latest thoughts on how atheism is a de facto religion

Found this on facebook:

"Atheism is a religion" I see that is the new thing going around. This is simply NOT true!!

My response:

Using all caps does not increase the validity of an argument.

If political ideology & goals have been brought into one or more atheist groups you belong to, which I'm sure they HAVE, then yes you have a de facto religion.

Are children blank slates? The modern denial of human nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

Are the wages of sin, death (in other words, are there very good fully natural evolutionary reasons religions came up with prohibitions regarding destructive behaviors)?
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29442642

More general counter-counter commentary:
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/

Additional humanist counter-theory:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/

The more popular groups, such as CFI, American Atheists, and national humanist groups do very much have political goals & ideologies engrained in their core group "missions." And so, rather like the creationists do with Darwinian evolution & the god concept, they put the cart before the horse.

Oh, and pot does rot your brain...
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/16/casual-marijuana-use-may-damage-your-brain/

http://io9.com/5903837/what-cannabis-actually-does-to-your-brain

Add Atheist Community of Austin and Atheists of Utah to the list of new religions.

A single atheist may not be a religion. But when more than one is gathered in the name of a political ideology, they quickly become one, de facto.

Recovery from Atheists of Utah
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2014/05/recovery-from-atheists-of-utah.html

Do you all see a difference between being an atheist and being antireligion? | Atheism is a religion
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2014/04/do-you-all-see-difference-between-being.html

Shermer on confirmation bias:
http://www.michaelshermer.com/tag/confirmation-bias/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-political-brain/

Atheists Brainwashed By the Homosexual Agenda / Stonewall Centers - August 2013

From August 2013:

Atheist groups and members of those groups ARE being brainwashed by the homosexual agenda, as taught inside the Stonewall Centers. Inside each Stonewall center is a set of dogmas, and books there to back up those dogmas. If you question their dogmas they'll boot you out. You're not allowed to question their core dogmas. Just another Church. Atheists are being chumps and fools - just like any person brain washed by any other religion.

Secular positions against gay marriage - some links found...

In these articles when they say "the state" I would replace that with "the community." "The state" is a bit too strong of a term for me. Humans exist in communities, and they do get to set their own community rules.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=174431302683586&id=174427829350600

http://tech.mit.edu/V124/N5/kolasinski.5c.html

http://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-liberal-case-against-gay-marriage

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/20/174848127/severing-love-from-diapers-gay-marriage-opponents-make-their-case

This whole deal has been an incredible eye opener.

Step back far enough from a position and you may well find yourself in the weeds of a Stonewall Center. This is exactly what's happened with atheist groups. And by "atheist group" we may as well call many of them "Leftist" groups, because it's very difficult to distinguish between their agendas and that of the social left in America: the assumption that everything is equal, and that everyone and all "lifestyles" are deserving of "equal rights" and equal respect. These are their dogmas. Question them, and they'll boot you - like any church would.

If your kids get sucked into a homosexual brain washing center AKA a Stonewall Center, or the gay culture generally, here is what they'll be exposed to: a.) a petty stunted life, and one which inherently leads to no children, no future - just petty vain childish play for all of their life; b.) exposure either directly to pedophilia (sex with underage people), or apology for such; c.) drugs (drug use is higher among gays); d.) deadly diseases (AIDS, other deadly STDs, etc.), and again e.) no ready opportunity to have real flesh & blood children of your own - to reproduce in a normal healthy natural way. YES, THIS MEANS SOMETHING AND IS IMPORTANT!

So we have underage sex & sex abuse. Drugs. AIDS. No naturally born children of your own. A stunted petty childish life. Brainwashing type teaching that being "gay" should be "equal." Well, it ain't. It never was, and by hell it never will be.

Atheists are, sadly, and en masse, jumping out of one church straight into the hands of another - but perhaps into a WORSE one, one which is far more damaging.

American Atheists - this group has done this.

Center For Inquiry - this group also.

Atheist Community of Austin - yep.

Several atheists go to Unitarian Universalist meetings, and such meetings are brain washing centers for the liberal death cult (eg; Having children is of less value, and acceptance of the homosexual  agenda via rainbow flag flying & worse).

The liberal deal cult (LDC) meme set infects all these groups. Samples of ideas from this meme set: 1.) Overpopulation & concerns about the environment means you should not have any kids of your own. 2.) Single parents raise kids just as good as two parent homes. 3.) Homosexual couples raise kids just as good. 4.) Human reproduction is now of little value, and if a person "chooses" to be a virtual zero on the Great Mandala, that's no problem. It's their choice.

Not all choices are of equal value, nor should all choices be supported equally by the community. That's one bottom line. And dare I say, advocacy for real flesh & blood reproduction is by f another - a good one, a worthwhile one, one worth advocating for and fighting for. YOU wouldn't be here without straight sex, straight pride, straight relationships (eg: normal human relationships) - even if your current views are rather traitorous in response.

August 14, 2013 - 7:33am

more info and links:

http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html
and
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/

report on visit to American Atheists convention in Salt Lake City, April 2014

Report of visit to the Hilton on Friday 4-18-2014: Having not paid the requisite $300, we didn't have badges on. We walked around the cocktail hour socializers on the 2nd floor for about 5 minutes. Didn't see anyone we knew, except one person who didn't recognize us.

Didn't see any youtube celebrities.

Didn't see the bible beating protestors outside - they must have arrived later.

We also walked quickly through Comic Con down the street. No one checked for a pass, perhaps because I had my son in arm. We breezed through quickly and only spent about 1 minute inside a hall just seeing the overall layout. Overall it looked like a fun affair.

We thought the atheists would have even more fun it they visited the Salt Palace & Comic Con.

I imagine that attending national atheist conventions is an interesting experience. You get to see a few youtube celebs who you'd never otherwise see. You'll never see them again, and they'll never see you again. You'll also probably never see again 99% of the other people.

Not many kids present, if any, but we were only there for 5 minutes though that's also true.

In any case secular groups need to become more welcoming to having kids present at their meetings, if they expect more religious people to join up. I for one resent the Unitarian Universalist model of sending your kids away to some basement room while the adults stay behind, and that model should not be mirrored by secular / humanist / atheist groups, especially not in Utah.

http://www.atheists.org/convention2014/

"American Atheists fights to protect the absolute separation of religion from government and raise the profile of atheism in the public discourse."

"...unless you post a link to your own blog on our FB page - then you've gone too far. You're engaging in 'self promotion' by posting a link to your own blog, and we here at American Atheists cannot tolerate having speech present from others - speech which detracts from US!" ...reasonable paraphrasing & interpretation of their response.

Whatever. Just goes to know Groucho Marx said it best: I don't wish to belong to any group that would have me as a member.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx

p.s. The policy at
http://www.atheists.org/convention2014/code-of-conduct
where they state "...This convention welcomes families with children and expects all participants to treat these families with courtesy and respect..."

Damn. That's a better statement than what the Exmormon Foundation stated on their website for their convention this year:

"...Due to the nature of the conference presentations and the serving of alcohol during the evenings, we have established a strict policy that no children are allowed except for nursing infants. In addition, since the presentations are recorded for our website, it's important that we control the ambient noise during the recordings. If you have any questions about this policy, please contact the Conference Chairman..."

http://web.archive.org/web/20130730052521/http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/conference2013.html

Hmmm. At least American Atheists states that their convention is supposed to be family friendly. That's a lot better stance than what the Exmormon Foundation does!

Why would a foundation meant to support former Mormons actively exclude those with children from attending? Strange, especially since in Mormon meetings they don't send their children away to some back room - during the main meeting, unlike some religions.

But, American Atheists is still too controlling on their own FB page. So no one's perfect.

Free St. Patrick's Day from ultra-leftist religious dogmatism

Seculars against ultra-leftist religious dogmatism.

Naive ultra-liberal dogmatism is highly present in the following de facto branches of the religion known as Stonewall: American Atheists; Atheism Plus; Unitarian Universalism; Council for Secular Humanism; Center For Inquiry, Atheists of Utah, and so-called naturalists and humanists.

Since when did being human or natural mean we have to accept 100% of the gay agenda? Inherently non-reproductive sex? By default a petty dead end narcissistic lifestyle? Perhaps concern about homosexuality is natural? How's that?

Most recently the LGBTQPZ community became very upset with the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Found this on American Atheists' facebook page:

Generally speaking the American Atheists group, located in Cranford, New Jersey, is in my view yet another branch of the liberal dogmatic religion known as Stonewall, as are all of the other groups I mentioned above.

My response to the social-justice oh so righteous warriors on the ultra left, who want to fly the gay flag at every possible event:

Not every parade needs to be a gay pride one. The boycotts are stupid IMO. The parade organizers get to decide who's in their parade. If the Stonewall place in NYC wants to have their own parade, they can. But they shouldn't demand to hijack the regular parade for their own agenda. Liberal dogma can be a de facto religion. Whatever American Atheists or the advocates for atheism plus happen to say isn't automatically on my own list of important agenda items.

The quintessential struggle of our time is not the promotion of the ultra-liberal agenda. Rather, it's just general advocacy for science, survival, and a prudent amount of hawkishness so as to curtail the actions of world-stage bullies. That's my view...

As for the rest, you can put me on a heresy trial if you wish, but if you do so you'll be just acting in yet another religion, just one with a new name.

I'm not a member of your church, nor do I wish to be.

Related post I generally agree with:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1467403400144168&id=293011477509961

Quotes from the post of the group Seculars Against Same Sex "Marriage:"

Just as black pride, brown pride, feminist pride, etc cannot be emphasized at the Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade; the same applies to gay pride groups as well. The parade and day has nothing to do with any of the causes mentioned above. Blacks, Hispanics, Feminists, and Gays can still be in the parade, but just not promoting their own identity politics.

*"In their defence, parade organisers claim that gay people are not prohibited from marching, just not allowed to march under gay-themed banners. In Boston, organisers point to the fact that gay people this year joined a ‘diversity’ float that represented a South Boston neighbourhood.

*According to Boston’s lead parade organiser, Philip Wuschke: ‘We don’t ban gay people. We ban groups that are trying to make a statement.’ He notes that they have rejected a variety of groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, Irish heterosexual pride and an anti-abortion organisation, among others...

* Or you might ask, why do gay activists insist on joining a parade that isn’t about their cause and, in the case of Boston and New York, doesn’t want them there as a separately identified group?

*The notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church probably doesn’t expect to be able to join a gay pride march, and gay pride organisers wouldn’t let them in if they tried (in fact, St Patrick’s Day organisers in Boston say they turned down an application from Westboro, which is anti-Catholic as well as anti-gay, to join the parade)...

*This is the top-down, elite-led politics of name and shame, rather than a properly liberal campaign that draw upon popular support.

*What we are witnessing is an attack on those who don’t share today’s pro-gay outlook. Some may not want to opt out of this Culture War, but the war increasingly won’t allow there to be any bystanders. Instead, there is pressure to conform. Even if it does not spill over into the political or legal world, such conformism is problematic for the free flow of ideas.

*The sky will not fall if gays and lesbians are allowed to march in the Boston and New York St Patrick’s Day parades. But we will create a conformist, intolerant and unfree society if we do not allow space for the expression of different views, including traditional religious teachings about homosexuality and same-sex marriage."

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/who-are-the-real-bigots-in-the-st-pats-spat/14797#.UycY1PldWaR

 ---end of quote

Related posts:

Listening to the NARTH guy - issues more complex than either side says
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2014/03/listening-to-narth-guy-issues-more.html

A high abundance of angel readers and other nutjobs within the gay "lifestyle"
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-high-abundance-of-angel-readers-and.html

Again from http://www.naturalism.org/sexualit.htm

"...Since there are no objective harms of being or acting gay, there are no reasons to withhold any constitutional right from homosexuals, including marriage..."

But there IS objective harm! The naive liberal just doesn't know. It's par for the course.

And I am reminded of:

1. My gay uncle who died of aids leaving his straight family with no kids.
2. My gay nephew who leads a petty, shallow, dead-end type of life.
3. However and also: gay people I know who spend their lives helping others, in service oriented lives.
4. Gay people like Stephen Fry, who I largely admire.
5. The crappy crazy warped & perverse sexual morality in Mormonism & Catholicism.

In any case, I don't wish to be annexed by either side. Just because I think there may be problems with the petty selfish lifestyle present in homosexual culture doesn't mean I believe we should shame children for masturbation, for example, or teach children that masturbation automatically leads to homosexuality, which of course it does not.

Religion basically fucks up people's built-in sexuality. It can fuck it up so much that you can go WAY to far over to the other side. So in my view gays are ALSO being abused by religion, by being pushed away from normal productive human relations by the extreme anger on the issue present in conservative religion. So this is not a simple issue.

American Atheists: Censoring atheist thought, taking a step back from all ideologies, and questioning 100% acceptance of gay marriage

On the facebook page for American Atheists they don't allow links to other sites to be posted. Science and human progress generally requires having a free and open exchange of ideas. American Atheists' main focus seems to be acting as props on Fox News, suing people over 10 commandment monuments, promoting the ultra-left social agenda, and not much else. Is this "atheism plus," or atheism minus?

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheism_Plus

Maybe triple minus - more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnBGeoJsFOk
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ69BhfiC6g

Pedantic motto of American Atheists: "I'm an atheist and I fight for equality."

Just because a human activity is natural doesn't mean we should embrace it 100%.

Maybe homosexual married couples should be required to adopt. How about that?

Just because a person becomes an atheist after leaving a cult or an ultra-conservative religion, doesn't mean they automatically become an ultra-leftie.

Be careful of people who want to control you after you leave a religion. Atheist plus people want to control your speech, just as much as any ultra-leftie might.

Frantic censoring ultra-lefties: http://goo.gl/wQ5BkP

A secular case against gay marriage:
http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/a-secular-case-against-gay-marriage/

I'm still somewhat undecided in general about gay marriage, but I'm not just 100% "for it" just automatically by default. The inherently non-reproductive nature of gay sex IS an issue, as are built in human nature that may feel some amount of concern over gay sex. That's natural too. Not everything is equal. Let's take a step back and not just jump wholeheartedly into the arms of the ultra-left. Maybe, just maybe, conservatives have something useful to contribute, even if at first glance their motives are motivated by "religion." Since, religion is a natural phenomenon, we cannot just fully dismiss out of hand every single thing they're concerned about.

A brain can be trained by genetics, socialization, and a combination of the two. During the following talk Warren Farrell talks about how in ancient societies homosexual sex which didn't include reproduction was discouraged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6w1S8yrFz4

An a fascinating article on the subject:
The End of Gays: Gay Marriage and the Decline of the Homosexual Population
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2011/08/01/the-end-of-gays-gay-marriage-and-the-decline-of-the-homosexual-population/
hmmm

I don't wish to see anyone harmed by the ideas people like past Mormon prophet Spencer Kimball, who equated masturbation and sex before marriage as sins akin to murder. That goes too far. And yet, even the happily free exmoron draws the line somewhere, between acceptable and unacceptable human behavior, regardless of the naturalistic status of that behavior. Of course it's all natural, and to some extent, so what. A better question may be: what do most people do, and what helps the species survive? Does this mean I advocate that gay couples separate? Not necessarily. But men who're in hetero relationships should not jump ship just because they find out they're gay. And already-gay couples maybe should adopt, or find other ways to have kids. And gay men, and rather self-centered straight no-children men & women, should find ways to not spend their whole lives in highly childish games chasing their own & other people's incredibly vain and shallow tails forever. Eventually we all have to grow up. Sex usually, even today, forces that upon hetero couples. It doesn't, automatically, do so for gay ones - and maybe that's the point.

I'm a social moderate, and an economic liberal.

Here's for an open discussion, and being free from censors.

June 30, 2013 afternoon

Just because you like dicks doesn't mean you should cheat on your wife - and comments on the gay flag

Just because you like dicks doesn't mean you should cheat on your wife, get aids, die, and leave your family with no father. And just because you like vaginas as well as dicks that doesn't mean you should cheat on your husband, and then go off to live with your lesbo buddy.

I'm an atheist and I don't believe in cults of personality, nor in being drawn into the assumption that atheism necessarily leads to being socially ultra-left. Being an atheist for me means being willing to take a step back from all dogmas, not only from the right but also from the left.

Criticisms of flying the gay flag universally, as doing so may transmit the assumption that people in the flag-flying group universally agree with all aspects of the perceived "gay agenda."

On when bi or homosexual men cheat on their wives, get aids, die, and leave their families with no father. I believe we should be open to debate whether "middle children" should be encouraged to live a straight life - otherwise we are having unquestionable dogma points just like in a religion.

Just because a person is an atheist, a secular advocate, or an advocate for science & naturalism doesn't mean they embrace 100% of the ultra-left agenda.

Wives who're members of conservative religions should meet their apparently bisexual husbands half-way, by leaving their abusive conservative religions, and by not being upset about porn. And then the husbands should not cheat & go elsewhere.

July 19, 2013 - 7:44am