The few times I’ve heard the term, it’s referred to someone who is hostile to gods/religion, and would continue to be even if it turned out they were real. I’ve referred to myself that way on occasion; as “atheistic, antitheistic and theocidal. I don’t believe in God, oppose belief in and/or worship of him, and would want to kill him if he was real.”
I really do believe that however you categorize him, you have to include the adjective “angry.” He seems very angry about the whole thing. I can understand being angry, in a general sense, that our government is often associated with a deity, but he seems to take it personally that anyone would presume to believe in a deity at all. IMO, there is more to the story than just an intellectual position.
I do not believe in God. No god who has been described to me makes any sense at all. But I remember having been persuaded by your example of the “relevatory experience” that belief in God is not, of necessity, irrational. Or stupid. Or delusional. Or any of the other rude phrases that some folks like to fling about.
I would also like to point to my link upthread to the “As The Psychic” thread and have anyone try to convince me that he was ripped to shreds. He simply wasn’t, and it would not have been allowed in that forum. I do not see Christians getting “a pass” from the moderators. As to whether the board as a whole is “more tolerant,” meh. The board as a whole is more forgiving to people who are sincere, polite, reasonable, and open to discussion. As crazy as it may seem, a lot of the self-identified Christians fit that description. The ones who don’t, don’t get very far.
There’s all sorts of absurd garbage of which I’m unaware. Thanks for pointing out this species.
As I acknowledge, there’s a long and pervasive history of theists imposing their beliefs and values on atheists. As your cite makes clear, the beliefs of theists are priviliged, and especially the theism of the “Judeo-Christian tradition”, which deliberately engages in an explicit policy of marginalizing the beliefs of those outside of this tradition. As your source states plainly:
*
In the United States, civil religion is often invoked under the name of “Judeo-Christian tradition”, a phrase originally intended to be maximally inclusive of the several monotheisms practiced in the United States, assuming that these faiths all worship the same God and share the same values.*
This is state-sanctioned discrimination, and I will fight it until my dying breath. Your religion is none of my business, as my beliefs are none of yours, and I would like everyone’s beliefs to get the respect that are discouraged by our present state. “Civil religion” sets the default as Judeo-Xian (in practice, Xian, since we all know them Jews aren’t to be trusted) and atheist as unAmerican and less worthy of respect than your beliefs. Moslems, Buddhists, freethinkers, Baal-worshippers–unworthy of inclusion, all of them. “Awfully interesting and quaint people, of course, my deah, but not quite part of our clahss.”
Sorry, this is bigotry and discrimination, plain and simple. Any more cites you’ve got to show me?
Why shouldn’t we liken belief in god to belief in unicorns? Because god is more popular?
Are they still smart when their mistakes are pointed out and they make no effort to correct them?
No, the important distinction there is that when you say ‘doesn’t believe in god’, you’re still talking about it as if god exists and the atheists just refuse to believe it. As if you’re saying we don’t believe in penguins.
I’m 100% against ‘civil religion’. All ‘civil religion’ says to me is ‘You’re not one of us.’
Talking about ‘our’ religion or invoking god as part of ‘our’ society means that I am not part of it. It’s like the whole ‘in god we trust’ on the money. No, we don’t. Or else I am not a part of ‘we’, and the federal government has no business invoking god and making me feel like less of an American.
And IMO, establishing any form of monotheism is establishing religion, and they’re not supposed to be doing that.
How many times does the word ‘god’ appear in the Constitution?
Actually, it’s not so much about “stupid” and “smart” as it is about “willing to think” and “unwilling to think.”
I’m sure there are evil Xians who reject honest discourse with atheists because they recognize they have no rational arguments to make, and choose to present specious (but plausible, especially to the faithful) arguments rather than just admit as Liberal does, “I got nothing, but I feel it very strongly, and for me that’s as good as having a basis to argue on.” These Xians, I feel, are very smart but simply see a greater good in arguing speciously for Xianity than in arguing for the truth, wherever such an argument would lead them.
But I have met a lot more genuinely stupid Xians than I have genuinely stupid atheists, but only because I’ve met so many more Xians than I’ve met atheists, and most atheists dont enjoy spending time arguing this stuff the way I do. Mainly, though, it’s that the Xians start from a closed-minded arguing position (“God exists and he’s just wonderful”) that they cling to no matter what. This is what I call “unwilling to think,” which doesn’t equate with stupid by any means.
“merely” interpret differently? There is no merely about it - the interpretation of evidence is the entire point. When I took Physics the theoretical physicist who was standing in for our usual lecturer did an experiment on stage that got a negative value of gravity. Our interpretation of this evidence was that he screwed up. My interpretation of the sensory evidence that last night I was chatting with Saddam’s body is that it was a dream. Similarly we can interpret the evidence of the abductees as a case of sleep paralysis, given the absence of supporting physical evidence. Sleep paralysis seems more plausible than invisible aliens walking through walls, but maybe that’s just me. All interpretations are not created equal.
As for evolution - I haven’t heard many people claim evolution proves there is no God. It might prove that there is no God as defined by an inerrant Bible. But at the best it removes the need for a god. We might also say that evolution shows that religions do not have good predictive ability in this area, since no one seems to have been able to use Biblical works to predict what would be found, only reinterpret the Bible to match what was found independently. Nostradamus fans do the same thing. Science has far better (though not perfect) predictive power. It doesn’t mean it is correct, but saying evolution supports the God hypothesis seems to be reaching.
I think even that is a bit strong. It’s more a willingness or unwillingess to think rationally about this particular issue.
So often an atheist’s statement that a position is irrational becomes transformed - usually by theists - into the statement that the theist is irrational and then into the statement that the theist is stupid. This is kind of like the “Lord, Liar or Lunatic” trichotomy, which ignores the possibilities that Jesus was misquoted or mistaken.
I don’t buy that an irrational position implies an irrational person. We’re all irrational about something. We’re all very good about compartmentalization.
And here we get to a key point.
I think we’d have to come up with some sort of definition of “smart” that was neutral on the point of belief in God or the supernatural or unicorns before we could agree that belief in God is stupid, otherwise we’re begging the question, where the proposition to be proved is given as one of the premises. It’s trivial to prove that religious people are stupid if you argue that way.
So we’d have to devise some sort of test on memory, reasoning, pattern recognition, and all sorts of other things, but leave out questions like “Do you believe in God?” and failing those who do believe in God. And once we’ve got our intelligence test and have people scored, THEN ask them if they believe in God. And then we’d see if everone with a score over, say, 120 was an atheist, and everone with a score below 120 was a theist.
Except you know and I know and the American people know that our test would be very unlikely to show that. It MIGHT show some statistical bias, in that people in the top/bottom quintile show more/less religiousity than average. But surely we wouldn’t expect to find that everyone with an IQ over 120 was an atheist.
Smart people have mistaken beliefs. I know smart racists, smart homophobes, smart people who lost a fortune in the stock market, smart people who lost a fortune at Vegas, smart people who married abusive assholes, smart people who believe in astrology, smart people who believe in reincarnation, smart people who believe in Marxism, smart people who drank themselves to death, smart people who were afraid of flying, and yes, even smart people who claimed to believe in fairies. As in, literal fairies.
I agree that a literal belief in fairies indicates something about a person, but what, exactly? That she was stupid? But she was a college graduate, she supported her modest lifestyle through her artwork, she could read and write and tie her own shoes, she was quick-witted, she was a clever conversationalist, she remembered people’s names easily, she could even balance her checkbook and fill out her own tax forms. So what exactly does “stupid” mean if we say a person like her was stupid?
And YES, I agree with you that a belief in fairies and a belief in YHWH are in many ways equivalent in silliness. But if I said to her, “You know believing in fairies is stupid, right?”, how likely do you think that person would be to have an epiphany and tell me, “I never thought of that before! Yeah, you’re right, fairies don’t exist.”?
Not very likely, because if she was the sort of person who could be conviced fairies don’t exist by some guy telling her belief in fairies was illogical, she’d have abandoned her belief in fairies long ago, like when she was 7 years old. Likewise, how many Christians are going to :smack: when you explain that belief in God doesn’t make any sense? If they were the kind of people that such an argument were intellectually or emotionally compelling to them, they would have given up Christianity a long time ago.
Now, WHY isn’t this argument intellectually or emotionally compelling to them? I wish I knew, but it isn’t stupidity! It might be any number of reasons, stubbornness, conformity, rebeliousness, credulousness, insecurity, generosity, unwillingness to disappoint one’s parents, I suspect the list of reasons is nearly as long as the list of theists, and sitting down Freud-style und figuring out exactly vhat neuroses cause zem to exzibit zis irrational behavior could take a lifetime. But labeling those reasons, “stupidity” surely misses the point, and confuses more than it helps.
Given the careful consideration you gave to this cite – as a phenomenon, independent of your extremely predictable kneejerk reaction to it – nope, won’t bother.
My point is that people as a matter of course do accept things on the weight of popular belief and reinforcement from people they like and/or trust without examining every belief. They examine the belief when it becomes relevant for them to do so.
The act of accepting certain beliefs based on what most people believe, or what those who have positive influence on you believe, and based on a certain trust in their opinion, isn’t evidence, but it may not be irrational either.
I am not talking about proving something to anyone else. I am only talking about the act of the individual accepting certain beliefs as “true” without scrutinizing the evidence. See the difference?
Perhaps you could copy my name rather than type it incorrectly. 
as to your reply…I assume it means you don’t want any discussion.
When I tell my 4 year old that the mushrooms growing in the woods are poisonous, does she demand evidence? No, she just gets a look of grim satisfaction and nods her head at the exciting thought of deadly mushrooms. I tell her all kinds of stuff every day and almost all of it she swallows uncritically. But some things, like whether she’ll be tired in preschool if she doesn’t go to bed now, she’s willing to debate passionately.
So why does she demand evidence in one case, and accept the dogma uncritically in the other case? Because kids pretty much accept whatever their parents say uncritically, unless it somehow conflicts with what they preceieve as their self-interest. Most people believe in God for the same reason my daughter believes that the mushrooms are poisonous, regardless of the truth or falsity of either proposition. What I can’t understand is why this is so shocking. Is my daughter stupid for accepting that the mushrooms are poisonous despite the lack of any evidence? And why do I believe the mushrooms are poisonous?
Am I smarter than her?
You might be interested to know that one of the board’s best moderators, Czarcasm, holds a similar view. Or at least he did when his username was Scythe. Many. Many. Many moons ago. 
The only reason I have never challenged anyone as to Autrailia’s existence is the absence of any motive they might have in getting me to believe it. If I thought for even one second that “Australia” might not exist, I would challenge it, somebody would come along and give me loads of evidence that it does, and I would accept it. Problem solved.
Xians OTOH have powerful motives for getting to buy into Xianity. Some of them say their purpose in life is geting me to buy into it, so I am skeptical, and their evidence is so insultingly weak that it just reinforces my original skepticism.
What do you want? I read your cite, found that it was informative–basically it said “Yeah, this crap goes on here, and Xians have drummed this meme into the very fabric of the culture, so that the government appears to support Christian-style theisms and no one really notices or cares anymore”–found my views confirmed, and was surprised that you thought I would find the phenomenon to be new to me. The label was new, the wine was not.
Oh, I agree. That’s why I think yours with respect to God are wrong. 
But I’m not sure that very much is illustrated by gratuitous analogies about invisible (physical, I presume) aliens. Undistributed middles can pop like a co-fused string of firecrackers if we start saying things like A is invisible and B is invisible, so therefore A and B are related in some arbitrary way. I mean, cats are mammals and dogs are mammals, so cats must be a type of dog (or vice versa)? Nah.
I don’t know why you say that. Do you mean the god of abiogenesis? If so, what does that have to do with evolution. What evolution removes, I think, is the need for a Nicean explanation of scripture with respect to man’s emergence from dust. (The metaphor is still a very good one, however.)
That’s what I’ve been saying all along — to a few deaf ears. Science is for examining the physical universe, and it does a damn good job of it. Although, to pick a nit, I wouldn’t say that it makes predictions. It does, however, test predictions very well. (Predictions about the physical universe only, of course.)
I daresay that each side believes the other is reaching. That’s the very nature of disagreement, isn’t it?
And for once I have to back PRR. I despise “ceremonial deism” – it’s paying lip service for political gain and in a form that is purest thin gruel to Someone important in my life and whom PRR and others do not think exists at all. It’s the equivalent of a jury coming down six for guilty and six for not guilty, so the judge splits the difference and gives the man half the prescribed sentence.
If God is real, then those of us who believe in Him owe our full commitment to Him, not a half-assed reference in civic devices – and that includes His command to treat others by the Golden Rule, which means that even if I for some bizarre reason wanted to force PRR or catsix into a devotion meaningless to them, it would be contrary to His commandments. On the other hand, it’s placing an obligation on that minority who does not adhere to the J-C-I deity to hypocritically profess faith in Him, or at least take their tax money to endorse Him.
In the particular incident that aroused PRR’s ire, I think he’s all wet. Say what you like about Dubya’s sins, which for my money are manifold and dripping with blood. He is an American citizen with the same rights under the free exercise clause as anyone else, and he spoke as a Christian man who happens to have been chosen by virtue of his office to speak at the funeral of another Christian man. If you don’t want to watch a Christian funeral service, then don’t. But don’t complain that it is one. If you don’t like country music, you would be well advised not to go into a bar whose marquee says “Yeehaw Olde Country Tavern - Live Entertainment!” My funeral, when I die, will be at the Episcopal church which I am attending at the time – St. Mark’s unless we should move at some time in the future. Any atheist, agnostic, pagan, or person of indescribably delicious theology is welcome to attend – so long as they know and accept that it will be an Episcopal church funeral service.
But be clear – I find “under God” in the Pledge and “in God we trust” on the coinage to be as offensive as PRR does – for precisely opposite reasons; they trivialize something very important to me, in the name of achieving some bread-and-water compromise that is minimally displeasing to everyone.
Sorry.
It wasn’t intentional.
It means exactly what it said. Nobody gets pissed off when you say dragons only exist in myths.
She would be if she was forty and still believed it.
And they are taking my tax money to endorse a god that doesn’t exist. It’s on the money they’re taking, for crying out loud.
I find those things ostracizing. A constant reminder that I don’t belong, that this country isn’t for atheists. And one of our former Presidents had the gall to say as much.
Perhaps you’re not familiar with the Mack abduction hypothesis? If so, my apologies, I assumed you were familiar with this little bit of nonsense, but I can certainly appreciate that my example makes no sense if you aren’t.
I’m certainly not equating invisible aliens with invisible deities. I am equating subjective experiences with limited or no direct physical evidence supporting them, and asking how you sort “true” experiences from false ones. By true I mean experiences true in the outside world - all these experiences are true in the subjective sense, in that the person truly had them.
I do mean the god who specially created mankind.
Oh? Science didn’t predict the neutrino? it didn’t predict cosmic background radiation if the Big Bang was a reasonable origin for the universe? Science also predicted the ether. The tests you mention are mostly done to test these predictions, though sometimes we get lucky and test them accidentally, as was the case of Penzias and Wilson.
How could something be falsifiable if you don’t make a prediction that can be falsified?
It troubles me that you give no additional thought to anything presented to you if it bears any “taint” of religion; you just evaluate everything instantaneously as to whether it confirms your views or not. (And, oddly enough, anything having said taint is taken to be additional evidence of the vast Christian conspiracy, i.e., confirmation.) As I said, I wasn’t really trying to change your mind changed – I’m just disappointed that you found nothing there to be possibly worth thinking about for more than a minute and a half.