Irrelevant. Atheism is disbelief in gods, period. Any other beliefs the atheist in question may have are not atheism, but something else. So unless you can provide evidence for gods, what I said is correct.
I think the poster meant “each one of us humans is surely wrong about some things”, so their statement was much like saying “all people named Fred are wrong about some things.” Technically true, but not relevant to the topic, except as a reminder to keep some humility in the conversation.
Yes. The topic of debate is very seldom limited to the question “Is there, or is there not, a God?” - it will often involve interpretation of actions and statements made by others, and the motives behind them - and this may be spectacularly off-target, regardless whether you’re right or wrong on the core topic.
NB: I’m not saying this problem is exclusive to anyone - atheists and theists are all prone to miunderstanding or mischaracterising their opponents.
To the OP: I think people should be free to believe whatever they want, so long as it doesn’t effect anyone else. If they ask my advice, I’ll give my opinion. If it’s someone close to me, I’ll try and nudge them away from doing something that I think is stupid, but again, ultimately, it’s their choice.
However, I must stress the “doesn’t effect anyone else” point. Indoctrinating kids into your wacky beliefs is just darn creepy. Most people aren’t religious because they “found the truth”. It’s because they were taught to believe in magical sky-men as toddlers and anything you learn at that age is a pain and a half to get over. While not terribly harmful, in general, like I said it is a really really creepy thing to do to children, and I think that any atheist does have a responsibility to call indoctrination into question.
I’m not an atheist. My spiritual/religious beliefs do not fit in a neatly labeled category.
However, I like what I read once about a Christian trying to explain Christianity to a native American Indian.
The Indian listened to the entire explanation and then said:
We have those stories too. We tell them to our children.
The implication being that adults outgrew the need for them.
Something to think about.
Of course not. I’m not saying you should hide it. Just don’t scream at them and such. You handled it quite well. It’s fun to shock them a little.
Well, yeah, except most Indians weren’t atheists either.
But that’s not about her belief in pixies. That is her behavior in response to her belief. She could believe in pixies and still not spend all her money on milk.
This is analogous to grandma giving away all her life savings to some televangelist. Most mainstream religious people would tell her she shouldn’t do that and try to stop her. In fact, you’d have more success convincing her that God doesn’t want her money than saying that God doesn’t exist.
Of course, you could get old and start sending your life savings to an atheist organization too. Would that justify someone challenging your belief in atheism? Would doing so make you likely to listen to them and stop sending the money?
Religion also leads to good behavior. And atheism can even be said to lead to harmful behavior too.
Challenge the behavior.
The effects of religion are overwhelmingly negative. And people motivated by religion by nature are never truly “good”; they are making their decisions according to a fantasy, and their actions therefore only have good results by luck, not intent.
Atheism doesn’t lead to anything. It’s an absence.
OK, but when the challenge to harmfull behaviour is met with irrational mumbo jumbo, that the believers will believe due to their indoctrination, then what do you do?
By then it is too late.
Best to nip it in the bud.
I wouldn’t say so. You just notice the negative parts.
Really? So a church going out and helping the homeless or whatever is luck?
Absence can lead to plenty. Absence of morality (which is what religious people would call atheism, but I’m not) can lead to bad things, for instance.
Then you have two choices:
If the behavior has little to do with you, mind your own business.
If you find the behavior to be morally wrong, illegal, or encroaching our your rights, you continue to challenge it as appropriate, ignoring the mumbo jumbo. For instance, someone trying to bring prayer in schools should be challenged with the First Amendment.
Someone who has “received personal commands from God” doesn’t need that very many followers to bring civilisation to a screeching halt.
There’s plenty examples from history.
The recent happenings in Lybia and Cairo only serve to underline this.
Best would be if these miscreants wouldn’t have a pool of recruits to begin with.
And that pool is the same pool your “benign believers” swim in.
No, the evidence is that the effects of religion are negative; example. And at any rate, the damage done by religion is so enormous that it simply isn’t possible that it does an equal amount of good, much less more good.
Yes; if their religion said differently they’d just as cheerfully be chucking those people into sacrificial volcanoes, if the law allowed. There’s no genuine morality or compassion involved, just dogma and the desire to spread the religion. Religion is incompatible with morality; morality requires acknowledging reality, not denying it.
That doesn’t change what I said.
Atheists should understand and support the right to believe whatever you want instead of simply joining the war against everyone else’s beliefs. The answer to those who want to ruin civilization is civilization.
You scare me more than they do.
That was slick(not). What bad things do you think atheism might lead to?
It’s simply ridiculous to claim that religion has no positive results in society or life.
That’s impossible to measure, but really irrelevant.
Again, somewhere, some religious person is saying:
"the damage done by atheism is so enormous that it simply isn’t possible that it does an equal amount of good, much less more good.
[/QUOTE]
That’s absurd.
You clearly are playing an enormous straw man game. You’re not interested in what religious people actually believe, just what you want to think they believe. That’s the exact same sin (no pun intended) that some commit against atheists.
When you approach someone and characterize their beliefs falsely, you’ll get nowhere fast trying to convince them of anything. They’ll simply inform you that you’re wrong about the facts, and they should know their beliefs better than you do. So then the debate will be over, unless you choose to stop doing that, which I doubt you will.
So there will be no real discussion, just you yelling and treating them exactly the way you don’t like them to treat you.
I guess I wasn’t clear enough - I wasn’t saying atheism leads to bad things, rather, the absence of something can.
Since atheism is the absence of religion, what bad things could the absence of religion lead to?