Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "How Helpful Is Atheism To The Left?" video.

Yes! It can be very lonely trying to point this out on some of these threads.
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@Velvetx4cove There are plenty if less reactionary churches in the United States. We just don't get the attention that the fundamentalists do.
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Indeed. Millions of Christians have taken Matthew 25 seriously to help the poor and Matthew 19 seriously to point out the danger of billionaires when there is so much poverty. When I was in seminary, a friend was a Republican at the time even told me, "If I took the Bible as seriously as you do, I couldn't be a Republican anymore" because it talks more about helping the poor than social issues.
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@TheMisterGuy Yeah, Acts 2 is a capitalistic tract. Jesus saying that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven is all about praising the accumulation of wealth. Anything can be used by anyone for any purposes. Marx was used to justify some of the worst totalitarian governments of the 20th century.
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As a person of faith who takes the command to care for the least among us seriously, when I am doing political work, I don't ask people's religious beliefs when doing that work.
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@tmsphere The religious right does not and never did define Christianity.
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@xray5984 Atheists trying to get rid of religion in the 20th century killed more people than in the religious wars of the previous 2000 years combined. Anything can be a tool. Do you really want to kick Martin Luther King Jr. and Jimmy Carter out of your coalition? Bernie has talked about how his Jewish faith has preserved him and given him the inspiration to fight for the needy. Atheism can also be used to advocate for Social Darwinism and beating up the weak. Anyone who would rather have Rand than King needs to look on the inside.
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@1369Stiles Fundamentalism is a mentality rather than a specific set of beliefs. I'll give you an example. I have a brother. We both grew up in a fundamentalist environment. I rejected the fundamentalism as I got older but kept my faith. My brother insists that because I believe "let there be light" and the Big Bang Theory are the same thing and that the universe is billions of years old, I must be faking it and not taking the Bible seriously. He rejected his faith but kept his fundamentalism.
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@1369Stiles Wrong. I am still a Chrsitian. Fundamentalism is a splinter group within. If you insist that only fundamentalists really have religious beliefs, you are far more guilty of fundamentalist thought than you realize. Inerrancy as a doctrine is only about 200 years old. Inspiration was the original belief, and it is still the belief of the vast majority of Christians. Fundamentalism is almost always a reaction against something. I don't lump every atheist in with Stalin and Mao. The instant you try to lump Gandhi with Modi, King with Falwell, Ali with bin Laden, and Sanders with Prager, you're doing it wrong.
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@1369Stiles I just realized that I didn't answer your query. To borrow a format from Jeff Foxworthy: If you believe that all of the world's wars would end if people abandoned organized religion... If you believe that you are the only ones who use ration and logic... If you believe that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid and needs to be disabused of ignorance... If you believe that everyone who claims to have faith that doesn't agree with fundamentalist dogma is lying or insincere... You might be an atheist fundamentalist.
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@1369Stiles 1) Dawkins has argued it, and I have heard other atheists agree with it. 2) The theist could also say that believing that something comes from nothing defies rationality. 3) No, an atheist fundamentalist wants everyone to agree with him/her and sees it as a failure when they don't. 4) You said that I am no longer religious, but merely theistic. Just because you didn't directly use the words "you are lying about your faith" doesn't mean that the intent wasn't there. 5) People can believe whatever they want. I am a firm believer in the first two clauses of the First Amendment. A lot of people of faith are. As a matter of fact, it was Baptists who led the charge, and the Danbury letter where Jefferson coined the phrase "wall of separation" that was written to a church. Washington thanked several churches for their lobbying for the religion clauses in the First Amendment. You can believe that you are right, and I can believe that I am right. I can acknowledge my potential to be wrong. When you insist that yours is the only rational approach, you are denying that possibility.
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@DOGbackwardz No, that would be agnosticism. No one can prove one way or the other. I am not saying that everyone should he an agnostic, but you are insisting that you are only demanding proof, which is dishonest. Anyone who is a theist can just as easily argue that you believe that everything came from nothing without evidence.
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@TheMisterGuy Saying you don't know doesn't make you an atheist. And gnosticism means something completely different. It was a movement popular in the second century that rejected the material world as evil and focused on a secret knowledge. There were gnostics of many stripes, with the most famous being the author of the Gospel of Thomas.
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nickers7409 Not sure what you're trying to get at. Yes, theism vs. atheism is a question of faith. That's what I've been saying. If you're saying "I don't know," that is not atheism. That is my point.
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If you push out theists and rely on atheists and agnostics (must studies show that people who identity as "not religious" tend to have beliefs but don't practice an organized religion), you are pushing away over 90% of the population. And like it or not, a lot of people who did some things that we like such as abolition, civil rights, and fighting to help the poor did so because of their faith, not in spite of it. When will people learn that you need to build rather than tear down?
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@americanliberal09 Someone who gets that atheists and agnostics are not the same thing. It is so annoying that people claim to be atheists while making the agnostic argument that they "just think there should be proof." My only point in combining the two was to point out that these are the two groups that don't claim to believe in a higher being of any time.
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@americanliberal09 Agreed. They aren't the same. People also don't seem to understand that a lot of people who identify as "not religious" have religious beliefs, but don't belong to an organized religion. However, if you want to say that people who do belief in a higher being, regardless of what they believe about that higher being, is detrimental to your cause, you're really only left with those two groups.
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@americanliberal09 Look at the studies. A lot of people who define themselves as "not religious" maintain a lot of the beliefs about the supernatural and cosmology, but they reject organized religion.
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@americanliberal09 Okay, I have three degrees in religion, including two graduate degrees. Religion has several degrees. By your logic, a lot of things that are considered religions (such as Confucianism) wouldn't really fit. The Raelian cult is clearly a religion, but it is adamant that it is atheistic, so should they not count? Buddhists run the spectrum from atheism to polytheism, so should they be considered a religion? I am not saying that they are synonymous. The original video was started by a comment wanting to excise everyone who had religion from the left. Therefore, the only two groups that would be left by that statement would be atheists and agnostics. Your argument is the equivalent of saying that is inaccurate to lump Christians and Muslims if someone said that atheists should be excised from a political movement. Of course, they're different, but they both fall under the same umbrella based on the criteria.
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@americanliberal09 Your point misses the the entire argument of the response. Did you not watch the video? Of course, people can be either religious or irreligious and still be left wing. The commenter the MR Crew responded to only wanted the latter. My point was that you would be left with a tiny, tiny group that would not excise. The point is not what religion and politics have to do with one another (except tangentially). The point is who would be left for your political coalition. The comment didn't specify which religion. The comment said to get rid of everyone with religious beliefs. My contrasting example was one that applies similarly if the reverse were being suggested. It is not about everyone being the same, it's about who would be remaining once you excise a group of people. I know atheists and agnostics aren't the same thing, but they are the only people who wouldn't be excised by the person they are responding to.
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@americanliberal09 If the video said that polytheists should be excluded, would you then get insist that atheists, agnostics, and monotheists would be all that's left? What exactly is it that you are holding onto. It should have been obvious that I was saying that they weren't the same, so why keep insisting that they are different?
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Yes! And fundamentalism can take many forms, including atheism. I personally would argue that is the greatest threat.
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