Atheist Memes

Unfortunately they believe that their god will punish everyone (them included) even for other people's misconduct in the community. Ancient Judaism has this principle and the old testament is full of examples of this, but this caused no big harm outside the Jewish community because it only applies to "the elected people" and not to everyone in the world. The problem started with Christianity, more in detail with St. Paul's doctrine of ecumenism, which extended to everyone this dangerous belief. With consequences we are still paying 2000 years after.

There are plenty of prohibitions I'm happy enough to live with.

Had scripture contained a verse in which the Archangel Gabriel alighted upon a banister and declared "Hark! Thy vehicles hath moveth'd too fastly through school zones! Narry shall thou exceed 20mph lest the heavens frown and the Lord look down upon his high chair and be displeased. Let the men of the highway patrol assess thee prohibitionary fines to deter speeding and incarceration of those that do both speed and strike a child!", compelling legions of traffic cops and their fellow travelers to enforce the rule within 200ft of any school zone, I would not begrude it.

But so much of modern religious theory is so incredibly dated. Its perfectly okay to eat shellfish now. You don't need to butcher a cow exactly right or get all sorts of nasty diseases. We abolished chattel slavery, so you don't need special rubrics for how to sell off your children or assign out your spouses.

The religiousity of the rules bothers me far less than the anti-democratic nature of decision making.

There are smarter people than both you and me who think some of our ideas are stupid. How do you feel about offending them?

Why isn’t it offensive that people follow gods that hate without any proof at all that those gods exist? I think that’s pretty offensive.

In a free society you're free to be offended. You're not free to use that offense to deny other people's beliefs (however wrong we individually find them).

Their following these religions and churches causes pain, suffering, hate, death, and genocide.

So you're going to decide which things are going to be allowed to be followed by everyone by your own set of rules, and use force of law to make it happen? Don't you see that's doing the same thing the OP's meme is speaking against?

Their following these religions and churches causes pain, suffering, hate, death, and genocide.

Yeah, partly because they use their religion as an excuse to ignore problems. We're changing the environment in our entire planet, our only possible home, in dangerous and sometimes irreversible ways, and they'll say "I'm not worried, it's in God's hands."

I was talking to one of them and they were trying to deny that the climate is changing. When I called them out for being ignorant they just said "well, the Lord Jesus is coming back so it's fine."

Faith could even said to be foolish. The Bible contradicts itself on that point though. Proverbs 1:7 says

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

But is it wise to accept instruction or alleged wisdom from somebody who has not proven their knowledge, or even their existence? Seems foolish to me. Even the idea of fearing the lord is foolish after so many years of no evidence.

And once they've accepted that there is s magic man who lives in the sky without proof, their tiny minds are open for Scientology / conspiracy theories and all manner of damaging bullshit.

Heard horrible things about the r/atheism subreddit. r/dankchristianmemes was where it was at.

Because respect to them means authority. And what they mean is "respect my authority or I won't respect you as a person".

The fundamental nature of belief. Holding a deep conviction in a set of laws or ideals and surrounding yourself with like-minded ideologues will result a certain amount of collective confidence. And that confidence leads to people taking action.

I definitely get not wanting zealots to run roughshod over civil society, But it might be worth noting how much of civil society was built and continues to be maintained by people will deep convictions working in large groups.

That's a wide generalization...