How to select which supernatural to believe?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's true that the more murderous and repressive an area was at any given time, public expressions of dissenting viewpoints (about anything) were relatively rare. A weird flex, but true.

The corruption of christianity? You just lost a whole lot of believers, and didn't convince a single atheist. Well done. Maybe the biggest reason for a rise in atheism today particularly in the west is a sentiment you can find from the far east thousands of years ago. There are no gods or afterlives. This is all for the benefit of the earthly priests. Ultimately, we don't really know how many people were atheists at some point (because who answers a poll with a murder me option.... as.. murder me) but there's every reason to suspect that no theocratic fiefdom has ever been the monolithic society of belief they fancy themselves as by the amount of effort they spent pursuing dissenters.

Speaking for myself, as one of those sincere atheists, christianity had nothing to do with it, corrupted or otherwise. I'm one of those guys who never believed, as I've told you many times. The gods of christianity are discarded as a matter of course because they are gods....gods have not been discarded as a matter of course, because of christianity.

-and I know, I know, before you waste your time, it's not as if, were any of you to get better gods, that would matter to me - because you're still stuck with a trash religion that I would reject even if I believed in gods, which is exactly what the majority of people who believe in any gods do to the majority of gods religions as well. IDK how much of other threads you catch...but in the us, paganism is the fastest growing religion - there are some folks who often believe in gods but would be unlikely to be caught dead in a mosque...or..I guess..really...... really...... likely to be caught dead if they were caught in a mosque..depending on who you ask and where you're asking. Bunch of purple haired lingerie wearing hard drinking homosexuals who think that your trash god is a corruption of the divine...and alot of them are still super duper okay with jesusism. Go figure.

[Fake Messiah]

It was awkward indeed to not believe in God before Darwin

Maybe Darwin was a trigger for broader atheism, but Christianity was falling centuries before him. One of the main triggers was Martin Luther who broke up Catholic Church and thus created places for freethinkers to exist and their ideas to spread. So you had thinkers like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Sir Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes.

What they did was to topple the Aristotelian Great Chain of Being which was an authoritative order of classes of people which is something that the Church imposed in everyday life with God on top and pope below him and then bishops, etc. Which was nonsense and was finally seen as such.

Especially after Newton made his discoveries, a lot of people started looking at God as a passive observer who is behind the "mechanism of the universe" and does not get involved in it anymore. They created deism which then led to atheism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Among ancient greek philosophers, one frequently encounters the name Epicurus as an important thinker in the history of atheism, the problem is that the guy did maintain that the gods existed.

-and just to clear this up, because it's peak batshit god bothering apologist logic.  Yeah, that was a bit of a problem....for the theists who accused him of being an atheist.

[Angrboda]

Going back to the OP - I don't want to believe in sparkly vampires, I'd rather believe in the sexy, sinister ones.

Sparkly vampires can't be sexy, sinister ones, too? Me and David Boreanaz beg to differ.

[Angrboda]

Strange, I never found it akward at all.  Lemme check again.  Your god is imaginary.  Nope, still not awkward.  Did you know that people have been saying that on record, for thousands of years?  I bet they didn't find it any more awkward then then I do now..but it was definitely a whole lot more dangerous.  You lot get pissy about it in a big murderous way.

As to sophisticated excuses....? I don't have any excuses for your imaginary god, or for my position on it, that's your ao..though I've never seen you offer a sophisticated one.

It's a matter of fact that atheism in its modern sense wasn't widespread -to put it charitably- in the West before the Renaissance, and it was almost nonexistent in the Islamic world. The East was probably the only portion in the world who explicitly endorsed godless philosophies/religions (Buddhism, Jainism, ..), and even in these religions one finds many figures of gods and supernatural entities. Among ancient greek philosophers, one frequently encounters the name Epicurus as an important thinker in the history of atheism, the problem is that the guy did maintain that the gods existed.

It was awkward indeed to not believe in God before Darwin. Like seriously, the appearance of design is an overwhelming indication of God's existence, and some famous atheists today acknowledge that if there were no theory of evolution, they would believe in God or the first mover (Sean Caroll said that verbatim in his debate with WLC). 
And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that evolution is actually irrelevant to God's existence, so Sean Caroll really should just believe in God, I guess.

So one might ask, what about the sincere atheists today? My personal take is that the corruption of christianity is the key reason for atheism in our era, here's why: people are naturally tilted to explain things teleologically and believe in a creator, but since deism is untenable because it's a hollow idea (you just believe an entity, that you know nothing about, exists), people turn to organized religion, and the leading organized religion happens to be christianity, which has many untenable beliefs like the Trinity/the Resurrection/the original sin, etc. And because of that, people reject belief altogether.

As Jerry Lee Lewis would say, "Whole lotta horseshit goin' on."

[The Architect Of Fate]

It's a matter of fact that atheism in its modern sense wasn't widespread -to put it charitably- in the West before the Renaissance, and it was almost nonexistent in the Islamic world. The East was probably the only portion in the world who explicitly endorsed godless philosophies/religions (Buddhism, Jainism, ..), and even in these religions one finds many figures of gods and supernatural entities. Among ancient greek philosophers, one frequently encounters the name Epicurus as an important thinker in the history of atheism, the problem is that the guy did maintain that the gods existed.

It was awkward indeed to not believe in God before Darwin. Like seriously, the appearance of design is an overwhelming indication of God's existence, and some famous atheists today acknowledge that if there were no theory of evolution, they would believe in God or the first mover (Sean Caroll said that verbatim in his debate with WLC). 
And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that evolution is actually irrelevant to God's existence, so Sean Caroll really should just believe in God, I guess.

So one might ask, what about the sincere atheists today? My personal take is that the corruption of christianity is the key reason for atheism in our era, here's why: people are naturally tilted to explain things teleologically and believe in a creator, but since deism is untenable because it's a hollow idea (you just believe an entity, that you know nothing about, exists), people turn to organized religion, and the leading organized religion happens to be christianity, which has many untenable beliefs like the Trinity/the Resurrection/the original sin, etc. And because of that, people reject belief altogether.

As Jerry Lee Lewis would say, "Whole lotta horseshit goin' on."

Also, we will never know how many atheists there were as there was a clear social stigma against non-belief that would have incentivized people to pretend to be theists. Also, the" appearance" is neither overwhelming it's merely a result of ignorance and bad thinking And trying to say atheism exists because of a corruption of Christianity rather than the total failure of theism to justify itself is absurd....

[The Grand Nudger]

What's an irrationalist supposed to do, acknowledge the possibility that his own religion is the reason that more people aren't joining his own religion?

Preposterous!

[The Architect Of Fate]

Among ancient greek philosophers, one frequently encounters the name Epicurus as an important thinker in the history of atheism, the problem is that the guy did maintain that the gods existed.

-and just to clear this up, because it's peak batshit god bothering apologist logic.  Yeah, that was a bit of a problem....for the theists who accused him of being an atheist.

The Idea a theist couldn't be influential in the history of atheism is silly.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's more that he was completely unaware that these were accusations by theists about another theist because they..similar to the way he views christianity...thought that epicuras' beliefs were somehow corrupt.....but, rather...some glaring mistake made by atheists that shows the illogic of their own position.

Kloro just can't get right, and barely ever manages to rise to the occasion of being wrong.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Also what is it with theists pointing to famous atheists as if their words should have any sway?