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Your assertion, reasoning and false choice are all bullshit. What a completely pointless, desperate grab for pageviews. I expect this kind of laughably trivial provocativeness from the Oregonian, but I really do expect better from the Mercury.

What's next? A post on the things and people that can be compared to Hitler?

WHAT ABOUT THE DROWNED GOD?!?!?!?

SO BRAVE.

All posts from anyone at The Stranger are bullshit

Kinda feels that way lately.

@3: Sigh. Yes. Religious texts, like all texts, were recorded by people. People make mistakes. People remember things selectively. People twist things to fit an agenda. To pretend that distinctions and/or disagreements between the dogmatic lines drawn from original and secondary religious texts somehow negate any notion of God or the legitimacy of faith/religion entirely is ludicrous.

Because you and I go to the same Dan Savage lecture and you leave thinking "That guy sucked!" and I leave thinking "I loved that so much I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant!" does that somehow mean that Savage said wildly contradicting things or nothing at all?

I agree with you that such a person as you describe would be an asshole. But extending that generalization to all people of faith everywhere makes you the rhetorical equivalent of every gay-bashing, Muslim-hating tea partier on OregonLive.

That Dalai Lama is such a dickhead. Same for Mother Teresa.

...it's always funny to hear the point of view of an intelligent person that actually still believes in God. I mean, from my perspective, to each their own as long as it doesn't interfere with my life (but it always does, doesn't it?) I like the "Religious texts, like all texts, were recorded by people. People make mistakes." line, like at some point there was some actual perfect holy text divinely provided to a bunch of Bedouins by God himself. I mean how wacky is that idea? I wouldn't care in the least if this shit didn't fuck up our every day lives because a ton of nuts believe it and try to codify it into law that affects me when I have every right to not be affected by some stupid majoritarian cult full of nonsense.

I ENJOY THAT THE SYCOPHANTIC ANTI-THEISTS ARE UNABLE TO SEE THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN, "DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE TO PEOPLE OF FAITH" AND "PEOPLE OF FAITH ARE INTRINSICALLY CORRECT IN THEIR BELIEF SYSTEMS".

@Graham: Even better is being talked down to by 17-year-old stoners that inherited a copy of The God Delusion when their older sibling finished freshman year at Reed.

Also, The Beans apparently believes that if there were no religion, no one would ever manipulate anyone else for personal gain and no one would ever, without religion, try to codify laws that affect you with which you disagree. Also, religious or not, democracy is the enabler of any "majoritarian cult." Hard to argue with that.

All that said, you can take your ridiculous straw man and shove it. But congrats for knowing what a Bedouin is.

There is no magic! There are no fairies! What you call intuition is NOT. ONLY facts are real.
I don't like your world much at all. I'll stay in mine thank you.

Yep. It's all bullshit. It's just a tool to instill social norms throughout a population for the purposes of control. Today, organized religion in the West is nothing more than ensuring productive, drug-free employees and preventing orgies in the streets. Before that, it was just a tool to give justification for a King, as the only reason you would listen to some asshole called a "king" is if they claimed to be Divine.

It's all bullshit.

I agree, but just don't forget to throw in Astrology and all the other 'new age' touchy-feely crap too.

Man, i've been saying for YEARS that ALL religion is out-right BULLSHIT! Noone listens to me, though...

hardcore atheists are just as annoying as hardcore theists. no one knows whether there is a God or gods or supreme force for sure. NO ONE.

to claim otherwise is actually, literally and truly bullshit. fact.

PS: no one listens to you, DamosA, because you are Admiral Windbag of the Moronosphere.

You know what's really bullshit? A $9 gyro from a food cart. C'mon, PEOPLE!

#6 for COTW

To all you who feel so provoked, proud, and defiant in defense of organized religion: you and Mitt Romney scare me. Can magical thinking and inaccurate texts guide contraception, education, national defense, and abortion policy? Isn't Mitt's religious worldview just as good (less bullshit) than anything else?

That's the issue- religion is bullshit and should be, but isn't, private; organized religion gets a free ride in the US-- in the public arena, government, and the tax code. Sure, the author could've left all of us some leeway for our own irrationality and superstitions--- avoiding Oregonometry's hysteria, and disparagement of 17 year old stoners and Reedies. (O- what makes you think either group couldn't decimate us in a debate on this topic?)