r/atheism • u/[deleted] • Jun 25 '12
To all of you posting all the anti-Islam content today.
[deleted]
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Jun 26 '12
SRS logic:
White man says something remotely misogynistic: OMG PATRIARCHY
Woman gets stoned to death as punishment for getting raped in some camel orientated nation: OMG DON'T BE RACIST YOU CAN'T CRITICIZE OTHER CULTURES
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u/randomrealitycheck Jun 26 '12
Let's talk about misdirected anger and behavior that exactly mimics everything this subreddit claims it is against.
The problem isn't necessarily religion, even though this is certainly where the symptoms oftentimes appear. The problem is people who are willing to stop at nothing to force you to believe and think like they do. More often than not, this is done solely for the purpose of aggregating power under their control. Pol Pot and Stalin are secular examples of that behavior.
Outside of religion, nationalism comes to mind as does white supremacy not to mention some of our political affiliations.
While I love it when a group comes together, it's even better when we do so with a purpose that isn't as bad as the causes we are railing against.
Think about it.
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Jun 26 '12
Islam contains problems that are more than just forcing a set of thoughts or beliefs on other people, though.
There's also the misogyny and child rape.
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u/duuuuumb Jun 26 '12
How is posting content in our own personal subreddit forcing our opinions on others? That just makes no sense.
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u/karma_engineer Jun 25 '12
72 hours from now we'll be seeing lil Reddit aliens being burned over in the Middle East. I'm calling this now.
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u/Devils-Avacado Jun 26 '12
False, the middle east doesn't have internet, and if they did, Reddit would be banned.
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Jun 26 '12
You joke but I live in Dubai and r/atheism is blocked by the government filter in the UAE for being offensive to Islam. I have to use a vpn to see content here.
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u/TodTheTyrant Jun 25 '12
I'd like to see all the tisk tisking happen if we actually called out the jews for starting all this nonsense to begin with.
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u/PKMKII Jun 26 '12
Oh, there's a lot of juicy insanity to be mocked in the Hasidim.
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u/seanbearpig Jun 26 '12 edited Jun 26 '12
It's not about maturity, it's about stupidity. The only thing that insulting a person about their faith is going to do, is make them retreat even further into the fantasy. They'll just turn around and say "Hey, I was right. Atheists really ARE scumbags.", and will learn NOTHING.
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u/tubefox Jun 26 '12
On the other hand, I support posting really offensive shit about Islam just because I know many people who laugh at offensive jokes about Christianity, bitch about Christians, etc.
And then the second any one says anything about Muslims they get all pissy.
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Jun 26 '12
The problem r/atheism is filled with a bunch of jerks who don't care much about driving people towards critical thinking, but would rather piss people off and make their egos feel better.
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u/canonymous Jun 26 '12
There's also a disturbing lack of critical thinking in this community, and Reddit in general, but what can you hope for when an argument has to be two lines long and superimposed on a well-known image to have any traction.
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u/FacsimilousSarcasm Jun 26 '12
I feel like most of this subreddit is an ego-stroking circlejerk, but atheists don't seem to get that in most other places, and everybody needs a little circlejerking every once in a while. It makes people feel good.
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Jun 26 '12
Exactly. I don't participate in the religion bashing myself but understand why it is done. Some of these people have to hide their atheism from everyone in real life, so sometimes people need a place to blow off steam. Nothing really wrong with that.
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u/FacsimilousSarcasm Jun 26 '12
And honestly, plenty of great scientific advancements came out of Islam, or at least Islamic cultures, e.g. the astrolabe. As long as someone doesn't take religion in general out of hand and go on a killing spree or try to hinder scientific advancement or infringe on someone else's rights in some way, I'm totally cool with it.
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u/kindersunrise Jun 26 '12
Yeah, I can definitely understand that, this subreddit is probably good for a lot of people who feel surrounded by religion. But then, they still need to understand why some people mock them for how hypocritical they are for bashing and stereotyping religion, I mean really, are some people on here not aware they're doing it?
I think it's good in some ways, but I'm not sure that it will do much for letting them deal with any religious situation irl. lol, it's good to have those "mature and logical redditors" as a devil's advocate, or whatever.
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u/fuckyourkarmabitch Jun 26 '12
I think the circlejerking is far outweighing the informative content now though. I came here a couple years ago as an "agnostic" but now I'd say I'm atheist maybe borderline anti theist.
Even so, with all the crap that is posted here lately, I've almost unsubbed like 5 times. I literally can't tell sometimes if I'm reading a title on the front page that is from r/circlejerk or r/atheism.
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u/FacsimilousSarcasm Jun 26 '12
People need to learn when enough is enough, but like all boards, r/atheism has been overrun by the masses, namely the idiotic, "cancerous" masses. It's the inevitable fate of all things on the internet that aren't filtered or moderated for content quality.
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u/trilobitemk7 Jun 26 '12
Every reddit has the chance to become a circlejerk as subscribers increase.
That a lot of people need to vent their frustrations doesn't help.
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Jun 26 '12
Then there'll be the people who like to chastise them from their ivory towers, (hence the more 'mature' redditors), and it'll be a vicious circle of ego swelling...till the end of days.
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u/Dice_Tower Jun 26 '12
There's a term for the tendency for an organization to skew towards extremism as the those who object to what the fringe element abandon ship, but I just can't remember what it's called.
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Jun 26 '12
But that's only because we've already determined religions are baseless, so we gotta do something to pass the time now
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Jun 26 '12
As far as I can tell this is the 'problem' with Reddit. Nobody helps anybody. There's too many conflicting opinions so the simplest bullshit makes its way to the top.
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Jun 26 '12
This is just as much a generalization as saying Christianity is full of stupid idiots. You're pretty much on the same level as those you criticize.
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Jun 26 '12
I get what you and the comment you replied to are talking about, but the Chinese riddle for me is how comments like these always seem to be at the top. How is it possible for r/atheism to be so full of hate... yet hate its own hate to the extent that they upvote the comments most critical of them.
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u/aDildoAteMyBaby Jun 26 '12
To be fair, how much of r/atheism came from unreasonably repressive households and is still stuck in the 'blowing some steam' phase?
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u/grandom Jun 26 '12
When her priest actually had the nerve to tell my mother that maybe she got cancer because she failed to raise me as a proper Christian, did I burn his fucking church down along with him as was my first impulse? No, I swallowed it and was as supportive as I could be to her. How many people here have had similar things happen to them?
I weep tears of shame when I see people who may have had it worse or better than me make fun of religion, no matter how immaturely, here. Tears of shame, I tell you.
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u/Quazz Jun 26 '12
Disagreed, there are plenty of people who became atheists because of r/atheism 's lack of scruples concerning offensiveness.
You prefer honey to catch flies, that's fine.
Some people just happen to prefer vinegar and that's fine too.
They both work, deal with it.
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u/Izlude Jun 26 '12
Its shit like this that makes my GF who is very accepting of my atheism be so put off by the stuff i read on reddit. Being against religious crimes is the reason I am against religion... And though I dont believe the narrative of their mythos, I don't think that THAT part of it is the wrong part. Doing 'X' because 'Y' says so in the book of 'Z' is no justifiable reason to do anything. Especially when that book was written by sand people...
Who as we know, rode single file, to hide their numbers...
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u/StandupPhilosopher Jun 26 '12
While I agree with you, and personally don't post insulting material myself, my theory is that this material is sort of meant for us, only for other atheists in the subreddit. I think that a lot of us lose sight of the fact that not everyone subscribed is an atheist.
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Jun 26 '12
Hey, if people can judge atheists by a vocal minority of 800,000 atheists, then I can judge christians based on the WBC right?
At any rate, I dont think anyone should engage with the purpose of convincing a "true believer" of anything. As in a debate, you're not trying to change the other guys mind, your attempt is to sway the audience.
For what its worth, I'm not a big fan of the current trend simply because its random and holds little meaning for me as I almost never run into anything related to islam or its followers, compared to an almost daily barrage of legislation that is rooted in christian beliefs. To me its just taking pot shots just because we can. I use "we" loosely here, because I've not posted anything.
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u/PKMKII Jun 26 '12
I'm all for bashing Islam, I'd just like to see some more "pointing out the hypocrisy/contradictions/double standards/bits fundamentalists ignore of the Koran" posts. We do it for the Bible, gotta do it for the Koran.
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u/xiipaoc Jun 26 '12
...They've always been coming. All the Christian-bashing shit is usually pretty stupid (though certainly not always), and Muslim-bashing is at an even lower level since most of these people are only familiar with caricatures of Islam.
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Jun 26 '12
Then tell us what is the penalty, as practiced, for leaving islam in damn near all the majority muslim countries?
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u/sytar6 Jun 26 '12
I'd say there's some pretty high level Christian bashing in this subreddit as well. There is definitely not any high level Muslim bashing, though. Nobody here knows shit about Islam, including myself.
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u/Aldren84 Jun 26 '12
.. I really feel out of the loop, whats with all the anti-Islam/Muslim stuff going around all of a sudden?
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u/InHarmsWay Jun 26 '12
It comes from a self-post from an ex-muslim basically asking for r/atheism to focus some more on islam. And they responded.
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u/Amryxx Jun 26 '12
Wow.
I would be flattered if people call me "mature and rational". All this time I thought those were good things.
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u/yofomojojo Jun 26 '12
The first thing real thing I learned from smear campaigns is that putting something in quotes neither makes it necessarily untrue or bad.
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Jun 26 '12
HAHAAAAAAA I just DIED laughing here. Whiny babies.
All about free speech until you don't like what other people are saying...
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u/limbodog Jun 25 '12
It's kind of weird how the "don't insult the muslims!" thing happens in the USA. Is it guilt for all the damage we've done to predominantly Muslim countries? Why does that religion get a pass?
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Jun 26 '12
Most liberals stick up for Muslims because they are a minority (within the U.S.) whose rights to freedom of speech are often being infringed upon by a majority group (Christians). And that's a good thing, I think. Freedom of speech must be protected at all times.
That being said, too many liberals make the mistake of thinking that you can't protect someone's freedom of speech while simultaneously criticizing the content of the speech itself.
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Jun 26 '12 edited Jun 26 '12
Wtf is this shit? You're acting like a bunch of hate filled militant shitheads. The entire forum is full of this.
Go fuck yourselves. This isn't even remotely something that Atheists care about, this is what hateful stereotyping bigots care about. I've already lost friends because they think atheists are douche bags because of how you fucking assholes act. You run around and wave the banner of atheism over your hatred. Sound familiar?
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Jun 26 '12
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u/wikipediaBot Jun 26 '12
zealotry:
Zealotry was originally a political movement in 1st century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt (66-70). Zealotry was described by Josephus as one of the "four sects" at this time. The zealots have been described as one of the first examples of the use of terrorism.
For more information click here
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u/ElixirCXVII Jun 26 '12
FTFY: Zealot - The basic Protoss infantry unit.
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Zealot_%28StarCraft_II%29
Sorry, it had to be done!
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Jun 26 '12
Nothing discriminatory about it IMO. If I only post about my experiences, since I've not had any muslims attempt to convert me / proselytize / institute their laws, I don't talk about them much.
Now if they started trying to implement sharia law where I live, there would be a shitstorm of posts on it.
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Jun 26 '12
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Jun 26 '12
Because of your comment I was looking through r/Christianity and noticed that they got together with r/islam in order to stand together against this recent unwanted attention. Needless to say I thought this.
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Jun 26 '12
Actually, this is incorrect. If you check r/Christianity, you'll find that they're helping to downvote troll posts in r/Islam. I see nothing claiming that they're going into r/atheism to downvote.
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Jun 26 '12
And their definition of a troll post in r/Islam is apparently any post that makes islam look bad. For example stating the penalty for leaving islam isn't being a troll it is stating a fact but they are still downvoting it.
It is rather scary how many over look the violence islam is responsible for in their quest to show the godless heathens who is right.
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u/Crysalim Jun 26 '12
What do you mean, "today"?
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u/BeardslyMcGee Jun 26 '12
We have no established proof that this is happening. By coming to conclusions without any sort of proof, aren't you exhibiting the very tendencies that the members of this sub-reddit speak out against?
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u/BeardslyMcGee Jun 26 '12
Do you have any proof of this? I saw nothing of the sort on that subreddit.
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u/tothemooninaballoon Jun 26 '12
They have no problem killing eachother for hundreds of years but band together against atheist.
Maybe we can start something up with r/jewish and we can end the whole middle-east problems.
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u/InfinitySnatch Jun 26 '12
I don't disagree with bashing Islam. It's the fact that everyone got riled up at the suggestion of one post and now it's just a circlejerk for easy karma.
Everyone is acting like we've never gone after Islam before and that we're being so profound now that the Islamic world is actually going to notice and get pissed off. It's just embarrassing.