Everyone knows the drill. Someone posts a poorly conceived logical proof in Great Debates along the lines of “if ‘blah blah’ then ‘blah blah’ therefore ‘Intelligent Designer’.” And ten minutes later you have a dozen pages of circular reasoning trying to prove the unprovable, The athiests thinking the intelligent designers are idiots and the intelligent designers thinking the athiests are Godless heathens.
So why the pressing need to convince the world of your beliefs? If someone wants to believe that there is an omnipotent omnicient superbeing, what do you care? And if there is such a being, are you so arrogant that you think it needs YOU to defend him?
Is this supposed to be a poll or a pitting? Please clarify?
I don’t feel obligated to convince anybody of anything. Well, I’ll try to convince people that drinking cianurated water is bad for their health, but not of my religious ideas. I’ll explain, but I’m not expecting to “convert” anybody.
(I don’t even believe that two people can have the exact same faith; we can use the same label as a shorthand, but each person’s beliefs are different because his whole life experience is different)
If anyone admits that theistic belief is totally based on faith, there isn’t anything to argue about. The arguments arise when someone inisists on trying to claim that their God can be apprehended or inferred without faith (that is, they try to claim their God can be proven by science or logic). Slapping down such nonsense is the mission of this board.
That’s pretty much the way I feel, as well. If they say that faith is the reason they believe, well… okay, then. Good on them. We all have our windmills to tilt.
However, when someone says that science supports their belief, they’re effectively saying that I’m stupid for misinterpreting the evidence. If someone says I’m stupid, I tell 'em they’re stupid, right back.
I’ve pretty much given up in real life and on the internet, but there is still part of me that is afraid of the slippery slope of millions of members of society believing just any old thing they’re told, willy-nilly.
I don’t really feel compelled. It would be much easier not to. But if someone preaches to me or justifies actions or prejudices because of their religion in my presence, that’s like sending me Snopes-able spam.
I feel like I’ve had and read every possible argument for and against the existence of god and I’m bored with it now. I like reading threads where someone is pushing ID as science and scientists push back with evolutionary biology and geology, or when biblical historians go at it with others historians because I always learn something new but the “does not”, “does too” stuff doesn’t interest me anymore. I don’t really care what other people believe until they start trying to create legislation based on it.
>If someone wants to believe that there is an omnipotent omnicient superbeing, what do you care?
My only motivation these days is that some people who believe this vote on the basis of what they understand the superbeing wants, and I have to live with the resulting laws.
I used to post on a forum where there were a lot of recently deconverted extreme fundamentalists and they were as fanatically atheist as they had been religious. It did appear to me that they were forming the church of atheism because they were so angry, intolerant and unreasonable toward theists and the ratpacking was vicious. I couldn’t stand watching it or understand why people could spend so much time talking about what they don’t believe in. Maybe I just can’t get it because I’ve never faced negative consequences because of my atheism.
Well, first you have the people to whom it’s OBVIOUS that God exists/doesn’t exist. In the name of fighting ignorance, they won’t rest until everybody else KNOWS what they know. And resistance to being persuaded just leads to an increasingly frantic, Kids-in-the-Hall “Citizen Kane” sketch sort of response. (transcript here, youtube here).
Then there are those who fight ignorance by trying to point out what they see as faulty logic or bad arguments, or ignorance about what Christians/atheists/whatever actually believe and how they actually think—the ones to whom a logical fallacy is as a possessive “it’s” to a Grammar Nazi.
Then you have the ones, theist and atheist alike, who aren’t very secure in their beliefs and who are very threatened by the fact that there are people who believe/don’t believe in God. Rather than allow for the possibility that they themselves might be wrong, or missing something, they cast aspersions on those who disagree with them.
Then you hve the people who genuinely believe others would be better off if they adopted/dropped some religious belief: the theist who believes you and those around you would be better off if you acknowledged God, and the atheist who believes that your religious belief is harming you or those around you.
And then you have the people who just enjoy a good argument, and debates about the existence, nature, etc. of God have long been among the Greatest Debates of all.
I don’t see any point arguing matters of faith with people, and so I don’t. That’s personal and internal. I can’t touch that.
However, if somebody says something patently, provably wrong, I do try to dispel ignorance. If I’m talking to my four year old niece and she tells me a story about fairies, I’m not going to argue with her. If she tells me that the fairies are the reason the bread rises, I’m going to tell her the truth. I think knowledge is a powerful thing, but I see no reason to go beating on people’s faith without cause.
Heck, I’m more of an agnostic than an atheist, but if I see a chance to educate on matters of fact, logic or science, I’m going to step in.
But, if it becomes apparent that nothing I say will make a difference, I’m not going to bother and will duck out of the conversation once I’ve explained things and found my explanations are being ignored.
I enjoy discussing the topic just because people are so astonishing. I admit that I harbor some hope that I might cultivate an appreciation for the marvels of nature, but I know that’s a rare transformation.
I do care very much when people attempt to entwine their religious beliefs into our government, and to move their beliefs from an appropriate discussion of culture into the science curriculum of public schools. And, when the beliefs take on certain drug-like aspects that encourage antisocial behavior, I think moderate people of all stripes have a responsibility to set boundaries.
Or me, unless someone’s faith is affecting my life (and I can’t really think of any examples of where it does in a direct way) why should I care what they believe?
Whenever I see those threads for/against god and the resulting 20 pages of screaming, vain attempts to use logic, references to scripture, anecdotal experience of miracles, analogies that are as amusing as they are insulting, I just pass right on by.
Because it’s the Ultimate Question. If someone is “wrong” about something so Ultimate, then imagine what all else they’re wrong about.
Notice that I don’t stay in those GD threads that long. I may chime in & then drop out, usually because it degenerates into sniping on both sides or accelerates into formal logic mode.
It may not be as bad in England, but here in America, a lot of laws are based on faith (blue laws and prop 8, for example, as mentioned.) Also, being the atheist in some American high schools can be as bad or worse than being the fat kid, the black kid, or the gay kid.
That, and the fact that the believers won’t stop trying to force their beliefs on everyone else, one way or another. And I don’t want to sit back and let the thread turn into a mutual masturbation thread of believers telling each other how enlightened they are.
And the fact that I just like to argue; it’s not like anything I or anyone says is likely to persuade a believer.
It’s not the “ultimate question”; it’s just another question.