I don’t know how anyone could dispute it.

I grew up in a liberal Protestant church (United Church of Canada) and looking back I was pretty clearly a proto-atheist (I really didn’t take religion seriously), but it only really emerged when I moved away from home and didn’t have any social or family pressure to attend church any more; my switch to self-declared agnoticism could probably have been measured in seconds. I finally gave up the agnosticism label about 14 years ago when I discovered my boss was an open atheist and so there was no grief in coming out of the closet, as it were.

And then last year, I found out my younger sister and her husband, quite independently, had gone the same way.

Atheists are, I firmly believe, underestimated in numbers. My current boss has stated to me his family is Catholic as a Social Relationship Only: they’ll go to church because it’s a required part of the social ritual his family does, but it’s not as though he believes there’s a deity, or raising his kids to believe that.

@KeithM, we have similar stories.

*Long atheist coming out ramble to follow*

I never really took religion seriously as well, it was something that I did on Sundays because my parents got me out of bed and I had to go, but I don’t ever remember a time of really believing it and then the dam totally broke when my father sat me down and had me read the bible myself. I don’t remember who said it now but that is really one of the biggest ways to turn someone into an atheist because it becomes quite clear very early that every word was man made and not divinely inspired.  And even if there was a god, he’s a homicidal dick and not worth worshiping

In college I still believed there could be a “god” some thing out there that was looking out for us and I held onto that belief and even into moving to L.A. though more and more it nagged at my mind that I was in fact an atheist I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. Well, after getting a job where one of my bosses was an admitted atheist who asked me point blank what I was. At first I hedged my bets and said I was about 95% there but there was still that belief there could be *something* but talking to him was a big part of coming to terms with myself. It would (sadly) be a few more months because I do have a lot of family and friends who, even if they’re not religious they still believe in a god and I didn’t want to offend them but more and more I started meeting and hanging out with other atheists and finally last year I just sat down and admitted to myself I don’t believe in god.

(BTW, is there the atheist equivalent of a “come to Jesus” moment? There should be.)

It’s been a long struggle and now I see that most of it is because I care about my friends and family who do believe and I don’t want to offend them cause if they challenged me on it I’d end up hurting their feelings. I got into a heated debate with a female friend in college over the story of Adam and Eve and why it’s bullshit that was used to oppress women and she became very upset and defensive because I was questioning the bible and if there was one thing wrong in the bible then that meant she had to pull the whole string and she got pissed and didn’t speak to me for a while.

Now, whenever it’s someone I don’t know I have no problem pointing out just how much bullshit the bible (and religion in general) is but it is the ones I’m close to that kept me from admitting my atheism for the longest time and though this is “coming out” I haven’t actually told many members of my family or friends for fear of a repeat of what happened before though when I find myself with other atheists I freely talk about my atheism. Cowardly? Yes I know but being a black woman who is now an atheist I find myself in the minority of the minority of the minority and seemingly all my friends and family are potential landmines I could piss off. 

*sigh* Rant over!

I think that some people have a tendency to drift away from religion the more experience they have with non-religious people, because they start to realize that their religious family, friends, and associates have a much greater likelihood of being ignorant, delusional, sanctimonious, bitter assholes.

I usually think of myself as a “secular Christian.” I still like going to church, though I can’t these days due to work schedule. Belonged to a relatively liberal church back in Canada (my bishop was advocating for gay marriage, amongst other things (though facing strong resistance)), and this is the community I was raised in. They are still very much my friends.

I just don’t believe. Haven’t for a long time. I enjoy ceremony for its own sake, and I like the people. They do a lot of good stuff and are quite progressive as churches go. I’ll probably go back to it when I move back to Canada.

@Comment #2: UltraMagnus on 04/13 at 01:30 AM

(BTW, is there the atheist equivalent of a “come to Jesus” moment? There should be.)

The “Come To No Jesus Moment”?

Or how about “Wake up and smell… there’s no coffee, and never was”?

haven’t actually told many members of my family or friends for fear of a repeat of what happened before though when I find myself with other atheists I freely talk about my atheism. Cowardly? Yes I know but being a black woman who is now an atheist I find myself in the minority of the minority of the minority and seemingly all my friends and family are potential landmines I could piss off.

You know what UltraMagnus? Don’t feel bad. I’m a white male and I do pretty much what you do, even though for me it’s arguably even more cowardly, if I publicly outed myself as an atheist in real life I would only be one kind of minority, and most of the people I know don’t care that much. When I was a kid I would tell people straight up that I was an atheist, and would get into the most absurd arguments with adults.

my father sat me down and had me read the bible myself. I don’t remember who said it now but that is really one of the biggest ways to turn someone into an atheist because it becomes quite clear very early that every word was man made and not divinely inspired.

I’ve heard that before too. For me the book that did it wasn’t the Bible, it was Dante’s Inferno. Reading about how “epicureans” (atheists) would spend eternity roasting in redhot tombs, in the sixth circle of Hell, somehow forced the issue for me.

I can’t speak for why Christians leave their religious beliefs behind, but I would argue that when it comes to Judaism (note: I’m Jewish), the situation is more complex, since many observant Jews hold non-traditional ideas about God (we’re pretty tolerant of heterodoxy).  For Jews, and I would argue other religions too, there’s a whole life (or part of one, anyway) built around rituals which can be time-consuming and not easy to do by yourself, away from home.  If you used to go to Saturday services in high school, you might, once surrounded by people (including other Jews) who are partying on Friday nights, etc. decide that being up and presentable at 8:30-9am isn’t something you want to do.  Keeping kosher is a hassle, depending on the campus, and so on.

So students end up moving away from the ritual.  I’ll speculate that, since Judaism is more tolerant of heterodoxy (we argue mostly about heteropraxy—what you do), the beliefs typically don’t change much, but the level of observance does (or can).  If a religion is centered on dogma—and that dogma is inflexible—you’re much more likely to just ditch the whole thing once removed from a religious subculture.  Jews, of course, will change their minds (including observant ones), but the real concern about college among Jews has always been the decline in religious observance, not what students are thinking or believing.

As an almost-tenured college professor I can confirm your suspicion, Amanda, that teaching critical thinking is one of our lowest priorities. More’s the pity.

My atheist coming-out story: first grade, 1974. The question of Xmas gifts comes up at my Midwest elementary school, and one of the other kids starts going on about how he has to be good so that Santa will read his letter and bring him the gift he wants. I think to myself “That kid still believes in Santa?” and the teacher jumps in and starts lecturing us all about how Santa is a bunch of nonsense. “Right on,” I think, and then the teacher goes on to tell us how Xmas is all about Jeezus and how God is going to gift us with eternal salvation if only we’ll believe, etc… and I think to myself that I’d always pretty much thought of Santa and God as being pretty much the same kind of fairy tale. But of course I was six, and this was 1974 in a still-semirural suburb, so boy did I get in a lot of trouble at school. And boy did the school get an earful from my mom about it—she grew up in the Depression and knew damned well no sky fairy was going to put food on the table.

Creepy. Amanda, can you ban this lunatic.

I wanted to comment on Mike the Mad Biologist’s point that we Jews are all about the orthopraxy and not about the orthodoxy. I think that’s a great point. But I also want to say that one’s identity as a Jew isn’t often challenged in College because orthopraxy is seen as something you can pick up or put down and because you often find a new community of Jews who share your agnosticism.  I think the Jewish community, at least the Reform and Conservative ones, are more tolerant of the notion that people move in and out of orthopraxy or even paying attention to g-d.  I’m an atheist, was raised an atheist, and am getting ready to “do” Passover again this year.  Its one of the few rituals I do.  But I still enjoy reading and arguing about g-d and occasionally find myself reverting to the traditional jewish refusal to write out the “sacred name” even though I don’t believe and have never believed.

But I think its possible, as well, that some Christians continue to be believers in College but cease to focus on praxy and submission to the community because its easier and because their former identification of g-d with a particular set of practices and people (authorities) would be disturbed by shifting over to a new set in College.  Except for Catholics who, I presume, are used to the interchangeability of management within a strongly marked set of practices.

aimai

I think it’s Occam’s Razor and that when people go to college to learn, they are suppose to be exposed to more secular and liberal worldviews because that’s what makes them smarter.  Period.

It makes me happy to see Denys Markuze is warning us against homeopathy. That should be a saying, “That’s so crazy, even Denys Markuze” doesn’t believe it!”

I guess he’s not so bad, for someone who’s constantly threatening to cut off my head.

(I know I shouldn’t feed it, but:)

@ 9: Yes, because if there’s one thing that would convince me of the existence of an all-powerful but merciful god, it’s dying in agony.

Nonsense.

First, thanks to Dennis Markuze for showing us that mental illness is another cause of religious faith (and Amanda, his post at #9 is the utterance of a direct physical threat. You might want to add it to the growing list of complaints filed against him with the Montreal police. While I don’t think he’s specifically focused on you, his behaviour has been escalating).

Moving to the main post, I’d have to agree. I grew up in a household where religion was more a component of culture/heritage than it was a serious theological belief. Even so, belief in God was assumed, as was respect for clergy.

I attended a very liberal middle school/high school that explicitly emphasised critical thinking in its mission, to a greater degree than most colleges. Even so, my age and the fact that I was surrounded by family at home and peers in similar situations meant that the best I could do was drift toward a sort of deism mixed with the “watchmaker” analogy.

It’s only since my early 30s that I came to terms with my atheism, after a long period of agnosticism (the fact that I had to “come to terms” with it indicates the level of social pressure still operating). And it’s only been in the past 5 years that I’ve “come out” to family and friends regarding my the atheism—thanks, in large part, to Dawkins and others who have taken the public stigma away from the word “atheist.”

My father was a bit disturbed, despite being all but atheist himself. I explained that I enjoyed religious traditions (holidays, dinners, etc.) and would continue to do so, and understood their contribution to my ethnic identity. But I also said that the supernatural business was kid stuff, and that trying to please or speak to an Invisible Man was a bit silly. He couldn’t really argue with that.

(BTW, is there the atheist equivalent of a “come to Jesus” moment? There should be.)

How about the “I read ‘On the Origin of Species’ and realized it wasn’t a Satanic Manifesto like I’d been told from childhood by people I since realized have no clue what the fuck they’re talking about” moment?  Not very pithy, granted, but certainly accurate for me.

Who’s gonna give you my identity, Dennis? Nostradamus or the 1980s band Depeche Mode?

Even so, I take threats seriously. You’ve just earned yet another complaint in your Montreal police file. I can see from <a href =“http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=33119.0”>this post by Michael Shermer</a> that your parents are in deep denial about your illness, but the police view things differently. Since you’re reading this instead of just copy-pasting, I sincerely hope you seek professional help or resume your course of medication.

It says a lot about this Jesus god, doesn’t it, that he picked this particular troll to troll for him.  Someone who clearly masterbates furiously at the thought of other people’s suffering, one would think, would be just about the last person Jesus would want to be in his corner. 

Kinda suggests there is no such jesus dude, huh.

My atheist “come to Jesus” moment was finally learning about evolutionary theory in a biological anthropology class sophomore year. BINGO! For Florida students (who are all I can speak for), I imagine that getting to a university, whether in-state or out, and being exposed to all sorts of stuff that you either never heard of in public school or were told didn’t exist/was evil/whatever, is a big nudge to the intellectual conscience. Our state public school system is just wretched; my high school bio class made no mention of evolutionary theory at all, even to say it was wrong (the sex ed classes were even worse). Little emphasis on critical thinking aside, colleges at least provide you with a broader array of information to deal with.

I am absolutely convinced, along with some of the earlier commenters, that there are a lot of “socially religious” folks out there who really are not believers. I think this is why the “new atheists” are so threatening to even religious moderates- there is a big house of cards out there which is threatened with collapse if atheism is brought firmly out into the open and made a socially acceptable option. And that just won’t do.

I don’t think the proportion of actual, as opposed to declared, atheists is actually all that much lower in the US than in Europe. And that will become obvious as more and more of them come out of hiding.

I don’t think Prager or Friedersdorf have any point at all to make.  They cite no actual inquiries into why the educated are less religious and more likely to hold left-wing views.  Here’s Friedersdorf:  “To me, there are better explanations for the fact that ‘the more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views.’ ”  There he is citing this as “fact” even though it is more a truism than a fact.  Prager is the same.  Their arguments are simply their personal prejudices cited as reasons.

I couldn’t give a crap less what either of these guys think is a reason for something that may or may not be true.  They haven’t actually asked anyone when they became atheists or when they began to hold “left-wing views”.  They’re just talking out of their hats.

I was an atheist by the time I left Catholic high school.  If I were to speculate and assume things because of my personal experience, I would assume that people who are smarter than other people tend to examine myths a little more closely and come to the conclusion that magic is nonsense and therefore don’t believe in it.  It might be that they tried praying and saw how worthless that was.  It might be that their reason told them that a magic creature in the sky doesn’t exist because it’s such a silly notion to begin with.  It might be that they read some Greek mythology and wondered how the Greek gods and goddesses came and went and now we weren’t supposed to believe in them.  It might be the combination of all those things.  The thing is, I don’t know because I never asked and it doesn’t pay for me to bloviate on the reasons hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of other people came to a conclusion similar to my own.

If I were to speculate and assume things because of my personal experience, I would assume that people who are smarter than other people tend to examine myths a little more closely and come to the conclusion that magic is nonsense and therefore don’t believe in it.

That’s definitely how it was for me, at age 12. One fine day it occurred to me that the Catholic doctrine with which I had been raised was in no way different in kind or status from any other body of mythology. That thought immediately and permanently ended religious belief for me.

What has kept me from going from agnosticism to atheism is the lack of certainty that there is no God. I don’t mind going to church (Protestant upbringing and spouse still a believer) because I like the music and the pageantry.  I don’t believe in monarchy either but I’ll watch the Brits Royal Wedding for the same reason.

My late SO described herself as a “born again atheist.”  She woke up one morning and realized “god still doesn’t exist.”

Ok, the actual death threat needs to be responded to.

Still my Sunday mornings when the weather is good are more often spent in the Church of the Green Fairways.

What has kept me from going from agnosticism to atheism is the lack of certainty that there is no God.

Why does that same “argument” not stop you from being agnostic about Zeus or Santa Claus? Or does it?

Einstein was agnostic.

No he wasn’t, not in any sense in which that word is normally used. He dismissed belief in anything resembling the Jewish / Christian God as being childish.

Adding that Spinozist pantheism, Einstein’s professed “creed”, is notorious for being logically indistinguishable from atheism.

MiddleageLiberal, I play a lot of poker. I also live in a Midwestern suburb of a large city and it people here take their religion seriously.  I was playing poker at the card room last Saturday another player, who is also Jewish, said something about “shul”.  I piped up with a line that I’ve been using a lot lately with reference to the poker room:  “THIS is my church.”  Silence.  I think some of them were scared of lightning bolts or something like that.  But yeah, my church is the card room. I used to play golf, but whichever gods control golf wouldn’t lower my handicap no matter how much I practiced, so screw ‘em.

There’s a quote where he says he’s agnostic.

There are also quotes in which he says quite forcefully that he does not believe in a personal God, and that his “god” is Spinoza’s “deus sive natura”.

My atheism goes back a long way—at least to when I started to become aware of the world outside my family (age 6?  7?)  It was the 1960’s, with the civil rights protests, Vietnam War, etc…  I could not reconcile the idealism of religion (although I didn’t think of it in those terms!) with the reality of what I saw.  Learning that there were other religions in grade school also lead to the question, “Why is one ‘correct’ and the others ‘incorrect?’”  Christians might argue popularity, but what about Buddhism and other eastern religions?  As I learned reason and the scientific method, that only reinforced my atheism, 

At the same time as I was undergoing this evolution, my mother was becoming more religious. she joined AA when I was in high school and has remained actively religious ever since.  My father, who has a PhD in Physics, joins her, although when I’ve tried to talk to him about it, it seems to be more of a matter of domestic tranquility than deep belief.  My (younger) sister, though, is following in my mother’s religious devotion. 

It is something I just can’t intellectually understand.

it seems to be more of a matter of domestic tranquility than deep belief

There’s clearly a lot of that going around.

Michael, since you didn’t have a minute to Google the quote, here’s a good summary of Einstein’s position on these issues:

http://www.skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id8.html

As you’ll see, Steve’s comment at #27 is accurate.

I’m going with “come to cheesus”

Michael has time neither to Google for himself nor to click on Gracchus’s link. And I have no time for dishonest quote-miners.

I think the “college makes people into atheists” idea is a conservative meme used to promote Christian colleges and groups like IVCF. From my decade+ spent in higher education, I’ve met all flavours of belief, from non-existent to scary. As much as I wish that knowledge was an antidote to religion, I know that’s just not often true.

When a smart, school-focused person, who is religious, is taught something they disagree with, they usually just learn it well enough to ace the exams. It doesn’t change their worldview and they don’t kvetch about it in class. Young Earth creationists get PhDs in scientific fields because they sign a mental compact with their creator that it’s okay to lie about the age of the Earth to get the degrees they need to be taken seriously. Not that there’s any particular examples of such a liar I could point to.

I don’t think I had a single “Come to No Jesus” moment. It was a combination of things, over a number of years.

Reading enough of the Bible to tell it wasn’t divinely inspired or even particularly moral, dealing with vast numbers of Christians who behaved far, far worse than the pagans and nonreligious folks I met, contradictions with established and proven scientific facts, the complete lack of evidence for any kind of supernatural power, and just plain getting tired of the concept of an omnipotent and perfectly benevolent deity who also invented cancer, starvation, and diabetes.

Eventually, I just got used to the idea that I was an atheist, but no single moment with the light bulb clicked on.

By the way, I read Prager’s article from which so much discussion arose and it is really idiotic.  The guy is a twit and all of his arguments are clearly the product of personal prejudices.  They don’t even have a distant relationship with logic, let alone inquiry.

<blockquote>I just produced the quote.</blockqutoe>

And are still ignoring all the other quotes that put it in context. Whatever.

I have to agree with this hypothesis. I spent most of my Sundays growing up discussing “Sweet Valley High” books in the back of the church with the other girls, completely ignoring the sermon. My husband admits that he only went to church to a) keep his mom from nagging him and b) to scope out cute girls. A coworker recently stated that her kids love to go to church. I asked why (as this seems like odd behavior for teens) but it turns out that they have tons of friends there and play on the churches basketball court after services. Sounds like fun.

My mother-in-law still inquires of my atheist husband if he would consider going back to church. But ironically, whenever she talks about church she never mentions anything about faith. She just runs down the latest gossip about other members. So yes, church is definitely about the social.

Breaking news:  It appears that God has just endorsed Pawlenty for president. I’m so glad that this was cleared up so early in the campaign. Now it can’t keep me up at night the way I worried in 2008 about who 50 Cent was going to endorse.

Sigh. Which says exactly what I said above- that is not agnosticism as the word is normally used. He had no doubts about the non-existence of a personal God, or of personal immortality- both beliefs he plainly disavowed.

I agree that the social component is a huge part of it, but Michael Corleone up there shows the other part—fear of insignificance and freedom.  If there’s no god, then there’s no divine purpose for our existence.  The only reason and purpose for our lives are the ones we give to it. 

There’s no Sky Daddy with a Plan.  There’s no Reason why bad things happen to good people.  You aren’t given problems and tragedy because you’re being tested or God knows you can handle it or God is teaching you something.

It’s scary to be in charge of your own life and have to give it purpose.  It’s scary to know bad things happen, and they might be too much for you.  It’s scary to know that you have utter freedom, and so does everyone else on the planet.  There’s no God enforcing Rules, and there’s no justice in an afterlife.

My first step I to atheism was at 13.  I went to public jr. high, and my social studies teacher, who was awesome, told us to prove to him there was a God.  He was about to teach us about China, and didn’t want us mocking them for not being Christian.

Of course we couldn’t do it.  I scored the only point with “you have to have faith”.  Faith, the belief despite evidence, can’t be disproved by evidence by definition.  Catholic apologetics had taken root even in a liberal Catholic school.

For years I still believed in a loving God who refused to act out of a tough love sort of fashion; we humans needed to grow up and be responsible for our collective selves.  Stepping in would let us remain children forever.  If we’d all behave, we could have paradise on earth.

I still think if we’d all behave the Earth could be quite a pleasant place, but the difference between a God who doesn’t act and no god at all is very small.  It was still very hard to take that last step.  I know so many good people who genuinely believe, but once you stop—really stop—there’s no going back.  The social component is huge, but there’s an individual spiritual component as well, and giving up a god is a step to really embracing adulthood and freedom in all it’s glory and ugliness.

I can’t believe in Santa anymore either.

Bertrand Russell, by he way, also declared himself an agnostic in the same highly exiguous sense.

I don’t think this is all a random occurence.

Wouldn’t it all be that much cooler if it were?

What has kept me from going from agnosticism to atheism is the lack of certainty that there is no God.

This bothered me for a while, but eventually I realized I just didn’t care what the answer was.  I had been thinking that I needed an answer one way or the other, when actually I didn’t. 

For me, the worst part of Catholicism was other Catholics.  I recognize I’m in the minority on this, because the friends I talk to who’ve also left mention the ritual or sense of community as something they miss.  I missed having faith itself, at least until I adjusted.

I can’t believe in Santa anymore either.

But are you SURE there’s no Santa?

I can’t seem to post.  ???...

Humans are social creatures.  We (at least most of us) learn early on how to fit in.  We figure out pretty quickly that it isn’t necessary to actually hold certain beliefs, just as long as we can fake it well enough.

As I’ve heard it said, sincerity is the most important thing in life.  If you can learn to fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.  Look all around you for proof…

Caren, great post!

We shouldn’t necessarily be so cavalier about belief systems that are reinforced by social practice. Think about all the people who start voting republican when they move to the suburbs. But one thing that college generally does is make you aware (if you’re religious) of how differently the same nominal religion is practiced by people in different places. And that can lead to a re-evaluation of faith.

(Of course, I took religion pretty seriously through high school, so my experience is probably atypical: after reading Tillich and Bonhoeffer and so forth, I kept waiting to make that leap of faith, and never did, so really it was my duty to god to become agnostic. And I still miss the music.)

Agnostic re: knowledge, as in you can’t definitively prove or disprove the existence that’s said to exist outside of the constraints of material reality.

Atheist re: belief, as in what’s the point of proving or disproving the existence that’s said to exist outside the constraints of material reality? The end result is the same: no evidence. No god. No point in worrying about Yahweh’s opinions about what we do on a day to day basis.

If a handful of congressional representatives in relatively safe districts came out of the closet as atheists, that might reduce faith-inducing social pressure.

Then, no offense Michael, but you probably fall into the “other Catholics I couldn’t stand” category.  Don’t worry; you’re in good company with a lot of good people.  My issues are my own.

Actually, for me, college was the first time I was exposed to evangelical Protestants who seemed to be all over the place. Coming from the northeast, I only really encountered Catholics, Jews, and mainline Protestants (plus Orthodox Christians, but they were/are a small group), but in college, I ran into evangelicals everywhere (granted, selection bias being that they were more visible than the non-religious). But still-  college seemed to be the place where people who were evagelicals seemed to decide they were going to dive into it.

I don’t think this is all a random occurence.

I don’t think you understand randomness and statistics.  It makes perfect sense that everything worked out perfectly for our existence.  If it hadn’t been that way, we wouldn’t be around to analyze it in the first place.  That’s why there are no people on Mars lamenting that conditions there are conducive to our specific type of life.

If you care to elaborate specifically on what you don’t like about randomness, I can explain my point better.

I was basically a questioning Christian when I left for college, and I never had a specific “conversion” moment to atheism, but college definitely influenced my views on plenty of issues.  I’ll share an example.

In regards to abortion, I have always been pro-choice.  But when I was a teenager, I did still feel like it was wrong, but that it shouldn’t be illegal (and I had decided that I would do the wrong thing and get an abortion myself if I became pregnant as a teenager, which never happened anyway).  I had seen plenty of propaganda, including the pictures and drawings of alleged early-term embryos that looked exactly like miniature babies.  The message was “See? This looks just like a baby!  How can you say it’s not the same as a baby when it looks just like a perfectly-recognizable baby?”  Then I had freshman biology.  On the unit about common descent, there were photographs of a human, pig, and mouse embryo next to each other.  They look identical.  Nobody but a trained biologist could tell the difference without reading the caption.  So that’s when I realized that if we judged abortion to be wrong based on the appearance of an embryo, then we would have to stop killing pigs and mice because they look identical at the embryonic stage.

In college, you just learn things that debunk the propaganda you’ve been fed.  If you want to keep believing lies, you have to work very, very hard to ignore the information or pretend it isn’t relevant.  There are no teachers out there trying to “convert” students to atheism.  They just teach the stuff and it automatically debunks the crap you’ve been told unless you do an amazing job of compartmentalization.

There’s no Reason why bad things happen to good people.  You aren’t given problems and tragedy because you’re being tested or God knows you can handle it or God is teaching you something.

Weirdly, people who have an academic background in literature, to me, seem to be always trying to divine the “underlying reason” something happens or someone chooses an article of clothing, etc.—all occurrences and small details have a “meaning.” Meanwhile, I’m more comfortable with the idea that “sometimes things happen for no reason.” But at the same time, most all people with a hardcore literature background are strong non-believers.

That said, arguments about the difference between atheists and agnostics seem primarily to be of interest to other agnostics. Atheists seem to think they’re making a cop out, and believers either can’t tell the difference or wonder why agnostics seem desperate to justify themselves to atheists.

@SallyStrange: some people are atheists of the “it’s a meaningless concept” sort; others (by appearance at least) are very clear on the characteristics of the deity they’re sure doesn’t exist. (Didn’t Pullman describe himself as a Church of England atheist?) For example, I’m a KJV, 1940 episcopal hymnal atheist. The other denominations and versions have no resonance for me.

Most religions I’ve encountered have a strong, sub-cultural aspect — i.e. you have your own community, your own rituals, your own way of speaking, etc.  As Amanda points out, you have to act in certain ways to be accepted in the community.  And if you can’t keep up the ruse, you’re rejected.  If that community is the only one you know, the thought of being cast out of it is scary/terrifying. 

I figure I’ve only come across a handful of actual, genuine, drank-the-koolaid believers in my whole life.  As far as I can tell, I am surrounded by people who feign belief in order to be accepted by other people who feign belief in order to be accepted. 

And this is not limited to religious belief either.  For example, as an American, I am (socially) required to believe (or at least express on demand) that I live in The Greatest Nation on Earth, the Ultimate Culmination of Thousands of Years of Human History, the Last Bastion of Freedom and Democracy, the Last Best Hope for Mankind — a nation can do no wrong, that is always on the side of goodness and rightness, a nation of the highest moral caliber, whose every act is sanctioned by God and whose leaders are guided by His hand.  Most other nations on Earth have a set of beliefs about themselves that are just as ridiculous…

“My position concerning God is that of an agnostic.”  - Albert Einstein

Only insofar as others choose to define those positions:

You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.

That’s not the same thing as saying “I call myself an agnostic,” in any sense of the word.

Really, in all of this Einstein was expressing the understandable reluctance of any rationalist or scientist to engage in the mug’s game of trying to prove a negative (in this case, “God does not exist”). You’re not gonna get many takers here, either.

here are the problems I have with the Church:

- its position on gay marriage
- its position on abortion
- the sexual abuse scandals

Other than that, I love the Catholic church!

Gotta admit, that one got a laugh out of me.

Other than that, I love the Catholic church!

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

It starts with my question of, what came before the Big Bang? Did God cause it?

Two separate questions. Most scientists and rationalists and skeptics think the first is a worthy question. Many of them think the second is, at best, irrelevant.

I mean, I sometimes wonder what came before the Big Bang. My immediate follow-up question, however, is not “Did Santa Claus (giver of gifts that he is) cause it?”

In regards to abortion, I have always been pro-choice.  But when I was a teenager, I did still feel like it was wrong, but that it shouldn’t be illegal (and I had decided that I would do the wrong thing and get an abortion myself if I became pregnant as a teenager, which never happened anyway).

This was my position exactly.  “If they want to sin by killing a soul, it’s on their heads.  I will just never have sex so it’s not my problem.”

<blockquote>It sounds like you just can’t stand Catholics</blockquotes>

They’re much more tolerable now that I don’t have to spend Mass time with them.  Please note my use of the conditional perfect.

It starts with my question of, what came before the Big Bang? Did God cause it? Stuff like that.

But invoking a deity doesn’t solve this problem.  What was there before God?  Who created God or how did God come into existence?  What caused God?

You can keep appealing to the supernatural layer after layer, but it’s turtles all the way down.

most all people with a hardcore literature background are strong non-believers.

This is because we all have to read reams of mythology, because in order to understand literary works, you have to know your mythology, as so many works are based on it. So you start to realize that pretty much everything about Christianity is ripped off from other, earlier cults, and you start understanding why prescientific people created mythological explanations for things, and you quit having faith in fairy tales because you’ve read so damn many of them that one can’t be right and the others wrong.

This was my position exactly.  “If they want to sin by killing a soul, it’s on their heads.  I will just never have sex so it’s not my problem.”

No, that wasn’t really my position.  I never thought that an embryo had a soul or that abortion was murder.  There was a time when I thought that it was a little bit wrong, but not wrong enough to stop me personally from doing it.  I did feel like it was fine for women who had a “good” reason, but that it shouldn’t be done “frivolously”, and that’s where my position has changed.  I no longer feel like any woman needs to justify her decision to me.

Michael,

From the link I provided above, which you didn’t bother to read.

felagund, my take is generally just that those questions of meaning and purpose that believers find in religion are fulfilled in literature by academic humanists.

I think the “education makes you a non-believer” is a myth; it’s more of being on your own in college makes you a more hardcore version of who you are.

The full Einstein quote, by the way, starts out with:

“From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist… I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.”

[source: Albert Einstein letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945]

Okay, catgirl.  I think we were the same on the “wouldn’t personally, but it shouldn’t be illegal” thing.  Sorry for the misreading.

I agree that social pressure is a significant part of religion.  My mother was insistent on everyone going to church on Sundays while we were stationed in Virginia.  As my sisters married or moved out she went less often herself and dad always used his crazy schedule as an excuse to not go. (That and he was pretty agnostic having converted from Lutheran to Catholic to marry my mother)

When we were shipped to Washington she pretty much gave up on it entirely.

As far as I know my direct family is either agnostic or converted to what ever flavor their spouse is.

Thomas Jefferson was deistic and Alexander Hamilton was Christian - pretty smart guys.

No-one’s arguing that there aren’t smart believers. I (and apparently Einstein) think that you don’t get to be a Jesuit by being a fool. It’s a shame that more Catholics haven’t been subject to the intellectual demands of Jesuit teachers—debates like this would be far more interesting.

Also, historians try not to judge our ancestors by modern standards. Jefferson and Hamilton were products of their times, and even then they were ahead of them. Deism was the closest a public figure could come to agnosticism, let alone atheism, in those days, due to the even greater degree of social pressure present then.

None-the-less, Jefferson went to the trouble of producing an edited version of the Bible which stripped out all the supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Hamilton was basically a deist and religious moderate who established relationships with Christian churches like Trinity mainly to improve his social standing in NYC—despite the fact that those churches treated him and his family very shabbily indeed.

It’s scary to be in charge of your own life and have to give it purpose.

Indeed, Buddhism is scary.

My moment was in Lutheran Catechism when I asked about all the people who never had a CHANCE to hear about Jesus.  Since the answer was “they’re screwed”, I figured it was all hogwash.

Again: my Buddhism doesn’t require any supernatural beings, so “Buddhist/atheist” is valid.

Or how about “Wake up and smell… there’s no coffee, and never was”?

The coffee is a lie.

I have to admit I kind of like going to church (I stopped in college because the school chapel freaked me out, and I didn’t feel like walking to the Catholic one), even though I don’t hold too closely to the beliefs of my supposed faith.  Even as a kid it always seemed a bit off, on one hand being taught of a just and loving God—where my faith and ideology still stem from—and on the other actually learning the stories of the old testament. I don’t feel like I am required to attend church (my mother didn’t go much, and my father isn’t religious, so it was never much of a ritual at my house), but sometimes it has its appeal.  The fact that it is its own community looked really good right after I moved here, because I suck at meeting people.

Thomas Jefferson was deistic and Alexander Hamilton was Christian - pretty smart guys.

Comment #75: Michael Corleone

They people who invented concrete and steel worshiped Roman gods.  The peoople who invented paper and movable type worshiped their ancestors.  What’s your point?

Throwing crap against the wall to see what sticks isn’t going to do anything but stink the place up and put you eblow deep in crap.

Debates like this would be far more interesting if we stuck to the facts.

Actually, little is known with any certainty of the mature Hamilton’s beliefs, which he was not in the habit of discussing. The quotation usually adduced to show that he remained a believing Christian (” I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion…) turns out to merely be something he was alleged to have said by an acquaintance, who reported this supposed statement after Hamilton’s death.

Glass houses, stones, etc.

False. Debates like this would be far more interesting if we stuck to the facts.

You means facts like Hamilton’s well-known attempts to emulate his (Deist) boss George Washington during the Revolutionary War and the early Federal period? Deism was the socially-accepted religious philosophy in that fashionable Enlightenment set during that period. You see many serious differences of opinion between Jefferson and Hamilton at that time, but none about religion.

When he was older Hamilton did indeed profess more conventional religion, but that change was driven by the same movitation: a desire for acceptance (AKA succumbing to social pressure).

Here’s a good Hamilton quote on religion:

“The world has been scourged with many fanatical sects in religion who, inflamed by sincere but mistaken zeal, have perpetuated under the idea of serving God the most atrocious crimes”

And Michael, if you read Amanda’s orginal post, she’s arguing that not all, and not even most self-professed believers are ignorami or simpletons or madmen. Smart people are subject to social pressures just like everyone else. Especially smart outsiders like Hamilton who burn to be accepted by society and understand its constraints.

If you want to disagree with Amanda’s post and claim that social pressures (in the present or in historical context) have little or nothing to do with professed belief in various flavours of Invisible Bearded Sky Man™, you’d be better off doing so directly. This oblique “lots of famous smart people in history believed in god” route is only taking you into a dead-end.

“debates like this would be far more interesting if we stuck to the facts”

That’s rich coming from someone who started commenting on this thread with a logical fallacy.

Yawn.  Appeal to authority is such a cliched fallacy.  Can we try out some new fallacies for once, just to spice things up a bit?

That’s rich coming from someone who started commenting on this thread with a logical fallacy.

Also notice how, when he’s presented with the uncomfortable fact of the full Einstein comment he cited, he first denies it and then, when he no longer can do so, ignores it entirely.

Michael may be a Catholic, but I can tell he was never put through the wringer by a hardcore Jesuit teacher.

Appeal to authority is such a cliched fallacy. Can we try out some new fallacies for once, just to spice things up a bit?

Give him credit: when Michael tried to appeal to Einstein’s authority, it turned out that the appeal was completely unfounded—fallacies within fallacies.

When I went to university, several dorm-mates tried to ostracize me for my atheism.  I had to actually reach out and share my experience, that I went through similar things as they, attended some church and was a regular member of a religious scout-type group, (as an example).

I don’t know what they expected, but I guess their preconceptions were that I held something against them, or wanted to intervene in their lives because I was an atheist.  And so it became up to me to show that atheists aren’t some sort of boogidy-boogidy that they needed to fear.  It was weird.

With respect to the agnostic/atheist split, I think it is important to note that atheist and agnostic are responses to two different A/Not A questions rather than two different points on a continuum of belief.  Are you a theist?  If your answer is yes then you are a theist (A=A), if your answer is not yes then you are an atheist (Not A =/= A).  The question of your theism or lack there of can be answered even if you lack gnosis.  For instance I am not a theist nor do I posses gnosis, therefore I am an agnostic atheist.

They people who invented concrete and steel worshiped Roman gods.  The peoople who invented paper and movable type worshiped their ancestors.

At least the Romans had no illusions about the capricious and sometimes sadistic nature of their deities. I can also respect ancestor worshipers insofar as they’re acknowledging those who literally gave them life.

The kind of person who can believe in the invisible all-loving and all-powerful god of Christianity while being aware of a place like Haiti is beyond my understanding at this point. Which is probably why they always end up going to the “God’s motivations are unknowable and everything happens for a reason” fallback.

Weirdly, people who have an academic background in literature, to me, seem to be always trying to divine the “underlying reason” something happens or someone chooses an article of clothing, etc.—all occurrences and small details have a “meaning.” Meanwhile, I’m more comfortable with the idea that “sometimes things happen for no reason.” But at the same time, most all people with a hardcore literature background are strong non-believers.
Comment #62: Tyro on 04/13 at 10:53 AM

Comparing reasons why someone wears something with Reasons for existence is silly.

The first supposes that the person wearing something can have a reason for doing so.  There’s nothing odd about that, because the one having the reason is right there in front of you.  You and I know of times we wear something for a reason.  Psychology holds that reasons aren’t always easily visible, or even clearly understood by the individual, but they are in fact held by individual persons.

The latter supposes that the existence of the universe or naturally-occurring things in it were created or allowed to exist for a Reason based in religion, spirituality, or some kind of nebulous feeling.  That’s much harder to support, because the one having the Reason isn’t available for questioning, and people deduce that one’s Reasons in many contradictory ways.

There is a social pressure aspect to religion, like in the relatively recent changes Catholicism, in the Mass from the old Latin version, using other instruments besides the organ, and the fact that most Catholics now go to Mass on Saturday @ 4:00 PM, as did my grandparents in their last years.

oldfeminist will tell you that up until the early ‘70s, the Sunday morning one was the ‘traditional’ time to go to Mass if you went at all.

The first two changes were from the Church, but the third has been a rising trend among American Catholics for a while.  That demonstrates the social component of religion.

Don’t underestimate not only the “social pressure” aspect of religion, but the “social support” part.  I’m a fallen-away Catholic, friends with several other fallen-away Catholics - atheists, agnostics, whatever.  A young couple we’re very fond of, he also a fallen-away Catholic atheist, she an agnostic, lost twin babies born a year ago yesterday.  They were dreading the anniversary, not sure how to mark it, but knowing it would be awful.  A friend said, “in the old days, we would have arranged for a mass to be said in memory of the babies, and we would have all gone”.  We would have taken comfort in the presence of each other and the familiarity of the ancient ritual, and the young bereaved parents would have had the support of their community.  But we’re all feeling our way in this new, unleashed, unreligious life, and there is no ritual to replace it.  They spent the day alone, miserable, freaking out and remembering.  Something was lost, even if the church isn’t our home any more.

Care to support that statement, Rare Ass?

You said:

I believe it is more likely there is a God than not.  I don’t think this is all a random occurence.

One core fallacy here (among several) is called “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” with a nice tautological twist.

To break it down, you’re arguing that because you, personally, don’t think everything since the Big Bang all a random occurrence, it’s self-evident that god is responsible, since (according to your personal belief) god came before the Big Bang.

And I know this is frustrating for you (defending the existence of a supernatural entity usually is),  but let’s not resort to name-calling.

Read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton and get to back to me.

The thread will be closed by that time. If you want to provide quotes (full quotes) from Chernow discussing how Hamilton argued against the Deism of Washington and Jefferson during the Revolutionary and Federal periods, feel free.

Or perhaps you can show us the influence of Hamilton’s devout and conventional Christianity in two of the most important documents associated with him: the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. Good luck with that.

Also, you and I have submitted enough information on Einstein for readers to decide if he was a full-fledged atheist.

No, you submitted a paraphrase of a partial quote. I submitted the entire quote, as well as a link to additional quotes and context, which you’ve been conspicuously silent about.

“Rare Ass”

LOL. You got all hard at having the chance to wave your misogynist flag on a feminist blog, didn’t you. Not that I expect any better from a coward who idolizes an abusive murderer. If you don’t want to be hoisted by your own petard, try shutting the fuck up.

Apart from Gracchus’ already stellar answer, I’d add appeal to supernatural.  You not knowing the answer to something doesn’t equal “goddidit”.

Don’t underestimate not only the “social pressure” aspect of religion, but the “social support” part.

Your entire comment at #100 makes an excellent and compassionate point—the two really go hand-in-hand (and are also relevant to discussions about Hamilton’s various religious leanings over his lifetime). I personally see plenty of ways to provide social support without resorting to religious mumbo-jumbo, but even those secular cases depend to a certain degree on social pressure.

But of course, Michael and other theists are more interested in defending their religion by trying to prove the existence of an invisible supernatural entity.

My “Come to No Jesus” moment was college anthropology class. There’s two ways to get out of that class: either you end up a “every belief system has a core of truth to it” New Agey relativist, or you go “well hell, I guess every fucking tribe or society since the beginning of time, including my own, has believed in a whole lot of serious bunk”.

Okay well, I guess if you’re good at comparmentalizing you might go “look at all the silly savages who still haven’t figured out that God killed himself so he could force himself to forgive all human beings for breaking the laws he invented himself”.

“What has kept me from going from agnosticism to atheism is the lack of certainty that there is no God.”

Why does that same “argument” not stop you from being agnostic about Zeus or Santa Claus? Or does it?

I learned Zeus as a myth so there was never a belief I came to abandon.  I came to doubt the existence of God by seeing and reading about pointless human suffering.  I came of age during the Vietnam War so that no doubt had an influence.  I looked at the Roman and Greek system of multiple gods as a labeling system of various human impulses, which reinforces my current view that the concept of God is a reflection of human need. 

With Santa Claus, there seems to be ample evidence of his lack of real existence.  I had older brothers so the revelation was sudden and a little painful.  You think there is still a chance he exists? I thought the only one over 12 who still believed in Santa Claus was Brittany in Glee.

As honest as the Puzo character but a lot dumber.

Rare Jackass

Helpless frustration it is, then.

(For reference, they usually use “Crack-Ass” with me. For Steve, “Stevedore LaMalle” might work)

Gracchus is a total hypocrite. He says there are smart believers and then condescends to you with his Santa Claus question.

That would be more compelling if it was actually my question. In fact, it was Steve LaBonne’s.

What is it with religious nuts and reading comprehension problems around here?

For an atheist, he’s a real asshole. Of course, Ayn Rand was an atheist, too, so maybe we are witnessing a pattern.

And Hitler and Stalin. Probably Pol Pot, too. Don’t forget them!

I guess this is the fallacy of “arguing from villainy.”

Meh.  I still have respect for a lot of religious people, which springs from my view that religion serves human needs, among them allaying fears of purposelessness or the finality of death.  Also, while religion often motivates bad behavior it quite often motivates good behavior.

There are lots of examples of pointless death and suffering but here is another one from today I just read:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/13/student-dies-accident-sterling-chemistry-laborator

I used to describe myself as an agnostic because it always seemed that the whole question of whether or not there was some sort of supreme intelligence beneath it all was simply too large for human minds to fully comprehend, much less successfully answer. I was raised Southern Baptist, but my dad had no use for other human beings and my mother had no use for the local hypocrite-filled churches, so the only time we went was either when my mother was extremely upset over the cruelties of life (like, for instance, when my teenage cousin died in a car wreck) or when my thumper cousins brought my brother and I along for some sort of “fun” kids activity. Rarely was it all that interesting and since I had an elephant’s child to feed, I generally managed to irritate the grown-ups with unceasing questions.

Add to that interests in science, history, and other religions and mythologies (the latter caused by comic books like Thor, admittedly), and I spent my teens as a doubting Christian convinced if there was a hell, I was going to it, not because I was a bad person but because God does not apparently care for folks who say, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense”. Sometime in high school, I learned about Deism and dug the concept immensely. For one, it made the most sense of any religion I’d yet come across, that is, God’s just chillin’ these days. For another, it pretty much got rid of Hell, which never sat well with me. I don’t care what kind of S.O.B. you are, eternity’s a long damn time for punishment.

I call myself an atheist now, not because I had any real moment, but because upon thinking the whole thing over, it just seems more honest. I acknowledge that there might be “something” beyond human comprehension, I just don’t believe there is. Furthermore, I don’t see any reason for there to be “something”, not for creation of the universe or how life formed or how consciousness arose or even human morality or ethics. I just don’t see it as necessary, so I’m not going to waste my time believing or even worrying about it.

I still read a lot about religion and spirituality and the occult and the supernatural, but it’s just entertainment. If a believer asks me where I stand, I tell them that philosophically I’m an agnostic but practically I’m an atheist. Course, I try to avoid discussions with believers as much as possible. That’s just tedious.

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between assholes. They all have one thing in common: a lot of shit comes out of them.

I know, so awful: offering actual quotes, reality-based historical perspectives based on actual documentary evidence, and definitions of actual logical fallacies. If only more people were like you or Dennis Markuze, and didn’t rely on pesky things like facts and logic and reason to make their points

Also, look at the name-calling I’ve engaged in with MiddleageLiberal and gretchen, even though I disagree with them that religion is the most productive way to serve the human needs they mention. What a jerk I’ve been compared to a model of civility like yourself.

I’d accept your gracious apology, except that in Bizarro World (from which you apparently post) things usually mean the opposite of what they are.

felagund @ 7: 1970, I refused in kindergarten after just moving to WA from CA to say the pledge of allegance until the meanings of all the words were explained to me.  My mother got a call from the school asking if we were communist.
Liberal protestant?  The church I belonged to from 1983 to 1995 in northern ID now has a lesbian pastor.  It is a Disciples of Christ/American Baptist united congregation in a small college town.
I’ve always thought the biggest component for questioning a previously unquestioned faith in college/at university has more to do with being exposed to people “not just like you” than anything else.  Once you face that those Jewish/Hindu/Catholic/Protestant/Budhist people are pretty much the same as you are, it’s harder to believe in a single “chosen” people, especially if it is just your own little group you grew up with and those other people are your friends.

Michael, see, this is what I think befuddles non-agnostics about conversations about agnostics vs. atheists. You’re trying to get social approval/respect from the atheists for your views and getting increasingly angry when you don’t. I’m not using this thread as an opportunity to justify why I believe what I believe. Why are you?

On the other hand, I made it out of college a stricter fundamentalist than when I went in. I went to an engineering school, which encouraged a lot of memorization and plug-and-crank higher math, but very little in the thinking about things that weren’t relevant to that diploma and later paycheck. (I ended up settling for an English degree after failing every calculus course.)

It was a very white, very male, heavily Protestant campus. It still has diversity problems today, 20 years later.

These days, I’m a nondeistic pantheist. Gods are useful metaphors for aspects of our own internal power/personality.

My mother got a call from the school asking if we were communist.

Did she point out to them the author of the Pledge, Francis Bellamy, was thrown out of his church for preaching socialism?  Because the resulting brainhurt would have been entertaining.

Mikey, dumplin’, don’t use words you don’t understand.  It weakens your already non-existent credibility.

We all know that you’ve lost the argument, so there’s little point in this macho chest pounding.  Unless, that is, looking like a complete moron is your goal.  In which case, well done!

P.S.  Thanks for not even trying to respond to both Gracchus and I about the complete worthlessness of your “goddidit” position.  I like a little boy who knows when he’s whipped.

Can we try out some new fallacies for once, just to spice things up a bit?

Comment #91: catgirl

No true forum poster would use tedium as defense.

My deconversion “moment” was years after I jumped head first into deep religious study.  Looking back, I think I was starting to doubt the existence of god in my teens, but had no idea atheists existed.  So, I dove into religious study with clergypeople, bible study groups etc etc thinking that, surely, my faith would come back.

8 years later I had to finally admit that I am an atheist.  Wasn’t any one particular “click” moment for me, just the slow realization that not having faith isn’t the end of the world.  In fact, it’s quite freeing.  Definitely a more content person now.

of course, one of my closest friends is religious, a Jehovah’s Witness.  She knows I’m an atheist.  The weird part is, part of our bonding was the discrimination we both went through because of religion.  Obviously from different sides of the coin, but could still understand how the other felt being an “outsider”.

I used to play golf, but whichever gods control golf wouldn’t lower my handicap no matter how much I practiced, so screw ‘em.

This year I’m considering adding this book to the catechism of COGF (Church of Green Fairways):
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=zen+golf&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=16339812536016510280&sa=X&ei=1vKlTbyIJOHd0QGT__hO&ved=0CDsQ8wIwAw#
It’s in my public library so if the guy is a false prophet I won’t have rewarded his flimflammery.

I never had a deconversion moment. Quite the reverse. Despite years of compulsary daily religious worship at school, I never believed in God any more than I believed in Zeus (whereas at the age of six I did believe, along with my classmates, that if we sang “When I Needed a Neighbour” in Assembly, we could make it rain by tidying the (fake) money tray during the morning). The moment of revelation for me came when I was about ten and realised that other people - people who appeared in other ways entirely normal - actually believed that all this stuff we sang hymns about and prayed to was true, which seemed completely bizarre. But all the social pressure was about participation - school prayer was “Hands together, eyes closed” (and shut up) - no-one cared if we were actually praying whilst the headteacher recited the words.

cynickal @ 85: steel was in Asia prior to Roman times, but otherwise, good question.  How about the people who invented steel, concrete, writing, movable type, and paper were pagans or worshiped their ancestors, what’s your point?

BlackBloc @ 104: or option 3, every belief system has a core of truth (if only we need a common something to get along) and every one has a lot of bunk believing involved. 
That’s kind of my position.  I’m a rather inactive social Christian (having not attended a service since 2004 would make me really inactive).  I don’t know if I’m atheist or agnostic but am also of the camp of “who cares which?”.

I was raised rabid atheist by a recovering Catholic.  I have actually softened somewhat-I identify as Buddhist, but that’s more philosophy than religion, really.  And actually, I also have realised that it just doesn’t matter if there is a deity-if there is, there is no way we as humans can even imagine anything about it.  I don’t ever think about whether the Big Bang was caused by a deity-it just doesn’t interest me.  I guess that’s weird.  My ex-husband used to try to get me to get into debates, but my answer was frequently that those things just weren’t for me to know or worry about.  It really ruined the discussion.  I guess my assurance in my beliefs-no matter what they are-is just not conducive to debate.

One day while we were watching Mythbusters, my 7-year-old turned to me and said “You know what is the biggest myth of all? God.”

I was gobsmacked. Yes, we’d never given him any religious training, and had avoided the “cute” childhood mythologizing like Santa Claus or saying that Grandpa was still alive in heaven. But he came up with this entirely on his own.

“Well,” I finally said, “I don’t think Adam and Jamie are ever going to tackle that one.”

So wouldn’t this mean that people with atheist/agnostic social groups would be more likely to gravitate towards non-belief?

So wouldn’t this mean that people with atheist/agnostic social groups would be more likely to gravitate towards non-belief?

Except that atheism/agnosticism isn’t a belief system: it only describes the lack of a certain belief system. People with in certain social groups will gravitate towards the social activites/beliefs of that social group. “Let’s not believe in God together” isn’t much of a social activity you see groups organizing around, outside of the local humanist society.

“Well,” I finally said, “I don’t think Adam and Jamie are ever going to tackle that one.”

“Can we start our own universe with a big enough explosion?”  Tonight - on Mythbusters…”

On the other hand, I made it out of college a stricter fundamentalist than when I went in. I went to an engineering school,

Well, there’s your problem right there… (rimshot)

Aw crud, just wrote a really tl;dr comment I was rather proud of and it got eaten. Oh well. Cliff-notes version:

@Tyro: Lit students look for hidden meanings in subtle differences in works produced by humans, and then sometimes use their analytical knowledge to understand other humans in real life. The atheists among us don’t apply this to the universe at large because we accept that it isn’t governed by the same forces that are present only in human society (the human craving to understand, exploit and explain the world around them leads to genuine things to point out in the things we create, but since we don’t accept that a God in the image of man created the universe, we don’t pretend it has “order” in the way we understand it).

@Michael Corelone: wikipedia Baruch Spinoza and read about his metaphysics to understand what other commenters mean when the say Einstein’s “Spinozist pantheism” is basically the same as atheism. Also read about his excommunication and compare that to Einstein’s quote that “from the perspective of a Jesuit priest” he is more or less an atheist: the beliefs challenge doctrine so much by radically redefining “God” as a concept that it loses meaning to mainstream religious folks.

*meanings in subtle details.

And by “loses meaning to mainstream religious folks”, I mean it loses the original purpose of organized (at least monotheistic) religion, which is to provide an explanation for the universe that makes it purposeful, orderly and controlled by humans/a God with human concerns. The fact that Spinoza and Einstein were willing to use the word “God” to describe something so radically different from the established doctrine was no more helpful to religious authority than if they had said “THERE IS NO GOD NEENER NEENER”. They were heretics in the eyes of those people just the same.

You can kind of relate this to the original topic if you think about the fact that many scholars believe that the metaphysics of Descartes (the predecessor of Spinoza with many similar ideas) were compromised by his wish to avoid being persecuted. This argument suggests that he wrote that there was a traditional God-like figure along with the being Spinoza also described partially because he was afraid of retribution from religious authority.

Church attendance drops when you’re too hungover from Saturday night to make it to church. Partying Friday night is bad for Jewish observance. And trying to get laid as much as possible clashes with early religious training.

Several of my classmates actually became more overtly religious in college, likely because they were reacting to rampant secularism. That’s when I first started to filter evangelical types out of my life, because they were too wearing to be with.

But, from my work associates who belong to megachurches, I learned that evangelical churches provide an instant social network, including subgroups for every age, sex, and marital status. Aside from a widows and widowers group, Catholic churches don’t provide as much in the way of targeted socialization.

Anyone care to guess who this famous American politician was?:

Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity
To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District.

FELLOW CITIZENS:
A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the “Doctrine of Necessity”—that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.

I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, or the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.

@129, Tyro
        Agnosticism is lack of belief. Atheism is a belief in no god, and can be called a belief for the same reason religion is; the truth is objectively unknowable. Beyond that, when it comes to media consumption, people seek out information and individuals that support their views. I’m not sure why this would apply to every philosophy, secular and religious, except for atheism.

It’s the same politician, who after their death, had plenty of people who said they had, in fact, heard him talk favorably about ‘infidelity’.

138: sorry, no. Atheism is just what it says, a- theism- lack of belief in gods.

Anyone care to guess who this famous American politician was?:

That’s a great quote that shows us how much things have changed (a high-profile American member of the House who’s forthright about his disengagement with organised religion) and how much they’ve stayed the same (a high-profile American member of the House who understands that he can’t go too far by denying the existence of god).

If you parse the statement closely, it becomes even more interesting

* “That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures”—slightly different, and probably more honest, than saying “I have always upheld the truth of the Scriptures.”

* “I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular”—intent in this context would imply malicious intent. Lincoln was notoriously fond of off-colour jokes, and then as now (perhaps more so), many dirty jokes contained a religious element present to propel the joke along rather than to intentionally disrespect religion. His political enemies understood that many prudes wouldn’t see it that way.

* “I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years.”—Lincoln’s political career on the national stage began in the 1830s. By 1840, I’m sure he realised that engaging in this debate (over a form of determinism that’s more metaphysical than theological) would hinder rather than help his career in American politics.

* “I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.”—a great illustration of how Lincoln balanced pragmatism with idealism. As an idealist, he understood that under the terms of the Constitution any office-holder who was an open enemy of religion in general or particular would inevitably be in violation of the Establishment Clause. As a pragmatist, he understood that, in the religion-soaked context of the period’s politics, supporting such an aspiring office-holder would be pointless (there are those social pressures again).

* “I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, or the community in which he may live.”—note the absence of the word “religion” or “god” here. He instead makes this an issue of what it means to be a member of a community. Too honest to make the equivalence between community and religion/church himself, he left it to the reader to draw their own equivalence (which those upset at his supposed scoffing would naturally do).

None of this makes Lincoln an atheist, of course. He regularly drew on those “truth of the Scriptures” to support his abolitionism, no doubt because American abolitionism itself was long grounded in certain Protestant sects. On the other hand, it doesn’t add Lincoln to Michael’s pantheon of “smart dudes who believe in god,” either.

In any case this statement, calculated though it may be, beats the rote “God bless America” closing statement and the Sunday church visit dumb-shows that top national politicians, religious or not, have been obliged to perform since at least the McCarthy era.

Atheism is just what it says, a- theism- lack of belief in gods.

Correct. Knowledgeable atheists aren’t trying to prove that there is no god (as noted above, trying to prove a negative is a waste of time). The closest they come is asking obnoxious god-botherers to prove their positive proposition (“god exists”) if they want to be taken seriously.

Agnosticism is lack of belief. Atheism is a belief in no god

Your definitions are way off. In addition to Steve’s post at 142, I’ll refer you to Fatman’s post at 95.

Note that “atheist” and “agnostic” aren’t mutually exclusive terms. An atheist lacks belief; an agnostic holds that you simply can’t know. Most people who claim to be atheist are both. (There are a few—sometimes called “strong atheists”—who claim a definitive knowledge. I’ve no data to support this but it seems to me that for most such people it’s an emotional position; those are the sorts of people who wind up on FSTDT alongside the religious fundies.)

An unbiased reading of Lincoln’s second inaugural address leads one to the conclusion that he died as a man who believed in God.

In light of the statement Dark Avenger posted, it may just as easily be that he was continuing to maintain his earlier opinion of the Doctrine of Necessity in theological guise for a wider audience, replacing necessity/fate/chaos with “divine providence.” It would have been especially expedient, because the Second Inaugural Address is (in any unbiased reading) primarily an attempt at national reconciliation. Making the Civil War not a matter of free will or one human side or the other but of deterministic necessity, and then hanging the blame on the mysterious ways of the well-known invisible Bronze-Age maniac (while strenuously avoiding mention of His more peace-oriented son) is obviously useful in the historical context of the address.

Even so, I’m glad to allow that at that point in his life Lincoln may very well have believed in the literal, personal God that Einstein dismissed. The times were more religion soaked, and being “born again” is something that happens to a wide variety of people even now, especially if they’re operating under severe pressure. So yes, unlike Einstein it isn’t clear at all whether or not Lincoln was a believer.

Still, it seems strange that someone who’d been so devoted to the Doctrine of Necessity (with the level of intellectual sophistication that implies) and gave it up only reluctantly due to the requirements of politics would decide 20 years later to fully believe in the fairy tale version of a prime mover. Maybe your citations from a biography of Lincoln will be as convincing as the ones you provided from Chernow regarding Hamilton (oh, wait…)

In any case, “a lot of smart guys have (maybe-kinda) believed in god” isn’t close to a proof—it’s about as weak and fallacious as “I believe it is more likely there is a God than not.  I don’t think this is all a random occurence.”

I recommend the book Atheist Delusions./<blockquote>

Is that by Chernow, too?

Seriously, looking at the Amazon product description, this particular book has nothing to do with proving the existence of god, but rather defending certain values of organised Christianity:

<blockquote>Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

Sounds like a fancier version of the wingnuts Xtian fantasists’ calls for America to “return” to being a Christian nation. Any of those you can recommend as companion volumes?

[As a side note, judging by the 2nd Inaugural Address, I’d also note that Lincoln’s supposed conversion to Christianity didn’t do much to “liberate him from fatalism” (another version of the Doctrine of Necessity).]

Hart’s bio on the Wiki is also interesting. For example:

On a number of occasions he has called himself an “anarchist monarchist.”

Lovely. No wonder he’s so concerned with preserving the power of and burnishing the highly tarnished reputation of the First Estate of the Realm. What’s up next? A book discussing “Delusions of Democracy” and describing the joys of living under a feudal system and hoping your baron is thuggish and ruthless enough to become king?

Not surprisingly, in other works Hart seems quite happy to dive into the usual sectarian theological disputes, including defence of an Eastern Orthodox concept called “divine apatheia”:

David Bentley Hart (The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth: Wm.B.Eerdmans, 2003, 167) affirms that the divine apatheia is trinitarian love: God’s impassibility is the utter fullness of an infinite dynamism, the absolutely complete and replete generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, the infinite “drama” of God’s joyous self-outpouring – which is his being as God

If that’s at the core of his proof of god’s existence, I’m already unimpressed. I’d say I’d pay good money to see him explain this concept to a roomful of Port Au Prince slum dwellers, but I’m not into blood sports.

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1230

How is a discussion of debating styles of two particular people relevant here? That Hitchens is a poor debater and not helpful to arguing the case of atheism is well known, even amongst atheists.

By the way, you’re not going to find much sympathy from anyone on this site, atheist or not, for an anti-choice theologist who believes a cluster of cells has “moral value” simply because it’s a blastocyst.

At this point, you’re just wasting time. If you came to this thread wanting to be taken seriously in your defence of the existence of god, you’ve failed.

My “come to nothing” moment happened a couple of weeks after my 26th birthday, after building up for over ten years before that.

One of the two high schools I went to was a nondenominational Christian school (with varying degrees of evangelicality, depending on the teacher) and I went on tour with the school chorale in Maine, spending Easter in a Baptist church in Bangor. It was right about then that I realized that the differences in Christianities were really irrelevant. A few years later, World Youth Day 1993 in Denver, I found myself in a very large service (not the infamous Cherry Creek State Park one officiated by JP2) where, on the outskirts of the Mass, I and others in my group were doing more socializing than worship, I realized that I was getting a lot more out of the community experience than anything that was going on an altar we couldn’t see from there anyway. There followed the few odd discussions at a Catholic college (BC) with atheist and agnostic classmates where I couldn’t find logical answers to a lot of their questions and a rather odd streak of Jewish-fanboyism… by the time I’d been out of college for a few years, my parish got a new pastor who was theologically rather conservative, very obviously gay stereotype conformant, and in general came off as a used car salesman with a Roman collar.

That day came in late November, just before Advent. He started telling a glurgy “the day Jesus” came kind of story and I realized I no longer saw any meaningful difference between Catholicism (which I had largely associated with their social justice/services work) and the rest of conservative Christianity. Okay, slightly more concerned with community, but still, the same shallow theology. The next week I stayed in bed, and since then, on the rare occasion I’ve had to go to church for a funeral or something like that, I’ve comported myself as a guest rather than a worshiper. (It really didn’t help that I had been reading the Bible somewhat regularly since my First Communion and had had quite a few WTF moments when noticing the things like the wildly varying genealogies of Jesus and the jumbled creation accounts in Genesis. And Ezekiel 23… yeah, that wasn’t a warning. Crazy ol’ Zeke just liked him some porn.)(

if most atheists are as nice as you, atheism is going to get an awful name.

Do you understand the nature of debates? “Nice” has nothing to do with them. Civility does, and I’ve addressed and critiqued the points you’ve brought up without resorting to name-calling (as you have in this thread).

Really, Michael, if your fee-fees are hurt just because we point out the gaping logical holes in your arguments or express disbelief in your Invisible Bearded Sky Man™ or point out the myriad flaws in His creepy self-appointed spokesmen, this probably isn’t the pro-choice atheist forum for you.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t the goings-on in the church that did it for me, though. Despite what I wrote above, my disgust with the RCC had little or nothing to do with my realization that I simply had no meaningful belief, and hadn’t in some time. Faith—even teaching it, as I did in high school for CCD classes—had never given me much of a bounds for believing in it. By the time I eventually owned up to being an atheist (I’d considered myself an agnostic deist to that point), I had come to the conclusion that something had gone really, really wrong with Jesus’s message, and that he’d be appalled at the amoral behavior and outright idolatry done in his name. (I also came to the conclusion that Jesus was a mite bipolar, and that he was crucified for the Temple riot, but that’s another story.)

Michael:

Does it even matter whether Lincoln believed or not? He clearly wasn’t all that much of a believer in it and it wasn’t high on his list of priorities. Furthermore, don’t conflate belief in “God” with belief in Yahweh/Allah. That’s an equivocation fallacy essentially identical to the false dilemma in Pascal’s wager; “God” could just as easily be Spinoza!God, Charles Fort’s idiot god, Ahuramazda, Azathoth, or some clueless guy who lives alone with his cat on an uncharted planet (among many others). All are very different from Yahweh/Allah and could still reasonably be called capital-G God.

Linus Pauling, William Shockley, Brian Josephson, Curtis LeMay, geniuses all. But that doesn’t mean I should thereby give them a pass on their views of Vitamin C, race, homeopathy, and nuclear diplomacy.

This hypocrite claims to be civil and then writes the following: “...your Invisible Bearded Sky Man™...”

You’re personally insulted by my describing the topic of discussion as such? Sorry, but when debating the concept of the Judeo-Christian god (specifically the Catholic flavour you claim to worship), one is allowed to mock or praise the concept as one likes.

Oh, I know, for you he’s not bearded and doesn’t live in the sky. He’s a totally different kind of invisible supernatural entity. Why, that changes everything!

(Or, in LeMay’s case, pretty much anything else. “Genius” and “sociopath” aren’t mutually exclusive.)

Yes, it matters if Lincoln believed because he was a genius.

So then, as someone noted above, the Roman pantheon matters just as much, because there were men of equal or even greater genius who believed in Jupiter and Ares. Right?

@ Gracchus

No, what it means is that, clearly, Lincoln headed off to the theater believing that he would be shot.  He was a genius, after all.

Long-time reader, (very) infrequent commenter… but the Godfather troll has moved me to comment.

Michael Corleone, why on earth do you insist that non-believers should be nice to you when you have done nothing but lie, obfuscate and fling around misogynistic crap? You sir, are nothing but a religious howler monkey. I also don’t understand why I (or anyone else) should be polite to someone who supports an ideology that says that I am a second-class citizen just because I happen to have female body parts. Until religions of whatever flavour start to respect women as full participants in society, I have only one thing to say to all of them - FUCK OFF. If this hurts your fee-fees, too bad. Being treated as less than fully human by the religious isn’t sunshine, happiness and rainbows either.

Differing definitions aside, saying, “There is no god,” indicates an active belief.

Differing definitions aside, saying, “There is no god,” indicates an active belief.

It really doesn’t, because you can’t put basic definitions aside.

If one says “I believe in god,” the first two words indicate an active belief—accepting a proposition despite a lack of empirical evidence.

If one says “I don’t believe in god,” the first three words indicate (and this is the key bit) a lack or absence of active belief—rejecting a proposition due to a lack of empirical evidence.

Theoretically, the atheist who rejected conclusive empirical evidence of god’s existence would be engaging in an act of active belief. I say “theoretically,” because despite thousands of years’ worth of books and scrolls, preaching, political activism, and “look,the face Jeebus appeared on my Chicken McNugget!” no-one has provided that conclusive empirical evidence—certainly not in this discussion thread.

Now a believer with more intellectual sophistication than Michael might say “there may be conclusive empirical evidence that’s beyond the ken of humanity in its current state.” Which brings us back to Fatman’s comment regarding agnosticism (basically an absence—“a”—of special knowledge—“gnosis”). But that’s a different issue, with different counter-arguments and debate points.

I have not lied, obfuscated, and flung around misogynistic crap, but nice try. How can you be so crass?

Here’s a good example of what I was talking about, Liz212. I see no direct evidence in this thread of misogyny on Michael’s part—personal support for the Catholic Church isn’t conclusive in that regard.

I don’t see much evidence of deliberate lies, either—belief in supernatural entities can arise from other factors, like mental illness (see Markuze) or social pressure.

Intellectual dishonesty falls more under the category of obfuscation, and here there’s plenty of empirical evidence—paraphrases of partial quotes, desperate flailing about resulting in logical fallacies, attempts to de-rail with ad hominem name-calling, etc. As Michael has asked again and again, read the thread for the evidence.

I have a degree from a university that would take one look at your application and then begin writing your rejection letter.

See, Liz212, this is empirical evidence of Michael’s desperate use of logical fallacies—in this case an ad hominem unsupported by any knowledge of the person being attacked (to amusing effect in this case), combined with an appeal to authority (nebulous authority, at that).

Thanks for helping me make my point, Michael.

And Michael, if that degree is a Harvard MBA or Yale B.A., I can certainly accept that you share the same level of intellectual sophistication as Dubya.

Care to state any other obvious facts? Way to miss the point; I’ll come back later in the day to explain it to you, if you like.

I have a degree from a university that would take one look at your application and then begin writing your rejection letter.

And I have an A.B from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Northwestern. So fucking what? Are you 22, or something, that you still think this is some great bragging point?

You’re making a pretty damn poor poster child for the intelligence of believers.

Amanda needs to do something about attracting more interesting trolls.

A bit of advice for you: Know thine opponent.

Or you might get shot in the back of the head on a fishing boat.

That was the great thing about Michael Corleone. He didn’t have to flail around pathetically losing arguments with smarter people; he could just kill anyone who irritated him.

That was the great thing about Michael Corleone. He didn’t have to flail around pathetically losing arguments with smarter people; he could just kill anyone who irritated him.

Who can forget the moment in Godfather where Michael responds to Tessio’s explaining “It was just business” with “Well ... you’re a big ol’ meanie!”

Since our own Michael claims not to need an explanation of the point (and since Steve gave him it anyhow), I’m done with him for this thread.

Michael:

Don’t even start with the credentials game. I refer you to the above examples of Pauling, Shockley, and Josephson if you need an explanation why, along with the Essjay incident on Wikipedia. What matters is the quality of your data and the supportability of your conclusions, and you’re about on a level with the Weekly World News.

Einstein: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

Not that that proves anything one way or the other, obviously. Einstein seems like a great source of quotes to mine, but taking the quotes in context gives a lot more insight into his worldview.

You know, I wondered how this had gone off the rails, and then I happened upon an atheist website and found that we were having two different conversations. I’ll start over.
  No one should be surprised that social pressure “causes” faith. That’s what culture is: social pressure to believe shit. The headline might as well be “Cultural function acts as cultural function.” My original post posited that, like believers, atheists and agnostics would gravitate towards those that don’t believe. I was told that this wasn’t true because it’s “non-belief”, but I’m not talking about belief as in faith. I’m talking about belief as in opinion. You may not believe in health care reform, but that in itself constitutes a belief ABOUT health care reform. Because, as I pointed out, people choose to consume information that aligns with their opinions, be they political/religious/whatever, so everyone ends up creating their own echo chamber to one extent or another. You may feel it’s different when children are born into a subculture than when an adult chooses individuals and information for himself or herself. But the outcome is the same. Your subculture reinforces your opinions, regardless of what they are.

Michael Corleone, you shit-flinging troll, crassness is the only logical response to a dishonest arsehole like you. Why waste good material on someone who is such a pathetic little loser, he has to get his kicks stirring up the atheists on the interwebs? Fap away, fap away, fap away…..

Remember, kids, it’s only theists who are allowed to call you names, because they’re already at a disadvantage by being wrong. It’s your job to be nice to them and make them think they deserve respect. If you sink to their level, you’re being unfair.

Rengeko:

My ex-husband used to try to get me to get into debates, but my answer was frequently that those things just weren’t for me to know or worry about.  It really ruined the discussion.

I hope your husband has since found someone who actually has some intellectual curiosity.

And this is why the move of colleges to more online classes is a really bad idea.

So theists don’t deserve respect because you think God does not exist? What kind of junk logic is that?

People deserve the respect they’re willing to give. You marked yourself as unworthy of respect because you started calling people names when you realized you couldn’t do any better, and then you got angry and accused them of calling you names. At that point, it was like arguing with a child. You can’t learn anything interesting from doing that, and the most you can hope to get is enjoyment out of the spectacle they’re making of themselves.

This, unfortunately, is disturbingly common behavior among internet theists. I postulate that if they had actual arguments that would convince anyone not already on their side, they would introduce them, but they’re stuck with what they do have. You’re an especially embarrassing example of this type; most people, theists included, realize that “Einstein didn’t call himself an atheist” is a bad argument for theism.

Even then, I would have been willing to ignore you if you didn’t have the gall to suggest that other people were dragging down the debate with name calling. Not that this could properly have been called a debate in the first place, since it consisted mostly of you throwing around quotes and insults. You were perfectly aware you had no argument, and you were throwing shit at the wall to see if any of it would stick. You don’t deserve respect because you think respect is something you can demand instead of earning.

I called Rare Vos, “Rare Ass.” That it hurt your feelings is bizarre.

It didn’t hurt my feelings. It made you look stupid, especially when you accused other people of name-calling. You did us all a favor, because you highlighted your stupidity for us.

I pointed out that Einstein was not an atheist and then you tried to contest this, which shows that it meant something to you. When you realized that your chosen quote did nothing to alleviate the fact that Einstein was not an atheist, you said, to paraphrase, “It doesn’t really matter anyway, dude. Ha!”

Einstein’s opinion on religion is interesting to me in its own right, not because it proves anything about the existence of gods one way or the other, as I pointed out before. But if you need to believe you “won” that badly, go right ahead.

Furthermore, you said that atheists do not deserve respect and now you’re trying to walk away from it because you know that you cannot prove God does not exist.

You can’t prove unicorns don’t exist, but that doesn’t mean you should live your life assuming they do. It’s sad, but certainly not unexpected, that that’s the best you can come up with.

It was wrong of me to say theists don’t deserve respect. I should have said angry, pathetic children don’t deserve respect. That would have been more fair.

Lol, once again the misconception that agnostics somehow don’t have to deal with crap from born-again Christians.  I was teased MERCILESSLY by my peers in school for identifying as an agnostic.  It wasn’t just because I wasn’t a fundie Christian, either; the harassment my Jewish, Muslim and Hindu friends got was quite different from what I was getting (and in the case of the Jewish and Hindu friends, not as bad; I can’t say the same for my Muslim classmates post-9-11).  They specifically had a problem with the fact that I did not belong to a religion and did not believe in a god, and in doing so was challenging their belief.  I’m sure that in places that are conservative and fundie enough, people have been denied jobs or fired from them from identifying as agnostic.  It would be really nice if theists and atheists alike could fit us into the neat boxes they created for us - from theists, the “doubters who will come back into the fold” box, from atheists, the “people to weak to use OUR label” box - but it’s more complicated than that.  There are many different reasons for choosing agnostic over atheist, not just “fear.”

On the main topic - I remember when I first decided I was not a Christian, when I was a little kid, my biological dad (distinction made because I don’t see him anymore and I don’t consider him my dad anymore) reacted really strong to it.  Which is typical, but what really struck me was the REASON for it.  He was mad that I hadn’t chosen, as he put it, the “family faith.”  Even at age 8-9, this was bizarre to me, as I knew that even the fundamentalist Christians I knew thought of their religion as a personal decision.  But in reflecting back, I think he’s right; for most people, religious identification is a family thing.  He was just being strangely honest about it.  I kind of wonder if he (being a smart guy, if a complete asshole) had his own doubts, but was suppressing him because he, more than anyone else I’ve known with my life, lived his life through the lens of “what will the neighbors think?”

The “unicorn” example is such a crappy example.  Unicorns, Loch Ness monsters, dragons, etc. are all things that we should be expected to see and record evidence of if they exist.  You can’t really apply the same rules to deities, things that most theists will tell you are SUPPOSED to be beyond our comprehension.

Just wanted to add - I won’t deny that I’ve met theists who don’t have a problem with me being agnostic, but have a problem with atheists.  But this is usually based on the misconception that agnostics are the same as religious people who go through a “doubting” period, and we’ll be “back into the fold” eventually.  When I point out to them that agnostic doesn’t just mean “unsure,” it means “I don’t have any way of knowing, and neither do you,” they usually get angry.  And the theists who know the actual definition of agnostic treat us as the same birds.

You can

Comment #163: junk science  on  04/18  at  11:16 PM