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mick
20th April 2009, 07:50 PM
A big g'day to my fellow non-believers,

I'm a proud atheist from the Central Coast of NSW. I was raised Catholic; both in the home and during my K-12 education. I was baptised and christened without my consent. With that said, I'm the only atheist in a long line of Catholic ignorance.

I broke free from the choking collar of religion at an early age, begging the questions that family and teachers could only answer with one of two phrases: "Because it was God's will.", or "Stop asking so many questions; with curiosity like yours you'll end up in hell."

At every chance I get, I debate religion with devout theists, often leaving them flabbergasted with no logical or rational counter-arguments except the typical (and somewhat predictable) "Well, I still believe because my faith in Jesus is unconditional". With a chuckle I leave the debate knowing that I've won.

I don't promote, condone, or applaud hatred or anger to those that do believe supernatural-imaginary-friends. I think as an atheist I have a responsibility to speak my mind in a 'nice', yet unrelenting manner; arguing with a smile and a 'tell-me-more-because-I'm-interested-in-your-bleeding-ignorance' demeanor. Yet I find it hard not to laugh uncontrollably when someone genuinely believes in virgin-birth, resurrection, miracles, and every word in a book written thousands of years ago by primitive, scienceless, people.

I have a solution for the problems people are predicting that the Rudd money (you know, the $900 payout to struggling Australians) will cause: remove tax exempt status from ALL religions in this country. Not only will it put the money back into the country, but it will remove a HUGE percentage of the money being spent on hate, ignorance, and (of course) the brain-washing that is pushed on children and the uncharacteristically weak (those who are suffering from some sort of traumatising incident).

Anyway, that's enough of a rant for a first post/introduction. I plan to be active here, and hope to enjoy conversing with like-minded people. Thanks for reading,

mick.

GenericBox
20th April 2009, 08:44 PM
I wonder if anyone has got a number for how much that would give back the government. Taxing religions that is.

GenericBox
20th April 2009, 08:52 PM
How do you even begin to study/measure it?

Vonnie
20th April 2009, 09:09 PM
Welcome aboard, Mick!

Vonnie

mick
20th April 2009, 09:14 PM
How do you even begin to study/measure it?

Currently, I don't think it could be accurately measured. Of course if regulations were put in place to enforce that all religious organisations were to record all income, spenditure, and profits (not to be mistaken with prophets!), it would have to be an astonishingly huge number.

I'm sure that a list of tax-exempt religions is readily available somewhere in the .gov.au TLD space, but whether or not each religion has to report their income to the government is something I'm ignorant to.

I'm sure that a lot of these organisations already have some pretty decent bookkeeping measures; how else would the big fella upstairs (the pope damnit! not god!) know whats happening with his hard-earned cult-money?

youngmoigle
20th April 2009, 10:14 PM
I think as an atheist I have a responsibility to speak my mind in a 'nice', yet unrelenting manner; arguing with a smile and a 'tell-me-more-because-I'm-interested-in-your-bleeding-ignorance' demeanor.

Welcome to the forum mick. One of my debating techniques is similar to yours: Every now and then a believer will mention a bible text for which I have a contradictory text, so I casually ask questions until they have painted themselves into a corner - and then hit them with the contradiction. As I have said to other people in other places, "The look on their face is pretty to watch."

It sounds like you might be using the "Socratic Questioning" method mentioned at this site:
http://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/socratic_questions.htm

If so, you won't need the link - I put here just in case...

davo
21st April 2009, 07:16 AM
gudday Mick! great to have you here :) look forward to the chats :)

TimB
21st April 2009, 11:16 AM
Hello Mick - welcome.

mick
23rd April 2009, 07:13 PM
gudday Mick! great to have you here :) look forward to the chats :)

As do I.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys. Who said atheists are demon-spawn anyway?

eclectic
24th April 2009, 02:12 PM
"Stop asking so many questions; with curiosity like yours you'll end up in hell."



Anyone wanting children to be LESS curious loses my vote.

Welcome to the forum!