From what I've seen, there are many situations that atheists are guilty of just being wrong about stuff, logical fallacies, getting emotional about arguments and letting it get in the way of their conclusions.
Before I go into what fallacies and over emotional arguments I think I've seen on here and on other forums I just want to say why I think religious people are usually more guilty of these things.
I think you're spot on when you said that religion is a by product of erratic human emotions, there's a lot to lose if you're a religious guy who suddenly realizes god doesn't exist at a late age, not so much if you're an atheist who suddenly realizes god exists at a late age. A theist who has spent 40 years of his life praying, talking to someone who doesn't exist, reading a boring book about nothing, being emotionally attached to an imaginary friend, loses a lot when he or she suddenly stops believing. Not to mention the comfort of rituals, of simplistic comfort in death.
But anyway, yes you're right atheists do get over emotional I think aswell, and can be emotionally fueled to support some bad arguments not even necessarily about religion all the time.
What I mean by that is it seems that groups of people seem to identify their enemy and the opinion they stand for that they're against, then go so radically in the opposite direction that they become just as irrational as the people they're opposing.
For example sexism, I'd say it's irrational to say women are inferior to men, and what could be a rational argument against this type of sexism is that superior and inferior are subjective in some ways and that obviously the survival of the human race is dependent on women and there's a vast spectrum of men and women on this planet all with different strengths and weaknesses.
But what I've seen is ridiculous arguments that ignore the actual scientific differences between men and women, people implying that the reason women don't compete on a mans level in a lot of sports is because of sexism, rather than the fact that on average men are taller, can run faster, have more muscles and it's easier for them to get to a lower body fat percentage.
I think the same type of thing happened when a theist started a thread on this forum talking about his girlfriend and her sexual history, then lots of people from the forum instantly identified him as the enemy and went so far in the opposite direction of what his opinion that it ended up (I think) blurring their own opinion. Saying things along the lines of "I don't care about my partners sexual history at all ever, I care about my partners sexual history if she lied to people/committed sexual crimes/hasn't had enough experience in the past."
Another example would be racism. I haven't seen it to a large extent on this forum but it's the type of thing where white people are against racism, fair enough, but then they go so far in the other direction they start apologizing for being white, feeling guilty, claiming black people can't be racist.
On the religious side of things there's plenty of bad arguments against the quran and the bible. Personally I only have a few things about the quran I can pin point as being total bullshit, other than that I don't even bother going into the specifics of what the quran says because whatever you argue against it the predictable argument back is that you have the translation wrong or it's out of context, or that there's a later part of the quran which abrogation of verses.
It's actually pretty difficult to read the quran in the right context since even arabic speaking Muslims don't agree on what the right context is.
But with the amount of atrocities and stupidity directly related to religions out there I think it is easy to see how people could get emotionally wrapped up in an argument against religions. When you watch a video of Muslims shouting God is great while sawing a guys head off with a knife while he screams and gargles on his own blood, it is tempting to tell other Muslims to fuck off when they try saying it's a religion of peace.
But one thing I will say in conclusion is that I think most atheists tend to agree on what I think is an opinion that all religions are just man made cults, and I think most the time this isn't an emotional conclusion it's just a casual observation. Not all of these cults are violent, I don't think all these cults evoke much emotion and some of them are not provocative at all but they are still man made cults.
Before I go into what fallacies and over emotional arguments I think I've seen on here and on other forums I just want to say why I think religious people are usually more guilty of these things.
I think you're spot on when you said that religion is a by product of erratic human emotions, there's a lot to lose if you're a religious guy who suddenly realizes god doesn't exist at a late age, not so much if you're an atheist who suddenly realizes god exists at a late age. A theist who has spent 40 years of his life praying, talking to someone who doesn't exist, reading a boring book about nothing, being emotionally attached to an imaginary friend, loses a lot when he or she suddenly stops believing. Not to mention the comfort of rituals, of simplistic comfort in death.
But anyway, yes you're right atheists do get over emotional I think aswell, and can be emotionally fueled to support some bad arguments not even necessarily about religion all the time.
What I mean by that is it seems that groups of people seem to identify their enemy and the opinion they stand for that they're against, then go so radically in the opposite direction that they become just as irrational as the people they're opposing.
For example sexism, I'd say it's irrational to say women are inferior to men, and what could be a rational argument against this type of sexism is that superior and inferior are subjective in some ways and that obviously the survival of the human race is dependent on women and there's a vast spectrum of men and women on this planet all with different strengths and weaknesses.
But what I've seen is ridiculous arguments that ignore the actual scientific differences between men and women, people implying that the reason women don't compete on a mans level in a lot of sports is because of sexism, rather than the fact that on average men are taller, can run faster, have more muscles and it's easier for them to get to a lower body fat percentage.
I think the same type of thing happened when a theist started a thread on this forum talking about his girlfriend and her sexual history, then lots of people from the forum instantly identified him as the enemy and went so far in the opposite direction of what his opinion that it ended up (I think) blurring their own opinion. Saying things along the lines of "I don't care about my partners sexual history at all ever, I care about my partners sexual history if she lied to people/committed sexual crimes/hasn't had enough experience in the past."
Another example would be racism. I haven't seen it to a large extent on this forum but it's the type of thing where white people are against racism, fair enough, but then they go so far in the other direction they start apologizing for being white, feeling guilty, claiming black people can't be racist.
On the religious side of things there's plenty of bad arguments against the quran and the bible. Personally I only have a few things about the quran I can pin point as being total bullshit, other than that I don't even bother going into the specifics of what the quran says because whatever you argue against it the predictable argument back is that you have the translation wrong or it's out of context, or that there's a later part of the quran which abrogation of verses.
It's actually pretty difficult to read the quran in the right context since even arabic speaking Muslims don't agree on what the right context is.
But with the amount of atrocities and stupidity directly related to religions out there I think it is easy to see how people could get emotionally wrapped up in an argument against religions. When you watch a video of Muslims shouting God is great while sawing a guys head off with a knife while he screams and gargles on his own blood, it is tempting to tell other Muslims to fuck off when they try saying it's a religion of peace.
But one thing I will say in conclusion is that I think most atheists tend to agree on what I think is an opinion that all religions are just man made cults, and I think most the time this isn't an emotional conclusion it's just a casual observation. Not all of these cults are violent, I don't think all these cults evoke much emotion and some of them are not provocative at all but they are still man made cults.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
Impersonation is treason.
