I have wanted to learn the lessons from The Manual for Creating Atheists for awhile, or at least since I read it. But one of the stumbling blocks I have is offering something to theists that would replace things like the personal relationship, through prayer and heaven. Any thoughts?
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Current time: August 28, 2026, 4:05 pm
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What to offer to theists
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 (April 11, 2014 at 12:41 pm)mrandredparis Wrote: I have wanted to learn the lessons from The Manual for Creating Atheists for awhile, or at least since I read it. But one of the stumbling blocks I have is offering something to theists that would replace things like the personal relationship, through prayer and heaven. Any thoughts? Why is there a need for something to replace it? The majority of atheists manage fine. Surely talking to other humans (who can actually give an obvious response, unlike any deity I've ever heard of) should suffice, and be an improvement on relying on some all-powerful being?
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. - J.R.R Tolkien
That question answers itself. If a theist is ready to give up the ghost, the relationship becomes moot anyways. What need does one have to replace a relationship that never existed?
If a person needs incentives, they are doing it for the wrong reasons, IMO. If you want/need a relationship with a deity, you are going to look for that. If you want a personal relationship with reality, you are fine making the most of the actual relationships you do have.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---  (April 11, 2014 at 12:41 pm)mrandredparis Wrote: I have wanted to learn the lessons from The Manual for Creating Atheists for awhile, or at least since I read it. But one of the stumbling blocks I have is offering something to theists that would replace things like the personal relationship, through prayer and heaven. Any thoughts?Presumably, if you convince someone that the god they had a personal relationship never existed, then they would be expected to replace it with relationships with real people. Or a whole new imaginary friend. Or nothing at all, which is what it was in the first place. Tell them to pretend that they had their sixth finger amputated from each hand.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould 
Offering to replace religious fuzzy feelings with some lo-cal alternative is rather like curing someone of the plague and replacing it with chicken pox.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
If you're trying it on me, I would suggest offering donuts.
Holey ones, I suppose?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
Friends, good life and death.
Friends are better than friends who don't exist. Good life is better than good life you will never have. Dying is better than never dying.  (April 11, 2014 at 12:41 pm)mrandredparis Wrote: I have wanted to learn the lessons from The Manual for Creating Atheists for awhile, or at least since I read it. But one of the stumbling blocks I have is offering something to theists that would replace things like the personal relationship, through prayer and heaven. Any thoughts? A real personal relationship through conversation and shared experience. |
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