Half of English No Longer Christian

[Keith&Co.]

Can't say 'hardly.' Lion reports that at least one atheist has said that they hate the idea of God. Therefore, all atheists hate the idea of God.

I haven't stated that all atheists hate the idea.
Please use the quote function and don't verbal me.

Sure.
Please, first, use the quote function to identify when Hitchens said he hated god?
Not your impression of what you think he insisted?
Please find any single source you can use to support your claims that 'if god is real I hate him' is a basic rule of atheism?

Hitchens (before his terminal illness) reviled the idea of Gods existence - even when predicated on a thought experiment.
Listen here;

Still don't see where they manged to get Hitchens to say he hates god.
The hosts describe him that way, but he did not state that. At least, not in the first half. I get tired of Friel's desperation, there.

DOES he get around to saying 'i hate god?' Can you give me a time stamp?

 

[Underseer]

I haven't stated that all atheists hate the idea.
Please use the quote function and don't verbal me.

Sure.
Please, first, use the quote function to identify when Hitchens said he hated god?
Not your impression of what you think he insisted?
Please find any single source you can use to support your claims that 'if god is real I hate him' is a basic rule of atheism?

Hitchens (before his terminal illness) reviled the idea of Gods existence - even when predicated on a thought experiment.
Listen here;

Still don't see where they manged to get Hitchens to say he hates god.
The hosts describe him that way, but he did not state that. At least, not in the first half. I get tired of Friel's desperation, there.

DOES he get around to saying 'i hate god?' Can you give me a time stamp?

If the character of God in the Bible is real, then He is indeed a detestable person.

You know what else? If Darth Vader is real, then Darth Vader is a detestable person. However, the fact that Darth Vader would be a detestable person if real has nothing to do with why I don't think Darth Vader is a real person.

If Voldemort is real, then Voldemort is a detestable person. However, the fact that Voldemort would be a detestable person if real has nothing to do with why I don't think Voldemort is a real person.

If Medusa is real, then Medusa is a detestable person. However, the fact that Medusa would be a detestable person if real has nothing to do with why I don't think Medusa is a real person.

If Sauron is real, then Sauron is a detestable person. However, the fact that Sauron would be a detestable person if real has nothing to do with why I don't think Sauron is a real person.

Lion IRC can accuse me of hating Darth Vader all he wants, but the observation is simply nonsensical. How can I possibly hate Darth Vader? He doesn't exist. He's a character in a story. Even if two billion people on this planet believed Darth Vader was real and used their belief in Darth Vader to do evil in the world, it still would not make sense to accuse me of hating Darth Vader.

 

[Lion IRC]

I don't accuse you of hating God (or Darth Vader)

What I say is that IF you hate the idea of God being true, it would be just as likely to cause the same type of cognitive bias which theists are accused of in wishing the opposite.

If the atheist can impartially assess the quality of the evidence for God, why can't the theist?

 

[none]

Ha fuck, what evidence? I'm biased against what evidence?

 

[Keith&Co.]

I don't accuse you of hating God (or Darth Vader)

Incorrect. You say it is a rule of atheism.
Thus, all atheists must hate god, else they're not atheists.
This is what you're posting, did you maybe forget?

If the atheist can impartially assess the quality of the evidence for God, why can't the theist?be forget?

As far as i can tell, you can't even impartially assess the statements made by atheists who actually and demonstrably exist.

 

[abaddon]

There’s an emotional commitment to believing the earth is flat or that the sun goes round the earth now in the 21st century. So wondering “What motivates such believers?” and "Are they letting emotions rule them?" are fair questions.

If those believers try to turn it around and make the same thing work on the nonbelievers, it doesn’t work. People think fairness would make it work both ways, but there’s no symmetry that makes it work both ways.

Same with god-belief. There’s no evidence of God, except people asserting “Existence is too unlikely without God”. Or “It all seems intelligently designed and such intelligence must be God”. Or “I have had firsthand experience of God!” and then if you get any details all they can say is they felt this and that.

There’s no symmetry between “There is a God” and “I don’t share your belief in God”. Theism and atheism are not two opposing claims (one is an un-evidenced metaphysical assertion about how all reality is, the other is self-description) so emotionalism as a motivation for one doesn’t mean there’s a necessary corresponding emotionalism that motivates the other too.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

My point is that if you, as a self-professed atheist, hate the idea of God existing, you lay yourself open to the same accusation made against the theist. Namely, that your belief with respect to the non-existence of God contains an element of wishful thinking.

Now, if you want to say that your position is purely rational and you consider the evidence impartially, completely unaffected by wishful thinking, then you ought to concede that the theist is capable of doing the same.

Of course you're capable of that. Everyone is. My point is that a claim of potential bias as a point in favour of your argument is the same as saying that you're right because water is wet. It's not something which distinguishes one side from the other.

Also, I do not hate the idea of God existing. I actually think it would be great, mainly for the whole not dying and living forever in paradise instead of the whole just ending thing which, to be honest, kind of sucks. I just don't find the evidence compelling enough to accept as factual.

 

[zorq]

A British study, British Social Attitudes Survey recently released shows that in 2014, 49% of those survey had no religion.

http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/893167/religious-affiliation-british-social-attitudes.pdf

Taking the biggest hit, The Church of England. Catholics and Other Christians holding steady though.

Most interesting.

Yet when news organisations report on countries they refer to England as a christian nation - that is why i harp on Atheists keeping quiet - if 50% of English no longer believe in religion and the other 50% is fractured between a bunch of religions, i would say that England is now an Atheist country and should be referred to as such. So must North Korea [South Korea] and Japan as well and i am sure i am missing a bunch of other countries

It's worth remembering that "no religion" is NOT the same as "atheist." Tons of these "irreligious" folks really DO believe in God. And that god that they imagine, at least in the UK (and the US), very closely resembles the Christian god. People get categorized as having no religion if they can't identify a church that they frequent. They are still Theists though.

The UK is far from being an atheist stronghold. And speaking from South Korea, atheists are still a long shot from being the majority demographic here.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't accuse you of hating God (or Darth Vader)

What I say is that IF you hate the idea of God being true, it would be just as likely to cause the same type of cognitive bias which theists are accused of in wishing the opposite.

If the atheist can impartially assess the quality of the evidence for God, why can't the theist?

Tell me about god.

 

[Lion IRC]

...My point is that a claim of potential bias as a point in favour of your argument is the same as saying that you're right because water is wet. It's not something which distinguishes one side from the other.

I agree.
I don't claim bias on both sides as a win. Merely that it neutralises the trope about...you only believe in God because you want it to be true. Or the one about people envisioning God they way they wish He was.

...Also, I do not hate the idea of God existing. I actually think it would be great, mainly for the whole not dying and living forever in paradise instead of the whole just ending thing which, to be honest, kind of sucks.

Similarly, I could sing many praises for the putative implications of atheism. Eat drink and be merry. Live like there's no tomorrow. Nobody telling me what I ought to do. ETC.

...I just don't find the evidence compelling enough to accept as factual.

Can you agree that it's possible others have sufficient evidence for them to conclude that God is the best explanation?

 

[Lion IRC]

...Tell me about god.

Do you think the heirarchy of 'beings' - lowest to highest - is a valid ontology?
Do you think there is a maximally great being? (Whether here on Earth or somewhere in the universe/multiverse.)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Can you agree that it's possible others have sufficient evidence for them to conclude that God is the best explanation?

Of course. Those people are called theists. There are also people who have sufficient evidence that communism is the best explanation and others who have sufficient evidence that libertarianism is the best explanation. As with theists, I just think that they're reading the evidence wrong.

None of those are knocks against them, I just think they've made a mistake.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Similarly, I could sing many praises for the putative implications of atheism. Eat drink and be merry. Live like there's no tomorrow. Nobody telling me what I ought to do. ETC.

Your bias continues to show.
I mean, I'm on a diet for my diabetes.
I have insurance, a retirement plan, savings.
I obey laws, city ordinances and nuclear safety rules.

I just don't think any of this is sponsored, required or developed by an invisible skybuddy.

 

[Atheos]

I don't accuse you of hating God (or Darth Vader)

What I say is that IF you hate the idea of God being true, it would be just as likely to cause the same type of cognitive bias which theists are accused of in wishing the opposite.

If the atheist can impartially assess the quality of the evidence for God, why can't the theist?

I think that's a rational question. I know from past experience that it is common for some theists to portray all atheists as people who are afraid that god might actually exist and living lives of denial and self-deception. I don't believe this is an accurate portrayal of the preponderance of atheists but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that there are some who fit this description.

But there are many, and I count myself among them, who are only seekers of truth and understanding. I'm not afraid a god might exist, but I am justifiably skeptical of every theistic claim I have ever encountered. I wasn't always that way. My dear old mom raised me to be a christian, and in fact was so pervasive in that task that for 16 years I actually made my living as a preacher. I zealously defended what I believed to be the truth, using many of the same apologetic arguments that I now understand are logical fallacies. I'm who I am today because evidence and reason overwhelmed my (indoctrinated) predispositions, not because I wanted to be an atheist.

But this isn't about me, it's about how (in general) to work around the very real problem of confirmation bias you allude to in the quote above.

The answer to that is ... SCIENCE. This is exactly the reason science was created. Because even among scientists there are those who wish to believe they are right about something so much that they fall into the same pitfall of confirmation bias. This is exactly why the scientific method includes checks and balances such as peer review, suggested methodologies when it comes to experimentation to test hypotheses, etc. The scientific method exists primarily to provide the means to increase our knowledge without perpetuating fallacy. Yes it misfires at times but it inevitably self-corrects. Because no matter how sacred or respected a scientist is there are always going to be young, hungry scientists eager to prove him wrong if they can. A theory has to be quite robust to withstand that constant onslaught.

Religion, on the other hand, is all about unquestioned answers. It is about "truth" that is accepted not because it can withstand critical review, but only because some respected authority said that his god told him to say it. The nanosecond evidence favors god, god will become part of the scientific knowledge base. Why is god not part of the scientific knowledge base? Because there is no evidence that there is a god. There is only the belief of those indoctrinated to believe in some god or other. Because every experiment that has ever been conducted to discover any effect that can be traced back to a god has demonstrated that if a god exists it behaves in exactly the same way it would behave if it did not exist. It is a claim based on nothing but anecdotes and always fails to deliver results with any predictability.

This is why religion often finds itself at odds with science.

 

[Playball40]

That's right. He was quite adamant that #1 There is no God. And #2 If there is, then I hate him.
Many atheists freely and firmly state that they hate the idea of a celestial dictator.
So, far from being the oft-stated trope that you cannot hate God because He doesn't exist, it is certainly true that atheists have their own version of wishful thinking wrt the afterlife and God.

...Can you explain why you worship Biblegod, given every horrifying crime he/it has allegedly committed against our species? The Bible claims he/it killed every human on this planet other than a small handful of chosen people by flooding the Earth.

Yes.
The concept of ends-justifies-the-means is quite well developed, not only in theology but also in meta ethics generally. Please don't tell me atheists, secular humanists, utilitarians etc don't have their own versions of this exact same concept.
How many millions of unborn babies are aborted by adult humans using some contentious justification? (Typically money)

...Why do you condone genocide? You think genocide is ok if god does it, and then you have the nerve to claim atheists are stupid?

I don't claim atheists (plural) are stupid. Go back and read what I said.
And I don't condone genocide. How could I?
I'm not in a position to know whether there is a moral imperative to advocate such a thing. (And neither are you.)

Perhaps just an aside here, but how come the brain is just a hunk of meat incapable of doing anything, but a clump of cells that are "unborn babies"? Just curious.

 

[abaddon]

I don't claim bias on both sides as a win. Merely that it neutralizes the trope about...you only believe in God because you want it to be true. Or the one about people envisioning God they way they wish He was.

The picture painted of nature by Christianity is so markedly different from what we experience of nature that it’s hard to find a place for God anywhere outside the human imagination. So, where else is he than there? In this thread you had to resort to saying we'll meet God after we're dead... why then and not now? Historically Christianity has placed “The Word” ("in the beginning was The Word") before nature’s ‘shadow world’ of the ‘merely material’ so that it basically has carte blanche to say just anything, and that’s exactly what it quite visibly does: ignore this world and reference another one to make up for how poorly this world reflects its claims.

I could sing many praises for the putative implications of atheism. Eat drink and be merry. Live like there's no tomorrow. Nobody telling me what I ought to do. ETC.

That wouldn’t describe very many atheists. You got this notion from reading it somewhere, not from witnessing it in the world. Again I see a theist telling how the world is, based on what he is told instead of finding what’s real or unreal by looking. Most atheists find life all the more precious since it's our one and only life, followed by nothing. We get to be with loved ones and this earth and experience life just a while, so it makes our short time momentous and exquisite. The hedonism-gone-wild story comes from Christianity's view that earthly life is meaningful only to the extent it's given meaning from somewhere outside or "above" it. It's from deprecation of the world. What a peculiar thing to do... drain earthly life of how momentous it is, and then try to refill what they (mentally) drained away by saying we're "gifted" with meaning only by a "celestial dictator".

Atheists are often dismayed by that aspect of religion. For example, if you need a god to be an ethical person, that doesn’t reflect on your character very well! Christians come across as extremely immature and servile if that's true. So some atheists worry if theists would do as they themselves say… go ape-shit if they lost their faith in god. But I think it’s just another instance of people letting mere ideas matter more than direct observation of reality.

Can you agree that it's possible others have sufficient evidence for them to conclude that God is the best explanation?

Well, they are going to think so. Problem is, God’s not an explanation for anything. It’s just side-stepping explaining anything. Saying anything happens because God did it doesn’t explain the details of how that works. God’s left unexplained, and theologians have to play a game of words to excuse God from needing to be explained. And so, yet again, a word comes to matter more than the world. The "sufficient evidence" is always just words.

So, yeah, that looks very psychological on the part of supernaturalists. This is not meant as an ad hom, it's just hard to understand what's going on there in any other way.

 

[Lion IRC]

...Perhaps just an aside here, but how come the brain is just a hunk of meat incapable of doing anything, but a clump of cells that are "unborn babies"? Just curious.

The Judeo-Christian sanctity of life ethic entails that we are more than just a lump of meat and that human life is 'special'.
Unborn baby, 99 year old in a nursing home - both have souls. Or as CS Lewis puts it,
...not that they have souls but that they are souls and what they 'have' are bodies.

 

[Keith&Co.]

...Perhaps just an aside here, but how come the brain is just a hunk of meat incapable of doing anything, but a clump of cells that are "unborn babies"? Just curious.

The Judeo-Christian sanctity of life ethic entails that we are more than just a lump of meat and that human life is 'special'.
Unborn baby, 99 year old in a nursing home - both have souls. Or as CS Lewis puts it,
...not that they have souls but that they are souls and what they 'have' are bodies.

Except that's not biblical.

The Bible says they aren't really alive until after their first breath. That's when the spirit enters the body and they become a living person. So the old fart may be a soul, but the unborn is just matter swimming in its own natural juices.

 

[Playball40]

...Perhaps just an aside here, but how come the brain is just a hunk of meat incapable of doing anything, but a clump of cells that are "unborn babies"? Just curious.

The Judeo-Christian sanctity of life ethic entails that we are more than just a lump of meat and that human life is 'special'.
Unborn baby, 99 year old in a nursing home - both have souls. Or as CS Lewis puts it,
...not that they have souls but that they are souls and what they 'have' are bodies.

Well abortion is not doing anything to the soul, only to the meat so no need to try and restrict abortion. You should be so relieved.

 

[atrib]

That's right. He was quite adamant that #1 There is no God. And #2 If there is, then I hate him.
Many atheists freely and firmly state that they hate the idea of a celestial dictator.
So, far from being the oft-stated trope that you cannot hate God because He doesn't exist, it is certainly true that atheists have their own version of wishful thinking wrt the afterlife and God.

You are making up shit. Most atheists don't hate god any more than they hate Sauron or the Joker. You cannot hate something that does not exist. However, you can point out to Christians that the god described in the Bible is a psychopathic, genocidal tyrant based on the actions of this fictional god character as portrayed in the book. Just as people can describe Sauron as an evil villain based on his actions described in the Lord of the Rings book, or hiss and boo at the Joker when he is plotting to do harm to the citizens of the fictional Gotham City in the new Batman movie. This distinction should be easy to understand, but is apparently something that is giving you a lot of trouble. Or perhaps you do get it and are not willing to acknowledge that your argument is flawed.

Again, atheists don't believe that Biblegod exists, although they sometimes engage in discussions regarding the merits of the fictional Biblegod.

Second, I don't believe in an afterlife, and I don't know any atheists who do. Can you point to some examples of atheists who believe in an afterlife since you made the claim?

...Can you explain why you worship Biblegod, given every horrifying crime he/it has allegedly committed against our species? The Bible claims he/it killed every human on this planet other than a small handful of chosen people by flooding the Earth.

Yes.
The concept of ends-justifies-the-means is quite well developed, not only in theology but also in meta ethics generally. Please don't tell me atheists, secular humanists, utilitarians etc don't have their own versions of this exact same concept.

That is exactly what an ISIL recruit would tell you if had the ability to question him before he blew up a school full of children who believe in a different god than he does. It's ok because that's what Allah wants. Genocide is never ok. Religious people who derive their morality from the Bible and the Quran believe that might makes right. That it is ok for their god to commit atrocities that would never be acceptable if some human did it. Or to commit atrocities in the name of their god. And you need to stop making up shit. Can you point to some secular humanists or atheists who believe genocide is ok?

By the way, what ends did Biblegod's genocide achieve? And why are you willing to worship Biblegod when he/it commits atrocities against humans at the drop of a hat? Why do you worship Biblegod knowing that he/it is a psychopathic, homicidal tyrant? It it because you fear his/it's retributions if you don't? I am genuinely curious.

...Why do you condone genocide? You think genocide is ok if god does it, and then you have the nerve to claim atheists are stupid?

I don't claim atheists (plural) are stupid. Go back and read what I said.
And I don't condone genocide. How could I?
I'm not in a position to know whether there is a moral imperative to advocate such a thing. (And neither are you.)

You are making up shit again. You just said it was ok for Biblegod to commit genocide.