shtreimel wrote:the very same words that have nothing...nadda...zip...zero...to do with zealotry.
When you're sanctioned to do good things, you do good things. Not always, not everyday, but more than if you're not sanctioned to.
Right, you believe human nature to be inclined towards not doing good things. I do not. People I know who are atheist, tend to be highly moralistic, now people who simply say they don't believe in god etc. but haven't really thought about it.... well IMO some of them are angry children of religious parents who will do anything to be different than their relatives.
Not all of us had religion crammed down out throat, and therefore don't suffer from a knee jerk reaction to the religious minded.
I have a healthy dose of secular and religous friends. My secular friends, IN GENERAL, are more self-absorbed, alienated from any type of community, volunteer less, and prone to get themselves involved with unhealthy lifestyle habits. And since I'm more "secular" than "religious", I've noticed this phenomenon time and time again. Atheism sounds good on paper, but it makes for lousy communities.
Right. I was going to address this. let's face it I know more atheists with a high ethical standard, it's who I am, so I surround myself with them. half the religious people I know are a product of work, and other community-at-large type interactions. For me to judge religious people based on my knowledge of that culture based on friends of mine with deeply religious parents and people I work with would be short sighted at best.
Let's just say that religious people in my experience are some of the worst people to do business with, cut throat and greedy beyond belief, but that's an entirely unfair value judgment to place on them, since it's only from my perspective in a very small subset of the human species.
What I do gather from the news points me towards believing that religious people in general suffer from all the same ailments as non religious. True enough that drug use would be up in the secular community, but I'd be willing to bet that prescription drugs are prescribed at an astoundingly higher rate to those of a religious faith.
Back to the zealot thing, you are fundamentally opposed to atheism, to the point to where you engaged in a discussion about your own opinion on the matter in a thread not even remotely related to atheism.
The simple definition, not the one used by politicians to taint their opponent in the same way Bush Sr. used 'liberal', but the dictionary definition, that fits you.
Zealota person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.
Sorry buddy, but you are going around and around with me, because I'm espousing a moderate view on the issue of religion, not some extremist anti jew, anti christian perspective, but a simple, easy to understand, and non critical view that religion, and atheism are not fundamental to the ethical nature of a person.
This took me years to come to realize, I used to be like you in the sense that I thought it mattered, I thought that atheists were of a stronger ethical character than the religious. Like your assumption that secular people are less ethical, I assumed that conversely religious people were more likely to be fanatics and deceitful since in my opinion their belief system was based on a fundamental lie, that they have any idea at all as to what happens to them when they die or the bigger picture of the workings of the universe. Now I realize that it has little to do with what people
say their actions are going to be, rather it's simply a matter of if they are of high ethical standards.
My family, which is mostly secular, spent all of our christmas money that would normally go towards gifts to each other on a single mother who has been clean for 15 years, whose husband left her two years ago to go back to heroin, and who is trying to raise a 16 year old on the crappy jobs she can get with a felony. A good person who is still suffering from the mistakes she made 15 years ago. (her felony is growing a field of marijuana, probably the lamest excuse for a felony there is!) Once again, you are going off the people you know, who are not nearly of the quality I associate with. My friends who are religious are also of a higher nature than the religious types I do business with, that's what I'm interested in, you're human capacity for compassion, not your religion.
