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Originally Posted by
The Atheist
Seems to me that our mild disagreement is two things:
1 Whether the article tries to say "all religious people are mad"
2 Whether it's deserved, or whether attacks should be made on religion.
In the case of #1, you think it does, while I think it doesn't. Maybe we're just srguing different interpretations what we're reading based on our own individual stances?
Not worth arguing about, from my seat.
I'm assuming by the "G-d" that you're Jewish? I've only ever seen that done by people of Jewish faith is why I ask.
I am Jewish as I already indicated in a previous post in this thread.
The “mild disagreement” was where the argument originally began so it does have significance. As I claimed The Countess post was a reasonable response to the original post. I was correct on this assertion as I already demonstrated.
This isn’t a matter of interpretation. I didn’t go through the post paragraph by paragraph for my health. Your “interpretation” is untenable. It’s not an interpretation, it’s a blatant misreading.
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It's no strawman.
If people are attacking theists, I'd say it's 100% likely that they will be atheists, since she specifically referred to people not holding those beliefs, and as we've discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, atheist = "does not believe in god", so people attacking theists must surely be atheists?
It is a Strawman because I’m specifically only including atheists who espouse anti-religious viewpoints. I’m not including EVERY atheist, meaning anyone who simply “does not believe in G-d.”
Your response to my original quote was the following:
“I know of no atheists kept awake by religious belief in others and I don't know anyone who hates people who wish to just live their lives according to doctrine.”
You attack my quote by using the EVERY atheist. Of course, there are atheists that don’t care about the existence of religious folk. However, I wasn’t talking about every atheist. But there quite obviously are many who do care that religious folk do exist and that we don’t live in a secular world, that don’t mind their own business, that are consistently patronizing simply because you happen to believe in G-d. I was addressing those latter people.
In other words, your response is irrelevant; it has nothing to do with the group I am talking about. The fact that you personally know of no atheists who are anti-Religion (except you admit you do later in the post I’m currently replying to when you mention Dawkins, making your point here even more irrelevant than it already was) has no bearing on the topic, and is especially disingenuous from someone who I am pretty sure has claimed in past discussions over in other threads that they get frustrated in some atheist forums because there is a fervent anti-Religious attitude.
To restate this I am talking about anti-Religious atheist only. You are reading it as if I am talking about atheists generally and responding. Since I am not talking about that group and your response only has validity if I were, you are committing a strawman.
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To me, this seems like the persecution card. If you are, as I suspect, Jewish, you should have a great grounding in what it feels like to actually be persecuted because of cultural association. (Not you personally, but Jews have been persecuted on and off for quite a large number of centuries.)
Is the persecution card sort of like the race card? What exactly are you trying to say? Also, labeling a “card” doesn’t invalidate the comment, though it is offensive.
And what do you call this:
“You mean the way theists hate atheists? How the theists' handbook states that god will damn families of unbelievers "even unto the fourth generation", despite atheists being no danger to an omnipotent god? Or the way that atheists are perceived in USA as the lowest grouping on the trust scale?”
Divine Truth by appealing to your authority? Or just plain being a hypocrite.
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The number of atheists who attack religion simply because it's religion is incredibly small. Richard Dawkins and his 300 fans, plus the bloke who wrote the article in the OP, I imagine.
So you do admit there are some atheists who attack religion simply because it’s religion. You haven’t, however, demonstrated in any fashion that their number is that small. You simply assert it. Assertion does not equal demonstration. In all fairness, I imagine something like this would be very difficult to prove one or another.
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On the other side of that, check out Red's attitude to it all:
. . .
On one hand, it is a reminder - completely unnecessary - that his brand of theism sees atheists sent to hell. There may or may not be an element of schadenfreude in the comment, but it's something which atheists hear with startling regularity. You talk of hatred, well what kind of hatred does it require to to suggest that an entire family is going to go to hell because someone thinks gods are childish? I don't know whether you live in USA, but it's an extremely common response to atheists in that country and they probably get sick of it.
No, it’s a completely common response to non-Christians, not specifically atheists. Believe me I have to hear this crap too. On the other hand, nothing Red said came off as hatred towards you, just his genuine cosmological beliefs. What he genuinely thinks is going to happen to non-believers. I’m not disagreeing that one can easily get sick of it and find it offensive.
I have no problem with you responding back as I already stated. We’ll get to what specifically I have a problem with at the very end of this post.
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Even in our delightfully secualr land, I have a horror story. My kid was at high school as a senior last year. He told me how groups of Samoan christians would go around his school in search of atheists and if they ever found one, would beat the crap out of them. Fortunately, most atheists are smart and when asked by eight 120-kilogram (280lbs) Samoans whether they believed in god or not, were smart enough to hand out a little white lie.
Now, please tell me wherever such a thing would happen in reverse.
Well, we could bring up Communism again, but then you’d start appealing to your own authority again.
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I must say that I find it incredibly ironic, theists trying to play the persecution card.
Why Theists can’t be persecuted? You assume just because the persecutions rarely turn physical--I also have my doubts that the anecdote you provided above is a frequent occurrence in most secular countries—that Theists cannot be persecuted by atheists verbally.
Now I’m not necessarily saying atheists are persecuting theists, but personally I don’t see someone telling me that “I am destined for hell” to be all that much more annoying than an atheist informing me “all religious people are stupid and unintelligent” (something I have heard before).
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No, I'm not confusing your religion with those, I just didn't separate it as the exception. See what I said about persecution before, though? You obviously at least see the bigotry.
I'll finish later, hit send in error.
I’m going to skip the rest of your comments and get to the main point as I think your quote here is nice jumping off point for why we are still having this conversation.
You wrote some posts back:
“The category error is that many theists just wish to just live their lives and leave others alone.”
Comment: Your claim here is that it is an error to believe that many theists just wish to live their lives and leave other alone. Not Christians, not Islam, not Hinduism, not specifically Judaism, but ALL groups of theists. That is in fact what this says based off how it is worded. Somehow it is an error to believe that many theists just wish to live their lives and leave others alone, despite the fact that it probably is true that the majority of Theists just want to worship in peace and be left alone.
“If that were true, I doubt atheists would even exist in any kind of organised resistance as they do now, let alone lose sleep over it. Far from being content to just worship, theists are wont to tell atheists that they and their children are going to burn in hell for not believing in their particular sky-daddy. That's not really keeping it to themselves, is it?”
Commentary: I am skipping the first sentence because it has little to do with my point. It’s there to explain atheist motivation to resist Theism.
More importantly is the second line. You’re still talking about a general group of theists without differentiating specific religions as evidence that Theists, not necessarily only Christians, do not keep to themselves.
“Then we get to Fred Phelps, Benny Hinn, Bert Potter, Brian Tamaki, the late and completely unlamented Jerry Falwell, et al, young earth creationists, anti-abortionists, suicide bombers and the stoning of adulterers and rape victims: these things exist because of belief in gods. That's not really lying down and allowing the world to go on, is it?”
Comment: Then in your next paragraph you bring up a variety of Christian figures (some of whom I don’t recognize, but I’m too lazy to google at the moment), and then throw in suicide bombers (particularly a tactic of Islamic extremists) and the stoning of adulterers and rape victims (which predominantly happens in Muslim countries). But then your last sentence builds on the previous paragraphs, which was talking about Theists in general. The group not “lying down and allowing the world to go on” that you established are theists. You have differentiated other groups. The extreme examples are meant to be representative somehow since what you're centrally trying to prove the following Thesis statement: "The category error is that many theists just wish to just live their lives and leave others alone.” You're implying that Theists in general are not "lying down and allowing the world to go on."
The Problems are pretty obvious and glaring: Not all Theists are Christian or Muslims. Most Theists that I know and interact with do in fact just want to be left alone to worship. Providing extreme examples of some Christians and some Muslims does not demonstrate that there is an error in the belief that “many theists just wish to just live their lives and leave others alone.” The reason being that Theism does not consist ONLY of Christians and Muslims, or of the particular extremists you mentioned within those sub-groups. This is blatantly confusing the parts with the whole because of poor choice words since you seem to be implying in your most recent post that this wasn't your INTENT. Fair enough. Then have the good grace to admit you had a poor choice of words and none of that was what you meant.
Ironically, I’m reacting to the very thing that in the other thread you claimed to hate that people do to atheists. Stop lumping my particular brand of Theism with all the others! Thank you!
