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I don't think pointing out flaws in their logic is bashing them. This is a debate site after all, so presenting opposing views is expected. Some atheists are very rude about it and resort to insults and personal attacks. Those kind of atheists do bash, and I wish they would stop it. They aren't doing atheism any favors by being dicks.
The reasons atheists do point out the problems with religion is because we believe it is harmful to society. Because of the lies spread by religion, atheists are treated like monsters.
-A University of British Columbia study found that believers distrust atheists as much as rapists!
-Only 49% of Americans would vote for an atheist for president, even if they believed he/she was well qualified.
-Only 33% of people would hire an atheist as a day care worker.
-Only 65% would hire them as a waiter/waitress.
-Atheists are frequently denied custody of their children for simply being atheist.
-If a politician admits they are an atheist, they have committed political suicide.
-In many countries, just admitting you are an atheist will get you killed, and not just by average citizens, but by the government.
-In public schools, religious students are free to form clubs, but when atheists try to form their own clubs they are frequently stonewalled by school administration.
-Discrimination against atheists is very common.
Then there is the long list of harmful things caused by religion.
-People are dying of AIDS in Africa and South America because the Catholic church has convinced them contraception is evil.
-People in Africa are being killed over accusations of witchcraft. The Salem witch trials all over again.
-43% of homeless gay teens were kicked out of their homes for being gay, and religion is one of the primary reasons people believe homosexuals are evil.
-Little girls are having their clitoris cut off because of religion.
-Many circumcisions are preformed without local anesthesia.
-In Islamic theocracies women who have sex before marriage, who date outside their religion, who spend time with male friends, or who disobey their male relatives are executed.
-In Islamic theocracies women who have been raped are executed for the crime of adultery. The ones who are not executed are often beaten and/or imprisoned.
-In Islamic theocracies girls as young as 9 years old can be married against their will.
-Seriously ill children often suffer and die because their parents refuse medical treatment because it is against their religion. In 39 states, these parents are protected from prosecution for child neglect.
-Priests molest and rape children, then the Catholic church covered up these abuses because they felt protecting their churches reputation was more important that protecting children.
-9/11
I could go on and on for days, but I think you get the point. Atheists have good reasons to want religion to be a thing of the past. If you saw something that was causing suffering and misery wouldn't you want to do something to stop it?
I hate all religions because they suppress individual freedom, you just named a tiny fraction in a long list of crimes against humanity in the name of religion over the last 10+ thousand years. To be a religious person is to say I am weak minded and need rules to blackmail myself to do the right and moral thing, or to justify the evil within myself.
The good news is religion is losing the battle and there grip on humanity the more intellectual we get, I estimate that the world should be rid of 90% of all religions within the next 1000 years or sooner at this pace, that is only if religion don't start WW3 and wipe us back to the stone age, then religion can again gain power with ignorant survivors searching for answers.
After all that seems to be the pattern though out history, as humanity starts to enlighten itself with critical thinking "like clock work" along comes this massive war and the collapse of that society to set the people back leaving religions once again gain it's control over the masses.
What you are talking about is the misuse of religion by the evil elements in the society. Bad people can misuse anything, as long as it can be misused. Religion teaches us not to be realistic, to be closer to god and increase our spiritual understanding.
Anything can be misused. What you are pointing out is just one of those things.
I find it amusing when Atheists complain they are discriminated for their lack of beliefs (which is wrong I agree) but then discriminate and bully religous people for their beliefs and for not being "logical", so Mr Spock wheres the logic in your hypocrisy?
I think as soon as anyone takes a hardline stance on anything that is due to beliefs or lack of them things are going to go wrong be it religion, race, sexuality. Atheists think its going to be a brave new world if religion is eradicated, I beg to differ if mankind isn't fighting over whose God is better they'll find another reason it's the nature of mankind we have spent years and a fortune on finding easier ways to kill more and more of each other whilst watching others starve, the most popular movies involve either, Religion, Violence or Sex and the subject most frowned upon is Sex, to me thats fucked up, people are happy for their kids to learn how to kill from an early age but are terrified they might see another naked person in a magazine, or enjoy sex!!
The problem with man isn't religion it's the violence at our core take away religion the violence remains.
I feel that the problem is our way of thinking, the way we as humans think religion plays a big part in that, so what's the cause?
If I had to guess I think the root reason as to why humans think the way we do I will have to say greed, fear & love, those emotions seem to be the most dominate and seem to control our every move in life, and for good reason.
Why do most people believe in God, for many it is fear of consequences, fear of death, fear of pain, fear dying and so on, so why do we fear, I feel we fear because it in our DNA to fear, without fear we would of died off along time ago as a species, fear helps our survival of the fittest instincts.
So why greed, well I feel greed like fear helped us get to where we are, without greed we would fear that we would die off, so greed fueled by fear seems to be the human way of thinking still at this point and time.
As for love, the big "L" we do many things for love. greed and fear also fuels love, to love we become greedy to protect us from fear, like seeing a particular person or thing taken away from us, we become greedy to protect them in fear of our own emotions from hurting if something should ever happen to that someone or something.
When we love it hurts us to even think of something bad happening to that person or thing, knowing or believing that we will see our loved ones after death helps the fear of death and pain caused by loving and losing someone or something much more bearable, so we selfishly lie to ourselves to protect ourselves from ourselves, to protect ourselves from feeling the emotional pain caused by love.
I feel as humans progress we in time will learn to better control our emotions and learn to shed things like religion that only server a fearful, greedy purpose fueled by the people and things we love, we will learn to love without fear and greed and as a result the world will become a better place.
We will in time learn to control our emotions instead of our emotions controlling us, when we do we will start to see a shift in better understanding the true meaning of existence, and what God really is if God is anything at all.
The reason why atheists bash us all the time is they get upset and what we believe and they think we are delusional but they can think all they want about us and say all they like about us Christians.
The other reason is because they don't have tolerance at all for what we believe and some of them hate our guts with a passion and wish that Christianity wasn't created. Some atheists can be nice at times.
It seems to be the other way around, here is a true story, my niece was telling me about a new after school club called "The free thinkers club" anyway the "Christian club" in that school is trying to get that club ban from the school because it questions the existence of God. the thing is we see this all over the world, religious people show little to no tolerance for any form of critical thinking that question if God exists.
Because they think the mere thought of a big magical man in the sky is... Idiotic and that christians shouldn't believe in it because they think it shows how stupid they are. Most atheist's not all of course but that's what most atheists answer.
Atheists are non believers. Unfortunately, most of them have been hurt badly in their lives , thus shaking off their belief in God. Atheists do not simply discard belief in God, they think it is a waste of time. Christianity preaches its followers to attend mass, do not do this in the name of god and so on. I thin that's why atheists hate it the most.
I don't think it's true that most of them have been hurt badly in their lives and that is why they are atheists. I'm sure there are some like that, but I doubt they represent the majority. Unfortunately there aren't any statistics on it, so I can only base that on my personal experiences with atheists. I myself have never been hurt badly. I've never lost a loved one or been abused in any way. The reason I left Christianity was because the more I studied it the more flaws I found it it and the more unbelievable it seemed. The more I studied it the more I realized that the god described in the old testament is not the loving god that Christians tell us about, he is a blood-thirsty monster. I could never worship someone like that because I believe he is extremely unethical and unjust. I eventually came to the conclusion that the god described in the Bible was nothing more than a fictional story created by man.
Not at all, I can't speak for all but I truly don't know if there is a God or not, would I like there to be a all knowing loving God that looks out for us? Sure that sounds great but logic tells me otherwise.
To me a pure Atheist is just as idiotic as a pure believer, (no disrespect) both are claiming they have the answers, I stand humble before the universe and simply say "I Do No Know" as any logical mind should say without 100% solid proof.
How did the universe come to be without a creator one might ask?
Well that seems to be the "BIG" question, is reasonable to think a God created existence? "sure", is it also so reasonable to think that we came from nothing? "sure."
And why, well simple, until we fully understand all forms of physics we can never truly know.
The next question is, well what created the elements for physics to even take place, isn't that proof of God? again we can never know so the only truly logical stance is "I do not know" Yet if ever at all.
After all we can only understand existence in a tree dimensional reality, physics is already showing strong theories on existence, space/time and our universe to be multidimensional, M theory.
Our brains can't even imagine what another dimension might even look like, it's like trying to teach a dog to understand quantum physics, it just can't be done.
Attacking straw-men again I see. Show me some atheists that claim to be all-knowing. I bet you can't even find one. How can we be jealous of something we don't even think exists?
No religious person in their right mind can tell you that God absolutely exists, they can only tell you that they believe God to exist. On the other hand ask an atheist if God exists and the answer will be NO. Now tell me who claims to be all-knowing.
No religious person in their right mind can tell you that God absolutely exists, they can only tell you that they believe God to exist
No atheist in their right mind can tell you that god absolutely doesn't exist, they can only tell you they believe god doesn't exist.
On the other hand ask an atheist if God exists and the answer will be NO
On the other hand ask a religious person if God exists and the answer will be YES
You're failing to realize that the answers YES and NO are not as black and white as they may seem. For example, I could say "no, I don't think god exists" or I could say "no, I know for certain no god exists." There is a big difference. As I've said numerous times before, I don't claim to know with 100% certainty that no gods exist. We already had a discussion about the different degrees of belief but you must have forgot, so here is a copy/paste of it.
"There is more than one kind of atheist. I'm not a fan of Richard Dawkins, I actually think he's kind of a prick, but the belief scale he describes helps clarify things.
1 · Strong Theist: I do not question the existence of God, I KNOW he exists.
2 · De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.
3 · Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.
4 · Pure Agnostic: God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.
5 · Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.
6 · De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
7 · Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.
Most of the atheists I've met consider themselves a 5 or 6. The atheists you are referring to are a 7 on that scale. I don't think many atheists would rate themselves a 7, but I'll see if I can find some statistics on that. Even Dawkin's himself said he's only a 6. I agree with you that anyone claiming to be a 7 is not being open minded."
BTW, I tried to find those statistics but couldn't find anything. If you have any luck finding any please let me know.
No atheist in their right mind can tell you that god absolutely doesn't exist, they can only tell you they believe god doesn't exist.
So you have faith that your belief is right? I say this because religious people base their answer on faith; What do you base your answer on. Let me guess logic, after all atheists do have the patent on it.
You're failing to realize that the answers YES and NO are not as black and white as they may seem.
Looks black and white from I'm seated; Does the text of your arguments come in other colors?
I've seen your scale by your idol (which is a god) before. It is one man's opinion. He slams religion and then tries to claim he's not for sure. Doesn't sound like you or him should be preaching to anybody about their beliefs until you find out which side of the fix your on.
I'll tell you which side of the fence I'm on and it's not in Dawkins little chart. I believe that God exists and I live my life by doing what I believe is the right thing to do based on humanitarian actions. A passage in a letter that Martin Luther wrote is sometimes translated into "Sin Boldly" meaning, that not to act is just as bad as doing the wrong thing.
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." Albert Einstein
Isn't it funny how two Jews (Jesus and Einstein) both dared to the right thing. Nothing like the god of science to set you straight.
So you have faith that your belief is right? I say this because religious people base their answer on faith; What do you base your answer on. Let me guess logic, after all atheists do have the patent on it.
Logic is a far more reliable method of determining truth that faith. "Faith is nothing more than the license that religious people give one another to believe propositions when reasons fail. The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so." – Sam Harris
And before you even say it, Sam Harris is not my idol or my god. Simply quoting someone does not make them an idol or a god. If so, then I guess Carl Jung, Einstein, and MLK are your gods, because you've quoted them.
Looks black and white from I'm seated; Does the text of your arguments come in other colors?
I assume that was sarcasm, because if you really can't see the difference between "no, I don't think god exists" and "no, I know for certain no god exists," then you should probably go see a doctor, because you may have a developmental disability.
I've seen your scale by your idol (which is a god) before.
As usual, you resort to condescension, only hear what you want to hear, and completely misrepresent everything I say. I called Dawkins A PRICK, and now you say he is my idol. I've tried to be nice to you, but I'm sick and tired of your condescension. Apparently your mother never taught you manners. Congratulations on making Christians look bad.
It is one man's opinion. He slams religion and then tries to claim he's not for sure. Doesn't sound like you or him should be preaching to anybody about their beliefs until you find out which side of the fix your on."
First, what you just said is totally hypocritical. You said, "No religious person in their right mind can tell you that God absolutely exists." So just like I'm not 100% certain that there are no gods, you are also not 100% certain that there are, yet you go around preaching your beliefs. Talk about double standards.
Second, I have never slammed religion as a whole. I slam the ones that cause harm to society, such as Christianity, because that is one thing I am 100% sure is false.
I'll tell you which side of the fence I'm on and it's not in Dawkins little chart. I believe that God exists and I live my life by doing what I believe is the right thing to do based on humanitarian actions.
You can pretend you're not on Dawkins chart but you clearly match #2 on that chart.
I also live my life by doing what I believe is the right, and I also do humanitarian actions. The only difference is I don't do them because I expect to be rewarded in heaven or fear being punished in hell. I do them because I care.
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. Albert Einstien"
Isn't it funny how two Jews (Jesus and Einstein) both dared to the right thing. Nothing like the god of science to set you straight.
Set me straight how?! I am doing something about it. I'm trying to stop all the horrific things caused by religion. I'm donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to humanitarian efforts. What are you doing?
You have this completely fictional idea in your head about what atheists are really like, and no matter how much people try to show you that it's misguided you just ignore everything they say and start flinging out insults.
Logic is a far more reliable method of determining truth that(then) faith.
The trouble with you is that you believe that logic can exist without faith, it cannot. The statics and data you read are not already known truths, they are are presumed truths by you and thus requiring faith that they are correct. Without error or bias in any manor. Find me a human that is except from these.
Looks black and white from I'm seated; Does the text of your arguments come in other colors? I assume that was sarcasm...
Wasn't sarcasm, but fact. The text on my computer is in black and white, literally.
I'm sick and tired of your condescension.
Then I take it that you have never read any of Mark Twain or the millions of others that use it. Take it for what it is, a style of writing. Taking it any other way only reveals that a nerve has been hit. Does the truth hurt much?
Second, I have never slammed religion as a whole. I slam the ones that cause harm to society, such as Christianity, because that is one thing I am 100% sure is false.
Just the largest one is the most incorrect. Talk about being bias and not stating any proof that Christianity does harm.
yet you go around preaching your beliefs.
I never preach, I only defend. Are all facts irrelevant to you?
I'm donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to humanitarian efforts. Sounds like you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart and not brag; Why else would you tell everybody. Want a medal? Trying to get into hell through good works?
The trouble with you is that you believe that logic can exist without faith, it cannot. The statics and data you read are not already known truths, they are are presumed truths by you and thus requiring faith that they are correct. Without error or bias in any manor. Find me a human that is except from these.
I already explained that there are different levels of faith in one of our other debates, so I'm not going to explain it to you again since you never listen anyway.
Wasn't sarcasm, but fact. The text on my computer is in black and white, literally.
You know what I was saying, but instead of admitting you're wrong you resort to semantics. Real mature.
Does the truth hurt much?
I haven't heard any truth from you yet, so when I hear some I'll let you know if it hurts.
Just the largest one is the most incorrect. Talk about being bias and not stating any proof that Christianity does harm.
First, I never said it was the "most incorrect". Second, who cares what size it is? Third, I did state proof in the other debates you and I have had, but apparently you forgot about those. You seem to forget everything I tell you. Maybe someday soon scientists will develop a cure for your Alzheimer, but since you are so anti-science you probably won't take it anyway.
Are all facts irrelevant to you?
What facts? You haven't presented any facts.
Sounds like you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart and not brag; Why else would you tell everybody.
I only mentioned it because you questioned my character, so I was showing you that you don't know anything about my character.
