragooned into an orgy of public sodomy, or a celebration of it, either. Similarly I don't want to see religions persecuted and I don't want to be told I have to celebrate religious differences either.

Everybody should be free to express their opinions but intolerance should not be tolerated. Expressing difference is not intolerance. The ability to mock people with differing views is a fundamental freedom. If the only freedom to express we have is the freedom to agree and celebrate then such freedom is worthless.

I do celebrate freedom of expression. I am holding a High Mass tomorrow followed by a feast of steaks cut from sacred cows.

I am standing up for the right to express disagreements with religions. Are you suggesting that if you have differences with people of a particular religion that you should not express those differences?

Freedom of expression lies in being able to freely express your opinion, not just the opinions that society is happy for you to express. That is a social tyranny.

There is no freedom of speech if the only acceptible answer to the question "does my bum look big in this?" is no. There is no freedom of expression if the only thing you are allowed to express is agreement.

SO.........What is your "grievance" against the Pagan commmunity?

Who said I had a grievance against the Pagan community? (Is there a Pagan community? Community contains the word unity.) When I did an earlier SmiteCam event I targeted virually every newsgroup that had religion in the description to counter the accusation that I was obsessed with Christianity because I was secretly a believer and I was making too big a thing about Jesus because I hated their god because I knew they were right and everybody knows queer bashers are all queers in denial themselves and there's no such thing as atheists yadda yadda yadda. This time I have returned to the groups that generated feedback, visitors or decent debates.

No one has suggested that there are no differences between religions. In fact this is the whole point behind celebrating diversity: That, being human, we are diverse and need to learn to get along

Why celebrate diversity? I don't want diversity. I want truth. Who the fuck wants diversity per se? I will celebrate the freedoms that allow diversity to exist because they are the freedoms that allow people to find the truth and express it. Being diverse means that many people are wrong. But allowing diversity ensures that not everybody need be wrong. Allowing diversity and tolerating difference allows for the possibility of some people actually, sometimes, being right.

Show me the unity behind Christian belief and I might take that comment a little more seriously.

Who mentioned Christianity?

Christianity does have some structure to it and some core beliefs, some vague epicentre. Paganism seems to be defined by what it isn't, sometimes by those who claim they are Pagans, and sometimes by those who aren't. And it isn't clear to me which definition many Pagans are trying to live up to.

On the same subject, do you accept Hinduism is a belief system?

It's more a kind of systematic collective cultural schizophrenia. In that sense it is a much closer analogy to Paganism than it is to Christianity.

...you didn't directly respond to it. Do I take it from this that you DO feel the need to save us from the error of our ways?

Oh yes. Absotivelyposotutly. What's the point of being right all the time if you don't share? That would be selfish, wouldn't it?

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alt.atheism, alt.christnet.atheism, alt.religion.christian, alt.politics.religion

Atheists love Christmas, too

What's not to like about Christmas? Except for being made to go to church when you don't want to, obviously, not that much.

I love Christmas, especially when there isn't too much Christianity involved in it, when it is true to the true meaning of the festival that predates Christianity. Wishing health and happiness to all you meet seems a great sentiment. Having a day that is special for everybody, once every year, seems a great idea too.

It becomes a nauseating event when people try to make out that the only reason for the season is some cock and bull story invented nearly two thousand years ago. Stop forcing your story down unwilling throats, relax and enjoy the holiday.

Of course the name Christmas comes from the Mass of Christ, but that is of no great significance, just as the fact that Thursday is named after Thor or Easter is named after a goddess of the Spring is of no great significance either. The important thing is that it is a traditional and highly popular celebration. So traditional and popular that Christianity could not suppress it so instead tried to take it over. For several centuries the people let the Church take it over but now it has been taken back and belongs again to the people.

Never let the Grinches steal your Christmas ever again. Don't let anybody tell you what your Christmas means. It means what you want it to mean.

If you are an atheist you don't have to draw the blinds, send back your presents and pretend Christmas is just an ordinary day. Have a great time if want to. It never was their festival in the first place, they never have owned it, they stole it from the people. At times they banned it too because the people were enjoying it too much and that would never do. And don't fall for any of that cod Pagan bullshit either, the original owners of the festival are dead and they have no legitimate heirs. Don't stress out over Christmas. Don't stress the Christ in Christmas any more than you stress the Holy in holiday, the Woden in Wednesday or the Saturn in Saturday.

Put up your Christmas trees, stuff your bird, pull your crackers and knock back plenty of seasonal cheer. Even sing some of those ruddy carols if the mood takes you, the lyrics are a load of bullshit but then so is Bohemian Rhapsody, Yellow Submarine and Frosty the Snowman.

I shall be taking my own advice on Sunday. By the bucketful.

Cheers,

http://www.mwillett.org/atheism/atheistchristmas.htm

alt.religion.christian, alt.christnet, alt.religion.christianity, alt.bible, alt.christnet.bible

Athiests, such as myself, post on a christian group just to piss off
brainwashed idiot morons such as yourself.
Besudes that, if you are stupid enough to believe in something you
cant even see, we know that sooner or later we'll take some of your
money. For example, I have an imaginary island which I'll sell to you
for $100,000. let me know when you are financed and ready to pay me.
I accept paypal, cash, check or money order. Hurry, otherwise I will
sell it on ebay for $500,000 and you'll lose it all..

Now, for todays religion class....
Please write these words 10,000 times
"There is NO GOD" and post them on this newsgroup when you finish.

 _____________________________________________________________
|                                                   ^^^^^^^^\ |
| I must learn how to spell athEIst                 |       | |
| I must learn how to spell athEIst                 |_ __   | |
| I must learn how to spell athEIst                 (.(. )  | |
| I must learn how to spell athEIst         _       (_      ) |
|                                           \\      /___/' /  |
|                                           _\\_      \    |  |
|                                          ((   )     /====|  |
|                                           \  <.__._-      \ |
http://mwillett.org/athiest.htm

Not knowing how to spell *atheist* when you are one is a bit of a 
problem when you are trying to make out that Christians are stupid.

It's so much easier to come across as superior when you actually are.

-- 
Martin Willett


http://mwillett.org

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Making the News 4

From uk.religion.pagan

alt.atheism, alt.christnet.atheism, alt.religion.christian, alt.politics.religion

alt.religion.christian, alt.christnet, alt.religion.christianity, alt.bible, alt.christnet.bible

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