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Atheism

And Christians are bad Christians when they eat shellfish. There are two options: speak more moderately--as invited to multiple times--or, inevitably, leave. I do not want this--you are knowledgable and intelligent and an asset to the board on other topics--but if fighting what you believe to be the scourge of Islam is so important that you must pursue it here in spite of repeated admonitions, then I'll go through the motions and press the buttons. We, the moderators and our site hosts, have discussed your case multiple times and have reached the conclusion that there is no more we can do. From now on it's just warnings and expulsion.
Please see sense, drop the bone and give us your opinion on cryptids, Jack the Ripper, UFOs or folklore.

Please explain in detail exactly what part of the terms and rules I have broken. I need specific examples of how I have performed defamatory, abusive, hateful, or threatening comments against members of this forum in my most recent post. You have never called me out for my political opinions, which are every bit as inflamatory. You haven't called me out for my criticisms of Catholicism or Fundamentalist Christianity in the USA.
This is a deliberate double standard and I want you to account for it please. I am quite happy to leave FT and never come back over this if need be. I am not making an uninformed case. I speak, read and write Arabic with passable proficiency and have offered sanctuary to ex-Muslims in my home, so my position isn't one of knee-jerk xenophobia. On the whole I am very much in favor of cultural pluralism & diversity, and my politics are generally left leaning, though increasingly centerist. For that diversity to work however the cultures involved have to be capable of behaving in a civilized and tolerant fashion. I have seen very little evidence to suggest that people of the Islamic faith are properly capable of this without becoming a threat to the people around them. My position, if anything, is probably too well informed on the matter of Islam. Have you ever lived in a Muslim country Yith? I certainly have. Not good. My position is one founded on a considered philosophical and political observation over years of experience. In my teens I was very open minded towards Islam, and inclined to think they had a case against Israel's treatment of them; now I know too much.
 
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For us to live in peace (at Jesus's command) we have to compromise. Christians (other than fundamentalists) do so. Give unto Rome that which is Roman. Atheists do so, even though they might look down on people of faith they do not murder them .

Unfortunately one belief system, which is both faith based and secular, does not believe in compromise. This is an existential threat to the idea of a multicultural society - something I am basically in favour of.

A multicultural society does not require everyone to integrate - I give the example of the Chinese enclaves in our major cities, and the recent move of a strict Jewish colony to, of all places , Canvey Island. These work because they allow people to follow their own culture. But it also requires acceptance that other people do not - and that even though they do not they are free to come and gawp at, or buy things from, the enclave.

That is what is missing from the Religion of Peace - it believes as a fundamental tenet that the peace will only be achieved by eliminating all other beliefs.
 
I think that there are good reasons to fear the advance of Islam in the West, but your use of a broad brush approach to Muslims is unjustified. it is also going to result in you getting banned from the board, I don't want to see that happening. Rather than tar all Muslims with the same brush you would be better off seeking out cases where Islamists try to overturn accepted norms in Western countries. Identify actual conspiracies (a Fortean topic) to take over schools, discriminate against Women, LGB etc,
There are Islamic Sects which do not adhere to a Fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran: Ismaili, Alevi, Alawi, Ahmadiyya, and indeed mainstream Muslims who don't hold to a literal Interpretation of the Koran. Just as there are Christians who don't believe that LGBs or Adulterous Women should be stoned to death as the Bible demands. Maybe just stick to other Fortean topics for a while.

So the issue isn't that Islam is ideologically motivating atrocities on a daily basis, but the fact that I am certain that any devout Muslim, with minimal encouragement, is capable of performing and inciting those atrocities? Have you ever seen someone stoned to death? I did when I was staying in Yemen. Ordinary people, neighbors, stoned a young man for apostacy 2 blocks from where I was living, and the police did nothing. I know because I saw who did it. They weren't all poor or undereducated either. Naturally I was outraged, then it was firmly implied that if I did anything about it, legally, that I was likely to meet the same fate. For something like this to happen once was disturbing enough, and might be passed off as an abberation but I have seen other similar things too on other occasions in other Islamic countries, and I have had my fill, and I am hardly a shrinking violet.
 
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Please explain in detail exactly what part of the terms and rules I have broken. I need specific examples of how I have performed defamatory, abusive, hateful, or threatening comments against members of this forum in my most recent post.

The prohibitions in the forum's Terms and Conditions are not limited to transgressions against particular forum members.

Your repeated rants against the whole of Islam are actionable with regard to any one, or combination, of the prohibitions against submissions deemed defamatory, likely to offend, and / or (with repetition, especially ... ) inviting or inflaming discord.


You have never called me out for my political opinions, which are every bit as inflamatory. You haven't called me out for my criticisms of Catholicism or Fundamentalist Christianity in the USA.

In case you hadn't noticed, all 'political' stuff has been, and continues to be, eradicated from the forums.

Your criticisms of particular sects or denominations are of a different order of severity and specificity than damning an entire religion.


I'm sincerely sorry you had to witness the horrific extreme of religious mania, and I understand how such an experience can permanently color one's views. However, that doesn't afford you a license to damn an entire faith - much less to do so on as shrill and repetitive a basis as you've demonstrated - in this venue and within the context of its stated rules and standards.

NOTE:
Do not take these comments as invitation to further discussion of the staff's position.
The position is decided, we have specified the crux of this matter, and consequences will result from any further transgressions.
 
As an atheist I'm inclined to agree. They should just cremate the douche and flush him. A real atheist wouldn't care, and might even find it funny. I am all for composting myself, assuming I can't live long enough to be eaten alive by an extraterrestrial life form (so sick of this biosphere).

Ha ha! Well said. I'm very impressed by the vulgar atheist humourist Frankie Boyle ( about whom I have mixed feelings but whose genius-level stand up and audience baiting I enjoy ) berating tiresome 'professional atheists' - he means the smug celebrity ones who 'fucking love science' even when they know fuck all about it and are merely signalling their superiority over the superstitious peasantry - no names, no pack drill.

I really respect him for that, like he'd give a monkey's.
 
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NOTE:
Do not take these comments as invitation to further discussion of the staff's position.
The position is decided, we have specified the crux of this matter, and consequences will result from any further transgressions.
Sure, but what if I have questions about how to comply? How do I ask you questions without entering into a discussion? I mean, if I am not allowed to communicate freely, I do need a bit of clarification about what I can and cannot say, or some context about when I cross a line of generating an offence. Clearly you have, as you say, decided upon a position, but I am not quite understanding the detail of what that is so I can properly comply with it.

I would also point out that if I have crossed some line of a vilification law, I need to know what that is, as in my present physical jurisdiction, no such laws exist, and I need to familiarise myself with them and I am quite willing to do so. Coming from the USA where we have unrestricted free speech, one can become arrogantly and culturally insensitively prone to forget that not all nations similarly enshrine that liberty.
 
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The simplest answer is "Stick to specifics, don't over-generalize, and cut out the pejorative rhetoric."

You stuck with specifics in citing personal knowledge / experience of apostates' deaths. That's fine; no problem.

A recent example of the last two items listed is your reference to Islam as a "huge atrocity cult." As Yith and I have made sufficiently clear, this sort of over-generalization and catty commentary is unacceptable.
 
What one can or cannot say here seems bizarre.

I have never known a 'family' site allow so much foul language as this one.

Barely a day goes by without a reference to 'fuck' this or 'fucking' that'.

The first use of such expletives would get you thrown of most sites.

But one can't use obviously verifiable fact if they relate to certain 'taboo' subjects.

All rather odd.

It is hard to discuss atheism with out reference to what atheism is contesting, and the reasons behind it.

INT21.
 
What one can or cannot say here seems bizarre.

I have never known a 'family' site allow so much foul language as this one.

Barely a day goes by without a reference to 'fuck' this or 'fucking' that'.

The first use of such expletives would get you thrown of most sites.

But one can't use obviously verifiable fact if they relate to certain 'taboo' subjects.

All rather odd.

It is hard to discuss atheism with out reference to what atheism is contesting, and the reasons behind it.

INT21.

This is not a 'family site'.

And you're derailing the fucking thread.
 
This isn't a family site. In moving to the current platform (and for a number of operational / legal reasons) we established an age requirement (18) for registration.
 
I mean, if I am not allowed to communicate freely

As I said to Megadeth today, you can always start a PM convo! It depends on how much thread derailment or publicity a person wants - he'll go ahead and post his material when he gets back I think, without having posted spoilers on open thread.
 
Kindly differentiate between those who would be God and the real thing. Once you talk about Organised Religion, one thing is sure: somone's playing the kind of power games which makes faith a rival. The first symptom is when it starts to claim Universality: when the faith is accessible to all. If millenia of experience tell us anything, it's that that's not true, which is the starting point of atheism. And yet that's the same mistake in reverse.
In my case, what I've channelled managed something significant enough, cumulatively, to win the team a Peace Prize. That's what's called second-stage faith, when you get something from outside. It's scarce as hen's teeth, and intermittent, so it can't be made to perform on command.
 
This isn't a family site. In moving to the current platform (and for a number of operational / legal reasons) we established an age requirement (18) for registration.

I remember when it was a family site, great picnics and barbecues. Rynner used to dress as a sailor and dance reels, jigs and hornpipes to amuse the children.
 
I remember when it was a family site, great picnics and barbecues. Rynner used to dress as a sailor and dance reels, jigs and hornpipes to amuse the children.

Some of us have actually performed said work in ernest, not in kit, thankfully. I'm from a naval family...
The one time I've been found dressed funny ended up with me licenced by the local magistrates to bash me nakers lewdly in public, without let of hindrance from the Police, in the streets of Chester, for a year. Said instruments being mediaeval Arabic kettle-drums, al-nahri, slung from a belt worn around the waist.
Funny thing, the etymology. It's late mediaeval English, where lewdly means loudly, today. But as sworn, ridiculous.
 
Well, I was a member of the Cecil Sharp House Choir, until their Chief Exec decided she preferred the LibProt bit over defending the heritage against HS2. The Chester bit was the Chester Minstrels' Court, in commemoration of the time the local entertainers scared a Welsh raiding party off..
 
The oddities of how language got dressed up in ritual to arrive at a sufficiently ridiculous conclusion for the core meaning to have got lost in the flummery. It happens in almost every religion, that a sense of interhuman commitment gets lost in the ritual.
The Hammer example was vindictive against both creeds under attack, and as we see now, many of those involved were hardly paragons of virtue themselves. I don't want to hammer on about the fabulated abuse, designed to discredit charges of real and actual abuse, although the examples are many, and only now are coming to a head in the performing arts (Weinstein) and Religion (which is the point here).
 
Survey results suggest a small but welcome move towards secularism in at least some countries within the Arab world.

Still a disappointingly high disapproval of being gay and a disturbingly high support for "honour killings" but still I suppose any hint of these countries liberalising has to be welcomed:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-48703377
 
Nothing significant will happen in these countries until the people at the top change their views, and that often means defying the clergy.
I understand Christianity took off because the Roman elite adopted it.

Just look at UK history as an example.

INT21.
 
Is Atheism A Belief System... or Fact?

It just struck me - many people who are atheists seem to regard it as a fact, irrefutable. But isn't it a belief system, exactly the same as monotheism, polytheism, or agnosticism? Or is it scientific "fact"? I'm not sure how it's calssified, but it might be scientific fact to a believer in atheism, but just a belief to anybody else....

Im no expert or something, but I personally do not vew Atheism as a belief system.

I mean sure, you, in fact, believe that there is no God but to me that sounds more like an absence of a belief.
If you are agnostic or believe in some sort of higher power/God or whatever then you belive in something (or, for agnostics, the posibility of something )

As an atheist you dont believe in any of the above - there is no belief.

When you believe in something, you have faith and trust in someone or something.

By believing in no God you actually do not have a belief, you, in fact believe in not believing???

You believe in the absence of something (probably seing tbat as an scientific fact)

Anyway, as I've said earlier Im no expert, this is just my opinion.
 
...As an atheist you dont believe in any of the above - there is no belief.
When you believe in something, you have faith and trust in someone or something.
By believing in no God you actually do not have a belief, you, in fact believe in not believing??? ...

Well, no - not at all ...

"Atheism" does not mean an absolute disbelief in any or all possible beliefs. It denotes a specific focus of disbelief - i.e., a disbelief in supernatural - often anthropomorphized - gods or deities as the agents responsible for (e.g.) the universe's creation, the course of history, one's fate, etc.

Phrased another way ... "A-theism" doesn't mean "against belief" generally; it means "against theism" specifically.

If someone rejects the notion of deities they may well hold a strong belief in something else (e.g., faeries or materialistic science).
 
Well, no - not at all ...

"Atheism" does not mean an absolute disbelief in any or all possible beliefs. It denotes a specific focus of disbelief - i.e., a disbelief in supernatural - often anthropomorphized - gods or deities as the agents responsible for (e.g.) the universe's creation, the course of history, one's fate, etc.

Phrased another way ... "A-theism" doesn't mean "against belief" generally; it means "against theism" specifically.

If someone rejects the notion of deities they may well hold a strong belief in something else (e.g., faeries or materialistic science).
Case in point, there are religions that include paranormal or supernatural beliefs that also don't have a diety as part of their makeup.
Scientology, some concepts of Wicca, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto for example.]
 
Well, no - not at all ...

"Atheism" does not mean an absolute disbelief in any or all possible beliefs. It denotes a specific focus of disbelief - i.e., a disbelief in supernatural - often anthropomorphized - gods or deities as the agents responsible for (e.g.) the universe's creation, the course of history, one's fate, etc.

Phrased another way ... "A-theism" doesn't mean "against belief" generally; it means "against theism" specifically.

If someone rejects the notion of deities they may well hold a strong belief in something else (e.g., faeries or materialistic science).
Well defined. A somewhat paradoxical view is that the atheism can be viewed as the disbelief of beliefs.
 
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While I understand the necessity of the term because naturally religious belief is so common, I really have a hard time with the semantic flipping that occurs trying to make atheism itself (that is atheism as a position) a belief.
It's obviously silly of you try to apply it to something else, like say the chipmunk that lives in my glove box.
 
While I understand the necessity of the term because naturally religious belief is so common, I really have a hard time with the semantic flipping that occurs trying to make atheism itself (that is atheism as a position) a belief. ...

It's an intrinsic problem with any "-ism" that's defined wholly via opposition to another "-ism".

Claiming a position based solely on opposing or rejecting position / belief X doesn't necessarily suggest, much less specify, an alternative position / belief Y into which the claimant must therefore be categorized.
 
A very-good 2019 informal antitheism-as-atheism conversation (published just last week on Youtube by the Centre For Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation) mainly between Richard and Ricky Gervaise.

Ably-facilited by the great Professor Richard Wiseman (who I have met in person... @gordonrutter many thanks again for that excellent event, here's hoping the next one will not be too far off in the future)


RG- "the periodic table of non-existent things is infinite"
#crocoduck
 
A very-good 2019 informal antitheism-as-atheism conversation (published just last week on Youtube by the Centre For Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation) mainly between Richard and Ricky Gervaise.

Ably-facilited by the great Professor Richard Wiseman (who I have met in person... @gordonrutter many thanks again for that excellent event, here's hoping the next one will not be too far off in the future)


RG- "the periodic table of non-existent things is infinite"
#crocoduck
Good post but to be honest these type debates will never end. Can't prove Jesus, Buddha, Taoism, Moses, etc were diviny enlightened or not. It's really up to who wants to believe or not believe in what, if that makes any sense.
 
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