# Who is both an atheist and a non-sports watcher?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-both-an-atheist-and-a-non-sports-watcher/376856>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 17, 2006, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-both-an-atheist-and-a-non-sports-watcher/376856 "2006-10-17T23:52:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-both-an-atheist-and-a-non-sports-watcher/376856/61 "2006-10-19T19:14:26Z")

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[QUOTE=jsgoddess]  
People believe in a god. They don’t believe in a baseball team. A baseball team exists. A god doesn’t exist. Acting like it’s a choice to like a god is silly. If there’s any choice involved, it’s whether to believe in the god. After that point, liking or disliking the god is irrelevant. People worship gods they don’t “like” all the time.

The analogy isn’t even a stretch. It’s a broken rubber band.  
[/QUOTE]

Why do you think people believe in a particular god? It’s because that’s the one that is familiar, that people believe in in that environment, right? But objectively, there is no reason to choose that one god or set of gods. Allah is not really more likely to exist than Thor. But if you don’t know anything about Thor, you are unlikely to start believing in him. In the same sense, there is objectively no reason to root for a particular sports team. People just do it because that’s what other people do in that environment. And, like with gods, you dont start rooting for foreign teams that noone else likes, even though they might have players on that team who are more deserving of victory.

The analogy is not about existance, its about peoples motive for believing smth. One belief is that it is good if a particular sports team wins, another is that a particular god exists.

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**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2006, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-both-an-atheist-and-a-non-sports-watcher/376856/62 "2006-10-19T20:00:40Z")

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[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]  
Now then… who here is an atheist AND doesn’t have cable television?  
[/QUOTE]

Right here.

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**Author:** ![Nic2004](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@Nic2004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nic2004)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2006, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-both-an-atheist-and-a-non-sports-watcher/376856/63 "2006-10-20T02:02:35Z")

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Count me in. No Gods, no Sports.

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