Crazy things non-Catholics, atheists, agnostics and skeptics say.

On the evils of religion, Matthew Aln writes -

When I point out the evils of religion, someone points to some atheist who did some horrible thing. The problem is that religion is a set of ideas, and atheism is the rejection of those ideas. Atheism has not content. While it is consistent with some ideologies, it is not an ideology in and of itself. I can be an atheist and be a psychopath, a murderer, a warlord, but I need something else to do these things. However, if I fly a plane into a building filled with infidels believing that I will be rewarded in the afterlife, then my religious beliefs are supporting my actions. 

In other words, I don't blame Catholicism for the rape and torture of children at the hands of the catholic church. There is nothing about Catholicism or Christianity which would make this ok. I would obviously blame the church as an institution. But would I blame Catholicism for the people in Africa dying of AIDS because the church has convinced them that using condoms is a sin? Absolutely.

According to this skeptic AIDS in Africa is due to Catholicism and its ban of contraception.

The bastard goes on ...

 I will try to be polite.

You seem to be justifying your god's commandment that people kill women because they are not virgins. I find this commandment, or suggestion even, despicable, in any context. I don't care in what time you live or where you are, it is immoral to do such a thing. Note that the man does not suffer the same fate. We know why. Because the people who wrote this stuff considered women to be lesser human beings, as most religions do.
You have to rationalize this horrible, immoral and barbaric nonsense because you have shackled yourself to bronze-age mythology. You can't say the things I am saying about this stuff because you have been convinced that it is something other than the writings of a greedy, tribal band of marauders. By doing this, you have given up your own sense of morality.

I really don't understand how intelligent people can read this and think anything other than it is horrible, and honestly reject it, rather than engage in less-than-honest intellectual gymnastics to find a way to say it is something other than this.
I guess all I can do is ask that you reconsider. In one of Christopher Hitchens' last speeches before cancer took him from us, he beseeched believers to reject the idea that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority, to think of it as a poisoned chalice and push it aside. Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.

So here enters the tired old accusation: believers do no think for themselves.

But not to worry. Poster Kent Meyer calls out Aln for his sorry excuse for sound reasoning and faux enlightenment.

You keep contradicting yourself and making your arguments weak. Quoting dead poets and posting here as if they hold some truth for you doesn’t help your argument either. They cannot offer you any scientific proof of anything. Nothing you assert here is even remotely provable, while you claim that other people assertions on this forum must be proven. Your lack of consistent thinking and objectivity makes it easy to stick with my bronze age mythology.

 Yep, that's pretty par for course for a modern secularist.  Meyer continues.

At least with bronze age mythology I have hope beyond my physical lifetime. That’s the whole point of the bible, a witness to eternal life. By your own definition, you are doomed to nonexistence at your moment of physical death. There will be no demonstrable proof that you ever existed. And if there is proof then no other atheist would spend their short lived time to give it a thought anyway, too pointless, too illogical except for the fact that there is an endocrine function which might be lived out. By the evidence you offer here, your life isn’t worth living.

You speak of science and logic but you lack objective thinking. You demand proof from others but you have no proof yourself. You have contempt for the faithful but your faith is in dead philosophers. You feign moral outrage for how women were treated 3000 years ago yet show no outrage how millions of women are treated under the dictatorships in modern atheist governments.

Ive already demonstrated that by your definition your life is only worth what another person or society assigns based on their values. You still haven’t refuted that in an empirical way. If you want to limit your existence to this, you can. I already told you I fully respect that freedom. By coming on this forum and expecting, even demanding that others think the same as you, you are claiming that there is an absolute authority which you cling to. Your thought process and propaganda is typical of atheist dictatorships throughout history. All the evidence you have offered on this forum points to a life not worth living.

Mr. Aln, please go fuck yourself and hold a book club in honor of Christopher Hitchens for you feel inclined.

Let's entertain ourselves with old fogey (71 yrs of age), tired of the world and its disappointments, Pat Gannon, the out-right Catholic bigot.

I don't like Catholicism. I cheered for the anti-matter bomb to go off in Angels and Demons, but I know the roots of Christianity dug themselves into the ground with the advent of the Catholic Church whether we like it or not.

As well as -

Believers accept germ theory, gravitation, relativity, cell theory, theory of the atom, and so on, but they reject evolution for one and only one reason - because it counters their beliefs. It seems that scientists get everything right, except the things that counter religious beliefs. Have you given any consideration to the idea that it is the beliefs that are wrong? I'm not going to continue the discussion until and unless you explain what YOU believe, so I know what I'm dealing with here.

Um, cranky old-man Gannon, the RCC doesn't reject evolution nor does evolution counter Catholic belief. You don't know what you're dealing with because you're too caught up in your stupidity and your ego. But, if I may say so, I know what CAF is dealing with -- a cranky, old-man who's bored out of his fucking skull because he totally sucks as life. Plus, if there's no God why does picking the brains of Catholics matter to you? You're just acting as a bully, trying to fill the hours with some meaning on a piece of rock floating through dark, infinite space. When your body fails you and when you're buried your life, if we borrow worldview, is utterly pointless and your determination to figure Catholics and their religion is just mere entertainment in the grand scheme of things.