Unitarians accept agnostics and atheists along with anyone willing to be a decent human being. They're essentially humanists.
One cousin of mine has Unitarian listed as his religious view on FaceBook, and knowing him as the freethinking sort, I suspect it's at least partially a cover. Much of the family is southern baptist, and that's about as fundie as you can get.
Two ironies here: one, the shooter didn't like deocrats or liberals yet he was dependent on food stamps. Secondly, he hates liberals, yet one of the signers and founding fathers was John Adams who was a Unitarian.
It wuold be somewhat ironic if he was an atheist. Being a Unitarian (or at least a fellow traveller) and an atheist myself these people tend to go a bit beyond tollerant. Although some Unitarian communities can be fairly theistic close to half of them as a whole outwardly disbelieve. It's simply beside the point to these people, god or not people are people and it's our shared humanity that's important. Oh and fundimentalists hate us =P. I think the abolition of hell was key.
As usual, a right-wing loser who hates gays and liberals and fancies that they were the cause of his failures. This is typical of the evangelical fucks who want to run everyone else's lives when they can't run their own. Ignorant white trash. Guess he really solved his problems, huh?
There certainly are conservative, racist and homophobic atheists in the world. One good example is a guy named Larry Darby who at one time was head of the Alabama atheist association. Darby has run for public office several times in Alabama. He is well known for his hatred of Jews. He has been very vocal about denying the holocaust.
I'll never understand the obsession some many people have with MISUSING THE TERM "HOMOPHOBIC". Homophobia is the irrational FEAR of homosexuals. I can't say that I've ever met a homophobe and would venture to guess that their numbers are very small. Hatred of gays or disapproval of gays is not homophobia.
Hatred frequently springs from fear. Generally speaking those that hate gays are in fact homophobic, not infrequently due to repressed, but often vaguely suspected homosexual tendencies in themselves. I consider the usage quite sound.
Fear is so often expressed as hatred that your assertion is ludicrous. I have an arachnophobic friend who will ball up a fist to punch a spider instead of calmly getting an object to swat it with.
Most people's sexuality falls on a spectrum, not some either/or toggle. I'm maybe 90% straight, myself. I admit to having a few weird dreams, but nothing my waking mind wants to act on. Now imagine that in someone who has been taught that such stray thoughts are evil and lead to hell.
There is no "atheistic" infrastructure in place for when christianity falls, the welfare of the displaced will fall upon our shoulders
If atheistic mindset gains numbers and the US educational system actually teaches kids something, what will happen to all the people with masters degrees ?
This guy aside, was Pekka-Erik, the 'natural selector' not a self proclaimed Atheist? In that case it has already happened. And it could happen again. That's why we have to keep looking out for people with an unhealthy obsession with violence, atheist or not.
Haven't you? It happened in Finland a while back. Search for Pekka-Erik (or was it Eric?) Auvinen. The guy was a YouTuber. Claimed to be an atheist and a "social darwinist". He even was subscribed to me which I found a bit creepy when I found out.
Shit! How did I miss that? What a complete fuckwit. I've a lot more sympathy for Adkisson than I do for this smug little prick:-( It's telling though, atheists do tend to think a whole package of enlightenment comes along with being an atheist, and while I think this is true more often than not, a racist nazi can be an atheist too. Food for thought.
He was ill. His wife left him because he threatened to shoot her years before. He was confused about his life and his culture and his place in it, and he was close to losing food stamps--his barrier from total insecurity. Why was he on food stamps when he could afford ammo? Why did he have a gun after threatening his wife? He was just a messed up fuck who needed some serious help a decade+ ago that he did not get. He needed therapy stamps more than food stamps, but we don't do that here.
You have managed to frighten me with your scenario, especially in light of the powerful sway of the pyramid scheme ministries that suck their (mostly poor) parishioners dry.
Rehabilitation for ex-theists? That's what YouTube is for, isn't it?
BTW the Unitarian Church has a large identity of members who are agnostic and atheist. Something like half of its membership. Its a really loose denomination of Christianity.
I agree completely.. and those who need support who are sound usually seek it out and find it. My concern rests with those who do not seek support during deconversion. I remember your video using the silly puddy to illustrate a coming away from faith... and I remember what happens when you pull too quickly.
I know of several people in the ministry I was part of, who have now "retired", in there 50 & 60's with absolutely nothing. The "Jesus will provide" mantra roles so glibly off the tounge, and is so hard to push back against, that this kind of thing is becoming commonplace. That is the nightmare, waking up with nothing, when it's to late to start living.
That news was in the papers even here in Switzerland.
It doesn't matter if he was an atheist or a theist. The problem is that some people believe that they have right to take the lives of others for whatever crazy reason.
Shooting will happen every so often, more in some places than others, though far less frequent than deaths from "medicines" or vehicles or heart disease from happy meals . Shootings such as these are often the culmination of numerous factors, including ignorance, poverty, a lack of close friends or family, etc. These issues may be addressable, but any of the many psychological factors are unaddressable save a massive some spent on mandatory psychotherapy for every man, woman and child...
...While shootings such as these should be noted and lamented, only indirect measures are likely to be possible in response and more over there are far more pressing causes of death and suffering...for instance, rouge American presidents, famine, genocide, etc. which may at least might be addressable
I agree with you, ready access to guns was not the primary factor here. This poor bastard was neglected for decades, left with little or no help, and about to have what little the state was providing him removed. If it wasn't a gun, it would have been a car, or a chainsaw.
I agree with you both, but in this particular case this man allegedly targeted "liberals". It's often the left leaning liberals in the U.S. that are supportive of health care for the mentally ill, prefer rehabilitation over punishment, and endorse the funding of social welfare programs such as food stamps.
It goes a bit more than that. American politics is a complicated thing. I myself am a conservitive republican when it comes to goverment and socialy a liberal. Ie I closely identify with Jeffersonian politics or the Libertarian view, which was the Republican view. People equate liberalism and it's social programs as a step toward socialism and a move toward large goverment and goverment interference. Republics are really nasty to manage on the size of America. - cont
While I do agree with you that he was a very troubled person, we do not have all the information at hand. Him saying he is a confederate tells me a lot about him. It means he firmly believes in the soverignty of the south as a seperate union from the united states. He believes in state power and the states right to sovereignty as prescribed by the 10th ammendment of the US constitution. It also tells me he is a fringe right wing Christian.
The tiniest bit of education should be able to dispell this idea, just look at Europe. They manage to have adequate social services, health care and pensions, while still running largely capitalist economies. The secret is MIXED economy, not one extreme or the other. A health care system works best under a single national system, with collective bargaining for drugs and supplies. The "socialised" medicine in Sweden costs 50% per capita what americans pay & for substantially better outcomes.
I'd say the responsibility goes further back than Reagan. The 20th century saw a long line of attacks on the seperation of powers. I'd say it started with FDR and has been building up till you now have the travisty today. It is still beter system than other place but that doesn't mean we can't bring things back to the balanced system of the past.
Ya conservative politics but social liberal.. also..
Take gun control.. I am against gun control. HOWEVER, I would never own a gun. I do believe the liberals are right when they say I am more likely to shoot a family member then I intruder..
However I don't believe in punishing responsible people for the stupidity of others :D :P
Well there is a flip side to that stastic of being more likely to shoot a family member than an intruder. It's about responsible upbringing and education in weaponry.
the possibilities can be scary. my parents are very liberal, hardly christians really, and i started drifting when i started really thinking for myself, and became free around 18.
i hate to imagine what i would've been like if i'd been raised by fundies, or even radicals. i wouldn't be who i am today. certainly not free-minded, and possibly even deeply delusional, self-righteous and hateful, like some poor people i see. just losing as much of my like as others have would have been terrible
I'm happy to report that she did. All three of us (our daughter too) now fall somewhere into the hard agnostics/light atheist category. I've even seen my daughter have online arguments with complete strangers about religion! Where does she get it from:-)
Unitarians accept agnostics and atheists along with anyone willing to be a decent human being. They're essentially humanists.
One cousin of mine has Unitarian listed as his religious view on FaceBook, and knowing him as the freethinking sort, I suspect it's at least partially a cover. Much of the family is southern baptist, and that's about as fundie as you can get.
Keovar 1 year ago
Two ironies here: one, the shooter didn't like deocrats or liberals yet he was dependent on food stamps. Secondly, he hates liberals, yet one of the signers and founding fathers was John Adams who was a Unitarian.
ffairlane57 1 year ago
It wuold be somewhat ironic if he was an atheist. Being a Unitarian (or at least a fellow traveller) and an atheist myself these people tend to go a bit beyond tollerant. Although some Unitarian communities can be fairly theistic close to half of them as a whole outwardly disbelieve. It's simply beside the point to these people, god or not people are people and it's our shared humanity that's important. Oh and fundimentalists hate us =P. I think the abolition of hell was key.
thorungal 3 years ago
As usual, a right-wing loser who hates gays and liberals and fancies that they were the cause of his failures. This is typical of the evangelical fucks who want to run everyone else's lives when they can't run their own. Ignorant white trash. Guess he really solved his problems, huh?
baddave62 3 years ago
There certainly are conservative, racist and homophobic atheists in the world. One good example is a guy named Larry Darby who at one time was head of the Alabama atheist association. Darby has run for public office several times in Alabama. He is well known for his hatred of Jews. He has been very vocal about denying the holocaust.
hiplib 3 years ago
I'll never understand the obsession some many people have with MISUSING THE TERM "HOMOPHOBIC". Homophobia is the irrational FEAR of homosexuals. I can't say that I've ever met a homophobe and would venture to guess that their numbers are very small. Hatred of gays or disapproval of gays is not homophobia.
mensacyclist 3 years ago
Hatred frequently springs from fear. Generally speaking those that hate gays are in fact homophobic, not infrequently due to repressed, but often vaguely suspected homosexual tendencies in themselves. I consider the usage quite sound.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
@mensacyclist
Fear is so often expressed as hatred that your assertion is ludicrous. I have an arachnophobic friend who will ball up a fist to punch a spider instead of calmly getting an object to swat it with.
Most people's sexuality falls on a spectrum, not some either/or toggle. I'm maybe 90% straight, myself. I admit to having a few weird dreams, but nothing my waking mind wants to act on. Now imagine that in someone who has been taught that such stray thoughts are evil and lead to hell.
Keovar 1 year ago
this was a good topic once in DEBATE FAITH
There is no "atheistic" infrastructure in place for when christianity falls, the welfare of the displaced will fall upon our shoulders
If atheistic mindset gains numbers and the US educational system actually teaches kids something, what will happen to all the people with masters degrees ?
Where will all the jobs come from ?
Talk about depressing ...
AtheistAtLARGE 3 years ago
que sera, sera...
jogayot 3 years ago
This guy aside, was Pekka-Erik, the 'natural selector' not a self proclaimed Atheist? In that case it has already happened. And it could happen again. That's why we have to keep looking out for people with an unhealthy obsession with violence, atheist or not.
rozeboosje 3 years ago
Was he indeed? I had not heard of that case, but it sort of sounds like what I was driving at.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
Haven't you? It happened in Finland a while back. Search for Pekka-Erik (or was it Eric?) Auvinen. The guy was a YouTuber. Claimed to be an atheist and a "social darwinist". He even was subscribed to me which I found a bit creepy when I found out.
rozeboosje 3 years ago
Shit! How did I miss that? What a complete fuckwit. I've a lot more sympathy for Adkisson than I do for this smug little prick:-( It's telling though, atheists do tend to think a whole package of enlightenment comes along with being an atheist, and while I think this is true more often than not, a racist nazi can be an atheist too. Food for thought.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
yes indeed
rozeboosje 3 years ago
He was ill. His wife left him because he threatened to shoot her years before. He was confused about his life and his culture and his place in it, and he was close to losing food stamps--his barrier from total insecurity. Why was he on food stamps when he could afford ammo? Why did he have a gun after threatening his wife? He was just a messed up fuck who needed some serious help a decade+ ago that he did not get. He needed therapy stamps more than food stamps, but we don't do that here.
InReasonWeTrust 3 years ago
America, home of workplace violence, church violence, and domestic violence. The old west is alive and well in the 21st century.
marshall1959now 3 years ago
You have managed to frighten me with your scenario, especially in light of the powerful sway of the pyramid scheme ministries that suck their (mostly poor) parishioners dry.
Rehabilitation for ex-theists? That's what YouTube is for, isn't it?
near2earth 3 years ago
Maybe it is ....
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
ya I can picture a "atheist" going ape shit...
I put it in quotes because he would be a atheist at the time. But christian for the majority of his life...
Ie purhaps a christian goes gay, christians hate him. And BAM they snap..
Or like you said, purhaps they are OOOLD decide it is bs, and realized there wen't 10% of their income.
thefakeyeti 3 years ago
Thats it exactly. It's the shock of transition that may send someone off the deep end.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
BTW the Unitarian Church has a large identity of members who are agnostic and atheist. Something like half of its membership. Its a really loose denomination of Christianity.
lunarfault 3 years ago
I heard that, a pretty interesting denomination all round.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
I agree completely.. and those who need support who are sound usually seek it out and find it. My concern rests with those who do not seek support during deconversion. I remember your video using the silly puddy to illustrate a coming away from faith... and I remember what happens when you pull too quickly.
heatherlynblue 3 years ago
I know of several people in the ministry I was part of, who have now "retired", in there 50 & 60's with absolutely nothing. The "Jesus will provide" mantra roles so glibly off the tounge, and is so hard to push back against, that this kind of thing is becoming commonplace. That is the nightmare, waking up with nothing, when it's to late to start living.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
That news was in the papers even here in Switzerland.
It doesn't matter if he was an atheist or a theist. The problem is that some people believe that they have right to take the lives of others for whatever crazy reason.
DeletedDelusion 3 years ago
Shooting will happen every so often, more in some places than others, though far less frequent than deaths from "medicines" or vehicles or heart disease from happy meals . Shootings such as these are often the culmination of numerous factors, including ignorance, poverty, a lack of close friends or family, etc. These issues may be addressable, but any of the many psychological factors are unaddressable save a massive some spent on mandatory psychotherapy for every man, woman and child...
cypherphage 3 years ago
...While shootings such as these should be noted and lamented, only indirect measures are likely to be possible in response and more over there are far more pressing causes of death and suffering...for instance, rouge American presidents, famine, genocide, etc. which may at least might be addressable
cypherphage 3 years ago
I agree with you, ready access to guns was not the primary factor here. This poor bastard was neglected for decades, left with little or no help, and about to have what little the state was providing him removed. If it wasn't a gun, it would have been a car, or a chainsaw.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
I agree with you both, but in this particular case this man allegedly targeted "liberals". It's often the left leaning liberals in the U.S. that are supportive of health care for the mentally ill, prefer rehabilitation over punishment, and endorse the funding of social welfare programs such as food stamps.
sft62 3 years ago
I know. It is the most staggering irony, how do the right manage to convince people that LIBERALS are their problem? It's beyond absurd.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
Indeed, and many on the right, particularly the older generation, equate liberalism with communism.
sft62 3 years ago
It goes a bit more than that. American politics is a complicated thing. I myself am a conservitive republican when it comes to goverment and socialy a liberal. Ie I closely identify with Jeffersonian politics or the Libertarian view, which was the Republican view. People equate liberalism and it's social programs as a step toward socialism and a move toward large goverment and goverment interference. Republics are really nasty to manage on the size of America. - cont
lunarfault 3 years ago
While I do agree with you that he was a very troubled person, we do not have all the information at hand. Him saying he is a confederate tells me a lot about him. It means he firmly believes in the soverignty of the south as a seperate union from the united states. He believes in state power and the states right to sovereignty as prescribed by the 10th ammendment of the US constitution. It also tells me he is a fringe right wing Christian.
lunarfault 3 years ago
The tiniest bit of education should be able to dispell this idea, just look at Europe. They manage to have adequate social services, health care and pensions, while still running largely capitalist economies. The secret is MIXED economy, not one extreme or the other. A health care system works best under a single national system, with collective bargaining for drugs and supplies. The "socialised" medicine in Sweden costs 50% per capita what americans pay & for substantially better outcomes.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
Ironically, the US used to be a pretty good example of a succesful mixed economy, but Reagan wrecked it.
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago
I'd say the responsibility goes further back than Reagan. The 20th century saw a long line of attacks on the seperation of powers. I'd say it started with FDR and has been building up till you now have the travisty today. It is still beter system than other place but that doesn't mean we can't bring things back to the balanced system of the past.
lunarfault 3 years ago
Ya conservative politics but social liberal.. also..
Take gun control.. I am against gun control. HOWEVER, I would never own a gun. I do believe the liberals are right when they say I am more likely to shoot a family member then I intruder..
However I don't believe in punishing responsible people for the stupidity of others :D :P
thefakeyeti 3 years ago
Well there is a flip side to that stastic of being more likely to shoot a family member than an intruder. It's about responsible upbringing and education in weaponry.
lunarfault 3 years ago
God is about as real as the Easter bunny. I was raised a Catholic but stopped believing in that hocus pocus in my early twenties.
This brief life we have on this planet is all there is folks - enjoy because there isn't anything after it.
ChunkyDude68 3 years ago
the possibilities can be scary. my parents are very liberal, hardly christians really, and i started drifting when i started really thinking for myself, and became free around 18.
i hate to imagine what i would've been like if i'd been raised by fundies, or even radicals. i wouldn't be who i am today. certainly not free-minded, and possibly even deeply delusional, self-righteous and hateful, like some poor people i see. just losing as much of my like as others have would have been terrible
drakeblackhorn 3 years ago
Christianity IS a cult and many people freak out when they finally realize the truth. I think you are correct; deprogramming would be wise.
bamboo4tameshigiri 3 years ago
Actually, the guy was a religious nut that thought the church was too liberal. Thus, it is likely going to go to the federal level as a "hate crime".
bamboo4tameshigiri 3 years ago
The perpetrator was a ultra-fundamentalist Christian. They are very intoleratant of liberal churches, such as Unitarians.
TexanDeist 3 years ago
Wow, you married a Swedish missionary and you still came around? That is impressive. Your wife, did she follow?
mavaddat 3 years ago
I'm happy to report that she did. All three of us (our daughter too) now fall somewhere into the hard agnostics/light atheist category. I've even seen my daughter have online arguments with complete strangers about religion! Where does she get it from:-)
TheModestAgnostic 3 years ago