This is the great hypocrity of the majority of atheists(and some theists) on straight dope. I’ve found thats its very difficult to have some real anti-ignorance arguments on here because of the very fact that we have so many atheists claiming extreme ignorance on the theist side, and in doing so, become the most ignorant of the bunch.
They just can’t** possibly **imagine how anyone could be so stupid as to believe something that has been “proven” wrong so many times…in name, religion and an Existence of God.
It bears the same phenomenon of the Japanese Army during WWII. These soldiers that were so doctrinated with honor and ethical morality that when they began to expand into the world and see the un-moral people around them, they themselves began to treat these people as extremely immoral, inferiors–and thus you get such events like the Rape of Nanking.
Now I’d like to think that I myself am not so ignorant to believe that if there are so many people on the planet who give atheism the weight that they do, then there must be something to it. Adversly, I would hope that an idea–religion–that I would say over 70% of everyone who has ever existed(and thats a conservative measure) has believed in, would be given the same respect and weight that atheism should recieve.
But as it is, this is generally not how it works. It goes both from religion to atheism and vice versa, but because there are much more atheists on here, it then applies more to you fellows. People justify ignorance by opposing ignorance, and so in turn they can be shown to be ignorant by the opposing side. As you can see, ignorance is essentially a vicious cycle.
Actually, what you wrote can easily be construed the way SenorBeef did, and in fact I’m hard-pressed to see it the way you’re claiming. Look at it again:
There’s a couple ways to take this:
Some of the atheists [who are angry and militant] say out loud what they are thinking, and we find out why [the militant and angry atheists] are hated and distrusted.
Some of the atheists say out loud what they are thinking, and we find out why [the atheists] are hated and distrusted.
There is a biiiiiiiiig big difference between atheists who say “Anyone who believes in God is a stupid dangerous fool” and atheists who say “I don’t believe in God.” I can see why the first would be disliked and distrusted, but your too-broad comment makes it sound like there is sufficient reason to dislike and distrust the second as well.
Religion hasn’t been proven wrong. It simply has no evidence for it.
Like unicorns, vampires and space-ninjas. If someone believed in space ninjas with no evidence, would you say they were rational?
But in or society religion gets a special pass. Religious people can of course be brilliant in general, but the one thing they share is each and every one has accepted a belief system with no evidence at all to back it up. Choosing to be religious is an inherently irrational act. It’s as stupid and silly as choosing to believe in Santa or Homeopathy or Astrology.
If there were evidence it would be a different story. As it is, it’s a pathetic fantasy that helps people deal with the fear of death. If it helps you, great. Just don’t start telling me I have to follow the dictates of your imaginary friend.
I’ve always loved when atheists boast so much about this idea. Truth is, atheists really just don’t get real religion, and I’ll explain with a little metaphor as to why.
Lets take two people, some top-level whiz of a professor at the best university, and some ten year old boy whose been stranded on some pacific island his whole life.
Now this professor knows everything there is to know about swimming; the arm and leg techiques, the breathing techniques, all about waves, oceans, and currents, the best and worst times to swim, and all the strokes. Yet, this guy has a fear of water, and therefore doesn’t swim and wouldn’t know how, because even though he has the concepts, his body just isn’t adjusted to be able to do such a thing.
Then lets take a look at the kid whose been stranded on a tropical island his whole life. Now as this kid has been here his whole life, naturally he would be an expert swimmer, because of the need to fish and whatnot, and even because there isn’t much else to do. By age ten he’d be swimming at the skill level of a twenty year old.
However, if you took this kid and put him next to the professor, and then asked the two to explain everything there is to know about swimming, the kid would look like a moron and the professor would look like the clear expert. Yet, when it comes down to actual swimming, well..we all know whats up. And thats just it. Athiests don’t get how they can seem so smart in telling religious people about how their wrong, and yet still have such a tough time getting through to the religious.
Now this isn’t so much an argument going in the direction of why God is real, but just as to why this article you presented is nonsense. Some of the most moral people I’ve ever known are the most simple minded I’ve ever known.
The point of the article is that religious belief is rooted in ignorance. The more you know about your religion the less likely you are to believe any of it.
An atheist isn’t non religious because he fears it. He’s non religious (in general) because he sees how worthless and unproven the claims made by the religious are.
There is no evidence for the existence of God. Choosing to believe in him is a decision to swap reason for comfort. For some people that might be the right choice. But it certainly isn’t something laudable.
That’s a ridiculous analogy as either one of them needs only to turn on a TeeVee during the summer Olympics to see that swimming actually exists. How they deal with their knowledge of swimming is beside the point … there’s already a conclusion to deal with. On the subject of religion … not so much.
This. My friend can believe in a purple unicorn that farts fire and he would have the same evidence proving that unicorn’s existence as you do for your god.
The same analogy might be made with someone who is an expert on mental illness versus someone who has it.
Many atheists on this board used to believe in God. I did. And, exactly as Lobohan said, I started doubting when I read in a copy of the Bible about the multiple authorship of the Torah - something they didn’t bother telling me in five years of Hebrew School. God belief fell apart rather rapidly after that discovery.
Religion has done rather well in developing communities where not toeing the religious line will get you ostracized or worse. It has also done very well in building communal rituals, which carry people away. The way to study religion is calm research without preconceived ideas. When you do that, it all looks like nonsense.
Atheists can’t prove the non-existence of god(s) (at least today we can’t). But, until you actually produce a god, you have zero proof that it actually exists.
You’ve described religion here to a tee.
Atheists are given little respect because we have rejected the delusion of the majority.
You are using two different usages of the word ‘ignorance’ and equating the two. One is being rude and the other is lack of knowledge.
One thing I wonder about (and would start a poll on if I weren’t so lazy), what is the difference, if any, between how believers and atheists would feel upon learning they were wrong?
Because my self-perception and the like really isn’t bound up in my atheism at all. If someone actually proved the existence of God, I’d say, “Hey, I didn’t think that could happen, but okay.”
When I was a believer (and most atheists were believers at one point), learning there was no God would have devastated me. I came to the realization pretty slowly, but if it had been abrupt, I would have been reeling.
In short, my guess is that believers are invested in a way atheists can never be. But I could be wrong.
If I had solid evidence for a particular God I’d probably follow its tenets, unless they were evil. “Oh, Cthulhu is real? Fuck. I guess he’s gonna eat me last.”
We’ll never disprove the existence of God, because God is such a fuzzy concept. Christians claim to get their idea of God from the Bible, but when a passage of the Bible contradicts the God they believe in they toss it out as a story or as not really inspired. One century you can get in big trouble going against the cosmology of the Bible, the next they say it isn’t a science book. They say anyone not accepting Jesus goes to hell, until this becomes politically unacceptable in our diverse world, and then the nicer Christians start backing off. Disproving God is like nailing Jello to the wall.
That is the fundamental distinction between religion and science. Science converges, religion diverges. Science does not have 15 different theories of the atom or combustion any more. If religion said something true about the world, we’d soon figure out which ones are accurate and which are not.
If god is everywhere, there is no reason to pray in public. I see it as a public demonstration of religiosity. See how religious I am?. See what a fine person i am?
No thanks. keep it to yourself.
See how well training works on me. See how I can put on a facade? That is more of what occurs to me when people pray in public.
I call myself an Atheist, but I find myself “praying” once in a while (Usually during Chicago Bears games), so I’m probably agnostic. I can buy the idea of a “prime mover” of the universe, just not the storybook “biblical” version. I can easily see the logic of science all the way to the “big bang”. It’s what happened BEFORE that that gives me pause.
I often wonder if my “belief” in a supreme being comes from the fact that I was told of His existance by people I trusted since I was born? It’s hard to give up something that was planted in your impressionable mind almost at birth.
Ha, well Atheists have no evidence of God because their not looking for evidence of God–there looking for evidence of Atheism. You’ll notice when you have loads of people all looking for the same thing–be it there or not–they’ll find it.
People have sometimes asked me why I believe in something that is so clearly wrong. Because–well–I have all the evidence I need. Now I’m not a Christian because my parents were. I’m not a Christian because I read some fancy words in the bible and thought they were cool and so dedicated my life to them. No, you see, I’m a Christian because I prayed to a spiritual being and called him Christ, and he answered me. Not in audible words or a personal messege, but spiritually. Now I know that you think I’m a crazy schizophrenic…but I just don’t care, because I know I’m not. And with the majority of the worlds population telling us they also have spiritually talked to another being on some level, I take that as dang good evidence–even if not for Christianity, certainly for the existence of a spiritual presence interacting with our world.
I think some of the best evidence for Christianity you can find is the historically accepted story of the disciples. Now lets just pretend for the sake of argument that, sure, Christ was another doomsday nut, claiming to be the savior, and got a nice little cult following. Not only was this nut then executed, but these diciples–of whom, out of those who had seen Jesus after they claimed he rose, was much more then 12–then proceeded to go off and die horrible deaths for an idea they knew was false, and for a God they would have known to be false. Now us humans have been known to do some crazy things, but no where else in history are you going to find people who actively made something up themselves, convinced themselves, and then all went to torturous deaths for the sake of their lie. You will find people who fulfill the first two–but never the third. If they were lied to by others, then thats a different story, but again, never the actualy decievers themselves.
I think one of the best ways to describe Christianity is applying it to a well known story…Whorton hears a Who. Childish example..yea..but it get the point across quite well.
Now if you take whorton as the Christian, and the whos as God, you’ll see somewhat the prediciment we’re in. Now you could line up every single animal in Whortons world and have them tell him hes wrong and stupid and crazy…yet he knew he wasn’t..he knew he heard them..and he absolutly knew that they were there. They could provide all sorts of evidence that he was wrong, such as the fact that this has never happened, and thats not the way things work, and that their are no little people in flowers, but it would have been the same. He knew he was right. And because we Christians know that this **is **true, you can find all throughout history Christians who absolutly would not recant what they knew to be true, even if they be presented with a torturous and horrible death.
Once we can prove how the universe came into being and it doesn’t involve 700’ guys with long flowing beards, burning bushes, etc, then we can pretty much put the nail in the coffin. It won’t stop the diehards, but it should shut up the average loon.
You are far more optimistic than I am. We already know that the Bible story is dead wrong, but we have one set who denies any evidence against their beliefs, and another who says the Bible story is just a myth, and God could be on the other side of the singularity puffing the whole thing into existence in a way indistinguishable from whatever science will discover. Why, if we are special, this God created a universe in which we showed up rather late is never answered. God works in mysterious ways, after all. I taught my kids the one answer theists will give to all difficult questions: “it’s a miracle.”
Looking for evidence of Atheism? Isn’t that like proving Bigfoot DOESN"T exist?
No like bigfoot, space aliens, or Sarah Palin’s intelligence, we are waiting for ONE shred of tangable measurable evidence that he DOES. So far, nothing.
I respect your faith, just don’t go passing laws based on it that I have to live by, and keep it out of our public schools.
So, you have evidence for Christianity. No one disputes that Christianity or Christians are real. You have no evidence that it had anything to do with a god or that any god was involved in your stories.