Thursday, November 29, 2007

Crying persecution

click to enlargeFreethunk cartoon
(I love Freethunk!)

15 comments:

Tommykey said...

My "favorite" is the college campus Christians who decry speech codes that penalize them for harrassing gays because it is interfering with the practice of their religion.

John said...

I use to do this sometimes. Now I just realize that there have been people on all sides who have been persecuted and mistreated for their beliefs. Even atheists.

Stardust said...

Hi tommy,
One of the "freedom of speech" abuses I really hate is using that freedom to express hatred toward another person or particular group. That is just simply wrong.

Stardust said...

Hi Cole,
The thing about Xians is that many of them THINK they are being "persecuted" by simply being asked to allow others to believe as they so choose or to not believe at all.

Andrea said...

Exactly, Star. By their own definition of persecution, they are giving gays and lesbians an extremely hard time. Persecuting them.

John said...

Good point Andrea.

I use to give gays a hard time. Nothing extreme or anything. Not because I was Christian. But because of how I was raised.

I was fortunate enough not to be arround Christians who were mean to gays.

I was also made fun of because I believed in God in High School.

I guess what comes arround goes arround.

Stardust said...

I was also made fun of because I believed in God in High School.

Cole, the interesting thing is that most of the kids in high school who are making fun of those who believe in God come from moderate, god-believing, church-going homes. I know this from first-hand experience for I was one who would go to church on Sundays,but think that the Bible thumpers and fundies in school were a bunch of "Jesus freaks", but then would go to church on Sunday and be one of those "Jesus freaks" for an hour or two with my family and friends at church.

If it were just atheists persecuting xians, xians far outnumber atheists and could stop it...however, most of the "making fun" is done Xian on Xian. Xians area always fighting amongst themselves. Just look at Northern Ireland and other places in the world.

Stardust said...

Hi Andrea...how are the kids?

And yes, Xians do exactly what they accuse others of doing to them...persecute others who do not think/believe as they do, whether they do it openly or to themselves. Many Xians are constantly judging other people.

John said...

Yeah Christians do fight among themselves which is one of the reasons I thought about giving it up.

No one agrees and everybody is going to hell.

John said...

I'm talking to a couple of them now who think that God has made them perfect.

Stardust said...

Cole (mt), I think my youngest brother has the right idea. Everyone believes what they believe in order to get through life. But the problem comes in when people try to force everyone to conform and to judge others for having those beliefs, or for having no beliefs. I personally would like to live life without these belief and non-belief arguments. If people could just believe without being so self-righteous about those beliefs, then there would be no reason to have arguments about it.

I guess if religion was out of the picture, humans would find something else to fight about and things to judge and persecute others about.

Peace is only a nice dream.

Stardust said...

I'm talking to a couple of them now who think that God has made them perfect.

Then ask them if they go to the doctor for "tune-ups" or check-ups to make sure they are still "perfect". If they believe that a god has made them perfect, then they have no need for doctors, dentists, surgeons, eye doctors, therapists, medicine, vitamin supplements, and even churches.

Andrea said...

Hey Star. The boys are great, healthy and full of energy.

Cole, where did you go to high school? When I was a Christian, I too screamed about persecution all the time...now it's so painful to see, like Star said, people will hate each other for any reason, no matter what. I used to have very bitter arguments with fellow believers about doctrine, etc. And we all used Scripture against each other, and so on and so forth. How is one supposed to be able to tell the difference? Some denominations don't even believe in hell.

The fact that there are thousands of different churches, with wildly differing ideas, helped lead me to conclude that perhaps there is a less stressful way to go through life.

John said...

Yeah your right. I'm going to stop arguing about it with them. It's just causing me stress.

Stardust said...

I sat through many Bible studies where heated arguments would ensue and fellow believers over interpretation, doctrine, etc. Looking back, it's all about what one person chooses to believe over another. It's all so silly, and there are more important things in life to get worked up about. There are already too many REAL stresses in life to deal with.