Yeah, you're right. It's kind of funny that a comedy website I sometimes go to cites their sources better than most news channels I've seen. But to be fair, it's not limited to the U.S., as overzealous news outlets are kind of a world-wide thing (The Daily Mail in the UK comes to mind).

i think npr is pretty decent tbh. i know a lot of people find it pretentious and it is.. but news wise they stay pretty reasonable. i say reasonable instead of objective cause you really can't have objective news.

whats funny is npr is state funded which would seemingly make them the perfect airhorn for propaganda yet since our politics are ruled by money more than anything else the more lucrative private news stations do a lot more propaganda than the state run news station.

Agreed. I was referring to television. NPR does try to stay pretty neutral but will lean a little to the left now and then.

Before you said "they" you were talking about both "muslims" and Christians then around the world. So the antecedent for "they" could any one of them, I assume by the way you treat the English language. What I said was a just-in-case you meant people who were persecuted in Syria. Which is something I wouldn't put pass you cause the way you come off. The Syrian Christians were brought up because of the original comparison between American Christian and Christians around the world who faced real persecution (physical violence or death). I didn't mention atheist and Shia muslims but that doesn't mean I don't care them being persecute or killed. And after my statement about the Syrian Christians I noticed you go on and make a couple of slights against Christians, so it just goes to show...

???Vice-versa in this case is that *******s are any demographic of a certain percentage.

NPR receives very little state funding. Federal, state and local govt funding of NPR is only 5.8% of the total. Most of it is listener supported (32.1%) and businesses (21.1%). Universities kick in another 13.6% and foundations kick in 9.6%. The corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is federally funded, kicks in 10.1%. The other 7.6% is listed as "other".

Don’t Forget the Facts About NPR Funding : Columbia Journalism Review

The CPB's own pie chart is a little different but not by much. These may have been two different years as well but regardless, state funding of NPR is miniscule.

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013...d-s800-c85.jpg

that whole post was clarifying that i was talking about my opinion on the motivations of american christians playing the victim card. i guess i assumed common sense would tell you who i was accusing of playing the victim at the end of the post.

and yea i made a couple harmless jokes about christians afterwards. feel free call the outrage brigade at once. i'm just too edgy for the internet, man.

^bump - was a bit drunk here, maybe i shouldn't be such a dick about it. honestly though i get the feeling that you look for things to nitpick with me since i offended you with that bill cosby joke. maybe i am just paranoid but really i felt like the meaning of my post was pretty obvious and the language wasn't that ambiguous. wasn't trying to be misleading. and with the christian comments i was just joking like i said and once again wasn't really out to give a genuine criticism of the religion which is why i didn't take your objections all that seriously cause it's like i was making dumb jokes and you were responding to them as if they were serious points. maybe there is some communication barrier between us. i'm not trying to be offensive but i am curious, is english your first language?

Okay, weird grammatical screw up on my part.

I think some people feel insulted because by being an atheist they think you're denying them their beliefs. Whereas agnostics can say "well your belief may or may not be valid" people think an atheist is saying "your belief is not valid"... whether the atheist is saying that or not.

Also many holy books make it seem like being a non-believer is worse than murder...

As far as agnostics who think atheists are awful, I don't get what their problem is.

I think it's the misconception that a lot of people, religious and nonreligious alike, have that all atheists are the militant asshole atheists (who also tend to be the most vocal and obnoxious) that causes that mindset among agnostics.

And I love the avvy man, Branca is a god.

I don't think atheists are awful, I just think it's a dumb thing in general.

And that, in turn, makes me dumb too. Because putting down other people's beliefs is dumb.

I can get that, although obnoxious atheists annoy me too. Not because they're obnoxious atheists but just because they're obnoxious people... (I don't equate outspoken with obnoxious).
Thanks!

@Mondo Bungle: You think atheism in general is dumb? Why?

Well it's just as much of an affirmative statement to say that there isn't a god than to say that there is. Sure you could be scientific about it and put the burden of proof on the accuser (spare me the flying spaghetti monster analogy), but with something vague and difficult to prove like the nature of God it's foolish to be certain in either direction.

Then again I was raised as a Christian, so even though I'm agnostic, maybe I'm still clinging onto some of those beliefs.

I just personally can't understand how someone can believe something so firmly when in reality you don't know anything at all.

But I also don't really know what atheism is all about so I'm just being ignorant. Do they believe that there is absolutely no God? Because that's what I'd consider dumb, for my reason stated above.

@Frownland: I don't know if I'd say atheism is certainty. Just like science is not really "certainty" but going by the most evidence that we have at this current moment. At this moment we do not have enough evidence for a god so I choose not to choose one to believe in.

I do understand where you would get that though. There are many atheists out there that act like atheism is a certainty.

I suppose that's sort of the burden of proof argument, huh? But, I don't feel "certain"... I feel like I'm just going by what is knowable.

@Mondo Bungle: Personally I don't make the statement "There is no god", although some atheists do. I just chose not to believe in or worship a god that I don't know exists.

You can skip to 1:10. But the gist is that there are plenty of beliefs that nobody feels the need to respect (Bigfoot, Flat Earth, Loch Ness Monster, etc), and to be perfectly honest, I don't find the existence of a deity to be any more credible. I could lie to you and say I respected the concept of believing in god, but I could also lie to a Flat Earther. I might respect you more than a Flat Earther, but if you believe in something that I see as being just as nutty, then that respect will not extend to that belief. Sorry, I guess.



I lack a belief in god simply because I have never been religious, and never seen any even remotely credible evidence to make me believe otherwise. Hence, I don't believe in god. Now, unlike many atheists, I actively extend that to believing that he doesn't exist. Why? I've probably told this anecdote on here before, but I think it illustrates my thoughts on human psychology in regards to religion...

Back when I was a kid (say around ten), I'd always go to this one friend of mine's house, like every day in the summer. We'd just chill out for hours playing video games and pretend fighting to the Mortal Kombat movie theme. And while we were playing video games, often one of us would be playing by ourselves while the other one was sitting and watching or playing on the computer or whatever. Point is, there would be two of us in the room. I'm sure plenty of gamers know all about gamer rage. You lose, you bitch, you lose more, you curse, you lose again, you hurl the TV out of a third story window. Well, we had our own mock, gamer rage cult going on. You lose, you bitch, other guy tells you that you have angered the gaming gods and that you shall continue to lose, you lose more, you ask the gaming gods for forgiveness, probably still lose, honest to god prayer to the gaming gods, repeat until you win and then the gaming gods like you again.

Clearly the idea of gaming gods is nonsense, and while we were ten, we were neither idiots nor given to that kind of thing (I was an atheist and he was a lazy Jew). And yet it came entirely naturally, and I swear to dog, we half believed it. You've felt it too. When you really can't get past some part in a game, and it just feels like the game is a self-aware entity who is for some odd reason making it its mission in life to prevent you from beating Super Mario World. It's like your brain is hard-wired to see agency in ANYTHING, in the vain hope that you can somehow appease it, which is your, and was our, logical next step. It may have been childish nonsense, but forming a religion out of praying to video game deities was as natural as breathing.

That's my biggest reason for actively believing that god does not exist. If human beings are that hard-wired to create religions at the drop of a hat, even when they actively know that they are not dealing with a sentient being, then why on Earth should I treat anything that "adults" have come up with with any more credibility until I see some compelling evidence. Human beings are just too psychologically dependent upon religious thought processes to be trusted to come up with anything other than nonsense unless proven otherwise, making me believe that from day one, when the first human thought up the first god, it was all Video Game God nonsense.

it's basically semantics tbh. nobody really agrees on what atheism/agnosticism really mean. i can explain it after work if u want or u can just google. long story short tho no atheist i've ever met actually claims to know for sure that there's no god. it's basically the stance that it's more logical to reserve belief in something until there is evidence for it. so like me for example i have no idea why **** exists and i don't pretend to. could be god could not be god. i'll let others decide whether that makes me an atheist or an agnostic or both but i'll throw in the stipulation that my opinion is it's more logical to not make the assumption of god until we get some indication that it's a valid assumption or at least a more probable solution to the problem, which i haven't ever seen so far beyond wishy washy apologetic rhetoric, some of which is very cleverly crafted but ultimately falls short imo.

I consider myself an atheist because I have never seen any kind of compelling evidence for the existence of a god or gods. I think it's a pretty reasonable position to have. There are a million other things I also lack belief in because of insufficient evidence and I've always found it strange that this one particular thing is the only one that such large numbers of people are hypercritical of.

W.C. Fields was an ardent atheist who wanted to found a school for orphans where they would receive no religious schooling. He had a large library of both atheistic and theistic literature that he spent a great deal of time studying. He knew more about theology than most theologians. One day, a friend come to see him and found him in his library poring over the bible. Knowing Fields' leanings, he asked, "What are you doing reading the bible, Bill?"

Without looking up or missing a beat, Fields replied, "Looking for loopholes."

One day in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln and William Herndon, law partners, were on their way to their offices. There had been a cloudburst earlier but now the sun was out and kids about playing in the mud and puddles. As they approached their office building, Lincoln noticed Willie, a 12 yo black shoeshine boy messing around in the mud.

Lincoln called out to him, "Willie, now you know your mother is going to be very cross with you if you go home all muddy!"

Willie said, "I'm bein' real careful, Mr. Lincoln. I'm not gettin' dirty. She wouldn't be mad anyway."

"And why wouldn't she?" asked Lincoln.

"Cuz I'm makin' a church, Mr. Lincoln, see?" Willie pointed out the design he made in the mud. "There's the church, there's the pews, there's the doors, there's the steeple and there's the pulpit."

Lincoln examined Willie's work carefully and said, "Well, Willie, it all seems to be there--except for one thing! The preacher! Can't have a church without a preacher, Willie. Where's the preacher?"

Willie innocently replied, "Laws, Mr. Lincoln! I didn't have enough mud for that!"

Herndon said Lincoln threw his head back and laughed so hard he had trouble breathing. Lincoln gave Willie a silver dollar and laughed all the way up the stairs to the office. Herndon was a lifelong friend of Lincoln's and accompanied him when Lincoln traveled about as president. He said Lincoln retold the Willie story hundreds of times.

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/23...fada9456b4.jpg

:whythis:

I consider myself an atheist because I've seen way too much in this world that proves a God simply can't exist. If one did there's no way they'd allow the insane amount of pain and suffering that occurs on a daily basis all over this planet.

Basically, gonisticism and theism are independent axes
You can be one of four things: gnostic atheist, gnostic theist, agnostic atheist, agnostic theist. The point is to separate belief from knowledge. A/theism is about belief a/gnosticism is about knowledge. A gnostic atheist is more likely to be a militant atheist becauase they think they know best. Similarily, gnostic theists are more likely to engage in extremist behavior to force their beliefs on others. Whereas agnostics on both side or more likely to have a co-existence mentality.

Still waiting on the evidence that there isn't a god. Too bad that's something we just can't get, and same for evidence that there is, short of dying and ascending to heaven, but those people can't tell us anything. So, what's the evidence that the universe was just created out of god damn nothing? Were you there?

But after October 2018, we may in fact have the evidence of what went down back then. After the launch of the James Webb space telescope that could potentially see the big bang. That'll be cool.

I'm just saying, we don't know a damn thing. You can think whatever/believe whatever, but to act like you know something when you 10000% don't, it's just weird to me, and I don't agree with that.

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And........................................... still waiting.

Yeah man, there's a lot of suffering, as God himself promised in the bible.

If there is a God, its apathy astounds me.

That doesn't really disprove a god, though it could possibly disprove a benevolent god.

Good cheer?

Stab me in the f*cking eye with an icepick.

If you want

How did we suddenly jump from whether there is or isn't some kind of god to the claim of the specific existence of the Christian God?

He's a god, he should count as an example I think.

It's my default too, since the only religions that I'm really knowledgeable about are Anti-Cosmic Satanism and Christianity. And a little bit of Buddhism, too.

Hey I don't believe in God either, because, as you'd expect, of the lack of evidence. The only thing I'm saying is that I think it's foolish for anyone to say that there is or isn't with 100% certainty.

If there is a god, he's probably more of an ******* than people give him credit for.

Sure, it's one example of a god, it just makes things more difficult to argue on "there is a god" side. If you're just trying to make the case for the possibility of some sort of deity, all you have to argue is that something that could be a god might be out there somewhere. If you go down the Christian God route, you now have to argue for the existence of a being named God who has a specific set of often contradictory attributes, and you also have to argue the validity of The Bible—which contains numerous well-documented contradictions and inaccuracies—and to a certain extent you put yourself in the position of having to argue against all other possible gods since God is supposed to be the one and only.

At Jans

http://ilarge.listal.com/image/42998...screenshot.jpg

The Bible's contradictions are pretty easy to account for because it was written by several different people, translated ad infinitum (sometimes poorly), and they were written under different circumstances, some more pressing than others.

Not to mention it was written over the course of about 1,600 years. How do you subscribe to a book that took over 25 lifetimes to get down?