A Meme Worthy of More Discussion...

[NeoGreen]

...and one that could be refined and/or expounded upon:



If you were required to expand on this concept, or create a "non-track" what would you discuss?

Would you edit the text already included?

Use a different image?

Make no changes at all?

For my part, I would work on not using the word "lies", it might be considered "over the top".

And, I would search for non-religious falsities as complementary memes, i.e. things kids are taught, that have no basis in reality, that they carry over into adulthood.

[mr blur]

1. I think it's fine. It's a point of view, atheists don't have to be polite

for fear of appearing over the top. "They" certainly don't.

Another approach:

[onager]

2. Been discussed in The Other Group.

Or at least people have tried to discuss it. But as I remember, it got the usual derails, "snappy" one-liners, and unevidenced claims that, no fer sure we are all born "wired for belief in Gawd."

It's an interesting question, and I go with the "born atheist." Not just because I'm playing for the home team, either.

Here's the fascinating story of Daniel Everett, a former Xian missionary. Everett went into the Amazon in the 1970s to convert a tribe of (apparently) natural atheists. The tribe had no gods, no belief in an afterlife or any of the usual religious trappings, yet seemed perfectly content.

So content that the tribe converted the missionary - he ended up an atheist.

How an Amazonian tribe turned a missionary into an atheist

http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/

[Warren Stupidity]

5. The funny thing re "wired for god" is that they think this helps

their side, that it somehow proves gods exist. Instead it is evidence that religion is an evolved adaptive behavior, not divinely transmitted truthiness.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. Mmmmm

baby soup

[Rainforestgoddess]

3. I might change it to

"until someone starts teaching us mythology" and yet that doesn't quite fit either. I was an avid reader of mythology as a kid, and it probably pushed me towards atheism (I came from a quite unreligious household, though we were nominally Anglican) because I saw how different cultures all made up stories to explain their world, and how the mythology of christianity wasn't any more or less ridiculous than Egyptian mythology.

[ZombieHorde]

4. I think the word "myths" is better than the word "lies."

Generally speaking, I think religious people believe what they say they believe, which makes them most likely mistaken. Being mistaken and lying are two different things, in my opinion. If you get a wrong answer on a test, the wrong answer isn't considered a lie.

[FiveGoodMen]

6. If you repeat a lie (in all good faith -- believing it to be true)

then you're not a liar.

But the lie is still a lie. (Just told by someone else)

[ZombieHorde]

7. That may be true.

I'll have to think about it. I think we usually use other words, such as "urban legend" or "myth," but "lie" may also be accurate.

[JNelson6563]

8. Or assign no label

and use the word "otherwise".

Julie

[frogmarch]

9. How about

"...until someone starts filling our heads with bullshit" ?

Really, though, I like it just the way it is.

[Curmudgeoness]

10. I agree that the word "lies" should be changed.

I would probably go with "until someone starts teaching us myths."

What are you thinking about when you suggest non-religious falsities? Break a mirror and have 7 years bad luck? Black cats are a bad omen? People who are different than us are not as smart/trustworthy/moral?

[NeoGreen]

11. Yeah...

...stuff like that and the "skin color matters" BS meme is a big one.

Plus, we need to celebrate when science changes its tune on something like the whole idea about stomach ulcers being caused primarily by stress (as an example). The self-correcting mechanism inherent in the scientific process.

[NeoGreen]

12. Plus, I think this meme is linked with the ...

...we are all atheists meme (some just one god more).

What Muslim believes in the divinity of Joseph Smith?

What Orthodox Jewish adherent believes in the divinity of Jesus?

What main stream American protestant believes in the Shinto divinity of the Emperor?

Don't even get me started on Scientology...

[LostOne4Ever]

13. I have always thought that this meme

did better explaining what disbelief is rather that trying to claim babies as atheists.

Often certain people with agendas will try and insist that disbelief is a belief in and of itself. This illustrates what we mean by not believing very well. And as Mr. Blur so excellently puts it, that we are not lacking anything either. We just don't believe.