Why I Don't Believe In God

[OrphanPip]

Seriously, depression generally isn't the discrete effect of another person's opinion. There are huge problems in establishing the truth of a statement suggesting that one person's opinion can cause another's depression--not to mention the fact that believing homosexuality is wrong is not synonymous with treating homosexuals in any particular manner. So if the argument is that there exists an environment of hostility toward homosexuals, then you have a fairly impossible task of demonstrating how a person's religious beliefs are responsible for this environment. Moreover, this sort of deterministic model of human behavior is bizarre. Is there anything I can say to you to cause you to enter a depression?

The evidence says otherwise, gay teens in general have higher suicide rates and rates of suicidal ideation. However, when anti-homophobic teaching material is introduced, and social support groups, like gay teen peer groups, are present the suicide rate is significantly reduced. This suggests that there is a strong role in anti-gay rhetoric and anti-gay motivated social exclusion in contributing to the teen suicide rates.

Religious discourses in the US have contributed unambiguously to giving authority to an anti-gay, and sometimes violently so, rhetoric that invades all levels of society, from the family to the state. For example, we can look at anti-gay legislation in Africa and we can see Christianity and Islam being the main driving force behind the justification of these laws.

Let us imagine that you find the existence of green hats oppressive and, thus, kill yourself. Did green hats cause your suicide?

Let us imagine that I tell you to go to a mountain, and you do. Once there you push someone off a cliff. Did I cause the other person's death?

Let us imagine you are, as you say, hyper-sensitive, and I say I don't like your shirt, so you kill yourself. Did I cause your suicide?

If you have two discrete events, it is difficult to ascribe the cause of one event to the effect of another--especially if this relationship between the two events is as complicated as that involving occurrences in someone's life.

You are making light of a real documented problem of social exclusion. Would you really suggest that people have no effect on the behaviors of others? That it is impossible for one person to make the existence of another more difficult, to the point that they increase the seeming viability of suicide as an option.

What about the link between higher suicide and being sent to religious sexual conversion camps? Even if we remove the problem of suicide, there is definitely something wrong with camps that have been shown to have no success at changing sexual orientation, but engage in everything from shock therapy to libido reducing drugs to forcefully change sexual orientation. This despite the fact that the evidence suggests that sexual orientation is as much a product of development, and as generally immutable, as hair or eye colour. It's certainly more complicated and nuanced than eye or hair colour, but that doesn't change that it is something that people do not choose or change willingly.

I find it mildly hypocritical that you would criticize the efforts of atheist to disabuse someone of theistic beliefs as being intensely insensitive, but the efforts of religious institutions to criticize and attempt to change something that is not even a choice is perfectly OK. This is especially problematic when the ideas are internalized. The Christian is not mutually exclusive from the homosexual, there are many gay Christians, and what does it do for the mental health of a child to be raised in a tradition where they are to continually see themselves as defective and sinful without any way out.

Here's the biggest problem. If I can cause your death by suicide, where are you in the equation? Is it true that once I have committed you to some theoretically inescapable chain of events that you are compelled to kill yourself? Do you no longer have a choice? If I am compelling your death, then it would be not suicide, but homicide. There are insurmountable problems with the proposition.

I have trouble seeing how anyone can really think this is reasonable.

This is a strawman, Darcy never suggested anything of the like. All he claimed is that an environment of pervasive anti-gay attitudes, which Christianity contributes to, contributes to a suicidal state of mind. And the empirical evidence is on his side, since this is the consensus of the APA. To dispute Darcy's claim, as he formulated it, is to claim that we have no responsibility in the way we treat others.

Let's offer another thought experiment involving responsibility and causation. If in the dead of winter I go out and spray the road in front of me with water so that it becomes icy. Then a car, driving faster than it should, comes down the road and crashes. Certainly, the driver is partially responsible, he should have been driving more carefully, but I would still have a burden of responsibility for increasing his risk through a deliberate action I could easily avoid.

In the same sense, someone who goes out of their way to use Christian doctrine to justify their abuse and dehumanization of another human being is partially responsible for the death of kids who are affected by that rhetoric.

[stuntpickle]

I understand where you're coming from Stuntpickle, I really do. But would you be especially cautious regarding what you say to someone just released from being on suicide watch in a psych ward? If so, why?

A young teen just killed herself less than a kilometre from my house. She was bullied intensely at school because her mother was gay and lived with another woman.

Yes, I would be really nice to someone just being released from a psych ward, but not because I could cause this person's death otherwise. I would be really nice to someone just released from gall bladder surgery, but not because I could cause them to hemorrhage otherwise.

You should never bully persons--not because it will result in their suicide, but because bullying is mean.

[Darcy88]

Yes, I would be really nice to someone just being released from a psych ward, but not because I could cause this person's death otherwise. I would be really nice to someone just released from gall bladder surgery, but not because I could cause them to hemorrhage otherwise.

You should never bully persons--not because it will result in their suicide, but because bullying is mean.

If you persist on taking this tack then you must also uphold the opposite to be true. You must believe that showing love and acceptance to one who is suicidal will have no effect on whether they end their life or not.

[Varenne Rodin]

I, alone, decide whether I kill myself. I find your deterministic ideas about behavior wrong and dangerous.

I think this is stemming from a lack of empathy.

[Darcy88]

OrphanPip's example is spot on. We don't live in bubbles. Causal agency or not, things impact us. The ultimate responsibility may lie with the reckless driver, but the individual who made the road slippery contributed to the outcome and therefore bears some responsibility for it.

[cafolini]

I agree with that, but I never saw my mom as an evil person. She's not as bright as she used to be. Her church friends and bible study group cited biblical references for why my brother Kenny died, and she believed them. She cries as she talks about it. "At first I wanted to be mad at God, but he knows best. He has a plan." Pretty sick plan, if you ask me. Obviously, I don't believe it was the plan of a god. People contributed to his death, and people justified it. People who never met him gave her the reasons for how he had been "bad". It doesn't give her comfort, and she has become cruel to me when I say it's not a nice way to think about the son she loved for 34 years.

I can't place the blame on texts. People either drink the kool-aid or they don't. Scary times for those of us who don't.

I think you got it upside down. I think these are the least scary times of history in that regard. The delusional will never achieve hegemony again. They are a laughing stock.

[Varenne Rodin]

I think you got it upside down. I think these are the least scary times of history in that regard. The delusional will never achieve hegemony again. They are a laughing stock.

I wasn't saying these are the scariest times in history. Scary nonetheless. Religion is the norm in america, not the minority, but I hope you're right and that we won't slide back into worse times.

Sometimes around my city, it's like a body snatchers movie. They single out the ones who haven't been changed.

[stuntpickle]

The evidence says otherwise, gay teens in general have higher suicide rates and rates of suicidal ideation. However, when anti-homophobic teaching material is introduced, and social support groups, like gay teen peer groups, are present the suicide rate is significantly reduced. This suggests that there is a strong role in anti-gay rhetoric and anti-gay motivated social exclusion in contributing to the teen suicide rates.

Religious discourses in the US have contributed unambiguously to giving authority to an anti-gay, and sometimes violently so, rhetoric that invades all levels of society, from the family to the state. For example, we can look at anti-gay legislation in Africa and we can see Christianity and Islam being the main driving force behind the justification of these laws.

If I say that one’s depression isn’t the discrete effect of another’s opinion, and you say the evidence says otherwise, you are stating that there is evidence that demonstrates one’s depression results from someone else’s opinion. I demand you produce this evidence. You are essentially saying that there exists a mechanism by which my personal opinion can, simply by virtue of its existence, inflict depression upon another person. We both know no such evidence exists, so I wonder why you state the evidence says otherwise.

If a person develops cancer and kills himself to avoid the pain and suffering, it does not follow that cancer causes people to kill themselves. Persons have agency of which they cannot be liberated simply because someone else holds a belief.

Holding a belief that some behavior A is wrong is not synonymous with another behavior B. Believing that homosexuality is wrong is not synonymous with mistreatment of homosexuals.

Your statements about anti-gay rhetoric and social exclusion are misguided. If I am waiting on a cab and I wait for one with tinted windows, it does not follow that tinted windows compel me to enter cabs. Can a person make a decision about social exclusion? Yes. Can social exclusion compel a person to make a decision? No.

You are making light of a real documented problem of social exclusion.

No, I am not making light of anything; I am making a reductio ad absurdum, which demonstrates the falsity of a proposition by logically pursuing it to absurdity. This is the business of reason. Just because you don’t like the results doesn’t mean I’m making fun of something. Propositions are either true or false, not true when they look serious and false when they look silly.

Would you really suggest that people have no effect on the behaviors of others?

I would say that person A cannot compel a behavior in person B simply by holding a belief.

That it is impossible for one person to make the existence of another more difficult, to the point that they increase the seeming viability of suicide as an option.

It is, of course, true that person A can make life for person B more difficult, so much so that person B prefers to kill himself. It does not follow that person A can compel person B’s suicide. Person A can, however, murder person B. Does incarceration cause one to kill oneself? Or does one kill oneself because one prefers death to incarceration?

However, it is NOT possible for person A to make person B’s life more difficult simply by holding a particular metaphysical belief.

What about the link between higher suicide and being sent to religious sexual conversion camps? Even if we remove the problem of suicide, there is definitely something wrong with camps that have been shown to have no success at changing sexual orientation, but engage in everything from shock therapy to libido reducing drugs to forcefully change sexual orientation. This despite the fact that the evidence suggests that sexual orientation is as much a product of development, and as generally immutable, as hair or eye colour. It's certainly more complicated and nuanced than eye or hair colour, but that doesn't change that it is something that people do not choose or change willingly.

This passage seems entirely irrelevant.

I find it mildly hypocritical that you would criticize the efforts of atheist to disabuse someone of theistic beliefs as being intensely insensitive, but the efforts of religious institutions to criticize and attempt to change something that is not even a choice is perfectly OK.

You could only find it hypocritical if you misunderstood hypocrisy. I never stated that having an atheistic worldview could cause theists to kill themselves. You’re the one purposing thought assassination. And last I checked, no person can, in this country, be compelled by any organ of the state to attend a religious conversion camp. Moreover, no person can be compelled to attend such a camp simply by virtue of the existence of another person’s metaphysical belief.

This is especially problematic when the ideas are internalized. The Christian is not mutually exclusive from the homosexual, there are many gay Christians, and what does it do for the mental health of a child to be raised in a tradition where they are to continually see themselves as defective and sinful without any way out.

This is irrelevant. Moreover, it seems to suggest that you are bothered simply by the existence of Christianity because it results in some number of psychologically conflicted homosexual persons.

This is a strawman, Darcy never suggested anything of the like.

No, it isn’t. Darcy wasn’t a part of the original discussion. The argument wasn’t a straw man but the original issue.

All he claimed is that an environment of pervasive anti-gay attitudes, which Christianity contributes to, contributes to a suicidal state of mind. And the empirical evidence is on his side, since this is the consensus of the APA. To dispute Darcy's claim, as he formulated it, is to claim that we have no responsibility in the way we treat others.

This, however, IS a straw man. I am suggesting we have no CAPACITY to compel action in other persons by simply holding beliefs.

Let's offer another thought experiment involving responsibility and causation. If in the dead of winter I go out and spray the road in front of me with water so that it becomes icy. Then a car, driving faster than it should, comes down the road and crashes. Certainly, the driver is partially responsible, he should have been driving more carefully, but I would still have a burden of responsibility for increasing his risk through a deliberate action I could easily avoid.

This is a bad analogy. You are comparing holding a particular belief to physically sabotaging a roadway, and guess what? Your example leads to murder or, at the very least, manslaughter. You can’t make someone choose to kill himself by icing the roadway.

In the same sense, someone who goes out of their way to use Christian doctrine to justify their abuse and dehumanization of another human being is partially responsible for the death of kids who are affected by that rhetoric.

Believing that homosexuality is wrong is not synonymous with going out of one’s way to justify abuse and dehumanization. This is another straw man. No one has proposed dehumanization. In fact, dehumanization occurs when you render human beings little more than automatons in a deterministic system of behavior, which is what YOU’RE doing.

[togre]

It's not bashing to say a person shouldn't hate a person who isn't hurting anyone.

The two major fallacies are contained so beautifully in this single sentence.

1). Saying X is wrong, yes even sinful, does not equate to hating. The very manner in which this statement is formulated is an attempt to bully the terms and force one's set of value on all others.

2). Who says the behavior (or inclinations) under discussion do no damage. If a behavior damages a person, damages their relationship to God and thereby damages their relationship to all other people, can it truly be said to "not hurt anyone?" And if this situation truly does exist, would not the most hurtful, loveless thing be to tell someone, "It's okay, nothing is wrong?"

[BienvenuJDC]

The two major fallacies are contained so beautifully in this single sentence.

1). Saying X is wrong, yes even sinful, does not equate to hating. The very manner in which this statement is formulated is an attempt to bully the terms and force one's set of value on all others.

2). Who says the behavior (or inclinations) under discussion do no damage. If a behavior damages a person, damages their relationship to God and thereby damages their relationship to all other people, can it truly be said to "not hurt anyone?" And if this situation truly does exist, would not the most hurtful, loveless thing be to tell someone, "It's okay, nothing is wrong?"

This is well said, and I agree totally, but I know that this group will try to tear these words apart. You see....the liberal mind doesn't play fairly. They will demand for tolerance, while on the other hand, they are intolerant of other's opinions and thoughts. They say that one can believe in creationism, as long as evolution is the only thing taught in schools. There will be no "winning" in a debate in this group, unless it is their opinion that is given in to.

[Darcy88]

"This, however, IS a straw man. I am suggesting we have no CAPACITY to compel action in other persons by simply holding beliefs."

You are suggesting much more than that. You are suggesting that our actions and attitudes towards others have no impact on their mental state or their decision whether to kill themselves or not. Its a silly standpoint since we know that bullying contributes to the rate of suicide particularly among young people. Go into a psychiatric ward and start demeaning and insulting people. Call them ugly, stupid, failures, abominations. See what happens.

[BienvenuJDC]

"This, however, IS a straw man. I am suggesting we have no CAPACITY to compel action in other persons by simply holding beliefs."

You are suggesting much more than that. You are suggesting that our actions and attitudes towards others have no impact on their mental state or their decision whether to kill themselves or not. Its a silly standpoint since we know that bullying contributes to the rate of suicide particularly among young people. Go into a psychiatric ward and start demeaning and insulting people. Call them ugly, stupid, failures, abominations. See what happens.

So...you are saying that if you are bullying me, then the likelihood of me committing suicide will increase?

[stuntpickle]

"This, however, IS a straw man. I am suggesting we have no CAPACITY to compel action in other persons by simply holding beliefs."

You are suggesting much more than that. You are suggesting that our actions and attitudes towards others have no impact on their mental state or their decision whether to kill themselves or not. Its a silly standpoint since we know that bullying contributes to the rate of suicide particularly among young people. Go into a psychiatric ward and start demeaning and insulting people. Call them ugly, stupid, failures, abominations. See what happens.

Affirming the proposition "homosexuality is wrong" in no way constitutes an action toward others.

People are not automatons executing programs written by their environment. I freely admit that we can contribute to an environment that someone would prefer to avoid by committing suicide. I do not advocate creating these types of environments. But holding a metaphysical belief does not imply any variety of behavior. To state that lying is wrong doesn't mean that one persecutes liars, nor does it mean that one is responsible for the suicide of a liar.

I just don't understand how you can't see this.

[WyattGwyon]

Wrong! Anyone making an assertion has the explanatory onus insofar as the assertion is concerned.

This is incorrect. Consider the assertion: "There is no evidence that God exists." This requires no justification or explanation whatever. The only way to counter such a statement is to falsify it by providing evidence to the contrary. If anyone wishes to dispute it, they will have to make a positive assertion that such evidence in fact exists and then present said evidence.

Traditionally, "nonsensical" refers to language having no sense or meaning. Since you have understood the content of my post, you cannot mean that it was this variety of nonsense,

No, you don't get to pick one narrow definition of a term and then pretend it must be (or must not be) what I meant. By "a nonsensical scenario" I meant one that is logically incoherent—one that makes "no sense." Your scenario was nonsensical in that it postulates two people who have intimate knowledge of one another (the closest in the world to each other—call this proposition 1), and yet are apparently oblivious to each others' central beliefs on issues some consider the most important facing humans—the existence of a supreme being and the afterlife (call this proposition 2). The two propositions are incompatible and mutually contradictory. Thus the scenario makes no sense. It is nonsensical. Understand now?

so I suspect you mean that the situation is inconsequential, which would seem wrong.

You are not capable of anticipating my thought. I would not have dreamed up such a tortured reading of a perfectly straightforward concept like "nonsense."

Also, I think you ignore the fact that a person on his deathbed will necessarily act in accordance with his past behaviors.

So you are saying that someone on their deathbed cannot or will not conceive a new way of behaving or a new belief? On the contrary, I suspect many on their deathbeds arrive at new knowledge or perspectives. I'm not sure why you would make this dubious and unsupported assertion.

I think it's also presumptuous that this person will just take your previous beliefs for granted. I think death has the affect of making people reconsider things.

First, I will assume that you meant "effect" since "affect" is nonsensical in this context (just trying to reinforce a concept—nonsense—you seem to find challenging. Please note that I have understood exactly what you meant, and yet what you wrote was, strictly speaking, nonsensical. Also note that this is precisely the situation you said was impossible in the second quotation of your text above!). So, in your scenario, the person on their deathbed is thinking something like: "I've known you for a long time and throughout those years you have been a confirmed atheist. Despite knowing you to be (1) a person with long-standing beliefs that are a matter of deep conviction and (2) a person not inclined to sudden, cataclysmic shifts in your belief system, I will nevertheless ask if today you have become a theist and now believe in an afterlife." Sounds vanishingly unlikely to me—and truly sad if anyone would actually spend their last moments in such a fruitless discussion. No, your scenario is simply nonsensical (see definition above if you are still confused.)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Nietzsche defined atheism as "..the awe-inspiring catastrophe of two-thousand years of training in truthfulness that finally forbids itself the lie involved in belief in God."

I don't think you fully grasp what Nietzsche thought, which was that atheism was an excruciating revelation.

So, is Nietzsche the only authority on what atheism is?

If I say that one’s depression isn’t the discrete effect of another’s opinion, and you say the evidence says otherwise, you are stating that there is evidence that demonstrates one’s depression results from someone else’s opinion. I demand you produce this evidence. You are essentially saying that there exists a mechanism by which my personal opinion can, simply by virtue of its existence, inflict depression upon another person. We both know no such evidence exists, so I wonder why you state the evidence says otherwise.

If a person develops cancer and kills himself to avoid the pain and suffering, it does not follow that cancer causes people to kill themselves. Persons have agency of which they cannot be liberated simply because someone else holds a belief.

Holding a belief that some behavior A is wrong is not synonymous with another behavior B. Believing that homosexuality is wrong is not synonymous with mistreatment of homosexuals.

Your statements about anti-gay rhetoric and social exclusion are misguided. If I am waiting on a cab and I wait for one with tinted windows, it does not follow that tinted windows compel me to enter cabs. Can a person make a decision about social exclusion? Yes. Can social exclusion compel a person to make a decision? No.



No, I am not making light of anything; I am making a reductio ad absurdum, which demonstrates the falsity of a proposition by logically pursuing it to absurdity. This is the business of reason. Just because you don’t like the results doesn’t mean I’m making fun of something. Propositions are either true or false, not true when they look serious and false when they look silly.



I would say that person A cannot compel a behavior in person B simply by holding a belief.



It is, of course, true that person A can make life for person B more difficult, so much so that person B prefers to kill himself. It does not follow that person A can compel person B’s suicide. Person A can, however, murder person B. Does incarceration cause one to kill oneself? Or does one kill oneself because one prefers death to incarceration?

However, it is NOT possible for person A to make person B’s life more difficult simply by holding a particular metaphysical belief.





This passage seems entirely irrelevant.





You could only find it hypocritical if you misunderstood hypocrisy. I never stated that having an atheistic worldview could cause theists to kill themselves. You’re the one purposing thought assassination. And last I checked, no person can, in this country, be compelled by any organ of the state to attend a religious conversion camp. Moreover, no person can be compelled to attend such a camp simply by virtue of the existence of another person’s metaphysical belief.



This is irrelevant. Moreover, it seems to suggest that you are bothered simply by the existence of Christianity because it results in some number of psychologically conflicted homosexual persons.





No, it isn’t. Darcy wasn’t a part of the original discussion. The argument wasn’t a straw man but the original issue.



This, however, IS a straw man. I am suggesting we have no CAPACITY to compel action in other persons by simply holding beliefs.



This is a bad analogy. You are comparing holding a particular belief to physically sabotaging a roadway, and guess what? Your example leads to murder or, at the very least, manslaughter. You can’t make someone choose to kill himself by icing the roadway.



Believing that homosexuality is wrong is not synonymous with going out of one’s way to justify abuse and dehumanization. This is another straw man. No one has proposed dehumanization. In fact, dehumanization occurs when you render human beings little more than automatons in a deterministic system of behavior, which is what YOU’RE doing.

It's not the belief alone that causes the problem. If a belief is kept private and to one's self, of course it's not harmful. If a belief compels someone to take actions against someone else, in this case someone who believes homosexuality is wrong and therefore ridicules someone who is homosexual, I don't think it can be denied that those actions can have a profound effect on a person. Do you deny that the abuse, whether physical or verbal, of someone due to a difference in that person can effect that person and cause that person to take actions he would not otherwise take? When it comes to suicide, I'm not sure one can ever point to one single cause and say definitively, "That's why he committed suicide, and that's the only reason why." I think it's also hard to say the opposite, that something like bullying (which can be caused be acting on certain beliefs) has no impact on someone's mental state.

Also, you demand evidence from Pip to show beliefs cause suicide. I'm sure it goes against logical debate rules or whatever and that you'll just hide behind that excuse, but can you show any evidence that suggests that beliefs don't cause suicide?