Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[Cecelia]

Yes, Atheists are angry. And for a damn good reason. We're tired of putting up with the abuses of religion. I don't like quoting a television show, but I think that Raymond Reddington from the Blacklist said it well:

"Honestly, is it just me, or is the human race, armed with religion, poisoned by prejudice, and absolutely frantic with hatred and fear, galloping pell-mell back to the dark ages? Who on Earth is hurt by a little girl going to school or a child being gay?"

Until the Religious stop discriminating against and oppressing lesbians, gays, and transgenders in the name of 'saving people's immortal souls'. Until the Religious stop taking money from the poor and buying Airplanes and Mansions. Until the Religious stop treating Atheists as people who lack morals. Until the religious stop pushing their religion on everyone. Until the religious stop protecting their pedophiles. Until then Atheists SHOULD be angry. Someone has to be. Because it's time that all of this stops. Religious Tyranny has to come to an end. You have a right to practice whatever you believe. You don't have a right to force it on anyone else.

So yeah, I'd say Atheists are angry. They have a damn good reason to be angry. But they're not angry at your imaginary friend. He doesn't exist! If he did, yeah, we'd probably be angry at him. As a fictional character your Deity is an asshole. Basically Dolores Umbridge with god-like powers. Atheists are angry at religion. Because for any of the good it does, it does so much bad. It convinces people to fly planes into buildings. It convinces people that a 12 year old girl who is attracted to other girls is worthless. It convinces people that a 20 year old man who wants to marry another man is just perverted and not in love and therefore undeserving of finding his own happiness on earth. It convinces people that it's okay for Preachers to take money from the poorest and give them false promises. It convinces people that they are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, and that is perhaps the most dangerous thing of all.

[Anomalocaris]

Their is irony in that, because that is what the artical is all about (it has nothing to do with reading the bible)

Do you know the difference between "there", and "their"?

[IATIA]

I found this to be true a long time ago. Most 'atheist' simply spin their own version of a hitchens or dawkins arguement and pin everything they believe on a primise they hear in a debate or read in an artical. The problem most have though is when their primary source material has been refuted, they simply shut down and start with personal attacks trying to discredit the one who showed them that their emperor has no cloths. They have to hide from the truth and are not able to follow it where ever it may lead.

Most believe, they have to 'kill God' philosophically in order to live in freedom, and their specific brand of atheism allows them to do that. the irony is their brand of belief is the tiny little box they believe Christians live in. they only see the rules and the bad that wicked people in the religion have manifest. Most fail to realize that those in the religion who only know of the rules and oppression of other to them, are running into the same boundries that the atheist who thinks this way also encounter.

I have never bothered to read any Hitchens or Dawkins. I made up my mind about god and religion a long time ago.

There is not an inkling of evidence for the existence of any god. Religion itself has proven to be nothing more than a medium for the control of the sheeple.

A god can only exist within an infinite regression and that would mean we do not exist yet, as an infinity has yet to pass.

A god cannot be timeless because causality is necessary for the sequence of thoughts and actions of a god of creation which invokes time and again infinite regression.

Any successful argument for the existence of a god would better satisfy the existence of reality without a god.

When one admits the delusional belief in a god is nothing more that the distaste of one's inevitable death and oblivion, that is when one becomes truly free.

[Minimalist]

Drippy and Deli.  What a pair of numbskulls.  Fucking "jesus" is welcome to followers like you.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Article: The New Philistinism

The New Atheist writers are supremely self-confident in their ability to dispatch opponents with a sarcastic quip or two. And they show no evidence whatsoever of knowing what they are talking about.


Great article. Worth reading to get an idea of what a joke so many atheist clergy are.

I found this to be true a long time ago. Most 'atheist' simply spin their own version of a hitchens or dawkins arguement and pin everything they believe on a primise they hear in a debate or read in an artical. The problem most have though is when their primary source material has been refuted, they simply shut down and start with personal attacks trying to discredit the one who showed them that their emperor has no cloths. They have to hide from the truth and are not able to follow it where ever it may lead.

Most believe, they have to 'kill God' philosophically in order to live in freedom, and their specific brand of atheism allows them to do that. the irony is their brand of belief is the tiny little box they believe Christians live in. they only see the rules and the bad that wicked people in the religion have manifest. Most fail to realize that those in the religion who only know of the rules and oppression of other to them, are running into the same boundries that the atheist who thinks this way also encounter.

WRONG!

I never encountered Hitchens or Dawkins, except for having read The Selfish Gene back in college, which isn't really about religion. None of their arguments, nor that of any other atheist writer, formed the basis for my opinions until I began to read Carl Sagan in my late twenties. My religious objections came from studying the Christian claims themselves and finding fault with them, and from learning what science actually has to say instead of the strawman version presented by my church leaders and Christian authors.

While I have seen both Hitch and Dawkins make points with which I agree, I have also seen them make terrible points, ones which I also reject, and I believe for sound reasons.

Your religious worldview is simply not compatible with what we now know (which the people in the first century did not) about the physical world, and how it operates. I have no need to "kill" your God, any more than I need to "kill" conservatism; I simply think that your ideas are terrible ones, not ones based on rational evaluation of the facts, and that the awful conclusions you people draw from those facts (Edit to Add: assuming you're not simply ignoring facts, which seems to me to be the basis of about half the religious ideology out there) do a lot of unnecessary harm to society and to the happiness and progress of humanity.

I stand against religious fanatics, not the thousands of ridiculous claims to secret knowledge about God that informs their beliefs, and thus their actions. I also DO NOT blame Christians overall for the bad actions of some of them, as I do not think the ideology is automatically false because of the actions of its adherents, but I do blame the ideology for the effects it has on the minds of those who follow it. It is an ideology that literally tells people not to think, that they should trust "God's Knowledge" over "Man's Knowledge", which translates to "believe this because it says to believe it, instead of relying on your natural abilities as a skeptical, intelligent human being to potentially detect that what we are feeding you is a load of horse shit". It short-circuits the defensive mechanisms of the brain in order to insinuate itself onto the host, and most insidious of all, it does so by attacking people in their conscience, telling them that they are inherently bad, inherently unworthy, and that if they do not follow the tenets of the faith, that it is because some evil demon is tricking them.

That is why I reference Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark as my only form of "atheist literature". The rest is because, when I was told I was thinking too much, religion had failed to dismantle the part of my brain that spoke up and said, "How can I think too much?"

[jenny1972]

hello? delicate yooohooo *crickets* wonder if a new thread is being created right now lol

[Spooky]

Article: The New Philistinism

The New Atheist writers are supremely self-confident in their ability to dispatch opponents with a sarcastic quip or two. And they show no evidence whatsoever of knowing what they are talking about.


Great article. Worth reading to get an idea of what a joke so many atheist clergy are.

WTF is an "Atheist Clergy"?

[Minimalist]

Another invention of the lunatic fringe.

[drfuzzy]

Okay, so I read the article and apparently it's an attack on "new atheism" (i.e. Dawkins and a few others). It points out a couple errors they made in some books and uses this to (repeatedly) insist that therefore the new atheists haven't sufficiently researched the claims that they are trying to debunk. I haven't read anything by Dawkins, so I really can't comment on that but one thing I can comment on is the fact that the thread title is misleading.

By using other atheist's critiques of Dawkins as support for his claims, the author incidentally implies that some atheists are intelligent enough to be taken seriously (or why else would we care what they thought about Dawkins?) The author never actually attacks atheism itself, only a handful of loud-mouthed "new atheists" he perceives as ignorant. He also apparently thinks that preachers denying evolution are equally ignorant, so take that as you will.

This article does nothing to expose the intellectual bankruptcy of atheists, and only a bit to show some errors of thinking in a select few. I guess if I were to summarize the point of the article in a single sentence it would be this: Do your research before you criticize religion, or you'll look like an idiot like Dawkins.

Thank you, Darkstar, for saying what I tried to say but much more concisely and eloquently.

[drfuzzy]

I've noticed a problem with Delicate's thinking that I think it would be useful for him/her to address.

He seems to not know the difference between him having an opinion, and that opinion being true.

For example, instead of saying, "In my opinion, 99% of the atheists here make bad arguments" or "It seems to me most atheists make bad arguments", we get the assertion of fact "99% of atheists here make bad arguments".

And it's been implied that his interpretation of the point of the article must be the correct one, and if I come to any other conclusion, I am wrong. I'm not even worthy of him/her sharing that information with me, to enlighten me.

Maybe he/she should start owning opinions and beliefs, and drop the attitude. People will never learn anything if they never consider they may actually be wrong sometimes.

EXACTLY, robvalue!!  Thank you.

I see a lot of statements from Delicate (and even in the posted article) that criticize without offering clear examples.  Delicate:  examples please!

But at least understand that everyone here knows that there have been some really good arguments made here (by robvalue, RocketSurgeon, -- goodwithoutgod, Min, abaris, as well as quite a few others) and there have been many which abandoned civilized debate and just devolved into name-calling and taunts.  I am guilty of the latter.  

So if you choose an example of a "bad argument", please choose one where the poster is sticking to respected sources and civilized discourse.