"Arrogant/militant atheist"

MonkeyBalls

Richard Dawkins was once giving a speech on a podium, and when he
finished he invited questions from the audience. A pretty young girl
near the front politely asked him, "...what if you're wrong?" Dawkins
rushed towards her, jumped off the stage, and began to strangle her.
"What if YOU'RE wrong, bitch!" he screamed, before security pulled the
rabid, convulsing, insane Dawkins off her.

True story, in some people's minds.

For hundreds of years religion has been cocooned from the blasting
light of reality and criticism, and now, in the twenty-first century,
people are finally starting to say "wait a minute, this is nonsense".
This criticism sounds to most ears – habituated to the glow of
solemnity and respect emanating from all things religious – like a
mighty army of cloaked swastika-clad fascists booming murderous
frothing rage as slivers of drool swing from their snarling mouths,
brandishing The Origin of Species and marching through the city
streets on a crusade to rip apart the worldview of goodnatured people
who just want to love the Lord and live a good life.

There is nothing militant about using words to criticise pernicious
nonsense. There are nice, simple people for whom religion is a
comfort, and who have no designs upon blowing up innocent people. But
life is not always fair, there are tradeoffs. It's a lie, perpetuated
over and over again, that religion is not responsible for the
atrocities religious people commit. People just block that nasty truth
out, or bleat “that's not religion, that's people”, or nuance every
detail to death in order to blur the hard brutal obvious truth of what
religion is and can be. The more truthful and cutting the criticisms
of religion, the more "militant" the atheist. Religious apologists
want to pull all discussion into the realm of the fuzzy and ambiguous,
where it is nice and safe and its undignified nakedness is covered up.
Nuance is the cloth that covers up the dangling saggy bollocks of
religion.

Religious belief is so imbricated and twisted into the fabric of
people's lives and minds, that criticising religion is like reaching
up into the wiring of their souls, grabbing a handful, and tearing it
all out through their asshole. It dangerously threatens everything
that keeps them together.

Lost in all of this is that the most frothing atheist pales in
comparison to the arrogance of the most timid theist – infinitely
special in the grand scheme of the universe – who kneels before his
bed to speak to the Creator of the Entire Universe who listens to what
he has to say and created the universe with him in mind and will
change the laws of reality for him if he prays extra hard and saved
him a parking spot that morning when he was late for an important
business meeting. Most religious people can't even see the absurdity
of this, so deep are they bured in the sands of delusion. My advice:
if you're a committed theist who doesn't require an opponent to define
you and reinforce your cult, don't try to argue with atheists or
expose yourself to science and reason, because that will cause you
distress and cause you to spout inane perversions of reason, such as
the attempt to reconcile evolution with theology. There is enough
truth-raping nonsense in the world without you adding to it.

housetypeb

you should post this on the other forum-there you'll see a miracle as it will vanish before your disbelieving eyes,as if it never existed at all.

Marcus.Aurelius

Very lucid post, thank you for taking the time! I think I can agree with all of your sentiments, and those of housetypeb; if you post that in the other forum, it will disappear before any of the drones start to think.

fatmammycat

I think the reaso RD, a mild mannered and likable speaker, gets so much flack is because he is steadfast and unwavering in his views and that make woo botherers anxious. They like to pretend he is strident and aggressive, but he is not, he's just right most of the time and can happily back up most of his thinking with fact. And that really really bothers them.

strobe

ok.

MonkeyBalls

housetypeb wrote: »

you should post this on the other forum-there you'll see a miracle as it will vanish before your disbelieving eyes,as if it never existed at all.

The Christianity cult forum? I'll do it now.

Merrick

That didn't last long at all.

MonkeyBalls

Merrick wrote: »

That didn't last long at all.

No, as expected. Hahaha.

antiskeptic

Caesar Augustus wrote: »

Very lucid post, thank you for taking the time! I think I can agree with all of your sentiments, and those of housetypeb; if you post that in the other forum, it will disappear before any of the drones start to think.

It's an evening-course-in-Creative-Writing synopsis of The God Delusion. On both counts it would have no place in the other forum.

MonkeyBalls

Another related one is "Reductionism" or "Biological determinism"

Particularly with evolutionary psychology and neuroscience and behaviour genetics, these terms are used by people who find hard cold facts upsetting and would prefer that certain ideas and behaviour were shrouded in a murky layer of vagueness and mystery and depthless subtlety. Usually used by the religious, women, effete men, and pussy-whipped biologists whose aging wives detest the brutality of immutable biological forces. Unique and special snowflakes like human beings must not be reduced to core animal instincts and predictable basic processeez, because that's upsetting. Who wants to feel like a DNA meatpuppet. Instead, we are unfathomably multilayered and mysterious.

edit: for those who feel opportunistic giddiness, tongue is firmly in cheek here.

MonkeyBalls

Oh, and "Darwinist"

A definition: A lazy and cheap way of derogating evolutionary biologists and those who believe in reason over fairytales. Usually used by religious nuts and right wingers appealing to the retard demographic (a depressingly large group), like Ann Coulter in her nauseatingly stupid book "Godless: the Church of Liberalism."

Pejorative labels allow the intellectually dishonest to have an easy, thought-free way of rejecting ideas that upset them

Marcus.Aurelius

antiskeptic wrote: »

It's an evening-course-in-Creative-Writing synopsis of The God Delusion. On both counts it would have no place in the other forum.

It does no good here, it should be in the other forum, giving people pause to consider the alternatives to their viewpoints. We do it all the time here, maybe you should give it a try?

You might even be pleasantly surprised.

PDN

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

Usually used by the religious, women, effete men, and pussy-whipped biologists whose aging wives detest the brutality of immutable biological forces.

MonkeyBalls wrote:

Pejorative labels allow the intellectually dishonest to have an easy, thought-free way of rejecting ideas that upset them

Indeed. +1

Memnoch

Caesar Augustus wrote: »

It does no good here, it should be in the other forum, giving people pause to consider the alternatives to their viewpoints. We do it all the time here, mabe you should give it a try?

You might even be pleasantly surprised.

If the religious were intellectually curious then we wouldn't have an Aethist and agnostics forum.

Birroc

Are atheists on average more intelligent than believers? I would imagine that less intelligent people are less likely to question their brainwashed beliefs.

antiskeptic

PDN wrote: »

Indeed. +1

+2

alandublin15

browsing the homepage of boards i see the title "arrogant/militant atheist".
i thought this was going to be the type of post i have been praying so hard for (haw haw).
i had hoped that there were other people out there sick of the same sh1t as i am. (okay so its the atheist forum/category fair 'nuf my bad).
anyway.
the **** im talking about is the the increrasing numbers of the atheist equivalant of the 'god-botherer'/street preacher/cnut calling at your door.

i sit on many sides of many fences with the whole religious/belief system thing (i like how it feels on my genitals and gooch) so dont go calling me a morMon or right wing religious fundy when i say this - and this isnt ALL atheists btw.
but some atheists are among the most ignorant annoying little cokmunchers on the internet and in our society today. i dont know how many of these self satisfied, smug faced, attention seeking little weasels there are but their numbers seem to have shot up recently. theyre something like school goths who see themselves as the underdog outcasts of an ignorant society, a bit like conspiracy theorists who wont just stfu. from what ive seen and read they have settled on the idea that dawkins solved the lot and that every single person attending a church has never contemplated logic or science or material laws or that people of all levels of thinking are continuosly changing beliefs. basically theyre ignorant and fundamentalist, just under the flag of atheism.

anyway this has been a rant, and the point of the rant is basically - whatever your belief system please dont go believing 100% that you have it right and start acting all smug, theres an atheist equivalant to the sunday morning 7am bible salesman and they are growing in numbers.
respect to the thinking members of the atheist society who contemplate and listen and wait and consider and wonder.
...as for this 'i reeded a book so youre more stupider than me' type that are springing up...i can only bit my lip (no not cause im having anal sex) and try not to be like them.

"Lost in all of this is that the most frothing atheist pales in
comparison to the arrogance of the most timid theist". :rolleyes: oh please.

MonkeyBalls

Memnoch, that's correct. People in a cult are bolstered by sense of there being antagonistic groups - devious nonbelievers who will doing anything to stop you, to take away what you have. Anyone, therefore, who tries to reveal the delusional nature of their belief can be described as a member of that devious force (may also be why some religious people like to claim atheism is a cult). Separating the two groups augments that, obviously.

PDN wrote: »

Indeed. +1

Look who's gracing us sinful heathens with a visit, Ms PDN. Are you tingling with excitement, thinking you spotted delicious irony?

PDN

Birroc wrote: »

Are atheists on average more intelligent than believers?

Not on the evidence of this thread. :pac:

Memnoch

Birroc wrote: »

Are atheists on average more intelligent than believers? I would imagine that less intelligent people are less likely to question their brainwashed beliefs.

I said intellectually curious, not intelligent, which I think is much harder to define and there are many different kinds of(intelligence, that is).

MonkeyBalls

alandublin15 wrote: »

browsing the homepage of boards i see the title "arrogant/militant atheist".
i thought this was going to be the type of post i have been praying so hard for (haw haw).
i had hoped that there were other people out there sick of the same sh1t as i am. (okay so its the atheist forum/category fair 'nuf my bad).
anyway.
the **** im talking about is the the increrasing numbers of the atheist equivalant of the 'god-botherer'/street preacher/cnut calling at your door.

i sit on many sides of many fences with the whole religious/belief system thing (i like how it feels on my genitals and gooch) so dont go calling me a morMon or right wing religious fundy when i say this - and this isnt ALL atheists btw.
but some atheists are among the most ignorant annoying little cokmunchers on the internet and in our society today. i dont know how many of these self satisfied, smug faced, attention seeking little weasels there are but their numbers seem to have shot up recently. theyre something like school goths who see themselves as the underdog outcasts of an ignorant society, a bit like conspiracy theorists who wont just stfu. from what ive seen and read they have settled on the idea that dawkins solved the lot and that every single person attending a church has never contemplated logic or science or material laws or that people of all levels of thinking are continuosly changing beliefs. basically theyre ignorant and fundamentalist, just under the flag of atheism.

anyway this has been a rant, and the point of the rant is basically - whatever your belief system please dont go believing 100% that you have it right and start acting all smug, theres an atheist equivalant to the sunday morning 7am bible salesman and they are growing in numbers.
respect to the thinking members of the atheist society who contemplate and listen and wait and consider and wonder.
...as for this 'i reeded a book so youre more stupider than me' type that are springing up...i can only bit my lip (no not cause im having anal sex) and try not to be like them.

"Lost in all of this is that the most frothing atheist pales in
comparison to the arrogance of the most timid theist". :rolleyes: oh please.

You sound a bit mentally imbalanced, man.

By the way, there is no comparison between fundamentalist theists and atheists. You missed the point of the post, and are a product of the exact thing I'm talking about.

antiskeptic

Caesar Augustus wrote: »

It does no good here, it should be in the other forum, giving people pause to consider the alternatives to their viewpoints. We do it all the time here, mabe you should give it a try?

It might do no good here but it'll at least give the author applause (if he wants it) and the audience the chance to applause (which they seemingly want to)

On 'the other side', it strikes of an attempt to 'do clever prose' using a vehicle which has 100,000+ miles on the clock. Weary, sagging-on-it's-springs and tired. Dawkins might well give it the fresh spin of an ardent believer-in-his-cause - worth reading because he is current and influential.

MonkeyBalls?? A less than inspired disciple.

You might even be pleasantly surprised.

Please...

MonkeyBalls

^ Blah blah blah. Not a word of substance, just attempts to poison the well.

antiskeptic

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

Look who's gracing us sinful heathens with a visit, Ms PDN. Are you tingling with excitement, thinking you spotted delicious irony?

Er.. he did spot the delicious irony. The basics of a tidy post involve you not cutting the legs off your own stool.

Dades

Okay, it's Friday night so let's play.

Firstly: no more mention of posting this in other forums or there will be deletions...

Seondly: This type of comment is too personal...

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

You sound a bit mentally imbalanced, man

Attack the post - not the poster.

Thirdly: I've been drinking so fair thee be warned.

Dan133269

In response to someone's question.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-26/health/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence_1_sexual-behaviors-liberalism-exclusivity?_s=PM:HEALTH

antiskeptic

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

^ Blah blah blah. Not a word of substance, just attempts to poison the well.

edit..

alandublin15

is it okay to ask what the point of the post was monkeyballs?
i mean i know im imbalanced for having had a wrong opinion but still majestic one, grant your magnificance upon one of the ignorant masses.

MonkeyBalls

Dan133269 wrote: »

In response to someone's question.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-26/health/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence_1_sexual-behaviors-liberalism-exclusivity?_s=PM:HEALTH

I don't think we needed a study to confirm that atheists are more intelligent than theists.

That said, it's not really an issue of intelligence.

There's a difference between stupidity and dishonesty. If Christianity stemmed from mere stupidity, I doubt atheists would attack them as much. Being stupid isn't someone's fault and isn't worthy of ridicule or scorn.

MonkeyBalls

alandublin15 wrote: »

is it okay to ask what the point of the post was monkeyballs?
i mean i know im imbalanced for having had a wrong opinion but still majestic one, grant your magnificance upon one of the ignorant masses.

I was referring more to your comments on cockmunchers and biting your lip but not whilst taking a cock up the ass.

Dades

Uh, decorum please.

I know there's a pair of you in it but this isn't After Hours.

Marcus.Aurelius

alandublin15 wrote: »

but some atheists are among the most ignorant annoying little cokmunchers on the internet and in our society today. i dont know how many of these self satisfied, smug faced, attention seeking little weasels there are but their numbers seem to have shot up recently. theyre something like school goths who see themselves as the underdog outcasts of an ignorant society, a bit like conspiracy theorists who wont just stfu. from what ive seen and read they have settled on the idea that dawkins solved the lot and that every single person attending a church has never contemplated logic or science or material laws

I think you fundamentally misunderstand atheism. If religious people applied that same logic they use in the rest of their lives to their faith, we would not need to make any noise at all.

or that people of all levels of thinking are continuosly changing beliefs. basically theyre ignorant and fundamentalist, just under the flag of atheism.

We have a flag?

anyway this has been a rant, and the point of the rant is basically - whatever your belief system please dont go believing 100% that you have it right and start acting all smug, theres an atheist equivalant to the sunday morning 7am bible salesman and they are growing in numbers.
respect to the thinking members of the atheist society who contemplate and listen and wait and consider and wonder.
...as for this 'i reeded a book so youre more stupider than me' type that are springing up...i can only bit my lip (no not cause im having anal sex) and try not to be like them.

"Lost in all of this is that the most frothing atheist pales in
comparison to the arrogance of the most timid theist". :rolleyes: oh please.

You want to know why atheists are vocal? If I believed that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was God, and made laws to enforce restrictions on what you do (abortion, divorce etc.) or say (blasphemy) then you would be right to refuse to take that shit.

And we refuse to take that shit from anyone either.

sink

OP it's ironic that you're attacking religious believers with pejoratives, gross generalizations and hyperbole in retaliation for them attacking atheists with pejoratives, gross generalizations and hyperbole.

If you think atheists deserve an objective, nuanced and balanced appraisal by their theological opponents perhaps you should consider whether theists deserve the same?

I'm an atheist in case you're wondering.

strobe

Dades wrote: »

Uh, decorum please.

I know there's a pair of you in it but this isn't After Hours.

Any more disparaging references to other forums will result in a ban. This is your final warning Dades.

magicbastarder

is MonkeyBalls a plant? or else someone has been snorting too much coke...

alandublin15

just would like to ask monkeyballs how he came to be an atheist/have an atheist opinion/perception/belief .

*(assuming yes he was born an atheist etc etc etc)

Dades

Nobody's born an atheist.* They're just born.

* imo

alandublin15

oh sweet jesus

magicbastarder

Dades wrote: »

Nobody's born an atheist.* They're just born.

i wasn't just born. i arrived.

MonkeyBalls

sink wrote: »

OP it's ironic that you're attacking religious believers with pejoratives, gross generalizations and hyperbole in retaliation for them attacking atheists with pejoratives, gross generalizations and hyperbole.

If you think atheists deserve an objective, nuanced and balanced appraisal by their theological opponents perhaps you should consider whether theists deserve the same?

I'm an atheist in case you're wondering.

Paradoxical, maybe. Ironic, no.

Light ridicule is important in defeating cultish and absurd beliefs. Light ridicule is how various absurd literary and cultural theories got demolished, despite years of serious and nuanced debate.

MonkeyBalls

@alandublin15: I grew up.

alandublin15

so you opened you mind.

Improbable

An interesting paper you might want to read:

http://tinyurl.com/24npljr

and the graph extracted from the data from that paper:

Dades

^^ Those type of studies really do nothing for the perception of atheists.

Best ignored if you ask me.

PDN

Dades wrote: »

^^ Those type of studies really do nothing for the perception of atheists.

Best ignored if you ask me.

Yes, let's stick to threads about 'Arrogant/Militant Atheists' where no theist posters even hint that atheists are arrogant or militant, but where atheist posters boast about how Aethists (sic) are more intelligent than theists. :pac:

Then they go on to describe theists as being arrogant, deluded, truth-raping, effete, pussy-whipped, intellectually dishonest, retarded religious nuts. But, worst of all, they have the temerity to use pejorative terms! :eek:

I hope MonkeyBalls will stick around long enough to grace this forum with more threads of such entertainment value. And, I humbly admit myself to be convinced and trounced by this thread. On the evidence provided I submit and acknowledge that atheists are never arrogant or militant.

bnt

Well, you don't hear Dawkins complaining about the word "militant", since he's the one who started using it back in 2002 in his TED Talk. But he was talking about militancy in promoting the idea, not about marching in the street or anything like that. If atheists are going to be called "militant" for not sitting down and shutting up, for saying anything at all on the subject, then let the deluded call us "militant" if it keeps them happy.

What's a believer to do? Since they can't attack atheism directly (what's there to attack?), they attack a false, outdated version of what it actually means, and attack atheists as people - while completely failing to address the fundamental issues of dogmatic beliefs and the harm they cause - whether they are religious beliefs or not. They think they're being "oh so smart" by bringing up Stalin and his nominal atheism, failing to understand that he became the head of his own dogmatic religion, "Stalinism" - and did nothing to disabuse people of their delusions about him. It's all there in the history - Khrushchev even criticized Stalin for that in his "Secret Speech".

robindch

Dades wrote: »

Those type of studies really do nothing for the perception of atheists.

Yes, but that's an inappropriate political conclusion concerning an aspect of reality. While it might be deeply unsettling to many religious people -- quite possibly even leading to feelings of arrogance or "persecution" -- I certainly don't think that the non-religious should be afraid of pointing out things like this, albeit as politely as possible within the circumstances at the time. Any more than the non-religious should be afraid to point out that societies with high levels of religiosity are almost invariably significantly more dangerous places to live than societies with low levels of religiosity.

Like Richard Feynman said, reality must take precedence over public relations.

Zombrex

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

Richard Dawkins was once giving a speech on a podium, and when he
finished he invited questions from the audience. A pretty young girl
near the front politely asked him, "...what if you're wrong?" Dawkins
rushed towards her, jumped off the stage, and began to strangle her.
"What if YOU'RE wrong, bitch!" he screamed, before security pulled the
rabid, convulsing, insane Dawkins off her.

It would be pretty awesome if he did actually do that, considering how mind bogglingly stupid the question was.

The rest of this thread = FAIL

Zombrex

robindch wrote: »

Yes, but that's an inappropriate political conclusion concerning an aspect of reality. While it might be deeply unsettling to many religious people -- quite possibly even leading to feelings of arrogance or "persecution" -- I certainly don't think that the non-religious should be afraid of pointing out things like this, albeit as politely as possible within the circumstances at the time. Any more than the non-religious should be afraid to point out that societies with high levels of religiosity are almost invariably significantly more dangerous places to live than societies with low levels of religiosity.

Like Richard Feynman said, reality must take precedence over public relations.

I agree, though I would also say that it would be wrong to draw too simple a conclusion for such data.

For example I don't think religious belief is connected to intelligence but rather education and the accessibility of ideas about critical thinking.

After all throughout some of the most intelligent people in the history of the world were theists. In the time that they existed theism was a reasonable conclusion.

The thing that has changed in recent times is that theism is no longer the reasonable conclusion. Which is probably why a greater number of intelligent people dismiss it. But if you are not in a position to see it is not the reasonable conclusion, then like theists in by gone times your intelligence will have not a lot to do with it.

Fanny Cradock

Caesar Augustus wrote: »

It does no good here, it should be in the other forum, giving people pause to consider the alternatives to their viewpoints. We do it all the time here, maybe you should give it a try?

You might even be pleasantly surprised.

With all due respect, you are working off an assumption in that post that perhaps you should challenge.

This assumption is that Christians, simply by virtue of being Christians, don't consider the alternatives. Many people don't seriously consider the alternatives. That goes for atheists, Christians, communists and any other in-group you care to mention. Let's not pretend that an atheist forum is somehow immune from becoming an echo chamber.

If the post in the Christianity forum was genuinely created to challenge ideas in a respectful manner then I don't believe that there would have been room for the shenanigans at the start of this thread. As it stands, I think it's rather rich to start/ encourage a thread to be started that is specifically designed to get torpedoed, and cry foul when it gets sunk. It reeks of a type of childish confirmation bias.

Dades

^^ Oi! No talking about, um, your forum. :pac: