Please correct me where I am wrong

[paulpablo]

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.

[Won2blv]

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.

George Carlin once said, "what if there were no hypothetical questions" 

WLC holds the position from his so called, "inner witness." But he also believes that facts and reason back it up. This is a favorite question for skeptics to ask him and I think his answer now is not what should he do but what ought he to do. I just don't think he has publicly ever said that if he went back in time and watched easter roll around with no resurrected jesus he would still believe. I believe that was a conversation that someone related. But even then, Its a hypothetical question with kind of ridiculous premise. It like if someone asked me if I took a time machine and saw that my late mother was not my real mom and asked if I still loved her like a mother. I would

---

For example sexism, I'd say[...] women are inferior to men, and what could be a rational argument[...] of sexism is that[...] there's a vast spectrum of men[...] with strengths 

I wouldn't agree with that at all!
Seriously though, my point of this thread was to get a general feel for how most on this forum felt about this stuff when its applied to yourself. I am happy to hear most validate OP. I get that religious people are the main perpetrators as well

[Cato]

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

I already addressed that so you can keep waiting. I maintain that my summation of your misrepresentation of Dillahunty's talk juxtaposed with your stated reason for giving up the ghost is accurate; therefore, can in no way be considered an extreme position and in turn is not an example of a straw man argument. Your cry of straw man comes across as a reflexive retort some give when they are uncomfortable with a conclusion and carries as much weight as claims of god with no evidence. If, in the other thread, you actually care to explain why my argument is a straw man then we can continue the conversation. All you have done is to make the claim, which I rebutted by citing what Dillahunty actually claims in the video and reiterating your own reason for becoming an atheist. You then simply restated your claim and began a sequence of 'is so/is not' argumentation. I'm not sure what you expect at that point.

[FatAndFaithless]

Still wondering what 'ad hominem attacks' OP is seeing in this thread, and why he/she can't give us examples.

[paulpablo]

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.

George Carlin once said, "what if there were no hypothetical questions" 

WLC holds the position from his so called, "inner witness." But he also believes that facts and reason back it up. This is a favorite question for skeptics to ask him and I think his answer now is not what should he do but what ought he to do. I just don't think he has publicly ever said that if he went back in time and watched easter roll around with no resurrected jesus he would still believe. I believe that was a conversation that someone related. But even then, Its a hypothetical question with kind of ridiculous premise. It like if someone asked me if I took a time machine and saw that my late mother was not my real mom and asked if I still loved her like a mother. I would

---

For example sexism, I'd say[...] women are inferior to men, and what could be a rational argument[...] of sexism is that[...] there's a vast spectrum of men[...] with strengths 

I wouldn't agree with that at all!
Seriously though, my point of this thread was to get a general feel for how most on this forum felt about this stuff when its applied to yourself. I am happy to hear most validate OP. I get that religious people are the main perpetrators as well

You wouldn't agree with what at all?

[Tonus]

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.

Cognitive bias appears to be a feature of the human mind.  Our brains have a whole raft of different ways to help us to make sense of our surroundings and of the things we learn and understand.  Those biases are always at work, and I don't think anyone is ever free of them.  But we can work towards a rational point-of-view on some things if we can identify the biases and strip them away.

I think that the most important thing is to recognize that there is a rational approach to almost any question or topic, and to work to find it.  The most efficient is to identify biases and fallacies, then quickly dismiss them and focus on the question or topic.  But it's very tempting to focus on the fallacies and biases instead, which then becomes a topic of discussion in itself.

[Napoléon]

Still wondering what 'ad hominem attacks' OP is seeing in this thread, and why he/she can't give us examples.

Yeah, it's hard to "correct if wrong" when the OP makes claims about other posters but doesn't actually quote or in essence provide any evidence for it. Personally I find some of the claims OP makes quite insulting. At least to my intelligence. I mean, OP starts a thread asking everyone to 'correct where wrong' and says the following garbage:

some on this forum don't believe that they're positions could be muddled by cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and logical fallacies. The most common fallacies that I have noticed, is the red herring and the straw man. Or even posters that are completely ignorant of what I believe/believed as a JW and asserting conclusions based off their ignorance.

I mean, OP is saying that some posters are ignorant of what OP believes, yet has no problem claiming what certain other forum members do and do not believe.

Seems the OP is the ignorant one to me if they honestly think people would respond to the OP with anything but "ofcourse I'm not infallible".

[paulpablo]

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.

Cognitive bias appears to be a feature of the human mind.  Our brains have a whole raft of different ways to help us to make sense of our surroundings and of the things we learn and understand.  Those biases are always at work, and I don't think anyone is ever free of them.  But we can work towards a rational point-of-view on some things if we can identify the biases and strip them away.

I think that the most important thing is to recognize that there is a rational approach to almost any question or topic, and to work to find it.  The most efficient is to identify biases and fallacies, then quickly dismiss them and focus on the question or topic.  But it's very tempting to focus on the fallacies and biases instead, which then becomes a topic of discussion in itself.

I suppose what I said about religious people being more guilty of emotional arguments is bias of myself obviously because I am an atheist.

Is what I'm saying about religious people having more invested in believing different from a theist saying atheists have a lot invested in being atheists?  Theists do sometimes say that atheists are atheists because they enjoy sinning and don't want to stop.

Personally though I don't feel a subconscious desire to sin is preventing me from believing in god, it's more like an comparative observation after looking over the cults and religions of the world, and a refusal to be threatened into joining a cult or religion with threats of hell.

[Ben Davis]

Hi nicanica, I hope to get more of a response from you than in your other thread.

So I ask, are atheist immune to common human fallacies and emotional roadblocks?

Of course not. No-one's immune. Such is the human condition. Since you seem to be a relatively well informed person, I'm surprised that you don't already know this (or at least intuit it). That makes me think that the second part of your question:

Or is religion and god the one main cause of such things?

...is a fairly unambiguous device to expose those who might hold double-standards. Would I be right?

Because from what I am concluding, belief in god and the supernatural seems to be a byproduct of human emotions not the cause

You don't think that beliefs cause emotions? I believe you may have described your position poorly here and that disappoints me.

Seriously though, you need to think this point through as I don't understand how or why you link 'the propensity for atheists to use logical fallacies' with 'the cause of beliefs'. Maybe I'm missing something here or you need to rephrase for clarity.

[Tonus]

I suppose what I said about religious people being more guilty of emotional arguments is bias of myself obviously because I am an atheist.

Whoops!  I quoted that part because I wanted to address it, but seem to have skipped it.  Sorry.  I think that a religious person may be more likely to use certain biases because they're defending an entire worldview that begins from premises that have proven harder and harder to support (the existence of god(s), the existence of specific god(s), views regarding science and nature, etc).  An atheist can also take unsupportable views on any topic and defend them with a host of fallacies and biases.  Heck, I think that we apply a healthy serving of fallacious and biased thinking to even supportable ideas and views.  But if your worldview is built on a foundation that starts with "god exists, and his name is Yahweh, and he did this and that..." then you need a fair amount of fallacious and biased thinking just to keep that going.