Controversial Opinions (For Everything Other Than DC Comics)

[JCAll]

To be fair, throughout history religious people have been victims. Some are victims today. As usually happens with these topics, "religious" comes to mean "Christian". And the term is not restricted to Christianity only. I know little about Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and other religions around the world. I can safely speculate that each has assholes and fine people within their numbers, though.

Historically speaking, religious people are usually victims of other religions. Either because a new religion threatens the power base of the established religion and so gets mercilessly clamped down on, or some other problems threatens the security of a majority religion and they use a minority religion as a scapegoat. Places like the USSR and their violent anti-religious campaign are rarer, and was in all honesty just another kind of ideological purity power grab.

People who have nothing to really gain or lose in or out of a religion are much less likely to be assholes about the whole business.

[Kirby101]

Even the most fervent atheist will admit most of the ten commandments are pretty good ideas.

Most, not even close.

Ten Commandments list

You shall have no other gods before Me.
Nope, I am an atheist, I have no Gods, let alone others I would put before you.

You shall make no idols.
I'm an artist and I don't want to be told what to create. Define craven image anyway.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
I believe in Free Speech and so I will. Besides, God here is more thin skinned than Trump.

Keep the Sabbath day holy.
Nope, I don't believe so I do what I want on the Sabath, and is it Saturday or Sunday?

Honor your father and your mother.
Most do deserve respect, but the the Commandment should be about children. Because there are many parents that should not be honored because they are abusive.

You shall not murder.
Duh, pretty much the same rule in every culture.

You shall not commit adultery.
True
You shall not steal.
Again, universal

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Good rule, but again something all cultures say.

You shall not covet.
In America, all we do is covet. Is wanting more really a sin?

So half are useless, three are no-brainers and two are good rules.

No The Ten Commandments are not all good ideas and I don't think they should be discussed in terms of our Government laws.

[DrNewGod]

The Pious have often used their scripture to persecute any who are "other," or anything else they dislike. That's been the case in a great many religions, and in all of the Abrahamic religions at some point along the way (usually multiple points).

It leads me to wonder if those who persecute are actually pious, or just arrogant sods who happened to find a handy excuse. And that, most likely, is a wide-spread human failing.

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Castro, after all, were adherents of a philosophy that was explicitly atheist (or at least, claimed to be adherents). Some faiths might be more predisposed to oppression; all of them can be weaponized against the "heathen" or the "immoral".

[Tuck]

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
I believe in Free Speech and so I will. Besides, God here is more thin skinned than Trump.

Technically an atheist can't take the Lord's name in vain, unless they're running a scam or something.

People get hung up on "goddamn", but taking the Lord's name in vain is more when Orel Roberts says God's going to take him home if he doesn't raise enough money, or that preacher that told his congregation God wanted him to have a private jet.

Or, you know, God supports such-and-such a political party or law.

[DrNewGod]

Technically an atheist can't take the Lord's name in vain, unless they're running a scam or something.

People get hung up on "goddamn", but taking the Lord's name in vain is more when Orel Roberts says God's going to take him home if he doesn't raise enough money, or that preacher that told his congregation God wanted him to have a private jet.

Or, you know, God supports such-and-such a political party or law.

...or war.

[CaptCleghorn]

Most, not even close.

Ten Commandments list

You shall have no other gods before Me.
Nope, I am an atheist, I have no Gods, let alone others I would put before you.

You shall make no idols.
I'm an artist and I don't want to be told what to create. Define craven image anyway.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
I believe in Free Speech and so I will. Besides, God here is more thin skinned than Trump.

Keep the Sabbath day holy.
Nope, I don't believe so I do what I want on the Sabath, and is it Saturday or Sunday?

Honor your father and your mother.
Most do deserve respect, but the the Commandment should be about children. Because there are many parents that should not be honored because they are abusive.

You shall not murder.
Duh, pretty much the same rule in every culture.

You shall not commit adultery.
True
You shall not steal.
Again, universal

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Good rule, but again something all cultures say.

You shall not covet.
In America, all we do is covet. Is wanting more really a sin?

So half are useless, three are no-brainers and two are good rules.

No The Ten Commandments are not all good ideas and I don't think they should be discussed in terms of our Government laws.

So you're OK with half and even with those that don't fit, something can be argued to push it in your favor. keeping the Sabbath holy and working six instead of seven day weeks, for example.

Coveting isn't just coveting. Most translation phrase it as coveting your neighbor's stuff. We can argue wanting it or something like it semantics, but taking that particular commandment as anti-greed seems to be amenable to many.

And the first two are pure religion. I'll grant you those, but I did say most.

The taking the Lord's name in vain. It could be argued that this means cussing and improper language, but I don't see myself winning this argument.

By my count, five minimum are acceptable as good ideas, even if obvious, possibly up to eight with tweaking. I'm standing by most even if "at least half" is more accurate.

The commandments are an early form of laws and as such serve as an example for modern law making. If there is no God, then they are the creation of men to control others. Which is kind of what the law should do. The collection is important to our history despite disagreement as to source.

[zinderel]

Controversial opinion: Stanley Kubtick's THE SHINING is over-rated hack work.

[zinderel]

I think myself and other Athiests would be very happy to have irrefutable evidence of life after death. Possibly more so than devoutly religious people.
Not sure this is much of a controversial opinion, but I wonder if the point has been brought up enough in conversation.

I know that I would. I would LOVE to have proof of magic, miracles, God...all of it. But I can't waste what little time I have on Earth worrying about what happens after I die. Everyone dies, we all live with the reality that no one knows exactly what happens when we do. I choose to live eithout fear of Heaven, Hell, Gods, Demons or Monsters, and just try to do right by people with the time and gifts I have. If I make one person's day easier or better, then I'm doing fine.

[zinderel]

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

I agree with your ENTIRE list of refutations. I wanted to add that these two commandments are, to me, both VERY clear in their meaning, and not in the way we all have been taught.

First, "Don't take the lord's name in vain." Ok, we have all been taught that it means you shouldn't say 'Goddammit!' or 'Jesus Christ!' or whatever as epithets. But that seems like a stretch, to me. To my understanding, the more logical interpretation is simply 'Don't claim to be my follower if you don't mean it.'

And as for the one about false witness, well...it certainly could be as simple as 'don't lie' But, as someone raised in a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian church, something has always stuck in my craw about this commandment. When a Christian shares their conversion story, it's called 'witnessing'. It's called that in honor of Paul, because it's the moment when 'the scales fell from our eyes and we saw the truth'. When I was a teenager, we were taught to 'finesse' our witnessing, like it was beginning to undergo a kind of grooming. It stopped being an honest accounting of our experience, and became a thing you were to use to draw people into church. We were taught to tailor our witness to the person we were speaking to. As an example - and it was this that made me first start questioning the whole thing - we were taught that if we were sharing our witness with someone we knew 'had comitted the sin of abortion', we were to tailor our witness to play on potential guilt by saying things like, "When I came to know the Lord, it opened my eyes to the sanctity of life, and how every soul is special."

That, to me, is the very definition of 'false witness'. Using what is supposed to be a deeply spiritual, personal event as a trap for potential converts seems like a pretty big no no...

Knowing that Jesus had a major beef with hypocrites, and that Christians believe Jesus is literally God as well, it seems clear that the Ten Commandments are more about not being a greedy, hypocritical, over-worked, ungrateful thug than about 'being a set of laws everyone can agree on'.

[Kirby101]

I think cartoonists should be able to draw. I don't like cartoons, no matter how clever they try to be, that look like they are drawn by someone in fifth grade.

[ed2962]

I think cartoonists should be able to draw. I don't like cartoons, no matter how clever they try to be, that look like they are drawn by someone in fifth grade.

Can you give an example of a cartoon that you think is not well drawn?

[Kirby101]

Can you give an example of a cartoon that you think is not well drawn?

Quick image search gave me these.





I blame a lot of this on "Cathy"

[GOLGO 13]

Can you give an example of a cartoon that you think is not well drawn?

CATHY sucks on a magical unicorn level. Also drawn poorly.

[ed2962]

Quick image search gave me these.





I blame a lot of this on "Cathy"

Ok, I see what you're talking about now. I wouldn't blame it it on just Cathy...I think there was a generation that felt it was more important to be smart and clever than to draw well. These are people who like the idea of comics and satire and art, but don't what to be too closely associated with comics or cartoons. A lot of them don't even consider themselves as cartoonists. They think of themselves as "satirists" or "social critics".

[ed2962]

CATHY sucks on a magical unicorn level. Also drawn poorly.

Has Cathy been relevant in like 30 yrs?