People Who Spend A Lifetime Crusading Against Religions And Their Followers

[MrLomas]

Have these people actually "walked" in the shoes of these religions they seem to spend all of their time and effort slating?

Surely you can only really judge them if you have been within them and know them inside out and have other religions where you've also walked in their shoes to compare them to?

I sometimes look around on the net and see people tirelessly and fiercely crusading against these religions but then see they have nothing to go on except hearsay, rumour and mass hysteria caused by shady media mediums and their uneducated peers, family and friends no less!

What are your views on these wasters of time and tireless crusaders?

Better education at a grass roots level?

[andrew1707]

Which religions?

What people?

[woofgang]

people are entitled to their opinions and to express them within reason....personally i find crusaders both for and against religion to be boring in the extreme and I say this as someone who believes in god.

[ludwig]

Sorry, unless you've walked in the shoes of a tireless crusader and time waster, you're not qualified to pass comment on them.

[woofgang]

snigger ludwig

[chrisgel]

There's really no need to go into the intricate details of each religion if you realise that the basic premise is flawed.

[Canary42]

So, I need to walk in the shoes of Hitler and his cohorts before I can slate Nazism.

Sorry, but I regard my father's premature death as sufficient justification.

[vulcan42]

Do I need to become a paedophile to understand it is an evil practice?

[cupid04]

Vulcan, that's a bigoted comment. Can you prove to me that there are no
atheist paedophiles.

[maggiebee]

Sorry to hear of your father's premature death Canary, but why would you blame that on religion (or God). Everyone dies, that is a fact. We cannot know when that will happen, but it will. My daughter died when she was 5. However, in her short life she had a profound effect on many people and will never be forgotten.

[vulcan42]

MrLomas suggests we have to walk in the shoes of "these wasters of time and tireless crusaders" to understand religions and their followers. I was trying to ascertain whether his view covered just religion or the whole spectrum of evil things.

[jomifl]

MrLomas, regardless of how comfortable religious shoes are if the shop you bought them from is bankrupt then the guarantee is worthless.

[jim360]

As with every viewpoint you should read into religious viewpoints to some extent. It doesn't necessarily have to be too far, though. In some recent conversations with close Christian friends it's become increasingly clear just how little evidence outside the Holy Book their religion is based on -- and that itself is enough to disagree with it.

Crusading is a different matter, perhaps. But I at least will only (intend to) "crusade" against religion if someone asks me about it first. Informing them about Science is another matter, but you can do that without an anti-religious overtone.

[atalanta]

I spent seventeen years going to Church regularly, taking my children who sang in the choir, etc. I ran jumble sales for them, gave money and and more. I spent all those years making and mending vestments for them, reading the lessons in the services, writing their mag, attending all sorts of stuff like Harvest festivals and so on. In all that time not one single memebr of the church invited me to their home or even spoke to me unless I spoke first. In one month I experienced four separate rejections from members of that church. Then I started thinking. I really seriously thought that the church did not want me. I thought about why. I started reading stuff about religious history. I read Dawkins and similar authors. Then I started using my brain for myself instead of accepting the church's thinking, and came to the very firm conclusion that religion did not want me, but atheism definitely did.
So don't tell me I haven't walked in the shoes of those I criticise.

[jomifl]

I don't waste the time of any crusaders and I don't let them waste mine, that is why I bin the catholic newsletter that comes through my letterbox and I send JWs and Mormons on their way pretty damn quick. I do find the 'religious' festivals in our village entertaining though, since half the population is communing with Bacchus by lunchtime and Morpheus soon after. In the evening the goddess Eris takes over aided by whatever disco the village can afford. These old deities are such fun.

[Old_Geezer]

I don't agree with the "logic" of the OP. I do not need to have been a burglar to know it is wrong, or a thief, or a rapist, or a murderer. I feel confident I can judge the activity as wrong without having experienced doing it. I may even feel more entitled to do so if I were a victim of any of them.

[RATTER15]

//People Who Spend A Lifetime Crusading Against Religions And Their Followers//

I dont know of anybody that does this, do you?

[LazyGun]

Lets see. More than a few logical fallacies in your OP MrLomas.

1.You do not have to be a paid up believer or participant in order to criticize the actions, stated beliefs or fundamental scripture of a religion in order to criticize it. Rather like you do not have to be a member of the tories in order to criticize them, or Labour, or the LibDems, or BNP.

2. You claim those that "tirelessly and fearlessly crusade against religions" have nothing to go on except rumour, hearsay and mass hysteria - caused by falswe reporting. Utter nonsense. Was it false reporting that led to critical reports of Irelands abortion laws, there for religious reasons, that at least in part contributed to the death of Savita Hallapanavar? Was it false reporting that informed us of the religious motivations of the 9/11 terrorists? Was it purely innuendo that informed us about the couple who let their child die because they preferred faith healing, rather tnan seeing a medic? (and may have lost a second?)
Was Cardinal Keiths homosexual proclivities purely made up by shady media mediums, who pointed out the arch hypocricy of this guy opposing gay marriage, and claiming religious justification for such resistance?

I think your OP is flawed on many levels. I flatly reject the notion that those who rebut the religious nonsense spewed out here and influencing our society are "wasters of time". They perform a good role, in my opinion.

I would agree that better education at a grass roots level is very definitely necessary to eradicate the mind-numbing nonsense that is religion...

[keyplus90]

Mr Lomas - I can't agree with you more. Answering to the question you asked right at the bottom, my views on these wasters of time are that they really are time wasters and that is the reason I have stopped banging my head against these walls. Because these walls are self obsessed and all of their belief depends upon one utter arrogance,that "I know and you don't", and in reality they do not know anything.

[ludwig]

// these walls are self obsessed and all of their belief depends upon one utter arrogance,that "I know and you don't", and in reality they do not know anything. //

I couldn't have put it better myself.

[jim360]

I'm never one for ill-informed criticism. Seems to me that being "right" for the "wrong reasons" is worse than being wrong for the right reasons. At least if you come to the wrong decision, but have thought about it deeply, it's a position that can be respected. By contrast just randomly condemning a position and never thinking about it again is just a tad arrogant and closed-minded. It's never a bad thing to spend some time learning more about a particular viewpoint. Even if all that does is make you hate it more and more -- at least having learned more about it you can understand better how people come to that view. In the particular cases where a viewpoint is not only wrong but abhorrent, perhaps understanding it can help people to combat it (in the case of, say, racism or crime).