Bhim

@Joshpanteraapologies for my absence the past three or four weeks. I'm curious about your thoughts on Biden's support for his own candidacy over the course of the pandemic. As I've alluded before: I don't consider myself a Trump sycophant. I simply happen to agree with most of his moral positions, and I especially love the combination of his tacit support for Jesus with his implicit denial thereof, via his lifestyle and rhetoric. To provide some contrast, my newly de-converted self would have hated pre-Trump Republicans. (For those who don't believe me, feel free to query my political posts on this forum prior to the rise of Donald Trump. I was as Democrat and leftist as they came. I have become very conservative in recent years, but my hatred of Jesus of Nazareth remains as strong as ever.) Josh, I'm curious what is your opinion on Biden as a candidate. Even setting Trump aside, I'm not certain how anyone can support the Democratic party without being avowed anti-American and pro-Muslim. But given that I am highly partisan in my appraisal of the situation, I am interested in your opinion as well.

I hope it makes you feel less alone to know that I am a vegetarian, I support Donald Trump, I am an (East/non-Pocahontas) Indian, I hate Jesus, and I most certainly do not feel the spirit despise being filled with Him in my Christian days. I also have a degree of respect for Gautama Buddha, despite our vast theological disagreements. So strangely, I overlap with your mother in some respects, and with you in others. I imagine your mom celebrates Easter for reasons of culture and heritage. Remember that you can respect this while you live with her, while not carrying on the tradition once you leave home. I'm fortunate to have come from a non-Christian home (and was a fool to enter a foreign faith). It's hard for me to imagine how hard it is for someone to leave who was raised in this religion, and you have my best wishes. I hope you'll use this community as a resource whenever you need to talk to like-minded people.

Interesting approach you've taken. I completely understand wanting to forget everything about the Bible. I've gone a slightly different route. For the past year or so, I've been meeting up every couple weeks with an atheist friend I've known since before I converted to Christianity (at a bar, which is ironic given your analogy) and discussing the Bible from a purely secular perspective. You'd be surprised what insights you can glean once you realize it's just a mythological text written by mortal men. For example, I've been able to fully separate the Old Testament from the New, and realize that the former is a decent work of literature, whilst the latter is immature garbage. Alas, I shouldn't tempt a Bible alcoholic too much. I'm glad you've found a way to substantially reduce the influence of Jesus in your life. He isn't worthy to occupy space in your mind.

True words. Jesus Christ presents an attractive philosophy and a cohesive worldview. As someone who contemplates philosophy on a regular basis, I admit that the temptation to return to Jesus arises from time to time, and I must remind myself that I have attempted his gospel, and found it to be not only wanting, but also evil, insidious, and reprehensible. As MOHO correctly stated, many of us (including myself) do in fact lead happy lives apart from Jesus. But once you have imbibed the toxin of a truly fundamentalist Christianity, I wonder if the effects of the gospel ever disappear completely. Maybe not, but I think we're both working on it. When I first deconverted, I thought about Jesus and Christianity on a daily basis. It was like this for years. I have now been a non-Christian for ten years, and Christianity plays a very minimal role in my intellectual life. But it is something I think about on rare occasions. I'm glad that some ex-Christians have completely left Jesus behind. As to those of us who struggle with this - however rarely - it's important to regularly remind ourselves of why we left.

@ficino @TheRedneckProfessor regarding hatred of Muslim people as opposed to their religion, you both made points which I seemed to miss earlier. I think this is worthy of some exploration. The idea of "love the sinner, hate the sin" is of course something we all learned from Christianity. Now, I am not so disconnected from logic and reason as to reject a proposition simply because Christianity teaches it. However, I do think that this is a fundamentally untenable position. If someone does something that negatively affects an individual or society, there will be some level of antipathy towards that person. On a related note, I firmly believe that a person's professed beliefs are an excellent grounds on which to judge them. If I made the same statements with regards to black people, Germans, hermaphrodites, etc., I think you would have a legitimate grounds to object. However, here we have a group of people who publicly claim to believe in horrible doctrines, and I deem them horrible people on the basis of those professions. I wouldn't want to live near people who believe such things, insofar as I can help it. I'm not certain what is the objection here. To recap, Muslims are people who believe that we are going to eternal conscious torment in the same hell where Jesus would be sending us (if he were real). They believe in a pedophilic prophet. They believe in enacting a theocratic state. They believe in banning alcohol and pork within said state. They believe in killing you if you engage in homosexual sex. They believe in restrictive dress codes for men and women, and in enforcing those codes via the power of the state. They believe in using the power of the state to punish people who draw or blaspheme Mohammad (swine urine be upon him). These are things that I can recall without even having to reference the Qu'ran, and I'm not nearly as familiar with that text as I am with the Bible. Is this a religion we should respect, or whose followers we should respect? I find no redeeming traits whatsoever in Islam. Were it not for the personal losses I have suffered from Christianity, I might find this religion the more detestable of the two (though let's not argue between bad and slightly worse). These are not good or wholesome beliefs by any measure that people here can agree to. Nor are these merely intellectual positions; these are things that can affect your life personally. If you enjoy dressing immodestly, having sex with someone of the same sex, or simply having an evening beer, you should be mildly concerned about having Muslim neighbors. And because none of us are Christian conservatives, we are not beholden to defending a religion with teachings similar to that of Islam. If someone holds to beliefs that are bad, does this not make him a bad person? Does that not mean that given the choice of allowing or disallowing him into your home country, you should decline? The second question is a matter of practicality, I admit, but both prudence and the fact that immigration into the United States is not a civil right compel one to ban such people. I might dare call it a Muslim ban. But - one might object - there are plenty of good Muslims. Granted. When I go to India, half of my drivers are Muslims, and they are all friendly and helpful people. I expect that they aren't out to ban alcohol or anything of the sort. Sometimes I even see the same people at a bar. On the other hand, there is a whole host of Episcopal Christians who don't believe in eternal conscious torment in hell for non-Christians. Their existence doesn't stop me from hating Christianity and those who practice it. Personally, I do not know why there are Christians who don't believe in Christianity or Muslims who don't believe in Islam. It seems as absurd as a Republican who believes in large government or a vegan who supports factory farming. I think it is unhelpful (at best) to take up the label of a set of intellectual propositions which don't actually define you, alas in the case of religion people do this for cultural reasons. Show me a Muslim who doesn't believe in any of the tenets of Islam, and I'm happy to say that I don't hate that person. But if you tell me you are a Muslim, then given no other knowledge, I will assume you believe in Islam, and I will hate you for your beliefs. And to those of you who morally object to the teachings of Islam (which I assume is everyone here), I would suggest that you should hate Muslims too. Hatred is the proper feeling towards those with awful beliefs.

Sure, not all people who say they are Christians are horrible people. But surely you would agree that simply going to a church on Sunday doesn't make someone a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. It's the belief, the buy-in to the fundamental theology, which makes one a Christian. I think most here would concede that if you believe the punishment for shoplifting should be eternal conscious torment in hell, then you are a bad person. I simply use the same metric with Muslims, i.e. I judge these people by their professed beliefs. As an Indian I of course know a lot of Muslims. Sure, most of them seem decent on the surface, as long as you don't talk about Indian or Middle Eastern politics. If you broach such topics, they espouse some views that you would find morally questionable at best. If you don't believe my anecdotal evidence, see the survey from the Pew Research Center in 2017 which asked Muslims in various countries if they support making Sharia the law of the land in Muslim countries. In Pakistan 84% said yes, and in Bangladesh it was 82%. These are countries whose populations were part of India just a century ago, and who were inculcated into the religious pluralism of a Hindu society. Yet they wish to live like barbarians. I believe that referring to such individuals as horrible people is justified here. Even if there is to be some debate on the topic though, I would ask: why take the risk when we are all agreed on the basic negativity of Abrahamic religions? Given the choice of allowing Muslims into the United States and not allowing them, why not choose the latter? No one is entitled to emigrate to a different country, so why voluntarily grant them this privilege at potential risk to ourselves?

You're free to comment on my propositions of course, but I did ask a specific question in order to understand your position, which you didn't address yet. Do you want more Muslims or less Muslims (or alternatively, no change in the number of Muslims)? This isn't a question about implementation. I'm trying to figure out what you believe makes Muslims valuable or worth having as your neighbors.

It seems to me that the threat of mainstream Islam - not fundamentalist Islam, but the variety practiced by the average Dearborn, MI resident - is a fairly severe threat to American culture. These people threaten my right to practice my religion, and your right to not practice any religion. If the government shuddered the doors on my local temple, I might become angry, but I don't see myself becoming a terrorist. If there exist people who resort to violence when the exercise of their religion is curtailed, then perhaps those people don't belong here to begin with. A person who will strap on a suicide vest just because I take away his Qu'ran is a person who should receive a free one way ticket to literally anywhere outside of the United States. As to the precepts and foundation of America, I'm very much a fan of said values. However let's step back for a moment and accept the reality that our collective rejection of Jesus is not something of which any founding father would approve. I'm not even sure Thomas Paine would celebrate the depth of our apostasy. So is this a place you really want to go? I realize there's an oversimplification involved in binary choices, but it's worth asking why exactly you want more Muslim neighbors (feel free to reject my premise). I hate to quote far-right European politicians, but do you want more Muslims or less Muslims? Could you at least agree with the proposition that we should make efforts to stop bringing people into the country who are known practitioners of the Muslim faith? I'm honestly trying to understand your position on Muslims. Muslims seem to me like generally horrible people who don't belong in civilized society. I fully accept that Western democracies afford individuals the right to be horrible, but it seems to me like immigration checkpoints are a logical place to select against horrid attributes.

This isn't a failure to understand. I understand your point, and I disagree with you. I contend that Muslims should be forced to stop practicing Islam. Sincere question: do you concur that two individuals can fully understand one another's opinions without adopting said opinions? If not, we may have reached an impasse.

At this point in the national discourse, I'd be honored to be labeled a white supremacist if only for the irony (since I'm not remotely white, in case anyone has forgotten). Sorry, but I cannot relent from my position that the practice of Islam should be banned within the United States.

I've expressed a belief in the past that churches should be burned down by the government (without the people inside). I still believe that, but I don't press the point too often because the large number of Christian's in Western nations makes it infeasible. I think if we talked about this a bit more, you may object to my view. On the other hand, if we talked about what I think should be done with Muslims in more detail, you may find that you don't object. To be sure, I do believe in discrimination against Muslims. But discrimination isn't necessarily wrong. We already discriminate against people who might be violent or who might be heavy welfare users...unless they're Muslim. I think this is worth talking about if you are interested.

Others have stated this a bit differently, but I do agree there should be some areas of the forum reserved for ex-Christians. That said, I enjoy debating Christians and am interested in attempting to deconvert them. As long as they are in the Den or other allowed forums, I'm content to let them say whatever they wish, provided that we have the unobstructed right to denigrate their faith and challenge their most dearly held beliefs.

It's curious that no one one here expresses such pity concerning my hatred of Christianity. Granted, everyone here (myself included) has a specific motive for anti-Christian hatred, but it seems to me like your fundamental qualm isn't an opposition to a lifestyle of hatred...

@Joshpantera, we've discussed in the past how religion may be an evolutionary adaptation, and thus is something that can't be entirely eschewed by most people in the short term. Since I'm the guy who makes everything about Trump, I'll venture into forbidden territory: do you think that far-left ideologies like Climate Justice (note that I did not say climate science) are replacing religion among Western atheists? About a decade ago when I was in grad school, noted climate skeptic and physicist Dr. William Happer gave a colloquium at my physics department. As you know I did my doctoral work at a mainstream public university, staffed almost entirely by atheists. So obviously he was severely heckled, and I think the department invited him in the interest of encouraging debate, rather than due to any endorsement of his alternative theories. I should also state that I don't personally agree with his projections regarding climate change (mostly because I am not sufficiently familiar with the literature to criticize the projections of climate scientists). But in his talk, he had a slide entitled "why do the nations so furiously rage?" Being a Christian at the time, this of course caught my attention. He pointed out that climate change was becoming a sort of secular religion among many non-religious people. Even one of my staunchly atheist friends expressed sympathy for this point of view. I didn't give it much thought at the time. But now in 2020, in the age of Trump and of Trump Derangement, I'm giving the notion of secular religion a second thought. I am surprised at the number of scientifically-illiterate people who not only express vociferous support for political agendas based on climate change, but who dedicate much of their life to the Climate Justice movement. As an astrophysicist I recognize that one must have a strong familiarity with mathematics, statistics, and the relevant literature in order to be conversant in my own field, and I know that the same is true of climate science. That's why I hesitate to form opinions on climate science, and generally accept that the published, peer-reviewed science is correct. Yet there is a large number of people who espouse support for Climate Justice and who make claims that are not supported by climate scientists, including the belief that the world is ending in ten years and that it is necessary to abstain from beef. The latter is interesting because I abstain from beef (indeed all meat) out of a religious adherence to Hinduism. The Climate Justice adherents have replicated my practice via an entirely different belief system. The former is interesting because it is reminiscent of evangelical belief in the rapture. I used to challenge believers in the rapture to sell me their houses at a fraction of the cost of purchase. I could just as well offer the same challenge to Climate Justice believers. If you believe that President Trump is ending the world in ten years via climate change, you should sell me your house for whatever reasonable price I am willing to offer you, since you won't be needing it for very long. It seems to me that the human need to believe in gods has resulted in the pseudoscientific Climate Justice movement. I don't see how those of us who are committed to secularism can treat it differently than we do evangelical Christianity. The latter has caused us more personal harm and loss. But the former harbors the same potential for political and social persecution. It even has its own indulgences in the form of "carbon credits" (note: I realized this analogy independently before I heard it stated by conservative commentators). Let me be clear in that I don't see Climate Justice advocates torturing men in dungeons as the original inquisitors did. But they do often seek to economically harm dissenters by terminating the employment of anyone who doesn't believe in an imminent apocalypse or substantive lifestyle changes. It seems to me that for Western atheists, Climate Justice offers a reasonable alternative to Jesus Christ for those who crave a religious paradigm.

I don't recognize this news source, but the story aligns with other, more credible accounts I have read and heard of the status of Islam in Pakistan. Apologies for getting political, but this is a good case in point as to why Muslims should be banned from entering the United States, whether it be for immigration, employment, or even academic conferences. Everyone who crosses the border should be required to deny that Mohammad is the prophet of God. Having said that, it might be surprising that I will advise @Citsonga that travel to the UAE is perfectly safe. My wife is from the UAE (obviously she is Hindu, but her parents were guest workers there when she was growing up). I've visited there several times. There is no freedom of speech and you can't criticize any religion, whether it be Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc., nor can you publicly eat food during Ramadan. But if you're just going there for vacation it's actually very safe, is populated by English-speakers, and has enough Western-style infrastructure that you can freely transit from one place to another without any issues. It pains me to say this, since I am someone who openly hates Muslim people, but based on my experience in the UAE, it's actually a nice place to visit.