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6381233 Commentshttp://st-eutychus.com/2009/five-things-that-would-make-atheists-seem-nicer/Five+things+that+would+make+atheists+seem+nicer2009-09-27+07%3A51%3A01Nathan+Campbell for “Five things that would make atheists seem nicer”

1. 

   1Bob

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 18:46

   1. Hypocrite much? The creator of the universe, an omnipotent and omniscient being speaks to you, personally and telepathically, and atheists are smug?

   2. Y’know – for the outspoken atheist; they’re after the same people. Preaching lies to the undecided is pretty much the same as calling atheists liars; and you want us to sit idly by?

   3. Intelligent people can believe in God; but they are not doing it intelligently, pretty much by definition you’re not believing in the rational.

   4. This is laughable. Really? You think Scientists sit in a lab, think something up, then go out and find supporting evidence? A hypothesis is created to explain observed facts, that’s *how it works*. It is as objective a system as we can come up with (peer review, repeatable results, etc.), and it is not infallible, but it has corrective powers built in.

   5. Ok, so Jesus says you can drink poison and not be hurt (Mark 16:18) — that’s not obscure and that’s not in the Old Testament. And wait, are you saying you should ignore the Old Testament? On what grounds exactly? Didn’t Jesus tell you not to do that in Matthew 5:17?
2. 

   2Bob

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 18:57

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_hypothesis — ” hypothesis used as a tentative explanation of an observation”. Can you briefly explain how it can be used to fly a plane into a building?
3. 

   3Mr Snuffle

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 21:17

   1) It’s easy to be smug when you start talking about prayer, hell-fire and The Great Zombie Jesus.

   2) I don’t really, there is lots of stuff that isn’t for me I leave well enough alone. Though, bring it into the public space don’t complain when debate ensues.

   3) It only becomes complex because that’s the only way you can justify something kinda retarded. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, just not very likely.

   4) Some of it is subjective, but as lot of it isn’t. Normally the stuff that can be tested and proven. Mmmm.. science. I like my iPhone and long life expectancy.

   5) Aw, but the closet-case evangelicals are allowed to so they can justify hating the gays…

   :D
4. 

   4Nathan

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 21:33

   Hi Bob,

   Thanks so much for commentating.

   1. I hope this is not an example of the aformentioned Poe’s Law and that you aren’t trying to be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. This kind of smug response that suggests that your particular world view is correct at the expense of every other one is the same arrogance you accuse me of. I also want to point out that you’re throwing out a little bit of strawman – I don’t believe God speaks to me now, except through the pages of the Bible. This is the orthodox belief of most Christians – and has been for many years. Your failure to grasp even this basic element of Christian doctrine leads nicely into my fifth point.

   2. An outspoken atheist has become more than a nontheist – they’re an antitheist. Did you read the post I linked to in my post? Atheists claim to have “no belief” not a belief in nothing. If you’ve started trying to convert others to your belief (pursuing undecideds) then you’re shifting the burden of proof back onto yourselves. I don’t think theists can avoid calling atheists liars – or vice versa – our points are binary opposites. Yes, I think you’re telling lies to people. Yes, you think I am. But we are in disagreement. That’s unavoidable. I think you should just be nicer in the way you do it. Hence my five tips.

   3. If you start off presupposing the existence of God (like most theists do) then science is understood through that lens. This is a perfectly rational thing to do when looking at the world and its complexity – despite the many atheist arguments to the contrary. It’s not as simple as you’d like to make it sound. If you define rational – then sure, we’re not being rational. But how irrational are you if we’re right and you’re thumbing your nose at the omniscient omnipotent God? Particularly the Abrahamic God the majority of religions around the world seek to understand. You’re in a pretty irrational place at that point.

   4. Yes, science has gatekeepers – but if the prevailing orthodoxy (or peers conducting reviews) is of an atheistic bent then it’s likely results will be found that match that bent. It’s not objective – science has always kowtowed to society’s powerbrokers – be it the church (think Galileo), or the government, or the prevailing intellectual school of thought. It’s not objective, it’s bought by the highest bidder – think the pro-tobacco lobby.

   5. I did not say ignore the Old Testament – I said understand the Old Testament and the role it plays as the governing rules for a specific group of people at a specific time, as an unattainable standard that demonstrated humanity’s inability to meet God’s rules and our need for intervention. That’s the timbre of the entire Bible and the entire modus operandi laid out in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The whole point of Matthew 5 is a rebuke for the religious leaders of the day who were claiming to honour the law but cherry picking the bits that they were interested in following and ignoring all the bits about love, justice and mercy. The church could absolutely do a better job of doing this today – but the contextual understanding of both this passage from Matthew and the Old Testament law is pretty clear if you take any time to read the Bible in completion, or keep track of any schools of theological thought from the Nicene Creed through to today (and every bit of mainstream theology seeking to get back to the Bible since then (eg the reformation)).
5. 

   5Nathan

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 21:39

   Again, thanks for your follow up comment – I’m not sure how your question about science and religious extremism from a group who I believe are almost as wrong about things as the atheists… but perhaps you could take some time to explain how Darwinism led to Hitler’s eugenics program? It’s analogous to answering your question…

   But, to stick with my policy of respecting strawmen as genuine misunderstandings – I would think understanding gravity and all sorts of other elements of engineering and principles of flight helped out with crashing planes into towers pretty significantly.

   I would think that starting with a hypothesis that western capitillistic imperialism was a bad thing, and a symbolic strike at the heart of that political and economic structure would prove effective in helping the cause of Islamic fundamentalism, would naturally lead to that sort of act. I just don’t think the fundamental hypothesis is sound, nor do I think it worked out the way they hoped or planned.
6. 

   6Nathan

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 21:53

   Thanks Mr Snuffle,

   1. Again, as I said to Bob above, I am suggesting that you can disagree in a nicer, more civil, less smug way. Like not trivialising a mainstream and historically valid belief as zombie worship. I think atheists, given that you (generally) want the moral high ground, should do more to raise the tone of discussion.

   I don’t mean you specifically (and others won’t know that we’ve had long discussions on the matter), I mean people who hijack threads on blogs to preach atheism like the guy in the post I linked to.

   2. I like debate, as you know, I don’t like the views of so many people being trivialised in an insulting and hyperbolic manner…

   3. Yes, says the guy who has made up his mind, almost, and fluctuates between being an atheist and an agnostic… it’s a complex question, just because you’ve personally reached decision B doesn’t make everybody who reaches decision A a delusional idiot. It’s a question that many people ask, with many answers.

   And it’s a question that seems pretty natural to ask… so much so that on one side of the fence we think God causes us to ask, and on the other side people think that we have evolved to ask because it makes us treat each other nicer… mostly…

   Christians get called arrogant, hypocritical (see Bob’s comment) and intolerant because we claim absolute truth – and a monopoly on it – by people making a counter claim in the same areas. This is where you come back and say “we’re claiming that there is no truth not that your claim is not true…” and a hair is split, and us Christians laugh at you.

   Again, I make the point I made to Bob – if we’re right and you’re wrong then your position is the least rational position possible. It’s “noble” to make this sort of decision because you think God could have shown himself better – or been more scientifically testable. Which is often the justification I hear for not believing in God and not going with the idea that you’re in a nasty spot if you’re wrong…

   4. All science is subjective, some science is just less subjective than other science… unless it’s completely measurable – repeatedly – which doesn’t really stand with questions of origins – I think we can all agree that we weren’t there when the world began.

   5. I think you’ll find that the New Testament has a fair bit to say on the question of homosexuality too – just that God’s people shouldn’t be engaging in homosexual behaviour. Just like we shouldn’t be engaging in getting drunk, lying, sex outside of marriage, and many other things where we’re called to live lives like God has described in the Bible. Again, I’ve written about homosexuality (particularly gay marriage) and a better church response to it before…
7. 

   7Mr Snuffle

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 21:55

   Replied! Hooray!

   I made you write stuff :) You and I both know we’ve said about all there is to say to each other on this topic :P
8. 

   8Nathan

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 22:00

   But it’s fun having the discussion in a slightly more public forum…
9. 

   9Mr Snuffle

   wrote on 27 September 2009 at 22:03

   Maybe when I’m in the mood for it… one day Nathan… one day…
10. 

    10Bob

    wrote on 27 September 2009 at 22:12

    Heh, Goodwin in 5? My point is simply; the scientific method is not as open to abuse as religion — tell me, what was it about the scientific method that encouraged eugenics? Science tells us we can deliberately breed for certain traits in humanity – it also tells us how blood will lie if you shoot someone, and exactly how the bullet kills them; is the scientific method then responsible? You’ve got to admit that religion is full of moral dictates, and that some of them, read literally are pretty terrible; science doesn’t have that, and therefore, is not as open to abuse as religion. That’s my point. (Incidentally, did you blame *gravity* in your follow up?)

    Ok. With that somewhat out of the way…

    1. I’m not trying to invoke a strawman here, but yes my “particular world view is correct at the expense of every other one”. So is yours. Unless you practise some brand of Christianity that adds on ‘also the hindus, and muslims, and every other religion are right too’.

    2. I have as much belief in the god of the bible as you have in the existence of Odin, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti monster. What I’m saying is that you can’t honestly expect atheists, in general, to leave you alone to preach when you are actively encouraging people to treat us as liars. And, by the same token, I wouldn’t expect different treatment if I did the same thing. I believe that religion is, at best, wasteful, and at worst, actively harmful – would you accept what is, effectively, “Go away, I wasn’t talking to you” if I started telling the man standing next to you that Drano is good for your eyes?

    3. Even if god exists, I’m not being irrational. There is no direct evidence to support god, the god hypothesis doesn’t make any predictions and is neither scientific nor particularly logical.

    4. I think you may want to check your examples. Galileo kowtowed to the church? The tobacco lobby hid the research they did, the research didn’t support them.

    5. So it’s the ‘timbre’ of the bible we should pay attention to? Not the very specific, very obvious, rules spelt out? Like Deuteronomy 22:5 – women wearing pants is an abomination. That’s pretty clear. In context, it’s in a list of rules; by what standard do you choose to ignore that? I’m interested to hear. And it’s funny you bring up the Nicene Creed – that’s not actually in the bible. I would put money on it that I own more bibles then you do, in more languages, and I’ve read it, cover to cover – and I still don’t get people who claim they want to get back to the bible, then ignore the clearest, most direct instructions.
11. 

    11Bob

    wrote on 27 September 2009 at 22:25

    But forget refuting these 5 points of yours; there isn’t a way to paint an argument like this so that one side or the other seems ‘nicer’.

    The fundamental complaint is “Atheists disagree with one of the cornerstones of your life because they think it’s ridiculous”. You can’t really spin that.

    1. We seem smug in the same way you seem smug – you claim to have the answers, we claim to have the answers; both sides have answers that directly contradict each other.

    2. Every piece of evangelism *is* directed at us. It’s like you’re telling our kids, our families and our friends that they should ardently believe in goldilocks or they’ll die in a fire.

    3. Debate about God’s existence is simple. There is no evidence of God, his complexity lies in sophistry and repeated reinterpretations of a book.

    4. The scientific method is as objective a system as we’ve ever created, and you don’t understand it, and you don’t understand the word ‘hypothesis’.

    5. This is a non-starter; popular doesn’t equal true. I know that the idea of God exists, and that in the western world, it’s a majority view. I know this has also been true of other gods, and I know the majority of the world has been wrong on more than a few occasions.
12. 

    12Nathan

    wrote on 27 September 2009 at 23:20

    Bob,

    Again, I’m not saying “don’t disagree with us” – no Christian I know (or rather “like”) will ask people not to disagree.

    I’m providing a list of tips that will make your disagreement more agreeable.

    Feel free to disagree – just don’t be a smug jackass about it.
13. 

    13Nathan

    wrote on 27 September 2009 at 23:21

    Also – a quick look at my tag cloud below will find that I write about Godwin’s Law and Hitler pretty frequently – and I will bring up Hitler in an argument with an atheist every time you argue with an extreme position that is demonstrably not consistent with Christianity.
14. 

    14Leah

    wrote on 27 September 2009 at 23:21

    Bob,

    just because science can explain something doesn’t mean it is not evidence for God. For some mistake reason, people think “oh, now that we can explain how this works, there’s no reason for there to have been a creator”. Apparently, just because we understand how photosynthesis works, that negates the need for someone to have originally designed it.

    If I figure out how an engine works, does that mean the engine had no designer? of course not.

    Also, what Nathan said about science – “starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis” – is absolutely true. It’s drilled into every science student between Grades 4 and 12 and, from my conversations with friends doing tertiary science studies, university too. Scientific investigation starts with a hypothesis, tests it, then comes to a conclusion. This doesn’t make it wrong or bad, it’s just different to starting with the original pieces and fitting them together to come to the ‘hypothesis’.

    Also, saying “Every piece of evangelism *is* directed at us” is enormously assuming and even arrogant. There are plenty of Christians out there who really could not be bothered putting the effort into trying to evangelise a decidedly atheist person and would much rather their efforts went into evangelising people who don’t really have much opinion. Some people have particular interests in evanglising people of a specific ethnicity or religion. If you’re saying “every piece” of evangelism is directed at you as an atheist, you’re including those people’s efforts too.

    You have also taken the Old Testament laws grossly out of context, which is exactly what Nathan was warning atheists should not do. No, it is not the ‘timbre’ of the bible we should pay attention to, but its overall message. But the fact is, later in the bible Jesus makes it clear there are many Old Testament laws we are no longer required to observe.

    What you’re doing is similar to me picking up a book, opening it to page 8 and reading about a character named Jane who is about to run a marathon, and then flipping forward to page 250 and finding out she is in a wheelchair. I might claim this is contradictory, but the fact is, I’ve missed pages 100-115 that describe the skiing accident that paralysed her. I’ve failed to take into consideration the context. The book never lies, and readers who claim Jane is a quadraplegic are not ignoring page 8, it’s just that I would not be getting the whole message by not taking in the overall context.
15. 

    15Nathan

    wrote on 27 September 2009 at 23:32

    And now to answer your points…

    1. Yes, Christians can seem smug. There is an inherent arrogance in claiming an absolute truth. But I think we’d all agree the bar can be raised beyond an Answers in Genesis “You can’t be good without God” type campaign and the Dawkinsesque “you worship a zombie every bit as likely as Odin” type campaign… neither really shows much understanding of the most intelligent stream of theistic or atheistic thought.

    2. I think, if the boot were on the other foot, and you believed my family were going to burn in fire, I’d want you to be telling me…

    3. No, that is simply your opinion on the matter – many other people see our ongoing existence as evidence for God – just because someone you put your faith in made a statement to the contrary and this was consistent with your observations does not make this fact. You’ll find most Christians will claim to have seen pretty compelling evidence for God. When you say “there is no evidence” what you’re really saying is that you have found the evidence put forward by believers unconvincing. There is plenty of circumstancial evidence and even logical evidence – and when it comes to the question of Jesus – who Christians believe to be God – there are plenty of first hand witnesses and documentation.

    4. I think you give science too much credit and me not enough. I’d say journalism, and history are just as objective – and just as likely to be influenced by the dynamics of power (and penned by the victors).

    The fact that science can be harnessed by people with agendas (the tobacco lobby, answers in genesis etc) means that it’s just as likely that a peer reviewed paper is dodgy as it is that it’s plausible.

    5. I didn’t suggest that “popular equals true” – if you apply the same standard of critical reading to the Bible as you do to what others have to say then it’s no wonder you’re confused… I said the fact that it’s popular is a reason to raise the tone of debate and not treat adherents to a belief system like idiots…

    Obviously I was addressing your second batch of points here. I’ll do your first batch next…
16. 

    16Nathan

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 0:05

    Righto Bob,

    I suspect you’re being deliberately dense – or purposefully treating me as an idiot. If this is the case, then thanks for reinforcing the stereotypical view of atheism that I was addressing with the original post.

    “tell me, what was it about the scientific method that encouraged eugenics?”

    I’m sorry, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough when I suggested this excercise was as fruitless as the one you put forward to me. I was using a little bit of the hyperbole you directed at me to demonstrate the absurdity of your point…

    “You’ve got to admit that religion is full of moral dictates, and that some of them, read literally are pretty terrible;”

    I agree – some religions have terrible moral imperatives – I don’t think Christianity does, nor do I think that it is our place as created beings to dictate morality to our creator. If God chooses a standard that we find unacceptable or hard to bear it’s not really our place to say so – nor is finding such a God’s position on matters a reason to disbelieve… That would be an odd form of logic in any hierarchical system.

    You’ve also got to admit that some of “religions” moral imperatives are pretty helpful and represent the best standards for social structures and interactions…

    1. “Unless you practise some brand of Christianity that adds on ‘also the hindus, and muslims, and every other religion are right too’.”

    Sorry Bob, you’re obviously finding it difficult to follow what I thought was a pretty clearly spelled out statement – we are both making absolute claims, all religions are – there’s just a nicer way to do this. Like trying to improve the tone past the point of insulting the other person’s position or arguing by extremes (eg talking to a Christian about Islamic terrorists as if we’re the same)…

    2. Again Bob – from the title through to the content my post is a bunch of tips for atheists to make conversations with theists more pleasant for all parties involved. You’d get a much better hearing from us if you weren’t so busy comparing us with people who suggest drano as a form of medical treatment.

    3. If the God of the Bible exists, and he, as a deity, gets to dictate the terms by which the world operates, then you are being irrational – particularly if what the Bible says about hell is a fair warning – by rejecting every attempt he makes (through Christians you interact with, or the Bible) you’re essentially thumbing your nose at this creator and asking to be chucked into hell – I don’t want to sell Christianity this way – but that seems to me to fit into the category of “irrational” the same way that a child who runs out onto the road in direct disobedience to their parents seems irrational…

    4. Again, I think you’re missing my point – Galileo made an unpopular finding that wasn’t really adhered to until much later because the “church” was in a position of power and essentially suppressed or denied his findings and excommunicated him… I use inverted commas for “church” because that wasn’t a particularly Christian course of action…

    The Tobacco lobby uses the framework of science to come up with tested conclusions that everybody knows are commercially driven bunkum.

    5. Again, you’re treating me like some sort of ignorant fly by nighter with all sorts of spurious assumptions about what I know and being a bit of an arrogant tool in doing so. I still can’t tell if you’re purposefully satirising atheism, but I’ll treat you as genuine…

    “So it’s the ‘timbre’ of the bible we should pay attention to?”

    Yes, like in any book you should look at the sum of the parts rather than individual passages – there’s a reason the Bible is presented as a package and there are libraries filled with the scholarship of people who have studied it and understood it – and nobody in the church (broadly – except perhaps the Westboro Baptists) understands the law in the way atheists strawman us as doing so… you don’t see anybody suggesting disobedient children be stoned do you? The New Testament is full of passages instructing Christians on how to understand the Old Testament (as a system of rules designed to increase a reliance on God’s grace – Romans 5 for instance – where Paul writes about why the law was given).

    It’s a shame that you’ve got so many Bibles and yet not been able to figure out how the Bible works – and how it’s always been understood by Christians – right from the sermons that the apostles give in Acts where they reference the Old Testament constantly as a precursor to the new covenant with God’s people (a covenant replacing the covenant established with Abraham in Genesis 12)… Before that even, because Jesus is pretty clear (in Matthew particularly – as we’ve discussed) about the law and its purpose and intention – you’ll find a similar lecture he gives the Pharisees in Matthew 23.

    Matthew, read in its entirety as a narrative, gives a pretty clear picture that the Old Testament was designed to point the Jews to the Messiah (Jesus) as the fulfilment of OT prophecy and promises – and pretty clear instructions to people who would follow Jesus about how the law should be understood.

    It’s pretty obvious if you take even a moment to consider how the Old Testament and New Testament relate to each other. It’s not rocket science or some sort of secret knowledge – plenty of people seeking out what the Bible has to say, rather than using it to pillory Christians, have been able to figure it all out without being “instructed” by any special interest church lobby group.

    “And it’s funny you bring up the Nicene Creed – that’s not actually in the bible.”

    Really? Man, I’m clearly so confused and I should recant everything I’ve said so far… no wait, I’m not, and in the context I mentioned the Nicene Creed it was entirely appropriate to do so…

    I was pointing out that the common understanding of the Bible as a holistic document is not new, is not some sort of fallacious “no true scotsman” type workaround of your lazy and trite OT based criticism – it’s the way the Bible has always been understood. It’s the way every group that has sort to bring the church back to Biblical roots has gone.

    “I would put money on it that I own more bibles then you do, in more languages, and I’ve read it, cover to cover.”

    How much money? I’d be interested in taking you up on the offer – but I don’t think the number of Bibles a person owns is a measure of understanding – particularly because you don’t appear capable of reading the Bible in a critical (as in engaging the brain) manner, you seem to read simply with the intention of criticising… I’m shocked at your claim to have read it cover to cover because you have no grasp of the rudiments of biblical scholarship or any understanding of how the Bible actually works and functions – either literarily or theologically. It’s like you’re an illiterate homeless person arguing against the benefits of ducted aironditioning based on the pictures you spotted in a manual – you’ve never seen the system at work, experienced it’s benefits and nor do you understand what it is you’re tackling. So excuse me if I dismiss your opinion in such a cursory manner.

    “I still don’t get people who claim they want to get back to the bible, then ignore the clearest, most direct instructions.”

    I don’t get the people who say they’ve read the Bible cover to cover and miss all the bits that chronologically explain how the previous bits are to be treated…
17. 

    17pitje

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 4:10

    “Feel free to disagree – just don’t be a smug jackass about it.”

    Please, practice what you preach
18. 

    18Psyc Chick

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 4:20

    Don’t be smug about your answers?

    Every day, I drive past smug billboards, watch smug congresspeople on television, drive past smug signs outside of churches, listen to raving street preachers, and Atheists are the ones being a smug jackass?
19. 

    19freelunch

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 4:20

    Nathan-

    1. I tend to be as polite to Christians as they are to me. Many others, believers or not, also tend to respond in kind to those who respond to them. If you have found that lots of people act smug when they are around you, ask yourself if you are the cause. Jesus recommended that.

    2. I don’t care much about any religion’s proselytizing. I treat them all equally.

    3. The argument is complex for those who are arguing for their god. This applies to all religions because all believers in any religion have the same problem — no evidence supports their faith. Those who choose not to believe because there is no evidence have made a very simple decision.

    4. The scientific method is not the same as the science establishment or the government or technology or any of the other things that seem to confuse people. The scientific method, because of its self-correcting mechanism of testing and retesting is not inherently prone to abuse. I’m not sure where you got that idea.

    5. There is no single notion of God. Everyone seems to have their own notion. That is part of the reason that Christianity itself has thousands of denominations or sects and it has spawned other religions that probably aren’t Christian. I’m not sure what notion I should take seriously.

    4.
20. 

    20Jack Reacher

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 4:34

    From Pharyngula,

    1. Make me.

    Look, you start an argument, you don’t get to whine at your opponent to be humble about his ideas before you’ve even taken a stab at criticizing them. Show me a reason not to be smug about atheism, and reason, and science, and the superiority of our beliefs over that pile of superstitious dogma you call faith. Don’t simply instruct me to stop regarding atheism as possibly not superior to your cultish apologetics.

    Christians also don’t get to play the humility card, anyway. People who believe they have privileged access to mysterious information direct from the brain of a cosmos-spanning super-intelligence, and who believe everyone else is damned to eternal torment, aren’t exactly poster-children for modesty.

    2. Oh, my, no. You think we see the inane dreck Christians propose as an argument, and you think we assume it’s directed at us? We’re “smug,” remember — we figure there’s no way you can really be so stupid as to think we’re going to be swayed by Pascal’s Wager or handwaving at vague quotes from the Bible or threats of an imaginary Hell or promises of an imaginary paradise. We’re after the undecideds, too. We love tearing up your stupidity in public for that reason.

    For instance, I know that the Christian who wrote this list wasn’t directing it at me, and probably never even heard of me. That doesn’t stop me from pissing on it.

    3. The debate is complex because a lot of intelligent, educated people buy into those ridiculous presuppositions and then toss a lot of noisy chaff in the air. There is a simplicity at the core that is not in Christian interests to expose: is there a god or gods, and is there any reasonable evidence for him, it, her, or them? And further, is there a reason to believe in your specific god over Thor or Xenu or Moroni or whatever other fiction some cunning con artist chose to peddle to the gullible?

    And your ‘intervening deity’ (the existence of which is an assertion not supported by any evidence) ‘communicates’ (you are using that word in some strange fashion that is not reasonable) ‘through a book’ (that was cobbled together from scattered scraps of theological rants, old poetry, and self-serving pseudo-history over 1500 years ago)? That’s crazy talk right there.

    4. No. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We are not going to get anywhere if you expect your opponents to simply fall over and accept a bogus mischaracterization of science.

    Science uses both inductive and deductive logic. Induction is the idea generator, the process that spins out tentative hypotheses that can be evaluated by observation, experiment, and deductive logic. Science is not infallible, and no one ever claims that it is, but it has something that religion lacks: a process of testing claims against real-world observations. To claim that science is as open to abuse as religion is ignorant nonsense. You can claim virtually anything about gods in religion, and all that matters is how many rubes you can persuade to believe it. Scientific claims are constrained by evidence.

    Of course individuals can abuse both religion and science. The difference is that science provides objective criteria to assess the viability of truth-claims.

    5. OK, explain Ganesh to me. Explain the prosperity gospel. Explain why Christians reject the prophecies of Mohammed, while millions of Muslims think they’re just peachy. Explain premillennial dispensationalism. Explain whether Episcopalians or Baptists are right. Explain how Spong is wrong. Or right. Who would win a cage match between Karen Armstrong and Pat Robertson?

    What is “the” Christological narrative? There is none, or rather, there’s a thousand of them. We know the context, too — that the Bible is an evolving mess of over-interpreted poetry and tribal stories and crackpot history. Why you guys choose to selectively declare one interpretation of one subset of the conglomeration to be the absolute truth as dictated by anthropomorphic vapor, while another arbitrary subset is archaic and doesn’t apply anymore, is completely incomprehensible…not just to us, but to you, too.

    We atheists actually do address the claims fervently held by millions of people. The sneaky trick the theological wankers pull, though, is that once we’ve smacked them down, they announce, “Oh, no — we didn’t mean those millions of believers. They’re stupid. We meant these other millions of believers.” It’s a big game of whack-a-mole. What you call “obscure Old Testament laws,” someone else will call the core of their faith. What you value as the “Christological narrative,” a member of yet another sect will call pretentious confabulations.

    Atheists just cut through all the noise and call it all sewage.

    And some of us see no reason to be nice to sewage, and get really cranky at demands to respect your steaming pile of ordure
21. 

    21Asdfer

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 4:57

    Terribly ignorant post, you made me cringe. Congratulations.
22. 

    22Mejdrich

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 4:59

    “Again, I’m not saying “don’t disagree with us” – no Christian I know (or rather “like”) will ask people not to disagree.”

    Do you know any Christians? O_o

    Yeah, it’s okay to disagree, as long as you’re comfortable being tortured in a lake of fire for eternity for your ignorance. How many times have us atheists had to endure this kind of smugness from hypocrites praising their own humility?

    If you want to throw the “smug” card down, then let’s hear you, Nathan, admit that you HAVE NOT been chosen by god. Your superior views WILL NOT be rewarded in heaven. In fact, your religion is NO BETTER than the tens of thousands of religions you dismiss as false.

    If you can’t, then admit what a smug worldview you’ve chosen to be a part of.
23. 

    23David

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:07

    I suppose my question to the author is why should atheists want to seem nicer than they already are? Why is any atheist interested in that? I, for one, don’t care a lick what other people think about religion, as long as it doesn’t affect my own ability to think what I want.

    In contrast, I commend the author on his overt admission that his stripe of Christian is actively seeking to convince “undecideds” of the truth of his particular religious propositions. This, of course, is a major objection that I have to the religious mode of operation. However, I am somewhat dismayed that he fails to understand that acting in such a mode forces all of us (even his bon-mot “decided-uns”) to have to put up with such proselytization.

    Interestingly, the author wants me to admit that the debate about god’s existence is complex. I’m afraid that I don’t agree. It would seem to be a rather binary argument.

    I would hope the author might revisit his understanding of science to the point that he understands that science relies on both induction and deduction in relatively equal parts. More importantly, science relies on a mode of thinking that is testable and falisfiable and, as such, constantly open to revision as more facts come to the fore. This, of course, makes every bit of technology that the author depends on for his survival and operation within the world, possible. There is a subtle irony in people who use the internet to decry the failings of science.

    Finally, I would make the point that any way of thinking about the world that puts religious terrorists as “not quite as wrong” in their way of thinking as non-belivers, or that likens (as this author does in his follow-up comments) is all that I need to stop listening to anyone who believes such things.

    To revisit: Be nicer atheists. Because some of you want to eat babies and all of you are more wrong-minded than the people who committed the greatest act of domestic terrorism of the 21st century. Also, Hitler was one of you.
24. 

    24Jennifer

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:08

    Well, I am a needy little atheist, so I DO want people to like me, but before start work on making us SEEM nicer…(and I choose to think that you think we are already as nice-as-nice can be)…could you write some rules on how your group could BE nicer? Seriously. SOMEBODY please come up with these rules, cause the 10 commandments aren’t doing it for these people.
25. 

    25brian

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:09

    “Like the two who hijack this thread on Communicate Jesus.”

    At least we only hijack threads and not airplanes
26. 

    26Jared

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:11

    This is going to be me being smug:

    How about you evaluate your ideas for yourself before spewing your emesis about. All of the arguments you have presented have already been eviscerated by several books. Thank you for the source of laughter, I have bookmarked this page and plan to give everything you’ve said here a thorough fisking upon completion of the two current book reviews and review of the status of the research into autism spectrum.

    Nathan; use your brain, please? I don’t think you’re stupid, I just think you’re not considering the question of god(s) as a valid question. It certainly is, and is there any evidence to support the existence of said entity which is not easily explained by alternative models backed by scientific research?

    It seems the core of your argument is “what if science is wrong?” and while this is certainly a valid question, the answer isn’t to ignore scientific research, but to look at it critically with the evidence itself. How well does the evidence support the claims? The answer isn’t just to ignore the observations.
27. 

    27Gemma

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:19

    Yeah, my biggest problems are with (4). Science is at its heart an attempt at objectivity, and while it does not always succeed in practice, it is nevertheless true that two different groups of people working independently of each other can come up with the same scientific conclusions (I’m told that to some extent this happened with physics during the cold war).

    It’s also true that science at its best is always searching for rigorous tests (for instance, all it would have taken for our current theories of evolution to be proved wrong would have been a lack of one specific structure in the human chromosome 2). This is in direct contrast to religion, which seeks confirmation only.

    So yes, science may have been abused at times, but it is not nearly so open to abuse as religion. After all, the Soviets tried to abuse it with Lysenkoism, and look where that got them…
28. 

    28brian

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:24

    Reading through the comments it looks like Bob tried to show you guys how we see things and Nathan and Leah couldn’t stand it, and proceeded to jump down the dudes throat. But you have the audacity to call us smug. Also, you never answered his question. Is it an abomination for women to wear pants?
29. 

    29MartinH

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:29

    “I agree – some religions have terrible moral imperatives – I don’t think Christianity does, nor do I think that it is our place as created beings to dictate morality to our creator. If God chooses a standard that we find unacceptable or hard to bear it’s not really our place to say so…”

    “..just that God’s people shouldn’t be engaging in homosexual behaviour…”

    Very scary. You seem to be abdicating personal moral responsibility.

    What if God’s standard violates the dictates of one’s conscience? Would you, could you still be Christian if you happened to find the moral imperatives of your religion immoral when judged by your conscience?

    Would you have followed the dictates of the Old Testament God? Would you have happily stoned adulterous women in the knowledge that it was showing you how to rely on God’s grace? I suppose being someone else’s “teaching moment” would be great consolation to the victim.
30. 

    30Kerry Maxwell

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 5:59

    Judging by your replies, it would seem you wouldn’t recognize it when someone hands it to you, but here is your ass, handed to you:

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/advice_for_atheists.php

    K
31. 

    31Jon

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:16

    Nathan;

    You are the one being insulting and condescending in the above dialog. Perhaps you should take your own advice on how to seem “nicer”? Or even better, how to be nicer.

    I am an avid “new atheist”. I agree that many christians are highly intelligent and rational people …. except in one particular area …. their religion. It’s called cognitive disonance.

    And what if you’re wrong? What if Mohammed was god’s prophet? Then hellfire is where you will end up. At least atheists never say “believe like us or you’ll burn for eternity”. We atheists seem much nicer overall, IMO. We don’t try to sneak our beliefs into the public school curriculum. We don’t (none of us) shoot doctors or bomb clinics because we disagree with what they are doing. I am not saying you do that, or even that most christians do that, but nor are most muslims terrorists either. Yes, there may be a difference in the percentages of christians who are violent fundamentalists than muslims who are, but the fact remains that fundamentalist christians are giving christianity a bad name. It has been secularism that has led christianity away from its fundamentalist roots. Going back to the bible flies in the face of the secular wisdom that has kept most christians from stoning disobedient kids, adultresses and homosexuals to death. Did you know that in Jamaica, a christian theocracy, that homosexuality is punishable by 10 years in prison? And that it is really more like a death sentence because homosexuals are usually killed in prison? That is closer to the bible than you seem to be and you want to move us closer to the bible?

    Sorry, I’ll take secular ethics and morality ov er biblical, or “quranical” any day, And honestly, I think Jesus would agree with me were he around today (if he ever even existed, which is a very moot point).

    Thanks for listening. I think I have been very nice in this post. If you don’t, then I think you are too sensitive to your beliefs being challenged. Perhaps I should write an article titled “How christians can seem less sensitive and intolerant to differing views”.
32. 

    32Wade

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:18

    First, you don’t care about coming across as nice, so why should we? Your post and your replies are pretty snarky and smug, so what do you care?

    Atheists are more outspoken and maybe some have a newfound sense of freedom to speak out that comes across as smug. I agree with the posts that highlight christians’ never-ending smugness about having a “personal relationship with God.”

    Consider the occasional smugness the price you have to pay for your predecessors’ murder and persecution of freethinkers throughout history. Also, for every “thoughtful” Christian, there seem to be plenty of fools who say stuff like “Jesus was the first astronaut!” or “The Bible is literally true” who deserve any amount of scoffery we can muster up. We oppose superstition in any form, and the more it is laughed at, the better. Quit whining.

    Evangelism- we don’t assume it is directed at us (at least I don’t), and don’t care who you direct it at, other than to the extent that we disapprove of evangelism being used to dupe the credulous out of their money. That’s a straw man.

    Complexity of God’s existence. That is definitely admitted, at least on my part. The something from nothing part is pretty tough to get one’s mind around. However, the infinite regression argument is valid, and the very assumption that whatever is out there is your “God” suggests that you don’t think it is complex at all. It is just as easy to believe that rational, intelligent people can be polytheists as well, which is also baloney.

    Scientific method: Straw man, everyone knows people make mistakes or lie about things. Nothing is “infallible.” What bothers us (at least me) is that religious people tend to discount science without actually attempting to understand it. “That’s junk science! My pastor said so!” Potassium-Argon decay comes to mind.

    Real notions of god: you believe that a human male (or image thereof) created the universe. There, dealt with it. Still ridiculous.
33. 

    33Jon

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:21

    PZ Myers’ blog post about this:

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/advice_for_atheists.php
34. 

    34Newfie

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:47

    1. Nathan, the only difference between any God that has ever been worshipped and The Flying Spaghetti Monster, is that we all know that FSM is a joke, but it’s just as believable as the rest, given the right person. Given enough time, a human brain such as yours can be convinced to believe almost anything. Your brain is not is not a questioning type, it’s the accepting type.
    You believe the Jesus story, because it’s been hammered into your unquestioning brain throughout your life. Whereas, upon a little research, it’s entirely believable that Christianity was cobbled together by the L. Ron Hubbard of his day, one Saul of Tarsis, until the Roman Empire got their mitts into it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
    Funny that Christians know little about their own church history, but totally understandable… can’t have the masses and the money asking the really tough questions, eh?
    God(s)= unknown answers to human questions. Religion(s)= People taking advantage of weaker minded people, for power, wealth, authority, or influence. Myths and Fairy tales have their place in humanity, but when people believe it to be fact, their judgment has to be questioned. Hearing voices in your head can get you a padded room, but if you believe that voice is God’s, you’ll be made a Saint.
    The sky is colourless, it just appears to be blue, man.
35. 

    35Dan Moody

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:50

    Ok, I’m an atheist. Point by point;

    1. Smugness – it works both ways. You have no idea how smug it appears when religious people tell me their beliefs are true regardless of whether the evidence is lacking, contradictory or lied about (the misrepresentation of evolutionary theory by creationist liars for example).

    2. I understand you want the undecideds to turn to your religion. I do not want this and if you publicly proselytise your beliefs, I will publicly counter them.

    3. I disagree the debate is complex – there is no proof for any religion. Give me some and I will believe. My standard of proof is scientific.

    4. Scientific method is not as fallible as religious belief. Any theory derived from inductive methods in science must then face deductive tests and more importantly a peer review process. No religious belief has ever stood up to these methods.

    5. It’s hard to deal with the notions of God seriously – they differ from religion to religion, sect to sect, person to person. Are you talking about the Baptist interpretation or the Catholic one? Your God is almost certainly different to that of most other believers.

    Maybe instead of giving tips “for my atheist friends to help them seem nicer and more reasonable” you should start by giving similar tips to yourself and fellow believers.

    Peace be with you

    Dan
36. 

    36Bas

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:50

    1. Why is explaining the evidence for evolution and the lack thereof for God considered smug? I’ve had a similar discussion about ghosts quite a number of times. Proposing an evidence-based explanation for something is not necessarily smug.

    2. “We want the undecideds”. Good for you, but saying the other side should keep their mouth shut when you’re talking to these people is like saying the defense should not say anything during trial, it doesn’t work that way.
    As for #2 in comment #15: In many cases, I can appreciate the sentiment, but once is quite enough. More often than not, however, the idea of Hell was used on me as a threat rather than a warning. If your arguments are too weak that you have to resort to the threat of eternal torment to get people to come to your side, you may want to rethink your argument.

    3. This was the point that made me slap a Poe’s Law verdict on this article. Many things described in the Bible about the structure and functioning of the universe are demonstrably wrong. And we would not consider these things particularly complicated these days, I would think that the “creator” would get these things right, even if the people at the time did not.

    The God invoked by so many Christians is a logical impossibility. Consider the traits of all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving and the concepts of Heaven and Hell. I’m sure you can see the inconsistencies (even if you do not draw any conclusions from them). You may consider this a strawman, in which case I will point you to point 5, this is the christian God as I’ve always heard it.

    4. The scientific method generally starts with an observation. Then comes the hypothesis which we then try to prove OR DISPROVE. That last bit is important. Scientific articles that disprove hypotheses are as highly valued as the ones that do, as long as the science is done right.
    Due to all kinds of circumstances, you would be right in saying that science is not absolutely objective or infallible. However, the point of science is that it is open to being proven wrong (consider phlogiston theory for instance) and either adjusting or rejecting these previously held ideas to account for the new observations or evidence.
    No such checks exist for religion, it seems.

    In response to Bob’s first comment about planes going into buildings.
    I think the author’s use of the word “abuse” was meant as “support one’s own views over reality” rather than “incite violence”. Of course, where it concerns science, I wouldn’t agree with either definition, but I figured it be worth mentioning.
    Scientists that “abuse” science tend to not have particularly long academic careers (see Andrew Wakefield).

    5. This is one I’ve heard before, too. First of all, dealing with the concepts of God “within it’s context” is virtually impossible. We can’t quote the entire Bible when considering a single argument. Any excerpt/quotation is by its very definition “out of context”. What matters is that all relevant information to that excerpt is discussed. So, when saying that homosexuality is an “abomination”, it is relevant to the context to say that the same thing is said about shellfish. It is not relevant to the context to say that Jesus was resurrected.

    The problem is that there isn’t just one interpretation of what the Bible means to say. Quite often when an atheist argues against a position you don’t hold, Nathan (I’m presuming that you’re the author of this article), it may not necessarily be a strawman.
    I’ve had several discussions with Jehova’s Witnesses (I was bored and had nothing else to do, sue me). And yet, even though they supposedly belong to the same version of faith, the people I had these discussions with had some radically different views on what their God had to say. And that’s just within their own denomination.
    So, while I’ll admit to sometimes exaggerating points to make my own, it may not always be the strawman you imagine it to be.
37. 

    37Joe

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 6:55

    Seeing this reminds me of when I was young and some kids still didn’t get the fact that there was no Santa Claus. It’s kind of cute that you believe in a man that lives in the clouds, simontaneously reads everyone’s thoughts, but can’t be bothered to take a trip to Earth to prove his existence. It’s also convenient that you can’t see him until you die.
38. 

    38Porco Dio

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 7:11

    It’s a real shame Nathan…

    You seem to be a really smart, coherent guy.

    Why is it that you waste your time on silly religion?

    Think of Pascals Wager in another way: You die and go to heaven and meet “god”.

    “god” says to you in no uncertain terms, “Hey, Nathan, why did you spend your life regurgetating adulterated crap?”

    Nathan replies, “But, oh god, it is what you instructed me to do.”

    “Wrong God!”
39. 

    39arensb

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 7:26

    If you start off presupposing the existence of God (like most theists do) then science is understood through that lens. This is a perfectly rational thing to do when looking at the world and its complexity

    Hang on a second: you’re starting out by deciding in advance what the answers to certain questions are going to be, like “are there any gods?” and “why are there humans?” Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to start out with “let’s see if we can figure out the answers”?
40. 

    40Lars

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 7:26

    What if I made my own edition of the bible, like so many before me have done? The last chapter explaining that all previous chapters should be ignored because no gods exist? Would that be enough to deconvert you? If not, why not?
41. 

    41Rebecca

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 7:36

    This is just stupid
42. 

    42Kapitano

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 7:37

    the debate about God’s existence is complex

    Ontological Argument – fails basic logic.
    Argument from Design – relies on eqivocation.
    Argument from Morality – misses the point.

    Yeah, complex.

    the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction

    You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. You’re completely wrong, and don’t even understand the basic terms of the debate.

    the actual notions of God seriously believed in

    And what are these “actual notions”? Theologins have been unable to come up with anything serious, and ordinary believers just believe in a magical man in the sky.

    There’s a very good reason we don’t take you seriously. It’s because you’re not serious.
43. 

    43TheBigCheese

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 11:33

    Mind if I jump in here?

    “Again, I make the point I made to Bob – if we’re right and you’re wrong then your position is the least rational position possible.”

    I don’t believe you understand what exactly it means to be irrational (This isn’t an attack; it’s the best way I can think to phrase it). Rationality isn’t a dependent on the result. Rationality is choosing the best possible option with the current information you’re given. Trying to judge the rationality of someone’s actions violates the basic definition of rationality. You have extra information after the fact, on what, at the time may have been the most rational decision.

    But that’s not really the point. I’m sure I sound smug right now, right? I’ll acknowledge it. However, I’ll bet I sound no less smug to you, than you do to me.

    “Sorry Bob, you’re obviously finding it difficult to follow what I thought was a pretty clearly spelled out statement – we are both making absolute claims, all religions are – there’s just a nicer way to do this.”

    This, I’m not exactly sure what you mean. Personally, I have yet to find any person that can provide a logical argument for how all religions can be right, even though they all have drastically different viewpoints, conflicting with one another. The mere fact that they conflict means one of them has to be wrong.
44. 

    44PhysicistDave

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 11:36

    Leah wrote:
    >Also, what Nathan said about science – “starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis” – is absolutely true. It’s drilled into every science student between Grades 4 and 12 and, from my conversations with friends doing tertiary science studies, university too.

    Leah, I have a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford; my wife’s Ph.D. is in biology.

    Yes, that is often what is taught to American public-school children – one of many reasons that responsible parents remove their kids from the American public schools.

    No, that is not what is taught in good universities in science classes because it is simply and manifestly false.

    In my own field, try reading about the discovery of the psi/J particle in 1974: I lived through this, knew several of the people who made the discovery, and remember it quite well. It was not a pre-formed hypothesis that was tested; it was rather the discovery of an unexpected fact, a bolt out of the blue. Happens all the time (penicillin, radioactivity, pulsars, etc.). The opposite (form a hypothesis and test it) also happens a lot.

    Your friends in “tertiary” education are either going to very poor schools, are very poor students, or, perhaps, are just pulling your leg for fun.

    This sort of bizarrely false claim about science is what causes so many scientifically educated people to smugly dismiss Christians as people who have simply not yet acquired an education. (Many years spent at very poor schools, such as American public schools, does not add up to an education.)

    David H. Miller, Ph.D.

    homeschoolingphysicist.blogspot.com
45. 

    45Fez

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:11

    @#28

    Well I can’t say one way or the other Brian; first you need to provide a definition of “abomination”.
46. 

    46PhysicistDave

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:25

    Nathan wrote to anti-Christians:
    >1. Stop being so smug.

    Hmmmm…..

    I wonder, do you really think it is always wrong to smugly dismiss some point of view?

    Are you really open to the idea that the earth is flat or that the Easter Bunny is real, or are you, perhaps, a bit “smug” in your dismissal of such things?

    I myself am preternaturally smug in dismissing people who believe in astrology, homeopathy, etc.

    I know far too much science to think that people who believe in astrology, homeopathy, etc. are anything but gullible, uneducated fools.

    Smug? Sure.

    But, I really don’t have much choice about this – anyone who knows much science will inevitably reach a similar conclusion.

    But, I hear someone call out from the distance, Christianity is different than astrology or homeopathy!

    Yeah, astrology is more credible than Christianity.

    Throughout my childhood, over eighteen years, I attended a Southern Baptist church (I refused to ever be baptized or join the church). Those Baptists do a lot of Bible reading, so that I know more about the Bible than most self-proclaimed Christians I have known.

    I know about contradictions between the Gospels (e.g., John’s disagreement with the Synoptics about the day of Jesus’ Crucifixion), about what scholars have discovered about how the Bible was patched together, and, of course, about various parts of the Bible disproved by science.

    Am I smug about dismissing the Bible and Christianity? I don’t see that I have any choice in the matter.

    I just know way too much to take the Bible or Christianity as anything but a bad joke.

    Can’t be helped.

    Dave Miller in Sacramento
47. 

    47Peace

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:29

    What everybody need is love! Atheist or not atheist we all need love, kind words soothe the pain,the ” I understand, lets’s pray together” or I feel for u” or” I’ll be praying for u” love, humility, prayers, solve all problems. we should remember that we r just human, u & I making mistakes just like everybody else and when we do, deep in our hearts we wish that someone understand. If u give love, u will receive love, love has many faces.God is love!
48. 

    48Dave

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:43

    Hilarious.

    I think that says it all, really.
49. 

    49Derek Bickerton

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:51

    Nathan, I have to come to your defense even if this will be a case of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, because I don’t support orthodox Christianity any more than I support atheism. However I couldn’t just sit there and see you getting stomped. Atheists are just as full of b.s. as Christian fundamentalists. Take this for just one, fairly trivial example.

    Bas wrote: “Why is explaining the evidence for evolution and the lack thereof for God considered smug? I’ve had a similar discussion about ghosts quite a number of times. Proposing an evidence-based explanation for something is not necessarily smug.”

    Of course it’s not, and nobody in his right mind ever suggested it was. Bas isn’t very perceptive if he/she thinks that smugness has anything to do with what you believe or what you say. It’s HOW you believe and HOW you say it that makes for smugness. Many (I hope not all) atheists are smug in just the same way that many, if not all, born-again evangelicals are: both lots just KNOW that they are right and they are so darned self-satisfied about it–the Christians because they’re saved and you’re not, the atheists because they think they’ve proved they’re so much smarter than you are. This just makes mee want to puke. It has nothing to do with what’s believed, whatsoever.

    Unfortunately Christians are just hopeless at taking down atheists, which gives the atheists a false sense of how smart they are. Christian anti-atheist stuff, like “The Dawkins delusion”, “The atheist delusion” and so forth, is just lame, pathetic, repeating the same stale old arguments the atheists have already debunked. In fact, atheists have gotten away scot-free, so far, they’ve never had to face any serious criticism, and for most part they’ve been greeted with unctuous, sycophantic praise by the media.

    Well, let’s see them try and hit someone their own size. I welcome them one and all to the website named above, Beyond Science Versus Religion–a blog whose goal is the elimination of b.s. from all sides of the controversy. Let’s see if any of them can answer the criticisms of Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins et al. they’ll find there.
50. 

    50AverageJez

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:53

    What I don’t get is when science has proved itself competent multiple times, it’s still being disputed by religious fanatics. Science is not a pick-and-choose subject, like religion is. You can’t not follow half the bible because you don’t like how blunt it is just as you can’t follow half of science because you don’t like the possibility of it disproving your divine father figure.

    If nothing, you should be looking to science because if you EVER want to prove your god true to any other person outside your religion, you will need to back it with scientific and historic facts. Not bullshit within a book that is the alleged word of god/jesus.

    Just because evolution is a proven fact doesn’t mean that creationism is completely moot. It just means we’ve evolved from something else.
    Metaphors are all over the bible. Perhaps some of the things you hold dear are metaphorical for something that each individual can understand and apply to their life.
    Maybe, just maybe, Jesus was a normal man who did great selfless acts, and was the subject of a book which was over exaggerated to peak the interest of readers of that point in time.

    Who knows? I don’t. You don’t. Your god won’t tell you. Science can’t tell you at this stage.

    So stop being arrogant asshats, whether you’re Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Jewish, Agnostic, etc. Learn from your mistakes and mistakes of others, so you can become a better person. Hold your opinions close while examining opinions of others. If one is more appealing than the other, switch it out rather than keeping an outdated opinion.
51. 

    51Derek Bickerton

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 12:53

    PS: Since my website didn’t get included, or so it seems, here’s the URL:
    http://www.beyondscienceversusreligion.blogspot.com
52. 

    52Riley

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 13:02

    Nathan, you are obviously just as smug as any atheist you’ve probably met. And this post proves it. Instead of just accepting that some people have the capability of being inconsiderate and rude (which is how I feel about the Christians who harass basically innocent students between classes) you decide to be inconsiderate and rude by assuming you can look down your nose to “help.”

    Wear the shoe on the other foot.

    Also, cursing in responses makes me think you wrote this looking to get into a fight. If you want your message to be to be heard and not ignored, find ways around curt and foul language. As Kurt Vonnegut put it: don’t give them a reason to block out your message.
53. 

    53test

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 13:05

    OP is an idiot and hypocrite. I’d explain why, but he seems intelligent enough to have already had these conversations, however dense enough to not have learned anything from them.
54. 

    54Lucifer

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 13:07

    I was going to leave a comment debating/debunk your five ’suggestions’, but after reading others’ answers and your replies I’m going to nutshell it for you…

    Atheists don’t ’seem’ nice and generally can’t tolerate Christians for one simple reason:

    Christians suck.

    Christians have spent a good majority of time in human history spewing out their doctrines and leading crusades (i.e. murderous rampages) trying to convert (i.e. brainwash) anyone and anything in their paths, yet when an atheist tries to peaceably express his opinion, we’re considered opinionated and generally ‘not nice’.

    Again…Christians suck. Take a few minutes to peruse and (dare I say) question the history of your own belief system before pointing the finger at rational intelligent people that don’t believe (i.e. fall for it) or support it.
55. 

    55Gordon Cheng

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 21:15

    G’day Nathan

    This thread is quite funny, and considerably better than your previous efforts at baiting Nigerian scammers. Lousy ROI by comparison, wouldn’t you say?

    But I think you are wrongheaded. I note what you said about comments not moving to your new host, so I’ll keep it short. This:

    I am trying really hard to cut down on generalising and bagging out “atheists” rather than specific people and streams of atheism.

    …is where you fail, to paraphrase Yoda, that great Jedi authority. It’s just one of those polite and genteel British etiquette hang-overs that finds no support in Scripture.

    Next time, start with “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God’” (Ps 14:1) This is far truer to the scant biblical testimony about atheism than trying the approach of reason, which gets…well, you’ve seen what it gets you. It gets you looking fot a new webhost.

    God bless, and congratulations on a very funny thread!
56. 

    56tjmcmahon

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 22:02

    Hello Nathan,
    While it appears you do have some thoughtful commenters, it would also appears you are beset by a particularly vehement species of proselytizing atheist. The proselytizing atheist is the atheist who is being driven by an irresistible impulse to spread his non-religion and get all who believe in the existence of a deity to stop believing this instant or said atheist will preach at you hour after hour about how the non-religion that he or she possesses is so much superior not only to your religion, but to the non-religion(s) possessed by other atheists…..

    While I think it would be healthier for the atheist to believe in something, that is outside my control- although I may invite them occasionally to consider the benefits of a closer relationship with God. However, just like the nutty folks who appear on my doorstep on the occasional Saturday to tell me they can prove from Revelations that the Apocalypse is due next Thursday at 4:30 pm EDT, and that I need to contribute to be one of the elect, the proselytizing atheists are annoyingly persistent. And they seem to become louder and more persistent if you resist their Gospel of Nothing.

    Beyond this, one can generally set the odd cultist type “Christian” (often more a follower of some would be preacher than follower of Christ) off one’s door step by pulling out the family King James Version with large illustrations of various Italian Masters and then showing them your pictures of the Blessed Virgin, in which case they think you are Satan incarnate with all your graven images, and run away. The proselytizing atheist is more difficult to rid oneself of, being convinced there is no Satan either. Although I note in some of the comments above, many of your atheists continue to draw on the Judeo-Christian (admittedly with a bit of classic Greek influence) concept of Good and Evil. Indeed, from their viewpoint, a belief system where there is no God is Good, while a belief system with any God (or god, or gods) is Evil. This is interesting in that, because they raise this to such a high level above neutrality, or naturalism, in their belief system, they do not see that they have actually created a religion. A religion that they are bent on spreading across the world.
57. 

    57Nathan

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 22:55

    Gordo,

    My point there is that I think it’s unhelpful to bag out atheists generally as though they all suffer from the same particular strain of foolishness.

    I think they’re all wrongheaded, misguided and foolish – but they’re not all the Richard Dawkins or the PZ Meyers of the world.

    I know personable atheists who are happy to discuss the basis of their folly – and today I’ve met many atheists (virtually) who are happy to hijack a post on a blog and turn it into something just a little bit crazy.
58. 

    58Nathan

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 23:13

    Hi Riley – not sure where I “cursed”…

    Where I come from a jackass is a donkey… perhaps that was what you were referring to?
59. 

    59Nathan

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 23:15

    Hi TJM,

    Thanks for stopping by.

    This does seem to be a pretty vehement mob, but it’s nothing like the mob pulling me to pieces on the blog that linked here…
60. 

    60mar

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 23:16

    Christians are misguided, uninformed people who are VERY VERY close minded. Well let me correct that, I’m not going to say all christians are like that, but christians like nathan are like that. There are some decent ones out there. You should respect other peoples belief, and just because YOU believe in a “god” doesnt mean you are correct. You have NO idea if there really is one, just like athiests have NO idea if there isnt one. Nobody knows, and nobody will ever know. So stop arguing about the stupidest damn thing, and lets all just grow up and respect other peoples beliefs.This is one of the dumbest posts I’ve ever read, and it goes to show just how childish some people are. So what makes christian the real religion anyways? In the bible, jesus was a jew, so shouldnt jewish over rule christianity? It’s crazy christians like you (and my grandma) that make a bad name for all of you christians, you should be more respectful to your religion, your not making any of you look good. As for me, I’m agnostic, like I said nobody knows if there really is a “god” or not. So just live your life in a good healthy positive way, and dont worry about what some crazy “christians have to say about it.
61. 

    61Bren777

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 23:28

    Nathan,

    As others have pointed out, your assumptions about science are completely false. It’s actually much more complex and tremendously more interesting than that. Read “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by TS Kuhn, or browse Wikipedia for science philosophy topics to understand it better.
62. 

    62Mr. Galliher

    wrote on 28 September 2009 at 23:38

    I like the format this was done in, it makes commenting easy.

    1. Of every race and religion there are smug people. What someone believes in does not affect their attitude.

    2. If I tell my friends I thought a red stop light meant go someone would correct me or laugh at me. Same goes with that argument when both sides think the other is wrong.

    3. Religious ideas will not effect intelligence. We can all say we have met an intelligent person on both sides of the fence.

    4. Steps of the Scientific Method
    * Ask a Question
    * Do Background Research
    * Construct a Hypothesis
    * Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
    * Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
    * Communicate Your Results
    Both sides have never made it past step 5.
    Tho in all fairness there is scientific proof of the B.C.

    5. The spaghetti monster was a hypothetical way of explaining it from an aggressive stand point. Both sides attack the other, that’s something everyone needs to notice.
    -
    Either way, adjusting the word of God would mean that God was wrong the first time. I was under the opinion that God was never wrong, to say so would be blasphemies.
    -
    You cant really pick and choose religion. Because admitting any part of religion being wrong is to say all of it is wrong.
63. 

    63Lars

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 0:00

    Nathan wrote:

    “I know personable atheists who are happy to discuss the basis of their folly”

    But they are still a bit too smug, aren’t they?
64. 

    64Crankydragon

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 0:35

    *yawn* Christians are funny. Why would I be interested in being nicer to someone who comes across as a moron?
65. 

    65Nathan

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 0:37

    @Lars – evidently.
66. 

    66harry

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:02

    Nathan,

    I am sorry that we atheists appear to you to be smug. Could it be that deep down you know that you are hanging onto beliefs that make no sense and it annoys you when someone points this out? Intelligent believers either have to acknowledge that there are no supernatural forces at work or alse make their arguments more and more sophisticated as the rug is pulled out from under them.

    Harry
67. 

    67liz

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:12

    as an atheist, i am fine with this list. i have to add one, though. atheists have a horrible tendency to use the word “christian” to describe angry, bigoted evangelists and ignore the millions and millions of friendly, respectful, liberal, open-minded people who belong to the nigh thousands of other sects. just sayin.
68. 

    68Raka

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:30

    Ugh. I read the post and the first few comment/response volleys. I’m not going to read the entire thread, since I am supposed to be working. So my apologies if it’s already been covered, but I want add my vote to the following sides:
    A.) Many “evangelical” atheists are indeed smug and combative in ways that are neither productive nor justified.
    B.) I think some of your arguments to that effect in the original post are fundamentally flawed, and do indicate a certain lack of essential understanding of your premises.
    3.) I believe point ‘B’ could have been communicated much more effectively if not for the teeming hordes of commenters so vigorously demonstrating point ‘A’.

    Basically, I disagree with you and don’t really respect your beliefs. But I think you’d make much better company than most of the above commenters on “my” side. For whatever that’s worth.
69. 

    69Stephen

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:32

    Er, wow.

    Someone writes on their blog a call for civility in theism debates (something I’d agree with), and his blog gets flooded with angry atheists who (for some odd reason) want to imply that all atheists are good and noble and would never be smug, self-congradulatory jerks.

    While I have known thoughtful, respectful, and rational atheists; I also have met a great many libertarian, stoner, college drop out atheists who simply want an excuse to believe they are superior to others. Atheism provides a fashionable method of doing that, and bonus points if it means they can eliminate any moral strictures that don’t meet their decidedly selective form of reason. They become smug, pompous jerks (that even the rational atheists I know dismiss as kooks).

    “Atheist” is not the same as “rational”, any more than “theist” means “irrational”; even if some people are atheist because of reason and some are theists through stupidity. This would be the case even if atheism were eminently obviously true (which it is not, it is debatable…. that’s why there are debates).

    There are idiot atheists and idiot theists. The author of the blog post was pointing out that you should avoid being a jerk if you want people to listen to you. Many Christians are learning that the hard way, maybe a few atheists should learn the lesson too. A few commenters here really should.
70. 

    70Raka

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:32

    I also think my own points would have been made much more respectably had I not listed them as “A”, “B”, and “3″. Oy.
71. 

    71Spherical Time

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:45

    Nathan: I also want to point out that you’re throwing out a little bit of strawman – I don’t believe God speaks to me now, except through the pages of the Bible. This is the orthodox belief of most Christians – and has been for many years. Your failure to grasp even this basic element of Christian doctrine leads nicely into my fifth point.

    No, that’s not true. The majority of Christians in the world are Catholics, who don’t believe that God speaks only through the pages of the Bible but also through his earthly representatives in the church hierarchy.

    I don’t know where you are located, but in the U.S. that is also not the case. Most Christians here believe in a personal God that listens and responds to them personally.

    I suspect that you are assuming that most Christians have similar beliefs to those around you. While it may look like most Christians in the world believe in sola scriptura to you, that is not actually the case.

    Please don’t assume that Bob is wrong just because he refuted a common (and relatively orthodox) belief of many Christians.
72. 

    72A. Noyd

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:57

    Nathan: “If you start off presupposing the existence of God (like most theists do) then science is understood through that lens. This is a perfectly rational thing to do when looking at the world and its complexity – despite the many atheist arguments to the contrary. …But how irrational are you if we’re right and you’re thumbing your nose at the omniscient omnipotent God?”

    Ugh. You want us to be nice when you poop out stupidity on this level? Circular reasoning and arguments from incredulity make theism rational? Only in the very weak sense of being logically consistent from the inside, but the second you try to get someone outside to accept your beliefs, we’re free to point out the massive flaws in your reasoning that got you there.

    You follow this up with a modified Pascal’s Wager. It doesn’t matter if your god actually exists. Since there’s no objective evidence for your god no matter one’s “preconceptions” then the most rational position is to thumb one’s nose at claims such a being exists.

    “I mean people who hijack threads on blogs to preach atheism like the guy in the post I linked to.”

    So calling Jesus a “zombie” is smug but saying people who argue for atheism are “preaching” isn’t?

    “Yes, says the guy who has made up his mind, almost, and fluctuates between being an atheist and an agnostic…”

    Atheist and agnostic aren’t two rungs on the same ladder. One can be both at the same time. One can be an agnostic theist, too. If you don’t know this, maybe you shouldn’t be arguing with atheists.

    “it’s a complex question, just because you’ve personally reached decision B doesn’t make everybody who reaches decision A a delusional idiot.”

    Way to completely misrepresent the reasoning of atheists! Didn’t you just say, “I don’t like the views of so many people being trivialised in an insulting and hyperbolic manner”?

    “Christians get called arrogant, hypocritical (see Bob’s comment) and intolerant because we claim absolute truth – and a monopoly on it – by people making a counter claim in the same areas.”

    Ooh, you did it again. What atheist claims absolute truth?

    “I think we can all agree that we weren’t there when the world began.”

    One doesn’t rely on “being there” in order to say how things happened if there’s evidence remaining that can tell us what happened. If one had to “be there” then your whole beloved Bible would get tossed out by your own criteria.

    “You’d get a much better hearing from us if you weren’t so busy comparing us with people who suggest drano as a form of medical treatment.”

    So we’re supposed to cater to your image of yourself? Sure, you could build a case for feeding your ego to get you to listen, but we atheists pride ourselves on being honest. You can’t have an honest, intelligent atheist who doesn’t point out that irrational is irrational no matter whether it’s using Drano as eye drops or believing that personal experience based on preconceptions is as reliable a sort of evidence for the existence of a particular god.

    Here’s an idea for you. Rather than screaming about how you want to be respected, behave in a way that is respectable. I’ll respect your rights as a human being but I won’t respect your beliefs if you can’t do anything to support them and I won’t respect your hypocritical attitude.
73. 

    73Christopher

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 1:57

    Hi athiests

    The 5 above-mentioned tips were a great catalyst for dialogue. You have defended your right to be smug very eloquently. In appreciation of your efforts, we Christians should make some attempt to justify our delusions. My paradigm is probably familiar to you:

    I love to read my Bible (currently The Message version), and think about and pray to God often. I guess this is where athiests become smug believing I am deluded. I accept that trusting in God without faith is a delusion.

    Faith comes from hearing God, such as through His creation and our consciences. Being a Christian is about having a living relationship with God through Jesus. The Bible facilitates this, being a record of historical facts chronicling God’s relationship with His creation.

    I accept that current scientific thinking about our origins contradicts the Bible. I am still comfortable with believing God created everything in 6 days about 6000 years ago, Noah’s ark and the flood, and all the rest of the Bible. Why? Jesus spoke of Old Testament events as facts. If you doubt any of the events he spoke of, then you can no longer consider him to be God’s Son. As far as everyday life goes, what I believe about our origins doesn’t make any difference, I still have to get on with life

    Jesus prophecied that prior to his return, amongst other things, many people would believe lies (Matthew 24). Nowdays there are even Christians who believe in an old earth and evolution. Looks to me like we’re on a slippery slope
74. 

    74A. Noyd

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 2:00

    Bas: “Why is explaining the evidence for evolution and the lack thereof for God considered smug? … Proposing an evidence-based explanation for something is not necessarily smug.”

    Derek Bickerton: “Bas isn’t very perceptive if he/she thinks that smugness has anything to do with what you believe or what you say. It’s HOW you believe and HOW you say it that makes for smugness. Many (I hope not all) atheists are smug in just the same way that many, if not all, born-again evangelicals are: both lots just KNOW that they are right and they are so darned self-satisfied about it…the atheists because they think they’ve proved they’re so much smarter than you are.”

    You’re not very perceptive if you think what Bas is describing never happens. I’ve had plenty of discussions where I keep insisting on the importance of facts and where I explain what the evidence is and what it actually supports, where I go into depth over why it’s important to have an epistemology that generates actual knowledge rather than blind assumptions. Religious people will tell me I’m being arrogant or rude or that I’m attacking simply because I’m challenging them to submit their cherished beliefs to reality.

    Furthermore, if atheists work hard not to hold any unwarranted beliefs, then how we believe is always going to affect the way in which we need to be humble about our beliefs. We’re scrupulously humble in admitting to what we don’t or can’t know (despite how religious folk nearly always assume we believe god doesn’t exist). As for our real beliefs (or lack thereof), yes, it’s smarter not to believe in something for which there is no evidence. Yes, it’s smarter to reject circular reasoning. Yes, it’s smarter not to give preference to ideas simply because we were raised to think they are true. If you don’t like that, then too damn bad.

    “Unfortunately Christians are just hopeless at taking down atheists, which gives the atheists a false sense of how smart they are. … In fact, atheists have gotten away scot-free, so far, they’ve never had to face any serious criticism, and for most part they’ve been greeted with unctuous, sycophantic praise by the media.”

    Wow, I sure wish I lived in your fantasy world where the media greets us with such adoring praise. And I suppose it’s out of the question that Christians have such trouble versus atheists because we’re right and they’re wrong? I mean, someone has to be right. If you’re not willing to even consider that atheists come off better because we’ve got truth and reality on our side, then you’re hoplessly biased.
75. 

    75A. Noyd

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 2:00

    tjmcmahon: “The proselytizing atheist is the atheist who is being driven by an irresistible impulse to spread his non-religion and … said atheist will preach at you hour after hour about how the non-religion that he or she possesses is so much superior … to the non-religion(s) possessed by other atheists…..”

    Hahahahahaha. And my nonexistent sandwich is much tastier than my friend’s nonexistent sandwich, as well. Would you like a bite? Oh, wait…
76. 

    76Topher Kersting

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 2:17

    Nathan wrote:

    “I know personable atheists who are happy to discuss the basis of their folly”

    That in itself reeks of smugness–but I’ll take in the jovial spirit in which I believe it was intended.

    Most of the problems in discussions between atheists and religious people arise because neither side really puts forth the effort to understand the other. In your first reply you fall into this trap with “Atheists claim to have ‘no belief’ not a belief in nothing.” That’s very similar to an atheist claiming that “Christians believe [belief]” when, in reality, only some Christians believe that. I’m about as atheistic as anyone, but I acknowledge that there is a remote possibility (but an almost infinite improbability) of a higher power. So, while atheism is defined as a lack of belief in a higher power, there are shades of grey. Even Dawkins only rates himself as a 6 on a seven-point scale where 1 is absolute belief and 7 is absolute disbelief.

    But the main reason that atheists are so confrontational is that, frankly, religious people started it. Most of us have been subjected to “discussions” that often start with “Believe this or burn in Hell” from early childhood. (I vividly remember hearing that whenever I questioned something in my kindergarten Sunday school.) As a trained negotiator, I can tell you that that is a horrible way to start trying to persuade someone to the accuracy of your claims.

    So, answers to your other points:
    2. We’re competing for the same minds, so whether or not your message is directed at us, we feel some responsibility to speak against it, because many atheists believe that religion makes the world a more dangerous place.
    3. We can’t admit something we can’t believe, no matter how much we would like to be able to do so. Believing that an “intelligent and rational” person would choose to live their life based upon a book inspired by an intervening deity isn’t any easier for us than believing in said deity.
    4. The difference between the scientific method and religious belief is that the abuse of scientific method will eventually be corrected through future research, while abuse of religious belief is maintained through infallible texts which cannot be corrected.
    5. With a scientific paper, I can read the paper and, sometimes, read a reference paper, and clearly understand the meaning. With a religious text, I can’t. I have to wade through various, often contradictory, explanations of what the author meant, as opposed to simply going by the dictionary definitions of the words. So we can read the Bible, for example, and think we know what God’s laws are, but in many cases, Christians will tell us our understanding is flawed because something doesn’t really mean what we think it means.

    So, three of your five points pretty much require us not to be atheists, the fourth asks us to stay out of your way, and the last asks us not to express our self-perceived superiority so overtly. As a negotiator, I can agree with that one.
77. 

    77neko

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 2:33

    ffs… two fools arguing are just still two fools arguing. There’s no talking logic to someone who’s happier with a world view where creation was a magic trick instead of an explosion. Even though there’s no direct evidence for the magician. I have a long christian background, and have tried to do the christ thing. I even studied some advanced witnessing techniques. Unfortunately this means I not only verbally beat up many JW’s and Mormons [note: two kinds of christians that 'other' christians say are not!], but that I studied the good book.

    I believe i can justify just about any action at this point, based on something that’s in the bible. Quite frankly its just as sickening as Cleopatra the psychic. We should not have too hard of a time saying she’s a fake, or most others that tell fortunes or prophesies. And yet I was forced to agree that the bible MUST be true. Till I really started reading it.

    This was something that should NEVER have been done, as any very old school catholic would have agreed. The problem with only verbal interaction with a religion is that each one has so much baggage. They require these huge piles of stories with which one must remember varying sets of detail and rule sets to let them interact without contradicting themselves. [btw there are many full books that were found to 'not be fit for distrobution' that disagree greatly with the rest.]

    I look back on these days with great fondness. I knew my place in the world, and was happy to know that even if I was wrong the worst thing i had done was waste some time. But as I kept reading, I realized the truth. We Christians had believed in a false god. Even god’s own image and description of himself sounds no better than the mall Santa each year to the children as only vaguely like the one the year before.

    Yet this god was immutable, all seeing, all present, all knowing, all loving, angry, jealous, and quite frankly acting like it’s sworn enemy Lucifer. And it was trying to teach me morals. Love your neighbor, don’t rape his wife, etc. But by its own definitions it could not be ‘the’ god. Christ made a big point out of helping the samaritan on the Sabbath. This meant even on a ‘holy’ day one still should do something nice for another. So by all rights, if i see someone in trouble that i CAN help i SHOULD. And yet this ‘god’ guy cant help out with _anything_ now?

    Then I really started noticing something. I had never met a real Christian. When one does a real miracle then there will be no need to evangelize. Everyone will just show up. Then I realized. This so-called-god was only a story – one made up by the same people who insisted the world was flat EVEN IGNORING THE LAND CURVING BEFORE THEIR EYES. The books – these complicated books – they are not even full of the stories that were written in them. Instead, in their place are cut up censored carefully structured stories.

    The design is very simple really. Get someone to admit something that is not true is. Then force them to give up other bits of the reality they can observe for themselves. In time, they will do anything you say.
    NIV© Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
    NAS© Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.
    GWT© Train a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not turn away from it.
    KJV Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
    AKJ Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
    ASV Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.
    BBE If a child is trained up in the right way, even when he is old he will not be turned away from it.
    DRB It is a proverb: A young man according to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it.
    DBY Train up the child according to the tenor of his way, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
    ERV Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.
    WBS Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
    WEB Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
    YLT Give instruction to a youth about his way, Even when he is old he turneth not from it.

    Isn’t that lovely? Thirteen of ways of saying politely that you should start early and brainwash often. These are standard techniques, and are violations of the basic tenants of civil rights and liberties.

    And you may ask yourself why so many atheists are smug?

    Let me give you one such reason. Remember “I knew my place in the world, and was happy to know that even if I was wrong the worst thing i had done was waste some time.”? Well here’s the effing kicker. If there is no god, and time was all that there was in the first place, then you just wasted the entire and only life you got. Sad, to say the least.

    I will go out on a limb here and bet you would like to not waste your life. Well i dont want you to either. As much as i hate to admit it, once one learns that something is NOT true just because one SAYS its true; once one learns to ACTUALLY respect another’s right to free speach; once one expects a DISSENTING opinion when expressing their own; once one learns that different is not necessarily bad; once one learns that the reason the bible is so much rubbish is because something that unlikely if ANY holes are poked in it the WHOLE house of cards comes falling down; then we might be able to have a conversation.

    In the meantime can i suggest you purchase some padding for the walls you seem to be beating your head on? BTW those hallucinations are from the abuse not god.
78. 

    78Alexander

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 2:38

    After reading some of the comments on here, I felt it a good idea to apologise on behalf of the people displaying a colossal disregard for the very first point of your list – people who, sadly, I’m forced to consider “fellow” atheists. I’m in complete disagreement with some of the stances you (Nathan) have put forward when replying to comments, but – barring a technical, semantic issue I have with #4 – I commend you on coming up with and posting the list. Here’s hoping both sides of the debate will simmer down and show some common decency to people who are, in the long run, no better or worse than ourselves.
79. 

    79Jimmy in Santa Clara

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 2:56

    Nathan,

    You are right, I am guilty of being rude to pious people, but only when they insist on engaging me in debate. I tell my Christian friends and family I won’t discuss certain things because I do not want to offend them.

    Take creationism for example, which brand do you like? Select one from this Wiki list…

    * 2.1.1.1 Young Earth creationism
    * 2.1.1.2 Modern geocentrism
    * 2.1.1.3 Omphalos hypothesis
    * 2.1.1.4 Creation science
    * 2.1.1.5 Old Earth creationism
    * 2.1.1.6 Gap creationism
    * 2.1.1.7 Day-age creationism
    * 2.1.1.8 Progressive creationism
    * 2.1.1.9 Neo-Creationism
    * 2.1.1.10 Intelligent design

    They can’t all be true can they? Someone has to be wrong here… right? I’m sorry if you think I am being smug here, but I am not!

    Evolution is regarded as undeniable fact by the world’s top scientists. Believing a book written by bronze-age shepherds over such scientific credibility is beyond ignorant, it is just plain stupid.

    There, now I have smug and rude… and truthful.

    It isn’t us Freethinkers forcing our beliefs on you. You want your 10 commandments in our courts, god on our money, you want to have our kids pray in school, you want Isreal to have non-restricted settlements, you want ID taught in HS biology… it goes on and on and you want us to be nice?

    Focus on your own family Nathan and things would be fine. But you and your pious sort can’t, you need to keep proselytizing to add new tithing flock to fill the incredible tax-free coffers used for political purposes.

    I have no apologies for being rude to American christians. They should know better.
80. 

    80RoboDoc

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 3:29

    Kudos: you provoked a truly amusing set of comments proving the post. Well trolled.

    You did make me think though: what does smug mean? I’ve talked with both rabid atheists and avid creationists who struck me as smug, and I think the common thread is this: I leave the conversation feeling belittled and insulted. They all come across as if their major point is to say to me “I am smart/blessed by God with knowledge, and YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT.” I mean, at some level most of us “know” we are right, but does a conversation with someone who disagrees with us leave them believing we think they are morons/heretics, and that, in fact, one of our goals in that conversation was to cut them down? Does anyone really think that is an effective means of conversion to any point of view?
81. 

    81Deepak Shetty

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 3:37

    1. My Irony Meter goes sproing (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=irony%20meter).
    (Thats humor not smugness).
    2. Hmmm I thought the really damned no hoper’s are the ones that need your help the most ? (thats sarcasm not smugness).
    3. Perhaps. its complex because no one really defines who/what God is. Or what properties he/she/it possesses. or what actions can he/she/it do.
    Perhaps you can do so? because we have Christians who say well the universe needs a creator i.e. God and then somehow assume that , that means their version is the one true God.
    Its really simple if you think of it in the following way. A benevolent omnipotent interventionist God does not exist (because otherwise the world wont be as we see it – A presence of a single orphaned child begging on the road is sufficient to me to disprove a benevolent omnipotent God).
    No other version of God is worth worshiping. (independent of whether a God exists or not)
    4. Fail. You do not know what science is, You are either ignorant or dishonest. This is extremely basic and hence the harsh assessment (That’s frustration not smugness)
    5. See point 3. On a related note see http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/09/04/four/. And yes can you provide us this definitive Christological narrative(And please dont point to the Bible)?
82. 

    82Lars

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 3:48

    Pot, let me introduce you to my an old acquaintance of mine. We call him Kettle. :)
83. 

    83Zack Ford

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 3:59

    Hey Nathan, I hope you’ll continue the dialogue on my post: http://zackfordblogs.com/2009/09/27/five-whiny-tips-for-atheists-ill-likely-ignore/
84. 

    84Richard

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:11

    Lol, Athiests and Christians are equally delusional, as is anyone who claims actual knowledge of something that is unknowable.
85. 

    85Alan H

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:25

    Nathan –

    Science is not subjective, that’s the whole idea:

    “…many different subjective experiences can come together to form intersubjective ones that are less likely to be prone to individual bias or gaps in knowledge.”

    from wikipedia

    Presuppositionalism doesn’t work because there is no way to confirm that you aren’t fooling yourself.
86. 

    86joe agnost

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:26

    Did the author of this post (Nathan) really just state that AIG does ~science~?! I’m afraid you’re WAY off on that one buddy, way off. AIG wouldn’t recognize science if it rode into town on a dinosaur!

    Epic FAIL for nathan.
87. 

    87Oh please

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:45

    “I know personable atheists who are happy to discuss the basis of their folly – and today I’ve met many atheists (virtually) who are happy to hijack a post on a blog and turn it into something just a little bit crazy.”

    Stop being smug! And self-centered. And dishonest. And childish. And answer the questions put to you, if you can.

    And stop whining.
88. 

    88Jen

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:46

    Doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible to treat others as you’d like to be treated? I’ll be nicer about Christians when Christians stop trying to stand between me and my rights. I get a little bitter when someone tells me that “my kind” (homosexuals) are the reason that Rome fell (yes, someone told me that) and that it’s dangerous for me to be around children because I want to marry a woman.

    Of course, then there’s that genocide thing, all the war and suffering and discrimination that we owe to “God”. Hitler was a Christian, remember.

    But, seriously, there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said before. Except, possibly, that you’re just a smug idiot.
89. 

    89Greg

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:51

    This is all very nice, but I have two things to interject. Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. Go learn your history and why all this religious nonsense is a coping mechanism. Nothing wrong with a coping mechanism, if it works for you, it’s good medicine, but, BUT… stop turning what could have been a good idea into something to persecute.
90. 

    90Morgan

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:59

    It looks like you’re getting responses on other sites too.

    http://skepticsinthepub.net.nz/blogs/gold/five-things-christians-can-do-seem-more-intelligent
91. 

    91Zmidponk

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 4:59

    Let’s take this in order.

    ‘1. Stop being so smug.’

    Sorry, no. We atheists will stop being so ’smug’ when you religious types stop believing that your particular magical Sky-Daddy is the one and only True God™, and there is no possibility you are wrong. In what way, precisely, are we ’smug’ anyway? The way our beliefs are the only ones that actually follow all evidence of objective reality, and have no qualms about pointing that out? The way we also have no qualms about pointing out the fact there is just as much evidence for the existence of the Tooth Fairy as there is for your particular god? The way we have no qualms about pointing out that, even if a god, of some sort, does exist, there is no way to tell if your particular version of him is correct and all others are false? The way we have no qualms about pointing out that, even within specific religions, such as Christianity, there are many different interpretations of the holy texts and the god they depict?

    ‘2. Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.’

    That is exactly what many atheists find scary. We see you wanting to take those who haven’t made up their minds (in many cases, because they are children) and try to make them into unquestioning religibots, secure in their ‘faith’. To many atheists, persuading people that a mantra of ‘don’t ask questions, just trust this is true’ about certain topics stifles the intellectual growth of humanity as a species. This is partly because many atheists are ex-religibots who committed the heresy of actually asking those questions.

    ‘3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.’

    Actually, the debate about God’s existence is not complex at all. Either He exists or He doesn’t. And on that question, we should apply the same standard as any rational, intelligent person would about the existence of an invisible dragon in my garage – that being, the whole idea is preposterous, according to the evidence we have about the way the universe works, so we should assume such a being does not exist until we get solid evidence that it does. In both cases, we are lacking such evidence.

    It is possible for otherwise intelligent and rational people to believe in God – by never applying their intelligence or rationality to that question. And this state of affairs comes about by these people being indoctrinated into the idea that questions like this are ones to take ‘on faith’, not by actually rationally examining them.

    ‘4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.’

    Is the scientific method infallible? No. Which is why it has self-corrective measures built in. As for your description of a scientific method, you start with a fully-formed hypothesis. How did that hypothesis get formed? By examination of the observed and established facts. So you actually base your hypothesis on ‘deduction’ and test it with ‘induction’, as you’ve defined them.

    ‘5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.’

    Well, every time we DO deal with ‘actual notions of God’ posited by religious folk, we get told by another set of religious folk that this is not the God THEY believe in. Sometimes this even happens with the same people – they propose a certain type of God (say, a direct interventionist God – one who actively affects events here on Earth), we put forth arguments that indicate a God like that doesn’t exist, and the very same people turn around and tell us we’re knocking down strawmen, as they don’t believe in that type of God (and, instead, say, claim they now believe in a non-interventionist God – one who set things in motion a long time ago, and is now sitting back watching His plan unfold). As soon as we then put forth arguments against this second type of God, they then revert to a third type of God – or even simply go back to the first one (whilst blindly ignoring the fact we’ve already demonstrated such a God doesn’t exist), and continue to accuse us of knocking down strawmen.

    So give us a nice, clear, unequivocal definition of what you mean by ‘God’, and stick to it, and maybe we won’t do that.
92. 

    92Savannah

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 5:13

    Omigosh! How funny. Its a shame that anything intelligent you might have to offer is totally negated by the fact you believe in such dribble as a supreme being. Oh well, the world needs idiots too.
93. 

    93dave

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 5:17

    2. “Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns. ”

    So do we. So if you attempt to evangelize the undecideds, we will attempt to counter your evangelism.

    “3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book. ”

    I am not going to admit something that isn’t true.

    “4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.”

    The scientific method relies on both inductive and deductive reasoning. It definitely is fallible, but it’s more reliable by far than any other method. And yes, it is objective.

    “5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people”

    We do. First of all, the millions of people who believe in a simplistic, anthropomorphic god are every bit as serious in their belief as you are. Secondly, an impersonal, abstact creater god (who still somehow cares about and communicates with people) is every bit as unevidenced as an anthropomorphic, personal god. We deal with both god concepts. None of them have evidence, and neither one is more “serious” as the other.
94. 

    94Adam

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 5:18

    It’s silly we’re taking any sort of religious person seriously as an adult. I’ve already started assuming they have near-child intelligence because they cannot figure out what is real and what is make believe and just stories.
95. 

    95steven moore

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 5:19

    you Christians make me sick given the means i would raise an army and wipe every single last one of you guys from the planet (hmm must sound kinda familiar to a Christian) its your religion that is single handedly holding back the advancement of civilization as we know it besides im sure any intelligent person is able to gather the facts around them to come to the conclusion that there is no god everything is random and were are ever so lucky that our planet happend to have all the existing conditions for life there is no god we as a race just lucked out on a 1 in a 1000000000000000000 planet. so take your 5 things to make atheists seem nicer and shove it right up your ass because as an atheist i feel it is my duty to make life hard for people who are stupid. i mean you can always say im a sad lonley man for not believing in god but the fact of the matter simply is THERE IS NO GOD only the worlds first ever con man who seen fit to write the bible so he could profit from churches who are one of the top 5 biggest corps in the world pretty good for a non profit organization
96. 

    96Stinky Pete

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 6:08

    1. Smug…I prefer ’supercilious’, actually. So, with your permission:

    2. The fact that religious indoctrination works best with impressionable children should tell you something. If an adult spouts nonsense in public, there are many people ready and willing to refute said nonsense. The argument from authority doesn’t carry much weight, as it has been continually abused.

    3. Any god, goddess, saint, angel, djinn, demagogue and/or demon you would care to name, exists solely in the individual’s imagination. (BTW, the “ultimate cosmic force” of my imagination is perfect and complete, neither needing nor wanting anything from us.) Morality may or may not be associated with a religion, but in any case morality develops independently.

    4. I hypothesize that religious fundamentalists wish to form a hive-imagination, in the hope that at some unknown threshold population it would achieve an awareness of its own and break through the veil, so to speak. Rationalists and empiricists are eagerly awaiting all testable data. Such data are exclusively in the domain of religionists, who cannot be bothered to share.

    5. The one thing that would convince me of the validity of any single scrap of scripture, is the universal agreement of all sapient humans on all it points. This is a rigorous standard to be sure, and will never be met, but as I mentioned my Imaginary Cosmic Boss is perfect and complete.
97. 

    97Matt

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 6:32

    Five things that would make theists seem nicer:

    1. Stop being so smug.
    2. Don’t assume every piece of atheist argument is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.
    3. Admit that the debate about the existence of gods is rather simple- and that it can, depending on what pieces of information you accept into evidence, be quite possible for good, kind, and unswervingly ethical people to believe that there is no metaphysical layer to reality, deified or otherwise.
    4. Admit that faith is by its very nature a selective belief in things that cannot be objectively proven and are simply the beliefs of the individual.
    5. Try to deal with the actual notions of atheism and agnosticism seriously believed by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or morally bankrupt monsters) to dismiss the concepts of atheism and agnosticism- and deal with science and the skeptical worldview without falling back upon dogmatic, unprovable scripture. By all means point out the scientific and pragmatic lessons contained in your book as appropriate- but understand that there is a big difference between accepting that there are good ideas and historical data contained in the book and accepting it as the revealed word of a god.
98. 

    98Koen

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 6:39

    Bob (comment 1, Sep 27) I couldn’t have said it better. Thanks. Christians are noobs.
99. 

    99The Tofu

    wrote on 29 September 2009 at 6:42

    Nathan: Perhaps atheist would be less smug if we were actually offered challenging arguments once and a while, rather than the variants of the Ontological Argument; appeals to authority, incredulity and majority; or complaints that we are “too mean.” It’s hard to remain polite when encountering an argument you’ve seen refuted thousands of times.

    You’re adding nothing to the conversation here. How smug we happen to be (or don’t happen to be) has nothing to do with whether our position is correct.

    There’s also a sad lack of substance in your replies. You’ve pretty much said atheists are taking things “out of context” without elaborating on how or why, or restating that you think atheist are rude or smug, using condescending language all the while. You haven’t defended any of your points. Please try to answer some of the questions posed to you- it will go a long way in showing your intelligence.

    tjmcmahon: You are confusing atheism with nihilism. The two are different. Try to actually understand a position before criticizing it.

    Morality is not the solely in the dominion of religions, thanks.
100. 

     100Dean

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 7:05

     Hi Nathan,

     I couldn’t resist the temptation to reply to your opinion piece. I am one of those pesky atheists I am sure you are referring to in your post. I can’t say that I would define myself as smug, but I am sure any christian that were to interact in dialogue with me would probably do so. Not because I come across with gross confidence but only because my opinion would challenge and differ from their existing beliefs (that usually seems to be enough for the stereotype to kick in). So to address your points on what you think would make a “nicer” atheists I will list them one by one as you did.

     1) The smug issue- I can only assume you are referring to the part of the definition of smug that states “highly self satisfied”-not the part of the definition that addresses being spruce or tidy (in dress mainly). If that were the case I would give it too you, I have seen some pretty dreadful outfits on atheists…whooa! With that said and not knowing what country you are from (religious perspective in the U.S. is a very unfortunate battle), I can only say that if an atheist comes across “angry” as often times one will describe us, it is actually frustration resulting from the overbearing uber confident christian capitalist approach that bombards our culture. Whole media channels (radio and TV) dedicated to the “truth” as if they created the concept. Door to door, neighborhood church billboards, hotel nightstand bibles, bumper stickers, window stickers, school board battles over creationism and nativity scenes on state property. It hardly seems fair to call atheists smug “highly self satisfied” considering the barrage of over confidence advertised daily for Christianity.

     2) The evangelical message…don’t worry I know it is not directed at me…any of it. That is exactly why I am an atheist, the christian philosophy does not apply. I understand you want the undecideds…like the borg wanted the captain.

     3) Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex…I won’t give you this one but I will say that the debate over proof of gods existence is complex. The debate about gods existence only takes faith, which is relatively easy if you just require that you stop thinking. The second part of the statement I can agree with. I can accept that smart people can believe in holy books, taking snakes, burning bushes and any type of supernatural action you wish to list…I just don’t think that smart people can show evidence those things are part of reality. I hope I am not coming off to smug.

     4) The scientific method…I don’t know that putting induction as a preference over deduction matters so much. Most importantly is the the understanding of the basics of the methods; using reason to gather observable, empirical and measurable evidence. I disagree with the statement that science can be open to abuse on the same level as religion. I can agree that the results of the scientific method can be used poorly or for actions one may call immoral, but you can not apply the misuse to the method of science or it is not science.

     5) Point five sounds like nothing but a way to strengthen your religious position without taking responsibility for its context when used to show its contradictions and or endorsement of violence (or any other negative someone may use in debate). In addition, by agreeing to the fifth point, one would have to give creditability to the fallacy that because a majority of people believe something it makes it true or is fact. To use the context of the bible in any serious discussion about the existence of a god goes way beyond what the topic is about. One can not use the bible as evidence for the existence of god. The importance to an atheist is not the Christological context…that is philosophy and outside the words of the context mainly a personal opinion, you can have that. The atheist position is…no god exists. Not just the Abrahamic god but any of the documented thousands that have occupied past cultures.

     Peace, from a member of the fast growing, most distrusted and hated minority in America!
101. 

     101D. B.

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 7:05

     I am not going to respond to every point because some of them are below the belt and because some don’t matter at all and/or are impossible to assail.

     First I will say that most atheists try and bring an open mind to any argument. It is because we know that what is a truth today may become a half-truth or outright lie tomorrow, for example, your religion claimed the world was flat, killed some people over it, were proven wrong and then hundreds of years after the fact admitted it.
     Atheist were the ones who adjusted their beliefs of how this world works in order to admit these new and relevant facts and enhance their understanding of their own existence, and therefor maybe be able to live a little better by those new understandings. We reach epiphanies in different ways, and use those new understandings in different ways.
     Another example of this is when your religion claimed that the Earth was the center of the universe, which you confused with our own galaxy, and were subsequently proven wrong, killed some people over it, then admitted you were wrong hundreds of years later. It seems like Christians are people who don’t like to admit they are wrong, ever, no matter what any evidence to the contrary might reveal.
     Now here is my second most important point and really why I am bringing up science. The general Christian idea that science is dangerous or evil or flawed in some fundamental ways because it contends with what your all-knowing book seems to dictate is logical to me. The reason is because religion, in every form, is a pre-science. It tries to answer many of the questions we have had about our surroundings and our basic reasons for even existing in the universe.
     For example, every religion has a origin story. Science contends with these stories by saying there was a Big Bang in the beginning of everything and that it may have occurred over and over and over again into infinity, so religion must refute this in some way in order to keep it’s membership in tact so that the membership dues will continue to roll in.
     Another example is how all religions have a story or reason for the sun. The Greeks and Romans thought a God in a chariot pulled it across the sky, a pre-scientific reason for it to happen. Christians think God said lights on one day and that is the reason the sun exists and acts as it does, a pre-scientific and truly unverifiable notion (except in your little book of all-trumping power). It was something we could rationalize so we could close the gap of dissonance in our minds so that we quite literally wouldn’t lose ourselves in insanity.

     Basically what I am trying to say is that your religion is no different then the science I believe in, but I know my science can be dis-proven and I may have to change my beliefs in order to react to the new facts that have come to light. You have taken an easier path and can study one book to tell you the answers to everything and those beliefs and that knowledge will never have to be expanded or changed because nothing else could ever possibly be correct. I know I must study an almost infinite amount of information in order to understand even a fraction of the amazing universe we live in.
     How much sense does it make to try and understand an infinite being in the pages of a single book that has had parts thrown out, added, and changed by the hands of man over the course of thousands of years anyway? You will only ever understand a fraction of God using that method, as I will only understand a fraction of the universe using mine. But which vision is more true, the immutable or ever changing? Time changes everything, everything is constantly moving and shifting, rearranging and transforming, and nothing is ever exactly the same again. Every second past is proof of this fact. How can it be true that something so unable to react flexibly reflects the truths that surrounds us.

     Oh, and one last thing… I have heard all of these arguments before. Mimicry doesn’t get us anywhere, how about you try and think for yourself like an atheist might try. Give me your own real arguments and not those you regurgitate like your mother did before you yourself began doing so, she had these beliefs beaten into her, you don’t have an excuse.
102. 

     102Patrick Salomon

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 7:09

     Guess it’s my turn to do a point-by-point refutation of your post. It seems like everybody else has done a good job already, but I thought I’d through my voice into the discourse.

     1. Shut up. As a self-professed agent of Christianity, you have no room to say this. Even if you aren’t smug, the institution with which you are associated produces the most amount of smug in the world. “I’m going to heaven and you’re going to hell because I believe in Jesus and you’re a heathen.” Sound familiar? Sound smug?

     2. I do not assume that every piece of evangelism is directed at me. I do, however, feel that every piece of evangelism is a ploy to draw the ignorant into your close minded and stagnant institution. Being that Christianity is ultimately detrimental to progress, and progress being what all mankind should strive for, evangelism is a direct assault on the nature of man and I don’t want to hear any of it.

     3. If “complex” means “doesn’t make a lick of sense outside of Imagination Land” then yes, I will admit this. I don’t know how else to interpret “complex” when debating the existence of any god. By nature of the definitions of “intelligent” and “rational” it is inherently impossible for those possessing such qualities to “believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.” If they claim to possess these qualities, and believe in such a deity, they are lying about one or the other.

     4. Admit that the “just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there” method is far superior in fallibility to the scientific method.

     5. The Christians in point 3, much like your God, do not actually exist, so this point is rendered moot.

     Guess I’m going a little over the top here, but whatever. I would call centuries of persecution, slavery, imperialism, ethnocentrism, intolerance, greed, and hypocrisy in the name of some magical skyman a little over the top too.
103. 

     103Alec

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 7:20

     Nathan, I really liked your post and appreciated everything you had to say. I found it extremely refreshing.

     I would call myself an atheist, but one that would love to believe in God. More and more I have been disgusted by “internet atheism” and its logical fallacies, hatred, and general jackassery.

     So thank you for your post, and I hope that people drop the attitude of absolute knowledge and realize that, as atheists, maybe we cannot know the truth, and should be open to other beliefs and ideas. After all, for a group of people (atheists) who seem to always beg for freedom of belief, they rarely grant the same privilege to religious people.
104. 

     104Patrick Salomon

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 7:24

     To back up my previous statements, I give you this article from August 30. Courtesy of CNN:

     Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds.

     http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/30/churchgoers-more-likely-to-back-torture-survey-finds/
105. 

     105PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 7:52

     Nathan wrote to anti-Christians:
     >3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

     Uh, Nathan, I know that using the English language is not one of your strong points (not your native language, right? — “Aussie” is sort of different from English!), but we can only “admit” something if we actually think it is true!

     And, I most certainly do not think that the “the debate about God’s existence is complex” (I take it your capital G on “God” does mean you are talking about that crazy, psychopathic old Yahweh dude who murdered so many innocent women and children in the Hebrew Bible).

     No, the debate about Yahweh is not complex at all – a bunch of ancient psychopaths invented a murderous God in their own image. Not “complex” at all.

     Anyone doubt that Yahweh is a murderous thug? Read about the Golden Calf incident where Yahweh supposedly had Moses kill three thousand of the children of Israel indiscriminately because they had chosen to exercise a bit of freedom of religion:

     Exodus 32:
     26] Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
     [27] And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
     [28] And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

     This was brought to my attention not long ago by a “liberal” minister who brought it up as an example of *noble* behavior in the Old Testament!

     Yeah, it is a myth, but it is a myth that is supposed to illustrate the character of Moses and Yahweh.

     Nathan, you complained in an earlier post that atheists are shy about using the word “evil.”

     I’m not.

     This is evil, deeply and profoundly evil.

     And, anyone who knowingly worships a God whose character is exhibited in this manner is also deeply and profoundly evil.

     Christianity is evil.

     And, Nathan, if you cannot bring yourself to denounce the behavior described in Exodus 32 and the God who supposedly ordered that behavior, then you too are deeply evil.

     Dave
106. 

     106Marcel Kincaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 8:21

     What sort of “friend” would tolerate such pompous garbage? I have no desire to be friends with, to be nice to, or to “seem” nice to, such hypocritical asses as yourself.

     “starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis”

     Comments such as this identify you as a stupid and ignorant person. If the scientific method involved the former irrational process rather than the latter rational process, why wouldn’t scientists simply adopt the latter? In fact, as anyone with enough intelligence to look it up knows, the scientific method consists of observation -> hypothesis -> prediction -> test -> observation.

     “is as open to abuse as any religious belief”

     Uh, you think our problem with religious belief is that it’s “open to abuse”??? The scientific method is a reliable way to find out about the world. “religious belief” isn’t a method or way or means at all, it’s just belief. Your comparison here is incoherent, nonsensical, ignorant, foolish, smug, and arrogant. Intelligent people are not about to “admit” to your stupid misunderstandings.

     You should develop a bit of humility, and recognize that the fact that you are uneducated in science and do poorly on IQ tests puts you in a poor position to give any advice to your superiors.
107. 

     107Richard

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 8:39

     I disagree PhysicistDave, MAN is evil, Christianity is just another of the endless tools (ie. Politics, Economics, marketing, knives, guns, hacksaws) he uses to manifest the horrors he inflicts on his fellow man.
108. 

     108Marcel Kincaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 8:39

     ” PZ Meyers of the world”

     His name is Myers, moron.

     “I know personable atheists who are happy to discuss the basis of their folly”

     What a hypocritical smug asshole you are.

     “and today I’ve met many atheists (virtually) who are happy to hijack a post on a blog and turn it into something just a little bit crazy”

     Do you even know what the word “hijack” means? Your post wasn’t “hijacked”, it was RESPONDED TO. You’re an ignorant arrogant smug anus who called out atheists, and you’re being schooled by them — not that you’re capable of comprehending the lessons.
109. 

     109wunksta

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 8:43

     1. Like wise, or is it called being righteous?

     2. So they should not be exposed to the criticisms that have been shown to your religion? That’s called being deceptive.

     3. Intelligent people can believe in a deity. I have yet to meet any intelligent people that think it talks to them through an ancient text though.

     4. The first part of the scientific method IS observation. We don’t dismiss any subsequent observations either. Deductive reasoning is also used.
     http://skepticstoolbox.org/hall/m50baa4bf.gif
     http://miscellanea.wellingtongrey.net/comics/2007-01-15-science-vs-faith.png

     Science isn’t infaliable, but we ADMIT THAT. its self correcting, religion seldom is.

     5. What a load of special pleading. “Please don’t use parts of our bible against us that we can’t explain!!” Furthermore, using alternative or fictitious examples of gods/fantastical creatures illustrates how ridiculous a belief without evidence can be. The fact that one can dismiss other peoples deities because they lack evidence yet cling to their own DESPITE the lack of evidence is dumb founding.
110. 

     110Marcel Kincaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:01

     “If God chooses a standard that we find unacceptable or hard to bear it’s not really our place to say so”

     How do you know what standards God chooses, oh smug one? Are you really saying that you abdicate moral responsibility to some words written by nomads millenia ago as interpreted by deeply neurotic preachers? It is certainly MY place to say that that YOUR sick “standards” that you dishonestly justify by claiming they were chosen by God are WRONG.

     This seems to be your position: “What if everything I believe, no matter how wrongheaded and fallacious it appears, turns out to really be right? In that case I’m the rational one and you’re the irrational one.” Uh, no, you have no understanding of what it even means to be rational, and with such a deep failure of logic you have no hope of ever being rational, and can only be right by sheer luck.
111. 

     111Marcel Kincaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:12

     “I think, if the boot were on the other foot, and you believed my family were going to burn in fire, I’d want you to be telling me…”

     I think you’re an ignorant imbecile and a hypocrite and that you’re a danger to everyone around you. Do you really want me to be telling you this? And why would I want someone stupid and deluded to tell me what they believe when I already am quite aware of what they believe and that it is based on stupidity, ignorance, and superstition?
112. 

     112Marcel Kincaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:18

     “The fact that science can be harnessed by people with agendas (the tobacco lobby, answers in genesis etc) means that it’s just as likely that a peer reviewed paper is dodgy as it is that it’s plausible.”

     In addition to not understanding science, you don’t understand probability or inferential logic — these are not “just a likely”, and the antecedent does not imply (“means that”) the consequent.
113. 

     113Patrick Salomon

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:33

     I am inclined to agree with Richard.

     Also, Nathan, please. I invite you to respond to my and PhysicistDave’s comments. I’m curious.
114. 

     114Antony L

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:36

     Hi all,

     I have tried to read a lot of the above but i would like to modify some things.

     Firstly, so everyone knows, i am a Christian.

     Next, i think both Christians and Atheists can be nicer about what people believe…because, in my humble opinion, you can neither prove God nor disprove God scientifically. Therefore, it would seem to me that both sides have an element of trust or “faith” attached to their beliefs.

     I would possibly put this thread this way…

     5 ways Christians and Atheists can be nicer to each other…

     1. Respect each other’s beliefs…there are plenty of intelligent people on both sides of the fence

     2. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are a bad person…personally, i believe that there is a God, you may not but we both agree that murder, paedophilia, rape etc are wrong and you would be a bad person if you did this.

     3. Mistakes have been made by the church in the past. Scientists have also made mistakes in their beliefs (like the atom being the smallest particle, etc). Both sides need to acknowledge these mistakes and move on and live better.

     4. We all have secrets in the closet that we don’t want to see the light of day – in other words, no one is perfect. I think it would be fair to say that “love one another as you love yourself” is not just a quote from Jesus but reflected in other religions as well agreed to by many atheists i know.

     5. Forgive me when i make mistakes because if you ever make a mistake, i would forgive you too…

     God bless you (whether you believe in Him or not).

     Thanks
115. 

     115Deepak Shetty

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:45

     PhysicistDave @104

     C’mon dave , you aren’t paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative. You are quoting obscure Old Testament stuff. Nathan has already pointed this out to you in pt 5.
116. 

     116Marcel Kincaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 9:55

     “You are quoting obscure Old Testament stuff.”

     Yeah, unlike Christians, especially Christian preachers, who never quote the old testament.
117. 

     117PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 10:02

     Richard wrote to me:
     > I disagree PhysicistDave, MAN is evil, Christianity is just another of the endless tools (ie. Politics, Economics, marketing, knives, guns, hacksaws) he uses to manifest the horrors he inflicts on his fellow man.

     Yeah, Richard, I take your point.

     Note that I did not say that Christianity was “uniquely” evil: of course, Christianity belongs in the same class as Communism, Nazism, etc. – all evil means to justify man’s inhumanity to man.

     However, people do have a choice – I’ve never killed anyone nor do I justify killing of innocents, even when carried out for a “noble” cause (e.g., defeating so-called “Islamofascism”).

     And, knives and hacksaws can be used for good purposes: they do not come with a manual instructing you to use them for evil purposes.

     However, the passage I quoted from Exodus (and there are many others like it in the Bible) show that the manual for Christianity – i.e., the Bible – does openly and clearly endorse horrifyingly nauseating forms of evil.

     Yes, of course, ultimately this evil is due to human beings – after all, no God created Christianity; humans did.

     But we need to recognize, as the quote from Exodus shows, that the human invention known as Christianity was evil from birth, that the operating manual on which it is based openly advocates evil.

     Dave
118. 

     118Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 10:05

     1) I find it interesting that the majority of responses to this point amount to “yeah, well, you do it to”. As your logic teacher probably told you, that does not eliminate the truth of the original point. So what if Christians are smug? The question is whether Atheists are smug.

     2) I think Nathan was originally pointing out that there are atheists who take every expression of religion anywhere as an attempt to subjugate and isolate atheists. I remember reading my own book on an airplane, and having some person flip over the fact.

     3) Okay, so maybe we can start doing verbal gymnastics here and start saying “the debates about the arguments for the existence of God” are complex. The practical point stands. smart people can disagree with you, as even Dr. Myers pointed out in a backhanded way. Sure you can see yourself as “cutting through it” as he did, but that means that your opponent may be confused. Impatience at this point only makes your hearers think you have nothing to add but bombast.

     4) Dr. Myers and many others put high value on testability as something science has that “religion” does not, even noting that science relies also on deductive reasoning. Unfortunately, that does not actually deal with the original point Nathan stated, that induction is where science gains its expansion of ideas, and thus the basis for it. The deduction in science is a check on its basis of induction.

     5) I find it funny how people throw texts out here and pretend that that somehow deals with this point. The idea is that you should probably see what the theist actually believes before throwing your (probably incorrect) understanding of those beliefs in their face. Maybe you could ask what they think about these passages? I dunno, that sounds a little more civil. It also makes you sound a little less like the anti-evolutionists most atheists coming from Dr. Myers’ site would oppose.

     Finally, I am a little curious as to how someone could answer physicistDave’s concerns about the question of evil in Exodus 32:26-28, since there are a great many different definitions of what evil is, and I have no way of knowing which one he refers to. Perhaps He could enlighten us as to what he means be evil here, and why that particular passage fits into that meaning?
119. 

     119PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 10:26

     Patrick Solomon wrote:
     >Also, Nathan, please. I invite you to respond to my and PhysicistDave’s comments. I’m curious.

     Oh, I think our young laddie Nathan will “answer” me – his job is to be a PR flack, you know. He knows how to spin these things.

     I think we’ll get an “answer,” but I very much doubt we will get a real answer.

     I’ve been around this subject many times with Christians – the fellow who first raised it with me that I mentioned was in fact also an Aussie. Christians have a slew of canned answers:

     “The Old Testament was a regime of justice and laws; the New Testament is based on mercy and love.”

     “You atheists don’t believe in the Old Testament anyway; why are you bothered?”

     “Who are we to pass judgment on God?”

     Etc.

     None of those canned answers addresses the specific issue: “Assuming for the sake of discussion that the narrative in Exodus is historically accurate, do you or do you not think that the men who carried out the mass murder ordered by Moses and Yahweh did the right thing or a horrifyingly evil thing?”

     It took weeks to get the Aussie minister I mentioned to give an honest answer to that question (even though he himself had brought the subject up!). He finally admitted that, yes, he did approve of the mass murders.

     I doubt we will ever get a clear-cut answer like that from Nathan, even if we spend weeks trying.

     Nathan does not seem to be a very standup kind of guy; I suppose few PR flacks are.

     Dave
120. 

     120PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 10:46

     Stephen, apparently in reference to my question about Exodus 32 wrote:
     >I find it funny how people throw texts out here and pretend that that somehow deals with this point. The idea is that you should probably see what the theist actually believes before throwing your (probably incorrect) understanding of those beliefs in their face. Maybe you could ask what they think about these passages?

     But, Stephen, I *did* ask him (and, implicitly, any other true believers here) “what they think about these passages?”

     That was exactly my point!

     I made very clear that I want to know whether Nathan can “bring yourself to denounce the behavior described in Exodus 32.” I will be a bit surprised if even a single Christian here gives an upfront answer to this – either “Yes, that was truly evil to carry out murder at Yahweh’s command” or “No, the murderers did the right thing.”

     I see the weaseling beginning already: you criticize me for not asking what you believe as an excuse for not saying what you believe, even though I was clearly trying to ask what you believe!

     Weird.

     Stephen also wrote:
     > Finally, I am a little curious as to how someone could answer physicistDave’s concerns about the question of evil in Exodus 32:26-28, since there are a great many different definitions of what evil is, and I have no way of knowing which one he refers to. Perhaps He could enlighten us as to what he means be evil here, and why that particular passage fits into that meaning?

     Ah, the weaseling blossoms.

     If I had asked whether you think the Holocaust was evil, would you be similarly tongue-tied?

     When I posted my previous post, your post had not yet shown up. Thank you for so rapidly demonstrating my point about Christians’ unwillingness to be honest and upfront about their views.

     Use your own definition of “evil”: by your own definition of evil, did the mass murderers do the right thing in murdering thousands at the command of Yahweh and Moses, or do you think their actions were horrifyingly evil?

     Such a simple question, and so hard to get an honest answer – from Christians.

     I bet we will never get a honest answer from you or Nathan.

     Dave
121. 

     121PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 11:09

     Stephen,

     By the way, your little ploy (“I am a little curious as to how someone could answer physicistDave’s concerns about the question of evil in Exodus 32:26-28, since there are a great many different definitions of what evil is, and I have no way of knowing which one he refers to. Perhaps He could enlighten us as to what he means be evil…”) is one of the most common of the evasive ploys used by Christians on such issues.

     In America, we call it the “That depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” ploy, in honor of one of our former Presidents (who was himself, of course, a Christian).

     Of course, no matter what definition I should offer up for the word “evil,” Christians can then explain at interminable length why my definition is inappropriate, complain that I am trying to impose my definition on them, etc. (A related ploy is to claim that atheists cannot possibly have any concept of evil: that too is irrelevant to the question, but it does give further delay.)

     I’ve been down that road many, many times before.

     Delay, delay, delay – all to avoid answering such a simple little question: by your own definition of evil, assuming for the sake of discussion that the narrative in Exodus 32 is historically accurate, did the mass murderers do the right thing in murdering thousands at the command of Yahweh and Moses, or do you think their actions were horrifyingly evil? Can you bring yourself forthrightly to condemn their actions?

     Are there are any Christians at all here who have enough guts to answer that question straight up?

     Or is there no one left any longer in the Christian churches but weasellers?

     Dave
122. 

     122Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 11:26

     So, I ask a question, and thus I am showing my unwillingness to face a straight question? In point of fact, I usually do ask the same question when someone makes such a claim about the Holocaust, especially if I suspect their understanding of “evil” may differ from my own. It’s taking my own advice and being sure that I understand your position before trashing it. You want to accuse me of bad faith, okay, whatever. Can you tell me what you mean by evil and why Exodus 32:26-28 fits that?

     Unfortunately, I have also talked with atheists on points like this before, and I think the question includes a few premises (like the definition of evil) that need to be clarified. I am asking about your claim that such is evil, I am unclear what you mean, can you explain?

     Honesty demands that we all understand roughly the same thing by the answer. At this point, I suspect that not all of us do. Please explain the claim you wish the Christians to reply to.

     The assumption of mala fides in a person you have never met, who you know only by the statements he has made in the comments section of a blog may be what Nathan meant by “smug”. I would use another word: “prejudiced” (namely, pre-judging the motives and beliefs of another with scant or even non-sequential evidence). After all, I’ve not claimed here to be a theist, much less a Christian. Why would I support here a claim I have not made here?

     You say in another comment that the Christians should answer “by their own definition of evil”. By that token, you are asking them for what may be a dishonest answer, since we are not sure that we are talking about the same thing. If they answer “no”, atheists are left with the impression that Christians are evil, because they will actually be interpreting the answer based on their definition of evil, not the Christian’s. If they say yes, you will say that they are then not believing their holy book. I would like to be sure that the answer actually is falling on the horns of a dilemma.

     Your question, as it stands, seems misleading since it has buried within it an implicit claim which is left vague (there is evil, and here is a possible example of it, don’t you agree?). I’d like clarification. If you think I’m delaying, then okay, whatever. I guess then you win.
123. 

     123Steve

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 11:35

     Five things that would make xians seem less smug:

     1) Stop quoting “the fool has said in his heart, there is no god.”

     2) Stop using Pascal’s refuted-to-hell-and-back wager.

     3) Stop claiming the believing six impossible things before breakfast makes you a moral person. It only makes you a gullible one.

     4) Stop claiming that atheists really believe in your god and are just rebelling against him. Why are you rebelling against Thor, Zeus, Quetzlcoatl etc?

     5) STOP TRYING TO FORCE YOUR SUPERSTITION DOWN OUR THROATS AND INTO OUR LAWS!!!!!!!!!!!!
124. 

     124Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 11:43

     Sorry, missed a point.

     physicistDave:
     No, I don’t think you actually asked the believers what they thought about the passage. That would be an open-ended question allowing for explanation. Instead you instead pointed out in comment 104 that Christianity is evil, and used the example of Exodus 32:26-28 to attempt to back it up. Then demanded that Christians join you in the condemnation.

     That is hardly asking to understand.
125. 

     125E

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 11:51

     Nathan,

     A couple of thousand years ago some guys realised they could improve their lot in life by offering up God who torments you forever if you don’t believe in him and do as he says.

     If you buy it, he killed thousands of human babies in the flood. OMG! He is serious!

     It’s all a scam and I would argue the bible is a form of spam.

     The people promoting it want your money. Over the centuries they got really good at it. It is that simple.

     -E
126. 

     126PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:01

     Ah, delay, delay, delay, Stephen – try to get me to play procedural games to avoid letting anyone know where you yourself stand.

     Thank you for proving my point that this is all Christians nowadays can do.

     You still lack the guts to tell us where you yourself stand: by your own definition of evil, assuming for the sake of discussion that the narrative in Exodus 32 is historically accurate, did the mass murderers do the right thing in murdering thousands at the command of Yahweh and Moses, or do you think their actions were horrifyingly evil? Can you bring yourself forthrightly to condemn their actions?

     Of course, we all know the problem: if you condemn the obvious evil presented in Exodus 32, you denounce your own God.

     And, if you approve it, you will stand condemned by the common conscience of all decent human beings.

     Not my fault, Stephen, m’lad: blame the folks who told you that the Bible was the “Good Book” when it is really a cesspool of evil.

     I’ll bet you’ll never show the guts to tell us whether you approve or disapprove of the behavior described in Exodus 32, now will you? You’ll just keep playing word games – forever – about exactly how I word my posts.

     Right?

     How precious.

     Dave
127. 

     127Will

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:04

     “1. Stop being so smug”
     Heh. Well, Nathan, to this I can only supply the words of one Nathan:
     “My point there is that I think it’s unhelpful to bag out atheists generally as though they all suffer from the same particular strain of foolishness.

     I think they’re all wrongheaded, misguided and foolish – but they’re not all the Richard Dawkins or the PZ Meyers of the world.

     I know personable atheists who are happy to discuss the basis of their folly…”

     I’m asking you this honestly: how do you reconcile your statements? I’m seriously curious. I really want to know why you think atheist “smugness” has to be done away with, but your post is acceptable. Please, tell me.

     Oh, and by the way:

     Matthew 5:22
     But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, “Raca,” is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

     Pity he didn’t tell Paul that.
128. 

     128TheBigCheese

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:12

     Stephen:
     I’m normally pretty open-minded, but I’m pretty sure he’s just looking for a straight answer, not arguing whether or not he asked the question.
129. 

     129Patrick Salomon

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:20

     Stephen: I believe Dave was using “evil” to signify “detrimental to society” or, “that which afflicts the progress and well being of man”. This all boils down to semantics, but I also believe that you darn well understood the point he was trying to get across, and that your “define evil” argument is you skirting around the issue.

     We could spend all day arguing over the meaning of “evil”, and we would never reach a conclusion. Rationally, there is really no “good” or “evil”. These are nebulous terms created by man trying to construct a foundation for its morals and ethics.

     In reality, it all boils down to “action” and “consequence”. Hence, and I believe Dave will back me on this one, the discussion here is about how the consequences of God’s (Christianity’s, religion’s, etc…) actions had/have impacted mankind.

     As you are so keen on questioning the meaning of words which have no concrete philosophical definitions, yet can still function as useful tools to convey meaning (ie. “good”, “evil”, etc..), I’m afraid I must take a different route to reach my conclusion.

     On the impact the consequences of (God, Christendom, Religion)’s actions have had on mankind, I have to, in pandering to your vain attempt at using ration, employ the more mathematical (even a good Christian cannot refute math) logic of “positive” and “negative”. Let us define “positive” as “that which benefits mankind as a whole” and “negative” as “that which afflicts”.

     In these parameters, one perceiving this debate with a purely rational mind would see a God advocating the slaughter of 3,000 souls over something so trivial as a false idol as “negative”. They would also perceive the overall consequences of Christendom’s actions (divided society, retardation of our understanding of the natural world through the persecution of scientific thought, and multiple counts of genocide, etc…) as “negative”.

     Being that that these examples provide evidence of (God, Christianity)’s “negative” impact on mankind, and being that “evil” was being used as a term to signify (God, Christianity)’s existence and ideologies as “detrimental to the greater good”, you will find that Dave was, in fact, positing a sound theory in calling Christianity “evil”.

     I hope this satisfies your query, but I’m sure that it will not.

     - Patrick
130. 

     130Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:20

     physicistDave:

     This is not about “guts”, this is about accuracy. I have a high value for truth over rhetorical games. I wanted to assume that you were not playing such games, and instead wanted to further understanding.

     Answering your question as it stands is, as I’ve said, dishonest in my opinion. Any answer will effectively lead to a misunderstanding, especially since it (to this point) rests on the unsubstantiated claim that (and I am putting this forward as what I understand to be the way you’d formulate it) “God is evil because of what is reported in Exodus 32:26-28″.

     There will be no straight answers, because at this point, there is no straight question.
131. 

     131Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:35

     Patrick, based on both definitions given, then no. The actions of the levites in Exodus 32:26-28 are not evil, if we assume the truthfulness of the narrative.

     Definition 1: detrimental to society

     If we take it as true that God punishes idolatry by death, and that He fully intended to eliminate the entire people of God to prove it (Genesis 32:9-14), then it is perfectly alright to take a small segment of that group as sacrificed for the greater good of the society. This is added to the fact that, if the narrative is taken to be factual, there were no innocent Israelites, because by the text, they had acted in opposition to their own covenant with God to a man.

     Definition 2:
     that which afflicts the progress and well being of man

     Again, assuming the integrity of the text, and thus that humanity is best functioning in submission to God, the punishment of a segment of the (guilty) people of God to facilitate greater fidelity to God is again a good and not an evil.

     You seem to have actually broken the terms of physicistDave’s question by first of all calling the idolatry of the Israelites “trivial”, which the text goes out of its way to state it is not….. repeatedly. If I assume that there is no God, of course the actions there are immoral. If there is a God, which I assume Christians believe, it is not immoral.

     The remaining claims you make (divided society, retardation of our understanding of the natural world through the persecution of scientific thought, and multiple counts of genocide, etc…) will also have to be supported, but then that expands this far beyond what can be done in the comments section of a blog.
132. 

     132Vlad

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:46

     You are pathetic. Enough said.
133. 

     133AudreyR

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:48

     I will not respond to the first one as it’s not in my nature to respond to ad hominem arguments.

     2)I assume no such thing and only respond to the ones that are.

     3)The reasons people do or do not believe in god is only as complex as they make it. I am very much aware that there are many intelligent believers. Never have I claimed otherwise.

     4) Scientific method is a process and your definition of hypothesis indicates a lack of understanding regarding it. I agree that data gained through the process can, is, and has been used by lots of people in many different ways for many different reasons. This does not negate the process itself.

     5) When people engage me in conversation, I respond to what is said and try not to assume their belief or the reasons for their belief. I’m very well aware I can’t read minds.

     Just like not all Christians are the same, all atheists are not the same. I have no problem with people believing. I try to deal with people on what they say and how they act. I abhor the idea of thought police.
134. 

     134Patrick Salomon

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 12:54

     Divided society: America. Fundamentalist Christianity became a tool of neo-conservatives which they utilized to polarize voters in socio-political discourse for the sake of advancing party politics. This was a bastardization of democracy.

     Retardation of scientific thought: Dark Ages. Stem-cell research. “Intelligent design”. Enough said.

     Genocide: Open up the nearest American/World/Ancient history textbook to a random page. You have a 60-75% chance of finding support for my position.

     You also must have missed the foundation of my argument, a foundation I built because you demanded it: logic.

     Logically prove to me that I can assume the “truthfulness of the narrative”.

     Atheists don’t have to be nicer. You mistake our adherence to rational discourse for meanness. It’s not that we’re mean, it’s just that most incarnations of logic simply cannot bend in a way that allows for the existence of a god, or justify the actions of the Christian God, should he exist.
135. 

     135BeHereNw

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 13:04

     I love this list. The whole Atheist Battling Christian, and reversal of that, is just so contrived and stupid. It’s always such a bummer reading something that an Atheist wrote. They usually have the hugest egos and are just so long winded and always push their points with how rational and logical they are when all they are doing is reacting to something emotionally. I too once upon a time used to find anger and hostility welling up inside of me and finding need for expression towards Christians but I evolved. Atheism need not be a hostile movement. Just have your belief and go about your business. These battles are usually pointless. Self-Righteous flying off the handle is so primitive.
136. 

     136Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 13:12

     Divided Society: That is actually a highly debated sociological position. But arguing it is again, beyond the bounds of a blog comment section.

     Retardation of Scientific thought: No, not “enough said”, that there is retardation of scientific thought (and each of the examples you give is again debatable) is not the same as saying that it is caused by religion, that it is greater than the retardation caused by other possible worldviews, or that such “retardation” is actually bad for society.

     Genocide: I must have picked up the wrong textbook. Of course, considering the legal debates concerning what constitutes genocide (see the pograms of the Soviet Union, the Acadian resettlement and the Armenian “genocide”) I may also be running with a different definition here.

     You must logically assume the validity of the narrative in the case of this question, because it was stated in the question that I was answering:

     “assuming for the sake of discussion that the narrative in Exodus 32 is historically accurate”
137. 

     137Patrick Salomon

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 13:44

     Failure of observation on my part has me pinned on what I said about how to view the text. To this I concede.

     As to your other points… you’re right again. There’s not enough space here to hash out the whole debate. Although, even you cannot argue that Christianity has stood in the way of numerous scientific pursuits, which, had these pursuits been allowed to progress unopposed, may have placed humanity farther ahead technologically than we are now.

     To BehereNw: You are correct. This long winded discourse between Atheist and Christian is largely pointless. Doesn’t mean it can’t be fun though.

     Being long winded is also inherent in, and necessary to, crafting the debate. Atheists must set the terms of their argument within a rational framework, as logic is the only weapon we have with which to refute blind faith. Christians must respond in kind, because the Atheist will hear nothing of blind faith and listen only to reason.

     In short, we’re both fools, and I’m just a philosophy minor exercising my, currently inadequate, ability to dialog on such matters.
138. 

     138Evan

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 13:50

     Why can’t we all just coexist without force feeding our opinions down each others throats?

     It is very un-Christian to assume that the “general Atheist” is bad. All followers of God and/or Jesus have been taught to “love your neighbor as yourself”. The “general Christian” does abysmally, if you’re basing it off of stereotypes. I’m Atheist and one of my favorite people on the plant is an avid Christian. She doesn’t rub it in, though. She is kind, caring, non-judging and funny. She should represent all Christians, because I haven’t met a single person who has one bad word against her.

     She is one of most passionate people about faith. Her faith is unlike anything in this world.

     Atheist aren’t any better than Christians, though. Especially when it comes to loving the people around them. No one group can claim that they are better than the other. Both have major flaws.

     The one universal law that should be agreed upon is to live the best life you can. Every person should be kind, caring, non-judging, and funny. Know when to be serious and when to laugh out loud. Know when to smile with joy and when to bow your head with grief. Know when you are being cruel and improve. Live the best way possible. If your religion helps you to be kinder, then you are on a good path. If it doesn’t, then a reconsideration should be taken. Anything that makes YOU a better person is how you should live your life.

     Be kind.
     Be courteous.
     Love with a passion.
139. 

     139PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:05

     Stephen wrote to me:
     > There will be no straight answers, because at this point, there is no straight question.

     Ah, now you are simply prevaricating, Stephen.

     The question is very clear and very simple: where do you stand on the mass murders described in Exodus 32 –do you condone them or condemn them?

     You know good and well that I am not trying to pin you into the exact words of my question. You are quite obviously free to frame your answer however you wish. All I am asking (and I am sure we will not get this from you, because you are clearly not an honest person) is that you actually tell us where *you* stand on this matter instead of weaseling out with some more of your verbal nonsense.

     You will not answer that simple question because you lack moral courage.

     But to claim that you find the question unclear?

     You are simply prevaricating.

     I wonder if Nathan will lie in a similar way or find some other way to evade the question?

     Dave
140. 

     140Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:15

     Actually Dave, I think I did answer the question. In all definitions of justice I can think of (though admittedly I haven’t thought that much about it), save possibly ones where I must assume that the freedom to believe in other Gods is a fundamental right that trumps even God (either because God does not exist, or because the freedom of conscience in religion is more basic than God), I think the actions in Genesis 32, assuming the historical validity of the narrative, are moral.

     I wonder why you’d believe differently, now, come to think of it.
141. 

     141PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:19

     The Big Cheese wrote with regard to my question to Stephen and Nathan about Exodus 32:
     > I’m normally pretty open-minded, but I’m pretty sure [Dave]’s just looking for a straight answer, not arguing whether or not he asked the question.

     Yeah, of course.

     I’m not trying to play any game with words here. The Biblical narrative is rather transparent. There is no semantic subtlety involved. I honestly want to know whether Nathan and Stephen approve of or condemn the horrific actions related in Exodus 32. I have a suspicion (a horrific suspicion) as to what they really think, but I am open to hear their real views.

     I couldn’t force Stephen to repeat the exact words I posted if I wanted to.

     But, it would be nice to know where he actually stands on this – does he approve of what the mass murderers did or does he disapprove of it?

     His little ploy is shown by his reply to Patrick: he makes various comments about history, etc., but we are still not sure whether Stephen condones or condemns mass murder when he believes it is ordered by God. He is willing to discuss Exodus 32 ad infintium, but he will not tell us whether he is for or against those mass murders.

     Weaseling and weaseling and weaseling.

     I used to think Christianity would still be a living movement fifty years from now, but if Christians are truly this cowardly, maybe the Christian movement is finally in its death throes.

     Personally, I’m really glad I do not live near Stephen: if he ever hears a secret voice telling him to do as the sons of Levi did, any non-Christians nearby just might end up dead.

     Of course, he could allay that concern a bit by declaring that he condemns the mass murders described in Exodus 32.

     But he won’t.

     Dave
142. 

     142Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:30

     Uh huh, precisely as I expected.

     “Personally, I’m really glad I do not live near Stephen: if he ever hears a secret voice telling him to do as the sons of Levi did, any non-Christians nearby just might end up dead.
     Of course, he could allay that concern a bit by declaring that he condemns the mass murders described in Exodus 32.
     But he won’t.”

     Now, logically, what in the world makes that a logical conclusion from what I’ve said?
143. 

     143PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:44

     Ah, Stephen! Perhaps I misjudged you, after all! (We cross-posted, so my previous post went out before I saw yours.)

     You are indeed willing to openly endorse evil!

     You wrote:
     >I think the actions in Genesis 32, assuming the historical validity of the narrative, are moral.
     >I wonder why you’d believe differently, now, come to think of it.

     And, now that you have finally confirmed my worst suspicions about you, I will indeed return the courtesy and answer your question as to why I think differently.

     But not this minute – the real world beckons.

     Now, let’s see if Nathan will be similarly upfront in presenting his views.

     Dave
144. 

     144Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:48

     No, I do not openly endorse evil. The levites were not being evil based on your own framing of the question.

     I would appreciate you not putting words in my mouth. After all, I still haven’t even copped to being a theist yet.
145. 

     145Deepak Shetty

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 14:48

     BeHereNw @134
     >. Atheism need not be a hostile movement. Just have your belief and go about your business
     In an ideal world this would be true, but it’s religion that isn’t satisfied with you go about your business and I, mine.
     Exhibit A Gay marriage
     The religious should marry whomever they want and the non religious should also be able to do the same. Who exactly is lobbying to ban gay marriage?
     Exhibit B Evolution
     The religious should be able to believe whatever they want , and let the rest of us who want to understand science do so. Who exactly wants creationism/id taught in schools to our children?
     Exhibit C Religious Terrorists
     Everyone should be able to live in peace. Who exactly threatens us when we don’t live by their rules?
     Do you really want me to go on?
     You can live your life like an ostrich , thats your prerogative.
146. 

     146Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:02

     physicistDave
     You are now appealing, quite openly, to emotion not logic. (You believe the worst about me, and worry that I’ll be massacring people because of a secret voice in my head).

     I have not stated my beliefs save to say that Genesis 32 expresses an internally consistent moral structure. I assumed the validity of the narrative, as asked in the question, I have not claimed to subscribe to that structure.
147. 

     147Nathan

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:28

     Right, so PhysicistDave wants an answer to his particular question as to whether I endorse the actions of God in Exodus 32…

     Of course I do. He’s the creator, I’m the subject. Would I have killed them? That would have been a struggle between giving up my autonomy and desire not to kill people, and obeying the direct commands of the Lord.

     This is logical. If God is God then he sets the standards – not us.

     I’d be interested to know PhysicistDave how you would respond to disagreement with things you ask your children to do (if you have them)? Or, if you were a military officer how you would respond to an order you disagreed with?

     It’s the judge who gets to decide what’s just – not the criminal.

     I hope this answers your specific question.

     Now, to the rest of you – I have completely lost track of every question I’ve been asked – but if you, collectively, want to frame ten questions for me to answer then I’ll do that in a subsequent post.

     I’m going to stop reading the meta of the post on PZ’s blog. It’s not particularly nice. And it’s clear that both parties (myself and the angry mob) have agreed that the other side is devoid of new ideas. And clearly we’re not going to have a meeting of the minds on my suggestions (from my post).

     I’m happy to continue this dialogue – and I’m happy to answer questions – but I can’t dig through paragraphs of disagreement to find specific questions. Please post them in a nice list or bullet point form.
148. 

     148Deepak Shetty

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:28

     Stephen @146
     One question from me. If God(however you want to verify this being) asked you to do something which is immoral (by your definition) , would you still do it? Or would you change your definition of morality?
149. 

     149PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:29

     Stephen asked me:
     >[Dave] “Personally, I’m really glad I do not live near Stephen: if he ever hears a secret voice telling him to do as the sons of Levi did, any non-Christians nearby just might end up dead.
     >[Dave]Of course, he could allay that concern a bit by declaring that he condemns the mass murders described in Exodus 32.
     >Dave]But he won’t.”

     >[Stephen]Now, logically, what in the world makes that a logical conclusion from what I’ve said?

     I’m afraid that is pretty obvious.

     An awful lot of religious believers are constantly saying that they believe God has told them something – this is not a rare event.

     Unfortunately, fairly often what God tells the religious believers to do is to kill someone: this happened, so the Bible says, in the Golden Calf incident (and many other OT passages). Of course, the 9/11 terrorists also believed they were carrying out God’s will. And, here in the USA, it is depressingly often that God tells US military or government leaders to kill someone – periodically, we have a quasi-scandal when some US leader announces that the killing is God’s will.

     So… if you believe that it is right to kill when God orders it, given the propensity of religious believers to hear such orders from God, I am kind of glad you are not my next-door neighbor!

     Buddhists or Jains, for example, would seem a bit safer.

     Dave
150. 

     150PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:55

     Nathan wrote to me:
     >I’d be interested to know PhysicistDave how you would respond to disagreement with things you ask your children to do (if you have them)? Or, if you were a military officer how you would respond to an order you disagreed with?

     If I tell my kids to do something that is morally wrong, I expect them to disobey.

     I did this with my own parents, Nathan.

     From time to time, well before I started school, they ordered me to lie, what they called “little white lies.”

     I refused.

     By the time I was in grade school, they stopped, since they knew I would refuse to lie.

     If I were a military officer and given an order that I thought was morally wrong, I would disobey it.

     Incidentally, the United States “Uniform Code of Military Justice” *requires* US servicemen to disobey an “unlawful order.”

     I do not think that power or authority trumps morality, and as I indicated, I have thought this since long before I started kindergarten – as my parents will ruefully attest.

     I am, frankly, always stunned, even at my advanced age, to find that there are people who do not recognize this elementary fact of morality – it honestly seems to me that all of you who do not recognize this are basically psychopaths.

     Are you not aware that this is a basic issue in philosophy that goes back over two thousand years? It is referred to as the “Euthyphro dilemma” from Plato.

     Many Christian philosophers (e.g., Aquinas) were on my side of the Euthyphro issue.

     Many more Christians today seem to be moral relativists, such as yourself and Stephen, who lack any sense that there are standards of morality higher than any human or divine authority.

     I trust you can see why this is extremely worrisome.

     In the end, it makes a war of all against all inevitable, for we know that what God tells you, what Allah tells bin Laden, etc. are certain to lead to violent conflict.

     If there is no standard of morality higher than God, and if humans keep believing in God(s), then the future for humanity is very bleak indeed.

     Dave
151. 

     151Mejdrich

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:56

     Hey Nathan,

     Telling a group of people they aren’t nice isn’t nice. Then referring to them as an “angry mob” when they call foul isn’t nice, either.

     Please stop being a jerk. :)

     - Mejdrich
152. 

     152Nathan

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 15:58

     Dave,

     For the Christian there is no higher morality than divine morality – and I’m not sure why “love your neighbour as yourself” is troubling…

     This doesn’t mean we’re relativists – it means the arbiter of morality is the divine ruler of the world, and not the collective mind of its creators.

     Are you a vegetarian? Is it moral to do to animals what you object to having done to humans?
153. 

     153Nathan

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 16:00

     Mejdrich,

     Have you read the comments here? Or at pharyngula?

     I would suggest the label “angry mob” is more than appropriate.
154. 

     154Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 16:04

     No offense intended Deepak, but from what I understand of most Christian conceptions of God, your question is a little like asking “If you discovered a square triangle, would you believe it, or just change your understanding of geometry to account for it?”.

     The hypothetical is nonsense. If I heard a voice in my head telling me to kill people, I’d find a shrink PDQ and get myself committed. That is a consistent reaction for Christians, since they generally believe that any revelation that is contrary to the Bible is not a revelation of God. Demanding that I express the wrath of God goes against the admonition that God says “vengeance is mine, I will repay”.

     And physicistDave, if it’s so obvious, maybe you could respond to what I actually say instead of what you wanted me to say.

     I did not say “if you believe God tells you to do something, it must be right”, I said that in the context of Genesis 32, assuming the truth of the narrative, what the levites did is not immoral.

     Those are simply different statements. This may be why Nathan had point 5 above. Stop using strawmen.

     You asked me to assume 1) That God exists 2) That the existent God did IN FACT tell the levites to do this 3) that there were real consequences to the disobedience that the Israelites had done (which amounted to reneging on an agreement that got them out of Egypt) and 4) there were no innocent Israelites.

     based on those points as facts, I am bound to the conclusion I made. Where is my mistake?

     You seem to be trying to find a method of attacking my morality directly rather than dealing with the concept of morality, or the morality of the text in question, something I’ve been trying very hard to do. I had assumed you wanted to do that.

     And I am not a moral relativist.

     But I have another question, considering that you seem to place your morality above all forms of authority. If you came to believe that it was moral to murder someone, would you do it, even in the face of all the people and authorities who would oppose you? To be blunt, I find privately held morality far more problematic, and decidedly more relativist, than even postmodern Christians.
155. 

     155Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 16:14

     BTW, I would have to check some, but from what I remember of Aquinas, he would not say that morality is higher than God, but rather that God and morality are coextensive. God would not order the morally incorrect, because God is moral. That you see Genesis 32 as immoral is not a moral failing in God.
156. 

     156Patrick

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 16:18

     I would go with mob-ish. And not angry. Just opinionated. But I would say most of the mob lacks the passion one needs to be angry.

     Dave… I dunno, man. Props to being an Atheist but, I think you have to check your logic on your last post. I’m with you on God being dangerous for society; don’t get me wrong.

     Unfortunately, I fear you fell out side of the parameters in your dialog with Stephen. You can’t truly criticize somebody’s moral compass by that road. Not if the opposing person has a firm grasp on the real theology of the thing.

     Stephen, hats off to you. I’m not converted, but this was fun.
157. 

     157James

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 16:33

     Nathan,

     If I could first state that I think it’s amazing how disrespectful some people are, while your initial message was a little accusatory you were not at all obscene, and there is no reason to be obscene in response to said post.

     I have only one question for you, which is related to the divine morality you have been discussing, yet a more intimate perspective.

     Suppose you are risen into heaven after your death, and are allowed to know the fate of all of those who were in your life. How would you deal with knowing completely moral people, perhaps even a fireman who saved your life once, were burning in hell for all of eternity only because they didn’t believe in God the way you did?

     I hope this question does not seem to inflammatory, but it has been my key struggle with Christianity for quite some time.

     Thanks for taking time to continue to rationally respond to these posts. Continue ignoring those who are being outrageous, for there is nothing to benefit from their bigotry than their own selfish amusement.

     -James
158. 

     158Mejdrich

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 16:41

     Nathan,

     Of course they’re angry. You called them all smug. What did you expect?

     As an Atheist, I’m pretty well used to bigotry thrown my way. Sometimes I let it roll of my back. Sometimes I call Christians out on it. Let me put it this way- how would you react if someone said, “The problem with all black people is they are lazy.” Or substitute in “jews” and “frugal”. This kind of bigotry is old news.

     But on the point, if you really think we’re smug, it’s probably because we tend to know our bible better than Christians. Every atheist ends up being an expert on god issues just as a survival mechanism. And, to be honest, it gets old.

     I wish y’all were leaving us alone, but the overwhelming majority of Christians aren’t. They want creationism to replace science. They want their religious values to be the law of the land. There is no debating with them, because the majority also think that a god personally approves of their opinions.

     And then, after all of that, they call US smug. Sometimes it’s just more than we can take.

     - Mejdrich
159. 

     159PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 18:35

     Nathan wrote to me:
     >For the Christian there is no higher morality than divine morality – and I’m not sure why “love your neighbour as yourself” is troubling…

     Unfortunately, Nathan, as you yourself have testified, and as history has abundantly illustrated, that is not the whole of Christian morality.

     You yourself, earlier this evening, endorsed mass murder when supposedly ordered by God.

     And, quite frankly, not only in history but even today, I see enormously more of that morality among Christians than “love thy neighbour.”

     Dave
160. 

     160PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 18:39

     Patrick,

     I did not expect you to agree with me: morally, you are a moral relativist, just like Stephen and Nathan.

     Earlier, you posted various comments about morality assuring everyone that I probably agreed with them.

     I didn’t.

     Dave
161. 

     161PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 18:50

     Stephen wrote to me:
     > And physicistDave, if it’s so obvious, maybe you could respond to what I actually say instead of what you wanted me to say.
     >I did not say “if you believe God tells you to do something, it must be right”, I said that in the context of Genesis 32, assuming the truth of the narrative, what the levites did is not immoral.

     Unfortunately, Stephen, in practice, it is logically impossible for a particular person to distinguish between the case of his believing that God is telling him to do something and God really telling him to do something.

     If he truly believes God is telling him something, then, from his perspective, God really is telling him.

     So, “murder people if God really tells you to” ends up being, in practice, logically equivalent to “murder if you truly believe God is telling you to.”

     And, this is not academic: exactly this has happened again and again over the centuries and is happening still today.

     If you cannot see that, you know very little about either history or current events.

     Dave
162. 

     162Bryan

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 18:55

     At first, I was going to respond in the spirit of good debate, but that isn’t going to happen here.

     It was tough to sift through all the fighting in these comments, but I will say that if you look at the logic here, Nathan, you are getting owned.

     To embellish a bit:

     unless it’s completely measurable – repeatedly – which doesn’t really stand with questions of origins
     Patently false.

     I’m providing a list of tips that will make your disagreement more agreeable.

     What the heck does that mean?

     and I will bring up Hitler in an argument with an atheist every time you argue with an extreme position that is demonstrably not consistent with Christianity.

     That is not the proper application of Godwin’s law at all. It is not a retort for what you don’t agree with; it is a retort to the logical fallacy “Reductio ad hitlerum”.

     When you say “there is no evidence” what you’re really saying is that you have found the evidence put forward by believers unconvincing.

     Because their claims are not backed by any evidence. Every single claim of evidence has always been debunked by rigorous study of history or science.

     and when it comes to the question of Jesus – who Christians believe to be God – there are plenty of first hand witnesses and documentation.

     This has all been debunked by modern Theologians, many of whom, by the way, are Christians.
163. 

     163Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:07

     PhysicistDave:

     Honestly the immorality and baptizing violence is (I think) the greatest sin of the Western Church.

     I think you may oversimplify Christian epistemology though. Christians do not believe that the individual has the ability to discern the will of God independent of external authorities. That is why they assert the authority of scripture, and demand that interpretation be done amongst the community of believers. There are checks in historic Christian doctrine against what you’re saying, because for a Christian morality is not relative to individual perception. Morality is absolute and grounded in the nature and being of God. God is not fallible, but we are.

     Again, Christians are not limited to a simple me-God duality. being “convinced that God told me” is a lot more than getting a voice from the great beyond in Christian thinking.

     Finally, if you do not agree with Patrick’s definition of evil, what is yours? I might not have actually answered your question then.
164. 

     164PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:07

     Stephen wrote,
     > You asked me to assume 1) That God exists 2) That the existent God did IN FACT tell the levites to do this 3) that there were real consequences to the disobedience that the Israelites had done (which amounted to reneging on an agreement that got them out of Egypt) and 4) there were no innocent Israelites. based on those points as facts, I am bound to the conclusion I made. Where is my mistake?

     I don’t think it is possible to explain this to you.

     In all honesty, I don’t think you are very bright intellectually, and so I think you lack the intellectual ability to see that the conclusion that you say you are “bound to” does not follow at all from the premises. Again, this is a standard point, the Euthyphro dilemma, made in any good first-year philosophy class, and it has been known for thousands of years.

     I also think your Christian background (whether or not you are now a practicing Christian) has so deranged your moral sense that you cannot even conceive the idea that there are many people who think that there are moral standards independent of, and higher than, any human or divine authority.

     I don’t expect you to agree with me, but can you even understand that I myself (and many other people, going back to Socrates and Plato) do think this?

     I don’t think you can.

     Dave
165. 

     165Derek Murphy

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:20

     Great article; it really generates discussion. I’ve written a response on my website, holyblasphemy.net.
166. 

     166Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:26

     PhysicistDave,

     I’m well aware of the Euthyphro dilemma, my undergrad concentration was in ancient Greek thought. Where do you fall on it? I am assuming that by saying “there is morality above divine and human”, you are saying that a divine being would state something because it is moral (meaning the morality binds God and everyone else to act morally).

     The problem with this is twofold. Since, at basis you seem to want to say that God is evil in Genesis 32 because he does not meet that ultimate standard of morality, we will need some way to know what this ultimate standard is (thus knowing that God does not meet it). That was the question I asked near the beginning. Since one of your atheist brethern has already mischaracterized your opinion, I think it’s clear my question is fair. Secondly, what grounds such a morality, if not God (which you clearly believe it does not).

     That said, my answer is actually non-sequential to the Euthyphro dilemma (at least in its classical formulation “is it good because the gods will it, or do the gods will it because it is good”). My answer simply assumed the Biblical belief that God is good and thus the effect (that God’s command is good, whether because he adheres to higher morality, or because things are good when God commands them, his command must be moral) is that the command given is moral on either answer. The dilemma simply does not enter the mix, because we have already assumed it to the point that the dilemma is immaterial.

     Though my understanding could be because I’m deranged and intellectually incapable. :-)

     And I can understand that you believe such, I’m just at a loss to understand what that has to do with the discussion at hand.
167. 

     167PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:35

     Stephen wrote to me:
     >No, I do not openly endorse evil. The levites were not being evil based on your own framing of the question.

     Yes, you did openly endorse evil.

     I did not frame the question so as to state that they were not evil.

     I merely framed the question so as to assume, for the sake of discussion, that they were doing what God ordered them to do.

     The mere fact that God ordered something does not logically imply that it is not evil.

     You chose to endorse the action of mass murder based on the stipulation that God ordered it.

     In my book, that makes you the very mudoel of evil, the poster-boy for evil.

     I truly believe that you are a profoundly evil person, and I am glad you do not live in my neighborhood.

     Dave
168. 

     168PhysicistDave

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:47

     Nathan,

     You seem truly bemused by the flak tossed your way over on Pharyngula.

     Let me try one last time to explain that.

     There are a lot of very highly educated people at Pharyngula: many of us have Ph.D.s in natural science.

     You made a very large number of statements about atheists, science, etc. that indicated that you were a very poorly educated person who knew very little about atheists, science, or even the Bible itself (as when you said something about the Bible being internally consistent – laughable to anyone who reads the Bible carefully, much less to anyone who knows anything about the last two centuries of Biblical scholarship).

     And, yet, when anyone tried to point out your logical and factual errors to you, you were the very model of a loutish, ignorant student, simply arrogantly restating your errors and unwilling to learn from those who are much better educated than you.

     This behavior on your part was extremely boorish, especially since you were a guest on Pharyngula, and people understandably reacted angrily.

     I myself refrained from hurling any obscenities your way, but I certainly understood the urge!

     For me, the crowning absurdity was your claim:
     > I’m quite an intelligent guy (apparently)…

     Do you really believe that?

     Have you never noticed that, intellectually speaking, you are not exactly one of the brighter stars in the firmament?

     I have known four Nobel laureates in physics. They were bright.

     You are not.

     You have a lousy dead-end government job. Your supposed expertise is in PR, an area not exactly known for being intellectually demanding.

     Doesn’t this tell you something?

     I am pretty sure you are completely ineducable – just as a drunk cannot cure himself of his alcoholism until he admits he is an alcoholic, so also you cannot cure yourself of your ignorance until you admit the extraordinary depth of that ignorance.

     And, you clearly will not do that.

     Morally, you are also a truly despicable human being, as shown by your willing endorsement of mass murder if ordered by God.

     I sincerely urge you to think about not having children.

     You may wonder why I went to the trouble to participate in this thread. I am homeschooling my kids and we are covering the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, including the history of the ancient Israelites. I wanted to illustrate to them that the horrible evil of ancient Judaism – things such as the mass murder in Exodus 32, the praise of Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, etc. – are not just distant echoes from the ancient past but that they live on today as moral blights in the lives of real contemporary human beings.

     You showed my kids that this is true.

     I am leaving this thread, since the main participants now seem to be you and Stephen, and I cannot have any personal respect for either of you.

     In closing, if you ever do decide to honestly plumb the depths of your profound ignorance, let me suggest three books you might find useful:

     Alan Donagan’s “The Theory of Morality” – he specifically addresses your question about obeying military superiors.

     Finkelstein’s and Silberman’s “The Bible Unearthed” – the Old Testament is now known to be largely false.

     Bart Ehrman’s “Jesus Interrupted” – the New Testament is also known to be a pack of lies.

     These are all serious scholarly books by serious academics – footnotes and all the rest.

     I will not help you any more. It is up to you.

     Reply to this post as you wish, but do not expect a reply in return from me – I do not plan on checking this thread again.

     Dave
169. 

     169Stephen

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 19:47

     (sigh) You stated that the narrative (I assumed the bible) was to be assumed valid for the sake of argument. The Bible states that God is good. ergo, I drew the conclusion Aquinas (whom you claimed agreed with you) does concerning the commands of God.

     Now if you want to limit the narrative, that’s fine. Then from the two differing definitions of Evil I was given (admittedly not by you) I again pointed out why such would be moral both from a purely utilitarian and a progressivist morality for the Levites to perform as they did, whether God was himself moral to give the command or not.

     You have (to this point) given no other definition of evil (save to say that both I and God are such), and so I still cannot (and apparently have not) answered.
170. 

     170Joel

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 21:35

     Nathan, more than anything this list reminds me of an upper-middle class white man beaming about how color blind he is, while anyone with any education in group dynamics or race relations is cringing because his being color blind, like your not being smug (although I find that a dubious notion to begin with) is a privilege only held by those in the majority. At no point in your lifetime or mine are you ever likely to be taken advantage of or denied rights because you failed to be assertive enough or smug enough, or willing to call someone on their profoundly unreasonable behavior or demands. It’s convenient that you brought up the flying spaghetti monster, because that is a perfect example. The flying spaghetti monster isn’t a strawman, or smug, it was a satirical response to the outrageous demands by Christians to corrupt the scientific curriculum with their categorically unscientific beliefs, it’s making a point that had someone come in with any other unsubstantiated belief and made such demands they would be laughed out of the room.
     You further display your privilege in suggestions 3 and 5, in which you advise that we should be more respectful of your beliefs, not because they are true, or well founded in any rational or empirical sense, but because they are popular, and over the course of your responses on this thread you have, through various feats of logical gymnastics suggested to the people who maintain that your beliefs are irrational that they are in fact being the irrational ones to run the risk of eternal hellfire without any rationale as to why your hellfire is any more of a risk than the Muslim, or Nordic, or Mormon hellfire, other than the popularity of your beliefs.
     You then proceed to feel assailed by those mob-like atheists when they voice their issues with your condescending diatribe posted in the public domain.
     I don’t expect to change your mind about any of this, I just felt obligated to point out that “seeming nicer” without being abused isn’t a privilege that’s extended to everyone.
171. 

     171Cody

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 21:47

     ‘God speaks to me through a book’.

     What a sham. Life’s more complex then commandments. The world has moved beyond this primitive jabber. These days Christianity can be a pin hole, something that leaves you weak and STUPID.
172. 

     172October Mermaid

     wrote on 29 September 2009 at 21:50

     I notice that when people are losing in a debate, they either resort to insults OR they try to imply that the other person is wrong because they were insulting. This smacks of the latter.

     Basically this just looks like a desperate plea of “Please be nice to me and my beliefs. Sure, they’re silly and completely insupportable by any real evidence, but if you mock them, you risk toppling my shaky mental house of cards! Oh, and *ahem* also, we’re both right, and um, we both have evidence, if you, y’know, completely change the meaning of the word evidence. There! Everyone’s happy now!”

     Basically, you’re just smart enough to realize that you’re getting your ass handed to you on an intellectual level, and so the best you can do is whine and say “Well, you’re mean, so there!”

     And then, cynically, you add in a few really stupid phrases that you know people will call you on, and when they do, you can triumphantly crow “See! Mean! So mean!” and disregard it.

     Pathetic.
173. 

     173Richard

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 0:00

     PhysicistDave & Patrick Salomon, I appreciate your opinion and thanks, but just out of curiosity I’d like to be clear re: which of my posts you were agreeing with, the one at number 84 or at 107?
174. 

     174Patrick

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 0:33

     Dave,

     Then I do not understand your positions, or what you were even trying to argue. I’m a “moral relativist”? If your name didn’t link to some blog lauding your Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics, I would have assumed that you were just some dumb atheist who, while well intentioned in engaging in this debate, lacked some of the background necessary to craft a solid argument.

     Stephen asked you to define evil and I, based off of some of you previous posts, sought to try and define it for you. You informed me that I was wrong, (in your world, it seems that a lot of people other than yourself are wrong) but still failed to present Stephen with a definition.

     It was this failure, along with further disregard for parameters that you set, that is making you come off as… well.. an uninformed Christian attempting to make a morals argument on a foundation of matchsticks.

     The best that you can come up with is “I truly believe that you are a profoundly evil person, and I am glad you do not live in my neighborhood”?. Really?

     And, you are willing to allow for the assumption that the “narrative” of the Christian God, not just any god, ordered the mass murder… but you refuse to allow for the assumption that any other part of that narrative is false, including the supposedly “just” justificications which Stephen has been defending?

     Gee… that sounds like how the Christians pick and choose which parts of the Bible are actually “important” and which aren’t.

     You can’t have your cake and eat it too. As a theoretical physicist, I assume you have some sort of skill in balancing equations; although, this discussion could suggest otherwise. Think of your responses to Stephen and Nathan as equations, where every point must be justified and balanced out by some associated piece of logic.

     Also, you say “moral relativist” like its a bad thing. I had to take on that role in this discussion because of mistakes you made in the discourse.

     Honestly, I’m an atheist too. And, if I were ever a debate club member and had to argue with Christians… I probably wouldn’t pick you for my team.

     Stephen would be cool though.
175. 

     175Patrick

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 0:42

     Richard: 107. You did a better job clarifying the “evil” thing than Mr. “I’m a BAMF Theoretical Physicist” over there.

     One of the few times I’ve seen the guy on the Christian team come out on top in a discussion like this one.
176. 

     176James

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 1:21

     Gee golly whizz! You really think we could seem nicer? I mean I know we could never BE nicer what with us not being religious and all but the idea that people won’t notice well that just butters my crumpets!

     You’re a real class act pinhead!
177. 

     177truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 1:30

     I think you may oversimplify Christian epistemology though. Christians do not believe that the individual has the ability to discern the will of God independent of external authorities. That is why they assert the authority of scripture, and demand that interpretation be done amongst the community of believers.

     This really isn’t any less troubling than an individual listening directly to a voice in his head and obeying. Assigning authority to a book written and edited by men means you are letting other people tell you what God wants. Interpreting it among a community of believers does the same.

     Why not just decide for yourself what kind of person you want to be and what kind of world you want to live in? Epicurus came up with the concept of “love your neighbor as yourself” without appealing to any gods or scriptures.
178. 

     178Vic

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 1:56

     And now…..pleaaaaseee…tell us 3…yeah just 3 things that would make christians seem more inteligents
179. 

     179Deepak Shetty

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 2:07

     Stephen@154
     No offense taken. Your analogy of the square triangle only applies if you define morality as whatever God says(via a book normally) is moral, is indeed moral. Is that your stand?
     I’d argue that there are many cases (e.g. Jesus doesn’t explicitly mention anything about gay marriage nor about contraception ) where the existing book doesn’t cover what the moral approach is. However you will still have used your experience/intelligence to pick what you consider is moral. Or in some cases there is a clear commandment – Thou shalt not murder. I assume you believe this is moral. What if God (not some voice in your head), but someone you could verify as God (i leave this as an exercise to you, what would someone have to do to prove to you that he/she/it is God) told you to do something that contradicts that definition of morality you have (e.g. in the example put forth to you , Go and kill the people I currently dislike)
180. 

     180A. Noyd

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 2:31

     Antony L: “Next, i think both Christians and Atheists can be nicer about what people believe…”

     No, because what Christians believe is wrong. If you mean we can be nicer to each other as people, you’re welcome to argue that, but you cannot ask me to pretend your beliefs deserve respect or are rational, intelligent or have any bearing on reality when they very clearly do not. What you are saying here is tantamount to me telling you to simply admit the Christian god doesn’t exist.

     “because, in my humble opinion, you can neither prove God nor disprove God scientifically.”

     Your humble opinion is misinformed. While perhaps we can never absolutely disprove god’s existence, but we can certainly disprove certain claims and certain gods. Interventionist gods are quite easy to tear down. If you say “my god has X effect in the world” we can test for X effect. If it’s not there, your claim is false. If all your claims are false, then your god doesn’t exist. A god might, but not yours. If your god doesn’t exist and there’s no evidence for any other god existing, it’s foolish to believe in any particular one actually existing.

     “Therefore, it would seem to me that both sides have an element of trust or “faith” attached to their beliefs.”

     Ah, yes, the favored accusation of theists. Maybe you should “respect” the beliefs of atheists by learning what it is we actually believe, eh? I don’t have faith of the irrational religious sort. My beliefs will change with evidence. The majority already have. Yes, some atheists believe there absolutely is no god, but most do not. Some who absolutely disbelieve even do so via sound reasoning: god cannot be defined in any meaningful, non-contradictory way that cannot also be disproven. Some–a very slim minority–dismiss god because they simply believe, without reason, that god does not exist. These you might say have “faith” like a Christian has faith, but the rest of us do not.

     “there are plenty of intelligent people on both sides of the fence”

     Indeed. But it takes suppression of that intelligence to believe in god.

     “Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are a bad person…personally, i believe that there is a God, you may not but we both agree that murder, paedophilia, rape etc are wrong and you would be a bad person if you did this.”

     Yet religion can make good people do or think horrible things. For instance, a lot of people (perhaps not you) support the RCC’s attempts to cover up the child rapes perpetrated by their clergy. While they would be against child rape normally, if it’s something the church did, they become irrational about it and either deny it happened or try to excuse it somehow. They might not support murder, but they would be willing to demand a nine year old girl try to carry twins to term when her body isn’t able and being refused an abortion is a death sentence. A religious terrorist (of any faith, not just Islam) might believe murder is wrong, but his religion will allow him to rationalize killing enemies in the service of god. So what we atheists and religious folk agree on, morally, is only ever superficially similar, and one cannot use non-belief in god to rationalize immorality like one can with belief in god.

     “Mistakes have been made by the church in the past. Scientists have also made mistakes in their beliefs (like the atom being the smallest particle, etc). Both sides need to acknowledge these mistakes and move on and live better.”

     Science is a system with mistake-detection built in and it is not a system that instructs people how to behave. In science, reality has the final say. Religion is a system of instruction and “mistakes” are just your interpretation against another fellow’s interpretation. In religion, someone who nobody can prove exists supposedly has the final say.

     “We all have secrets in the closet that we don’t want to see the light of day – in other words, no one is perfect. I think it would be fair to say that “love one another as you love yourself” is not just a quote from Jesus but reflected in other religions as well agreed to by many atheists i know.”

     So why cloak it in religion at all? A huge part of your imperfection is your irrational acceptance of religious beliefs. No, I’m not perfect either, but that doesn’t mean that I’m equally mistaken about what I accept is true. Why wouldn’t I try to show you how you’re wrong if I love you as I love myself?

     “Forgive me when i make mistakes because if you ever make a mistake, i would forgive you too…”

     And if you’re making a mistake, I will tell you that because if I ever made a mistake, I would want to be told as well. I know you really, really want atheists and theists to be on equal footing in the ring, but we can’t both be right and we’re just so much better grounded. It sounds arrogant to say that, but it’s true. And if, to even things up, we scrap the concepts of fact and truth, then what are we arguing over?
181. 

     181A. Noyd

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 2:32

     Evan: “Atheist aren’t any better than Christians, though. Especially when it comes to loving the people around them. No one group can claim that they are better than the other. Both have major flaws.”

     Atheists are not saying we’re less flawed as human beings, but our thinking is. It’s not perfect, no, but it’s more critical, more rational, more consistent and more courageous. Christian thinking on religion requires embracing flaws. Atheist thinking invites exposing and rejecting flaws. Why should we have to be humble in acknowledging this, especially when religion has such a pernicious effect on society?

     ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

     Nathan: “Would I have killed them? That would have been a struggle between giving up my autonomy and desire not to kill people, and obeying the direct commands of the Lord.
     This is logical. If God is God then he sets the standards – not us.”

     And this is why religion is disgusting.

     “It’s the judge who gets to decide what’s just – not the criminal.”

     Bad analogy. You’re not the criminal in the story, you’re the executioner. Also, at least these days, judges decide what’s just according to laws they did not write themselves whereas you think god writes the laws.

     “For the Christian there is no higher morality than divine morality – and I’m not sure why “love your neighbour as yourself” is troubling…”

     Wow, you are so dishonest. I’m sure PhysicistDave believes in loving one’s neighbor just as I’m sure he doesn’t need a god to tell him to do so. He’s very clearly asking about your stance on mass murder.

     “Are you a vegetarian? Is it moral to do to animals what you object to having done to humans?”

     Does it upset you to admit that you would perform mass murder if you think god (for whom there is no evidence!) told you that you should?

     “I would suggest the label “angry mob” is more than appropriate.”

     I would suggest that you’re rather full of yourself and don’t know when you’re being laughed at. Your stupidity was used as an example of the sort of hypocritical, backwards thinking that we atheists put up with on a daily basis. It makes us frustrated and sad.

     ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

     Stephen: “And I am not a moral relativist.”

     Hahaha, yes you are. If your answer to “is X moral?” changes depending on whether condition Y (say, god exists) is true, then you are a moral relativist. Deal with it. Me, I wouldn’t care if god did exist. If he told me I should believe mass murder is moral, I’d tell him to go spin on his own knob and that threatening me with eternal torture for disobedience was a total dick move for an oh-so-omnipotent and “loving” fellow.
182. 

     182Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 2:57

     A Noyd:

     I’m just going to reply to what you said to me, as the sheer mass of claims you made in your comments would be far more than I care to take the time to check.

     I did not claim that my morality changes based on a condition such as the existence of God, I did not make any statement about my own moral standpoint whatsoever (save stating that I was not a moral relativist). Traditionally though, an appeal to God is not morally relativistic. Moral Relativism is usually used to refer to the belief that morality is determined by the individual’s context (including historical, cultural and sociological context) not by appeal to a transcendent existent ground for morality as is true for Christian theists.

     As I pointed out to physicistDave, the example I was given, and answered to, had already skipped the basis of the Euthyphro dilemma (as to whether the grounding was in God or in a supramorality), as effectively it would matter little whether God was simply adhering to morality in his command, or the command was moral because He had made it. The command was a moral one on either answer to the dilemma in the example.

     I would like to know what the basis for your morality is. Why would you tell an existent God to “spin on his own knob”, and why would that be a moral thing to do?
183. 

     183Courtnay

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 3:08

     just to clear everything up.

     let me show you what you dedicate your lives too:

     http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197#

     enjoy.
184. 

     184Mejdrich

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 3:54

     Stephen,

     “I would like to know what the basis for your morality is. Why would you tell an existent God to “spin on his own knob”, and why would that be a moral thing to do?”

     Hope you don’t mind if I jump in.

     Asking for the basis of morality is like asking the basis of your legs. You have it because it’s helpful. People with functional ethical systems are more likely to succeed and have successful children. Pretty much end of story.

     So if you have a god who tells you to stone your children to death if they disobey, are gay, or work on Sunday, how COULD it be a moral thing to go along with him?

     The only way is if your love for your children is less potent to you than your blind faith in your deity. *shrug*
185. 

     185Grant L

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 3:56

     Nathan – wow….just, wow…its like a hideous mix of the pot calling the kettle black and just outright misrepresentations of science and atheism.

     1) Stop being smug? Which is the more smug view do you suppose: the unshakable, unsupported by evidence belief that you know the will of a cosmic super intelligence that created everything and who, by the by, speaks to you through the pages of a 1,500 year old book (a proposition no less crazy than claiming god speaks to someone in his head.) or a world view based on evidence that is modified by new data? Sorry, but it is the atheist, generally, who says “I don’t know” when there is no evidence and who follows the evidence where it takes him. It’s your religious belief, which pre-determines your conclusions (which are often supremely arrogant – ie, knowing the will of a god).

     2) going to have call BS on this one, mate. Are you SERIOUSLY going to try and have us believe that evangelicals only want to preach to “non-decideds” Are you really, with a straight face, going to say there are not legions of evangelicals who believe it their moral duty to “save” non-believers – be their atheists, or Jews, or Muslism or whatever non-Christian thing they happen to be? I must have missed the passage in the bible where Jesus his followers to out to and spread the “good news” but only to those with no religion who are not atheists….

     3) Yes very smart people believe in a god or gods. This true. Thanks. However, very smart people also once believed the sun went around the earth. They have very good, and eventually, very complex reasons for believing they were right. But they weren’t. They were as wrong as too left shoes. The fact is that once you get past arcane theological clap trap, it all boils down to evidence. Either your specific chosen god exists as you believe he does, or he doesn’t. Saying some smart people also believe what you do is not, in any sense, evidence you are right.

     4) Sorry dude, but here you are just wronger than the two left shoes. Science uses both inductive and deductive logic. Its just a bloody fact. And, because science is also testing and challenging its own conclusions, attempting to prove its own conclusions WRONG (this is how science works!) the process has a self correcting system built into it. NOthing is above being challenged or proven wrong, even theories that have stood for a long time. Religion on the other hand, particularly the Abrahamic ones, says “this is the way the universe it and that is that. No questions please.” It is easy to see how religion can cause a guy to walk into a school room and shoot up a bunch of students he figures are not godly enough. Harder to see how the scientific method provides that kind of justifications. You’re just daft on this point.

     5) Yeah, so what you are here is that you’ve got YOUR interpretation of the bible which you think is correct and are rejecting the just as valid interpretation of other Christians who view the OT differently than you do. (see your first point about being so smug.) Also the FSM and Russell’s tea pot are not strawmen, but rather illustrate a very serious point.
186. 

     186A. Noyd

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 4:23

     Stephen: “I did not claim that my morality changes based on a condition such as the existence of God, I did not make any statement about my own moral standpoint whatsoever…”

     Then you did not answer PhysicistDave’s question. As he said in 120: “I was clearly trying to ask what you believe!”
     121: “did the mass murderers do the right thing in murdering thousands at the command of Yahweh and Moses, or do you think their actions were horrifyingly evil?”
     126: “I’ll bet you’ll never show the guts to tell us whether you approve or disapprove of the behavior described in Exodus 32, now will you?”
     139: “The question is very clear and very simple: where do you stand on the mass murders described in Exodus 32 –do you condone them or condemn them?”
     141: “I honestly want to know whether Nathan and Stephen approve of or condemn the horrific actions related in Exodus 32.”

     Now, you might be able to argue that before 120 he didn’t make it clear the question was about whether you, personally, believe the people in the Exodus story behaved morally, but after he explained what he was after, you can’t say you answered his question if you did not make any statement about your own moral standpoint. You made only a waffling, relativistic statement.

     “Moral Relativism is usually used to refer to the belief that morality is determined by the individual’s context (including historical, cultural and sociological context) not by appeal to a transcendent existent ground for morality as is true for Christian theists.”

     So what? If you believe that Christian theists are moral for doing what they believe even if it conflicts with whatever you believe is moral, then you are embracing that relativism and are a relativist.

     “I would like to know what the basis for your morality is. Why would you tell an existent God to “spin on his own knob”, and why would that be a moral thing to do?”

     How about you come clean on your own moral standpoint first? And while you’re at it, why don’t you explain what you do believe in, since you’ve been so coy about whether or not you’re a Christian. If you can’t do that, then I don’t owe you any sort of explanation. Your little game of “don’t assume my beliefs, even though I won’t let you see any of them” is really infantile.
187. 

     187Wade

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 7:17

     Nathan, you are a Catholic, right? The inquisition alone makes any claim as reasonability, even centuries later, ludicrous. Just dwindle away into obscurity over the next few hundred years…oh never mind, it’s already happening…
188. 

     188caitgirl

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 8:36

     this is amusing :) spaghetti monster rules!
189. 

     189Nathan

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 8:37

     No Wade, I’m not a Catholic.

     I can understand that the “Saint” part of my name may give that impression.

     I’m decidedly protestant, and the name is meant to be humourous.

     I understand that some of your atheist brethren aren’t great with nuance when it comes to the written word so I’m happy to clear that up.
190. 

     190Patrick

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 9:45

     “I understand that some of your atheist brethren aren’t great with nuance when it comes to the written word so I’m happy to clear that up.”

     Excuse me, Nathan, but that comment just removed any scrap of righteous ground you had to stand on, both in making your initial post and in all ensuing comments.

     What a compelling generalization of atheists. I’d be inclined to respond with “I understand most of your christian brethren are hypocrites when it comes to living by the beliefs they preach”, or “I understand most of your christian brethren are ignorant, southern American red neck hillbillies who like burning crosses on people’s lawns.”

     What happened to don’t be smug? Anything you say after that statement will be unjustified, as far as I’m concerned. You filthy hypocrite.
191. 

     191truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 9:59

     Caitgirl, what’s really funny is the blog post chides us for taking on a simplistic caricature of Christianity with parodies such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but in these comments the author has revealed that he believes in a miracle-working, resurrected Christ based on what he’s read in the Bible and Biblical scholarship. That’s pretty much the same class of supernatural being as a flying spaghetti monster. I really don’t understand why we are supposed to treat them differently.
192. 

     192Edward

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 10:12

     I am personally offended by the main post, and I don’t even consider myself an atheist. I am more of an apathetic. I could care less if there is or isn’t a god. I personally don’t need the doctrine of ANY religion to tell me how to act, or to dictate how and where my life came into existence. If other people need that to function in daily life, that is their choice. It’s just sad to see dialog like this. We can all get along if we try. Talk like this is entirely counterproductive to mankind.

     …but for the record, I don’t find many Christians to be “nicer” when people attack their way of life. So Nathan, stop attacking the athiests. If you want a “nicer” dialog, then start one, but posting something like this is a direct attack. Not very welcoming in my opinion. If it was a verbal boxing match you were looking for, then I guess your post was perfect.
193. 

     193Nathan

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 10:50

     Patrick,

     I’m sorry that you feel that way – but I’m at the point where I’m finding this whole thread pretty risible and dismissing any atheist who bothers to comment on it as a particularly foolish brand of atheist.

     Seriously – what are you all trying to achieve other than trying to demonstrate the truth of my original post to anybody reading this?

     My comment about nuance was based on the fact that my every word has been pieced apart, stripped of the benefit of any form of context and pilloried by an angry mob. It’s just possible, just slightly possible, that us theists are smarter than you believe, and that at times we are capable of humour, sarcasm or brevity.

     Lighten up. Have a look at the general tone of this blog. Read the comments on pharyngula and ask yourself what any non-atheist might think when reading through them.

     Some of the things I’ve been accused of, or the assumptions that have been made about me on the basis of one post are just crazy.
194. 

     194Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 10:53

     Medjrich:

     I apologize if I’m not clear. What makes it more moral to tell a deity to “spin on his own knob” than to obey him? Why is one of those more moral than the other. (and, which one)?

     I’m not asking “why do you stand on your legs”, I’m asking him to please point to what he thinks his legs are.

     A. Noyd:

     I actually also pointed out to physicistDave that I may not have answered his question. I then asked him to properly clarify his question so I could answer him, to which he stated I was too stupid and evil to understand.

     To be honest though, I think that he was not actually trying to further rational discussion, but to dismiss me by making me the issue rather than his claim. It would be like me saying that because a group of atheists descended on a blog that had the tiniest of implied criticisms of atheism in masses, and used his (believed) character as the reason to disparage anything he said to mean that atheism itself is a morally bankrupt system. You see the problem. The character of people are generally not the issue when determining whether ideas are correct.

     I see no reason at all to “come clean” about my own moral standpoint when it’s you and your atheist fellows that are making the claims as to the morality of the God of the Bible. I’m not willing to make my beliefs the issue before we’ve clarified what claim it is you’re making. I don’t think you owe me anything, but I’m pretty sure I owe you nothing either.

     Wade, you say that the inquisition makes the reasonability of a Catholic laughable centuries later. Am I understanding you?

     So why would the actions of another group of people who had the same label as someone else, make that someone else less reasonable? I think you’re missing a few steps in your argument.

     Patrick, please read Nathan’s actual statement (though I’ll agree it may have been angry, we are all guests on his website right now… I get touchy when guests call me stupid and evil then march out). Some atheists, as we have probably all seen firsthand at some point actually are very bad at nuance, and while I will agree that some Christians really are “ignorant, southern American red neck hillbillies who like burning crosses on people’s lawns”, to say that most are is not equivalent to Nathan’s statement. In the first place, because it is not true, and laughable when writing on a Christian blog hosted (I think) in Australia, when neither of the people who are being lumped into the Christian camp are actually American (I’m a Canadian living in Korea).

     The first inclined response is, BTW, true. Most Christians actually are “hypocrites when it comes to living by the beliefs they preach”. Though considering their religion claims that all humans are evil, and that they are no less evil, only redeemed by grace through faith, that isn’t actually a point against the belief system.

     Truthspeaker, I am sorry, I don’t see how the flying spaghetti monster is equivalent to the resurrection of Christ as evidenced in the Bible and Bible scholarship. It doesn’t matter really though, as Nathan’s character and beliefs have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not his original post is true.
195. 

     195Nathan

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 10:55

     PhysicistDave,

     Time for me to respond to one little part of your last comment… without suggesting that historical or scientific studies conducted and peer reviewed by atheists aren’t really likely to get me excited, or have me changing my mind…

     But it was this one:

     “This behavior on your part was extremely boorish, especially since you were a guest on Pharyngula, and people understandably reacted angrily.”

     That I think deserves a response…

     I was a “guest” on Pharyngula the same way that the victim of defamation is when they either stand up in court or seek to have the record set straight.

     Or a “guest” in the sense that someone who has their photographs stolen from a house and displayed at an art gallery is a guest when they go along and cop criticism from visitors to the art gallery for the lack of creativity expressed in their work.

     I was not a guest – had I not gone along to join the discussion I would have been the unwitting victim of almost 200 comments filled with vitriol. Put the boot on the other foot, what would you have had me do?
196. 

     196truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 11:25

     Truthspeaker, I am sorry, I don’t see how the flying spaghetti monster is equivalent to the resurrection of Christ as evidenced in the Bible and Bible scholarship.

     They are both supernatural entities that defy the known laws of nature, who take an interest in the affairs of humankind.
197. 

     197truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 11:27

     I apologize if I’m not clear. What makes it more moral to tell a deity to “spin on his own knob” than to obey him? Why is one of those more moral than the other.

     Many people define immoral behavior as behavior that harms others. If the deity is telling you to harm other people, he is telling you to engage in behavior that can be described as immoral. To obey him would be immoral. To disobey him would be moral.
198. 

     198Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 11:44

     Truthseeker: So the basis of that morality is harm to other humans? So, assuming that the existent God is actually who the Christians claim He is (the loving creator of humanity, who is omniscient and good), and that a human is kinda like most humans (fallible, unknowing and often quite selfish) I don’t see why obeying a human (you) would be more moral than obeying God, considering both have human good in mind.

     That is, unless harm to another human is always in all circumstances. Is that what you want to say?

     And on the equivalence of a resurrected Jesus Christ (for which we have some evidence of having existed in history) and the flying spaghetti monster (who was made up to make fun of theists), I can see why those would be similarities, but don’t you see a few rather pertinent differences between the two? I can see a similarity (much like you and I are similar, we are both commenters, on Nathan’s blog, that care about issues of religion, and both seem able to use English well, but I’m guessing there are a few pertinent details if we were dealing with say, the presidency of a local secular humanist group). How are the spaghetti monster and Jesus Christ equivalent for the discussions at hand?
199. 

     199truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 12:11

     Truthseeker: So the basis of that morality is harm to other humans? So, assuming that the existent God is actually who the Christians claim He is (the loving creator of humanity, who is omniscient and good), and that a human is kinda like most humans (fallible, unknowing and often quite selfish) I don’t see why obeying a human (you) would be more moral than obeying God, considering both have human good in mind.

     Your assumption that the existent God is who Christians claim he is is what I’m taking issue with. If you use harm to others as the sole basis of morality, then you can judge whether God is moral or not just as you can judge humans. Just because a god exists it does not necessarily follow that that god is moral – indeed the gods of my ancestors, or of the ancient Greeks, most definitely were not. Just because a god speaks to humans and claims to be the source of morality, it does not follow that that god is telling the truth.

     And on the equivalence of a resurrected Jesus Christ (for which we have some evidence of having existed in history) and the flying spaghetti monster (who was made up to make fun of theists), I can see why those would be similarities, but don’t you see a few rather pertinent differences between the two? … How are the spaghetti monster and Jesus Christ equivalent for the discussions at hand?

     There are differences between the two, but none of those differences have any bearing on the plausibility of their existence. I’m not talking about the man Jesus – there is evidence to suggest he existed. I’m talking about a person who can perform miracles and can come back from death. A man performing miracles is no more plausible than a monster made of pasta who can fly.

     That’s the similarity that is pertinent to this discussion. A miracle-performing, resurrecting Jesus is exactly as implausible as a flying spaghetti monster, or an angel who tells Joseph Smith where to find golden tablets, or a flying creature that transports Mohammed to Jerusalem, or a fat sleigh-driving man who delivers gifts on Christmas Eve.
200. 

     200truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 12:16

     One minor nitpick: the Flying Spaghetti Monster was not invented to make fun of Christians, it was invented to make fun of creationists who were trying to get 6-day young earth creationism taught in science classes in Florida public schools.

     The Invisible Pink Unicorn was invented to make fun of Christians, but also to make a point about the plausibility of supernatural entities.
201. 

     201arensb

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 12:16

     Stephen:

     And on the equivalence of a resurrected Jesus Christ (for which we have some evidence of having existed in history) and the flying spaghetti monster (who was made up to make fun of theists)

     What evidence are you talking about? I’m aware of the passages in Josephus that talk about the existence of Christians, as well as the famous 4th century addition saying that Jesus was the messiah. I believe there are people like Tacitus who talk about the existence of Christians, but if any contemporaries of Jesus wrote anything about him outside the gospels, I’m not aware of it. Do you have any references?

     Please note the distinction: the existence of Christians is not controversial, but it also doesn’t mean that Jesus existed, any more than the existence of Hindus means that Krishna exists.

     You say that there’s evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. What is this evidence? Is it better than the evidence for Dionysus’s resurrection, or that of Osiris? Or that Jim Jones was a reincarnation of the Buddha?
202. 

     202Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 12:42

     truthspeaker: So the question is now one of plausibility? That is what you want to refer to. I can understand, since there is evidence of many of the things you claim are implausible. So, what makes something plausible? Why is any recorded evidence of a resurrected Christ implausible?

     The harm to others hypothesis as a basis of morality seems to me to suffer from similar vagueness. So, do you mean others as in individual people, harm to others as in many people, or harm to others as in humanity in general? Indeed, do you mean “others” as in humans at all, or life with emotional capacity, or life generally, or other creatures?

     Similarly, while I can see clearly how killing would be “harm” to that person, it doesn’t take much to imagine situations where allowing certain people to live would be harm to others. Indeed, that was the claimed rationale behind most self-claimed atheistic regimes forcibly eliminating pesky clergy people (short pain to avoid long term harm to people). So you can understand why I would ask such a question of an atheist. How does your morality function in relation to that?

     In short, why should I apply your moral standard to God, and how would that moral standard differ from the actions we see claimed for God in the Bible?
203. 

     203Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 13:03

     Arensb:

     Don’t forget the Bible, which is linguistically and stylistically different from the myths you refer to (Dionysus for example, had a recurrent resurrection in a mythical realm). Why are the Gospels and the epistles automatically suspect?

     The Christians that did exist seem to refer to Jesus as historical, see, for example, the Gospel of Luke.

     As to the resurrection account, it is more likely than the Osiris account since Osiris never was claimed to have physically been resurrected. He is depicted as being “alive” in the Spirit realm. That is a different claim than the Gospel one for Jesus.
204. 

     204Oh, the irony...

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 13:36

     Atheists have already won the intellectual debate. Most of us have also taken the next logical step and developed (and continue to develop) individual moral frameworks through introspection and continued study of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, religion, mathematics and science.

     Congratulations on bucking the odds and remaining woefully and willfully ignorant in the age of information and technology. You can thank God for that. You’d think He would’ve given you more sense than that, but then He didn’t want to give us knowledge in the first place now did He?

     The only battle we’ve yet to win is the PR battle, thanks to ignoramus’ like you and pompous windbags spewing hatred and vomiting self-righteous pompacity from pulpits every Sunday seemingly without a tittle of a notion of the repercussions of their bigoted idiocy.

     The sad part is, every atheist I know has very little real impetus to shout their atheism from the rooftops. The only reason the most vocal of us are becoming louder and harder to ignore is because religious stupidity is endangering our societies and world to the point where we realize we must be heard and make a stand for rationality and to try to ensure the progress of humankind and the humanities as a whole, without the scarred baggage of an abusive, personal relationship with Jesus or any other whore pimping his god-damned religion!
205. 

     205Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 13:42

     “The only battle we’ve yet to win is the PR battle, thanks to ignoramus’ like you and pompous windbags spewing hatred and vomiting self-righteous pompacity from pulpits every Sunday seemingly without a tittle of a notion of the repercussions of their bigoted idiocy.”

     Gee, I wonder why the PR battle is not going well…..
206. 

     206Nathan

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 13:48

     Well boys and girls… this has been fun, but I’m sick of moderating comments that pretty much say the same thing – I’ll be closing the comments down in an hour or so – get in while you still can.

     Let me just address a couple of points made by this last commenter first…

     “Atheists have already won the intellectual debate.”

     Only in their own minds. And only if “victory” means having the loudest voice on this particular post and in your own little blogosphere. You do not win a debate by shouting the loudest, nor by finding a publisher for your vitriol and selling a lot of books. That’s not how debate works.

     “Most of us have also taken the next logical step and developed (and continue to develop) individual moral frameworks through introspection and continued study of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, religion, mathematics and science.”

     That’s great, I hope you’re able to convince all the other atheists – and even the agnostics – to live by this moral framework. The world will be a nicer place.

     “Congratulations on bucking the odds and remaining woefully and willfully ignorant in the age of information and technology.”

     Are you suggesting that the age of information and technology has led to less ignorance? I suggest you are wrong – it has led to more spam, pornography and photos of cats. People writing things on the internet creates noise and clutter to search through, it is harder, not easier, to be properly informed.

     “The only battle we’ve yet to win is the PR battle, thanks to ignoramus’ like you”

     I’m not sure that needed an apostrophe – I suggest you wanted to use the plural of ignoramus which would be ignorami? Or something? I don’t know what ownership you’re implying. I would not have pointed this out if it wasn’t for the irony. And the name you’ve put down when filling out the comment form.

     The other ironic thing is that my tips, understood rightly, would have possibly been helpful in the PR battle – and yet you, and your tribe, have done more damage to your cause than good.

     “The only reason the most vocal of us are becoming louder and harder to ignore is because religious stupidity is endangering our societies and world”

     I suggest the danger being caused to the world is a result of human stupidity and will carry on regardless of religions. I suspect religion has been a vehicle of convenience for the power hungry, rather than the root of evil – and this is actually explained better by Christianity than by any other world view.
207. 

     207Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 14:15

     Well, I have to say I’ve enjoyed much of the discussion as well. The discussion spurred some decent thinking in my own intellectually challenged, deranged and evil mind. :-)

     Thanks especially to Patrick, sorry I didn’t get to reply to much later in the conversation, but it’s always a pleasure to run into someone who enjoys thinking, whatever their persuasion.
208. 

     208truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 15:43

     Don’t forget the Bible, which is linguistically and stylistically different from the myths you refer to (Dionysus for example, had a recurrent resurrection in a mythical realm). Why are the Gospels and the epistles automatically suspect?

     Because all written historical accounts are suspect, especially when they involve supernatural elements.

     Or do you believe the Trojan War started because Eris threw a golden apple into the wedding of Thetis and Pelues?

     As to the resurrection account, it is more likely than the Osiris account since Osiris never was claimed to have physically been resurrected. He is depicted as being “alive” in the Spirit realm. That is a different claim than the Gospel one for Jesus.

     How does the fact that it’s a different claim make it more likely? People claim all kinds of things in literature.
209. 

     209truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 15:51

     So the question is now one of plausibility?

     Of course. How else would you determine what to believe than how plausible it is?

     I can understand, since there is evidence of many of the things you claim are implausible. So, what makes something plausible?

     Empirical evidence.

     Why is any recorded evidence of a resurrected Christ implausible?

     Because people don’t come back from the dead. But people are known to make up stories about things.

     The harm to others hypothesis as a basis of morality seems to me to suffer from similar vagueness. So, do you mean others as in individual people, harm to others as in many people, or harm to others as in humanity in general? Indeed, do you mean “others” as in humans at all, or life with emotional capacity, or life generally, or other creatures?

     Similarly, while I can see clearly how killing would be “harm” to that person, it doesn’t take much to imagine situations where allowing certain people to live would be harm to others. Indeed, that was the claimed rationale behind most self-claimed atheistic regimes forcibly eliminating pesky clergy people (short pain to avoid long term harm to people). So you can understand why I would ask such a question of an atheist. How does your morality function in relation to that?

     It is a complicated question. That’s why philosophers, ethicists, and artists have been thinking and writing about it for the past few thousand years.

     In short, why should I apply your moral standard to God,

     Why wouldn’t you?

     and how would that moral standard differ from the actions we see claimed for God in the Bible?

     God starts off by punishing Adam and Eve for seeking knowledge. He orders the Israelites to kill off other tribes, or kill the men and enslave the women and children, in order to establish their kingdom. He orders them to kill people who won’t accept him as the one true god. He orders homosexuals to be killed. He orders children to be killed for disobeying their parents. None of those are good reasons to kill people.

     They may have seemed like good reasons to the people who wrote the Bible. Most of their customs are no more violent and intolerant than other people in that period in history. But coming from a loving god, they don’t make any sense.

     In the New Testament, he demands that people worship Jesus or they will burn in hell. Since we know that people can be good to others without worshiping Jesus, or without even having heard of him, this is clearly not a loving thing to do.
210. 

     210Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 15:52

     “Because all written historical accounts are suspect, especially when they involve supernatural elements.
     Or do you believe the Trojan War started because Eris threw a golden apple into the wedding of Thetis and Pelues?”

     Suspect is a bad choice of words, I apologize. Why is it automatically discounted?

     So, we’re looking for texts that support the resurrection, but if they include supernatural elements, those texts are suspect?

     I disbelieve the reference to the Trojan war because of how I have read that text, I don’t think it was intended to be historical. I have a different understanding of the Gospels, again based on the text itself.

     Finally, while I don’t believe in the cause of the trojan war, I do believe that there WAS a trojan war.
211. 

     211Stephen

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 16:01

     Truthspeaker:

     So plausible empirical evidence is empirical evidence?

     I don’t accept your moral grading of God, because 1) I don’t understand your moral grading and 2) I have serious questions about its moral efficacy.

     If you’re going to tell me what God did and why, you’re going to have to give me the Bible references, so I can deal with them.

     I’m also not sure why intolerance can’t be good in some instances. And the Bible seems to claim that people are actually not good, because well, your moral code and the Bible’s are different. You know by your code that people are good, so you’re unfairly grading another system by your standards.
212. 

     212truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 16:06

     We discount it because, while nobody in modern times has ever come back from the dead, we have abundant evidence that people make up myths and stories with supernatural elements to help make sense of their lives and the human condition.

     I believe there was a Trojan War. And I believe there was an influential figure named Yeshua in the Jerusalem area around 30 AD with new (for the area) religious and social ideas. And there some people a little later who wrote about him, and some of them synthesized it with the emerging Greek philosophical monotheism.

     But nobody really worked miracles or came back from the dead, because those are just story elements that appealed to people of that culture and that place and time, like countless other people in countless other cultures.
213. 

     213truthspeaker

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 16:10

     I don’t think people are good, I think people are capable of being good just as they are capable of being evil. No outside agents are necessary.

     The idea that humans are inherently bad is one of the most destructive ideas in Christianity.

     As for the genocide, slavery, rape, and intolerance I mentioned, those are all from well-known parts of the Bible. As I Christian I assumed you would be familiar with them.

     Of course intolerance isn’t always bad. Intolerance of homosexuality is bad. Insisting that women be subservient to men is bad.

     If you don’t understand my moral system, I suggest reading some Marcus Aurelius and some Kant. It’s not uniquely mine and it’s not exactly new. Causing other humans to suffer is generally considered to be immoral.
214. 

     214Nathan

     wrote on 30 September 2009 at 16:32

     Right.

     This has all been fun. But it’s over now. Thanks for coming all, I hope you’ll stick around for further bouts. I write about atheism about once a week.

     Just so you know – the comments here were mostly in violation of my commenting policy – which I documented here.

     In closing – the question of morality is an interesting one, I’ve touched on it in this post about Atheists and Hitler – but will explore it further in the next day or so.

     Thanks boys and girls. Especially to the snarky atheists who did their best to prove my point…
215. 

     215Rebel Sole

     wrote on 7 October 2009 at 20:03

     I am not an atheist yet you make a good case for it.

     When smug people like you represent God, then God is weak. You are lacking in knowledge of the Bible and you are lacking of good intentions. You catch more flies with honey, not with ill-intentioned declarations of battle.

     If you believe in the Holy Spirit than you need an intervention. Find yourself. For you are not doing God's work, you are pushing people away, you are doing the work of the Devil. A proud, smug, righteous individual who triumphantly believes he knows better than his foes. So did Lucifer.

     Christianity is about atonement, sacrifice and good works. Many have exploited this in the name of selfishness and profit, (ie: the Crusades, the 30 Years War, the Hollocaust of both Jews and Native Americans), yet the greatness of Christianity is judged by the greatness of its disciples.

     Even if you made buttermilk pancakes for the disabled veterans of America, you do your cause harm by your smugness. You have become what you detest the most and you need to put yourself in check.

     Take a long hard look at yourself before you throw stones in glass houses. For he who is without sin does not exist, as Jesus deemed, and the only one who can judge a man's heart is God.

     Lead by example, not force.
216. 

     216Gee Suss

     wrote on 9 October 2009 at 17:06

     oh looky here, so I hijacked the thread, by clearly putting down a list of things that christians need to answer if they want to advertise their faith? I asked for answers in regard a campaign that said jesus had answers?

     All I got was asked questions myself.

     Anyway, I won't go into it much more here, I think people have pointed out how well your JAAL campaign is working, plenty of other places to visit yet!

     I mean, so much discussion! This campaign is really achieving that goal hey! :)

     BTW what footy team do you have faith in? We can discuss that faith too if you like :) same thing really, just a belief, just opinion.
217. 

     217Andrew

     wrote on 10 October 2009 at 11:03

     "Because people don't come back from the dead."

     Of course, we're not talking about a natural resurrection, but a supernatural one. And in order to eliminate the possibility of that you would first have to show empirically that the universe is causally closed (and I'm assuming, as no one has, that you probably can't). So then if it is not impossible (and we don't have to assume it is definitely possible, only that it might be possible) and it explains the known facts (i.e. Jesus was dead, his tomb was empty, people had what they called appearances of him, the unlikely birth of the church etc) better, more comprehensively than any other explanation than it is likely to be true. It is the normal argument to best explanation:

     "if the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true."
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method#Ar...
218. 

     218Wulf

     wrote on 21 October 2009 at 23:23

     Wow.
     I'm not a Christian, and I firmly believe that many Christian ideas are wrong. But I'm shocked at how your fairly sensible piece has attracted the venom of so many would-be thinkers. The ignorance, the inability to think critically, the volume of sheer resentment of the idea that they might not know it all–is quite staggering. Atheists never cease to amaze me.
     Good post, Nathan, and Good Luck to you (even though you're convinced I'm going to roast in Hell :))
219. 

     219Bamboo

     wrote on 3 February 2010 at 22:07

     Just stumbled across this, and was amazed.

     1. At how Christians are so ready to call other people with differing ideas on life and spirituality "smug". Well, if atheists are smug, at least we have a good reason – we get to really enjoy life while you just retain your illusions.

     2. At how the scientific method is so (deliberately?) misunderstood. Science doesn't start with hypothesis. Science starts with observation; only then does the scientist ask "Why is this?" and starts coming up with hypothesis which he will then test.

     3. At how Hitler is still brought up as a valid argument in every debate about atheism. First, Hitler was NOT atheist. Yeah. Sorry to disappoint. And to crush your argument at the same time. And secondly, even if he were atheist, so what? He was also dark-haired. Does that make dark-haired people dangerous? It's called an inductive process, and it's the kind people often decry.

     But oh well. The debate will never cease. It can't even oppose atheists and christians. It only opposes narrow-minded people with open-minded people.

     And oh yeah, piece of advice to all Christians out there: be nicer when talking about your religion. Please. It could actually make me believe once again that Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love. *cough*which it really isn't right now*cough*
220. 

     220Nathan Campbell

     wrote on 4 February 2010 at 20:06

     Bamboo,

     You’re fairly late to the party. Although I thought I had shut the comments on this post a while back.

     Let me address your comments.

     1. I’m not ready to call other people with differing ideas smug. Just the new atheists. Smugness is endemic amongst your ilk (and by yours I mean those atheists who trawl the blogosphere looking for things to disagree with).

     2. I would contend that this is not always the case. Once a philosophical hypothesis (like atheism) has been established it is very rare that an observation comes first.

     3. Hitler was certainly not a Christian – and I think you’ll find that despite your assertion to the contrary – it is more likely that he was an atheist who used Christianity and its mystical elements for his purposes.

     You’re right about the debate not ceasing – and your advice is pretty on the money.

     Thanks for stopping by.
221. 

     221AndrewFinden

     wrote on 5 February 2010 at 8:13

     First, Hitler was NOT atheist. Yeah. Sorry to disappoint. And to crush your argument at the same time. And secondly, even if he were atheist, so what? He was also dark-haired. Does that make dark-haired people dangerous? It's called an inductive process, and it's the kind people often decry.

     It's very difficult to know with any kind of certainty about his beliefs – his public and private statements conflict and contradict so often. The argument that some anti-theists will use: that he was a catholic and thus his actions are just another example of the poison of religion, is equally misguided. While he did identify with Catholicism, it was very much an opportunistic ploy (Bavaria is very Catholic after all), and he certainly had some amount of disdain for religion and the church.

     Normally I read the reply not about dark hair – but that Stalin and Hitler both had moustaches, does that mean moustaches are bad etc. But that is someone disingenuous – clearly moustaches have nothing to do with the kind of ideologies they promoted, but institutional atheism clearly does have something to do with the Marxist ideology of Stalin and Mao (who didn't have a moustache)

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4. 4. Do Atheists Need to be Nicer? « No God Here
5. 5. 5 ways for Christians to talk with Atheists | Holy Blasphemy
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