Christians Claim Credit For Free Society
My conversation from over the last two days at “Think Christian” has been cut short due to censorship. You see, I talked about how Progressive Christians had to acknowledge that the Bible is wrong on homosexuality in order to be absolved of being labeled hateful toward gays. A Christian responded by claiming that the free society of the United States is based on the Bible and that Nazism is based on atheism. Then “Think Christian” refused to allow me to respond and told me they will censor any response I make that addressed those completely invalid and incorrect points… so much for the “free society.”
That is yet another issue with religion. It has been my observation that religious websites (Christians aren’t alone in this) tend to “moderate” their comments and it just so happens that most of the dissenting opinions don’t make the cut. They may allow a little bit of disagreement, but it doesn’t take much for them to cut off discussion and debate.
What I have noticed with atheist run websites on the other hand are moderators who take less of an authoritarian rule in moderating. In other words, atheist moderators tend to try to avoid censoring comments and only do so reluctantly when the conversation gets out of control or when a person is making threats of violence or obviously spamming.
I moderate my facebook comments and the comments on my blog, but I rarely actually exercise my power in that regard. It does happen, but rarely. Religious believers tend to be quick to abuse their power when it comes to allowing others to speak. They tend to be afraid of contrary opinions while atheists would rather let the ridiculous comments of religious believers speak for themselves.
We prefer to let them “hang themselves,” as the expression goes. Unfortunately for religious believers, we tend to be rational and to use logic, facts, and reason in our arguments. This tendency makes it less likely that we will say something that will “hang ourselves.” So they are left with one option, censorship.
The other problem is that religious beliefs are based on faith and not reason. Anyone can have faith in anything. So one person’s faith based assertion is no different than another person’s faith based assertion. The only way to settle their differences is through the application of force either through censorship or ultimately violence.
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Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, Authority, censorship, conversation, free speech, Offensiveness, Progressive Christians, Religion
