They aren’t? And yet stem cell research was blocked because of people’s beliefs in fairy tales.
Curtis – you are getting your ass kicked, and more importantly, you’re hijacking this thread.
Der Trihs, to be fair, Curtis is only 13. Using your usual approach on a kid who can’t even drive is really over the top. I find him annoying as all get out myself. But I think he’s coming from a point of extreme ignorance, NOT malice. You seem to think that ignorance and malice are the same thing. Not always. So keep in mind, he’s a kid, and adjust your arguments accordingly. All you’re doing is reinforcing his views.*
Sometimes, you have to decide what strategy works best for the situation. Do I need to be strident and angry? Or calm and composed? Is this person taking his position because he’s a total bigot (such as say, Yorick73 appears in the gay marriage thread?) Or because he’s young and naive? (As Curtis certainly is!)
The same weapon doesn’t always work in all battles.
I Love Me, Vol. I, I think that’s what REALLY started me noticing Der Trihs’s attitude. Like I said, I too have family in Iraq – at the time he said it, my cousin C.B. was there (he’s now at home, but he missed our grandmother’s funeral – and we didn’t even tell him until he came back, because he didn’t need the distraction!), and his brother Josh just came home early (because my Uncle is undergoing fucking cancer surgery!). I don’t support the war in Iraq at all. But neither of them asked to be there. The troops aren’t there by choice.
Besides, I wonder how he felt about the original war against Afghanistan. If we had stayed there, when it was just the Taliban and Al Qaeda? (We’d probably HAVE Bin Laden by now.
“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
-Master Yoda
If you met her though, you wouldn’t refer to her as “Queen,” the proper address would be “Your Majesty.”
*I hate to pull the “you don’t know any better”, but in this case, I think it really DOES apply.
Confrontational, sure. Intolerably rude, well, that’s your opinion, man. Me, the fucker should be glad I’m just not calling him “Father”, rather than quoting Diderot at him.
Gosh, I had no idea you still had the draft! Poor guys.
I don’t want to hijack this thread with an agnostic/atheist debate. My point was that the default atheist position isn’t necessarily one with the highest degree of rigor.
But to answer your question, empirical agnostics apply decision theory. Given an assemblage of evidence a hypothetical decision maker can (among other options) a) Conclude P, b) Conclude not P, c) Postpone the decision pending better information, d) Not move a conclusion or e) Conclude that the question is wanting and reformulate it. There is no evidence of ladybug colonies or Celestial Teapots for that matter and there is little or no penalty for misjudging the issue. So pending better evidence, I disbelieve in lunar ladybugs. Where the stakes are higher, I consider what is known, what could be known, what is unknowable and the salience and fecundity of the question.
What stakes?
It’s not like Yaweh is going to say to you after you’re dead, “Oh, well you didn’t disbelieve in my, so come on in.” You’ll be in the fiery pit with the rest of us atheists. God doesn’t like fence sitters.
For a guy as hilariously ill-tempered as Der Trihs is, he does have impressive self control. FTR though, it’s my impression that most attacks on Der don’t involve wishes for violence, although I trust there are exceptions.
Re: the OP:
-
I suspect that the most persuasive anti-religious forces are alternatives to spending Sunday morning in church. That said, the meme that “Faith alone will send me to heaven”, has powerful staying power as it can coexist with all manner of flaccid or apathetic participation or effort.
-
I tend to think hatred is a bad idea, insofar as it is acted upon violently. But I draw a line between that and “Perpetually pissed off”, which is what I perceive is Der’s stance on religion and much else. That’s much less toxic, though it does tend to amuse one’s audience.
-
I wouldn’t want Der’s stance to be common on the left: if that happened we would have to deal with the sort of Tea Party wackos that the dwindling number of sensible conservatives must contend with. So conscientious lefties are obliged to mock Der Trihs every now and then. It’s a prophylactic.
Not clear. Management may prefer fence sitters, or abhor them most of all.
There are 2 issues here. One involves a consideration of consequences: this is essentially Pascal’s Wager. The other just thinks that a question of this metaphysical import is one that you don’t want to muck up, just on general principles.
and after you let go of all that hate… if you can just forgive them and pray for them… you’ll like what happens next…
Decency to somebody claiming to be thirteen years old aside, I’m not convinced that Der really cares to pitch his arguments strategically: I sense a fair amount of nihilism in his stance. But I might be wrong. Der?
True, but as the divine right of kings (and queens) is pretty much accepted to be an outdated concept it’s a title that I’m prepared to accept.
Like Lord, Sir or Baron. I may not accept the way they got the title, but as it’s mainly political I use it. There are plenty of people with titles who I can’t stand e.g. Bob Geldoff and Elton John and I don’t use their titles when describing them except in a sarcastic manner.
For the record this is getting off track and seems to be a fairly trivial point to argue over. My post was to support Dir Trihs and to refute religion, not get bogged down in minutae.
Firstly there is a major difference between not trusted and hated. You’re backpedalling. Secondly, what do you take from you own post? Do you think that if religious people are generally going to be untrusting of you, the most effective way to win their trust is to call them stupid?
Personally, when I’m trying to win people over who don’t trust me (and I’m a lawyer by trade, so I do this all the time) I go out of my way to be polite and understanding while still making my points. That was what was taught to me by people far better at winning people over than I, and it seems to work passably well but not all the time. IME, being hostile *never *works.
It wasn’t a strawman. **Der Trihs **said if you are an atheist you will be hated by most of the population, I said he was exaggerating, and in response you said that the US wouldn’t elect an atheist president, I said this was a leap since who you will elect and who you hate are not the same. No strawman, my rebuttal arose directly out of what Der Trihs said
**Der Trihs’s **utterances tend at worst to have a grain of truth to them, but he exaggerates so badly that defending him usually makes a fool of you. Been there, done that.
“Your overconfidence is your weakness.”
“Your faith in your gods is yours!”
Thankyou for clarifying. Well, partly clarifying… how do you evaluate ‘degree of rigor’? I twitched slightly when you said “and there is little or no penalty for misjudging the issue” since a sudden dread surfaced about where you would go with that thought. And sure enough, a few posts later, bam, Pascal’s Wager.
I trust you realise Pascal’s Wager is deeply fallacious. Hell, even if it were impeccable logic, the utility of a hypothesis has no bearing on its truth.
“The salience and fecundity of the question”… again I am unconvinced that those are relevant in evaluating possible answers to the question.
I’m not familiar with more than a small fraction of decision theory, but I do likes me some Bayesian belief-updating. And every time a prayer goes unanswered (for example), that’s another update to P(God).
Maybe you don’t want to hijack the thread with an atheist/agnostic cagematch, but I do, so there. 
The idea isn’t to win them over. The idea is to make them think. There is no amount of polite conversation that is going to make them do so. Thinking for credophiles isn’t something that comes naturally. Sometimes it takes a hammer to get through to them. If it takes comparisons of elves on the backside of the moon, or the magical pink unicorn to do so then so be it.
And you think that provoking an angry “this atheist is being insulting to me” response is more likely to make someone think? You’re dreaming. Anger and offence are the opposite of the mental state in which someone is likely to think about what you are saying.
Face it, it’s Der Trihs, and apparently you, who are up against every fundamental tenet of marketing and persuasion ever written. You’re making an idiot of yourself. And why? Let’s face it, Der Trihs all the time and you and I and and probably the rest of us atheists some of the time like to poke fun at the religious, and with good reason. We like to play with their really rather stupid beliefs. We like to show off our cold logic skills. We find religion offensive and destructive and take revenge on those who practice it to get our own back.
It feels good, and it’s fun sport, and few of us can resist the urge to take a kick at our tormentors when given the opportunity.
But its not wise and it’s not effective, and you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
If I was trying to sell something, I’d take your advice. But you fail to understand that those who get listened to are the ones that make the most noise. Or, if you like, you spend enough money on advertising you end up with sales even if you’re selling crap.
You are not arguing with some religious dimwit, Uzi! 
Do you really think a crass attempt at suggesting equivalence between “abusing your audience” to “making noise and getting noticed” is going to win this argument? I fail to understand nothing except why you keep spouting such obvious nonsense.
Because there’s more to hate than to like, and the likeable stuff can be achieved without religion, so it doesn’t count.
Telling your audience the truth isn’t abusing them.