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December 21, 2015 at 8:23 pm (This post was last modified: December 21, 2015 at 8:27 pm by TheRocketSurgeon.)
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 1. I'm skeptical of the claim that I'm repeating a lie. Evidence plz.
You keep repeating the lie that we don't understand religion (specifically yours, of course), and refusing to listen to us when we tell you what we think/feel as atheists. Instead of saying, "Oh, my mistake!" and then correcting your opinion based on the new information, you simply repeat what you said before, without regard for the people to whom you are speaking. It is a lie, we tell you it is a lie, and you don't seem to care. If I said that Christians are secretly atheists and only pretend to worship a God, and you told me that you sincerely believed, and I kept repeating it anyway, it would make me a liar... and intensely disrespectful, to boot. Yet you call us "angry atheists" when we react with anger to something that would infuriate anyone.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 2. I'm skeptical of the claim that because some board members are former Christians, they understand the religion quite well. I find that to be false in my experience. How would you show you understand religion, when you constantly disagree with Christians on what Christianity teaches?
We don't just make the claim that we understand religion because we're former Christians; as you would likely admit, yourself, many Christians have barely cracked open a Bible in their lives. What we actually say is that we (the ones to whom this applies) have studied the Bible and have found that its claims do not match what we learn from other sources, or that the version of Christianity we were taught is based on poor scholarship or ignorance of the history of the Bible and the church. Your assertion that disagreeing with Christianity means we do not understand it is bunkum. We disagree with Christianity because we understand it. I would challenge you to present an element of Christianity you think I have failed to understand, and I will happily explain it to you both from my previous point-of-view (as a former Christian) and how I have come to understand it once I applied information not taught within the church culture.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 3. I'm skeptical that I blind myself with the culture and thought-limitations imposed by a system of belief. Evidence plz.
Puh-leeze. Christianity teaches you that there's One Right Way to Live™, ranging from ideas about the nature and "place" of the sexes, to relationships, to which types of sex are acceptable and which are "abomination", and even extending to extra-Biblical principles like opposition to abortion, even though the Bible contains a forced abortion in Numbers chapter 5, performed by priests on a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity. It has clearly taught you that atheists cannot be moral (and a host of other foul traits with which you have tagged us), even though you have no reason to believe that other than your religious indoctrination and the bias with which you approach your examination of atheists. Again, we try to tell you how we really are, but you refuse to listen.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 4. I'm skeptical that atheism has no system of belief. I don't mean the dictionary definition, I mean the sociological group.
We may have some beliefs that are common among us, but if you pay attention on this board, we disagree on nearly every subject imaginable. With few exceptions, we accept the Scientific Method and the findings of scientists, but that's largely because we're not pre-indoctrinated to reject it. Even the group "leaders" you mention, like Dawkins, spend most of their time talking about applying what Sagan called the "Baloney Detector", so we learn to reject the distortions that are common to human pattern-seeking brains (such as observer bias, for instance) and ensure that our ideas are as grounded in reality as possible. That's part of why people talk about their lives changing once they embrace this methodology... you'd be surprised, if you ever honestly examined why you hold certain ideas, at what you accept simply by dent of cultural programming, much of it via religion and/or the "magical thinking" mindset that accompanies it. We reject magical thinking. That's not a system of belief, that's a method of knowing the world.
"Some beliefs that are common among us" would apply to Democrats, to NFL fans, to ex-military members, and pretty much any other group you can name. That doesn't mean there's a "system of belief" to any of those groups. Atheism itself is not a thing-- it is the absence of a thing, belief in gods. That's it. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 5. I'm skeptical of the view that atheism is the absence of belief. We're discussing this in another thread.
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods. Nothing else. I'm not sure why you're wrestling with that concept. Similarly, you and I are both adragonists. We might enjoy stories about them, talk about whether Smaug or Trogdor is the greatest dragon to ever burninate the peasants, but in the end, both you and I know that dragons are imaginary creatures from the minds of human beings. So when you're trying to tell atheists what they believe because of atheism, pause a moment to consider what beliefs you hold as a result of your adragonism, other than to reject the reality of stories about flying, fire-breathing wyrms.
If you will take a moment to consider, with an honest heart, you will realize that both atheism and adragonism only become "things" when surrounded by people who insist that gods or dragons are real. If you were surrounded by devotees of Smaug the Magnificent, you might have to spend a shocking amount of your time explaining that you're an adragonist, but it doesn't mean that any of your other beliefs have changed. In the case of atheism, we reject magical thinking, so some extra-Biblical beliefs will change based on the acceptance of the Scientific Method (etc), but they're all along the lines of the sorts of things that they bust on MythBusters. (Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are both atheists, and the show is largely about applying the Scientific Method to beliefs that people hold which are, as often as not, completely false.)
So please, I ask you as kindly as I can, Delicate. Stop simply launching hatred at us, and consider what you have been taught to think about us that may color how you filter the anecdotal evidence that is presented to you every time you tell us what we "really" think, and we tell you it's simply not true.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
(December 21, 2015 at 8:23 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote:
1. I'm skeptical of the claim that I'm repeating a lie. Evidence plz.
You keep repeating the lie that we don't understand religion (specifically yours, of course), and refusing to listen to us when we tell you what we think/feel as atheists. Instead of saying, "Oh, my mistake!" and then correcting your opinion based on the new information, you simply repeat what you said before, without regard for the people to whom you are speaking. It is a lie, we tell you it is a lie, and you don't seem to care. If I said that Christians are secretly atheists and only pretend to worship a God, and you told me that you sincerely believed, and I kept repeating it anyway, it would make me a liar... and intensely disrespectful, to boot. Yet you call us "angry atheists" when we react with anger to something that would infuriate anyone.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote:
2. I'm skeptical of the claim that because some board members are former Christians, they understand the religion quite well. I find that to be false in my experience. How would you show you understand religion, when you constantly disagree with Christians on what Christianity teaches?
We don't just make the claim that we understand religion because we're former Christians; as you would likely admit, yourself, many Christians have barely cracked open a Bible in their lives. What we actually say is that we (the ones to whom this applies) have studied the Bible and have found that its claims do not match what we learn from other sources, or that the version of Christianity we were taught is based on poor scholarship or ignorance of the history of the Bible and the church. Your assertion that disagreeing with Christianity means we do not understand it is bunkum. We disagree with Christianity because we understand it. I would challenge you to present an element of Christianity you think I have failed to understand, and I will happily explain it to you both from my previous point-of-view (as a former Christian) and how I have come to understand it once I applied information not taught within the church culture.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote:
3. I'm skeptical that I blind myself with the culture and thought-limitations imposed by a system of belief. Evidence plz.
Puh-leeze. Christianity teaches you that there's One Right Way to Live™, ranging from ideas about the nature and "place" of the sexes, to relationships, to which types of sex are acceptable and which are "abomination", and even extending to extra-Biblical principles like opposition to abortion, even though the Bible contains a forced abortion in Numbers chapter 5, performed by priests on a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity. It has clearly taught you that atheists cannot be moral (and a host of other foul traits with which you have tagged us), even though you have no reason to believe that other than your religious indoctrination and the bias with which you approach your examination of atheists. Again, we try to tell you how we really are, but you refuse to listen.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote:
4. I'm skeptical that atheism has no system of belief. I don't mean the dictionary definition, I mean the sociological group.
We may have some beliefs that are common among us, but if you pay attention on this board, we disagree on nearly every subject imaginable. With few exceptions, we accept the Scientific Method and the findings of scientists, but that's largely because we're not pre-indoctrinated to reject it. Even the group "leaders" you mention, like Dawkins, spend most of their time talking about applying what Sagan called the "Baloney Detector", so we learn to reject the distortions that are common to human pattern-seeking brains (such as observer bias, for instance) and ensure that our ideas are as grounded in reality as possible. That's part of why people talk about their lives changing once they embrace this methodology... you'd be surprised, if you ever honestly examined why you hold certain ideas, at what you accept simply by dent of cultural programming, much of it via religion and/or the "magical thinking" mindset that accompanies it. We reject magical thinking. That's not a system of belief, that's a method of knowing the world.
"Some beliefs that are common among us" would apply to Democrats, to NFL fans, to ex-military members, and pretty much any other group you can name. That doesn't mean there's a "system of belief" to any of those groups. Atheism itself is not a thing-- it is the absence of a thing, belief in gods. That's it. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote:
5. I'm skeptical of the view that atheism is the absence of belief. We're discussing this in another thread.
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods. Nothing else. I'm not sure why you're wrestling with that concept. Similarly, you and I are both adragonists. We might enjoy stories about them, talk about whether Smaug or Trogdor is the greatest dragon to ever burninate the peasants, but in the end, both you and I know that dragons are imaginary creatures from the minds of human beings. So when you're trying to tell atheists what they believe because of atheism, pause a moment to consider what beliefs you hold as a result of your adragonism, other than to reject the reality of stories about flying, fire-breathing wyrms.
If you will take a moment to consider, with an honest heart, you will realize that both atheism and adragonism only become "things" when surrounded by people who insist that gods or dragons are real. If you were surrounded by devotees of Smaug the Magnificent, you might have to spend a shocking amount of your time explaining that you're an adragonist, but it doesn't mean that any of your other beliefs have changed. In the case of atheism, we reject magical thinking, so some extra-Biblical beliefs will change based on the acceptance of the Scientific Method (etc), but they're all along the lines of the sorts of things that they bust on MythBusters. (Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are both atheists, and the show is largely about applying the Scientific Method to beliefs that people hold which are, as often as not, completely false.)
So please, I ask you as kindly as I can, Delicate. Stop simply launching hatred at us, and consider what you have been taught to think about us that may color how you filter the anecdotal evidence that is presented to you every time you tell us what we "really" think, and we tell you it's simply not true.
Rocket, bro, I love to watch you work. Brilliant.
"The family that prays together...is brainwashing their children."- Albert Einstein
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
(December 21, 2015 at 8:23 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 1. I'm skeptical of the claim that I'm repeating a lie. Evidence plz.
You keep repeating the lie that we don't understand religion (specifically yours, of course), and refusing to listen to us when we tell you what we think/feel as atheists. Instead of saying, "Oh, my mistake!" and then correcting your opinion based on the new information, you simply repeat what you said before, without regard for the people to whom you are speaking. It is a lie, we tell you it is a lie, and you don't seem to care. If I said that Christians are secretly atheists and only pretend to worship a God, and you told me that you sincerely believed, and I kept repeating it anyway, it would make me a liar... and intensely disrespectful, to boot. Yet you call us "angry atheists" when we react with anger to something that would infuriate anyone.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 2. I'm skeptical of the claim that because some board members are former Christians, they understand the religion quite well. I find that to be false in my experience. How would you show you understand religion, when you constantly disagree with Christians on what Christianity teaches?
We don't just make the claim that we understand religion because we're former Christians; as you would likely admit, yourself, many Christians have barely cracked open a Bible in their lives. What we actually say is that we (the ones to whom this applies) have studied the Bible and have found that its claims do not match what we learn from other sources, or that the version of Christianity we were taught is based on poor scholarship or ignorance of the history of the Bible and the church. Your assertion that disagreeing with Christianity means we do not understand it is bunkum. We disagree with Christianity because we understand it. I would challenge you to present an element of Christianity you think I have failed to understand, and I will happily explain it to you both from my previous point-of-view (as a former Christian) and how I have come to understand it once I applied information not taught within the church culture.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 3. I'm skeptical that I blind myself with the culture and thought-limitations imposed by a system of belief. Evidence plz.
Puh-leeze. Christianity teaches you that there's One Right Way to Live™, ranging from ideas about the nature and "place" of the sexes, to relationships, to which types of sex are acceptable and which are "abomination", and even extending to extra-Biblical principles like opposition to abortion, even though the Bible contains a forced abortion in Numbers chapter 5, performed by priests on a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity. It has clearly taught you that atheists cannot be moral (and a host of other foul traits with which you have tagged us), even though you have no reason to believe that other than your religious indoctrination and the bias with which you approach your examination of atheists. Again, we try to tell you how we really are, but you refuse to listen.
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 4. I'm skeptical that atheism has no system of belief. I don't mean the dictionary definition, I mean the sociological group.
We may have some beliefs that are common among us, but if you pay attention on this board, we disagree on nearly every subject imaginable. With few exceptions, we accept the Scientific Method and the findings of scientists, but that's largely because we're not pre-indoctrinated to reject it. Even the group "leaders" you mention, like Dawkins, spend most of their time talking about applying what Sagan called the "Baloney Detector", so we learn to reject the distortions that are common to human pattern-seeking brains (such as observer bias, for instance) and ensure that our ideas are as grounded in reality as possible. That's part of why people talk about their lives changing once they embrace this methodology... you'd be surprised, if you ever honestly examined why you hold certain ideas, at what you accept simply by dent of cultural programming, much of it via religion and/or the "magical thinking" mindset that accompanies it. We reject magical thinking. That's not a system of belief, that's a method of knowing the world.
"Some beliefs that are common among us" would apply to Democrats, to NFL fans, to ex-military members, and pretty much any other group you can name. That doesn't mean there's a "system of belief" to any of those groups. Atheism itself is not a thing-- it is the absence of a thing, belief in gods. That's it. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
(December 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm)Delicate Wrote: 5. I'm skeptical of the view that atheism is the absence of belief. We're discussing this in another thread.
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods. Nothing else. I'm not sure why you're wrestling with that concept. Similarly, you and I are both adragonists. We might enjoy stories about them, talk about whether Smaug or Trogdor is the greatest dragon to ever burninate the peasants, but in the end, both you and I know that dragons are imaginary creatures from the minds of human beings. So when you're trying to tell atheists what they believe because of atheism, pause a moment to consider what beliefs you hold as a result of your adragonism, other than to reject the reality of stories about flying, fire-breathing wyrms.
If you will take a moment to consider, with an honest heart, you will realize that both atheism and adragonism only become "things" when surrounded by people who insist that gods or dragons are real. If you were surrounded by devotees of Smaug the Magnificent, you might have to spend a shocking amount of your time explaining that you're an adragonist, but it doesn't mean that any of your other beliefs have changed. In the case of atheism, we reject magical thinking, so some extra-Biblical beliefs will change based on the acceptance of the Scientific Method (etc), but they're all along the lines of the sorts of things that they bust on MythBusters. (Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are both atheists, and the show is largely about applying the Scientific Method to beliefs that people hold which are, as often as not, completely false.)
So please, I ask you as kindly as I can, Delicate. Stop simply launching hatred at us, and consider what you have been taught to think about us that may color how you filter the anecdotal evidence that is presented to you every time you tell us what we "really" think, and we tell you it's simply not true.
1.
a) It's not a lie if there's hard facts establishing the claim.
b) I reserve the right to refuse to listen to anything someone thinks and feels if they are demonstrably mistaken. You can call me out when they are not clearly mistaken. But not otherwise. Not when there's evidence they are mistaken.
c) Please point to specifics here. That helps.
2.
a) Specifics please. Who here claims to have studied the Bible with any degree of rigor? Anyone can claim to study it. Pick someone and let them lay out their how their studying worked. What they did, how they did it, etc.
b) You claim you understand it. Demonstrate how or what qualifies you to say you understand it.
3.
a) Being blinded entails you are wrong. You've said (or caricatured) many things Christianity teaches, but you haven't shown them to be wrong.
b) At this point, looking at your post and my responses, I see you make a lot of assertions, and I'm asking you for a lot of substantiation of your assertions. Perhaps this is why you notice a problem in what I'm saying. I refuse to accept baseless assertions, since I'm a skeptic. Maybe you should just accept my skepticism.
4.
a) I find you generalize too much here about atheists when you presume to speak for what you think is such a diverse group. And I see a lot more assertions without substantiation.
b) A big part of what you describe seems like an idealized romanticism about a hyper-rational picture of atheists that I don't find the least bit true. I can substantiate this with evidence if you like.
5.
a) I'm not an adragonist. I don't have enough evidence for the view that dragons or something very similar could never have existed in the 13.7 billion years the earth has existed. I'll grant it seems intuitively implausible to me, but I'm not confident enough to be an adragonist. Likewise, I don't think atheists have enough evidence to be atheists.
b) You seem like a nice guy. I'll make you a deal. Let's fight side by side to eradicate all hatred on this forum. Not just hatred against atheists, but hatred or irrationality against all groups, views, and individuals. Will you join me?
(December 21, 2015 at 7:50 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: No. I accept them as facts. They are simply verified data. This does not require belief. Scientific facts are true no matter what I think.
So you don't believe that something which is true is in fact true?
The play on semantics is getting old. Let's just say I require facts based upon scientific evidence before I will use the word "belief", because "belief", at least in the USA, has been linked with the term "faith" - - the implication is that most belief involves things that are not proved.
"The family that prays together...is brainwashing their children."- Albert Einstein
December 23, 2015 at 1:48 am (This post was last modified: December 23, 2015 at 2:06 am by TheRocketSurgeon.)
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 1.
a) It's not a lie if there's hard facts establishing the claim.
b) I reserve the right to refuse to listen to anything someone thinks and feels if they are demonstrably mistaken. You can call me out when they are not clearly mistaken. But not otherwise. Not when there's evidence they are mistaken.
c) Please point to specifics here. That helps.
a) True. However, your "hard facts" fly in the face of both what we are telling you and the point (which I've made before) below, which is that we are a diverse group, to which your "hard facts" may apply in a number of cases but hardly represent the majority. You are applying strong confirmation bias when you evaluate "how atheists are", and ignore us when we tell you that these statements do not represent the majority of us. I have participated in atheism groups for nearly 20 years, half my life, and I have only known a handful I would describe in the way you describe us as a group. That makes you either so prejudiced that you're incapable of thinking about or treating us reasonably/respectfully, or you're a liar. I'm not sure which would be worse.
b) You reserve the right to think whatever you want, and to listen as much or as little as possible. But as I said, if you insist on going on with your prejudices in the face of what we're telling you about ourselves, it is no better than a child who plugs his ears and repeatedly screams "I'm not listening!!"
c) I have already done so.
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 2.
a) Specifics please. Who here claims to have studied the Bible with any degree of rigor? Anyone can claim to study it. Pick someone and let them lay out their how their studying worked. What they did, how they did it, etc.
b) You claim you understand it. Demonstrate how or what qualifies you to say you understand it.
a) Many of us here are well-versed in Biblical scholarship; some (such as GoodWithOutGod and Aractus) have degrees specifically in the subject. For many others of us, those of us who left strong faith traditions behind, an intense study of the Bible (in an attempt to maintain our faiths) was part and parcel of that process.
b) In my process, I read the Bible in both the New King James and the New International Version, once cover-to-cover and once as part of a "read the Bible in a year" program, as well as being part of intense Bible study sessions throughout my church upbringing, because my intelligence marked me as a potential apologist or evangelist. After leaving Christianity, I again read the Bible (New American Standard Version, this time) in its near-entirety as part of a "Precept Upon Precept" course (Kay Arthur), which claimed to but did not in fact cover the entire Bible... you could tell because of all the pages that never got highlighter pen marks on them. I also audited (took for free) the head of the Religious Studies department Dr. Mirecki's courses on the history of the Bible (largely about the writings and culture of the Hebrews and the early Christian church) at the University of Kansas, in 2004-05. Because my family is highly religious, I have read pretty much every major book of apologetics written prior to 2001, when my family tried to "save" me during the year before I received my degree in biochemistry.
Most importantly of all, I can read and compare the difference in how I absorbed verses and "Biblical Truths™" before and after I stopped looking at the scriptures through rose-colored glasses, and spot the same thinking errors I once committed whenever I listen to (or read) Christians saying the things I once would have said. It is why it is so offensive that you would claim we don't understand religion, and why it's so infuriating that you boil all the effort and emotional struggle it takes to leave a faith into trite phrases like "You still believe but are just angry at God."
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 3.
a) Being blinded entails you are wrong. You've said (or caricatured) many things Christianity teaches, but you haven't shown them to be wrong.
b) At this point, looking at your post and my responses, I see you make a lot of assertions, and I'm asking you for a lot of substantiation of your assertions. Perhaps this is why you notice a problem in what I'm saying. I refuse to accept baseless assertions, since I'm a skeptic. Maybe you should just accept my skepticism.
a) I confess I do like to caricature and use hyperbole to effect, but I don't think I've been called upon to show that the things Christianity teaches are wrong, yet, during our discussions. If you'd like to go into the problems of what the Bible claims about the origin of man (and thus, of course, Original Sin), the physically impossible concept of a global flood, or how it gets how genetics works absolutely wrong in Genesis 30, I'd enjoy that sort of discussion. However, if you're referring to the Christian claims of moral superiority via the Ultimate Lawgiver who allegedly caused the human authors to be "inspired to write divine scripture" (as the claim goes), you'll be stuck defending slavery in both testaments, as well as a host of other concepts that are distinctly against the US Constitution, which I have given my solemn oath to defend... one example is "no other gods before me", in a nation that guarantees freedom of religion. Neither is a winning argument for a Bible defender, except when surrounded by sycophants and the credulous.
b) As I said, skepticism is applauded around here. I don't mind a bit that you disbelieve me. However, you can't simply ignore what I say and keep repeating "examples please", without being more specific. If you'd like to ask me questions you'd like specific answers to, go ahead, but this playing coy shit has got to stop if you want me to take you seriously enough to continue beating my head against what appears at the moment to be a brick wall, metaphorically speaking.
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 4.
a) I find you generalize too much here about atheists when you presume to speak for what you think is such a diverse group. And I see a lot more assertions without substantiation.
b) A big part of what you describe seems like an idealized romanticism about a hyper-rational picture of atheists that I don't find the least bit true. I can substantiate this with evidence if you like.
a) We are a diverse group, as I have explained. Yet there are some things we generally have in common, based (as, again, I have already explained) on the rejection of magical thinking and the acceptance of the Scientific Method and rational skepticism. There are some traits that are more common than others, among us, which I certainly recognize. But at the moment your statement is itself a generalization that's far too broad to generate a pointed response.
b) However it "seems" to you, it's based on 20 years spent among atheists, both online and in real-world organizations. You may not like that we don't fit your observer-biased presuppositions about us, but you don't get to use a few examples and say it applies to the group. It'd be like saying Christians are all secretly like Westboro Baptist Church, even though most Christians despise them as much as we do. Honestly, think about it, how would you view such a claim by a non-Christian?
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 5.
a) I'm not an adragonist. I don't have enough evidence for the view that dragons or something very similar could never have existed in the 13.7 billion years the earth has existed. I'll grant it seems intuitively implausible to me, but I'm not confident enough to be an adragonist. Likewise, I don't think atheists have enough evidence to be atheists.
b) You seem like a nice guy. I'll make you a deal. Let's fight side by side to eradicate all hatred on this forum. Not just hatred against atheists, but hatred or irrationality against all groups, views, and individuals. Will you join me?
a) Then you're an agnostic adragonist, just as I am an agnostic atheist. You don't think it's possible to know, but your opinion is that they most likely are just the product of human imaginations. It's not simply "intuitively implausible", it defies everything we know about the history of life on earth-- not the least of which include the inability of creatures that size to fly under their own power, the inability of any creature to breathe fire without severely damaging itself, and the lack of hexapedal body-forms found anywhere on the planet. But get real; you'll never convince me that you really think that, despite all of the above, dragons might be more than the product of human imaginations. Hell, just like we can watch new religions being created by con-men (Mormonism or Scientology, anyone?) today, we can watch people creating new dragon stories to tell. It's not rocket science! I'm sorry you don't like the conclusion to which this thought-process leads, and so I can understand your claim of agnosticism on the question, but I'm afraid I still think you're an adragonist.
b) No I will not. I think you're being deliberately coy about a huge number of things, your entire style is irritating, and you have not yet shown anything that looks like an ability to treat us as your equals. I think you're using this final plea as an attempt to gain advantage, in that you may take umbrage if I do not accept, which I cannot do as I am fiercely against censorship of any kind. I do not need a pact with you to call out my fellow nonbelievers when they step over a line, or are unfounded in their claims and/or are unfair. I have done so in defense of (decent, respectful) Christians on numerous occasion on this website and its sister site. But I will not make a pact with you, based on the behaviors I have witnessed from you thus far.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
December 23, 2015 at 7:15 am (This post was last modified: December 23, 2015 at 7:22 am by tkolter.)
(December 23, 2015 at 1:48 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 1.
a) It's not a lie if there's hard facts establishing the claim.
b) I reserve the right to refuse to listen to anything someone thinks and feels if they are demonstrably mistaken. You can call me out when they are not clearly mistaken. But not otherwise. Not when there's evidence they are mistaken.
c) Please point to specifics here. That helps.
a) True. However, your "hard facts" fly in the face of both what we are telling you and the point (which I've made before) below, which is that we are a diverse group, to which your "hard facts" may apply in a number of cases but hardly represent the majority. You are applying strong confirmation bias when you evaluate "how atheists are", and ignore us when we tell you that these statements do not represent the majority of us. I have participated in atheism groups for nearly 20 years, half my life, and I have only known a handful I would describe in the way you describe us as a group. That makes you either so prejudiced that you're incapable of thinking about or treating us reasonably/respectfully, or you're a liar. I'm not sure which would be worse.
b) You reserve the right to think whatever you want, and to listen as much or as little as possible. But as I said, if you insist on going on with your prejudices in the face of what we're telling you about ourselves, it is no better than a child who plugs his ears and repeatedly screams "I'm not listening!!"
c) I have already done so.
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 2.
a) Specifics please. Who here claims to have studied the Bible with any degree of rigor? Anyone can claim to study it. Pick someone and let them lay out their how their studying worked. What they did, how they did it, etc.
b) You claim you understand it. Demonstrate how or what qualifies you to say you understand it.
a) Many of us here are well-versed in Biblical scholarship; some (such as GoodWithOutGod and Aractus) have degrees specifically in the subject. For many others of us, those of us who left strong faith traditions behind, an intense study of the Bible (in an attempt to maintain our faiths) was part and parcel of that process.
b) In my process, I read the Bible in both the New King James and the New International Version, once cover-to-cover and once as part of a "read the Bible in a year" program, as well as being part of intense Bible study sessions throughout my church upbringing, because my intelligence marked me as a potential apologist or evangelist. After leaving Christianity, I again read the Bible (New American Standard Version, this time) in its near-entirety as part of a "Precept Upon Precept" course (Kay Arthur), which claimed to but did not in fact cover the entire Bible... you could tell because of all the pages that never got highlighter pen marks on them. I also audited (took for free) the head of the Religious Studies department Dr. Mirecki's courses on the history of the Bible (largely about the writings and culture of the Hebrews and the early Christian church) at the University of Kansas, in 2004-05. Because my family is highly religious, I have read pretty much every major book of apologetics written prior to 2001, when my family tried to "save" me during the year before I received my degree in biochemistry.
Most importantly of all, I can read and compare the difference in how I absorbed verses and "Biblical Truths™" before and after I stopped looking at the scriptures through rose-colored glasses, and spot the same thinking errors I once committed whenever I listen to (or read) Christians saying the things I once would have said. It is why it is so offensive that you would claim we don't understand religion, and why it's so infuriating that you boil all the effort and emotional struggle it takes to leave a faith into trite phrases like "You still believe but are just angry at God."
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 3.
a) Being blinded entails you are wrong. You've said (or caricatured) many things Christianity teaches, but you haven't shown them to be wrong.
b) At this point, looking at your post and my responses, I see you make a lot of assertions, and I'm asking you for a lot of substantiation of your assertions. Perhaps this is why you notice a problem in what I'm saying. I refuse to accept baseless assertions, since I'm a skeptic. Maybe you should just accept my skepticism.
a) I confess I do like to caricature and use hyperbole to effect, but I don't think I've been called upon to show that the things Christianity teaches are wrong, yet, during our discussions. If you'd like to go into the problems of what the Bible claims about the origin of man (and thus, of course, Original Sin), the physically impossible concept of a global flood, or how it gets how genetics works absolutely wrong in Genesis 30, I'd enjoy that sort of discussion. However, if you're referring to the Christian claims of moral superiority via the Ultimate Lawgiver who allegedly caused the human authors to be "inspired to write divine scripture" (as the claim goes), you'll be stuck defending slavery in both testaments, as well as a host of other concepts that are distinctly against the US Constitution, which I have given my solemn oath to defend... one example is "no other gods before me", in a nation that guarantees freedom of religion. Neither is a winning argument for a Bible defender, except when surrounded by sycophants and the credulous.
b) As I said, skepticism is applauded around here. I don't mind a bit that you disbelieve me. However, you can't simply ignore what I say and keep repeating "examples please", without being more specific. If you'd like to ask me questions you'd like specific answers to, go ahead, but this playing coy shit has got to stop if you want me to take you seriously enough to continue beating my head against what appears at the moment to be a brick wall, metaphorically speaking.
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 4.
a) I find you generalize too much here about atheists when you presume to speak for what you think is such a diverse group. And I see a lot more assertions without substantiation.
b) A big part of what you describe seems like an idealized romanticism about a hyper-rational picture of atheists that I don't find the least bit true. I can substantiate this with evidence if you like.
a) We are a diverse group, as I have explained. Yet there are some things we generally have in common, based (as, again, I have already explained) on the rejection of magical thinking and the acceptance of the Scientific Method and rational skepticism. There are some traits that are more common than others, among us, which I certainly recognize. But at the moment your statement is itself a generalization that's far too broad to generate a pointed response.
b) However it "seems" to you, it's based on 20 years spent among atheists, both online and in real-world organizations. You may not like that we don't fit your observer-biased presuppositions about us, but you don't get to use a few examples and say it applies to the group. It'd be like saying Christians are all secretly like Westboro Baptist Church, even though most Christians despise them as much as we do. Honestly, think about it, how would you view such a claim by a non-Christian?
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 5.
a) I'm not an adragonist. I don't have enough evidence for the view that dragons or something very similar could never have existed in the 13.7 billion years the earth has existed. I'll grant it seems intuitively implausible to me, but I'm not confident enough to be an adragonist. Likewise, I don't think atheists have enough evidence to be atheists.
b) You seem like a nice guy. I'll make you a deal. Let's fight side by side to eradicate all hatred on this forum. Not just hatred against atheists, but hatred or irrationality against all groups, views, and individuals. Will you join me?
a) Then you're an agnostic adragonist, just as I am an agnostic atheist. You don't think it's possible to know, but your opinion is that they most likely are just the product of human imaginations. It's not simply "intuitively implausible", it defies everything we know about the history of life on earth-- not the least of which include the inability of creatures that size to fly under their own power, the inability of any creature to breathe fire without severely damaging itself, and the lack of hexapedal body-forms found anywhere on the planet. But get real; you'll never convince me that you really think that, despite all of the above, dragons might be more than the product of human imaginations. Hell, just like we can watch new religions being created by con-men (Mormonism or Scientology, anyone?) today, we can watch people creating new dragon stories to tell. It's not rocket science! I'm sorry you don't like the conclusion to which this thought-process leads, and so I can understand your claim of agnosticism on the question, but I'm afraid I still think you're an adragonist.
b) No I will not. I think you're being deliberately coy about a huge number of things, your entire style is irritating, and you have not yet shown anything that looks like an ability to treat us as your equals. I think you're using this final plea as an attempt to gain advantage, in that you may take umbrage if I do not accept, which I cannot do as I am fiercely against censorship of any kind. I do not need a pact with you to call out my fellow nonbelievers when they step over a line, or are unfounded in their claims and/or are unfair. I have done so in defense of (decent, respectful) Christians on numerous occasion on this website and its sister site. But I will not make a pact with you, based on the behaviors I have witnessed from you thus far.
I own the book its not immoral. You chat with people, bring up faith then show them its not a good epistemology thereby creating openings for them to think about it and move away from faith which will undermine religion bringing them out of it to the light of reason. Its just correcting how they think from poor thinking to good thinking which is using evidence and human reason.
(July 10, 2015 at 3:40 pm)Idrfuzzy Wrote: From one of my new favorite authors, Peter Boghossian. (I rate him with Dawkins and Hitchens and Stenger and . . . all our favs.)
From "A Manual for Creating Atheists".
But I'm a little torn. Sure, I dream of a day when religion is classified as a mental illness. I would love to see 95% of my 9-year-old
cousin's HS graduating class claim to be atheist. I would love to see a day, before I die, when nobody kills each other over who has
the RIGHT imaginary friend. BUT . . .
I have told many Xtians who were trying to change MY mind that it was disrespectful. That they were treating me as if I was not an
intelligent adult, quite capable of choosing my own beliefs, and that those beliefs were none of their business.
If I try to "debate" a religious person away from their religion, am I not committing the same act of disrespect?
In the book which I bought he shows how to lovingly attack faith ,not religion, since faith is faulty thinking which is our job as Atheists to correct so they then can rationally evaluate their religion.
(December 23, 2015 at 1:48 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 1.
a) It's not a lie if there's hard facts establishing the claim.
b) I reserve the right to refuse to listen to anything someone thinks and feels if they are demonstrably mistaken. You can call me out when they are not clearly mistaken. But not otherwise. Not when there's evidence they are mistaken.
c) Please point to specifics here. That helps.
a) True. However, your "hard facts" fly in the face of both what we are telling you and the point (which I've made before) below, which is that we are a diverse group, to which your "hard facts" may apply in a number of cases but hardly represent the majority. You are applying strong confirmation bias when you evaluate "how atheists are", and ignore us when we tell you that these statements do not represent the majority of us. I have participated in atheism groups for nearly 20 years, half my life, and I have only known a handful I would describe in the way you describe us as a group. That makes you either so prejudiced that you're incapable of thinking about or treating us reasonably/respectfully, or you're a liar. I'm not sure which would be worse.
b) You reserve the right to think whatever you want, and to listen as much or as little as possible. But as I said, if you insist on going on with your prejudices in the face of what we're telling you about ourselves, it is no better than a child who plugs his ears and repeatedly screams "I'm not listening!!"
c) I have already done so.
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 2.
a) Specifics please. Who here claims to have studied the Bible with any degree of rigor? Anyone can claim to study it. Pick someone and let them lay out their how their studying worked. What they did, how they did it, etc.
b) You claim you understand it. Demonstrate how or what qualifies you to say you understand it.
a) Many of us here are well-versed in Biblical scholarship; some (such as GoodWithOutGod and Aractus) have degrees specifically in the subject. For many others of us, those of us who left strong faith traditions behind, an intense study of the Bible (in an attempt to maintain our faiths) was part and parcel of that process.
b) In my process, I read the Bible in both the New King James and the New International Version, once cover-to-cover and once as part of a "read the Bible in a year" program, as well as being part of intense Bible study sessions throughout my church upbringing, because my intelligence marked me as a potential apologist or evangelist. After leaving Christianity, I again read the Bible (New American Standard Version, this time) in its near-entirety as part of a "Precept Upon Precept" course (Kay Arthur), which claimed to but did not in fact cover the entire Bible... you could tell because of all the pages that never got highlighter pen marks on them. I also audited (took for free) the head of the Religious Studies department Dr. Mirecki's courses on the history of the Bible (largely about the writings and culture of the Hebrews and the early Christian church) at the University of Kansas, in 2004-05. Because my family is highly religious, I have read pretty much every major book of apologetics written prior to 2001, when my family tried to "save" me during the year before I received my degree in biochemistry.
Most importantly of all, I can read and compare the difference in how I absorbed verses and "Biblical Truths™" before and after I stopped looking at the scriptures through rose-colored glasses, and spot the same thinking errors I once committed whenever I listen to (or read) Christians saying the things I once would have said. It is why it is so offensive that you would claim we don't understand religion, and why it's so infuriating that you boil all the effort and emotional struggle it takes to leave a faith into trite phrases like "You still believe but are just angry at God."
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 3.
a) Being blinded entails you are wrong. You've said (or caricatured) many things Christianity teaches, but you haven't shown them to be wrong.
b) At this point, looking at your post and my responses, I see you make a lot of assertions, and I'm asking you for a lot of substantiation of your assertions. Perhaps this is why you notice a problem in what I'm saying. I refuse to accept baseless assertions, since I'm a skeptic. Maybe you should just accept my skepticism.
a) I confess I do like to caricature and use hyperbole to effect, but I don't think I've been called upon to show that the things Christianity teaches are wrong, yet, during our discussions. If you'd like to go into the problems of what the Bible claims about the origin of man (and thus, of course, Original Sin), the physically impossible concept of a global flood, or how it gets how genetics works absolutely wrong in Genesis 30, I'd enjoy that sort of discussion. However, if you're referring to the Christian claims of moral superiority via the Ultimate Lawgiver who allegedly caused the human authors to be "inspired to write divine scripture" (as the claim goes), you'll be stuck defending slavery in both testaments, as well as a host of other concepts that are distinctly against the US Constitution, which I have given my solemn oath to defend... one example is "no other gods before me", in a nation that guarantees freedom of religion. Neither is a winning argument for a Bible defender, except when surrounded by sycophants and the credulous.
b) As I said, skepticism is applauded around here. I don't mind a bit that you disbelieve me. However, you can't simply ignore what I say and keep repeating "examples please", without being more specific. If you'd like to ask me questions you'd like specific answers to, go ahead, but this playing coy shit has got to stop if you want me to take you seriously enough to continue beating my head against what appears at the moment to be a brick wall, metaphorically speaking.
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 4.
a) I find you generalize too much here about atheists when you presume to speak for what you think is such a diverse group. And I see a lot more assertions without substantiation.
b) A big part of what you describe seems like an idealized romanticism about a hyper-rational picture of atheists that I don't find the least bit true. I can substantiate this with evidence if you like.
a) We are a diverse group, as I have explained. Yet there are some things we generally have in common, based (as, again, I have already explained) on the rejection of magical thinking and the acceptance of the Scientific Method and rational skepticism. There are some traits that are more common than others, among us, which I certainly recognize. But at the moment your statement is itself a generalization that's far too broad to generate a pointed response.
b) However it "seems" to you, it's based on 20 years spent among atheists, both online and in real-world organizations. You may not like that we don't fit your observer-biased presuppositions about us, but you don't get to use a few examples and say it applies to the group. It'd be like saying Christians are all secretly like Westboro Baptist Church, even though most Christians despise them as much as we do. Honestly, think about it, how would you view such a claim by a non-Christian?
(December 23, 2015 at 12:05 am)Delicate Wrote: 5.
a) I'm not an adragonist. I don't have enough evidence for the view that dragons or something very similar could never have existed in the 13.7 billion years the earth has existed. I'll grant it seems intuitively implausible to me, but I'm not confident enough to be an adragonist. Likewise, I don't think atheists have enough evidence to be atheists.
b) You seem like a nice guy. I'll make you a deal. Let's fight side by side to eradicate all hatred on this forum. Not just hatred against atheists, but hatred or irrationality against all groups, views, and individuals. Will you join me?
a) Then you're an agnostic adragonist, just as I am an agnostic atheist. You don't think it's possible to know, but your opinion is that they most likely are just the product of human imaginations. It's not simply "intuitively implausible", it defies everything we know about the history of life on earth-- not the least of which include the inability of creatures that size to fly under their own power, the inability of any creature to breathe fire without severely damaging itself, and the lack of hexapedal body-forms found anywhere on the planet. But get real; you'll never convince me that you really think that, despite all of the above, dragons might be more than the product of human imaginations. Hell, just like we can watch new religions being created by con-men (Mormonism or Scientology, anyone?) today, we can watch people creating new dragon stories to tell. It's not rocket science! I'm sorry you don't like the conclusion to which this thought-process leads, and so I can understand your claim of agnosticism on the question, but I'm afraid I still think you're an adragonist.
b) No I will not. I think you're being deliberately coy about a huge number of things, your entire style is irritating, and you have not yet shown anything that looks like an ability to treat us as your equals. I think you're using this final plea as an attempt to gain advantage, in that you may take umbrage if I do not accept, which I cannot do as I am fiercely against censorship of any kind. I do not need a pact with you to call out my fellow nonbelievers when they step over a line, or are unfounded in their claims and/or are unfair. I have done so in defense of (decent, respectful) Christians on numerous occasion on this website and its sister site. But I will not make a pact with you, based on the behaviors I have witnessed from you thus far.
Let's settle some issues:
It's not enough to simply tell me, or assert something. You have to be able to support it. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, right? So why should I accept your claim with no evidence?
We can also settle the matter of specifics: Are you simply saying my claim that most atheists don't understand Christianity is a lie? Or is there more?
Likewise, you're welcome to pick a topic of your choosing from the list you've provided (origin of man, original sin, etc) so we can discuss it. In fact, I can even broaden the topic to discuss the scientific method and rational skepticism you brought up, and how the scientific method is more compatible with theism than atheism, and rational skepticism, so far as it is rationally justifiable, fails to render religious belief irrational.
So far as our differing views on what atheists are like, you're welcome to disagree with my findings, as I am with yours. Keep in mind this is not to say all atheists are idiots. I'm more comfortable saying a significant majority are, at least as reflected on the internet. And I don't mean this as a slur. I mean it as an objective assessment of their rational competence.
As for adragonism, I reject the adragonism label completely, just as I reject the dragonism label. I really am just an agnostic on the existence on dragons. I see no need to bring dragonism or adragonism into the picture so far as my views. Can you say that mere agnosticism about the existence of dragons, without invoking adragonism, is incorrect? On what basis?
As for my final request, for us to eliminate hatred tout court, I find it strange how eliminating "theistic hatred" has your support, but you call eliminating hatred period to be censorship. Can you explain this inconsistency in your views?
