How are these atheists finding you to proselytize to you?
You’ll note that I said that most atheists aren’t proselytizing. What is the circulation of the atheist newsletter you referred to? I’ll bet that only a very tiny, tiny fraction of atheists subscribe to such a thing.
Message boards are a example. Note that two people here shared the idea that Churches cost us $80 billion in lost property tax revenue- which is false, even if you accept that bad study. See- 'churches are bad", and many other similar posts here.
And even when their error was pointed out, there was no “oops, sorry” or emily littela.
No, it’s not.
Particularly not with the crowd having a fit over “Happy Holidays” and screeching “JESUS is the REASON for the SEASON!!!”
Those of us who are not Christians (atheist or other type of believer) do at times feel Christmas is being shoved down our throats. Not just by rude and aggressive evangelicals but by clueless and thoughtless Christians as well.
This is a seriously flawed analysis.
I’m not talking about your discussion of the argument made by the atheist newsletter. For the purposes of this post, I’m perfectly happy to stipulate that the argument made by Cragun was “full of lies, half-truths, made up statistics and a basic misunderstanding of how tax laws work.”
But that doesn’t make it “atheist proselytizing.” It just makes it a really bad argument about tax policy. The article makes no effort to convince religious people to abandon their religious or spiritual beliefs and adopt an atheist worldview, which would be actual atheist proselytizing. It simply argues, using bad math and bad arguments, that religious tax exemptions cost society too much money and therefore we should tax the churches.
If by “everyone” you mean “dishonest people with a martyr complex” then sure, otherwise, that’s an awfully broad brush you’re painting with.
True, maybe not literally everyone. But this dynamic plays out in a hundred different theaters.
There’s an old cartoon (from the 1970s, I believe) in which a Jew is reading an Arabic newspaper, and his Jewish friend asks him why he reads this instead of something like the Jerusalem Post. The paper-reading Jew replies (paraphrased): “Because according to these Arab papers, we Jews control the world’s banks, the world media, and are powerful, cunning masterminds of the world. Makes me feel a whole lot better than our actual, tough, underdog life as Jews.”
And see, this is where we differ. To me “religious tax exemptions cost society too much money and therefore we should tax the churches” translates to 'churches bad" (because of their cost to society) .
Hardly ever do atheists say faith is bad. Once in awhile they will mock faith as opposed to reason. but generally, it is organized religion which is attacked- and nearly always Christian churches that are attacked. (You cant attack Jewish, Buddhist , Islam, Hinduism without appearing racist or bigoted, so atheists dont, even tho those religions and churches have beliefs just as non-reason based as Christianity ) .
Another atheist attack is “Jesus never existed”, argued endlessly on this SDMB.
Now sure, these are indirect proselytizing. “Religion is bad” does translate as “Atheism is good” , but rarely do atheist say “Join our way of thinking, we have cookies”. Giving it a political spin, attacks on Biden for being senile or 'sleepy" or on Harris for being “nasty” are not usually accompanied by “Thus, vote for trump, Make America Great Again”- but the point is there just the same.
So, if your point is that atheist proselytizing is indirect, rather than direct- yes, I will concede that.
Societies are made up of people with many different belief systems. Some societies have made the tenets or doctrines of their particular belief system into law. Fortunately, the US is not such a society. But you do have many people in the US that would like their belief system more wholly enforced on others in their society. This swings both ways. What is required for our society to function more healthily is for people to respect each others belief system. The OP is not an example of this.
That is true. Far and away, the Religious Right seeks to enforce their beliefs on others in our society. But, INHO, this is more a Political issue, more than a issue of faith vs reason.
Wait, an arguent on historicity is an “atheist attack”?
Maybe you’re just a bad, or self-interested translator. Because that’s not what I see at all.
Similarly, I’ve seen people make the argument that other non-profit institutions like universities should also pay taxes like property taxes, from which they are currently exempt. Whether or not I agree with those arguments, I don’t believe that they are necessarily rooted in a hostility to universities or to academic and intellectual pursuits.
Do you believe that an argument supporting the idea that universities should lose some of their tax exemptions automatically and necessarily translates to “universities bad”?
It is, in fact, quite easy to separate out the question of “cost to society” and the question of “bad,” which you have conflated in your analysis. An excellent example here, one that I have considerable interest in, is professional sports stadiums.
I love sports. I think sports are great. I spend a lot of time watching sports on TV, and when we’re not in a pandemic lockdown, I also make semi-regular trips to watch sporting events live. And yet, while I love sports and would also argue at a general level that they offer a variety of benefits to society, I am adamantly and fiercely opposed to massive tax breaks and government subsidies for new stadiums. And yet my opposition to these tax breaks and subsidies is not at all motivated by a belief that sports are bad; I just don’t think that society as a whole should be forced to shoulder the costs of building and operating a privately-owned and privately-run organization.
So, my argument is not “sports bad” (because of their costs to society). My argument is “stadiums’ cost to society bad, but sports good.” Remove the public funding of sports stadiums, and I have no problem with sports.
Yeah – it’s a debated issue in historical circles but I don’t see in what way it’s an “attack” on Christianity, unless you consider the study of evolution, cosmology, geology, or really any form of scientific study or historical research that uses a source other than “the Bible” to be an attack.
Doesn’t look that way to quite a few non-Christians.
Especially these days, with the ‘don’t say happy holidays’ nonsense.
I fairly commonly see arguments made by people in college towns that college property should be taxed. I’ve never seen this phrased as ‘education is bad!’ It’s always phrased as, ‘the other businesses and property owners have to pay extra tax because the colleges aren’t paying their share.’
If you seriously can’t see how secular parents celebrate Christmas just like religious parents do, then there is no hope for you. I say this from an entirely agnostic reference point.
While I am it, there are both pushy Christians and pushy atheists who want to argue about things with a finality as if they know they can be right.
They are both wrong, they don’t KNOW if any diety exists and they should stop arguing that they do.
Oh, good grief.
If you seriously can’t see that other people’s perspectives may vary from yours, then I don’t know if there’s any hope for arguing with you.
Of course some secular parents celebrate Christmas. Some of them aren’t even the kind of “secular” which has entirely Christian back-of-the-head assumptions. Some of them are even members of other religions.
No, they don’t celebrate it “just like” practicing Christians do.
And yes, the ways that practicing Christians celebrate Christmas inescapably permeate the USA celebration. People who’ve been swimming in it from the insides for their whole lives often don’t notice the water, that’s all.
(ETA: do I need to add here that I’m not trying to stop anybody from celebrating Christmas, even all over the town square, and with carols explicitly about Jesus?)
It is, to me. Living in the South, I hear it regularly, and it always produces a slight puff of annoyance; it feels preachy and smug, to me.
Still, it doesn’t annoy me as much as, say, people who don’t wave when I let them in traffic, or bikers who run stop signs. So I just let it slide. Bigger fish to fry.
Some descriptions/definitions of God are held, by some atheists, to be self-contradictory. (Kinda like the Invisible Pink Unicorn.) It’s valid to “know” that such a God cannot exist.
And how many people say that? I have NEVER heard it myself.
I have. Seen it in letters to the paper, for that matter.