# Why is this site overwhelmingly atheist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 30, 2014, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938 "2014-08-30T04:04:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 29
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/561 "2014-09-26T17:58:01Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > Yes, you need say more. Like whether that was an attempt at humor. If so, it was a grievous fault… Generally Grievous? CMC fnord! I would say more . . . but this isn’t the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/562 "2014-09-26T18:49:08Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > What nonsense do you like, Lobohan? I run role playing games, including Dungeions & Dragons. I read and watch science fiction. I like symphonic metal. I don’t think that my D&D campaign is real. I don’t think that Issac Asimov is speaking with the inerrant voice of God. I don’t think that Nightwish foretells the future. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/563 "2014-09-26T19:32:38Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I run role playing games, including Dungeions & Dragons. I read and watch science fiction. I like symphonic metal. > > I don’t think that my D&D campaign is real. I don’t think that Issac Asimov is speaking with the inerrant voice of God. I don’t think that Nightwish foretells the future. Oh, THAT nonsense. No matter. I don’t know what Nightwish is anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/564 "2014-09-26T19:46:22Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I see you taking a lot of offense, dougie, and not giving a lot of answers. As far as I can tell, that’s all bible literalists have. **dougie\_monty** is getting piled on, but is nonetheless standing his ground. This is never easy under these circumstances, especially when trying desperately to hold onto an indefensible position. It was people like dougie\_monty—with the apparent inability to confront the cognitive dissonance that inevitably results from attempting to interpret the bible literally—who first drove me out of the church, for which I do feel a certain kind of gratitude. Letting go of my mystical beliefs, superstition, and faith in the supernatural has made me a far happier and more functional person. So, while I know he’s not debating well, has been warned twice for personal insults, and is utterly failing to respond to politely stated but pertinent and sharp rebuttals to his claims about bible inerrancy, I say let’s try to be a bit more sympathetic to dougie\_monty. > [@Lobohan](#): > > I don’t think that Issac Asimov is speaking with the inerrant voice of God. Blasphemy! :mad: ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/565 "2014-09-26T19:47:56Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > Oh, THAT nonsense. > No matter. I don’t know what Nightwish is anyway. Ask and ye shall receive. [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hTdhXxxWREo/hqdefault.jpg "NIGHTWISH - Bye Bye Beautiful (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTdhXxxWREo) ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/566 "2014-09-26T19:58:24Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > :Sigh: I confess. Point taken. I find it difficult to control myself when I encounter four-letter words in replies from people who are supposed to be sustaining intelligent discussion. Somehow I have never been able to reconcile the two. Well, the rest of us have trouble controlling ourselves when we encounter off-topic reply after off-topic reply, most predicated on personal attacks. When you can’t or won’t answer the questions, and are incredibly obtuse, we start getting tired of it. Food for thought. Look, it’s really simple. If you want to believe that the Bible is perfect and contains no contradictions, then you need an explanation for post 441. If you have no answer, then the correct (and intellectually honest) thing to do is _admit you are wrong_. > [@dougie\_monty](#): > > "Written by people who had only just mastered the art of iron smelting. " If that isn’t hateful it makes Latro out to consider himself some kind of superior being. Being? No. Culture? Yes. The point of these arguments about what metals they could smelt is simple: it shows that what we’re dealing with is a very basic, simplistic culture - one that is crawling slowly out of prehistory and whose knowledge of the world is limited and stunted. That the people who wrote these books were _not_ highly knowledgeable about the world. Now look at the bible - what does it look like? A book that describes the creation of the world in 7 literal days with an order that is clearly prescientific and a global flood that covered the entire world that clearly never happened; a book which describes the earth being “hung on nothing” and, if you examine it, appears to quite literally describe a _flat earth_… Does this appear to be the work of an omnipotent, omniscient god? Or does it seem more like the work of a bunch of people whose entire world was one tiny stretch of land in the middle east; who didn’t know anything else? I’d say quite clearly the latter. @Lobohan: really, you link that over Nemo, Ghost Love Score, or Wish I Had An Angel? ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/567 "2014-09-26T20:03:34Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > First things first! Why would YOU think writers were, in any era, ex-iron smelters? (Oh: and please note Job 26:7.) OK, we’ve established that \*\*Latro \*\*was talking about the culture, not the writers themselves. So now let’s go back to your answer for the bible’s contradictions and inaccuracies. That’s how “sustaining intelligent discussion” is done. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2014, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/568 "2014-09-26T23:49:11Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > \*(Welch is a minced oath of Welsh and is based on a presumption that the Welsh are dishonest.) You mean they aren’t? Mother Goose has been lying to me all these years! Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my house, And stole a leg of beef. I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was not at home; Taffy came to my house, And stole a marrow-bone. I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was in bed; I took the marrow-bone, And broke Taffy’s head. From his inappropriately violent response I always assumed the speaker was a Scotsman, but I suppose you’ll tell me THAT is racist, too. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/569 "2014-09-27T01:04:59Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > And this is what I don’t get in non-literal believers. > You recognise it is a bundle of old books, written between some 2600 and 1900 years ago, riddled with errors and contradictions with lots of influence from other religions and older versions of itself. Exactly what you would expect if written by people in some backwater, that had only just mastered the art of iron smelting. > > Yet they cling to the idea that this book is “holy” and that amidst this mishmash is hidden God’s special message to mankind. If you just read it right. I suppose some do. (Very literal followers of Martin Luther, for example, might have this view.) Alternatively, others see it as the efforts of disparate peoples over different periods of time to explain their experience of God in language that corresponds to their own times and literary conventions. Scripture proceeds from faith and then anchors it rather than faith proceeding from scripture. For those who do not share the faith, such a perspective makes no sense, of course. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/570 "2014-09-27T03:24:41Z")
That’s a very interesting observation, **tom~** , and it leads to a speculation that, as new converts are brought into the ranks of the faithful (and as new generations of the faithful supplant older ones), the experiences of the later adherents ought to give rise to new writings that can be accepted into that body of work that is called _Scripture_. Or possibly some discussion of what is the effect on a faith when this does not occur. ETA: > [@Latro](#): > > Yet they cling to the idea that this book is “holy” and that amidst this mishmash is hidden God’s special message to mankind. If you just read it right. > [@tomndebb](#): > > I suppose some do. (Very literal followers of Martin Luther, for example, might have this view.) You bet they do. [They even put the word “HOLY” right there on the front cover, as a general rule.](http://advancefirstbaptistchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/bible-1024x818.jpg) 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/571 "2014-09-27T03:49:56Z")
dougie\_monty writes: \> Lately political correctness tends to discard single words, such as the one I used \> that you said is an ethnic slur, in favor of circumlocution ("altitudinally challenged " \> instead of “short”, for example). No one has ever seriously used the terms “altitudinally challenged” or “vertically challenged” as a politically correct substitute for “short”, in the sense that “physically challenged” is seriously used for “handicapped” or “African-American” for “black” or “Native American” for “American Indian”. By saying that no one has ever used it seriously, I mean that no one has ever said something like “I’m offended by the term ‘short’, so I insist on being called ‘altitudinally challenged’ or ‘vertically challenged’ because those terms are less offensive.” Yes, people have used those terms as a parody of political correctness. They have said things like “I guess you don’t want to be called “short”. You want to be called “altitudinally challenged” or “vertically challenged”, right? Ha, ha, isn’t that funny? Why aren’t you laughing? Isn’t that hilarious? Laugh already. Don’t you have a sense of humor?” And I know this because I was one of the creators of the short rights movement back in 1971 and have followed what’s gone on since then. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/572 "2014-09-27T06:13:59Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Alternatively, others see it as the efforts of disparate peoples over different periods of time to explain their experience of God in language that corresponds to their own times and literary conventions. Scripture proceeds from faith and then anchors it rather than faith proceeding from scripture. For those who do not share the faith, such a perspective makes no sense, of course. I doubt that many atheists would dispute this view in general - though there was some politics and power tripping thrown in also. What we’d dispute is whether God is in evidence. That they were documenting spiritual experiences - as people throughout history and all over the world have done - seems hard to argue with. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/573 "2014-09-27T10:26:06Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > That’s a very interesting observation, **tom~** , and it leads to a speculation that, as new converts are brought into the ranks of the faithful (and as new generations of the faithful supplant older ones), the experiences of the later adherents ought to give rise to new writings that can be accepted into that body of work that is called _Scripture_. > > Or possibly some discussion of what is the effect on a faith when this does not occur. This actually happened through the historical arc of Judaism and Christianity. It seems to have stopped (leaving aside the CoJCoLDS) in the Jewish/Christian tradition since the third century, but there have been discussions, from time to time, as to whether it could recur. (Current sentiment is that it will not, of course.) > [@kaylasdad99](#): > > You bet they do. [They even put the word “HOLY” right there on the front cover, as a general rule.](http://advancefirstbaptistchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/bible-1024x818.jpg) Well, yes. Nothing in my observation precludes the idea that God inspired the works that, having been written, were then collected into a canon of holy scripture or that God inspired groups to collect human works that would express his religious truth. My point was that Latro seems to have conflated the views of different religious traditions. One tradition is that God pretty much dictated what went into scripture while the other tradition is that God inspired men to recount their own experiences of God. There is nothing in the second tradition to preclude such a work from being holy. Latro objected to the second path on the grounds that human error would preclude such a canon from being inspired by God, and, thus, holy. The response is simply that people can perceive the hand of God to make such a work holy in spite of (often because of) the human frailties that permeate such work. Certainly such a view has no binding on those who are outside the faith tradition, but one should at least understand and criticize the tradition for what it actually says, not for a misunderstanding of what it says. > [@Voyager](#): > > What we’d dispute is whether God is in evidence. As to evidence for God, that is a separate issue than how people of faith perceive and record their beliefs. I was addressing only Latro’s objection based on a conflation of traditions. Simply dismissing all scripture based on the _nego majore_ position that there is no god in which or whom to believe is still an available option. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2014, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/574 "2014-09-28T02:49:16Z")
Aw, dougie got suspended before he could answer about the bible’s contradictions and inaccuracies. He’ll do ANYTHING to get out of answering! ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2014, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938/575 "2014-09-28T03:14:59Z")
That’s enough of that right there. He can’t respond for another week or so and cheap shots are…unseemly. Any more of them might well spoil my pleasant disposition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-site-overwhelmingly-atheist/696938.md?page=28)