Please correct me where I am wrong

[pocaracas]

So I ask, are atheist immune to common human fallacies and emotional roadblocks? Or is religion and god the one main cause of such things?

[fun fun] Atheists have an extra gene that prevents them from having such fallacies. People who deconvert from any religion, suffer a mutation of this gene, thus enabling them to reason clearly... Sometimes, this mutation is only temporary and it can revert back to its original state. Of course, the mutation can also go in the opposite direction and an atheist become a theist.

[realsies] Of course! Atheists are humans like believers. They just don't believe in the existence of a god, provided that such belief is invariably brought to them through other humans.... other equally faulty humans.
Knowing that the information conveyed by humans may be faulty, a certain degree of critical thinking arises and, given the absence of any solid base on where the believer can stand.

It's like Matt says, I'd like to believe as many true things as possible and not believe in as many false things as possible. The truthfulness of a claim that's unverifiable is, from the start, unsustainable. So, we don't believe.

[Cato]

I'll call myself out for the sake of conversation. Yours truly falsely assumed something and waxed poetic about its moral implications, but consider what happened when challenged. I am constantly aware of my fallibility and can admit error and course correct when I cannot justify my beliefs. I think you'll find this trait far more prevalent among skeptics than you will among the devout. It's not that the religious are incapable, new atheists everyday, but the process is antithetical to a thought process that blindly accepts unsupported claims about the nature of the universe and how we are supposed to navigate it.

[Won2blv]

I'll call myself out for the sake of conversation. Yours truly falsely assumed something and waxed poetic about its moral implications, but consider what happened when challenged. I am constantly aware of my fallibility and can admit error and course correct when I cannot justify my beliefs. I think you'll find this trait far more prevalent among skeptics than you will among the devout. It's not that the religious are incapable, new atheists everyday, but the process is antithetical to a thought process that blindly accepts unsupported claims about the nature of the universe and how we are supposed to navigate it.

Im still waiting for your response from my last claim that you straw manned me 

[KevinM1]

Critical thinking is a skill like any other. If you practice it, and care about applying it well, you will improve.

I'd say religion relies heavily on dissuading critical thinking, and using convincing sounding but fallacious arguments. The argument from ignorance is its bread and butter.

I'd go even further and say that organized religion is designed to whittle away at one's critical thinking skills in order to create an easily led and exploitable source of labor and defense for those higher up the chain.  Remember - organized religion was government for a time.

When the answer to every question is to go back to the holy tome and read it for realsies this time, that says to me that religion isn't interested in providing any real guidance, just obedience.

[Simon Moon]

No one is immune to cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and logical fallacies.

The advantage we have over the faith based religions world view is a much easier method to correct our views of shown better evidence and information. The scientific method is beautiful at eliminating cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and logical fallacies.

I am not tied emotionally to my lack of belief in gods. Nor do I need to spin and obfuscate arguments and evidence (the definition of apologetics) to support my view, because my view is based on lack of demonstrable evidence and lack of valid and sound logic provided by theists.

If someone points out that one of my arguments is fallacious, I will correct it. Not so with theists. I have pointed out the fallacies contained in all the logical arguments for the existence of a god (Kalam, teleological, ontological, etc) and have never heard a theist admit it.

If someone points out that I have a belief based on faith, not evidence, you know what I will do? I will stop believing it. That is what rational, critical thinkers do.

I want my internal representation of reality to map as closely as possible to reality. The best, most reliable method to accomplish this is by basing beliefs on demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument. Not ancient texts, not the word of other people, not faith.

[ignoramus]

As above, the pattern I detect is that their belief system is built on a "stack of cards".
They instinctively know that when we begin dissolving any one of these "cards" via robust discussion, that everything goes to shit real quickly and they have nothing.

This is why they cannot agree to even the smallest discepancy in their book.
One lunatic here, who many may remember, was going on about  god is as real as anything else because we cannot prove anything is absolutely real.

I asked him to get back to basics with me. I asked him is the plastic toothbrush he brushes his teeth with real?
He couldn't even answer that! He instead went off about other dimensions and multiverses...
Why do they even bother coming here? Are they really that stupid.....?

[Won2blv]

If someone points out that I have a belief based on faith, not evidence, you know what I will do? I will stop believing it. That is what rational, critical thinkers do.

Here is a an interesting point though, if you believe that you're a rational critical thinker then you can rationalize why you're not guilty of a fallacy or cognitive dissonance, etc. And I am not saying that you do this and attacking you at all personally. I just think that absolute statements on unknown/unknowable things seem to be irrational in the first place. And we would all agree with it but when you start adding ad hominem attacks, straw men, red herrings, or just being ignorant to what someone really believes then you're just bringing down the dialogue and encouraging cognitive dissonance on the other end. I think that even when we don't know the name of a specific fallacy, we still can sense when someone says something that kind of makes sense but something is missing. WLC, who i know is beloved in this community, often points out in debates that his counterpart avoids answering to certain refutations and points that he has made. And I personally don't believe that is to be minimized. I just find it humorous that a lot of the comments in this thread have gone straight to ad hominem attacks on christians and theists. 

[robvalue]

It would really help if you could start identifying specific things people have said and why they are a logical fallacy. Just saying atheists keep making logical fallacies and such is just a vague way of saying we're "just as irrational as theists", which is in itself an example of the tu quoque fallacy.

I'm happy to address any criticism to anything I say. If I've been guilty of a fallacy, I want to know about it.

As for WLC, he is a professional con man. He is very good at it, I'll give you that. You are welcome to bring me anything he has said that you think is a good point, and I'll see if I can deconstruct it. He is blatantly dishonest to the core. This isn't ad hominem because I'm happy to back it up against any argument and to point out the dishonesty. Apologetics is dishonesty, I'm sad to say. It's a matter of hiding the dishonesty somewhere, wrapping it up to make it less obvious, and then muddying the waters so much that people can't figure out what to object to. For example, WLC uses the technique of arguing for a deistic God, then just shoving in the God of the bible without justification as if they are the same thing.

Personally, it appears that whatever "I" am, I am experiencing something. I make as few pragmatic assumptions as possible about the reality I appear to be in, and I can't justify them any further than saying I'd be paralysed without them, and they have been shown to be reliable. Everything else I try to base only on these assumptions, and where I've made further ones, I try and incorporate a confidence rating into what I'm saying. I would never claim I can't be wrong.

[Won2blv]

I'm happy to address any criticism to anything I say. If I've been guilty of a fallacy, I want to know about it.

You're missing the forest through the trees. I am simply saying that I read these forums and I notice a lot of recycled canned answers, many of which are full of fallacies. Now, I am not saying that a man or woman cannot be capable of overcoming fallacies and cognitive dissonance, etc. Rather, I am just saying that it seems that these threads would be more helpful if they could be kept on the point brought up. I will identify the fallacy from now on if I feel I see them. I have actually started doing so. And as far as WLC, you can't say that he is a blatant con man and also that you're not doing an ad hominem. I don't think you have proof that he is a con man. He is actually a very smart guy that is also awesome at debates. Unfortunately that doesn't qualify is arguments as true. But it seems like the atheists he debates with stoop to levels that are unscrupulous. His debate with Krauss was a good example. Krauss displayed a partial email and left out part of the email and claimed it was just technical data. But when the full email was released it painted a different picture. In the same dialogue, he mocked WLC's use of syllogisms with one of his own. But the problem was that it more of a punch line than logical. Only proving the point that syllogisms can be illogical when misused

[robvalue]

I call him a con man because he is aware and intelligent enough to know exactly what the fallacies are in his arguments, but he uses them regardless. He is unashamedly dishonest, when he said he'd believe in Christianity even if it was proven to be false by actually witnessing the so called events. I'm saying why he is a "con man", not just throwing the words out there.

So I don't literally mean he is nothing more than a con man, I apologize if that sounded too strong. It's an offhand generalisation, it's not a direct accusation I would make in so many words in a court of law. If I had to sum him up in two words, those are the words I would use. He makes money from making mostly fallacious arguments and using dishonest tactics. Sure, atheists may too sometimes be guilty of similar transgressions. But that's besides the point. I'll happily criticise any atheist any time they employ dishonest tactics.

But again, I'm happy to back this up. Bring me something he says and I'll analyse it. I did so with that thing he wrote about miracles. It's a load of fancy language deflecting from the fact that it's just a tautology. "If God exists, then God can do things a god could do." Of course, he doesn't say the "if" part, he just assumed it to be true. So doubly dishonest.