Are all atheists this ill-informed about religion?

[RoadRunner79]

So.. you do not think that you are responsible for your actions under a Christian worldview? I would disagree.

Also, this seems to be more of an emotional issue for you, rather than rational. Should I be posting pictures of cuddly kittens.
If you just want to throw a melodramatic temper tantrum... I'm not really interested.

[John V]

The problem with your argument is that we’re talking here about a god who set the original man up. Keeping from him the knowledge of good and evil. Putting that knowledge in the fruit of a tree then telling the man not to eat the fruit. Adam had no way to know that disobeying god was wrong. Yet god punished him.

In telling him not to eat, god gave him a priori knowledge that eating was wrong. The tree provided experiential knowledge of good and evil. There's more than one type of knowledge. A virgin might have full intellectual knowledge of sex, but he doesn't really know what sex is until he partakes.

Note that Paul said that Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't - i.e. Adam willingly sinned. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway.

[Redbeard The Pink]

I'll let you off the hook. Your god is as phony as a $3 bill.  Shit happens because shit happens.  No gods involved because there are no gods....and there never have been.

I had my hands on one of these awhile back, worth a lot more than three dollars.  I really love the emblem depicting an eagle fighting a heron (obvious underdog) with the motto "exitus in dubio est" ...the outcome is uncertain

I still think we're all ill-informed

Look! Up in the sky! Waaay up over your head!


It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...


...actually, it looks to be a figure of speech...and also the point...good job.

[Redbeard The Pink]

So.. you do not think that you are responsible for your actions under a Christian worldview?   I would disagree.  

Also, this seems to be more of an emotional issue for you, rather than rational.  Should I be posting pictures of cuddly kittens.
If you just want to throw a melodramatic temper tantrum... I'm not really interested.

What about my argument is emotional and not rational? I wasn't even particularly profane like I usually am. My wizard senses tell me that you're trying to avoid the responsibility of supporting your assertions by dismissing me as angry (even though there's not necessarily evidence of that).


Answer the question instead of dodging it with another question, please. Is your Gaud evil or stupid? Does he plan suffering and death because he's evil, or does he fail to stop it because he's incompetent?


As for responsibility, that depends entirely on the specifiic "Christian worldview" in question. Most sects assert that Gaud is completely and perfectly omniscient, which precludes the possibility of free will because the only one with any agency in that scenario is Gaud. If Gaud already knows everything that will happen, then history is written and all choices are already irrevocably made. By creating us with full advance knowledge of our actions, Gaud sets us on a path that we are powerless to change or control, making him responsible for everything we do and everything that happens to us.


Basically, if I create a robot with full foreknowledge that it will work fine right out of the box, but that soon it's programming will break down and cause it to kill a busload of children, I don't get to blame the robot for the busload of dead kids just because I didn't technically program it to do that. I still knew it was going to do that, and yet I still created the robot and did nothing to prevent this glitch from arising in its programming. That makes me responsible for the robot's murderous actions. The only way I'm not responsible is if I didn't know the glitch would arise, but then I wouldn't be omniscient, would I?

[abaris]

Note that Paul said that Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't - i.e. Adam willingly sinned. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway.

Absence of knowledge about good and evil defines the perfect simpleton. Going by American judicial standards, as far as I understand them, such a person wouldn't be found responsible for any crime they committed. They simply don't know right from wrong. So, this god saying, don't eat, doesn't trigger anything in the mind of people like that.

[Edwardo Piet]

@ the OP question

"Are all atheists ill-informed about religion?"

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Atheists are often more well-informed than the theists. Many atheists became atheists because they read up on the Bible.

EDIT: P.S. From an interview with my favourite music artist Steven Wilson:

[...]I believe the curse of the human race is the knowledge of death. It’s why many people are unhappy a lot of the time. We are aware of our own impending death. No-one has managed to prove to me satisfactorily that animals are also aware of death. I think human beings are unique in that we are aware of our own mortality and it casts an incredible shadow over our whole existence. If we’re not happy, we measure our unhappiness against the fact that we have a finite amount of time on Earth in order to be happy. I would say that’s why we invented the myth of religion and God—to try and come to terms with the fact that we are mortal. We invented this whole kind of mythology and fairy tales about the afterlife and God. It’s all designed to make ourselves feel better and provide comfort. Now, that’s not the only thing we’ve done in order to get comfort. Alcohol, drugs, and one could even argue culture itself, are all things done to distract form being reminded about our own mortality. The irony with art is that a lot of it does the opposite. It reminds us exactly of our own mortality. I love that. It’s what draws me to lots of music—the whole spirituality thing, and sense of mortality, and that sense of the tragedy that is the gift of life. The gift of life is a wonderful thing, but it’s also a tragic thing. Life is but a blip. It’s just a moment, really. You have 80 years or so, maybe less, maybe more, to try and make some kind of sense of this random gift of life—this strange, cruel blip in time that is your life, your ego and your consciousness. Many years ago, I wrote an album called Signify for Porcupine Tree. The whole idea was to look at the ways we try to create some significance for our own life. So, even in my 20s, I was obsessed with that—the idea of making some kind of mark [...]

Continued under the hide tag:

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[...] I guess I am in some ways your archetypal atheist. I think the whole myth of religion is absolutely absurd. I say this with the caveat that I understand it brings happiness to people who would otherwise be unhappy. There is comfort in it for people who would otherwise be tortured by their own existence and all that stuff. I appreciate those reasons and arguments, but at the end of the day, I’m afraid it’s just a silly fairy tale that mankind has dreamed up because of our fear of death. It’s as simple as that. It seems so obvious to me that’s why we created this myth. Religion, lest we forget, is a relatively new thing. You can go back as far as the Stone Age to see that man has always worshiped something, such as the sun. But the contemporary idea of religion has been around for less than 2,000 years. I’m speaking as someone that grew up with the idea that if you’re going to be religious, you’re gong to be Christian. Well, the Bible was written 200-300 years after the events it supposedly depicts. That’s certainly true for the New Testament and The Gospels. People were employed by politicians and leaders of the church to write it and that says it all to me. I’ve done a lot of reading and research about religion, because it’s something that fascinates me. What fascinates me is the compulsion or need for many to believe in this nonsense. A great deal of us seem to have this need to fall back on this crutch of faith and belief. People say to me “Well, it’s all a matter of faith. You don’t need proof.” Well, faith for me in that sense becomes a synonym for believing a lie and that’s no explanation at all.[...]

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[Rhondazvous]

God is so powerful, he can do what he likes and we can't stop him.

IIRC, did not god display a weakness toward iron?

Found it:

Judges 1:19
And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Damn! It's so obvious that the Jewish god was just something they created to justify genocide.

Christians, I don't care what you say. You cannot unwrite what is written. You can revise the Bible to leave these problematic passages out, but we already have our copies.

[Mister Agenda]

The problem with your argument is that we’re talking here about a god who set the original man up. Keeping from him the knowledge of good and evil. Putting that knowledge in the fruit of a tree then telling the man not to eat the fruit. Adam had no way to know that disobeying god was wrong. Yet god punished him.

In telling him not to eat, god gave him a priori knowledge that eating was wrong. The tree provided experiential knowledge of good and evil. There's more than one type of knowledge. A virgin might have full intellectual knowledge of sex, but he doesn't really know what sex is until he partakes.

Note that Paul said that Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't - i.e. Adam willingly sinned. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway.

How was Adam supposed to know disobedience was wrong if he didn't understand right and wrong? Telling a child not to do something before you've taught them to obey you and expecting obedience is a sign of moronic deficiency on the part of the parent.

[John V]

As for responsibility, that depends entirely on the specifiic "Christian worldview" in question. Most sects assert that Gaud is completely and perfectly omniscient, which precludes the possibility of free will because the only one with any agency in that scenario is Gaud. If Gaud already knows everything that will happen, then history is written and all choices are already irrevocably made. By creating us with full advance knowledge of our actions, Gaud sets us on a path that we are powerless to change or control, making him responsible for everything we do and everything that happens to us.

This argument is self-defeating. If our every thought and action is pre-determined by god, then we aren't persons with rights. We're just characters in a very complex novel. We don't call novelists evil for letting their characters suffer.

[abaris]

Many atheists became atheists because they read up on the Bible.

Yes, but they mean listening to their pastor/priest interpreting what they have to believe. So much so that evangelicals often deny catholics the status of being christian. Which more or less answers the OP in a nutshell.

There even was a time when the church didn't want laymen to read the bible in it's entirety. Can't be bothered to look up the particular regulations right now, but all through the Middle Ages, only certain parts of the bible were fair game for everyone. Reading and talking about anything else, was frowned upon and led to be burned at the stake a few times.