We Have Many Cab Drivers From the Middle East in Australia...
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...so when I fell into a taxi at Watsons Bay last weekend about 7am, with the sort of multi-layered, industrial strength hangover the sillier forum members will feel at the cellular level, I was not in a particular mood to discuss the flavours of Babylon with the intense looking gentleman behind the wheel.
But it as we drove along, the fellow started talking and it wasn't long before he launched into a hateful diatribe, foaming at the mouth with loathing, snatching at the air as if at vaporous throats as he raved with religious intolerance. Death to them all - they have ruined us - our culture destroyed - my family deluded. On and on he went building to a crescendo of vitriol against the much loathed demons of satan.
He was my first Iranian atheist.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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Haven't actually taken a cab recently, but I have certainly myself noticed the number of drivers who look and sound like they are from the Middle East, as I have walked past cab ranks in the city here (Brisbane).
The other group I have noticed is the number of Indians running gas stations locally. Got into an interesting discussion with the guy at the counter when I topped up my car late at night.
I can't remember exactly what took us there, but it turned out he was also an atheist, and his pet peeve about where he came from was the growing number of muslims there.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Amazing how countries and societies will go to great expense and sacrifice lives to defend their homeland from armies of invaders. Then they let in all the religious breeders to take over without a shot being fired.
Oh well, I guess earth is just destined to be a planet of misery with religion as the chief opiate for all the pain.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
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Given the tyranny of such theocracy type governments in Iran, I would have presumed that alot of the people in those nations would have seen through the nonsense of Islam. Of course, with the dangers involved they would have to remain hidden. But it is refreshing to hear firsthand accounts of Atheists from Iran.Where there are one or two there are many more. Maybe fundamentalist Islam is falling apart at it's core, just like Christianity is in the West. We can only hope.
This does seem to prove that all the tyranny and terror invoked by a religion can not overshadow logic and reason.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
I've also heard that the Arabs in turn got a lot of stuff, like their number system, and the idea of zero, from India..
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology