You’re being whooshed, ITR Champion was no more insulting towards atheists than the article was towards Christians.
I get it now. And feel a bit dumb too.
This article is at best okay.
First, it starts badly. I know he admits this, but his beginning is frankly offensive and is going to upset people. He is particularly going to upset his target audience of conservative Christians (they’re they ones who aggressively witness the most). Many will likely think “typical godless heathen” and stop or read the rest of he article in an angry and offended state of mind and thereby discount anything good he might have to say. Sure you can say they shouldn’t, but one of the first rules of any presentation is know your audience and if he really is writing this for conservative (likely evangelical Christians) I think he does a poor job of this. The last parting shot does this, as well as, does the (seeming?) comparison between Christianity and scam artists.
The second point also has some flaws. I’d change the bolded section to “atheists are not going to accept they need to believe in God” as an evangelical is likely to see his words and have a different take on them. He also, contrary to his previous promise not to, seems to argue against religion with “It’s crazy to buy something you can’t prove exists, isn’t it?” I don’t know if he meant to but thats how it came off to me.
He also comes off as wrong when he says "Did he ever tap people on the shoulder and say “Hey, have you heard the good news about me?" No… Not according to any of the literature I’ve ever read… And I’ve read a lot of it.”, as I would argue that Christ’s preaching was, in part, ‘Hey have you heard the good news about me?’ He just didn’t walk around doing nice things and never preach which seems to be what this gentleman is implying. Now you can say that this is not effective now or Christ did it differently, but to say that Christ did nothing of the sort is going to make some people go “This guy doesn’t know what he is talking about” and dismiss him.
Also I’d say he does, in fact, come off as comparing Christianity to Amway, because the similarities he mentions aren’t techniques. Show me where in, “There’s another organization / concept that those involved are equally as glad to share, because it’s changed their life and they can’t wait to spread that good news. This organization thrives on new members. Each individual collection of people works diligently to get more folks into the stable, because the larger they grow, the more they thrive and the farther they can spread the word of this great, life-changing group. Surely, you know who I’m talking about. It’s called Amway.” you see mention of a technique. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t mean to, but he sure seems to anyway.
Though this article does have some good points I’d say the author needs to read an article titled “How to Write for a Potentially Hostile Audience” and try again.
That’s pretty bizarre. First because being Christian has little to do with celebrating Christmas these days; for many people Christmas is a cultural holiday that involves eating food and giving presents to people. I’m an Atheist and I celebrate Christmas. Second because even if it was important to whether or not you celebrate Christmas, it has nothing to do with whether you have any plans for Christmas.
Here’s how that conversation would go for me.
Aquaintance: Do you have any plans for Christmas?
Me: No.
See how I still managed to not bring up religion?
The only and worst insult you can ever say to anyone: The Truth about Themselves
Just to join my voice to the chorus : you’re wrong.
Yes, believers intellectually know what “atheist” mean, but it’s blatantly obvious that a great many of them don’t get it, don’t “grasp” what it entails.
They’re so accustomed to the prevalence of their religious beliefs, to the idea that these beliefs are extremely special and important that they’re seemingly unable to truly understand that discussing God with an atheist is the same as discussing Athena with a fellow Christian, or that trying to convince an atheist of God’s existence is the same as trying to convince a random Joe of the existence of fairies.
They don’t get that atheists truly, really, don’t believe in God anymore than in Santa Claus. That they mean it. That they don’t say so just to piss off the believer or demean his faith but because it’s true.
I keep on making comparisons with fairies, unicorns, etc… mostly for this reason. Because it’s blatantly obvious for me, like for many others, that many believers need to be remembered again and over again that both are equally real for an atheist : that is, not at all. Even though those believers indeed know it, they don’t get it. And it shows. The first reaction of many believers to a God/unicorn comparison is often along the line of “don’t be silly”. There’s an assumption that making such a comparison is purposefully pretending to be dumb, or purposefully trying to be insulting, or purposefully refusing to argue seriously, or non-purposefully being a complete idiot. The idea that one can seriously equate a belief in Thor with a belief in God, that it’s not just rhetoric, but the actual perception of the atheist is often completely foreign to the believer, even after reading the “atheism” entry in the dictionary.
If some believers really realized that, when witnessing to an atheist, they’re indeed trying to convince him he’ll get free chocolate if he adopts an unicorn, they wouldn’t use the arguments they actually use. In fact, most of them would probably just give up immediately.
The lesson I take from this thread, thanks to the ITR Champ, is that when atheists call Christians “morons” and “idiots,” they’re being arrogant and condescending, but when atheists do not call Christians “idiots” and “morons,” the Christians will resent the subtle implication that they’ve just been called “idiots” and “morons.”
They’ve set up rules for argumentation very nicely. If you want to discuss their core beliefs directly, they explain how you couldn’t possibly understand their beliefs without sharing them, so your positions quite naturally deserve dismissal, and if you want to discuss their core beliefs by way of analogy, they explain how your analogy is flawed, offensively, deliberately and deeply, which makes you into a condescending fool, well worthy of the dismissal they give you so happily. Either way, you get dismissed and they feel all self-righteous and so pleased wiht themselves.
The operative words here are not “idiots” and “morons” in my view, but simply “closed-minded.” If it’s so impossible to explain to Christians exactly what it is about atheism that they don’t understand, even when expressed in the good-natured and friendly way it’s expressed here, the inevitable conclusion is “They’re just not interested in thinking about this.” Which is my conclusion.
As an agnostic I think the article is absolutely correct in every particular. If you shout at me from street corners or preach to me from my doorstep or otherwise throw your faith in my face at every opportunity, even with the best of intentions, the message I receive is that Christians are inconsiderate obnoxious assholes. Why would I want to convert and become an inconsiderate, obnoxious asshole myself?
I used to attend a UCC church some years ago which had a husband-and-wife pastoral team. I started going to help out a friend who conducted the choir and was in desperate need of people who could sing in tune, but I kept going because I saw in those two and in the congregation a group of kind, charitable people who welcomed me without demanding that I subscribe to their belief system or banging on about how great it was that they were Christians and how I should become one of them. In other words, they didn’t have to tell me about their faith because I could see it in them.
If ever I do convert, it will be because I see how belief in Christ makes people better and not because the proselytizers cajoled, harangued, browbeat or blackmailed me into it.
Well, that’s part of the point, Gyrate, that people make decisions because they examine the evidence and are persuaded by what they find persuasive, not what other people find persuasive. That’s why it’s a silly waste of time to try to “convert” a Christian to atheism, which I think very few atheists have ever tried to do, despite all these absurd charges we hear about “atheist proslytyzers” (that spelling is SOOO wrong). I have been accused of being one of those "A.P."s myself here many times, and this puzzles me no end. I have no hope of ever converting a Christian to atheism, and I hope I haven’t wasted a single breath (or letter) in trying to. All we can do is tell people why we believe as we do, not to foist our beliefs on others. But apparently discussing the general subject is verboten for atheists, while aggressive and systematic persuasive techniques are okay for believers–even to label them as such, or to analogize them to other hard-sell techniques, is morally offensive to Christians.
Excellent article. One sentence that I take issue with is this, though:
“And the result of these tactics is a massive swelling of the ranks of the “New Atheist Movement” (Neo-Atheism) in America and abroad.”
I’m not certain that the annoying, ill advised techniques are the single (or even major) cause of the religious shift.
I agree entirely. Annoying, obnoxious Christian twits (to paraphrase somebody) we will have with us always. But the hopeful part, to me, in the rise in open atheists is that most of us get here simply by being encouraged to think, even a little bit, about these issues, and NOT be swayed in one direction or the other by someone’s powerful influence.
I’m going to move this to Great Debates.
That message doesn’t appear anywhere in the article, although it borders gets didactic.
My basic issue with the Dawkins crowd is that they’re too strident and oversensitive. As this post indicates, that also goes applies to the Christians they are responding to. The result is a lot of useless white noise.
He didn’t say that either. At all. Where do you get this stuff?
As to the article itself: the unicorn thing, while attention grabbing, probably doesn’t strike the tone the author wants and gets the essay off on the wrong foot. On this board, we’ve debated the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the validity of this comparison endlessly. What I see is, believers find it so insulting that any message that follows becomes ineffective, even if the IPU is intended only as an analogy and not a comment on the stupidity of faith. The author says “I’m not comparing Jesus to unicorns and steak or Amway,” but a less sarcastic comparison (say, to a telemarketer interrupting dinner) might have served his purpose better, even if it would have made for a less gripping opener.
Beyond that, and maybe this is just because I’ve heard all this stuff before, I’d say the author belabors his point. This piece 3,500 words, and it is much longer than it needs to be. He takes a lot of pains to apologize and explain this and that (“And I do this not because I think you don’t know what the word means, but because I’m fairly certain you’ve not yet realized the concept.”) but a shorter presentation of his ideas would be more effective. He doesn’t need to repeatedly soften the blow this way. He should do it just once, prominently, at the beginning, and then move on. I think it would also feel more respectful if the ideas flowed at a faster pace, because that would come across as being more respectful of the intelligence of his religious readers.
The bottom line is this: witnessing to committed atheists and agnostics is absolutely useless. While it would be more respectful if believers modified their tactics, I doubt it would be any more effective in winning conversions. It might be more productive and help defuse some of the culture war rhetoric, which is a good goal on its own, but that’s different.
At the end of the essay, he writes "Ultimately, salvation has very little to do with saying the words “I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God and died for my sins.” This is a very stupid thing to write. The issue of how you get saved has been a point of debate among religious people for centuries, and as an atheist, he’s got no stake in the issue, so taking a side is divisive and uninformed. His point should be “We’re never going to agree about what happens after our lives end, but we agree in many ways about the right way to live our lives.” Instead, here, he’s telling people how to interpret the Bible. Not a smart move.
Just to add to your list, I don’t believe I have ever heard myself or another atheist/humanist casually comment “God is a myth,” “Praise be to science” or the like when someone sneezes, after an athletic event, in response to a casual greeting, whatever.
Believers so commonly casually utter expressions of their faith in any number of situations which - in my opinion - have entirely no faith-based context. And on nearly every such occasion my response ranges from neutral to the unappreciative end of the spectrum.
Maybe I’m lucky. I haven’t had too many people openly witness to me, though I have had a few. The people who are really in your face are easily ignored/dismissed, because they are usually strangers and are grandstanding. Them, you can just walk away from, or close your door in their faces.
No, what really gets me is when people ask about my religious beliefs (and yes, they do ask, in subtle ways, like, “Do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah?” or, “X is a Jewish last name, isn’t it?”). If I say I have none, I sometimes get, “I’m sorry,” or “I feel sad for you,” or “I’ll pray for you.” I find that so incredibly condescending, patronizing, and provocative that I have to bite my tongue in half not to say something just as offensive right back. Maybe they don’t even know how it sounds, which is why I usually restrain myself, though sometimes it launches a rather pointed conversation, depending on how rude the other person is. And it’s not just Christians who do this: I had a pagan say it to me recently, that she felt sad for me because I “don’t have faith in anything.” :rolleyes:
If people could just keep their snotty little cracks to themselves, on both sides, I think things would be a lot less contentious. It’s rude to bring up religion, period. Don’t do it.
You haven’t read much from ITR, have you?
Excellent.
While I agree the opener is unnecessarily controversial, the message that the author tries to get across is one that I wholeheartedly agree with.
In my closest group of friends, we have several religious people, who are fun to hang out with. However, their dedication towards evangelicalism ranges from the “Show my example” to “Show by browbeating”. The latter of the two describes one of my friends, who is slowly being alienated not because he’s a bad person, but because we simply cannot have a good time when he is subtly hinting that we’re all going to hell.
Oddly enough, when we all first met, he was the one who proposed that Religion be one of the verboten topics… along with politics.
I’ve never heard someone say ‘Don’t be ridiculous, no one is really a Christian, everyone believes there is no god.’
To which the correct response is “I’ll think for you”.
I’ve printed the article to PDF and may make paper copies to distribute in any subway car that gets invaded by morning proselytizers.
(I do not have the vocal amplitude or resonance to take them on via the spoken word)
Does it count as irony if you’re telling people that “I’ll think for you” is correct? 
I too found the article condescending in places; I suspect it is probably because of the writer’s exhortions to be careful about coming into things with a particular frame of mind that his inability to abandon his own for a while is more obvious. I don’t agree with **ITR **in his reading of how offensive this is; but, in the end, the point is that **ITR **is the audience for it (in general, I mean). It has not, in his case at least, been all that effective, and possibly the reverse. We can sit around all day and pat each other on the backs for one of our number coming up with an impressive piece of writing, but if it fails in its goal all of it is so much self-gratification.
I think the most important part of the article (and I believe it’s something i’ve seen ITR, well, champion in the past) is the idea of proseylatization by being. The most visible factor of a belief system is the believers themselves, and the best advertisement is to simply live in a way that follows those beliefs.