Rick Reuben wrote:

stewie wrote:I do believe you just called me a terrorist, and that I don't belong in this country because I don't believe in God.

Man, I miss the days when you ignored my posts. You can't read for shit.

Get the fuck off your imaginary high horse, you dope.

I "can't read for shit"? How the fuck else should I read these two gems of yours?

The atheistic bigots do not belong in this country if they cannot tolerate the reasoning that supports their unalienable rights.

You wrote that, correct? It wasn't some secret government agent taking over your computer when you weren't looking, right?

There's no other way to read that, other than "I don't believe atheists belong in this country". Unless Reubenspeak has another meaning for "do not belong in this country" which I'm unaware of.

Moving on, I'm pretty sure there's only one way to take this:

If they mean to expunge the concept of a Creator from this nation's principles, then they are engaging in terrorism, and attacking the rights of us all to serve their elitist secular humanist vendetta.

Here, you call me a terrorist. Exactly what kind of "terror" tactic have I been employing on this forum? Care to explain? I know I supposedly "can't read for shit", but seriously, what's next? Gonna call out my terrorist fist-jab?


You are an embarrassment to forum trolls everywhere.

Rick Reuben wrote:

stevenstillborn wrote:But, what's the Creator?

Doesn't matter.

Oh, but I believe it does. Look at the language Jefferson used to refer to this entity or force or whatever the fuck: Nature's God...the Creator. OK, to what religion is he referencing? Is he even referencing a religion? He mentions a deity, sure, but he is careful to be vague as to the specifics so that any man, no matter if he worships "twenty gods - or no gods at all," to quote another of Jefferson's letters, could claim these rights simply by being human. However we are created, these rights exist not because we were created by a deity, but because we exist as humans.
But, this ignores a basic misconception here. You call the Declaration of Independence the founding document of this nation, and that is flatly false. It is a philosophical statement from the signatories only. There's a reason it doesn't start "We, the people of the former colonies." It only refers to the people who signed the Declaration, "We." The founding document of our country is the Constitution, which came 11 years later and refers to the government's responsibilities to all of us.

Bow down and worship your Kreator!!

Rick Reuben wrote:The Declaration preceded the Constitution.

Yes, but it does not give citizens any rights. The U.S. Constitution, standing on it's own, does.


Apparently Rick Reuben has trouble understanding the Declaration
of Independence as well.

Rick Reuben wrote: If you think that you should give back your unalienable rights because you can't cope with the words 'the Creator' being attached to them, you priorities are fucked beyond belief.

But I don't think that. That would negate the word "unalienable." And I can cope with the word "the Creator" being there just fine. I just think that it is a weapon commonly used weapon by those who would attack atheists - which I am not, BTW - that, upon inspection, really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Did the signatories believe in a Creator? I'm sure they did. But it really doesn't matter, because they thought people got these rights because they are people. As long as you agree with that element in the syllogism, who created the humans is a moot point.
Wikipedia is a weak source (I won't even let my high school sophomores use it) because it can be adjusted by any old person. The Declaration of Independence is NOT a foundational legal text in the United States. That is simply a fact. And, when faced with codifying their beliefs into a functioning government, the Founding Fathers left the god-words out of the equation.

sunset_gun wrote:

Rick Reuben wrote:The Declaration preceded the Constitution.

Yes, but it does not give citizens any rights. The U.S. Constitution, standing on it's own, does.


Apparently Rick Reuben has trouble understanding the Declaration
of Independence as well.

This whole thread - oddly enough - is based on a false assumption, namely that humans have rights as something outside of nature.

We only have the rights that we as humans decide that we have. There is nothing about "rights" in the Bible, if anything the Bible is very much not about rights, as it advocates slavery and genocide - to name a couple -.

As for in the context of the Founding Fathers of the US, many were Deists at the most. Yet it is humans that invoke a deity when rights are declared, not the deity in question. That is unless Yahweh materialised during the writing of the Bill of Rights and no one recorded it.

This is a rather moot point as Yahweh is about as real as Zeus anyway. I'm guessing what some people find upsetting about humans not being supernatural creatures, is just that, good or bad actions have no eternal consequence.

Guys.

For future reference, if you're going to argue with Rick about the the whole "atheist bigot" thing (file under: latest Rick straw man buzz phrase; what happened to "sellout liberals"?), you'd be well-advised to remember that theism and Christianity aren't the same thing. Rick doesn't argue in favor of Christianity; he argues in favor of the freedom to believe in something.

That being said, this thread is just another thrashing onto the dead horse that is the bug up Rick's ass about how not everyone believes his 9/11 Truth and Federal Reserve conspiracies. He's said it on this forum a number of times himself--he's only yelling about atheists because he sees some sort of hypocritical connection between these two things:

1) If you deny 9/11 Truth, you are living in a fantasy land of your own creation and choosing to believe your own version of the truth

2) If you make fun of theists, you are making fun of people choosing to believe their own version of the truth, and are therefore a hypocrite.

Seriously. That's what all these threads he starts are about. Now, you wanna go ahead and keep beating around the bush, go right ahead. But in the interests of intellectual honesty i'm suggesting this thread be retitled "Rick is pissy that no one here takes his 9/11 and Fed Reserve threads seriously thread #98576."

Rick Reuben wrote: Fewer minorities are atheists, when compared to the population as a whole. So if atheistic bigots insist on associating religion with stupidity, they in effect are exhibiting racism, because they are calling behavior that shows up among minorities at a higher rate ( belief in God ) a sign of stupidity.

Wrong.

One cannot be called racist unless that person is employing race in the assumption/prejudice. A person can do something about being socialized/brain-washed into a belief in myth as reality. A person cannot change their race. This is the distinction that allows me to laugh at them.

Rick Reuben wrote:

DrAwkward wrote:Rick doesn't argue in favor of Christianity; he argues in favor of the freedom to believe in something.

Well done. That's exactly right. ( Except you left out the other part: that atheism and theism are on equal scientific footing, so anyone from either side who claims that science confirms their belief system is talking bullshit. )

I don't disagree with that. Where we seem to differ is that you seem to think that scientists have an anti-religious agenda, whereas i prefer to pay attention to scientists who consider the god question irrelevant to their chosen field.

Rick wrote: Fewer minorities are atheists, when compared to the population as a whole. So if atheistic bigots insist on associating religion with stupidity, they in effect are exhibiting racism, because they are calling behavior that shows up among minorities at a higher rate ( belief in God ) a sign of stupidity.

Wow, i can probably point to about a dozen logical fallacies that this would qualify under.[/quote]

Personally I'm interested when by simply saying something it instantly becomes true...

People can invoke whatever they like, it doesn't make it real. The concept of "rights" in the modern sense is very new in the history of human ideas and developed during the Enlightenment, i.e. the period of human thought when we broke free from the primitive ideas expressed in supernatural beliefs that have no foundation in evidence.

It would seem that some people like idea of belief as a "good", this doesn't always mean they actually have supernatural beliefs, just that they feel there is something "good" about accepting something with zero evidence.

As for "right", these are amorphous concepts that have been developing as long as humans recorded history. Just prior to around 200 years ago almost zero percent of the population had any.

God has been invoked much more often to strip people of what we now call "rights" than granting them.

God is not a democrat.