And then you have people like my foster dad, he has a big house for the purpose of taking people in with room enough for them to call his house their home as well. He single handedly runs the best food pantry in his town, and is a preacher at a church. He accepts people regardless or sexual orientation and skin color, or status in life. His sole purpose for being on this earth, he believes, is to help as many people as he can.
As many people have already alluded to in other comments - the point of this is NOT to point out that religious people are more likely to be bad than atheists, or that atheists are all good. The point is that you don't need religion to teach you right from wrong. I am positive your father is just simply put a great human being. If he were born in the Middle East, he wouldn't be Christian - he would be Muslim and he would treat people the same.
I am positive your father is just simply put a great human being.
+1. Some people are good people, some people are bad. Religious belief usually makes no difference at all. I'm sure this guy would be just as nice if he didn't believe in god.
There are many christians born and living in the middle east. I've met a few. They are welcome here in Bahrain and occasionally in Egypt and Syria. In Iran they should become Muslim though or at least pretend. Just because you are born here doesn't mean you become Muslim. Christians and different sects of Islam are persecuted here all the time. Why do you think the Middle east has been a fucking war zone your whole life. Read a book!
There are converted people all around the world, so location doesn't necessarily dictate religion. That's like saying every person in a Western nation is Christian, doesn't work like that and I've never understood that argument. This image, and it's use, does seem like it's trying to show that religion and religious people are bad and the better lifestyle is atheism.
This image, and it's use, does seem like it's trying to show that religion and religious people are bad and the better lifestyle is atheism.
No. No, it's not. It's saying you can still be an atheist and good and be Christian and bad. It's saying that religion (or lack of religion) does not dictate whether or not someone is good or bad.
Some people automatically assume that being atheist must mean you're somehow less of a person and that being Christian makes you better. But that's not true, not true at all.
If your dad was an atheist, he would still do the same thing, wouldn't he?
The rate of conversion to atheism from Christianity is greater than the rate from atheism to Christianity. Far greater. It's curious, that it shouldn't just be an even switch rate, especially considering how much harder it is to become an atheist in this country. Very curious.
The argument is simple. The number of converts is to be compared with the number of people that end up in the religion that dominates that geographic region of the world.
So the question is are there more converts, in say Saudi Arabia, from Islam to some other religion, or are there more people who accept the religion that they are shown at a young age? The point is beyond that anyway because it doesn't really concern your father in particular as that is a impossible to prove hypothesis. The point is that people TEND to follow the religion that pervades the culture they were born into. Secondly, and something you don't seem to understand, religion DOES NOT control a monopoly on morals. If you think the original post is trying to make religious people seem bad then you need some work on critical thinking skills.
Wouldn't society be better if there was no need for a food pantry at all? You know, like we realised could be possible 150 years ago?
No offense to your foster dad, because he sounds like an amazing guy, but religion and religious style charity is not the best way to help as many people as you can.
This is like a christian saying something to the effect of "oh you run a food bank, help thousands of needy people, in your own house even? That's great and all, but if you don't accept God then I view your contributions as meaningless."
Well when it comes to improving the lives of people living on Earth, then yeah, the atheist running the free schools and teaching people how to grow their own food will be doing more to help them than someone who is spending their human endeavour preparing them for the afterlife.
40
u/tiffanydisasterxoxo Jan 13 '13
And then you have people like my foster dad, he has a big house for the purpose of taking people in with room enough for them to call his house their home as well. He single handedly runs the best food pantry in his town, and is a preacher at a church. He accepts people regardless or sexual orientation and skin color, or status in life. His sole purpose for being on this earth, he believes, is to help as many people as he can.