Popular arguments you think Atheists shouldn't use

[Brian37]

Recently came across this article which I think is relevant to the OP: Atheists, Please Stop Saying These Things

In brief here are the nine things the article mentions (see the article for more detail on each):

1. Please stop saying that “we’re all born atheist.” .

2. Please stop trotting out simplistic reasons why people believe (ie. they just believe because they are afraid of dying).

3. On a related note, please stop explaining the creation of religion in equally simplistic ways. (ie. religion was created to control people).

4. Stop conflating fundamentalism or Biblical literalism with Christianity itself.

5. Please stop saying that being religious means someone is stupid.

6. “Religion is a mental illness” or “religion is a virus.”

7. That if you call yourself an agnostic you’re really just a wimpy atheist who won’t commit or who doesn’t have the courage of their convictions.

8. Tax the churches! Churches are tax-exempt under the same section of the IRS code as the FFRF, ACLU, Americans United and American Atheists.

9. “The founding fathers were all deists” (or worse, atheists).

Why?

1. Um if you have no god claim in your head that is like an empty glass. "Atheist" does not to some atheists means "no god" but all of us are "empty" as far as god claims when we are born.

2. Theist certainly do not have to be afraid of dying and can be quite brave in defending a falsehood. But they are psychologically unaware that it is an attempt to defend the idea being infinite when the truth is we are finite. It is not so much a fear of dying as much as it is a fear of being finite.

3. No religion was not invented to control people, but group survival does set up social orders and those social orders do become political, so religion does control people.

4. Why not? Liberals do not understand the context of when those books were written and civility is because they water it down. The literalists DO NOT water it down.

5. If you are claiming the Yankees wont the Superbowl you are stupid, there is no polite way to put it.

6. This one depends. Humans can have mental illness that leads to bad claims. But religion itself is a result of gap filling, but to say it cannot spread like a virus is absurd, otherwise people would not indoctrinate their kids or switch from one religion to another. I used to poo poo Dakwins meme theory. I would translate that into mere marketing and marketing even when lacking facts, unfortunately can and does work.

7. You cannot simply be an agnostic. You can be a theist or agnostic theist, or an atheist or an agnostic atheist, but you cannot simply be agnostic because the word is a qualifying word and not a position itself.

8. Yes tax them if they break the law. Otherwise stay the fuck out of politics.

9. I agree, they were not all deists but many of them were and someone like Jefferson if he ran today could not run on the Republican ticket having called himself a Unitarian and saying atheists could be moral even though he was not an atheist himself.