What Are Your Challenges In Being An Atheist?

Great Debates
181

[QUOTE=1010011010]
If your god commanded you to do something that you knew was wrong, would you obey? If so, why? Or can you tell the different between right and wrong, and refuse?
[/QUOTE]

If you don’t mind my saying, it’s a silly question. If there really WAS an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing entity, how would you know what he/she/it was asking was ‘wrong’? What if ‘God’ asked you to kill a child…but this all seeing, all knowing, all powerful entity knew that by killing that child you would save billions? Say ‘God’ ordered you to wack a young German infantry corporal in 1916…one that really hadn’t done anything wrong? Say he wanted you to kill a Russian child born on December 21, 1879, in the Georgian village of Gori? Or maybe ‘God’ asked you to do something else that you THOUGHT was wrong…but it turned out that it was really the right thing to do if only you knew what ‘God’ knew?

Granted, I don’t think there IS this all powerful, all seeing, all knowing being…but if there was, how would you judge what s/he/it was telling you from your non-all seeing, knowing, blah blah blah perspective? It’s a silly question because a theist DOES believe in that all seeing, all knowing, etc etc being…so they would have a ready answer to give you. And one that you really can’t dispute as there is no way to PROVE anything (this is, btw, why I’m an agnostic :wink: )…

-XT

182

[QUOTE=Lobsang]
Sometimes it bothers me that I’m in the minority of the sane. And that the future for my kids (if I have any) is in the hands of the insane.

But in everyday life my Atheism doesn’t cause me a problem. If anything I get a little more respect for being a rational person.
[/QUOTE]
I must say, i have to agree with Liberal about some of the needless potshots in this thread.

It seems to me that arguing from a standpoint that equates religion with insanity and irrationality is not only a pretty offensive way to begin a discussion, but is contradicted by centuries of demonstrated sanity and rationality on the part of religious people of all religions and denominations.

This thread was started with a view to asking atheists what “challenges” they faced due to their atheism. It seems to me that taking the opportunity to launch broadsides at the sanity and rationality of religious people in general is not really in the spirit of the thread. YMMV.

I originally composed a longer post, complete with historical arguments supporting my position that religion and rationality are not mutually exclusive, but i think i’ll leave it at that for now.

183

[QUOTE=1010011010]
You aren’t a moral person because of what you don’t believe.
[/QUOTE]
You continue to imply that atheism is merely a lack of belief, but it’s not. For many atheists, as i said earlier, it involves specific BELIEFS about the nature of the universe, the primacy of natural forces working according to natural laws, contingency rather than teleology, and the absence of supernatural beings or moral agents external to humans.

184

[QUOTE=xtisme]

If you don’t mind my saying, it’s a silly question.
[/quote]
I don’t think the question is silly and I’ll offer that you’re either over thinking it, or not thinking it enough. In your examples our hypothetical theistic assassin is offing Hitler and Stalin before they’re Hitler and Stalin. So really, there’s a great reason to kill them that God could easily reveal while He’s handing out the the dossiers. Naturally this would raise some additional questions, which brings me to the next point… if you’re going to play the omniscience card, you have to acknowledge that God knowingly and intentionally set in motion the events which would give rise to Hitler and Stalin for the purpose of what, having some random mortal clean up his divine mess via an act of premeditated murder? Why couldn’t God hit our nameless German infantry corporal with an aneurysm? Why not his father? Heck, all He’d have to do is somehow prevent a chance meeting between an Austrian Customs official and his future wife-- no need for killing there at all! Cleaning up the mess preemptively seems like a fine solution for a super being. Oh, and why was there a mess in the first place? Unintelligent design?

Really, I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question. If I may be so bold, I think the point of the inquiry is to determine whether or not a specific believer will surrender his preconceptions of right/wrong in the face of authority. If God said to me, “Kill that guy over there!”, I’d probably be inclined to ask “Why does he deserve to die?” and “Why don’t You do it?” Maybe some people would happily trot off to murder in the Lord’s own name without a second thought. I’m sure all the kids who have been thrown off a pier, drowned in a bathtub, or had their heads smashed-in with a rock might have enjoyed the benefit of such consideration.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Granted, I don’t think there IS this all powerful, all seeing, all knowing being…but if there was, how would you judge what s/he/it was telling you from your non-all seeing, knowing, blah blah blah perspective?
[/quote]
I always sound like a presumptuous jerk when I ask this, but is there any good reason why God shouldn’t at the very least be able to live up to my crummy little moral standard?

185

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
In your examples our hypothetical theistic assassin is offing Hitler and Stalin before they’re Hitler and Stalin. So really, there’s a great reason to kill them that God could easily reveal while He’s handing out the the dossiers.
[/QUOTE]

Why exactly SHOULD an immortal, all seeing, all knowing, blah blah blah being explain in detail what s/he/it wants to their followers? Would you explain to bacteria why you want it to eat oil for you? I don’t really see why such a ‘God’ WOULD explain anything to what is in essence another species.

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
Naturally this would raise some additional questions, which brings me to the next point… if you’re going to play the omniscience card, you have to acknowledge that God knowingly and intentionally set in motion the events which would give rise to Hitler and Stalin for the purpose of what, having some random mortal clean up his divine mess via an act of premeditated murder?
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s really the rub, isn’t it? Of course, it wasn’t MY silly question that sparked this, ehe? We could get into any number of permutations here with a ‘God’ being able to see both into the future and past, being able to self correct things…or hell, maybe deliberately picking possible futures/pasts/whatever for some unknown or unknowable reasons. All that ‘Gods will’ stuff. This further illustrates, IMHO, why it’s such a silly question…you could never KNOW what was in the mind of a being so far outside of human understanding. Just the immortal thingy would make for a being so radically different than us that we couldn’t even hope to understand it’s motives or actions…let alone a being of the purported powers we are speculating about.

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
Why couldn’t God hit our nameless German infantry corporal with an aneurysm?
[/QUOTE]

Well, I don’t know, ehe? Why were the initial conditions of the universe before the Big Bang singularity the way they were, instead of some other way? It’s unknowable. Maybe ‘God’ needed this theoretical follower to do it this way for yet another unknown/unknowable reason? How many angels can dance on the tip of a pin?

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
Really, I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question.
[/QUOTE]

I completely disagree for the simple reason that assumptions have to be made in order to even have the discussion. Depending on the assumptions you make will depend on what logical conclusion you reach…or what ILLOGICAL conclusion you reach. Since a theist and an atheist are going to start off with radically different baseline conditions they are going to draw radically different conclusions…which I, as an agnostic, will delight in informing both of them that the whole discussion is rather silly. Sort of like those theoretical angels dancing on the tip of that pin.

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
I always sound like a presumptuous jerk when I ask this, but is there any good reason why God shouldn’t at the very least be able to live up to my crummy little moral standard?
[/QUOTE]

Because you are a mortal being, who thinks in a way that a mortal being does, who’s ‘moral standards’ are informed and shaped by BEING a mortal, and who has additionally been shaped through evolution and culture. A theoretical ‘God’ would have none of those things and pretty much be impossible to understand from a humans perspective…a bacteria would have a better chance of understanding a gazelle than a human understanding an immortal, all seeing, all powerful ‘God’.

-XT

186

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
As I recall, Cybil Shepherd’s character on Moonlighting was casually atheist - no anger at God or religion or anything, just a shrug of indifference.
[/QUOTE]

Currently, Dr. Gregory House (on the FOX TV show named for him) is pointedly atheist.

187

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I completely disagree for the simple reason that assumptions have to be made in order to even have the discussion. Depending on the assumptions you make will depend on what logical conclusion you reach…or what ILLOGICAL conclusion you reach. Since a theist and an atheist are going to start off with radically different baseline conditions they are going to draw radically different conclusions…which I, as an agnostic, will delight in informing both of them that the whole discussion is rather silly.
[/quote]
This is where I mutter something under my breath about “bloody lazy agnostics” and wander off. :wink:

No offense, but really, if you are going to acknowledge from the outset that any conversation related to God can have no meaningful outcome for anyone, anytime, anywhere, because God is the impenetrably complex shiny black obelisk to our nittering chimpanzees… I can only wonder what you hope to gain by commenting on the matter. It seems like you’re wasting your effort. I prefer to think that, given some sort of agreement with respect to terms, definitions, preconditions, etc. two people who don’t necessarily agree on the topic of religion can at the very least work out something of value like a novel idea or an insight into another perspective. Say for example that we have a discussion about the assertion that “God is super!” For the sake of the discussion, we can allow that God exists and that He is super. Once we’ve quibbled over what it means to be “super”, we can discuss various bits of data which seem to support or refute the notion w/o wandering all the way back to the point of whether or not God actually is at all.

(And while I appreciate the effort, you don’t have to point out the standard religious responses to my questions. I’ve heard them all. My previous post was mostly rhetorical.)

188

[QUOTE=Liberal]
Such disingenuousness is uncharacteristic of you, unless you have redefined “thread shitting” to mean “asking for clarification”. The fact of the matter is that you hosted a Pit thread in your forum that bashed the faithful for two pages before I finally asked my question.
[/QUOTE]

One of the things I have learned here at the Dope came from you. That is that not all Christians are evangelical or fundamentalist bigots. Yet it would seem from this thread that not only are many atheists still in contact with said such bigots, some of us have family who are such. So, would it be possible that an atheist can bitch about such people in their own lives without conflating that to the entire Christian population?

189

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
No offense, but really, if you are going to acknowledge from the outset that any conversation related to God can have no meaningful outcome for anyone, anytime, anywhere, because God is the impenetrably complex shiny black obelisk to our nittering chimpanzees… I can only wonder what you hope to gain by commenting on the matter.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I hope to ‘gain’ nothing really. I’m merely saying that any discussion about something that is essentially unknowable is, well, rather silly. Everything depends on your baseline assumptions…and those will vary wildly depending on your viewpoint.

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
It seems like you’re wasting your effort.
[/QUOTE]

Well, my effort costs nothing…I’m just sitting here drinking and smoking a cigar. If I got one person to nod and think ‘Yeah…discussing God is really silly’ then my ‘effort’ has not been in vain. Even if I didn’t get that nod…well, it really didn’t cost me much.

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
I prefer to think that, given some sort of agreement with respect to terms, definitions, preconditions, etc. two people who don’t necessarily agree on the topic of religion can at the very least work out something of value like a novel idea or an insight into another perspective.
[/QUOTE]

I think discussions of religion say more about the ‘two people’ than it does about the nature of a theoretical deity. So, I agree with you a bit here. Speculation on some theoretical ‘God’ telling some equally theoretical follower to do something immoral…well, to me it smacks of those angels and that pin. It’s interesting…but only insofar as what it says about people in the discussion.

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
(And while I appreciate the effort, you don’t have to point out the standard religious responses to my questions. I’ve heard them all. My previous post was mostly rhetorical.)
[/QUOTE]

Fair enough. I’ll bow out then unless someone quotes me wanting a further response.

-XT

190

[QUOTE=recessiveMeme]
Well, let’s see. My mom is about six inches shorter than me, late fifties, corporeal (with a street address and everything), communicates via phone/email, demonstrates her existence in person several times yearly for birthdays and holidays, enjoys literature and painting, has a sharp wit, cooks a mean turkey…
[/quote]
I feel for your mother. Not one mention of love.

I’m not sure why you believe there is any onus upon Him to convince you of anything. If I’m trying to establish a relationship with two people, and one is responsive and respectful while the other makes ridiculous demands and mocks me, I might favor the former over the latter. Are you one of those people who says “no” but means “yes”? If not, you’ve already told Him to leave you alone, so what are you complaining about?

Hillarious, given that this was originally a thread for you people to lick your wounds.

No. I don’t understand. How can I be both smart and stupid?

191

[QUOTE=FordPrefect]
So, would it be possible that an atheist can bitch about such people in their own lives without conflating that to the entire Christian population?
[/QUOTE]
One would have thought so. But I’m not the only one who failed to infer any differentiation. (See mhendo’s post above.) Even if we give the most generous interpretation to some of the posts (like those from recessiveMeme, for example) we end up with something similar to the more temperate posters on Stormfront who willingly acknowledge that there are some good Negroes among the bad.

192

[QUOTE=vivalostwages]
Currently, Dr. Gregory House (on the FOX TV show named for him) is pointedly atheist.
[/QUOTE]
And a total dick. He is hardly a good role model for anything he might be.

193

[QUOTE=1010011010]
If your god commanded you to do something that you knew was wrong, would you obey? If so, why? Or can you tell the different between right and wrong, and refuse?
[/QUOTE]
I not only would refuse, I would cease to worship Him.

194

[QUOTE=Liberal]
And a total dick. He is hardly a good role model for anything he might be.
[/QUOTE]
Also Bones from, er, bones. Who isn’t a dick normally but is when it comes to atheism.

If it helps any i’m with you on some people’s reactions. Not so sure i’d go with Stormfront analogies, but I don’t generally hang around Stormfront so I don’t know if they’re accurate. I don’t really believe in apologising for other people in a group, but sorry? We’re not all generalists.

195

Thanks, Revenant. :slight_smile:

196

Until I am as free to say I am an Atheist as a Christian, Muslim or Jew or whatever, there will be issues. I deal with a vast number of humans every day. I depend on tips. I would be very curious to see how much my money would drop if I wore a sign that said “I am an Atheist.” Perhaps maybe we don’t get as much in your face challenges because most of us, try to avoid the subject. I’m not a closeted Atheist by any means, but I certainly don’t offer the info up.

My husband is mildly religious. Which means basically that he thinks his beliefs should trump my lack of beliefs. The funny thing is, my lack of belief is always much easier to accommodate than his mild, mild beliefs. Christen my child? Uh, I won that one because he was too lazy to do what it took to get it done. Go to church? Well, I win that one too, mostly because my lack of belief says we get to sleep late and wear comfy clothes all day.

As for shitting on religion in this thread, guess what? I feel pressured by society to keep my mouth shut and put up with all the religious crap out there, if I am NOT free to relax it a bit and let out some tension in a thread titled “What Are Your Challenges In Being An Atheist?” then where the hell can I? As far as I’m concerned, if you have nothing better to do than come in here and tell me how wrong I am for being an atheist, or how perfectly perfect your perfect is, please, don’t let the door hit you on the ass.

Right now my biggest challenge is wondering why the hell the religous nutjobs won’t just leave Atheists alone, not even for ONE STINKIN’ THREAD.

197

At a guess, perhaps it’s because they’re being called nutjobs?

198

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
At a guess, perhaps it’s because they’re being called nutjobs?
[/QUOTE]
Thank Og we nobody went overboard and compared them to members of Stormfront, because that really would be a silly comparison.

199

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Thank Og we nobody went overboard and compared them to members of Stormfront, because that really would be a silly comparison.
[/QUOTE]
It would have been damn near a compliment in the midst of all the rest. What is your feeling about the Christians and their pet being thrown out of the veterinary hospital? You have yet to opine.

200

[QUOTE=Liberal]
It would have been damn near a compliment in the midst of all the rest. What is your feeling about the Christians and their pet being thrown out of the veterinary hospital? You have yet to opine.
[/QUOTE]

  1. Thanks ever so much for the “compliment”-I’ll take it in the spirit it was given.
  2. There are many things I haven’t “opined” on-I didn’t know I was required to respond to everything in this thread. Why don’t you give me a laundry list of everything you think I should respond to, and I’ll get right on it.