Unfortunately, there is no way to convey vocal tone over a message board, but be assured, I mean this post in a gentle way and not one designed to antagonize.
Because it is a false hope, one that by design, or simply as a result of it’s intrinsic nature, conspires to perpetuate the ignorance and poverty that plagues those same areas. Worse yet, it creates mindsets and political opinions based upon myth and superstitions rather than reason, logic, observation, or even just a simple searching of one’s conscience. It provides pat, easy answers to difficult questions and discourages growth, exploration and innovation. It creates a sort of comfortable, welcoming numbness of thought and critical thinking. It treats us as ignorant children who need easily digested lies rather than the more difficult, but ultimately vastly more satisfying truth. At it’s worst, it can become predatory on the parish who placed their trust and well being into the hands of an absentee and occasionally abusive parental figure. All because the world and the reality of eventual death is just too complicated, too scary, and the church offered that welcoming apron to hide under.
Yes, it can create a positive community, hope and an environment to stem the worst of humanity’s darker nature; but it does this at the high cost of stagnation. I don’t want to see any person held back by fear. I want to see each person free, truly free to make their choices based upon the best case they can muster, not myths and legends that we outgrew long ago. I will never fault someone for holding an opinion contrary to mine if they can convey how they arrived upon it. It is the nature of humans to disagree, to argue and to be contrary; but we can do this without a pleasant fantasy to give us all the easy answers. At its heart, the position, ( at least for me) is based upon compassion for my fellow man. I want each person to have the real opportunity to excel. Snake-oil salesmen are a nuisance, a distraction no matter how silver their tongues or how good they make us feel.
Eventually, I’m going to learn to stay the hell out of these threads, because they do little beyond piss me off.
It is incredibly arrogant to assume one has all the answers, knows what is best for everyone, and to dismiss a position held by something like 85% of the entire world population as “false hope”. No one actually knows whether there is or is not a God or gods. Religious faith, in and of itself, does no harm and does some measurable good. Hungry people get fed, homeless people get shelter, hopeless people find strength to face another day as a direct result of religious faith.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if God exists. For those that believe, no explanation is necessary. For those that do not believe, no explanation will suffice.
A few hundred years ago everyone knew that earth was flat, and common diseases were caused by demons. Lots of people find the strength to face another day in drugs, alcohol, or other delusions. Why are they wrong, but the religious right? Facts are not voted on by popularity. They are deciphered by objective, repeatable measurements. There is nothing arrogant about facing reality. No one claims to have all the answers, or know what’s best. That is your misunderstanding. Those of us who object to religion, are doing so for the same reason one might object to psychics, door to door scam artists and con-men. There isn’t any need for fantasy when there is so much to discover right here, right now. Take a look at the blanket pronouncements you make in your own statement, yet you have the gall to call us arrogant, and pedantic?
Not acceptable. People who are ignorant should be treated respectfully in a similar manner to children. Would you ridicule a child for ignorance?
More over, I don’t think it helps to try and absolve people of beliefs about things like God which aren’t disprovable. It’s better to focus on concrete physical things which are demonstrable such as the age of the earth.
Is it more arrogant to proclaim to the world that there are no gods and religion is wrong than to proclaim there is a god and your religion is right? Surely the nature of religion is that those who believe in it assume they have more answers and more certainty than atheists.
As for people getting fed and people getting shelter, well people get starved and kicked out of their homes in the name of some faith too. Religion is a double edged sword, and it needs to stop being any kind of sword before I’ll see it a good thing for humanity as a whole.
The moderates are right and wrong.
Wrong: Ridicule is more effective than reason, logic, etc…because it plays to the more primitive, animalistic part of human nature.
Right: Naturally, ridicule is, in the final analysis, an ad hominem argument, which confuses the issue.
The Superman radio show took on the klan in 1940 which is long after the organization had peaked. According to Wikipedia, membership in 1924 was 6 million and was down to 30,000 by 1930. It’s great that Superman took on the klan but by 1940 they were certainly a fringe group.
Satire and parody is a very, very powerful tool. But it has to be used very, very carefully. For one, you have to take great care to not misrepresent the beliefs of the religion you are making fun of. This is why Chick Tracts are only really useful in persuading people who already more or less agree with Jack Chick, because whichever position he cares to demean (Evolution, Atheism, Catholicism) is almost universally perverted into a form that barely resembles its actual beliefs and implications. The pitfall here is that there are so many religions (hell, denominations of a single religion) that you’re absolutely bound to mischaracterize somebody’s position. You can work around this by trying to mock the statistically most common positions, but you have to tread on careful ground.
The other point is that while you may be making fun of their beliefs, it absolutely cannot feel like a personal attack. It’s imperative to make them laugh with you. The goal needs to be not to make fun of religious people for being dumb (or whatever), that’s comedy for people who are already atheists. No, what you need to do is make them think “haha, yeah, that is kind of silly.” I suggest reading “Some Mistakes of Moses” an oft neglected book that makes an absolute mockery of the Biblical creation story, for one. “And God, having used up all the nothing…”. You can hear a few passages in this video. Some good examples of making fun of beliefs can be found in DarkMatter2525’s Youtube Channel. Keep in mind that he also makes fun of fundamentalists and religious people sometimes, so it’s up to you to separate the videos into making fun of beliefs vs people. He is, after all, a channel for atheists, rather than to convert believers.
Overall, I do not think that satire, parody, ridicule, whatever you want to call it is serviceable as a main approach. If you run a pamphlet, I say it should be 98% essay and reason, and 2% comic strip, jokes, whatever. However, I do think that laughter and parody of beliefs can be a useful tool as long as you realize that it will put some people on the defensive.
Where belief in the supernatural has some of the most terrible results, as in some parts of Africa where people are murdered for being believed to be witches for example, ridicule simply wouldn’t work.
I’d consider it an inane comparison, given that Santa Claus is factually known to be a made-up entity for the amusement of children and that, much as you might like to pretend so, the same is not known of God. Ridicule? Assuredly so.
I’ll concede the latter, but I disagree that the first two occur as a “direct result” of religious faith. It’s quite possible to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless without believing that a deity wants you to, or relying on an organization founded on belief in that deity.
His religion is not important, his position as a holder of public office was relevent.
Breaking the ice and allowing the conversation to happen is what the Life of Brian did for a lot of people.
I found out that my Fauther was a deist and that my mother was mad at people for suggesting if you were sick god had “zapped” you for doing something bad.
Those types of converstations would not have happened in a polite, go to church every sunday context.
Actually, as far at the god of Abaraham there is lots of evidence that most of the stories are made up too. And there is NO emperical evidence to say he is real.
We do however know that Saint Nicholas, also called Nikolaos of Myra was a real person.
Former Doper, Bad Astronomer, talks about not being a dick regarding skepticism. In many cases, ridicule falls into the being a dick category. I think that in some rare cases, ridicule should be used, but in most cases, it’s ineffective. That being said, I think ridicule is a tempting tactic. There is the old aphorism: “You can’t convince a person using reason out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.” Ridicule is also the easy choice. Empathy and reason are harder tools to use, which may be why they are usually more powerful.