On 11/21/2014 6:08 AM, Share Long wrote:
>
Ok, if it doesn't matter whether or not there's a God, then a
genuinely interesting question is: why do people go on and on about
it? What is really going on in all these supposedly intellectual
conversations? What are people really attempting to accomplish by such
posts and exchanges?
>
/It's actually very simple, Share - trolls send duplicitous messages to
discussion groups in order to get angry responses./
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* "TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
*To:* FairfieldLife <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com>
*Sent:* Friday, November 21, 2014 5:24 AM
*Subject:* [FairfieldLife] Good article by someone with more patience
for theists than I have...
*/One of the reasons I speak in such a derogatory way about
God-believers here is that I figure after centuries of them putting
down non-believers all the time (not to mention killing them, burning
them at the stake, etc.) they should get a taste of their own
medicine. That, and the fact that I really DO consider many
God-believers pretty much as stupid as I say they are. :-) /*
*/
/*
*/But every so often, it's probably good to present the point of view
of a more balanced atheist who has more compassion for the idiots
trying to shout him down than I have. Consider this my contribution to
FFL in this respect.../*
*/
/*
10 Stupid Things Theists Say to Atheists
<http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/2013/10/09/10-stupid-things-theists-say-atheists/>
October 9, 2013
by Cephus <http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/author/admin/>
<http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/author/admin/>
Say Something Stupid
<http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Say-Something-Stupid.jpg>
As atheists, we see this kind of thing all the time, really absurd
things that are said to us by theists in the midst of a debate or
discussion that leave us rolling our eyes. This really isn’t intended
so much for the atheist, but for the theist, who really needs to
understand that none of these things are going to convince anyone of
the validity of their arguments. Maybe that’s okay with them, but
maybe, just maybe, they never realized just how pointless any of the
following statements actually are.
It leaves me wondering if theists are really debating to come to a
mutually agreeable conclusion, or if they’re just “debating” to hear
themselves talk or see themselves type.
And so, in no particular order, these are ten statements that I see
routinely from theists that are simply not helping your case, and why.
10. /*I’ll pray for you…* / This is totally and completely useless.
If you really feel the need to talk to yourself about us, I suppose
it’s your time to waste, but this statement really comes off as a
final flip of the finger to the atheist when the theist has run out of
other arguments. It’s essentially “I’m still right, so there!” It
appears to be childish, even if it’s sincere. We don’t want you to
pray for us, we want you to be able to defend your beliefs. Maybe you
should spend more time worrying about that.
9. /*The Bible says… * /We don’t care what the Bible says. In fact,
we probably know the Bible better than you do and not only the Bible,
but many other religious texts as well. Often, that’s why we’re
atheists, because we had the courage and commitment to read the Bible
and think about what it actually says. We don’t limit our knowledge
to the words on the page though, we often know why it’s there, where
it came from and how it came to be accepted by your religion. We’ve
engaged in higher criticism of your religious text and can almost
certainly show how and why your book isn’t trustworthy. Don’t pretend
we’re not well-versed in what your book says, we are.
8. /*This website says… * /This is probably even worse than the
previous statement because not only does it show that you think we’re
not well-versed in all of the standard apologetic arguments, it
demonstrate that you are not. If the best you can do is grab a claim
off some apologist’s website or YouTube video, there’s really no point
in talking to you because clearly, you don’t understand the argument
well enough to present your own take on it. I don’t care what William
Lane Craig says, I’m not debating William Lane Craig, I’m debating
you. Make your own arguments and understand what you’re saying
because I absolutely will attack the argument and expect you to defend it.
7. /*You can’t prove God doesn’t exist… * /No I can’t, it’s not my job
to do so. It’s yours. You’re the one claiming that God is real, it
rests solely on your shoulders to prove it. After all, you can’t
prove that Krishna doesn’t exist, does that mean that the Hindus are
right and Krishna does? You can’t prove that unicorns exist, does
that make them real? The burden of proof is always on the individual
who makes the positive claim. Most atheists do not claim God does not
exist, they just reject your claim that he does based on lack of
corroboratory evidence.
6. /*You really believe in God, but… * /Theists make this statement to
make themselves feel better, it has no critical validity. It is a
form of the argument from ignorance, where a statement is made, not
because there’s evidence that it’s so, but because the individual
can’t come up with a better argument. You don’t want to believe that
there are people out there who really reject your deity, thus you
imagine that nobody actually does, they’re all lying. That’s just not
the case.
5. /*I know God is real! * /No you don’t, you *BELIEVE* God is real.
Knowledge requires some demonstrable basis. You can no more say you
know God is real than you can say you know unicorns are real because
you have no evidence to present in either case. Claims of knowledge
do not impress unless you can show us that you have any objective
means of coming by that knowledge.
4. /*You’re not really an atheist,* *you’re*…/ an agnostic or some
other term which makes the theist feel better. For some reason,
theists tend to feel uncomfortable around the word “atheist”, mostly,
I suspect, because it suggests that there are people who reject the
central tenet of their worldview. They don’t like that so they want
to get around that word if at all possible. There are a couple of
problems with that, however. First, it’s not up to you to decide what
terms mean and/or what other people believe or do not believe.
Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of gods. If the shoe
fits, stop pretending that other people ought to wear sandals because
it makes you feel better. Secondly, it’s really not up to you to
decide what terms people can adopt for themselves. If I want to call
myself an atheist, I can call myself an atheist. I have no obligation
to choose another term because it softens the blow on you.
3. /*If you don’t believe, you’ll go to hell… * /This is utterly
pointless, we don’t believe hell exists. You might as well be
threatening us with Hogwarts. Hell, to us, is no more real than the
Greek underworld, heaven is no more real than Valhalla. If someone
approached you and said that if you don’t accept Odin as your personal
lord and savior, you’d be sent to Helheim, to be punished by the Norse
goddess Hela for all time, would that bother you? If not, then you
understand why Hell doesn’t bother us. Save your breath.
2. /*I have evidence for God… * /Then by all means, present it, you’ll
be famous and a multi-millionaire, the first person to ever present
actual evidence for the existence of any god. Oh wait, that’s not
what you really mean, is it? You have *CLAIMS* about God. You have
*ASSERTIONS* about God. You have *BELIEFS* about God. You have no
evidence though. This is one of those wiggle words that we see from
theists all the time, like “knowledge”, it’s something that’s claimed,
but once you really get down to the nuts and bolts, it’s totally
false. There isn’t any evidence for God that has heretofore been
presented, just like there isn’t any evidence that has been presented
for Bigfoot or alien visitations. If you’ve got some, present it, but
it had better be more than “this convinced me”. That doesn’t mean it
will convince anyone else.
1. /*You can’t take away my faith!*/ Nobody can “take” anything away
from you, atheist mind control technology is still in it’s
experimental stages and won’t be ready for testing until early 2015.
If you lose your faith, that’s on you, but let’s be honest, faith
really isn’t a rational way of looking at the world anyhow. Besides,
your faith is meaningless to us, we don’t want to take it away, we
want you to deal with reality as it actually is. So far, if you
believe in an unseen and unproven god, you’re not doing that. You can
argue that point all you like, but I’m sure that argument will fall
into one of the above categories. Don’t have faith. Don’t believe.
THINK!
So what about some things that you should say or do in a debate? I’ll
give you my short list:
1. /*Know your argument.*/ If you don’t know what you believe or what
you’re trying to prove, how do you think you’ll manage it? I don’t
want to hear what someone else thinks, I want to know what you think
and I want you to prove to me that you have a functional understanding
of your claims and have worked out in your head, logically and
rationally, how it’s supposed to operate.
2. /*Know your source material.*/ Again, this means prepare your
arguments and get your ducks in a row. If you want to claim that the
Bible is the source of your information, be ready to defend the
Bible’s validity with more than “I believe it”.
3. /*Understand proper debate techniques.*/ Most theists stumble
blindly from one logical fallacy to the next, they don’t understand
how to properly construct arguments or build logical syllogisms.
Learn how to move from one segment of your claim to the next in a
logically demonstrable fashion. Avoid absurd leaps of irrationality,
say, from making a claim to asserting a cause unless you can actually
demonstrate a direct link between the cause and the effect.
4. /*Stop being so emotional.*/ The purpose of a debate is to reach a
conclusion based on the evidence and the best delivered argumentation.
How your position makes you feel is entirely irrelevant. I’m
interested in how you come to your conclusions, not how your
conclusions make you feel.
5. /*Be ready to concede defeat.*/ If you lose, lose graciously.
Your claims are only as good as your evidence and your arguments. If
you are emotionally unable to evaluate your claims intellectually,
don’t bother debating, you’re just going to look foolish.
6. /*Be ready to change your mind if you lose.*/ This is the most
important part and the hardest one theists have in accepting. You, as
an intellectual, rational and logical individual, ought to want to
believe as many factually true things as possible and reject as many
factually false things as possible and know how to differentiate
between the two. Unfortunately, as in point #4, most theists don’t
really care if what they believe is true, they have an emotional
attachment to their arguments and when it comes to rejecting heartfelt
beliefs or ignoring evidence, virtually all theists will clench their
eyes shut, stick their fingers in their ears and scream “I’m right!
I’m right! I’m right!” This is a problem and a serious one at that.
It separates the metaphorical philosophical men from the
philosophical boys. It reveals who is willing and able to deal with
reality and who would prefer to curl up inside their comforting
fantasy world and pretend everything is going to be alright.
If you’re not someone who can put aside your feelings and deal with
the facts, who will overlook the evidence if it gets in the way of the
blind faith, then you have no business pretending to do so, you have
no business trying to debate with educated and intellectual atheists.
We’ve been there. It’s how we got where we are today. We put in the
legwork, we did the math and we came to conclusions because we weren’t
afraid to follow where the actual evidence led.
Maybe one of these days, you’ll be willing to do the same, even if it
doesn’t lead to your religious convictions.
