Most annoying/frustrating atheist arguments?

Turtwig

Jakkass wrote: »

Interesting. I'm not in agreement that this is the reasoning behind people rejecting their faith however.

As for these problems I'm curious to what exactly you are referring to.

Um the two alternate genesis accounts.
A Global Flood that would have wiped out every species.
One God that's loving,righteous and a mass murderer.
Another that's all loving, forgiving but still righteous not so much a murderer though.
Jesus saying he was the only way into heaven when Elijah was supposedly already there...

Really, Jakkass do you want us to list them.

philologos

Malty_T wrote: »

Um the two alternate genesis accounts.

If you read a Biblical commentary, it will adequately explain to you that the first is a general overview of the creation, the second is a particular one. It's quite obvious that there is a purpose to both.

Malty_T wrote: »

A Global Flood that would have wiped out every species.

Interesting, particularly considering that the nature of the flood from Genesis 6 - 8 is something I have yet to think about in detail. (N.B I don't claim to have all the answers, I'm merely curious as to why many of you think you do in the form of dismissal).

Malty_T wrote: »

One God that's loving,righteous and a mass murderer.

Murder = unlawful killing.

God is the Creator, and the law giver, He has the right to create life and take it away.

Malty_T wrote: »

Another that's all loving, forgiving but still righteous not so much a murderer though.

God is the same from beginning to end. I believe in the same God who spoke to Moses at Mt.Sinai (Exodus 3), to the God who revealed Himself to John in the book of Revelation.

This is a very fragile notion that is easily refuted by drawing clear connections between Old Testament and New Testament events and prophesies.

Malty_T wrote: »

Jesus saying he was the only way into heaven when Elijah was supposedly already there...

Em. Trinitarian theology rather simple. Jesus was there when Elijah was there. Infact according to Christian teaching Jesus existed before all other things (John 1:2) and that He was the firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15)

Malty_T wrote: »

Really, Jakkass do you want us to list them.

Considering in another thread, most atheists openly confessed that they hadn't read the Bible. I doubt logical or epistemological issues have anything to do with it.

Tim Robbins

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I heartily recommend a re-read.

I hearily recommend reading some philosophy books if you want some real logic. Someone like Julian Baggini kicks Dawkins ass.

Labelling someone before they have a chance to decide for themselves is not a very nice thing to do.

But we do that all the time. We come up with names for our children for exmaple.

Especially when they are at an age where they CAN NOT decide for themselves on a given subject. If this is what you want to do, so be it. I am merely pointing out that what Dawkins, and I, agree on is that this is a nasty thing to do.

Again we do this all the time. Most people bring their kids up to eat meat without putting the ethical arguments for vegitarianism to them.

Clearly there is a difference between introducing someone to a sport/belief and indoctrinating them into it therefore. As with most words however people can correctly enough use it for both cases and clearly miss what the other person is actually saying.

Most kids can ditch the religion just as easily as they can ditch the rugby.

The fallacy, Dawkins is using here is referred to by Baggini as "Loading the Dice".

He doesn't need to use the word "abuse" and by using it he is loading the dice so to speak. It's a bad argument just like any argument with an obvious fallacy is.

Tim Robbins

ShooterSF wrote: »

I suggested that by disregarding truth in place of happiness you are dumbing down a persons intellect i.e teaching them something as fact when you cannot know it's a fact simply because it's comforting.

I don't think anyone disregards the truth as they see it.

Religious people, by and large, think it's the truth their's a happy place we go to when we die.

nozzferrahhtoo

Tim,

Firstly do not make the mistake of assuming to know what books I have or have not read. You do not know me.

Secondly “we do it all the time” does not change my opinion on the ethics of the action. You can either argue for something to be considered right or wrong. Doing it more often does not suddenly change said arguments.

Thirdly if you do not see the difference between labels and names then this conversation is not going to go far at all. Names say nothing about what a person is, labels do.

Tim Robbins

Jakkass wrote: »

Considering in another thread, most atheists openly confessed that they hadn't read the Bible. I doubt logical or epistemological issues have anything to do with it.

Jakkass, what percentage of Christians do you think have a read a book on logic?

Tim Robbins

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Tim,

Firstly do not make the mistake of assuming to know what books I have or have not read. You do not know me.

Well don't tell me to read books, I have read again. You drop your smugness and I'll follow.

Secondly “we do it all the time” does not change the fact that it is not a very nice thing to do.

I don't see an argument for a consistent: "it's not a nice thing to do".

Thirdly if you do not see the difference between labels and names then this conversation is not going to go far at all. Names say nothing about what a person is, labels do.

But you are now contradicting yourself. You are saying we shouldn't give labels to people that confer some sort of meaning when that meaning is actually nonsensical.

Now you are saying there is a sense to the labelling and is different from just conventional referencing or identification.

If calling a child a Christian is nonsensical because it's impossible to infer that categorisation from the child's intrinsic nature, well then it is no different to a name.

nozzferrahhtoo

My suggestion to re-read the book was based on you openly admitting you couldn’t remember the whole chunk of it you were here talking about. This is not smugness, it is an entirely useful thing to do if you can not remember.

My argument was already laid out. If you can not see it then that is not my problem. Labelling someone based on what they are, when in fact they may not be is generally a nasty thing to do. Especially when it is a child and they know no better and it is a subject which they may even be generally incapable of making a decision on.

And again, if you can see no different between calling someone a Christian (which is to say what they believe about the nature of Life, the Universe and our place in it)… and giving them a name which tells you nothing about them whatsoever, then this conversation is not going to go far.

ShooterSF

Tim Robbins wrote: »

I don't think anyone disregards the truth as they see it.

Religious people, by and large, think it's the truth their's a happy place we go to when we die.

I see both of us are working from a different start point so. I'm working from what we know to be true you are working from what we know to be true and what you believe to be true. Obviously our opinions on indoctrination are going to differ based on different starting points.

Tim Robbins

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

My suggestion to re-read the book was based on you openly admitting you couldn’t remember the whole chunk of it you were here talking about. This is not smugness, it is an entirely useful thing to do if you can not remember.

Oh nonsense. It was over whether he was more referring to "labelling" or "indoctrination" which was actually moot with respect to my point as "abuse" is inappropriate for either.

My argument was already laid out. If you can not see it then that is not my problem.

Labelling someone based on what they are, when in fact they may not be is generally a nasty thing to do. Especially when it is a child and they know no better and it is a subject which they may even be generally incapable of making a decision on.

I already rebutted this.

And again, if you can see no different between calling someone a Christian (which is to say what they believe about the nature of Life, the Universe and our place in it)… and giving them a name which tells you nothing about them whatsoever, then this conversation is not going to go far.

In the context of your argument there is no difference as, I pointed out.

It's up for you to think about it a bit more and articulate the difference.
But if you don't want to do that, it's not my problem.

farna_boy

Naz_st wrote: »

How can this be applicable to atheism exactly? The default position of a child at birth is lack of belief in God (and every other concept). So how is it possible to force a "lack of belief" (that they already lack) onto them?

By "not indoctrinating" them one is, in fact, indoctrinating them?

No the default position of a child is ignorance to everything in the world and they are taught by their parents / society etc how to live and what to believe.

Atheism is not a lack of belief in God, it is a belief that God does not exist. For example "a lack of understanding" would mean that you do not completly understand something, therfore a lack of belief is something you do not completly believe.

That is why I was asking, wouldn't it be better to let the child decide for themselves whether or not they do believe in God instead of forcing atheist beliefs on the child?

doctoremma wrote: »

No. An atheist household isn't one where they revel in burning bibles and decrying religion. An atheist household is (or should be) one where religion isn't mentioned, a non-event as default. Until your child comes home and asks why some people go to church. You reply "Because some people believe in god (and explain what that means)". I'd be inclined not to mention my own beliefs unless explicitly asked.

That is how I would have thought atheists would ideally raise their children, but I wonder how neutral anyone can be when teaching their own child about something in which they believe.

Do you think it would be better to teach the child about religion (in general) before they come and ask you though?

robindch

Jakkass wrote: »

I'm not in agreement that this is the reasoning behind people rejecting their faith however.

I think a lot of people reject religious explanations for the simple reason that they don't appear to map to the world and that can appear to be rejection caused by observation. But having said that, I'd imagine that in the majority of these cases, the underlying reasons appear to be more that (a) they stop trusting the people who tell them that the religious worldview is accurate and (b) they simply stop finding the religious worldview attractive or worth sticking to.

Science, in the hard-science sense that it tends to get used in this forum, has little or nothing to say about religion because religion has engaged in a partially successful multimillennial effort to remove the deity from any possibility of evidential rejection, rendering science objectively useless in determining the truth or falsity of the deity's existence.

That Templeton-funded study into the effectiveness of prayer on sick people is a good case in point. Lots of money, lots of science, lots of hard work and in the end, religious people just handwave it away saying, as one nun did, "God works in mysterious ways and I don't need a scientific study to tell me that". Sheesh! Talk about missing the point!

Jakkass wrote: »

As for these problems I'm curious to what exactly you are referring to.

The most obvious problem is the basic epistemological problem that basically nothing -- outside of cogito ergo sum -- can be known 100% certainty. Hence religion's claim to be a provider of absolute truth (even as it defines it, or appears to define it to judge by its sloppy use of the concept) is false. All the more so when one considers all the other religious books which made similar claims to be vessels of different, though still absolute, truths.

And that's quite apart from the more basic historical problem of why anybody would trust the bible in the first place when nobody really knows who wrote it, nor when, nor under what conditions, nor why, nor what edits were made, what was dropped, what was subsequently added. And so on. To say the very least, the position that seems to be current in truby circles these days that the bible is "inerrant in its original form" is unsupported.

As for the logical problems, well, they've been discussed at length before, but to start off, our old friend "free will" is inconsistent with omniscience. Not to mention the whole shtick with a deity getting himself killed to seal a deal he made with himself -- well, that only makes sense if you don't look at the whole picture which suggest that the deity is, frankly, weird.

Tim Robbins

ShooterSF wrote: »

I see both of us are working from a different start point so. I'm working from what we know to be true you are working from what we know to be true and what you believe to be true.
Obviously our opinions on indoctrination are going to differ based on different starting points.

I can't make any sense of your point there.

nozzferrahhtoo

Tim,

Again, if you can not remember the section of a book you are here talking about, then the suggestion to re-read it is entirely valid.

And again if you think labelling someone (which is to say what they are and what they beleive) and naming them (which says nothing about what they are) are equivalent then this conversation is, again, going nowhere. It is not "up to me" to pander to any such nonsense.

Tim Robbins

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Tim,

Again, if you can not remember the section of a book you are here talking about, then the suggestion to re-read it is entirely valid.

You have move from "whole chunk" to "section", it's actually word and it's actually moot which would be clear if you read my posts.

And again if you think labelling someone (which is to say what they are and what they beleive) and naming them (which says nothing about what they are) are equivalent then this conversation is, again, going nowhere. It is not "up to me" to pander to any such nonsense.

Naming is a form (it's not equivalent) of labelling.

The "labelling" you are talking about isn't a very good word for what I think you are trying to convey. "Catergorising" is a better word.

I think we could agree there is a mis-categorisation by the parent, if the parent claims their 3 year old is a Christian and that's an inescapable logical fact. However, mis-categorisation is just an error in logic unless it can argued otherwise.

I would also argue that parents choose all sorts of categorisations for the kids. Some are clearly unavoidable and the religious categorisation is certainly avoidable.

So I think the question is: to avoid mis-categorising children does that mean parents wouldn't be able to share any religious views / beliefs with their children? For example, would Christian parents have to hold off completly and hire child minders when they go to church? And if so, is that a reasonable thing to ask parents to do?

doctoremma

farna_boy wrote: »

Atheism is not a lack of belief in God, it is a belief that God does not exist.

Wrong. You had it right in the first part. Atheism is lack of belief in a god, not belief that god doesn't exist.

doctoremma

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Naming is a form (it's not equivalent) of labelling.

My name is Emma - now tell me something about myself. Anything. Just from that.

Naz_st

farna_boy wrote: »

Atheism is not a lack of belief in God, it is a belief that God does not exist.

No, it is a lack of belief in God. This has been done many times in this forum but as I recall, the most consensus view in terms of definitions was Dawkins' "Spectrum of theistic probability", where most atheists would classify themselves as a 6 on the scale.

That is why I was asking, wouldn't it be better to let the child decide for themselves whether or not they do believe in God instead of forcing atheist beliefs on the child?

With slight modification of your post, we agree.

cavedave

doctoremma

My name is Emma - now tell me something about myself. Anything. Just from that.

I can tell your a doctor*



*warning may not just be from your name being emma

doctoremma

cavedave wrote: »

I can tell your a doctor*



*warning may not just be from your name being emma

Hmm, the most you would be able to conclude is that I'm purporting to be a doctor...;)

farna_boy

doctoremma wrote: »

Wrong. You had it right in the first part. Atheism is lack of belief in a god, not belief that god doesn't exist.

Not quiet sure I follow this statement.

Naz_st wrote: »

No, it is a lack of belief in God. This has been done many times in this forum but as I recall, the most consensus view in terms of definitions was Dawkins' "Spectrum of theistic probability", where most atheists would classify themselves as a 6 on the scale.

Interesting. I haven't heard of that before and most forums I read everyone seems to be a 7 (or possibly a 9 )

Naz_st wrote: »

With slight modification of your post, we agree.

If it was changed from "atheist" to "your own", would we still agree?

doctoremma

farna_boy wrote: »

Not quiet sure I follow this statement.

Sorry, it wasn't very clear. The original assertion - it's not that atheists don't believe in god, it's that they believe god doesn't exist - is incorrect. It IS that atheists don't believe in god.

doctoremma

farna_boy wrote: »

Interesting. I haven't heard of that before and most forums I read everyone seems to be a 7 (or possibly a 9 )

I adopt position 7 when debating god .v. no god because it's easier than peppering posts with "likely", "most likely", "but the tiniest possibility" etc. But in real terms, I'm 6.9999999999999999999999999.

Naz_st

farna_boy wrote: »

If it was changed from "atheist" to "your own", would we still agree?

Broadly, yes. The keywords being "forced" and "your own". Children should not be forced into accepting partisan beliefs (aka indoctrinated).

Turtwig

Jakkass wrote: »

Em. Trinitarian theology rather simple. Jesus was there when Elijah was there. Infact according to Christian teaching Jesus existed before all other things (John 1:2) and that He was the firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15)

2 Kings 2:11 wrote:

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

John 3:13 wrote:

No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.

Hmm...
Jesus didn't mention Elijah there did he?

nozzferrahhtoo

Tim

Section. Chunk. Same thing. If you want to talk about something in a book, and you can not remember that part of the book then I advise re-reading it. I do not care if it is a word, sentence, paragraph, page, section, chunk, smattering or whatever, my advice remains the same.

The same with labelling and categorising. Regardless of which word word you use my point that I am getting across here is the same so please, use whatever word you like to describe it but here is my point again: Telling someone what they are, when they have not expressed that themselves or worse are even too young to be even capable of deciding what they are themselves is what my point is here. You can call that anything you want. Labelling. Categorising. Or splidubillywuptiyfying. I do not care. The point remains the same.

If you think in this context that naming and labelling are equivalent then so be it. That is your mistake. However I invite you to put it into practise. I am thinking of two people in my life. One of them in fact is a Christian. Imagine now what that tells you about them, their view of the world, life, their place in it and so on. It tells you a lot. You can tell me a lot about that person and much of it would be entirely correct.

The second person I am thinking of is called Sam. Now if you can come back and tell me something about that person from that morsel of information, nothing but their name, beyond “Their name is Sam” I will be somewhat impressed. Why? Because the former is labelling them and telling you a lot about them. The second is naming them and tells you nothing. Nadda. Zilch. Nichts. In fact from the person I chose, you could not even tell me what sex they are. Labelling entails inherent meaning, naming does not.

As for your last paragraph, no this is not what I was saying at all and I would not ask that of any parent. I already told you the different between introducing someone to a religion or sport, and telling them that they belong to that religion or sport only. There is a world, an entire world, of difference between saying “I love rugby and this is how to play it and what it is...” or “I am a Christian and this is what I believe” and telling them, especially before they are even capable of finding out for themselves “You are a rugby player not a soccer player” or “You are a Christian not a Muslim/Atheist”. It gets worse then if the person doing this goes out of their way to prevent the child in question being what they were just told they are.

But suffice to say at no point, no point at all, did I even suggest let alone say anything remotely similar to the last paragraph nor would I.

ShooterSF

Tim Robbins wrote: »

I can't make any sense of your point there.

I've quoted it again here to see if it helps.

ShooterSF wrote: »

I see both of us are working from a different start point so. I'm working from what we know to be true you are working from what we know to be true and what you believe to be true. Obviously our opinions on indoctrination are going to differ based on different starting points.

Basically I had approached your comment about telling kids their grandma is in heaven to be comforting as doing so simply to comfort them regardless of whether it's true or not. This is where I approached the dumbing down point.
What I didn't realise was you were assuming that heaven actually exists and what your telling the kid is the truth. If I believed that then I can see your point. Scarily though I would also be telling my kid unless they spend their life worshipping this god and following his rules they are going to burn in hell because I would believe that to be true too.

Imagine you get into a debate with someone about teaching kids scientology in school as if it were a fact. You are opposed they however suggest it comforts the kids.

At this point you would be entitled to ask why tell kids something we don't know is true just to comfort them? However you are making an assumption about the other person when asking this question an assumption that they agree scientology might not be true.

If however they say "But scientology is true" then you realise you are having a totally different debate and you are either going to have to debate scientology or drop the current discussion as you had made a mistake at the start assuming you were both on a level field other than the comfort versus intelligence issue.

Zillah

Jakkass wrote: »

Atheists claim to rely heavily on science. Science itself is agnostic on the issue of whether or not God exists. That's always been my problem with atheists claiming this.

Oh God I am so sick of hearing this. Yes, science does not say "there is no God", but when you or any of your magic-believing kin present the God-hypothesis science says "insufficient data, circular unfalsifiable position, hypothesis fails". It is not that science is stumped by the topic of God, it is that the very notion is so devoid of intellectual worth that it is beneath its notice. Science hears ya, science don't care.

As an atheist I rely on sceptical inquiry. Science is a formalised system of sceptical inquiry.

Morbert

Zillah wrote: »

Oh God I am so sick of hearing this. Yes, science does not say "there is no God", but when you or any of your magic-believing kin present the God-hypothesis science says "insufficient data, circular unfalsifiable position, hypothesis fails". It is not that science is stumped by the topic of God, it is that the very notion is so devoid of intellectual worth that it is beneath its notice. Science hears ya, science don't care.

As an atheist I rely on sceptical inquiry. Science is a formalised system of sceptical inquiry.

How would you present the God hypothesis to science?

[edit]- As an atheist I rely on skeptical inquiry. Science is a formalised system of skeptical inquiry. However, I cannot affirm atheism with science.

Zillah

Morbert wrote: »

How would you present the God hypothesis to science?

I'm not sure I understand the relevance of the question. You don't present a hypothesis to the scientific community in a big auditorium, you expose the idea to the scientific method.

However, I cannot affirm atheism with science.

Neither can I, then again I was not trying to.