Btw, the more I hear about christianity and atheism in the USA, the less
I can relate to it. It's so different here.

  In Finland, to put it bluntly, everybody is by default considered atheist.
I don't know how credible this sounds to an American (and to citizens of
some other christian countries, especially in southern Europe), but I can
assure you that it's more a surprise if someone confesses to be a believer.
In fact, many believers are not eager to tell anybody for the fear of
getting ridiculed. The most common reaction, though, is for people to ask
*why* they believe in such things.

  The Finnish government and media take no stance on religion vs. atheism.
Politicians don't openly take a stance, unless directly asked (and they
seldom are). You won't see people in television professing atheism because,
frankly, it doesn't make sense. Atheism is basically the status quo. Someone
on TV declaring being an atheist is like a man declaring that he is a man.
"Yeah, so? What's your point?"

  The Lutheran church as some kind of semi-official status in Finland, but
it's more a formalism than anything else. It weds and buries people, and
little else.

  Thus I have hard time relating to the USA where, as far as I understand,
atheism is considered by many to be some kind of mental disease. People go
to TV and declare being atheists and cause controversy. That makes me just
scratch my head and be all like "wha... why... huh???" It just doesn't make
sense to me. It just feels hugely contradictory for what's supposed to be
the Land of Freedom, where everybody is equal.

  Apparently in the USA it's a great shock when they announce on the news
that eg. in Sweden something like 80% of the population is atheist. I am
more like: "Really? So few? That's a surprise."

  Maybe it really is different here, but atheism is really the rule, not
the exception. Being a believer is the exception.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Thus I have hard time relating to the USA where, as far as I understand,
> atheism is considered by many to be some kind of mental disease.

Yep.

> It just feels hugely contradictory for what's supposed to be
> the Land of Freedom, where everybody is equal.

Well, yeah. Remember, tho, that the whole "land of freedom" stuff was how it 
started out.  Because the USA tolerated the nut cases, maybe the nut cases 
tended to come here from elsewhere.   AFAIK, the USA was the first country 
to be *officially* secular. Certainly the first modern westernized country - 
at least that's the general sense children get taught in history class here. 
I imagine there were some roman-era city-states perhaps that were secular, 
or some east asian countries that don't count because, you know, they're 
east asian. ;-)

It's still a whole lot more tolerant than countries where there *is* an 
official religion - where declaring yourself an atheist gets you beheaded or 
something.

>   Apparently in the USA it's a great shock when they announce on the news
> that eg. in Sweden something like 80% of the population is atheist. I am
> more like: "Really? So few? That's a surprise."

Now maybe you understand better the outspoken-ness of atheists in the USA. 
:-) Most atheists are just trying to get to equality, and keep the majority 
of religious people from doing stupid stuff to them.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Now maybe you understand better the outspoken-ness of atheists in the USA. 

  I also understand why they are so prejudiced. They only see Christianity
as professed in the USA, not as it is professed eg. in northern Europe,
which is rather different. That's probably why I find most of their rants
so provocative and irritating. (It's really refreshing to see level-headed,
rational, non-aggressive and non-fanatic views on skepticism, like in the
video in my original post in this thread. Sadly, this kind of video seems
to be an extremely rare occurrence.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Now maybe you understand better the outspoken-ness of atheists in the USA. 
> 
>   I also understand why they are so prejudiced.

Certainly. The basic assumption most atheists make is that they're either 
talking to the wingnuts here, or they have an audience who understands that 
there are wingnuts here.

> so provocative and irritating. 

Sure. If you're from a reasonable place and you listen to rants against "all 
christians" or whatever, you're certainly going to be more offended than 
intended.

> (It's really refreshing to see level-headed,
> rational, non-aggressive and non-fanatic views on skepticism, like in the
> video in my original post in this thread. Sadly, this kind of video seems
> to be an extremely rare occurrence.)

Probably because it works so poorly. :-) If it worked well, you'd really 
only need one. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Warp wrote:
> Sadly, this kind of video seems
> to be an extremely rare occurrence.)

Actually, it's very common. Just not in atheist vs theist debates. But go to 
any (say) philosophy textbook, college science class, or even science blog, 
etc, and you'll find lots of good discussions of such things. Producing 
something like that and putting it up on youtube targeting people who 
generally won't listen anyway is a lot of work for little reward.

For example, posts from that same blog I mentioned:

http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/null_hypothesis_and_logic_skepticism

http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/definitions_definitions_what_they_mean_science

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Now maybe you understand better the outspoken-ness of atheists in the USA. 
> 
>   I also understand why they are so prejudiced. They only see Christianity
> as professed in the USA, not as it is professed eg. in northern Europe,
> which is rather different. That's probably why I find most of their rants
> so provocative and irritating. (It's really refreshing to see level-headed,
> rational, non-aggressive and non-fanatic views on skepticism, like in the
> video in my original post in this thread. Sadly, this kind of video seems
> to be an extremely rare occurrence.)
> 
Nut not at all surprising. When thousands of brainwashed people insist 
that the guy who thought long and hard about an issue, and concluded it 
was absurd, is mentally ill, because he didn't just "accept the truth", 
never mind that not one of them did either, but had to be force fed it 
for the first 10 years of their lives, before they started accepting it 
as fact, the reaction to such over the top accusations of defects isn't 
going to be, "Ah, well.. That's your opinion. Lets just go see a movie."

This is especially true if the same brainwashed legions are trying 
everything they can to undermine everything from whether you are allowed 
to hold office without being properly brainwashed, to what, if any, 
movies get shown, because they might not conform to proper brainwashing 
dogma. The problem is not of course so much religion as blind ideology 
and a refusal to see the end negative results of following it. The UN 
and, to some extent, some European countries, are making similar 
mistakes in their willingness to either try to ban, or blindly accept, 
certain things, which, ironically, we are all too aware tend to be the 
first step in creating a closed door, delusional, and potentially 
dangerous cult in the first place. I.e., forcing the people who believe 
certain symbols out of the public eye, by banning the symbols, like 
Germany has done with certain old WWII garbage. Some guy publishing a 
book about UFOs is an annoyance, some guy **secretly** publishing tracts 
on how unfair it was that the master race lost, is dangerous. By the 
same token, someone secretly publishing total nonsense about space 
aliens, and having the law back them while trying to hide it gets you.. 
Scientology, while some wacko talking about white power in public nets 
them derision and entirely the *wrong* sort of interest, if you want 
people to take you seriously, in large numbers.

The only major problem the US has is that it absolutely ***refuses*** to 
treat faith, no matter which of the tens of thousands of version we are 
talking about, the same way as some moron babbling about white power on 
the street corner. Some of us are. We spent over 150 years losing by 
being nice, while they used every form or rhetoric and hate speech they 
could against us. Its our turn to present the truth in a way that is 
sufficiently aggressive that people will notice, over top all the loud 
mouth lunatics ***still*** yelling about how unfair the world is being 
to their 90% of the population and 99% of all the political power, 
because they, "wah! wah!", don't have 100% believers in the US and 100% 
of the political power, so must, logically, be "persecuted".

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The only major problem the US has is that it absolutely ***refuses*** to 
> treat faith, no matter which of the tens of thousands of version we are 
> talking about, the same way as some moron babbling about white power on 
> the street corner. Some of us are. We spent over 150 years losing by 
> being nice, while they used every form or rhetoric and hate speech they 
> could against us. Its our turn to present the truth in a way that is 
> sufficiently aggressive that people will notice, over top all the loud 
> mouth lunatics ***still*** yelling about how unfair the world is being 
> to their 90% of the population and 99% of all the political power, 
> because they, "wah! wah!", don't have 100% believers in the US and 100% 
> of the political power, so must, logically, be "persecuted".

The first sentence is false--witness David Koresh.  An example of faith 
that was sanctioned with extreme prejudice.  Or do you mean that you 
feel *any* tolerance of *any* faith is unacceptable?  That is just as 
blind a view as the other way 'round.  "We spent x years losing by being 
nice, so now we're not going to be nice any more", while pragmatic, 
places you neatly in the same general category as 'fair-weather 
pacifists', abandoning a basic tenet in the face of adversity (at least, 
if 'being nice' is in any way fundamental to your belief, which if it 
weren't, why be nice to begin with?).  When you use the enemy's methods, 
you become the enemy.  "Our turn to present the truth in a way that is 
sufficiently aggressive"?  That's poor form, indeed.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Tim Cook wrote:
> if 'being nice' is in any way fundamental to your belief, 

I like the story about the Quaker wrestler in the time leading up to the 
second world war. He runs across a group of youths talking about how they 
should bomb the crap out of Germany, and he points out that violence never 
changed anyone's mind.  The leader of the group is adamant, so he offers to 
wrestle the leader.  After soundly trouncing the leader, the Quaker says 
"See? *Now* do you believe force doesn't change anyone's mind?" The leader 
says "No way."  The Quaker says "See?" and walks off.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:53:09 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>I like the story about the Quaker wrestler

Has the "Society of Friends" been elevated to the status of a Mystical Eastern
religion?
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen wrote:
> On Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:53:09 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> 
>> I like the story about the Quaker wrestler
> 
> Has the "Society of Friends" been elevated to the status of a Mystical Eastern
> religion?

I don't believe so. Did something I say imply that?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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