I agree with you. Very well said.
As the OP, I had more of a poll than a debate in mind; I put this in IMHO and am more than a little worried that it ended up in GD. I don’t come here much.
It totally depends on the individual. As with any other strong belief or sense of identity, it’s pretty common I would say.
I can say that my very Christian family looks down on those who aren’t ‘saved’ both with pity, and a fair amount of condescension. They honestly do wish that other people would see the light, because if they don’t, they are going to hell after all…
I do think that some Christians relish telling others they will burn if they’re not saved – I saw Evangelicals at Mississippi College (an extremely Baptist school) telling a Hindu girl that she was going to Hell if she wasn’t saved, and they really seemed to take pleasure in it that wasn’t your standard ‘I’m saving your heathen soul’ self-congratulatory feeling. As an atheist, I’ve encountered that reaction myself. I can also ‘pass’, and I’ve encountered what the OP describes (both the religious and racist sides) when people thought I was “one of my kind” before, based on how I looked or acted.
Heck, it’s pretty obvious that a lot of atheists here consider themselves to be intellectual superior to theists, as evidenced by all the talk about “delusions,” “fairy tales,” and “flying spaghetti monsters.”
Touche.
No more than most atheists look down on them.
I think it’s more general than Christians. People who try to live by a disciplined moral code generally think they are more moral than those who do not. In my opinion, it’s probably true just generally. An atheist who has a strict adherance to humanist ideals in his personal life will likely be more moral than some random schlub with no particular belief system. So of course it makes sense to believe this. If you believe you are following a moral code that makes you more moral than someone who doesn’t. Now of course there is that whole divide between ideal and practice.
Heck, in a recent GD discussion, numerous SDMBers were talking about how some people choose to believe whatever makes them feel good. This, they said, would explain why people believe in God – because it makes them feel good. As I pointed out, not one of these people considered that this same phenomenon can motivate people to reject God’s existence and any obligation to obey his rules.
Now I’m not here to argue for or against theism, as that is routinely covered in other threads. The point is simply that a great many dopers looked down on theists as people whose beliefs were chosen out of comfort and convenience. Not once did they consider that atheists can be motivated to reject God for the very same reasons.
It depends on the Christian.
My family all belong to the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination headquartered in Memphis. They’re Biblical literalists who believe in a literal, physical, eternal Hell which anyone can avoid by taking Jesus as his or her personal savior. They definitely look down on non-Xtians.
Contrariwise, I know and am very fond of many people who belong to the United Church of Christ. Though I am a a technical agnostic and practical atheist, I am still a nominal member of a local congregation, and often do volunteer work there. No one cares that I don’t believe in miracles or a literal god.
You can’t “reject” something you have no reason to believe exists. The assumption of non-existence is the logical default, not a “rejection.”
I’ve also seen a lot of theists express this same belief that atheists are intentionally “rejecting” God because they just don’t want to live by the rules or because it makes them “feel better,” or whatever. I think that’s nonsense. The trip from theism to atheism is very painful for some people. Atheists are not just a bunch of amoral libertines who hate “God’s law.” They just haven’t been convinced that God exists.
The kind of attitude expressed by JThunder is just as silly as saying people reject Greek mythology because they don’t want to follow Zeus’s rules.
That’s just after-the-fact rationalization. People believe what they want to believe, and think up justifications afterwards, Atheists do it, theists do it, liberals do it, conservatives do it.
Regards,
Shodan
Ah, but you see, atheists would never do something so stupid. That’s what makes them superior.
Atheism is not a belief, and many atheists would rather like to believe in a God.
Actually, I found something from no less an authority (to Christians anyways ;)) than the Bible:
This definitely suggests that those in hell could see heaven, and alludes that the reverse is likewise (because the rich man and Abraham go on to have a conversation, assumedly from their respective places).
(BTW, the passage also seems to suggest that the rich man is in hell not because he’s not a Christian (the concept of Christianity, of course, hasn’t been established yet, Jesus having not yet died), or even because he’s not religious, but because he’s a greedy little prick who didn’t improve the life of the poor (which was Jesus’ favourite bugaboo).)
May I? That was going to be my comment before I read this. My biggest peeve is those people who are calling themselves “Christian” and go on to commit everything that Christ said not to do! I’ve long thought of calling myself something other than “Christian” to dissassociate what I believe in from what those who use the term have made it out to be in others’ miinds. (I guess it’s kind of like what you Americans must have been feeling during Dubya’s presidency, I’m sure you had to explain to someone from another country at least once during that time “no, Americans aren’t like that at all! We’re a kind, caring people! Tolerant! It’s just the high-profile yahoos who are messing up our name!”)
I correct you on this point not long ago (and not for the first time, I might add). I also predicted that you could continue to ignore that correction. I’m disappointed to see that I was right.
To repeat: It is grossly inaccurate to say that atheism is a mere absence of belief. As defined by encyclopedias of philosophy, it most commonly refers to the active belief that there is no God. This is corroborated by every single dictionary that I’ve consulted, with only one exception that might arguably be used to denote a mere absence of belief.
Now, it is true that some modern skeptics choose to say that it is merely a lack of belief. Even if we grant that this is legitimate usage of the term though, the point remains that atheism is NOT specifically defined that way. At best, one could argue that it is an alternative usage of the term, one that differs from the historical usage.
Somehow though, I don’t think that this will stop you from insisting that atheism specifically means nothing more than an absence of belief. I’ve learned that the hard way.
But for the sake of argument, let’s grant your claim. You’re still making an irrelevant distinction, since your claim does not refute what Shodan said. If people do indeed “believe what they want to believe” (and I think that’s true of a great many people), then one could just as easily say that atheists don’t believe in God because they don’t want to. Whether atheism is a belief or not is simply irrelevant.
Thanks for that. Yikes! That looks pretty, er, damning 
OTOH, it’s a parable, and should be considered an illustration of a point, not a statement of fact. We don’t consider the parables of, say, The Prodigal Son or The Good Samaritan to be factual reports of actual incidents, why this one?
And as I pointed out in our previous discussion, many theists would prefer not to believe in God. I, for example, would love to think that there is nobody to whom I would ultimately be held accountable in eternity.
Your comment reflects the smug double standard of which we’re complaining. You’ve got skeptics here who proudly proclaim (for example) that many atheists disbelieve in God even though they would like to believe in God. Yet they ignore the fact that many theists embrace God, even though they would find it convenient and liberating to believe that there is no deity to whom they must someday answer. That’s what happens when people take pride in their supposed position of superiority.
Now, this is the point at which Dio invariably says, “But there is no reason to believe in God! There’s no evidence that any such being exists!” or words to that effect. That’s simply irrelevant, though. The issue isn’t whether God exists or not. The issue is the double standard of which we’ve been speaking.
Your “correction” was inaccurate, and it’s kind of ridiculous to keep trying to tell atheists they must beleive X, because your own misunderstanding of the definition requires it.
Atheism is not a belief, and is not a result of what the individual “wants.”
“Prefer” has nothing to do with it. One is either convinced that sky gods exist, or one is not. We can all create personal fantasies of what we would prefer God to be, or prefer the truth to be, but that has nothing to do with what we can be convinced is actually true.
I don’t say that people are only theists because they want to be. I think “want” has nothing to do with it on either side. People are either convinced or they aren’t. I’m not concerned about “accountability” for anything. If there is a God, he’s the one who’s got the accounting to do, not me.
Well, considering Heaven and Hell aren’t as “real” places as, say, Denmark and New Jersey, the way we get its qualities are from spiritual texts, which some consider “parables” in themselves. (Because then, of course, we can actually use the “because the Bible said so!” arguement legitimately. I get the impression that the fact that you can see heaven from hell and vice-versa is long-established Jewish tradition (which is why Jesus used it in his analogy) and, since such metaphorical concepts can’t be definitively proven or disproven outside of religious texts, “tradition” will have to do for depicting properties of metaphorical places.
This is surprising. I would have thought that, while there may certainly be issues which you aren’t particular happy with in your faith, that overall your preference is for God’s existence. Consider me educated.