Question For Fellow Atheists...

[The Grand Nudger]

 But surely we can all at least be civil.

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Tell that to the potty police and the pre-marital groincheckers.  

[Rhondazvous]

Welcome Autolite,

I know talking to theists is like playing chess with someone whose strategy for staying in the game is to ignore checkmate. “Whaddaya mean the game is over? I can still move my pawns.”

Basically when on line, I say what I feel needs to be said and when I reach the point where all I can say has already been said, I’m gone.

As for neighbors and family, I keep them on the end of a long handled spoon. There’s an African proverb, the lips of wisdom are closed except to the ears of understanding. So if they come to me wanting to know then I tell them. If they just want to shoehorn a testimony or stealth bomb proselytizing, I find something else to talk about.

[Asmodee]

Welcome Autolite,

I know talking to theists is like playing chess with someone whose strategy for staying in the game is to ignore checkmate. “Whaddaya mean the game is over? I can still move my pawns.”

Basically when on line, I say what I feel needs to be said and when I reach the point where all I can say has already been said, I’m gone.

As for neighbors and family, I keep them on the end of a long handled spoon.  There’s an African proverb, the lips of wisdom are closed except to the ears of understanding. So if they come to me wanting to know then I tell them. If they just want to shoehorn a testimony or stealth bomb proselytizing, I find something else to talk about.

You forgot the part where, when they run out of pieces to move, they simply put the old pieces you already removed back on the board and pretend you didn't take them off in the first place.

[Autolite]

But is it rising faster than Islam???

Offhand, I don't know. If it wasn't, then... what? Give up?

Well it's like I've already said, as Atheists we need to stop affording Theism any respect or credibility.  We should collectively encourage the attitude that Theism is no different than any delusional belief. Instead of calling it merely a 'difference of opinion' we should all be regarding it for what it really is and that is bat-shit crazy nonsense. 

Remember when we discussed the medical definition of 'delusion' and that that definition excludes religious belief?  We should challenge that definition instead of accepting it.   Dr Peter Boghossian of PSU is doing just this.  He wants to see the medical definition for delusion in the DSM revised so that it does not exclude religious belief...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIaPXtZpzBw

[Asmodee]

Offhand, I don't know. If it wasn't, then... what? Give up?

Well it's like I've already said, as Atheists we need to stop affording Theism any respect or credibility.  We should collectively encourage the attitude that Theism is no different than any delusional belief. Instead of calling it merely a 'difference of opinion' we should all be regarding it for what it really is and that is bat-shit crazy nonsense. 

Remember when we discussed the medical definition of 'delusion' and that that definition excludes religious belief?  We should challenge that definition instead of accepting it.   Dr Peter Boghossian of PSU is doing just this.  He wants to see the medical definition for delusion in the DSM revised so that it does not exclude religious belief...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIaPXtZpzBw

I can't disagree with any of that, however it's easier said than done.  In America, at least, and it seems, the world in general, it's okay to hurt anyone's feelings for any reason EXCEPT when it comes to their religious beliefs.  Sanal Edamaruku had to go into exile to hide from the backlash after telling one church that their crying statue was crying raw sewage and people should stop drinking it.  That was blasphemy.  The church would rather people be drinking raw sewage than have their magical beliefs disrupted by facts.  And throughout the world the laws only ever protect the dominant religion in any real sense.  Yeah, in America we have freedom of any religion on paper, but I've never seen any Yiddish or Arabic carved in stone at my courthouse.

[Cephus]

When I find out someone has an imaginary friend as an adult, my level of respect for them goes right out the window.  They might be perfectly nice people, but my level of respect for them as intellectual beings pretty much goes to zero, at least with regards to their religious beliefs.

Rational people, in the act of being rational people, are not religious, period.

Bold mine.

That is the crux of the matter. We're discussing whether someone can have otherwise respectable beliefs, as well as religious beliefs. I think it's very clear that they can. I will take whatever other things they have to say into consideration with an open mind, if they can do so without bringing their religion into it. If they insist on bringing it into everything, then yeah, intellectual conversation is pretty much a non-starter.

If someone wants to write off a religious person entirely without hearing anything else they have to say, that is up to them, but I think it's a mistake.

Certainly they can.  In fact, apologists will often point to scientists who are credible in their field, who also believe in gods, as a means of showing that belief in gods is somehow rational.  This is ridiculous.  Faith, by definition, is not rational.  Religion and science are not carried out the same way.  These people are rational in their scientific work in spite of their religion, not because of it.  That doesn't mean we don't listen to them, but the only thing I'm interested in hearing is how their gods can be validated rationally and that's not something they ever manage to come up with.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Was it Sam Harris who wrote, "There is sanity in numbers"?

[Rhondazvous]

You forgot the part where, when they run out of pieces to move, they simply put the old pieces you already removed back on the board and pretend you didn't take them off in the first place.

Oh thanks. Must not forget that one. Or they take my pieces and paint them to look like theirs. "The big bang only proves how great god is."

[Minimalist]

We should collectively encourage the attitude that Theism is no different than any delusional belief.

Consult the Tooth Fairy thread.  That seems to drive religitards right up the fucking wall.

[Rhondazvous]

We should collectively encourage the attitude that Theism is no different than any delusional belief.

Consult the Tooth Fairy thread.  That seems to drive religitards right up the fucking wall.

Thinking of driving something else right up somewhere else?