But this also very rarely happens. At least in GD. What does happen is arguments or purported evidence for the existence of God are compared to equivalent arguments for things that everyone agree do NOT exists, and one asks “what sets your arguments for god apart from my hypothetical arguments for this thing which we all agree does not exist” or something similar. And if they can’t answer that, then the argument must be agreed to be invalid, since it has been showed capable of proving the existence of something that doesn’t actually exist. This is a line of reasoning, and it requires something absurd and implausible for the comparison, but by no means is it the same as referring to God as a sky pixie.
I still don’t know what you;re refrring to then. Could name any specific examples of our conceits of being reasonable and skeptical on this board being fraudulent?
I’m not an angry person, but you’ve been making hostile and sanctimonious attacks on atheists on this board without being willing to back them up. Why does it make me “angry” to ask you to support your own hostile allegations?
I agree this is an appropriate appeal to the IPU. But it’s often used more broadly than that.
What the hell does that have to do with atheism/theism?
According to the polls atheists are one of the most distrusted groups in America. We’re regarded as not real Americans, and as evil.
I thought Democrats were not real Americans? But then again, most atheists are Democrats.
Sure. You really need examples of people who are religious being dismissed as crazy, delusional, evil, stupid? Whatever
Crazy:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12593853&postcount=4
All should be murdered:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=566782&highlight=religious+evil
Mocked for daring to express positive religious sentement:
I know there are better examples, but I’m not sure what’s up with the search function - no matter what I pick under the search menu for posts within last X years it’s only showing the most recent thread with the term I searched for.
People do call God a “magical sky pixie” but I think this is in reaction to the special treatment of God in our culture, special enough so that misusing his name used to be against the law. The IPU was invented exactly as you said - I was in alt.atheism during her early days, but theists get terribly bent out of shape by the IPU as an example. No one calls God an IPU, but saying that the argument for God and the argument for the IPU are fundamentally equivalent gets you called all sorts of names.
Dawkins’ major point is the rejection of the special pleading that theists use. Just acting on pure belief with no or even against evidence gets you considered a chump in most aspects of life, but in religion it shows you are special. No one rejects that theists have the personal experience they claim - we just reject the contention that these say anything except stuff about our internal mental states. We see an oasis in the desert for perfectly good reasons, and saying that the oasis is not there, but is a mirage, is not denying the experience. Attempts to provide ways of testing these experiences get rejected out of hand.
Actually, I asked for a link to “the magical thinking thread,” whatever that is, but whatever. I’ll look at these.
The first is DT, who I’ve already acknowledge to by atypically antangonistic to religion around here (albeit, this is not a particularly egregious example), the other two OPs are both disagreed with vehemently by board atheists, so they don’t really support your contention. Just the opposite, actually.
This may come as a shock, but I (and I assume many other atheists) consider taking as absolute fact the notion of heaven, or hell, or resurrection, or any number of religious myths as entirely childish.
Why do the religious get a pass?
I wasn’t atheist when I joined; I was a liberal UCC Christian. I never sensed hostility here toward Christians or any other religion. A little condescension, yes. I personally feel a bit of anger about being brainwashed most of my life simply because someone is scared of some irrational afterlife punishment. . . but I’m not hostile toward Christians themselves.
The most hostility I see is between political philosophies or people who do or don’t declaw their cats.
BTW, I don’t post on any other board where atheists are in such high numbers unless it’s related to atheist issues. It feels good to come here, like home.
Except that to believers, any disagreement at all is typically regarded as persecution, as already noted in this thread. Anything less than a chorus of praise for religion is intolerable. The fact that my opinion is a minority one doesn’t matter; the fact that the mods allow people to express disdain of religion at all is what offends them.
So really, it’s not a matter of a lack of examples of hostility, it’s just your refusal to acknowledge how hostile the examples are.
Grown-ups shouldn’t go out of their way to be hostile and offensive, either.
So it’s okay if I insult your Mom in front of you as long as she laughs it off?
I’d also like to point out that not all spiritual people (and in fact, very few of them, here on this board) are fundamentalist Christians angling to take away your legal rights and take offense at the mere existence of atheism, so engaging everyone as if they are is disingenuous and irrational.
Actually, IMO, yeah. I may not like it, but if she doesn’t care, who am I to say otherwise?
And which is the greater problem on this message board? I submit that both are extremely rare.
Does anyone else besides Dio feel that I’ve made hostile and sanctimonious attacks on atheists on this board?
Sure. Countless threads have sprung up over the years on the subject of rape and how it shouldn’t be viewed as worse than any other crime. I have posted extensive citations from reputable scientific journals reflecting the best evidence in the field of psychological trauma indicating that rape is in fact more traumatic than any other trauma we know of–significantly more traumatic. I’m no expert on statistics, but these are damn good cites – cites where statistical countermeasures were used in meta-analysis to calculate that the probability of study selection bias is extremely low. These citations are always summarily ignored. As in, people just go right on arguing, as if these citations were never even provided.
This is but one example of many. After a while you just stop wasting time posting cites. If it’s not obvious to you that many people on the Straight Dope express hostility toward religious members, I know, Dio, that you of all people are not going to be convinced by any links provided. You believe what you believe and that’s it. I’m not going to waste my time turning this issue into a multi-thread clusterfuck just because you see things differently than I do.
By and large, the people who post here use data to support their worldview, but they don’t use data to shape their worldview. So the claim that there are so many atheists on this board because of its steadfast commitment to skepticism and the scientific method rings decidedly false to me. It’s more like people constantly trying to present facts to justify their position. Which is better than, say, YouTube, but in no way like actual science.
I am an atheist, so it wasn’t just once, and since I have never advocated the mistreatment of religionists I would thank you not to question my standards.
Note: All the "you"s in this post will be the general you, not anyone in particular.
Would you say that this board is more or less hostile than an average internet community towards people who believe in:
Nasa faked the moon landing
Anti-vaxers
Young Earth Creationism
9/11 truthers
New Age medicine
etc?
Of course this board is more skeptical and rational than average. The nature of the purpose of the board selects for people that appeals to. Where are all the people here sticking up for the poor abused anti-vaxers or 9/11 truthers?
Oh, but your sacred cow is special, and shouldn’t be treated like those other silly beliefs, right? Our society has a special double standard for religion - sure, you can bash all of those other bullshit primitive beliefs - but religion is a sacred issue that is above any critcism, right? So if a rational person on this board treats a belief in a big bearded guy in the sky the same way they treat belief in the loch ness monster, then it’s a hostile community who’s bigoted against the religious.
The persecution complex that religious people have is obnoxious. You rule real world society. Lots of people would rather vote for a child molester to become the president than an atheist. It’s you who persecute us because we’re willing to admit that everyone is a fucking fully grown adult still believing in Santa.
So we have a community dedicated to wiping out ignorance, which attracts more intelligent, skeptical, and rational people on average - and boo hoo, it doesn’t always bow down to the automatic sacred status religion receives most places.
Quite frankly, you people have it too good here. There are lots of people who out of politeness and out of the general special status we’re all trained to give religion, not many people are willing to be openly hostile towards your nonsense. You deserve no better than anyone else here who has their pet irrational belief, but you get far better. Most people here aren’t openly hostile towards religion until you start getting into specific factually wrong claims. Just being a normal religious person does not get you the same sort of ridicule that being a 9/11 truther would here, not even close.
The community of this board on average treats bullshit beliefs with hostility. The fact that you expect differently is only because our society is setup to protect your sacred cow from the same scrunity, and so you think you’re persecuted if anyone here refuses to buy into that idea. Even still, even the most ardent believers here are treated far better than any atheist amongst a religiously-oriented community.
Edit: I’m sure you’ll now cite my post as an example of hostility towards religion. I’d just like to point out that I only do it in threads that specifically debate issues of religion, where it’s perfectly relevant. I don’t follow people to other threads saying “well you’re a religious person so you’re an idiot anyway!” or anything like that. Nor do I think religious people are necesarily bad or dumb in any particular case. But the actual belief itself - just like someone who believes in the other demonstrably silly beliefs I mentioned above - should not be given a special status and should be treated in a hostile way on a board dedicated to wiping out ignorance.
And I’ve seen more “you’ll get yours” from believers here towards atheists than calls for believers to be executed. In fact, that single thread from mutantmoose is the only time I can recall the latter being called for here. Although I have seen believers lie and claim that I’ve called for it.