But it’s all relative. God as a daily experience that shapes the way a Christian looks at everything, etcetera, could easily be replaced by … anything … including:
Or the Invisible Flying Lasagna Fairy or whatever.
It’s all neither here nor there. I defer to **Dio **on this one. He’s right. He’s not always right, but this time he is … the whole IPU notion as a rhetorical device is spot on. It just ruffles because it isn’t reverent. It is a perfectly reasonable response of nonsnse to nonsense.
I know it isn’t easy to hear that what one dearly believes in is nonsense … but sometimes it is. I don’t particularly like it when someone tells me Hamburger Helper sucks, but there it is.
The main thing I recall about that Star Wars thread was all these people telling me to see an hour long video “review” of episode 1 that would show me what a moron I was for not saying that movie was garbage. As if I was going to waste an hour watching a movie review.
Probably. And I’ll point out what I find silly or irrational. But out of respect to the person espousing the belief, I’ll withold my sniggering until they are out of earshot. Because if you’re just trying to score cheap points, people aren’t going to change their mind; they’ll just stop talking to you. Which goes to answer the OP’s question.
I’m not understanding your meaning here. Atheists don’t want to deny that - we acknowledge it’s not, and never is, rational. You seem to be defending it on that basis, but that’s the basis on which it’s attacked.
I don’t quite understand what you’re saying - do these beliefs deserve a special status because they can’t ever be rational?
And if you treat ridiculous beliefs with respect, people won’t change them because after all, if they were ridiculous they wouldn’t be treated with such respect.
All of us? Really? Cause I don’t even think there is evidence for any god I believe in, so I’d be surprised if I argued for a god’s existence based off evidence.
Atheists do not deny the existence of churches or religious communities. We don’t even deny the benefits of belonging to a church if there is good evidence for it. (Which there might be.) None of this has nothing to do with the existence of a God.
If religious communities managed to not pretend that their god is real and wants everyone to do or not do different things (kind of like the Baker Street Irregulars) we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
We’re not talking about human experience, we’re talking about the existence of a supernatural entity. BTW, I don’t recall Buddhists getting a lot of flack around here, which might be because Buddhists don’t publish comics saying everyone who doesn’t believe as they do will suffer torment, Buddhists don’t ring our doorbells Saturday mornings, and Buddhists seem admirably unconcerned about my sex life.
Where would you say the line goes between “pointing out what I find silly or irrational” and “sniggering”? In the context of a debate I would find it very hard to do the former effectively without being perceived as also doing the latter.
I know you would, which is why I used that example. I actually agree with you most of the time on many things.
I think you skipped over some posts in this thread.
The OP asked why there are so many atheists on the board. I responded that it was due to the ‘‘unbridled hostility’’ that is ‘‘prevalent’’ on this board. You took exception to that phrasing. Some people formed counterarguments to my claim. I acknowledged some of their points were good and agreed that ‘‘unbridled hostility’’ was probably an exaggeration, and that the Dope is clearly better than a lot of other places in this regard. However, I still maintained that the snarking that does occur bugs the shit out of me. Then I ranted about how shitty atheists are often treated in society at large because I’m an atheist and it sucks.
Some suggested that the reason there are so few believers on the board is because we are a bunch of rational skeptics. Someone pointed out that just because people believe they are skeptical doesn’t mean they actually are. I piggbybacked off of this idea to say that I don’t believe that Dopers are anywhere near as rational or skeptical as they believe they are. You demanded a specific example. I gave. The citation was not intended to prove that people on the Dope are hostile toward the religious. It was intended to support my argument that many Dopers aren’t really skeptics so much as really intent on defending their preconceived notions with whatever evidence they can find, and ignoring the rest.
As for the reference to the ‘‘ignorance of age’’ thread, I was merely pointing out, what, in my perception, is the end result of arguing with you, Dio. I don’t believe there is a cite in the world I could ever provide you that would change your mind once you’ve settled on something.
Ever been to a Psychic Fair? 30 to 50 booths, half of which contradict the beliefs of the other half, and yet they live in harmony. Why? Because they don’t have the guts to say “I just can’t put a booth next to someone who is telling you what I believe to be absolute lies and not say something about it, because if I do, they’ll point me out and say the same thing about me!”
You don’t question their beliefs publicly, to their face, and they’ll extend the same courtesy to you. How…safe.
Well, you give the other person benefit of the doubt and assume that they are discussing in good faith. You don’t insult their intelligence or point out how irrational they are or how evil their belief is. You identify specific facts that they claim and provide contradicting data. It also helps to restate their argument, so you know you are understanding them. You avoid name-calling or derisive language.
Maybe I worked in customer service too long but it seems intuitive to me that you can tell someone they are wrong in a way that they feel good about. They’re more likely to come around to your side that way.
Even if you were correct on this point, you’d have the cause and effect wrong. The board didn’t set out to be hostile to religion specifically and therefore attracted atheists. The board set out to be a place where there could be high-level discussion amongst intelligent, educated people, and one of the effects of that would be to have more atheists than average. Similarly the board I’m sure has fewer Glen Beck watchers than average too.
I think you exaggerate when you try to claim that we’re saying the SDMB is a “paragon” of skepticism. I wouldn’t make that claim. In particular, the issue of politics tends to make people ridiculously partisan and tribal and hard headed. But I would claim that the board is certainly more skeptical than the average social community, and that’s all it takes for a greater than average representation of atheists.
And from there, both because it’s a place where atheists aren’t a persecuted* minority like in real life, and because we have a Great Debates forum that’s designed for tackling the big questions like the meaning of life and religion, you see a lot of critism of religion on rationalist grounds. It’s not the hostility towards religion here that’s attracting atheists - it’s the board’s general appeal to people who are, on average, less respectful towards unscientific beliefs.
Persecuted may be too strong a word, it’s not like we’re hunted down and lynched. However, as has been noted, pretty much no one can be elected as an atheist, so we lack representation in government, and many people treat us with a disdain reserved for actual bad people like criminals.
I thought it was rather obvious that when I wrote “the problem begins when religionists try to shoehorn reason and dubious “evidence” into their beliefs” I was referring to the religionists that actually do this. If you, as a religionist, do not do this, I am not referring to you.
