# Best Responses to New Atheists **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 1, 2010, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682 "2010-10-01T02:09:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/281 "2010-10-05T21:48:38Z")
[quote=“begbert2, post:279, topic:555682”] [li]If you roll a 1000001-sided dice once, the odds are a million to one that _any_ specific side will come up. Nonetheless, beating all the odds, one does. Supposing the number that comes up is “1”, or “123”, or “666”, does that mean it wasn’t rolled randomly?[/li][/QUOTE] And keep rolling that die over and over again for billions and billions of years. Given sufficient time, the improbable is inevitable. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/282 "2010-10-05T21:55:49Z")
[quote=“acsenray, post:281, topic:555682”] > [@begbert2](#): > > [li]If you roll a 1000001-sided dice once, the odds are a million to one that _any_ specific side will come up. Nonetheless, beating all the odds, one does. Supposing the number that comes up is “1”, or “123”, or “666”, does that mean it wasn’t rolled randomly?[/li][/QUOTE] > > And keep rolling that die over and over again for billions and billions of years. > > Given sufficient time, the improbable is inevitable. Well, yes, but that’s a different (and already mentioned) explanation. It remains possible that the dice was only rolled _once_, and that it _happened_ to come up all aces for life. Obviously if you roll the dice over and over again ad infinitum it becomes downright _likely_ that our universe would turn up sooner or later, but it remains the fact that there needn’t actually have ever been any other universe for our specific universe to have happened. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/283 "2010-10-05T21:58:12Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > For instance, if I mention religious and spiritual experiences, I get told that it’s all explained away by obscure neurological disorders. Then when I look up the symptoms of those disorders I find they don’t match at all with they’re supposed to explain. I haven’t heard many that couldn’t be explained away by a daydream or ordinary coincidence, myself. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/284 "2010-10-05T22:03:07Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > > > For instance, if I mention religious and spiritual experiences, I get told that it’s all explained away by obscure neurological disorders. Then when I look up the symptoms of those disorders I find they don’t match at all with they’re supposed to explain. > > I haven’t heard many that couldn’t be explained away by a daydream or ordinary coincidence, myself. And lying. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/285 "2010-10-05T22:06:55Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@begbert2](#): > > > > I haven’t heard many that couldn’t be explained away by a daydream or ordinary coincidence, myself. > > And lying. ALL of them could be explained by lying, in theory. However, daydreams and ordinary coincidences cover a wide swath on their own, with just those two categories. (Particularly in the case of ones where **ITR** might go looking into ‘obscure neurological disorders’ - those are a shoo-in for the ‘zoned out for a moment’ explanation.) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/286 "2010-10-05T22:31:26Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > And lying. > > ALL of them could be explained by lying, in theory. My point is that when someone claims that they had a subjective experience “proving” something they desperately want to believe is true, something that is physically impossible according to all we know, but they can provide zero evidence beyond their unsupported word then suspecting them of lying is a reasonable position. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/287 "2010-10-05T22:40:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@begbert2](#): > > > > ALL of them could be explained by lying, in theory. > > My point is that when someone claims that they had a subjective experience “proving” something they desperately want to believe is true, something that is physically impossible according to all we know, but they can provide zero evidence beyond their unsupported word then suspecting them of lying is a reasonable position. I disagree, rather strongly! The _defining property_ of a lie, as opposed to ‘mistake’ or ‘delusion’, is that the person telling the lie is consciously aware that it is untrue. Rather obviously, if they know it is untrue, then they will not be able to satisfy their desperate desire to believe it _is_ true. Which kind of shoots the whole thing in the foot. So the only people who could _possibly_ be plausibly accused of lying are those who are gaining direct benefit from what they say, such as leaders and the like; but certainly not the average believer. Of course, the minute you start to say things like “delusion”, the **ITR** s of the world’s hackles rise and the teeth come out. Not that _you_ care, as you are more interested in showing your distaste than in getting your point across, but it becomes a delicate issue for those that want to actually debate. There are a variety of more precise terms for various kinds of [cognitive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) and [memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases) errors, none of which require a person to be actually insane, but all of which boil down to telling the theist that their thinking is wrong. Which never goes over well, especially when it’s true. But it goes over better than _incorrectly_ telling them they’re lying. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/288 "2010-10-05T22:53:24Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > My point is that when someone claims that they had a subjective experience “proving” something they desperately want to believe is true, something that is physically impossible according to all we know, but they can provide zero evidence beyond their unsupported word then suspecting them of lying is a reasonable position. > > I disagree, rather strongly! The _defining property_ of a lie, as opposed to ‘mistake’ or ‘delusion’, is that the person telling the lie is consciously aware that it is untrue. Rather obviously, if they know it is untrue, then they will not be able to satisfy their desperate desire to believe it _is_ true. Which kind of shoots the whole thing in the foot. So the only people who could _possibly_ be plausibly accused of lying are those who are gaining direct benefit from what they say, such as leaders and the like; but certainly not the average believer. I worded that poorly. It’s a common feature of believers that they don’t just want to believe themselves, they want others to take their beliefs seriously, and ideally to convince them of the “Truth”. And if they have to lie to convince others, well that’s just a little fib they are using to convince less enlightened people of the much more important Truth. The lie in this case is at least as much to convince you as them. And true believers of all sorts seem happy to accept even blatant lies if they support their ideology. Look at all the tyrannical groups and individuals throughout history who have forced people to express support for this religion or that dictator using threats and torture. There is a mentality out there that finds even the most blatant of lies satisfying. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/289 "2010-10-05T22:55:13Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Then again, [some folks disagree](http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/anthropic-cr.htm#evolution). None of what you said disagreed with what I said. If the universe formed in such a way that it wasn’t conducive to life, we wouldn’t be here debating it. If it formed in a way that was conducive for very different sorts of life, we might all be giant blobs of goo and hence not debating the issue. Assuming the universe was designed exactly for our existance is the water in the puddle deciding the mud was formed perfectly to fit the shape that the water is in. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/290 "2010-10-05T22:58:06Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > > [@SenorBeef](#): > > > > Thinking that you need a defense for find tuning is erroneous in the first place. The best analogy I’ve heard regarding this is… imagine there was a bit of rain that left a puddle on the ground. And imagine the water in that puddle said “how amazing is that! The shape of this hole in the ground is the _exact_ shape I am!”. The water thinks the hole was finely-tuned to be the same shape as the water. > > Then again, [some folks disagree](http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/anthropic-cr.htm#evolution). That analogy is based on the assumption that whatever set of laws a universe comes up with, it’s somehow possible that some form of intelligent life would arise within it No. There is no such assumption. If the universe was differnt there could have well been no intelligent life. The fallacy in the fine-tuning argument is in the assumption is that there is any necessity for life to exist at all. There isn’t. Life is molded to the confines of the universe, but that’s not remarkable. The universe doesn’t care if life exists, and a universe without life is just as valid as a universe with it. It’s completely beyond me how anybody is remotely convinced by the fine-tuning argument. It’s so obtuse and backwards that I can’t even really get a handle on why the believers think it’s persuasive. Douglas Adams’ puddle analogy is right on target. Yes, a different universe could have well been a lifeless universe. So what? How is that anything more than the most simple-minded tautology? If the universe was different, it would be different. Yes, and…? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/291 "2010-10-05T23:04:07Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@begbert2](#): > > > > I disagree, rather strongly! The _defining property_ of a lie, as opposed to ‘mistake’ or ‘delusion’, is that the person telling the lie is consciously aware that it is untrue. Rather obviously, if they know it is untrue, then they will not be able to satisfy their desperate desire to believe it _is_ true. Which kind of shoots the whole thing in the foot. So the only people who could _possibly_ be plausibly accused of lying are those who are gaining direct benefit from what they say, such as leaders and the like; but certainly not the average believer. > > I worded that poorly. It’s a common feature of believers that they don’t just want to believe themselves, they want others to take their beliefs seriously, and ideally to convince them of the “Truth”. And if they have to lie to convince others, well that’s just a little fib they are using to convince less enlightened people of the much more important Truth. The lie in this case is at least as much to convince you as them. > > And true believers of all sorts seem happy to accept even blatant lies if they support their ideology. Look at all the tyrannical groups and individuals throughout history who have forced people to express support for this religion or that dictator using threats and torture. There is a mentality out there that finds even the most blatant of lies satisfying. You’re still quite wrong it you think that any significant percentage of believers are deliberately making up “little fibs” in order to better sell their beliefs to the unbelievers. Why should they? The truth (as they know it) was convincing enough to convince _them_; why should it need to be gussied up for anyone else? Yeahhhh…no. The vast vast majority of theists aren’t deliberately lying. They just believe lots of strange stuff, and maybe have had some nifty dreams and mental adventures and maybe had lots of spiffy coincidences happen that totally could _not_ have been coincidence. That’s all. As for them _accepting_ blatant lies…‘blatant’ is a relative term. Crudulity can be trained. And I haven’t the faintest idea what point you were trying to make with the tyrant/torture thing. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/292 "2010-10-05T23:16:49Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Well this is the crux of the matter, I’d say. It all rests on the claim that there is no evidence for any theistic claim. I believe there’s plenty of evidence. Let’s see it. > [@](#): > > I’ve got a shelf full of books providing the evidence at home and can find many more in a library and elsewhere. Whenever I say this, the majority of responses that I get from atheists will simply be insults aimed at me and/or the authors of the books in question. But for the minority of atheists who actually try to address the evidence, I find their answers more tenuous than almost anything else I hear. For instance, if I mention religious and spiritual experiences, I get told that it’s all explained away by obscure neurological disorders. No you don’t. At least not on this board. You get told that the classic “religious” experiences are neurological in nature, but that doesn’t mean they have to be cause by disorders (certainly not “obscure” ones. Schizophrenia, for instance, is hardly obscure). Psychotic episodes (and that’s what these are, by definition) can also be caused by drugs, epilepsy, meditation, fasting and other things, but having a single psychotic episode does not mean a person necessarily has a disorder, just that they had a psychotioc episode. > [@](#): > > Then when I look up the symptoms of those disorders I find they don’t match at all with they’re supposed to explain. I don’t know what disorders you’re looking up, but religious hallucinnations are among the most common psychotioc experiences. I’m aware that you have, in the past, attempted to define religious hallucinations as being in a sperate category from other psychotic episodes simply by fiat, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they are psychotic episodes. We can induce them pretty much at will by stimulating certain parts of the brain. > [@](#): > > I mention the fine-tuning of the universe, I get told about multiple universes. No, you get told that the fine tuning agument attempts to draw a bullseye around an arrow and then exclaim about the excellent aim of the archer. > [@](#): > > I mention miraculous healings, I get told something about the placebo effect, regardless of how well the medical facts are documented. Cite for a “documented example” of “miraculous healing?” > [@](#): > > etc… You say that you’ve looked at the evidence and found that it doesn’t hold together. Well, I say that I’ve looked at the evidence which atheists bring to counter my evidence and found that it doesn’t hold together. You don’t have any evidence and atheists don’t need any. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/293 "2010-10-05T23:20:36Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Well this is the crux of the matter, I’d say. It all rests on the claim that there is no evidence for any theistic claim. I believe there’s plenty of evidence. I’ve got a shelf full of books providing the evidence at home and can find many more in a library and elsewhere. You are almost certainly a poor judge of what constitutes evidence. Do you want to link me to a thread where you’ve hashed this out before, or should we do this dance again? > [@](#): > > Whenever I say this, the majority of responses that I get from atheists will simply be insults aimed at me and/or the authors of the books in question. But for the minority of atheists who actually try to address the evidence, I find their answers more tenuous than almost anything else I hear. For instance, if I mention religious and spiritual experiences, I get told that it’s all explained away by obscure neurological disorders. Then when I look up the symptoms of those disorders I find they don’t match at all with they’re supposed to explain. I wouldn’t say that one requires a “neurological disorder” to be religious or have a religious experience. It’s obviously extremely common, and since we define our disorders and diseases based on the abnormal most people probably wouldn’t describe it that way. But let me try this from another angle. There are people who have religious experience that greatly differ from yours. They worship gods who are completely different from your god, and often in direct contradiction. And yet they believe with just as much faith as you do. They feel like they see the work of god(s) just as much as you do, that they’ve been touched by the hand(s) of gods, etc. Now, how do you reconcile this? Do you think that both your gods exist, therefore there’s evidence for both of you to see your own god? Do you think that their religious experience is just a result of the psychology of believing such a powerful thing, whereas yours is inspired by the real divine? My explanation is that you both believe equally. That the things that motivates religious thinking are so strong, that they affect your perceptions to the point where you can legitimately be having “religious experiences” that move you in very real emotional and psychological ways. If there are dozens or hundreds of religions in history, with sincere followers who all had religious experiences, who all felt like they were touched by gods and so sincerely believed they knew the truth - you’re essentially asking us to believe that, oh, sure, their religious experiences were explanable because they wanted to believe so much, but my religious experiences are because I’m right and I’m really on to the right god. > [@](#): > > I mention the fine-tuning of the universe, I get told about multiple universes. Multiple universes are unnecesary. On the very first shot, as I explained above, you could get a lifeless universe where no one is around to ponder why the universe wasd designed for them, or you get a different kind of life, which may be intelligent enough to ponder why the universe was custom designed for them. You can’t lose - you never end up with a form of life that seems unwanted by the universe. > [@](#): > > I mention miraculous healings, I get told something about the placebo effect, regardless of how well the medical facts are documented. etc… Do people of religions that aren’t yours also experience these miraculous healings? Do their gods exist to heal them, or in that case was it just spontaneous remission that those silly bastards credit to their monkey gods? > [@](#): > > You say that you’ve looked at the evidence and found that it doesn’t hold together. Well, I say that I’ve looked at the evidence which atheists bring to counter my evidence and found that it doesn’t hold together. Almost certainly nothing you’ve brought up meets any scientific definition of useful evidence, but since you’re only summarizing it I can’t say for sure. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > And the funny thing is - even if you were right and your logic wasn’t faulty in a million ways - the idea that believing in multiple universes is still less silly than a guy reading a golden book out of a hat or spaceborne DC10s flying evil souls into our volancos. I only point that out because it only adds one more delicious creamy layer to your wedding cake of wrongness. > > In regards to that last paragraph, I’m tempted to ask what the metric for silliness is. It seems to me, generally speaking, that silly religious claims are a lot less silly than silly atheist claims. If somebody tells me that a certain monk living thousands of years ago could levitate, all that I can say in response is that it violates physical laws as we currently understand them. By contrast, the Dawkins crowd is offering to me laws of physics, biology, and psychology which they claim are present and in force at all times and places, then I can check the world around me and see if the laws they’re offering fit with what I observe. It seems to me plausible that the laws of the universe that I’d read in a high-school book may not have been as absolute throughout all time and space as we generally think. Ancient accounts of levitation of whatnot, I wouldn’t classify them as likely, but neither would I absolutely rule them out. On the other hand, when I presented with a notion such that all children have brains which incline them to believe and obey whatever adults say, I can say with certainty that it’s not true. I see children everyday and I once was a child and the claim flatly violates what I see, remember, and know. So - just to be clear - you think the idea of aliens creating space ships that look _exactly_ like DC-8s because even though DC-8s are logical contemporary plane designs, they were actually designed out of the racial memory of little float souls who were trapped in volcanos and nuked until they were able to inhabit humans … you think this idea is far more plausible than the idea that the brain evolved in such a way that obeying social pressure and having ideology shaped by your parents was selected for? This is besides the silly generationalizations you’re making. Dawkins does not speak for all atheists. Sharing his beliefs on multiple universes or evolutionary psychology are not a necesary step to being an atheist. Whereas believing in xenu and DC-8s and all that are necesary to being a scientologist. But even discounting all that, the idea that because you can come up with some beliefs that a single atheist holds, which really aren’t all that out there, and then use it to say “see! atheists are kookier than religious folk!” when you don’t hold them to the same standard by randomly bringing up stuff you consider silly believed by religious people, makes the whole declaration so ridiculously unfair that I have a hard time believing you sincerely believe what you’re saying. But upon further reflecting, given your extreme cognitive biases, I suppose it’s plausible. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/294 "2010-10-05T23:21:10Z")
> [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](#): > > So it’s wrong to say you have faith unless you can prove it? No, only you know if you have it or not. It cannot be proven, it just is. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/295 "2010-10-05T23:21:40Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > I worded that poorly. It’s a common feature of believers that they don’t just want to believe themselves, they want others to take their beliefs seriously, and ideally to convince them of the “Truth”. And if they have to lie to convince others, well that’s just a little fib they are using to convince less enlightened people of the much more important Truth. The lie in this case is at least as much to convince you as them. > > > > And true believers of all sorts seem happy to accept even blatant lies if they support their ideology. Look at all the tyrannical groups and individuals throughout history who have forced people to express support for this religion or that dictator using threats and torture. There is a mentality out there that finds even the most blatant of lies satisfying. > > You’re still quite wrong it you think that any significant percentage of believers are deliberately making up “little fibs” in order to better sell their beliefs to the unbelievers. Why should they? The truth (as they know it) was convincing enough to convince _them_; why should it need to be gussied up for anyone else? > > Yeahhhh…no. The vast vast majority of theists aren’t deliberately lying. They just believe lots of strange stuff, and maybe have had some nifty dreams and mental adventures and maybe had lots of spiffy coincidences happen that totally could _not_ have been coincidence. That’s all. > > As for them _accepting_ blatant lies…‘blatant’ is a relative term. Crudulity can be trained. And I haven’t the faintest idea what point you were trying to make with the tyrant/torture thing. Lying still belongs on the list of possibilities that can’t be ruled out, though, and I think it’s more common than you may suspect. Not that it’s a majority of believers, but , at a petty level, there is quite a bit of faking it with things like speaking in tongues or being overcome by the spirit or hearing messages from God. There is also (in my opinion) a lot of self-delusion and massaging of ordinary events to make them more and more extraordinary. Also, there is denial about mental illness. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/296 "2010-10-05T23:31:48Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@acsenray](#): > > > > And keep rolling that die over and over again for billions and billions of years. > > > > Given sufficient time, the improbable is inevitable. > > Well, yes, but that’s a different (and already mentioned) explanation. It remains possible that the dice was only rolled _once_, and that it _happened_ to come up all aces for life. Obviously if you roll the dice over and over again ad infinitum it becomes downright _likely_ that our universe would turn up sooner or later, but it remains the fact that there needn’t actually have ever been any other universe for our specific universe to have happened. No, all it requires is for a single universe to exist for a very long time. The dice analogy tells you that everything that is conceivable in that universe will eventually come about b ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/297 "2010-10-05T23:32:11Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Lying still belongs on the list of possibilities that can’t be ruled out, though, and I think it’s more common than you may suspect. Not that it’s a majority of believers, but , at a petty level, there is quite a bit of faking it with things like speaking in tongues or being overcome by the spirit or hearing messages from God. There is also (in my opinion) a lot of self-delusion and massaging of ordinary events to make them more and more extraordinary. Also, there is denial about mental illness. ‘Denial’, as you seem to be using it, ain’t lying. And neither is self-delusion, nor do the usual cognitive biases qualify. It’s even my understanding that that ‘speaking in tongues’ stuff isn’t deliberate deception, but instead getting swept up in the moment and popping open the cap on your brain’s ability to generate gibberish. High-emotion mob situations have a recorded tendency to lead people to act pretty odd. So yeah - you’re including a lot of stuff that’s I wouldn’t call ‘lying’, which naturally pads it to the point of being ‘more common than I may suspect’. But if you take out all that stuff and limit yourself to _actual_ lies, I don’t think I’m underestimating it at all. So, these people _aren’t_ all dishonest scuzzy liars. They’re just _wrong_. Really, emphatically, _wrong_. Isn’t that good enough? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/298 "2010-10-05T23:42:27Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > It’s even my understanding that that ‘speaking in tongues’ stuff isn’t deliberate deception, but instead getting swept up in the moment and popping open the cap on your brain’s ability to generate gibberish. High-emotion mob situations have a recorded tendency to lead people to act pretty odd. When it’s genuine, yes, it’s an altered state of consciousness and high emotion, but if you’ve ever been around those kinds of churches, you’ll see that there are people who really are “under the spirit” and people who are faking it. In a given service, I suspect that about half the people speaking in tongues are faking it. This also happens in other religious traditions (and not just Christianity) involving attempts to alter consciousness. Faking ecstatic states happens with Quakers, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. I didn’tmean to give an impression that I don’t believe ecstatic states exist (I’ve experienced them myself), but that a lot of people pretend to be in them when they’re not. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/299 "2010-10-05T23:49:25Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > ]You’re still quite wrong it you think that any significant percentage of believers are deliberately making up “little fibs” in order to better sell their beliefs to the unbelievers. Why should they? The truth (as they know it) was convincing enough to convince _them_; why should it need to be gussied up for anyone else? Because the evil scientists/liberals/communists have falsified evidence proving them wrong. Or the Devil has. They know better than to trust the evidence of their eyes over what the True Faith says, but the weak minded might not. And I think it is fairly common. > [@begbert2](#): > > And I haven’t the faintest idea what point you were trying to make with the tyrant/torture thing. That there’s no lie more blatant than one that you yourself threatened or torture someone into telling, yet people go ahead and force such lies and appear to consider them evidence of the correctness of their beliefs. There ARE people who find outright lies, lies they can’t help but know are lies supportive of their beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/300 "2010-10-05T23:52:30Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > > [@begbert2](#): > > > > It’s even my understanding that that ‘speaking in tongues’ stuff isn’t deliberate deception, but instead getting swept up in the moment and popping open the cap on your brain’s ability to generate gibberish. High-emotion mob situations have a recorded tendency to lead people to act pretty odd. > > When it’s genuine, yes, it’s an altered state of consciousness and high emotion, but if you’ve ever been around those kinds of churches, you’ll see that there are people who really are “under the spirit” and people who are faking it. In a given service, I suspect that about half the people speaking in tongues are faking it. > > This also happens in other religious traditions (and not just Christianity) involving attempts to alter consciousness. Faking ecstatic states happens with Quakers, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. I didn’tmean to give an impression that I don’t believe ecstatic states exist (I’ve experienced them myself), but that a lot of people pretend to be in them when they’re not. Hmm, that raises an interesting point: in this case, they’re not lying to fool themselves, and they’re not lying to fool the atheists: they’re lying to fool the _believers_. And there _is_ a rational reason for the average theist to tell this sort of lie: social acceptance. Pretend to be more theisty than you are, to gain status and avoid censure. Heck, I gather that _atheists_ have been known to do this. Okay, I take it back. Theists all lie all the time, to each other. Which naturally could result in them lying to atheists too, if there’s a chance the other believers would otherwise hear about it and kill them. (I’ve seen the opposite, though: I’ve had religious apathy ‘confided’ to me, with the expectation I wouldn’t tell.) Though I maintain that if they actually tell the lie often enough that they convince themselves it’s true, then (suddenly) they’re not lying about it anymore. At that point, they’re just messed up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682.md?page=16)