I have encountered a lot more people trying to convince me that there is a god then people trying to convince me that there isn’t.
Atheists very rarely knock at your door asking you to read their pamphlet.
Simple. It is in defense of the xtain prostelitizing. I could not give a flying fuck about what you believe in. That is your personal belief, but when xtains are moving forward to take away my freedoms and force their, IMHO BS, morality upon me, I feel that debate is the least violent thing I can engage in.
Nametag,
I know this isn’t GD, but… cite! 
I think, honestly, that what you say there is a conception that really needs to be looked at. I have a really hard time admitting I’m an athiest, because people automatically assume I think that their belief system is wrong and hurtful, and that their faith is harming society. Don’t assume that because someone is an athiest that he or she is anti-religion, anti-faith, or anti-belief.
Amen! :eek: er…rather, yeah! What you said!
Atheists, Theists, a pox on the both of them!
Both fail to recognise that their positions are based on faith, something that is outwith the bounds of proof, be it scientific or biblical. Consequently their arguments are totally pointless and you get just as many obnoxious atheists as you do theists.
This is why I am an Agnostic.
Yes, but my faith is better than their faith. 
Barry
Reminds me of a bumper sticker:
Not in my neck o’ the woods. I can probably count on one hand the number of people I know in this town who acknowledge they’re an Atheist. I can count more churches than Atheists.
I remember the day I became an atheist.
There I was, a happy and contented, rather comfortable, maybe even complacent, agnostic.
I prayed to a speculative god: “God, if there is a god, why won’t you reveal yourself to me?”
And the clouds didn’t part, and a voice didn’t say “I am.”
“Okay, god, if there is a god AND you won’t reveal yourself to me, what should I do, believe in you anyway?”
And the clouds didn’t part, and a voice didn’t say “I am.”
“And if I did believe in you, how shall I believe in you? Should I believe you to be some geezer with a beard? Perhaps as a little blue boy-god? Who are your prophets lord? Which are your sacred texts? Which of the many choices, god?”
And the clouds didn’t part, and a voice didn’t say “I am.”
And on, I permuted, and couched, and rephrased my questions to god, all the time he remained stubbornly silent.
“God, if there is a god [etc…], do you want me to make the best guess that I can based on the evidence revealed to me? I’ll make it easy on you, part the clouds for ‘no’, and do nothing for ‘yes’.”
And the clouds didn’t part, and a voice didn’t say “I am.”
And I thought, “What could that mean? Was that a definitive ‘Yes!’?”
Probably not.
Maybe god was busy?
BUSY? Doing what? Not busy stopping earhquakes, famine, war and disease, that’s for sure.
Maybe god didn’t like me?
A possibility, I had said some pretty snide things about “him” in the past, but in the circumstances the least I could hope for was the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe god was testing me?
Testing what? Testing my free-will? Why? To judge me? For what? For making the best guess I could? Nah! Too bizarre.
I began to suspect very strongly that the most likely explanations were a) there was no god, or, b) god was taking the fucking piss.
Either way, he’d set himself up against me, clearly, and with malice of forethought, either, a) by sending hordes of evangelical loons to preach to me about god’s non-existent self, or impose upon me their arbitrary, unquestioned and unquestionable morality, and generally behave like self-satisfied gits, all in the face of the blindingly obvious (strictly, one shouldn’t blame god for this, but fuck it, god was way past strike three), or, b) well b) speaks for itself.
And I thought “Dammit all, there isn’t a god!”
And the clouds parted, and a glorious light fell all around me. And an immense feeling of understanding grew within me. I had been blind but now could see, a dark veil of superstitionalist, irrational conjecture had been lifted. I had been reborn. Never mind the angst, feel the freedom.
I hope that clarifies my position.
Probably not.
More accurate to say:
I CAN’T KNOW AND NEITHER CAN YOU.
I think it’s pretty clearly demonstrated that atheists are smart, that’s really not open to debate. In my follow-up sentence I wondered if they were perhaps hoping for something unexpected that would be palatable, not that they were stupid. I put that statement out there not because it’s conciliatory, I realize that it isn’t, but because it is how things have honestly looked to me from time to time. I wondered if there was any truth to it. One thing I’ve learned on SDMB is it’s much wiser to be honest than clever (for me, anyway), so I’d rather go ahead and expose my presumptions even if they turn out to be false.
You know, I have to say that I totally agree with all of the grievances people have listed re: religion. This whole lack of separation between Church and state thing is terrifying, the right wing religious groups are just wrong, and I’m right in there with you on fighting them. I just don’t really think of those kinds of followers as religious so much as stupid. I think they’d be equally dogmatic and arrogant in promoting any other group to which they claimed membership. And the leaders are after power, not salvation - the God thing is a blind, in my view. I really resent their claims of ownership and understanding, their religious flag-waving. I don’t think that has anything to do with God.
I found the bumper sticker but had misquoted it. Here’s what it says:
The purpose of the Straight Dope is to dispel ignorant belief and argument.
The vast majority of religious threads begun in Great Debates are riddled with both.
Ergo, posters who have no personal interest in the specific religious beliefs being discussed gravitate toward those threads.
Please note that I wasn’t accusing you of meaning that statement the way I interpreted it, just that it’s how it could possibly be interpreted.
As for the way you meant it, I can only speak for myself here.
I am not hoping for anything of the sort. I am agnostic (with strong atheistic leanings) and quite content to be so. I don’t secretly wish for there to be a god. (In fact, I ardently hope there is no god in the way the fundies conceptualize Him, because then I’d be fucked!)
And, contrary to what some would say, my life is not empty as a result. I think that the vastness of the universe and the complexity of nature is mind-bendingly astonishing. And to attribute this to some guy making all this stuff so that he can feel self-important seems petty and arbitrary. Such a concept, to me, diminishes the wonder of the universe rather than augments it.
YMMV, natch.
I think others have hit it on the head. Athiests DO care about God, or the non existance of God or gods, or anything else similar. I think those that claim to be agnostics don’t really understand the term either. Some might, but way too many people think Athiests say “there is no god(s)”, and agnostics say “doesn’t matter.” An agnostic can believe in god, but confirm that there is no way to know. Or be an athiest and still accept that it cannot be knowable. Not that they cannot decide or any of the other strange translations I have heard.
I agree that there are alot of vehemant athiests, and I tend to stumble down that path on occasion as well. Like others before have said one gets tired of hearing the same crap thrown at us like we have never thought of it that way or something. Or we get chastized, or ostracized by our peers if we let it be known. The only comfort I have is that many more people are accepting of athiests or slowly becoming one themselfs.
A bit of history about myself. I grew up baptist. My parents were hard core southern baptists with a penchant for revivals, bible camps, and any other number of activities such churches like to organize. My father was a Catholic that converted when he met my Mom, and they became religious fanatics. I couldn’t wear shorts, go to school dances, or date. To name just a few restricitons. Not that it bothered me. When I was 5 and baptised, I swore to become a missionary. I wanted to spread the message of a loving an purposeful God, and the only explination for those that didn’t believe was that they did not know of his message.
What a message. I loved him and feared him. I would sometimes pray myself to sleep because I was afraid my salvation wasn’t going to work and I would be thrown into a pit of firey brimestone if I died in my sleep. I would cry, I would tremble, and I would read the bible. When I was between 12-14 sometime I started questioning things I didn’t understand. How could God do this? Why did God do that? Why have life on earth anyway? I asked pastors, visiting missionaries and my parents. Some I recieved answers too that I felt were good ones, and others I didn’t, and was told not to question such things. Faith was constantly compared to sitting in a chair.
By the time I was late into my teenage years I had given up on my denomination. I was disgusted with their theology, and started to slide down inventing my own reasons God could have created the earth, how, and such. I started feeling he Created us so that we could grow up and become lesser gods, full of wisdom and understanding, like him, and he would no longer be lonely. Things went on like this for some time. At the Age of 20 I have given up on Christianity. I felt there was a God, but didn’t know what he was like. So I experiemented, I looked into the Muslim beliefs, Paganism like Druidism, wicca, et al. I found things like Ghosts, demons, Alien abductions, the Bermuda Triangle, etc; all proof that this was a fascinating and wonderful world.
I started reading quite a bit, once I hit around 23-24. I found this website and was introduced into critical thinking. I loved reading the articles and finding stuff that debunked ideas I once blindly accepted. So informative and backed by a logical and concise premise, and a bit of independence researched supported the articles. Slowly my ideas started changing, I became more skeptical, and perhaps I even fell towards a bit of fanaticism myself. I had found some answers to my inquries and nobody else seemed to be understanding. I am a skeptic of many things now, not just preternatural or supernatural things, but of simple things like slanted newspaper articles, erronous magazine articles and even books. Even new scientific discoveries that are in the works I tend to not just believe. I want to understand it before I accept it.
Now, I am nowhere near perfect, but I am not so dense that I think I can change people’s minds about thier beliefs. I think if I were presented with a compelling argument, or some evidence my ways of thinking or my beliefs would change. Who knows. I am under the mindset that the people I argue against WONT change their views at all. Not one iota. So why debate? Because there may be an open minded answer seeker like I once was that is reading a particular debate with some interest might benifit from those posts. Not that I am trying to win a debate. I have never seen anybody, in a debate, change their views. Sometimes you can see their views change over months, after many posts on a similar topic. Never just “Oh, I see you are right, I will change my view right now.”
Really I just seek answers. If there is a God, which I am inclined not to believe in, and he is the Christian God, I DON’T want to even be a part of the religion. That god is dispicable, vile and evil. So yeah, I guess I do care. I fear him actually existing. Read what you will into that.
I am still learning and growing, which is much more than I was when I thought I had the answers. When one feels compelled to find answers to questions they seek. When they think they have found them, they stop. Why look for alternative answers when you have some that you feel are infalliable? Yes, I claim to be an athiest, but I don’t say “God doesn’t exist, under any circumstances”, but more, “I don’t believe in gods because nobody has proposed a system in which they make sense.” Since all I have is my brain to make sense of the world, it is what I must rely upon. Make of THAT what you will. 
Why the necessity of taking a verbal whack at organized religion now and again? It can range from resentment over militant religious intrusiveness* to the mere urge to shed a few bright rays of doubt into the lives of the hopelessly devout.
You’re going to hell for that, you know.
*As to the relative effrontery of unbelievers, I don’t know of any atheistic judges lately who’ve placed multi-ton statues of Madalyn O’Hair in the courthouse lobby (jeez, what a grotesque thought). And there are few nonbelieving columnists to serve as counterpoint to Cal Thomas (bless his pointy little head), who suggested this past week that those who don’t publicly subscribe to the Judeo-Christian Word O’God™ must necessarily worship Greed and Affluence instead.
I think this statement is very important. I get the impression from your previous posts, that you feel people in our camp (athiests, skeptics, rational/critical thinkers) are unimaginative automotons that rely on pure logic to surive. Sort of like Spock, emotionless and dull.
The fact is that we have awe, wonder, excitement, sometimes more than the average person. Right up there with that of an artist. In fact some of us ARE artists as well as rational human beings capaple of logic and reason. We stare at a sunset, marveling at its beauty as shafts of sunlight warm our faces and such a beauty evokes enough emotion sometimes to even cause a tear or two to form. We dream of conquest, of love and hope to fulfill our dreams. We have wonderful social lifes, in which we get along just fine with people, christian or illogical or not.
A snowflake landing on our tongue is just as fun as a thiest experiencing it. An epiphiny(sp?) experienced while gazing at artwork at a museam is not diminished by possessing logic or a lack of believe in gods or the spirtual world.
In fact, with the materialistic worldview that many of us posess, we see the autrocities that humans commit and art just amazes us; that such a base creature full of such horrors can create such things is amazing.
I plan on someday writing. I have much to work on, and lots of time, hopefully, to perfect my skills, but one thing I know is very important. Strong opinions and beliefs are detrimental to my work. Being passionate isn’t, but being able to entertain an idea without accepting it is a very important aspect of being a writer. I can entertain ideas without accepting them. I do so all the time. Sometimes I find myself automatically rolling my eyes and dismissing things off hand because it doesn’t fit into my paradigm. That, I admit, is wrong.
Ok, I am rambling here. Lost where I was going, so I will leave it here. Perhaps you will notice my direction and draw some inferences from it since I can’t seem to remember my point now.
Sorry tdn, I quoted you, but was refering it to fessie. I should have specified.
My perception is that there are a couple of major factors in play.
One is that, at least in the parts of the world I’m most familiar with, non-Christians (atheistic or otherwise) often need to be versed in the tenets of Christianity and the image of the Christian divine, as a matter of some self defense. For some, this expands into an interest in theology (Christian or otherwise); for some, this boils down to a desire to put their beliefs or understandings of the universe in terms that a Christian audience can understand; for some, it is, in essence, wanting to be familiar with the territory so they know from what directions they should be anticipating attack. (This isn’t limited to non-Christians, really; I’ve seen it between members of various Christian denominations, or folks like gay Christians.)
I’m a pagan; I’m better-versed in Biblical stuff than most folks I know (I read exegesis and analysis, in other words) in part because I have a general interest in theology, and in part because I want to know how to protect myself. I want to be aware of the verses that might come up against me, in my religious and personal life, so I can have a response available – much like most of the gay folks I know can cite Leviticus and Romans at the drop of a hat, even though many many most of them aren’t Christian (or, indeed, members of any of the book faiths). If there are verses I can throw back in people’s teeth, I want to know about them; I can’t escape the grounds that they’re using for argument without becoming a hermit, so I need to learn the terrain to be safe.
Besides which, there is a huge amount of culture bound up with religious beliefs; for people who are interested in history, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, art, or current events, an understanding of religious beliefs and the ways in which they manifest is pretty important. For some people with such interests, this will proliferate outwards, whether or not the people involved subscribe to the beliefs in question. For current events discussion, belief is irrelevant, but relevance is often very immediate.
The other bit is that there exist proselytising atheists, out to convert the ignorant savages and make the world a better place. I tend to feel that these are essentially the same people as proselytising theists, out to convert the ignorant savages and make the world a better place. The set of principles is very different, but the impulse looks the same to me; I think it’s just the sort of thing some humans do. (I see it among various pagan communities, too, even the ones nominally devoted to non-proselytising religions. They stick to the letter of the beliefs, most of them, and don’t try to convert others to their way directly – they just explain in painstaking detail why different ways are stupid, ignorant nonsense, brainwashing, controlled by The Man, or whatever else floats their preferences.)
Don’t underestimate self-defense, though. Especially keeping in mind that a lot of people have been personally damaged by religious belief, either in general or of a specific genre, and thus feel a real need to keep an eye on it whenever it shows up to be sure it isn’t going to bite. (And I know I’m not very competent at lurking; I expect that watching can easily lead to participation.)
Thanks for clearing that up. I was about to give you a big ol’ 
.
Having said that, I must take exception to one thing you said in your previous post – having a theist land on your tongue is much more fun than a snowflake!