How strongly do you agree or disagree?

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

10.  It undermines science and progress, perverts morality, and makes a virtue out of not thinking.  Just because one can study religious texts does not mean it's any less the authoritative musings of primitive humanity.

It's all filth.  Every bit of it.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

10.  It undermines science and progress, perverts morality, and makes a virtue out of not thinking.  Just because one can study religious texts does not mean it's any less the authoritative musings of primitive humanity.

It's all filth.  Every bit of it.

Perhaps you're under the assumption that there is such a thing as progress, though the idea that somehow our fancier technological gadgets make us better or even different creatures than we were 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 years ago is baffling. Men and women are still men and women and the moral, intellectual, and philosophical questions we grapple with seldom change, and religion gives us continuity with our ancestors. When we speak the same words as they did and make the same motions, we transcend time itself in a way that the past-destroying scientific positivist juggernaut respects not and readily tramples. What is our most important duty as humans if not to empathize with, revere, and preserve the memories of those who came before us?

When society is busy trying to destroy historically-minded continuity with the past in every other way, from having us buy disposable goods that will not last a fraction as long as the appliances our ancestors purchased out of a greedy model of planned obsolescence to bulldozing houses that families lived in for generations for more gaudy copies of currently-fashionable architectural styles to encouraging families live on opposite ends of the country or even the world and lose their close bonds of support and even familiarity (when was the last time you saw your third cousins? Your second cousins? Even your first cousins?), we need to seek community and connection with the past in some way.

In many ways, Hockeydude's statement reminds me of the execrable doctrines of the Futurists, who advised constantly tearing down the old and replacing it with the new for little reason other than its novelty. It is repellent to me on every moral level when our most fundamental obligation to those who came before us is to keep their memory and their world alive and honor what they honored. The idea of stabbing our culture's father and throwing it on the funeral pyre to make way for "progress" is the most abhorrent and disgusting notion I've heard in a long time, and is a distinct threat to our cultural heritage.

I didn't choose to be here.  I feel no obligation towards anyone to be anything other than not harmful towards them.  I will oppose any and all things I find destructive and ignorant.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I didn't choose to be here.

That's fine, but whether you like it or not, you are fundamentally connected to a particular cultural tradition. Of course you have the freedom to reject this tradition in favor of your own contrived identity, but that doesn't mean that it's destructive or ignorant to embrace those aspects of one's self that one is incapable of altering anyway.

People are incapable of altering whether or not they follow religious belief?  Well, sometimes they are (this is called brainwashing in all other instances, but it's "bigoted" to refer to it as such when religion is involved), and that is a reason why it is so poisonous.  And to those who have been exposed to different worldviews (and most importantly scientific research) it is absolutely destructive to embrace religion, for many reasons, but mostly because it contradicts in almost all instances what we've come to understand about reality.  And even the most fundamentally basic religion one could have, literally just someone who believes in a higher power and nothing beyond it, tends to legitimize the more radical faiths.  But is that even the overall question?  I think people are trying to argue that religion doesn't poison everything because it doesn't nevessarily have to.  But in reality it does, through the fundamental undermining of our critical faculties.  I mean come on.  Name one major breakthrough in human achievement that religious hordes didn't try to fight.  As one of my idols said, and I'm paraphrasing, "even moderately religious people need to step back and look at the price of their comfort".  Which is completely valid, because there is literally not one virtuous act that necessitates religious instruction, but thousands of horrible acts that require it.

I challenge you to name for this atheist ONE deed that I'm incapable of. 

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I'd say that the ultimate "goal" of human existence is to cultivate an inner peace that can't be disturbed by external events. That's a challenge that the materialist is particularly poorly equipped to deal with. 

Why do you distill people's systems of 'non-belief' into base materialism? If materialism is simply reliant on other people/selves, then why can a person not acquire an inner peace through being content with themselves and their friends?

Because this is the stigma placed upon atheists and backed up by religiouses across the board from the fundamentalists to the "only on Xmas/Easter" crowd.  We "don't believe in anything beyond ourselves" aka they seek nothing beyond their own personal satisfaction and pleasure. 

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/30/religious-people-do-not-believe-in-atheists-study/

Here's the link to the 2011 study that showed atheists on a level of trust with rapists. 

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I'd say that the ultimate "goal" of human existence is to cultivate an inner peace that can't be disturbed by external events. That's a challenge that the materialist is particularly poorly equipped to deal with. 

Why do you distill people's systems of 'non-belief' into base materialism? If materialism is simply reliant on other people/selves, then why can a person not acquire an inner peace through being content with themselves and their friends?

They can (though I would say that if your happiness is reliant upon your social circle, you haven't achieved true, lasting happiness, as your social circle is liable to change). However, my experience has been that many non-religious people (and many religious people) derive their happiness from things - which is a much less stable source of happiness than a relationship with one's deity, or something similarly intransitory.

That doesn't disprove my point.  You are saying in your experience irreligious people, who you incorrectly identify as materialists, (and then you even say some religiouses, as well) tend towards something.  I asked you to name a good deed that I as an atheist am incapable of.  I did't ask you what materialists struggle with. 

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

A relationship with a deity is material

No, a relationship with a deity is noumenal.

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Perhaps not. In that case, the believer should reevaluate the nature of his relationship.

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Human relationships are more reciprocal, in that both parties get something out of them. But whether one's deity gets something out of one's relationship with him/her/it is irrelevant, IMO.

That doesn't disprove my point.  You are saying in your experience irreligious people, who you incorrectly identify as materialists,

I don't think that it's necessarily inaccurate to conflate irreligious people and materialists. Or are you saying that most irreligious people don't reject the existence of a realm outside of the material?

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There are no good deeds that an atheist is incapable of. What's your point?

1. I guess human relationships are material, then?

2. Religion is completely unnecessary.