What is wrong with theistic beliefs?

[Aliza]

It's not about the magic book.

It is, look..above, at your own example.

People only follow the parts of the magic book that they like. We can take a stroll through leviticus and see for ourselves that the majority of Christians eat or condone the consumption of bacon and shellfish. The magic book doesn't stop them from doing what they actually want. It only offers them the justification to do it.

So if you can convince the followers of the magic book that equal rights is the just thing for everyone, then they'll chew on that for a little... decide if it makes sense to them or not independent of whatever the magic book says. If they decide that equal rights for all makes sense, then they'll find support to validate their views in the magic book. If they can't find support, they'll reinterpret things or cherry pick the offending part of the bible into obscurity.

Then the children see that the parents faced a moral dilemma and they responded by reinterpreting the magic book, and they themselves will have justification to reinterpret it as needed when they become adults. If this wasn't happening, then we'd have the exact same christianity that we had 2,000 years ago. We don't even have the same Christianity that we had 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.

The end result is the same regardless of how a person justifies it; they're choosing the path they want to take independent of the magic book.

Agreed, but that doesn't change the fact that an argument which depends on what a magic book says can be no more credible than the magic book.  This was an example of magic book believers trying to do a -good- thing, and even that got screwed.

Magic books, or theistic beliefs in general, give the believer all the reason they require to do some shitty thing, but provide no credible reason to do any good thing.  Theism is a drain swirling phenomena.  The god of theism, no more than a puppet.

I guess my point is that if the believers in question were going to do something shitty, it was independent of what the book said. They ultimately do what they want to do, whether that's a good thing or a shitty thing. If the theist makes an argument based on the book, it's just a facade. The book is the curtain they hide behind.

If the atheist and the theist agree on the outcome, then we don't have a problem. If we both agree that civil rights for all is the just thing to do and you don't like my reasoning for agreeing with you, then we have a totally different problem; that's a completely different value system that should be addressed separately from the point I'm trying to make now.

If the atheist and the theist disagree on the outcome, then I say a more appropriate tactic for persuading the theist is not to attack the book because the book is not the cause, and doing so polarizes the theist against you. "People of all races seem to be able to earn medical degrees, so how can you say that one race is inherently 'better' than the other race?" Keep chipping away at that and if you successfully persuade them, then they'll change their understanding of the book to match what they've decided.