What are some good checkmate arguments against religion?

[Mister Agenda]

Just the words :"I now truly believe" that will shut them up and checkmate any Christian.

I now truly believe in doubt.

---

According to Dr. Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, don't bother going for the checkmate. Rather, your aim is to move the person one step at a time away from their faith.

I'm not sure I like all this evangelism. It has nothing to do with atheism per se, and doesn't seem very humanistic, either. Is it motivated by anti-theism (I don't believe in God and you shouldn't either!)?

Besides, the churches and mosques are doing a wonderful job of the initial task moving people a step away from their faith. That's the typical path from religious to atheist: Leave place of worship over the hypocrisy or whatever. Discover you can get along just fine without the institution. Faith gradually erodes. Winds up atheist.

I know it would have been much more difficult for me to stop believing in God if I'd stayed in church getting my faith reinforced and being subjected to pressure to believe all the time.

So the religious are doing their part by driving young people away. Letting nature take its course should suffice to generate significant numbers for us. I'm not sure I even want us to be a majority. I haven't been to impressed with how people act when they know they're in the majority. A large minority, like 20-40% of the population would be fine with me.

---

I hear this general story from fellow atheists all the time and it reeks of the same strain of bullshit as those atheist-turned-Christian stories, because it paints a picture of people and how they usually change more fundamental beliefs about the world that is very against the grain. Sure, it happens sometimes, but this sort of thing certainly does not happen nearly as often as fellow internet atheists like to pretend (especially in cases where the reasoning they present is less rationally sound than they seem to realize).

Have you considered that atheists may be different from believers and that's why our stories are different from theirs? No doubt someone raised atheist is largely atheist for the same reason people raised Muslim are Muslim, but someone who deconverts in an overwhelmingly theist-positive society may have distinctive personality traits. Against the grain is kinda our thing.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonre...y-profile/

---

The answer is rational humanism.

Can something create itself?

Did anyone here claim that something can create itself?

is that rational?

Are nonsequiturs?

think about it..

Generally speaking, it's thinking that makes someone an atheist. You should try it yourself.