Yeah, that’s likely why I don’t even remember him being there. My guess is they mentioned his role in Harry Potter to make his relationship to Rowling more relevant to the story.

Headline blasted by grammar “Nazis” for having “too many” quotes to be taken serious

Didn’t even know he was in it, so I had to look it up. Apparently he played Barty Crouch Jr. in the Goblet of Fire.

LMAO

Where is the evidence for that?

I thought you had standards.

Yeah, I’m gonna call bullshit on that.

For instance, I see you claimed here that Julian Assange was a Russian asset, and despite people calling you out on it being nothing but speculation, you never provided any evidence for that claim.

So how about you dial it back a notch and talk about things you can actually prove.

Who says I’m proud of it?

The problem with free will is that everyone is entitled to use theirs as they see fit, even if you vehemently disagree with their choices.

Sometimes, the best you can do is tell someone that they’re headed for the abyss, but if they’ve already spent countless hours convincing themselves that the abyss is a lie and they intend to prove it by throwing themselves in it, there may not be much you can do to change their mind.

So no, I’m not proud of having said this, but occasionally you have to cut your losses before you get dragged down along with the other person.

That’s a very good point, and it’s interesting that you rarely (if ever) hear atheists claim that he was an atheist because he made himself equal to God and abolished the church of his ancestors in order to replace it with his own. It’s almost as if they either didn’t understand the Gospel, or they simply do not want that kind of responsibility, and prefer to endlessly complain about organized religion instead.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the problem wasn’t much religion telling you these things as the fact that your parents were also clearly broken and/or incompetent, yet continued to persist in pretending that they could somehow fix you.

You definitely go through some stages of brokenness as a child growing up because everything doesn’t necessarily grow at the same rate or the same time, so I don’t think it’s necessarily abusive to be upfront about that. What IS abusive is letting you continue to labor in that state without providing any sort of hope for relief — which the Bible clearly does, but your parents and priests may not have.

Healing from this can only occur when you start putting the blame on the right people and hold those responsible who actually caused the problem. Projecting your issues onto the entire faith or even the concept of religion as a whole is unjust and counterproductive.

Okay, but IF it is the way that it is because God made it that way, what is the use of getting angry about it? Is that not just going to make it worse? Also, wouldn’t you at least rather be informed about it in advance instead of having to puzzle it out yourself over many, many years? That would only make it more agonizing, wouldn’t it.

And have you considered that perhaps the entire story is merely an allegory that describes the internal experience of growing into a fully formed human being, with all the troubles, pitfalls, and vicissitudes that might befall one on the way? And that perhaps the worship of God is ultimately just about learning how to love and respect yourself with all of the flaws and problems you inevitably have?

What if the only lie they told you in church was that God was to be found somewhere out there in the world, and that someone other than you was more capable of communicating with him when He is actually inside of your own head, about two inches from the top, right between your eyes? Would that change your opinion on any of these things or would you continue to be angry about all of it?

It’s a wrong observation based on what you see online. When you see atheists online being explicitely atheist, they have some hot issue with religion at the moment. The vast majority of non-believers are just chill.

It’s possible that my view is somewhat skewed by mainly observing atheism through online discourse, but the “hot issue” with religion seems to be a perennial one. After all, most atheists seem to come from religious households, and a lot of it appears to be a form of rebellion against parental tyranny. Meanwhile, people who were raised in atheist households often seem to seek out religion instead.

Religion is a means of social control, enforcing comformity and protecting the privileges of the in-group and the impunity of the hierarchy.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long is it is not oppressive. Having an orderly and well-behaved society benefits everyone after all. I don’t think you’d enjoy living in a society without rules or norms for all that long, because it makes for a short and brutal life for most people.

You have just acted in bad faith (as you admitted you just guessed what the intentions of the other person were) as a means to protect your identity, your worldview, rather than sincerely considering the honesty of the other person because you have been abused into interpreting the possibility of reasonable doubt as a threat.

That’s an interesting accusation coming hot on the heels of telling me that social control and conformity are bad things. Why would you possibly care? And aren’t you making yourself guilty of the same crime by assuming the reason for my acting this way? What if it was merely a reasonably educated guess based on the observation that the vast majority of people who complain about Christians not living up their own stated values never even attempt to live those values themselves?

Nothing of this is an attack against you. I just want you to see your attitude will only lead you to continue living in a cloud of fear, hindering your own growth.

Come on now, that’s textbook gaslighting and psychopath behavior. “I never did the thing I’m currently doing” said the abuser, “and if I did, it’s for your own good.”

Citation needed. This is a total straw man argument.

Believe it or not, but it turns out studies on this actually exist.

Two U.S. M-Turk studies (Studies 1A and 1B, N = 429) and two large cross-national studies (Studies 2–3, N = 4,193), consistently show that disbelievers (vs. believers) are less inclined to endorse moral values that serve group cohesion (the binding moral foundations).

Specifically, disbelievers are less inclined than believers to endorse the binding moral foundations, and more inclined to engage in consequentialist moral reasoning. […] It seems plausible that the more constrained and consequentialist view of morality that is associated with disbelief may have contributed to the widespread reputation of atheists as immoral in nature.

Very interesting also that you’re showing the exact same behavior (i.e. consequentialist moral reasoning) in the remainder of your comment. This poses the question, if society were to evolve to consider rape, murder, and theft as excusable or even desirable behavior, would you go along with it?

As I am positive you know, quite a few things in Judeo-Christian scripture were considered “moral” in their time but are now viewed as unquestionably heinous.

What exactly are you referring to here? Slavery? Persecution of homosexuality and witchcraft? I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the abolitionist movement was largely driven by Christians, while the other two causes were championed by atheists or non-Christians. I’ll leave my moral judgment of the latter aside so as not to unnecessarily inflame the discussion with reactionary rhetoric, but I will pose the question of whether in light of the rapidly declining birth rates in the west, homosexuality is a net good for society as a whole.

I don’t need to, because Christ has delivered us from the need of worshiping Yahweh, in much the same way that Prometheus delivered mankind from worshiping Zeus.

Don’t you understand? The point of Christianity isn’t to worship, it’s to become a moral person. Whatever amount of horror or exploitation you may have seen going on around you in the church you grew up in wasn’t a sign that it had failed, but rather, that it worked on YOU in a way that it didn’t on everyone else, because it gave you eyes to see what others were missing – that is, all the evils and crimes they had committed and were still praying to be delivered of.

I understand that this is somewhat of a horrifying gift to receive, but you should treasure it anyways because it will keep you from running straight into the welcoming arms of another abuser – which WILL happen if you deny it.

Everything you do and say in this life will leave a mark on you, one way or another. Look up epigenetics if you need a scientific explanation for this. There is no such thing as a free lunch – getting rid of God does not get rid of the consequences of doing evil.

This is the sort of intellectual conmanship that I’m sure is very impressive to a 15 year old, but people who talk like that do not have your best interests at heart.

Are you accusing me of putting you on that island? Because a minute ago you told me that pointing out the alligators was a thinly veiled threat, as if it was me who put them there.

I’m only telling you how it is. I’m not asking you to worship me.

Because Jesus or any other mythical figure is not required for anyone to have the same or similar values.

That’s true, but it helps having an example as a role model to look up to, because you’re not going to go far without one.

Honestly, I could care less if it’s Jesus, Luke Skywalker, or Jean-Luc Picard, as long as your atheism isn’t an excuse for smoking weed and watching porn all day. All I’m saying is to be careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you leave organized religion behind, because while the church you grew up in may very well have been a den of thieves and fully deserve your condemnation, not all of them are, and there’s thieves outside of the church, too.

It’s not a threat, it’s a warning. Like saying “be careful about swimming in that lake, there’s alligators in there”. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and they’ve already eaten for the day, but simply not believing in them will not make them go away.

And no, that’s not to say there aren’t any alligators in church, because that would be a lie. What I’m trying to tell you is that they’re everywhere, not just in church, and it’s a mistake to believe you are safe because you got out of there.

So just stick to your own values?

Not a good idea if your own values suck – and a lot of people end up using atheism as a an excuse to have shitty values because there is no God who will judge them for it.

The values Jesus espouses are fundamentally solid and worth imitating. The fact that many of his fan clubs do a terrible job at living them is not a testament to their futility, but rather, to the sheer difficulty of actually practicing them.

My point is basically that if you throw out your morals along with God, there is no hope for ever making it anywhere good in life. It’s true that you don’t HAVE to go to church to have morals, but unless you find them somewhere else, you’ll be no better than those fake Christians.

Thanks, I appreciate that. But I hope you do understand that this is not the average experience for the vast majority of people who become atheist, right?

Would you care to share what you may have done differently?

Just to be clear, I am by no means advocating for anyone to return to their parents’ church if they found it to be full of assholes and hypocrites. Rather, what I am saying is that unless you manage to live a more moral life than those you left behind, you aren’t likely to end up anywhere good in life, and to the extent you use atheism as an excuse for being a shitty person, you’ll be just as much of a hypocrite as those you condemn.