But, my statement x 1000

We can't have our failings cancelled out by getting down on our knees for 30 seconds. We have to be nicer, or we couldn't live with ourselves.

Crooked preachers, pervy pastors, serial abusers, bent cops, all cover each other's asses, because they have to! Karma is an incredible force, and a lot of it is no mystery!
Basically, this godawful mess of crappy humans, are as incompetent at every other part of their miserable lives, as they are at what no good they are up to!

They're good, very good. They have won the national championship or been the national runner-up five times in the past eight years. They have won the Big 12 championship for (I think) eight straight years, and haven't even lost a single Big 12 game in more than two years. Those are dynasty numbers.

BUT, it seems like every time I see one of them or their coach interviewed on TV, she always says something like, "I always give all the glory to God." Or something similar. Many of the players put that black stuff under their eyes to cut down on glare in the shape of a cross. It seems like every player and assistant coach on that team has to be religious, and openly and publicly so. I'm sure they have group prayers in the locker room, and everybody has to participate. That's the University of Oklahoma, a public tax-supported institution.

SO, what I always wonder about that team is:

What would happen if an atheist were on that team?

Would she be ostracized and shunned by her coach and teammates?

Would the coach not attempt to recruit a highly desired blue chip player if she were an atheist or an agnostic?

Just wonderin'.

-- Ron

There are atheists on that team. The question is are they being discriminated against, and it's not hard to guess at what the answer is.

It would be ridiculously easy for a coach on pretty much any team to discriminate against athletes and prospective athletes in all sorts of ways. It would also be phenomenally hard to prove any of it.

I generally try to avoid arguing by analogy, but I think this one applies very well.

LGBT have had to publicly deny their very nature for centuries out of fear of being ostracized or killed, or something between. Only very recently from a historical perspective have they been able to even begin overcoming that discrimination and there are people in this country who are absolutely loosing their shit over the idea of giving people even a modicum of human rights.

With a few differences, this is almost the exact same situation with atheists. The kicker is the shitbags who are kicking and screaming at the idea of joining the rest of the civilized world on this are for the most part the exact same people.

I used to cut Billy Graham some slack because he was at JFK's swearing-in, until we heard the released Nixon tapes.

Now I know where little Frankie got it from.

Until they become truly Christ-like, they're using His name in vain.

William Barber.

Liz Theoharis.

And countless others.

Some people are tolerant. Some are not. Most people are a mixture.

Now you're talking Christ-like.

And we can find intolerance among people who have power. Saudi Arabia is a theocracy, and hugely intolerant of non-Muslims. China, on the other hand, persecutes Muslims, and generally tries to control/inhibit any exercise of religion. And that Government is controlled by atheists.

Just as Bill Maher has said on numerous occasions.

It does not matter the claimed reason, the result is intolerance.

And one thing I cannot tolerate is intolerance.

Everyone starts out as a blank canvas. Hating parents apply the color scheme.

Except for reflexes, nearly everything we do is learned behavior.

Power often causes the user to abuse the power. But power is one result of hierarchy. Can humans eliminate hierarchical groups?

Two points:

1) Personality and behavior are strongly influenced by both the physical makeup of a child as well as the nurture (or socialization) of the child. A child that is physically wired with more physical sensitivity is going to be fairly different from the child without that awareness and sensitivity. So a pair of siblings can be very different.

2) Can we eliminate hierarchical groupings? So far, to the best of my knowledge, only a few social experiments have been successful over an extended period of time. None of the so-called communist governments has been successful in eliminating that hierarchy. Every single time someone has snatched the reins of communal control and grabbed the power for themselves. Mao, Stalin, Castro (etc); they and many others have used the “peoples” revolts to seize control.

We humans have a very difficult time working together without a leader or an ideal to work with. And yet, humans seem so hardwired to work in groups. But personalities collide. Without a strong & fair leader, groups tend to de-volve.

You make good points. Allow me to make a few, very simplified, points.

Humans are social beings. We need a group to survive. And group identity implies a division between the group members, and outsiders.

And as groups grow larger, more hierarchy is needed to mediate between group members.

the “Communist Party” - which has about as much to do with communism as a goldfish has to do with whale watching. Buddha’s in Myanmar, the Islamic’s in Saudi Arabia and other countries; Hindu’s in India; the Hebrew in what now is called Israel; they all have worn their religion like big fat “We Are The Best” badge. It is not unique to the States; all over the planet, even when the religion isn’t a “religion” in the normative sense.

And that “We Are The Best” badge is used as a brutal cudgel to abuse the dispossessed.

No construct of “God” is so pure and good that is should be used as a yardstick to measure others by.

(Also, no construct of communism has ever truly been the communism that gave the power to the people as imagined by Marx)

— getting off of soapbox

And authoritarians can only tolerate one leader. Thus anyone or any belief system that is seen as a threat must be attacked.

Atheists have the same human impulses as theists.

Depending on how homogeneous or liberal the area happen to be.

I recently posted in a thread about Trae Crowder, a Tennessee native:
Not long ago a couple of sweet h.s. friends found my email and so we began a multi email communication, until it happened: the standard assumption that I'm religious. Because, if I'm not, I must be a bad person who's going to hell. Shamefully I've kept these gals hanging for a month now because I don't know how to handle this while staying honest & authentic.
Telling my sweet, accepting, religious DU friends that I'm an atheist has never been a problem but these religious TN gals would feel as if I just told them "I'm from Mars and have come to kill your babies."

Different the dominations & levels of indoctrination have different results.

...describes. The atheist trying to be nice and accommodate christians who can't even conceive of a thought process outside their jesus-magic filled bubble.

Popular topic too 😁:

Social identity threat predicts the concealment of nonreligious identity, study finds

https://www.democraticunderground.com/122869602