The New Atheist - Mock and Ridicule Believers

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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[quote]darsemnos wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]on edge wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]on edge wrote:

[quote]bdocksaints75 wrote:
Of all the things that I can’t understand about atheist’s or what have you. Is the fact that they seem to spend most of their time trying to bash religion, or disprove God.[/quote]

Atheist don’t need to disprove god. It’s up to religious types to prove the existence of god…

[/quote]

Nonsense.

It takes a fair amount of hubris to make this demand. Unmerited hubris.

Atheists have faith. In spades, they have faith.

In fact, it takes far more faith to look at this universe and say, “Nope! Ain’t no God out there, I’m purty darn sure of it.”
[/quote]

Push, you’re just saying words, there’s nothing behind them.

And my statement is not nonsense. If you and I are out taking a stroll through the woods and we come upon an old cabin and you turn to me and say “you know Edge, I do believe there’s a beach ball in this here cabin, as matter of fact I’m sure of it.”

I look sideways at you and say “you’re kidding, right?”

You say “No, I’m sure of it, there’s a beach ball in this cabin”.

I’m going to say prove it and it’s up to you to do so.

In short; you can’t just make shit up and expect people to believe you without proving it.[/quote]

Yep.

The burden of proof is on the one who says that the sun froze in the sky and a man rose from the dead after three days and a serpent tempted the first woman (who’d been from a rib) to eat an apple (and this is why our mothers had such a hell of a time giving birth to us) and the first ever man was made from dust and water was walked on and also turned to wine, not on the person who finds no good reason to believe any of it.

That said, Push is right about atheism (as certainty of godlessness): it requires a great deal of faith, possibly more than theism*

Theism generally, not any specific religion.[/quote]

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Um…the idea that G-d doesn’t exist?

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It depends on the kind of ateist. Some say they know there is no god. Most say they see no evidence for a god.
He wrote on insuficcient evidence. If there was sufficient evidence we could trade belief for knowing, and there would be only one religion. Most of you are atheists regarding every other god but your own.

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[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

That the existence of the physical universe is not contingent on the existence of an extraphysical entity or phenomenon.

Which is not to say that anybody can prove that it is; there is simply not a correct answer, and there may never be one.

To draw an analogy: You are walking in the woods and you find a number of rocks arranged in a striking configuration. Your friend says that “a man named Joe built the sculpture, and he built it for these precise reasons, and he built it in this precise way, and so on.”

You say: “No, no man built this.”

That your friend is almost certainly wrong does not alter the fact that the correct answer is “I don’t know,” and you didn’t give it.

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[quote]atypical1 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
A person’s intellectual capability should have to be this tall:
[/quote]

What you really mean to say is that everyone should agree with you and believe like you do otherwise they are obviously stupid. You don’t want a discussion or an argument, you want to insult everyone who doesn’t think like you do.

james
[/quote]
Hey now, you do know he has over 35,000 posts here? He must be smart.

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[quote]pushharder wrote:
I mean no ill will to any of ya’ll fellers. Just want you to sharpen up your game.

This isn’t preschool and we’re not here to build your self esteem.

Think before you speak (write).[/quote]
What he means is that the internet is serious business. He wouldn’t have 35,000+ posts if that weren’t the case.

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[quote]H factor wrote:
Why do you think I have him on ignore? Consistent trolling. Save your breath, he doesn’t get any better ever. Just hops around from thread to thread trolling and insulting people. Took me way too long to figure out he wasn’t worth the time. Save yourself the breath, he isn’t going to mature or change no matter how many people on this forum call him out on it. [/quote]
Why do you think he has me on ignore? Because he is exactly what you say as well as a cry baby.

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[quote]darsemnos wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:
Clarity is offensive.

If atheists communicate clearly, it will be offesive, because religion is almost always ridiculous, and often evil.
[/quote]
Insults and mocking are certainly clear. It doesn’t mean anything, it has no basis in fact or point. It’s sad, small and petty, really. If you have to resort to insults and mocking, it just means you have no point and pretty much concede you lost the argument. If you have to resort to it, who’s being ridiculous and evil, really?
What’s Dawkins really saying here? If you come across a religious person, act like your a 12 year old bully repeating 6th grade? That’s fabulous advice, glad you’re taking it to heart.[/quote]

No, it means point out the truth clearly. Evolution is a fact. The Big Bang happened. The earth is not less than 10,000 years old. It’s at least 400,000 times older. We DO have common ancestry with other apes.

Clarity is offensive because much in religion is silly. Take Christianity. God sacrifices himself (but not really,since Jesus is supposedly alive and well) to himself so he can protect us from his wrath that resulted from us being exactly as he made us to be. Well Adam sinned, but god still set him up to fail, on purpose, and everyone else is just born into a losing struggle such that they literally have to beg forgiveness for being born.

It’s psychologically unhealthy to feel guilty for being being born.

This is taught to children who are brainwashed to think they are literally evil and deserve to be tortured alive in fire forever. Love god or he will TORTURE YOU FOREVER. Literally. This is taught to CHILDREN. Do you think telling children they are evil and deserve to be torched forever is not psychologically harmful? It borders on abuse.

Not to mention the evil commandments in the Old Testament. Almost no one lives according to Old Testament because anyone acting the way god commanded the Israelites to would be on death row because our morality has progressed.

Slaughtering entire cities. Literal genocide. Well, sometimes the virgin women were allowed to live. Guess why. Would you thrust a sword through the belly of a child? God ordered men to do this according to the Bible. God commanded that women marry the man who raped her. God commanded people be put to death for imaginary crimes like witchcraft, and for homosexuality. He also commanded half of Israel to be subject to ritual genital mutilation. Lot is called a good man, even though when the men of Sodom come to his door to rape the angels he offers up his daughters to be raped. A man who offers up his daughters to literally be gang-raped is called a good man by GOD. God thinks gang-rape is ok apparently.

This is clarity.

Clarity is saying what everyone is thinking but for so long it was considered rude to state explicitly. Religion has had it far too easy for far too long. [/quote]

That’s not clarity. That’s a sophomoric grasp of theology. Clarity is not insulting. Misrepresenting, creating straw men out of people’s beliefs and then mocking the believer for something you say they believe, but don’t actually believe is mocking and rhetorical propaganda. It’s not illumination, it’s ignorance.
You aren’t tearing ideas down, you’re tearing people down based basically on bullshit.

Just because you don’t understand the subject matter, does not make other people who do understand it stupid. It means you’re uneducated on the topic, it doesn’t mean religious people are silly.

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[quote]darsemnos wrote:
Is any of this an insult? Do my remarks have substance? Is the substance inaccurate or accurate? [/quote]

The substance is inaccurate. I think it’s meant to be insulting, but it’s more of an indictment on yourself and your lack of knowledge on religion and theology. It’s what you think religious people believe, but it does not represent what people actually believe.
You are attempting to make it look absurd and illogical, when in fact there is a rich history and philosophy behind religious beliefs. They aren’t just loosely thrown together passages of the Bible out of context thrown together as some bizarre worldview or paradigm. All of these things are carefully studied in the context of the history and culture of the peoples for whence it came.

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[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Oh? You believe it, don’t you? A lack of belief in God doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you believe something else. Not believing in God doesn’t make the big questions in life disappear, it means you have different answers to them… based on faith.
You don’t know existence is base ex nihilo, you don’t know the universe happened by chance, you don’t know consciousness is a bio-chemical accident, you believe it, you don’t know it.

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[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Oh? You believe it, don’t you? A lack of belief in God doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you believe something else. Not believing in God doesn’t make the big questions in life disappear, it means you have different answers to them… based on faith.
You don’t know existence is base ex nihilo, you don’t know the universe happened by chance, you don’t know consciousness is a bio-chemical accident, you believe it, you don’t know it.[/quote]
This is wrong. Faith and knowledge are not the same thing. Faith and belief are not the same thing. A Christian should know this.

And not all answers are based on faith. There is something called reason.

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[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Oh? You believe it, don’t you? A lack of belief in God doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you believe something else. Not believing in God doesn’t make the big questions in life disappear, it means you have different answers to them… based on faith.
You don’t know existence is base ex nihilo, you don’t know the universe happened by chance, you don’t know consciousness is a bio-chemical accident, you believe it, you don’t know it.[/quote]
This is wrong. Faith and knowledge are not the same thing. Faith and belief are not the same thing. A Christian should know this.

And not all answers are based on faith. There is something called reason. [/quote]

And reason is not on your side. Do you know God doesn’t exist, or do you just think religion is ridiculous?

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[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Oh? You believe it, don’t you? A lack of belief in God doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you believe something else. Not believing in God doesn’t make the big questions in life disappear, it means you have different answers to them… based on faith.
You don’t know existence is base ex nihilo, you don’t know the universe happened by chance, you don’t know consciousness is a bio-chemical accident, you believe it, you don’t know it.[/quote]
This is wrong. Faith and knowledge are not the same thing. Faith and belief are not the same thing. A Christian should know this.

And not all answers are based on faith. There is something called reason. [/quote]

And reason is not on your side. Do you know God doesn’t exist, or do you just think religion is ridiculous?[/quote]

Reason is not on your side either by these metrics. You don’t “know” God exists either it just makes the most sense to you based on some of the evidence. You can’t demonstrably prove God. And you certainly can’t demonstrably prove that if God exists it is the Christian God from the Bible who wants you to worship him.

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[quote]darsemnos wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

How many atheists believe Richard Dawkins? We should be mocked and ridiculed for our beliefs? This isn’t non-belief, this is raw, pure hatred. I want to hear from atheists, do you practice what is preached?[/quote]

You know, this anti-Christianity nonsense is vulgar.

And the belief that a lot of the human condition will just go away if we get rid of religion is stupid.

And that we have ditched millenia of wisdom because it rested on a premisse that at least to me is a bit questionable was probably not the wisest move either.

But, other than that, fuck religion, grrrrrr…[/quote]

What wisdom have we ditched?
[/quote]

That there is such a thing as human nature.

That we are made of crooked wood and predictably so…

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[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Oh? You believe it, don’t you? A lack of belief in God doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you believe something else. Not believing in God doesn’t make the big questions in life disappear, it means you have different answers to them… based on faith.
You don’t know existence is base ex nihilo, you don’t know the universe happened by chance, you don’t know consciousness is a bio-chemical accident, you believe it, you don’t know it.[/quote]
This is wrong. Faith and knowledge are not the same thing. Faith and belief are not the same thing. A Christian should know this.

And not all answers are based on faith. There is something called reason. [/quote]

Is not reason itself based on faith? It’s supposed to be our very human ability, to consciously sort through, make sense of, blah blah, things. But what if certain voices in science are right and we don’t actually make conscious “thought-out” decisions? Instead, our reasoning/and choices are an illusion, pasted in AFTER subconscious processes have already–through extraordinarily complex reactions to extraordinarily complex environmental stimuli–been ‘decided’ below ‘consciousness.’

And if we are supposedly born with certain other topical proclivities, well, what if we are born predisposed to accepting certain religious worldviews. As in, those answers and beliefs happen to trigger all the right “I’m satisfied” switches hardwired into the brain? Then the most ‘reasonable’ thing to do is to be deeply religious, regardless.

And what of the reality that we’re supposedly reasoning our way through? How does one empirically prove to ones ‘self’ that there are indeed other ‘selves,’ independent of us (although self may be an illusion anyways), and that this world is an actual reality independent of our ‘selves?’ My observations and thoughts are the product of the thing in question, my mind/will/consciousness. Does it appear that science can now implant memories into mice? Yes. If they can do that now, is it a stretch to imagine that in a 1000 years from now the process might be perfected in human beings? That entire false realities/memories might be constructed, without the recipient being able to detect them? If it’s a fairly reasonable bet, then why not now? Why aren’t you experiencing a false memory/reality where the science in question is portrayed as only just now being explored? How do you falsify that?

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And why does it always feel like people are getting all puffy-chested when they deploy “we could just use reason” in these arguments? What does that even mean? You CAN reasonably rape, murder, war, and rob banks. If I bring a gun to a bank robbery and yell “stick 'em up!” That’s reasonable. If I instead pull out a banana and point it at the tellers yelling “stick 'em up,” that’s unreasonable.

We can reason our way to capitalism, socialism, pacifism, overseas military adventurism, slavery, anti-slavery, etc…

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Now, I have to get to studying for a final tomorrow. Don’t you guys interrupt my studies again!

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[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

BS. Atheism requires no faith whatsoever. What idea must I accept on insufficient evidence in order to be an atheist?[/quote]

Oh? You believe it, don’t you? A lack of belief in God doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything. It means you believe something else. Not believing in God doesn’t make the big questions in life disappear, it means you have different answers to them… based on faith.
You don’t know existence is base ex nihilo, you don’t know the universe happened by chance, you don’t know consciousness is a bio-chemical accident, you believe it, you don’t know it.[/quote]

Still don’t understand atheism do you.