# Resolved: Atheists are wrong. What now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 22, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949 "2011-07-22T04:53:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/41 "2011-07-22T18:04:11Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > The only way I can reasonably postulate the hypothetical of this thread is that god suddenly decides to stop purposely making the universe look exactly as if it’s 100 percent natural, and simply enters the fact of its existence into our heads. Assuming an omnipotent god that would not make mistakes doing this, an atheist would be a person who denies a fact he or she knows is true. > > These people would simply be treated as liars or as insane. Or as someone who doesn’t trust creatures that can mysteriously stick things into our head. Professor X could do that with Cerebro, but he’s not a god, he’s a comic book mutant. Innumerable Evil Government Conspiracies with mind control satellites can do that too, but they aren’t gods either. Mind control doesn’t make you a god. ---
**Author:** ![PandaBear77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@PandaBear77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PandaBear77)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/42 "2011-07-22T18:05:51Z")
> [@The\_Conqueror\_Worm](#): > > So calling all you theists, whatsoever your ilk, what are you going to do with the unbelievers? Please try to answer truthfully. I find agreeing to disagree works. If that doesn’t work, they’re easy to ignore. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/43 "2011-07-22T18:10:36Z")
> [@PandaBear77](#): > > I find agreeing to disagree works. > > If that doesn’t work, they’re easy to ignore. Unless they set you on fire or something, that makes ignoring them harder. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/44 "2011-07-22T18:14:26Z")
> [@The\_Conqueror\_Worm](#): > > So calling all you theists, whatsoever your ilk, what are you going to do with the unbelievers? Please try to answer truthfully. Please describe the deity that “all those theists” believe in. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/45 "2011-07-22T18:24:30Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Please describe the deity that “all those theists” believe in. Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/46 "2011-07-22T20:17:09Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > As such, arguments like “most or all varieties of theists are also still wrong” simply doesn’t make sense, because it isn’t a matter of black and white, but a continuum of distance from that absolute truth. Some may be closer or farther, but any line that determines right or wrong is either relative to the specific circumstances or completely arbitrary. And, moreso, to that end, I also think that, even in a universe where god necessarily exists, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that one person could believe he exists but be so much farther from the truth in so many other important areas, that he’s relatively more wrong than someone who doesn’t believe in God, but is closer in those other areas. For example, assuming that WBC or terrorists still exist in this proposed universe, while they’re correct on the existence of God issue, I think they’d still be farther from the absolute truth than a moral atheist. But theists, for the most part, are not deducing the existence of a god from evidence, they are claiming direct contact with a god (either physically or through inspiration) and that this direct contact is what sets the tenets of the religion - at least the important ones. Joseph Smith didn’t deduce the stuff he described, it was given to him on plates. Hundreds of years ago more or less logical arguments for gods kind of made sense, though they were all God of the Gaps arguments. Tom Paine used one. Today they don’t. Maybe five people come up with five different values of pi, and maybe 3 are pretty close, but they are all wrong if they refuse to change them based on mathematical or experimental evidence. The one closest is just as wrong as the one furthest away. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/47 "2011-07-22T20:28:14Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Your premise is flawed. In this imaginary world where gods exist, people who would become atheists here would be theists instead. To do otherwise would be like someone not believing in _chairs_. I assume they’d be treated the same way as Flat Earthers or people who believe the moon landing was faked, i.e. with much rolling of eyeballs. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/48 "2011-07-23T06:04:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Unless they set you on fire or something, that makes ignoring them harder. We’re saving that until after dinner. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/49 "2011-07-23T06:41:10Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > “Yeah, I know we can’t seen any evidence that there is a God, but there might be _something_, and it is outside the universe so we can’t observe it. I don’t know what it does, or any of its characteristics, and I can’t tell you what would be different about the world if it didn’t exist, or how we would know if there were two of them, or a billion of them, but I know there is _something_.” I can think of a whole bunch of "believe in something"s that don’t match the artificial annoyingness of your description. And I can imagine any belief about such a large topic as being hard to articulate. “Belief in something” can be as simple and reasonable as the honest acknowledgement that outside the boundaries of our known playground (larger than our universe/history; small enough for quantum effects), common sense ceases to be useful and even conservative theories are still fantastic sounding. It’s probably not the domain of a deity, but whatever reality looks like at those scales must be worthy of wonder. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/50 "2011-07-23T12:25:17Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > I think you’re taking a rather black and white approach to religion and it’s sort of missing the point. It is a search for truth that is not meaningfully able to be studied by science. So, sure, one could say that anyone who isn’t exactly right is wrong, but it’s more meaningful to try to determine the degree of truth. > > Consider that, in this proposed universe, some deity absolutely exists. Even if that being isn’t necessarily omnipotent, that it is powerful enough to create that universe it is also likely to be something that is difficult or impossible for the human mind to grasp. As such, an absolute understanding of the truth of the nature of that being is a standard that just doesn’t make sense. Instead, it is a quest for the best comprehensible approximation. And, like any multidimensional optimization problem, it’s quite possible to have local maxima, or even if multiple people are climbing toward the global maximum, it’s entirely possible to approach it from different angles and thus have seemingly very different approximations, from a parameterized approach, and yet all be roughly equidistant from the global maximum. > > For a simple one dimensional analogy, imagine that we are in the search for pi. To claim that anyone who cannot unequivocally name every decimal is wrong is missing the point. However, we can continually get better and better approximations of it. It is that latter quest that is meaningful, particularly since it is provable that we can never know every digit as it is an irrational number. > > Specifically to the OP, there’s nothing that can be done. There are a number of things that are proven a hundred times over that still have people that don’t believe them. For instance, there are still people who believe the Earth is flat, granted there’s very, very few of them, but they are out there. Even if we can say that the existence of God is proven to that level of certainty, we can expect those sorts of results. But even still, I don’t believe it’s possible. > > Imagine, for instance, that God came down, performed unexplained miracles directly in the the presence of every person on Earth in some way. The thing is, there’s no way to eliminate the possibility that it’s some sort of massive hoax, that there’s some supremely advanced aliens playing tricks on us silly Earthlings, or that any particular observer has gone completely mad and it’s all a delusion. Even in circumstances where those are extremely remote posibilities, if there’s even a one in a million chance that any of them is possible, over the seven billion people on this planet, we’ll still have a few thousand that don’t believe. > > But what should be done, is nothing different than we are now. Again, as I tried to point out above, I don’t believe that it’s about being right or wrong, but about trying to discover that truth. To that end, forcing beliefs into the minds others can ultimately be destructive, especialy if they don’t align with their personal experiences. It will create cognitive dissonance and possibly result in stalling or even regression. That said, though I do believe that the absolute truth includes the existence of a creator, I don’t think progression toward that holding that belief is necessary to progress toward that truth from an arbitrary point. The dimensionality of that space is so massive that it’s simply impossible to make that sort of judgment. > > That said, we should still try to learn and grow and we should share our ideas freely with eachother and hope that others can learn and grow from our experiences and that we can learn and grow from theirs. To react to their beliefs with aggression or coercion rather than in love, even when we have absolute certainty that they are wrong, will likely do more harm than good. I am still trying to find out who created the place for God to exist! In order for anything( or one) to exist he first has to be in existence! ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/51 "2011-07-23T13:33:58Z")
I do understand how you say we are all part of the universe trying to experience itself, and would basically agree with that, and think it’s a pretty darn good realization. What to do with the unbelievers? Absolutely nothing. They too are part of the universe and they will one day seek out their place. Till then they are fiercely independent of it, they are as a child throwing a tantrum, and you just have to let them be and discover things on their own. And also trust that as they will come to realize that they really want and need to be part of the universe, the universe, as a living being, also needs, longs and loves that child trying to get them to come home. Now the situation is a bit different if they are open to love, which means they are open to their place in the universe as part of it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Controvert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@The\_Controvert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Controvert)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/52 "2011-07-24T05:10:12Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > This. If [Amaterasu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaterasu) descended to earth and proved to everyone that she exists, I’d willingly believe in her and join in her worship. (Unless, of course, she made it clear that she only welcomes worship from Japanese people, in which case I’d believe in her and politely ignore her.) > [@MrDibble](#): > > atheist vs theist are not really the [only options](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misotheism) available. You end up with one guy worshiping a Japanese god and another guy worshiping a Japanese soup. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/53 "2011-07-24T05:25:19Z")
> [@The\_Controvert](#): > > You end up with one guy worshiping a Japanese god and another guy worshiping a Japanese soup. Miso confused now. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/54 "2011-07-24T05:39:16Z")
> [@The\_Controvert](#): > > You end up with one guy worshiping a Japanese god and another guy worshiping a Japanese soup. Or a Japanese monster _and_ a Japanese soup! And their holy chant will have the chorus of: _Gojira Wonton-amera…_ ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/55 "2011-07-24T07:14:30Z")
Hanging’s too good… ---
**Author:** ![pikey\_pete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pikey\_pete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pikey_pete)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/56 "2011-07-28T21:20:47Z")
I’m a post theist. when I realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves, religion and belief in a ‘higher power’ became irrational in the extreme. (if I may borrow from the far more eloquent William Melvin Hicks.) We are our own higher power. ---
**Author:** ![Snag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Snag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snag)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/57 "2011-07-29T21:51:01Z")
Insist that the real God(s) reveal Him(Her,Them,It)self(lves) in a clear, completely unambiguous physical manner to them and everyone else so that there are no excuses for not believing in the real deity/deities. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/58 "2011-07-29T22:10:18Z")
> [@Snag](#): > > Insist that the real God(s) reveal Him(Her,Them,It)self(lves) in a clear, completely unambiguous physical manner to them and everyone else so that there are no excuses for not believing in the real deity/deities. And how do we tell the difference between the One True God and something just or nearly as powerful that isn’t? If three Gods show up and each claims to be the One True God, what then? ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/59 "2011-07-29T22:43:55Z")
Celebrity Death Match. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949/60 "2011-07-29T22:56:24Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > Celebrity Death Match. “And Jehovah _goes down!_ Odin pulls off the win for this round using a surprise blow with Gungnir to the crotch! And as a theological bonus, we can verify that Jehovah _really is_ a guy! Well, was.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-atheists-are-wrong-what-now/589949.md?page=4)