So this story has been hot in Tallahassee recently:

http://www.wctv.tv/.../headlines/145835335.html

Basically a methodist preacher has come out and said she is an atheist (and still has not resigned her position to date). Apparently there are online communities where other atheists "support" active clergy who are secret atheists. My issue with this is that the atheists groups seem to be offended that people are pissed when they come out and "persecute" them. Which is why they are making an analogy to homosexual "coming out".

Are you fricken kidding me? These same atheists BLAST people like Peter Popoff and Robert Tilton for exploiting gullible Christians for financial gain while at the same time applauding these people for not quitting the clergy because they don't want to stop getting the paycheck it provides. People are pissed? Well no fluffing fluff they are pissed. The person who has been their religious mentor for the past few years has not believed in a single word they've said to you in that time period. WTF kind of response do you think you're going to get?

So if someone doesn't believe in God you are saying they are not capable of interpreting and relaying the text of the Bible?

The issue is that for religious people its extremely important that they do believe in God while they do that. Otherwise to them its a break in trust and to them there words have a lot less meaning behind what they say.

No they cannot, in the same sense that humanities professor is not qualified to be the Oracle of Delphi

I believe in God and I do not think someone has to believe in God to have a complete understanding of the Bible.

Preachers are actors with the bible as their script... sure, believing in the script helps you be a better actor, but good actors can be convincing while hiding their true beliefs. My question for members of the clergy would be - does finding out that your preacher is an atheist take away all the good that (s)he has done over the past 'x' years that you've been attending their services? The answer should be no.

So are you of the belief that preacher's have some connection to God that the average person does not possess? Like I certainly understand why Catholics would be unhappy to find out if their holy figures were atheists.

Glad to hear that the Methodist priest has seen some sense and got himself away from his midieval way of thinking and joined the sensible people that doesnt think there is a magic man in the sky that pulls all our strings.

Seriously I hope and think that more people will manage to slip the noose of religion!

What is wrong with religion?

hate and blood..
Thats whats wrong with religion.

I think that academic understanding is not a substitute for conviction. Knowing about the philosophy of Hitler does not mean you would have been an awesome replacement for Goebbels.

this is true

Atheists like to tout that those of faith understand very little about their own religions. Unfortunately the reverse is true. Atheism is in and of itself as much of an irrational position as theism. If you are truly a believer of logic and reason the only defensible position is agnosticism.

orkin i think most people who hear the word atheism just think it means someone who doesnt believe in god. i do not believe in god, and think its a little silly, however i wouldnt persecute someone who did.

Agnosticism is not unbelief in God. Atheists try to annex agnostics into their wacko camp but it is a wholly separate category.

Doesn't mean I wouldn't have been. =P

DETMER IS A NAZI

I think you're getting religion confused with when people use religion as a tool of persecution/etc. That is like saying free speech is bad because it allows you to convince people to do bad things.

Also, I'm glad to see you're still around. I was actually just talking about you last weekend.

You can call me a Jazi (pronounced Yahtzee) since I am also a Jew.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

i'm only paraphrasing here..

"go away, satan. you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve"

jesus, two thousand and twelve years ago.

i can quote jews, too :)

"I think you're getting religion confused with when people use religion as a tool of persecution/etc. "

I think detmer is forgetting about the old testament :P

Seems better than pedophiles?

Please read the god delusion, which goes into that in depth. Thanks.

As someone who has read that, I have to disagree. Even Dawkins describes himself as a 6.9/7 Atheist. The reason being that atheists are, by definition, incapable of making the ultimate leap of "faith" that we currently know every fact on any given subject that is "knowable". I am sure as humanly possible that there is no sky-god that cares about my inner thoughts and intentions, minute to minute, but I am also interested in new, scientific information on the subject, and am willing to change my beliefs based on a strong preponderance of the evidence.

Which, I might add, is not a characteristic of Organized Religion.

I didn't know organized religion was prescribed to reject science and evidence. While I think that stereotype is largely true but not a defining characteristic of organized religion.

How can established religion be anything but, when their dogma is written in stone, and anything new is a potential challenge/threat to what the Church/Synagogue/Mosque/Temple has been teaching for hundreds/thousands of years?

If they were wrong in the past, they can be wrong in the future. If they will be wrong in the future, what makes them any better or more "holy" than you or I?

Nobody on this planet is born with powers or communication skills that are outside of standard evolutionary genetic variation. Nobody.

Unfortunately atheists do not understand that science by definition and it's own laws is limited in what it can explain and observe. Science is not capable of answering "what came before the big bang?" because that is the point at which scientific laws begin. Likewise if anything exists outside of our universe science will also not be able to observe it as it will not generate any data in terms of scientific laws.

Btw the point I just made is something most cosmologists will concede and something Dawkis never addresses because it punches gaping holes in his arguments.

Sure it does. But you're also not really understanding it either. What does "before the big bang" mean, when, by definition, the existing dimensions, including time, began at the big bang? There was no time as we know it before time began...

Incidentally, M theory (or brane theory) (an extension of string theory) deals with the origins of the big bang, as a collision of higher dimensional membranes could have caused the big bang; but where string theory isn't really testable and is falling out of favour, M theory is even more so.

I agree that preachers should abdicate their professional if they change their belief to something incompatible. I'm not sure why any would support it either. Prosecution of atheists that come out is still fluffed up though, its worse and probably way more common anyway.

Orkin, if atheism is as wacky as theism, then neither are wacky at all. Agnosticism is no position in its own. Everyone is either theist or atheist.

You should also stop making claims about atheist in general, since starting a thread claiming that some of us pisses you off and then be a douchebag really won't get you any sympathy.

Ever heard of Scientology or Mormonism? These are not religions that have been around for hundreds of years (well I suppose Mormonism has reached multiple hundreds by now). You are prescribing religion to be something old, unyielding and wrong. Not all religions are old, many are largely unyielding but even Catholicism changes its official views on things and for wrong, while some religions are mutually exclusive, you have no evidence that all are wrong.

And with that, the coup de grace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism

um, why would you need to believe in the religion to teach it? that's kinda like saying that a teacher actually needs to have worked in the field before they can teach it.

"How can established religion be anything but, when their dogma is written in stone,"

have you attended church, lately? i mean outside of a catholic church in sixteenth century spain?

"If they were wrong in the past, they can be wrong in the future. If they will be wrong in the future, what makes them any better or more "holy" than you or I?"

can be said just as true for science as religion, no?

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. "

there are no bad people, there are just the disillusioned who commit bad deeds because they are morons. hmmm, disabling uPNP doesn't seem to effect me from being disconnected when i logon to this forum.

Really? Mormonism and Scientology? I don't really need to go into that. One was officially a racist group until that position was completely untenable. The other is quite clearly "religion" for profit.

I would simplify to say that Science as a method is constantly trying to prove/disprove past findings..... Find me a religion that has any interest in disproving their past teachings for the greater good.

i don't actually understand why people try to claim science is a religion. science is simply an attempt for people to try to understand the universe using discrete laws that are understandable and known to everyone.

fluffhead, fluff sucker, son of da fluff. be nice Dibs.

in any event, i actually need you to post some proof that God isn't capable of inspiring anybody who is capable of reading the book that he wrote. i can kinda see why the illiterate don't have a chance in heck of understanding his word, but how is it that the literate, educated people don't have a chance of understanding his word?

I think an Atheist could perform very well as a Methodist preacher. I also believe it is immoral to do so. If the Atheist wants to teach people about religion, become a prof and teach religious studies somewhere. I believe becoming a preacher assumes a certain testimony to belief in the faith, and undertaking that (or continuing it, if your beliefs / faith changed) is willfully disingenuous.

As someone who doesn't believe in "God" and who doesn't have a book telling me what is or isn't moral, this was a pretty easy case for me to decide my opinion on.

how is it immoral to help people find faith?
oh, there it goes again. i lost connection because i logged on to this farking forum.
ok, well, anyway... fluff suckers...
you're pretty much required to pray to God when reading the Holy Word so that you may understand the wisdom that he imported to the words that you just read. technically, you don't understand it because you have no faith, which is why you didn't pray to be blessed with understanding to begin with.

fluff NukEvil and ghost acres.

in any event, you don't understand the word of God because you never asked him for the permission and guidance required to decihper it.

i'm not actually required to understand this stuff because i don't technically care whether i burn in hell or have to fluff 77 virgins.

"Find me a religion that has any interest in disproving their past teachings for the greater good. "

protestant reformation.. not all of the teachings, mind you, but you never asked for a complete one eighty, only interest in disproving past teachings, and I certainly met that, no? :)

`Atheism is in and of itself as much of an irrational position as theism.` was more the line i was trying to point at. Saying because two things are both impossible to fully prove, means theres a 50/50 chance of either being correct is horribly flawed login. Athiesm is less of a jump off of facts etc. then religion is, making it a higher chance of being correct.

Im pretty sure he goes into the fact that religion was in favour only to explain the unexplainable. We canm right now say we will never scientifically know that answer. However we also at one point though we wouldnt know alot of things. Originally god explained weather, thunder, lightning, floods, etc. When that was explainable it shrunk to explain primarily death, mortality, morals etc. as currently they are unexplainable. Science may never be able to explain those things, but because they cant, and someone (religion) has an answer, no matter how absurd, those who cannot cope with the idea that we arent perfect and arent all knowing will grab at those answers.

The realm for religion is shrinking and shrnking as more of it is proven incorrect scientifically. It will continue to do so, till hopefully it will not exist and that will be a good day for humans to evolve past such mundane concepts and ideas.

Pastors Who Don't Believe (The Clergy Project)
http://youtu.be/rYMxSLuO6YY

Let me start by saying that I am a deist who does not believe in organized religion, and was not raised in a christian faith.

I have no issue with the idea of atheism, and I do not believe that you need a foundation in religious belief to be a moral person. However, I consider being clergy for a faith you do not believe in hypocritical at best, and unfair to your parishioners. These "secret atheists" should resign, and should do so quietly. If they are in the clergy to help people, then they should pursue a career in social work.

As far as the comparison to coming out, it works in the sense that you were living a lie, and have stopped doing so. Where it breaks down is in the direct betrayal of your flock, especially if you preach a fundamentalist faith like the subject of that article. A closer analog would be confessing adultery to a longtime partner, especially one who you had put through the ringer for your perception of their infidelity. But instead of one person, you betrayed the entire congregation.

I also have a big problem with people forcing their religion on others, and that includes the absence of religion. Whether or not you believe in religion personally, faith can be a path to happiness and improved life for others.

There was a study done and basically on average atheists were able to correctly answer questions about the bible at a higher percentage than Christians.

As an atheist, I think we generally know why and what we dislike about religion and why we don't believe in a god.

Many Christians have blind faith and only know what their preacher tells them and don't spend much time actually reading the bible.

There is a saying that basically says if you want to convert a person to atheism give them a bible and tell them to read it.

And get a Christian to read 'the god delusion' as well and hopefully that will help a few of them to get rid of their delusions... :-)