D'or

my friend was talking about how excited she is about going to Sri Lanka to do mission work and help all the poor brown primitives

i don’t know if she knows that i’m an atheist or what but i post enough shit on fb for people to get the idea

i never say anything i’m just always like “oh wow that’s so exciting you’ll have so much fun” because she will like that’s a fact

and she’ll feel really good about herself and closer to god and a huge sense of community

all great things

but i’m not sure if she understands the history and reality of indoctrination and colonialism and mission work

i don’t know if she understands that many Sri Lankans are Buddhists and Hindus and that you can do charity work and change people’s lives without imposing your religion on them

because come on they’re not going half way around the world to “discuss” Christianity, to talk about the pros and cons and the history. it’s not an educational thing, like “learn what the Christian ideology is about” or “evaluating the Bible”

sure that’s what they’ll say it’s about. they’ll say they’re simply “spreading the Word”. what they’ll actually be doing is saying “there is a God and his son is Jesus and here is a Bible- study it.” And they’ll be implying (or even explicitly saying) that their thousands of Buddhist deities (can’t find the right word) are fanciful and insignificant and pale when compared with the glory of their, the Christians’, god.

right now my eyes are actually watering i’m so disappointed that a group of beautiful, healthy, able, passionate, young people are so excited about doing that. I am so disappointed that they are wasting their intelligence and passion and TIME on the indoctrination of vulnerable people. I am so disappointed that they have been lead to believe, that they have been brainwashed in to thinking that they are doing an amazing thing, the most Christian thing, and that they deserve praise for it.

Fuck I really want to have a good conversation about it to her. I reallllllllly do but I don’t know if a good time will ever come up, or even if it would be worth it.

watching nun porn on christmas 

Anonymous asked: Why does it bother you if people have faith in a god? It doesn't always mean that they are extreme or anything they just have a faith that they wish to be involved in. Not every single christian or whatever takes the stance that the church takes on every matter. It seems a lot of generalizing is being done , and it seems you dislike generalizations usually yeah?

Faith (in the religious sense), in its simplest form, does not bother me. It is when an individual’s religious beliefs impact on others, that I am “bothered” lol. Which is hard not to do in a democratic society, as your god might preach that Asian people are evil, thus when you have to vote on the referendum “Should Asian people be able to use public transport?” you might vote “No”, even though your Asian neighbours are finding it difficult to reach the shops to buy food, as they couldn’t use public transport. Therefore, your religious beliefs, if you chose for them to, do impact on others.

Yes, of course, not every religious person condones or agrees with the way in which their church acts.

Say I was part of the “Save the Whales Project.” I believed in the majority of their code of conduct (apart from the bit about killing dolphins, but I chose to overlook that because I agreed with the rest), I called myself a member and I believed in what they were trying to achieve. But one day I saw the leaders of the group going and killing dolphins. I decided that I would either try to stop it, or I would pull out of the project and not call myself a member anymore. Ya?

I don’t see a whole lot wrong with generalising. When I heard that Peter Jensen was the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, I made and EDUCATED GUESS that he would be:

•  against gay marriage

•  a supporter of the Liberal Party’s policies

•  unsupportive of other religions

•  against abortion

•  disapproving of atheism

Was I right? Of course. Why? Because those beliefs are directly attributed to the tenets of his religion. 

I’m a young woman who is interested in feminism. Taking a guess that I’m vocal about animal rights, asylum seekers, abortion, religion, gay rights (all human rights) would be completely acceptable and completely correct.

If you care about freedom and equality in one domain, you will most likely care about it in all others.

If you care about people being adhering to the “traditional” principles of marriage, you would probably care about people adhering to the “traditional” principles of gender or speech or dress code.

If not, it’s a bit hypocritical, no?

I dislike generalisations when they have not substantiated. When they are based on hate and stereotypes (different to generalisations). 

I make generalisations about religious people, cat owners, people who love football and people who love ballet, because I, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, CSIRO and other research organisations (me myself being one ;) ) can conduct research to prove generalisations,

Stereotypes, not so much. 

Many religious people love to claim that religion is the source of morality; that religious scriptures form the basis for living as a moral and good person. 

To a creationist, this makes sense, as they are under the belief that we came about in a religious way. That a being created us, and therefore that religion proceeded creation (us). But since there is no reason to believe that we were intelligently designed and a plethora of reasons not to believe that we weren’t, let’s base this argument on evidence that we do have, and not on the folklore that people still hold very dear to them. There is no argument that we evolved from primates to be what we are today. 

During that extremely long process, long before we had language abilities and cognitive skills to spin up ideas of how we got here and what we are meant to do here, we had quite a sound understanding of right and wrong. 

A person, and even most animals, with normal mental cognition, understand that what is wrong and right. All social animals, even insects, have to modify or restrain their behaviours for group living to be worthwhile. Chimpanzees remember who did them favours and who did them wrong, and are more likely to share food with individuals who have previously groomed them. They do not need a book to tell them that it works to their advantage to treat their fellow chimpanzees in a way that they would like to be treated.

If you actually believe that Jesus was the first person to come up with this belief, to come to the realisation that peace between people is found in the reciprocality of gestures that give pleasure, comfort or help, then maybe you should do some reading, and even some thinking.

A recent study at Yale University has again proved the fact that babies, beings that have not been indoctrinated into any religion or fully understood any philosophies on morality , have a basic understanding of right and wrong.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all)

I saw this when I recently went to my baby cousin’s Greek Orthodox christening. As she was being dunked into the holy tap water, she (understandably) was screaming and wailing in distress. At the sounds of her screams, her older sister (two years old) ran over to the bath and began crying and looking around frantically for someone to help her little sister. She was throwing her arms up in the air doing the whole: “She’s obviously distressed! That man is hurting her! Why is everyone watching on and doing nothing about it!?” It’s obvious that the older older sister knew her little sister was distressed due to her cries, and this made her aware that some sort of injustice was happening. Something wrong.

Morality came before any religious thinking, and definitely before any religious scripture. The moral guides found in religious scriptures are based on being a fucking cognisant being. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or The Golden Rule was what chimps were living by.

If someone wants to enlighten me some more, or challenge what I just said, please do!