That's not a big deal, most religious groups can't agree between themselves on their own religious deity and how he/she/it operates. Which is why we've got like 3000 different variations on Christianity alone, not to mention other doctrines for other faiths. People disagree about stuff, that's nothing new.Barbas said:
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Please provide an example of this. No, I am not picking a fight or trying some kind of rhetorical judo move on you, I am seriously and 100% honestly asking you this. I have been mingling around in atheist circles for years now and I have never, I repeat, never met a single person like that.Kuredan said:
On the other hand the crazy kind of Christian propaganda media (I am mostly thinking of Chick Tracts and that new movie, God is Not Dead or something) is chock full of these guys. That, and the easily convertible atheist that just never heard of Jesus for some reason. I also see accusations of someone being this flying around all the time by the nuttier creationist/radical Christian demographic but never a single atheist that described themselves as such.
So I have to ask: Have you actually met, either online or offline, a person that actually described them as "being an atheist because they hate God", or are you basing your dichotomy on hearsay that may or may not have been manufactured by apologetics?
I don't think that is a good comparison. The whole gnosticism/agnosticism/atheism/anti-theism thing is more similar to a philosophical debate, where people are not arguing about tenets or agendas but what the different labels actually mean.Happyninja42 said:
As far as I gathered along the years, the usual arguments go along these lines:
-The difference between the colloquial and specific usage of the word "agnostic". The colloquial usage refers to "Not being sure about whether go exists or not." while the specific usage can refer to not professing any knowledge about a subject.
-Do atheism mean "Lack of belief in gods." or "Disbelief in gods."? The question becomes especially muddied since an agnostic would be an atheist by the first definition but not by the second (since disbelieving means putting down one"s five cents on one side and therefore "technically" professing knowledge).
-Can an atheist be gnostic, not only professing disbelief but denying the existence of gods, and be logically consistent?
-Is anti-theism (opposing religion, especially organized religions) just a form of atheism or it's own thing that only overlaps atheism?
So yeah, it's a bit of a complex clusterfuck and a discussion about it is usually more similar to a linguistic or philosophical argument than a religious one.
Sure, people *****, but pretty much everything I've heard about Lucy is prefaced with that 10%-of-the-brain thing, to the point where it's just annoying. And from what I've heard from people who weren't thrilled to have found something that makes them feel smugly superior, it's actually a good movie, so I'm extra annoyed at the prospect of a good film being shoved aside for a minor issue...Zachary Amaranth said:
See I've yet to meet this atheist. And I understand you put quotes around the word when referencing them because of the discrepancy in their behaviour, but I've just yet to meet this type. I don't deny that they're out there, but they are most likely a very small minority. I mean me and my atheist friends, and the social networks we communicate in about it, just really don't have any beef with God, just like we don't have a beef with the Easter Bunny or leprechauns. We have some major beef with the people who believe in them, and follow them, and the stuff they do in his/her/it's name, but that's an issue with the person, not the fictional skyfather they follow.Kuredan said:
I do find it really interesting, and darkly amusing though, that in movies and books, the "Angry at God" atheist is the only type of person portrayed in entertainment. Like the default state is to believe in a deity, and the only way someone could think otherwise is if they had some great tragedy in their past that has made them mad at God. Usually including a Beard of Sorrow trope, as well as some career change. Then by the end of the movie, they overcome their grief and anger about the Tragic Loss in their past, usually because of some very random odd occurance that is attributed to God, and then poof, they're a whole and happy person again, who loves God and has faith, cue credits.
It's tiresome really, considering it portrays the entirely wrong perception about atheists to people who don't know about them.
My point was just that the comment I was responding to was using the statement of "The atheist's can't seem to agree on exactly what they are" to sort of discredit their stance on things, because they can't agree with each other. I was pointing out the similarity with religion as an example of how people just disagree about definitions of things, whatever it is. That it's not anything specific to atheism, or a knock against their arguments that they have debates to define what they are. Everyone does that,it's what humans do.GabeZhul said:
That was the impression I took from the poster's comment anyway, perhaps that's not what he was conveying, but it seemed like it to me, thus my response.
And religious types argue over what stuff means all the time. Seriously the number of definitions, which is what something means, about how God is, how he operates, what the Bible says and how to interpret it's meaning are vast and varied. And these are usually debates over meaning, because they have to find a positive spin on some of the stuff in those books, to make them look good.
Chick Tracts are absurd because they port the standard Christianity elevator pitch (which is super successful on people who genuinely have never heard of Jesus) to a culture where everybody already knows the story.GabeZhul said:
In my experience, people are areligious for 3 reasons: rationalism, an emotional response to the world's unfairness, or simple indifference. Similarly, people are Christian for 3 reasons: reason, an emotional response to God's love, or just going with the flow. Generally, the rationalists call themselves "atheists", while the emotional people will say "I don't believe in anything" or "I stopped believing in God" or on the other side of the aisle, "I'm a very spiritual person". There is definitely not a hierarchy of the "correct" response and the "immature" response; the best human beings I know have a very small set of overlap with the most rational human beings I know.
When I read these strips that don't focus on video games and veer into other things, I assume Erin is Carter's mouthpiece for whatever's on his mind, like Brian Griffin is for Seth MacFarlane. Yet, Erin is portrayed as a terrible human being, so...
Ha! that's a better zinger than what Erin tried in today's strip. You get +10 points!Super Cyborg said:
Irony: aman well known for refuting the existence of God is followed like one.RoonMian said:
They might as well ***** about the Winter Soldier's cryogenic freezing and memory wiping processes, or Arnim Zola uploading his mind onto a supercomputer. Or, like, everything in Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy.Jandau said:
It is in the United States, especially in some parts of the South, and it can get pretty damn frustrating at times let me tell you that.warmachine said:
OT: Eh...I don't know. I barely define as Catholic anymore, I'm more agnostic, but this joke...I'm just gonna say it isn't that funny and leave it at that.
That's the problem though, there isn't any actual evidence of any of the attributes, if you can't pin down the thing you are looking for how do you know you didn't just look right past it?Whoracle said:
That argument doesn't get you anywhere since you can't say anything useful about the concept other than "I believe" or "I do not believe"
Celestial teapot, Invisible Pink Unicorn, False Equivalence. Occams razor. Look them up.Hoplon said:
What do you mean by " there isn't any actual evidence of any of the attributes"? Do you mean attributes of God? Because if that's what you mean, sure, there are plenty of attributes to be taken from his holy book. Leaving aside all the "-isms" the God character might quite reasonably be accused of, we are left with an all-powerful, all-knowing (contradiction right there) anthropomorphic (we are in his image, after all), intervening (answers prayers and grants wishes in exchange for burning oxen) being that is powerful, complex and intelligent enough to create literally everything by speaking it into existing with magical words.
is this the thing we just might have overlooked a big pile of evidence for?
I prefaced my argument with the words "I've seen" so yes, this is in my experience. Perhaps I'll have to amend my previous post to more clearly indicate that my view has been informed only by personal experience.GabeZhul said:
I've been within the atheist community (both online and in my own circle of friends) for at least the last fifteen years of my life and I have met or debated more than a few- (if you want exact numbers, I'm sorry but the span of time is a little too long) -people that became atheists because of either a failure of the religion of their upbringing or rebellion against the repression they found in their religion. This was especially true when I was younger and in college and had many atheist contemporaries around my age. They were angry at a religion they perceived as failing to answer the questions of their existence adequately, angry that the religion did not accept who they were inside, who they were born to be. They were tired of the moral outrage at the personal choices in their life so they turned their back on the religion of their youth and turned to an atheistic solution. Even after their choice they were still angry at the God they decided no longer existed: angry at the past treatment, the actions and attitudes of religious people, angry really that anyone would choose to believe otherwise. Perhaps it's part of normal development, we are conditioned to rebel at certain points of our lives and that it forces us to discover who we are and to grow from it. The sad fact is that a decade later, many of these individuals are still angry. They still behave as though religion is actively oppressing (the religion they left) them. They are adamant that others understand the inherent evils of religion and have both negative opinions of religious people and an inborn hostility towards them.
On the other hand, I have many friends that came to atheism later in life out of a feeling of disconnect with religion, or a feeling that religion didn't play a meaningful role their life. It was as though they stopped paying for a service they never really used in the first place. They are by and large really relaxed people, happy in their atheism and secure that it was the right choice. They speak of atheism in terms of logic and reason and are generally fine with those that haven't seen the light. The atmosphere is largely that of "Live and let Live."
Would the first group describe themselves as a person who was an atheist because "They hate God?" No. Who would ever say that? That's as absurd as a theist saying "I am theist because I am afraid that God will strike me where I stand if I'm not" You might counter with "But that is what theists believe." I'm merely saying they would never say or admit to it, so too for an emotionally driven atheist. I can't speak to the contents of an individual's mind, but when behavior is reactionary and emotionally charged, it generally indicates a negative emotion is at work. That emotion has to be aimed somewhere, so it's logical to assume that an angry atheist would be angry at either the religion or the deity at the center. You could also argue that they are angry at the actions of those who are theists, but in the end the anger terminates at the religion or deity behind the action. I didn't intend for the analogy to devolve into the simplistic maxim used by fundamentalists that "You can't be angry at something that doesn't exist" You obviously can be angry at things that don't exist, just that using emotion to justify a contradictory belief leads to an unstable belief.
The movie and culture behind "God is Not Dead" is perhaps a valid example but Chick Tracts is in no way an accurate representation of the mainstream Christian community in America (which itself is divided between many sects), any more than allusion to the Westboro Baptist church would be. I certainly wouldn't say the community is "chock full" of these guys. There are going to be polarizing figures like Ken Ham and Richard Dawkins in any circle of belief. Their existence doesn't radicalize the middle or average adherent, it merely proves that each system has its outliers. Also, Do you honestly believe that atheists don't have a stable of well-worn stereotypes for theists as well? That they don't have their own "hawks" who essentially proselytize for their own system of belief? To quote the current pope, which my atheist friends call "New pope: Best pope"
"Don't proselytize; respect others' beliefs. ?We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. But the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes: 'I am talking with you in order to persuade you,' No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytizing."
I think that is true for any belief.
What I primarily maintain is that atheism from emotion is an immature and unstable system of belief mired in arrested development while atheism from reason is a stable, mature belief and that these opposites extends beyond atheism to other currents of thought. I also believe that when your identity is tied to belief and that belief is informed by and feeds into your emotions, every challenge to your belief is a personal attack, which often leads to reactionary rhetoric that serves only to raise the emotional level of the discourse. Conversely, every "success" directly feeds your emotions and ego so that you pursue confrontation to affirm you belief by asserting dominance over someone else. Personally, I just love the dialogue and the chance to express myself.
I didn't intend to offend anyone in this or my previous posts, just point out observations from my life that I think bear some thought. I certainly didn't form my opinion based on "hearsay by apologists" mainly because I don't pay attention to apologists and couldn't tell you what they say.
I didn't say he didn't read the Bible, I didn't say he couldn't analyse and criticise anything. What I meant is that he, with his background in science instead of humanities (or both), uses the wrong tools to approach the study of religion and I should have qualified that with an "in my opionon", sorry.Ingjald said:
Analysing and criticising religion with the scientific tools and mindset Dawkins uses misses the point because there is no intersection between science and religion (and philosophy, for that matter). Science is about facts, religion is about "truths". Science asked "How does this happen?", religion asks "Why does this happen?" Talking about both at the same time is a huge challenge. One that, in my opinion, Richard Dawkins just doesn't meet.
While Dawkins is not just plain factually wrong when muddying science and humanities - like creationists or proponents of intelligent design are - he is incredibly one sided, throwing a whole field of human thought away, which is, at least in my opinion again, intellectually wrong.
But that's the crux: If I formulate a claim nebulously enough, it can never be disproven. Dos that make my claim true? Nope. That's why the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Which does not make the atheists and the religous people equally wrong on an objective level. Also: What the religious guys do is believing. What the atheists do is doubting. Big difference.Hoplon said:
It's not "These guys belive god exists. Those guys believe he doesn't."
It's "These guys belive God exists. Those guys doubt that."
And that's not a semantic difference, it's one of worldview.
Now of course, that may not be true for the internet tough guy atheist kiddies that seem to sprout these days, but that's the crux of the issue I quoted in the first place.
Replace "watching anything on Youtube" with "Religious debates" as a whole, and you're still right.Clowndoe said:
And really, what is so special about the whole "X% of your brain" that warrants all this snark? I really can't remember all this backlash about, say, "human batteries" in The Matrix, even though it's about on the same level of half-true, partly-irrelevant, mostly-bullshit fallacies.
RoonMian said:
I'm sorry, bit I'm going to have to disagree. When the bible says that Pi = 3, the mathematician will show it to be wrong. When the bible says that crickets have four legs, the entomologist will count out the legs of a cricket and proclaim this statement to be incorrect. When the bible says that bats are birds, the taxonomist will provide a resounding correction. When the bible says that humans and all animals were created, as is, some measure of time ago (the 6000 years thing is a later invention) the entire scientific fields of anthropology and biology would like to have a word with it.
What you're hinting at is what Stephen Jay Gould called Non-Overlapping Magisteria, that science and religion should just each play in their own corner of the sandbox of reality. Something that sounds like a peaceable position, but I'd call it unholdable when faced with things such as the catholic church spreading lies about condoms causing AIDS in Africa, in direct opposition to the medical sciences efforts to spread awareness and contain the spread.
and to call Theology "a whole field of human thought" as if that alone warranted its conservation; are not Astrology and Alchemy also "whole fields of human thought"?