People take that "fighting ignorance " stuff seriously? It’s just a marketing phrase.
So, I’ll just refer to Jenny McCarthy as “fanatic scum”, the same way I refer to Christianity’s “demon god”. That’s being evenhanded.
In other words, “not giving special treatment” doesn’t mean “treating with kid gloves”.
I’m not setting a trap for you. Your brother is not being intellectually dishonest - he’s interpreting his experience in good faith (pardon the pun). His conclusion is that he had a religious experience. You find the notion ridiculous, and (presumably) you can discuss it with him intelligently and respectfully in person or on a message board. I don’t see the virture in being mean to people. What’s the point? You’re much more likely to win an argument if you’re firm with your argument, but kind to your opponent.
Probably because in its more mainstream varieties, religion is not characterized by an overt and ceaseless struggle to refute elemental facts of the natural world by expounding from a collection of ancient scriptures. A great many of the religious believe in the essential narrative of their faith, like the Resurrection for Christians, but do not consider Genesis or its analogues in other faiths to be true, literal history. It’s one thing to believe you have a soul and to take comfort in the idea of an afterlife, and AFAIK these believers are usually not irrational or even particularly less intelligent than anyone else. The essential narrative is not deemed to contradict a rational understanding of the material world, and for the most part doesn’t. The premise of the existence of Heaven or Hell does not contradict our bona fide knowledge of the world because the mainstream believer doesn’t attempt to force one into the other.
It’s a mission statement. Of course it’s a marketing phrase. It does probably lead to attracting more than an average amount of atheists.
People might get a laugh out of this - or maybe not. I told a friend of mine about this board and how there are many atheists here. She said “are they all the militant type who hate Christians?”
BTW, she is not Christian , she is agnostic.
You raise an interesting point, and I’m not sure what my criteria would be.
One thing I would say is that you don’t have to show respect for anyone, but if you sincerely believe the person is doing real harm, insulting them and questioning their character is not going to be an effective measure of change. If you really want to get through to someone you have to approach them on their own terms. Even when people try to prove religion through empirical means, their belief is still rooted in emotion, so refuting the ‘‘evidence’’ won’t change anything about their belief.
That’s sort of the most important point for me: Does the hostile approach work? I see no evidence that it does.
I’m not saying being nice always works either. I had an issue with a particular old friend on Facebook who made post after post slamming atheists and other religions. I tried to be nice, but she didn’t get it. She didn’t understand why I would ‘‘take so personally’’ a claim that agnostics are incapable of real love, for example. So I had to stop interacting with her.
The reality is a lot of very religious people are strongly reinforced through their church, family and social network. You and your skeptical input is most likely an anomaly and barely registers on their radar in terms of changing their belief system. In fact, a lot of churches focus extensively on The Skeptic and How to Handle Him, and a lot of people are reinforced by Bible quotes about those who maintain faith in the face of challenges to their faith will be rewarded in heaven. The entire system is designed to reinforce and perpetuate belief. Comparatively you are a drop in the bucket.
Sadly that’s probably also the case for Jenny McCarthy–she now has a whole movement of people telling her how right she is. So you have a choice. You could be rude to her thus guaranteeing that she will never take you or anyone with your position seriously, or you could try to understand where she’s coming from, and plant a seed. Maybe a seed that won’t come to fruition for many years, maybe a seed that will be ignored forever. But either way you can walk away knowing you did your best.
I’m a bad person for this argument, because I believe in a construct called God, which is a very different thing than believing that God exists. But I consider myself a theist (actually a Deist) - the atheist label works too, though and I know a lot of people would label me as such. Which is part of the reason I get cheesed off with the generalizations on the IPU and what “religionists” believe - there are a lot of shades of theism.
So from the start, your first premise is off, and the rest of the assumptions are wrong and the logic doesn’t hold. Its sort of like when those of certain religious beliefs start from the premise that morals come from God. Obviously they don’t. Neither you or I get our morals or ethics from God.
Because taking apart movies to understand what makes them tick is fun? And because it’s particularly fun if the movie is broken in a variety of ways because it highlights how storytelling mistakes can damage the experience of the audience?
Wrong. Most Americans are Creationists. The Christians who “struggle to refute elemental facts of the natural world by expounding from a collection of ancient scriptures” are the mainstream. In America at least, and this is a mainly American board.
They lost any chance of me following their advice when they were bashing me.
Well, the bolded bit is kind of the key point isn’t it? You don’t like it, you are taking personal offense, whether or not you think you “should.” In fact, it’s not an entirely unexpected reaction on your part, either. If I call your Mom names, I may have a right to expect that you won’t respond by punching me in the face, but it’s not reasonable to expect that it won’t sting you at all. Or to tell you that it shouldn’t sting you at all.
And yet I’d respect her wishes. If she disapproved, I would “defend her honor,” as it were, but if she doesn’t care about insults directed at her, then I have no grounds on which to take any action.
Uh . . . what? This is the internet. It’s not a funeral. We have porn and videos of people being stupid and ranting and witnessing and arguing of stupid shit. That’s what we do here. The proper behavior at a funeral is in no way informative of the proper behavior on an internet message board.
You know Czarcasm, I get you’re trying to make a point with this ‘it’s insulting they’re telling us we’re going to hell’ schtick to put the shoe on the other foot, but you have to find another venue pal, no ones at this stage.
If you don’t believe in hell how can you pretend to be offended by them telling you you’re going there?
It really doesn’t matter anyway, I know you’re going to Narnia.
Eh, if someone says “I hope you get raped to death” you don’t think that there’s any reason to suspect that their hope is going to somehow make you any less safe, yet they are wishing the most vile, hateful thing on you, and the sentiment is enough to be disturbing.
So your moral code is derived the same way an atheist derives his moral code - from ethical reasoning. if you choose to consider our rights as coming from god fine, it makes no difference to say this or that they come from our being rational beings.
I think the logic holds fine for any theist who claims morals come from god.
If your god is totally unfalsifiable, and if the universe with your god is equivalent to a universe without him, but you feel comfortable believing, well and good.
Which brings up a point relevant to the OP - many self identified theists here are actually deists or pantheists. I think these numbers are even more out of whack with the country as a whole than the number of atheists. Maybe we should have a thread, “how come so many deists wound up here?” Actually I know - it is a far more supportable position than standard theism.
In regard to the confrontational tone some Atheists take to Believers, remember that religious people are making factual claims with no evidence.
If someone was making a factual claim that Santa exists he’d be asked for evidence or laughed off the stage. But religious people will claim things about reality that simply have no evidence for them and get huffy when challenged.
In our society the religious get huge latitude in their beliefs and aren’t asked to hold them to any kind of standard. When actually held to the standard of everything else on Earth they claim they’re being oppressed. It’s not oppression, it’s reality kicking your fantasy in the balls. It’s supposed to suck when you are being asked for evidence and can’t provide any.
Not every person who believes in God says it’s a “fact” the he exists. They just believe he does and they don’t worry about proof. I don’t have a problem with that. For the most part it does me no harm for people to believe in God, especially friends and relatives.
Believe it or not, it does offend me when someone follows a nonsensical belief to the point that they actually believe that I DESERVE to burn in Hell for all eternity.
It offends me.
It scares me.
And sometimes it fucking astounds me that you don’t get it.