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 Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:23 pm
So one day a while back I was having a political discussion with a Gaia friend of mine. I won't mention their name but someone we got to discussing abortion and I said. "I don't believe in abortion...then again, I'm a christian...lol." For some reason, that made this friend angry. Apparently, he was under the impression that I was saying he wasn't a christian because he was for abortion. That's not what I was saying of course. And then he went on to say that I was ignorant and that I didn't have any "facts" to back up my "faith." I tried to explain to him that the very definition in "faith" is to believe in something that can't be definitely proven as fact. I kept trying to drop it but he kept calling me ignorant and all that. I admit, I got a little upset. I told him that just because I chose to belief in an higher power that it didn't make me ignorant. I told him it's all how you interrupt certain facts.
Has this ever happened to you? People calling you ignorant because of what you believe in?
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:47 pm
Sadly, there are a lot of people out there that will think you ignorant if you believe in God. They won't even give you a chance to show whether you truly are ignorant or not. Look at Bill Maher (but then again, he's a bit of a liar and somewhat crazy) for instance, among other famous and less known atheists.
But I think that mindset is in itself ignorant, too. I know some atheists who really like philosophers, and many of those philosophers happened to believe in God. I knew one man who liked Aquinas. Aquinas was a Catholic monk, and happens to be a saint. lol It's amazing how some atheists can overlook that, yet deny the chance for other Christians to defend their faith.
Not all atheists do that, though. That was only one example. Either way, most atheists I know get very angry and annoyed that "Christians" are so "narrow-minded" (because that's not a blanket statement *cough* ), but isn't their same exact attitude towards Christian just as narrow-minded?
I digress. When you meet someone like that, it's best not to feed the fire. Do not quarrel and become contentious, as Paul advises us to. Have gentleness and patience with your opponents, and realize where they might be coming from. Sometimes it's deeper than just their idea of intelligence; they could be harboring some personal bitterness, too. This happens on both sides, really.
Though this is all assuming the person you're talking about is atheist; you seemed to make that impression by his attacking your faith. I could be wrong. Either way, I hope I offered even a small amount of insight.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:57 pm
I think we all know some atheist who has it out for Christians and will say anything to try to make us look as closed minded as they are. Of course it's easy to post a link on Facebook of a news clipping of an extremist we don't want to be bunched in with and all their friends will go on agreeing with themselves while the real Christians are watching our our faith being trampled on. My brother is currently engaged to one whom I had no choice but to ignore because although she claimed to be a peaceful opinionated individual she would continue to post insulting comments on the church from out of nowhere and act like everyone was targeting her when they stood up for their beliefs.
As ca adam said, you may as well ignore them or at best mention if you're trying to prove your point at least allow the people you're talking about prove their own before you start making assumptions about every one of them.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:12 am
 I usually only talk about religion and politics with like minded people because of this reason... I don't like how sometimes people with different ideas or completely different beliefs altogether will go on a tirade about how I am wrong and how I don't know anything. Every religion has it's crazy extremists and every religion has backwards people with messed up beliefs. There is good and bad in every single thing, I tend to just keep quiet around most people unless I am in a group where I know that I wont be targeted. I had that same person on my FB, that girl who her brother is engaged too. Shes insane, you mention one thing about God and she is posting huge rants on your status about how religion in general is a sham. A.B0T and I are friends in real life.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 2:24 am
You have to wonder if there's something much deeper going on when people rant like that. I guarantee it's a bigger issue than just her disagreeing with religion. Sounds like she's got beef.
You know what I do when someone continues to do that on FB, causing a ruckus on my page? I set it so that I don't see any of their status updates. lol Makes things easier for everyone.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 4:04 am
ca adam You have to wonder if there's something much deeper going on when people rant like that. I guarantee it's a bigger issue than just her disagreeing with religion. Sounds like she's got beef.
You know what I do when someone continues to do that on FB, causing a ruckus on my page? I set it so that I don't see any of their status updates. lol Makes things easier for everyone.
She's from a Korean Catholic family and they are somewhat forceful towards her about what she should be. So religion is a very personal fight for her and t seems as though no matter what you say or how she knows you, if you defend Christianity in front of her she plays the victim card and acts like the little girl her parents forced to go to church. All she posts is political and religious debates and she still wonders why everyone is unfriending her.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 5:40 am
Technically, we're all fairly ignorant about God. There's no undeniable, universal proof that He exists, and even for those of us who do have faith, God is something that we can't really fully conceive. Not completely, at least. So yes, we're ignorant. We're all ignorant, believers and non-believers alike.
But no, I do not believe that having faith makes you automatically more ignorant than someone without faith.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:44 am
ca adam Sadly, there are a lot of people out there that will think you ignorant if you believe in God. They won't even give you a chance to show whether you truly are ignorant or not. Look at Bill Maher (but then again, he's a bit of a liar and somewhat crazy) for instance, among other famous and less known atheists.
But I think that mindset is in itself ignorant, too. I know some atheists who really like philosophers, and many of those philosophers happened to believe in God. I knew one man who liked Aquinas. Aquinas was a Catholic monk, and happens to be a saint. lol It's amazing how some atheists can overlook that, yet deny the chance for other Christians to defend their faith.
Not all atheists do that, though. That was only one example. Either way, most atheists I know get very angry and annoyed that "Christians" are so "narrow-minded" (because that's not a blanket statement *cough* ), but isn't their same exact attitude towards Christian just as narrow-minded?
I digress. When you meet someone like that, it's best not to feed the fire. Do not quarrel and become contentious, as Paul advises us to. Have gentleness and patience with your opponents, and realize where they might be coming from. Sometimes it's deeper than just their idea of intelligence; they could be harboring some personal bitterness, too. This happens on both sides, really.
Though this is all assuming the person you're talking about is atheist; you seemed to make that impression by his attacking your faith. I could be wrong. Either way, I hope I offered even a small amount of insight. The believer/non-believer circle of hate seems so silly to me. Many atheists say things like they cannot respect someone who believes in a higher power, or that all Christians are automatically close-minded self-righteous....I can't think of a polite replacement for the word "t**t," forgive me. The reality is, nobody has all the answers, and if we could all pull our heads out of our collective bums for a few minutes and really listen to each other, I think we'll find that we have more in common than we think. Many of us even have very similar morals, albeit for different reasons. We're all human, after all, and at the end of the day, most humans want the same basic things: to have the means to take care of our basic needs, to love and be loved, to be treated with some degree of decency and respect...I won't launch into the whole "Hath not a Jew" monologue, but you get the idea. We're all cut from the same cloth, and I feel that so many of the world's problems would simply disappear is everyone made half as much effort to understand and emapathise as they do to shun anything different from them. It astonishing how committed we as a species seem to hating one another. ....slightly off-topic ramble, sorry. Let's all stop shaving and grow out our hair, then join hands and sing "Give Peace a Chance."
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:24 pm
A-B0T
She's from a Korean Catholic family and they are somewhat forceful towards her about what she should be. So religion is a very personal fight for her and t seems as though no matter what you say or how she knows you, if you defend Christianity in front of her she plays the victim card and acts like the little girl her parents forced to go to church. All she posts is political and religious debates and she still wonders why everyone is unfriending her.
That's too bad, though. I can imagine the kind of suffering that puts her through. Hopefully one day she'll learn to face that and move on, instead of letting it rule over her feelings and thoughts so much.
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