street epistemology

[TheRocketSurgeon]

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.

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."

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.

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?

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.