Switch sides

[Starman]

What an interesting exercise it might be for everyone participating to switch sides, honestly,
respectfully.

Christians might say something on the order of:

"Sometimes I wonder what I have done wrong to deserve all this." Then discuss how you deal with it successfully.

"What if there really IS no God." [What have you lost by virtue of practicing Christianity?]

Atheists might say something on the order of:

"If what we claim about being so intelligent and rational is really true, then why are we so condescending, so arrogant, so vulgar, so mean?"
Then discuss what you have done (or should have done) to discourage such conduct by other atheists, to try to civilize them.


It seems to me that, yes, far too many Christians, Jews, whatevers, commit horrific sins and crimes. But likewise, the good done by people of faith is demonstrably widespread. Neither body of facts proves or disproves anything.

Countless atheists have high intelligence quotients, and are successful by most any standard. That too proves nothing, most particularly being right.

So bare your soul, or non-soul, as the case may be. Just be honest in your temporary role, difficult as that may be.
It just might give you a different perspective than you get any other way - an appreciation for the opinions of others.
One can hope.

 

[bilby]

What an interesting exercise it might be for everyone participating to switch sides, honestly,
respectfully.

Christians might say something on the order of:

"Sometimes I wonder what I have done wrong to deserve all this." Then discuss how you deal with it successfully.

"What if there really IS no God." [What have you lost by virtue of practicing Christianity?]

Atheists might say something on the order of:

"If what we claim about being so intelligent and rational is really true, then why are we so condescending, so arrogant, so vulgar, so mean?"
Then discuss what you have done (or should have done) to discourage such conduct by other atheists, to try to civilize them.


It seems to me that, yes, far too many Christians, Jews, whatevers, commit horrific sins and crimes. But likewise, the good done by people of faith is demonstrably widespread. Neither body of facts proves or disproves anything.

Countless atheists have high intelligence quotients, and are successful by most any standard. That too proves nothing, most particularly being right.

So bare your soul, or non-soul, as the case may be. Just be honest in your temporary role, difficult as that may be.
It just might give you a different perspective than you get any other way - an appreciation for the opinions of others.
One can hope.

Perhaps you could start by asking yourself whether there is anything at all condescending, arrogant, vulgar, or mean about your approach?

Perhaps what you see is a reflection of what you project yourself?

It may be condescending to point out that the fundamentals of a person's world view are based on a lie. But how could that be avoided?

It is not arrogant to claim superior knowledge, unless you don't have that knowledge.

Vulgarity is simply a refusal to accept someone else's demand that certain arbitrary things be held sacred. Fuck that shit.

And as for meanness, well, sticks and stones may break my bones, but more likely they will just set me on fire. But only if the theists are allowed to descend back into the barbarism from which they were recently dragged by the enlightenment.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What an interesting exercise it might be for everyone participating to switch sides, honestly,
respectfully.

starman posting respectfully?

Atheists might say something on the order of: "If what we claim about being so intelligent and rational is really true, then why are we so condescending, so arrogant, so vulgar, so mean?"

So, by 'switching sides' you mean that we should behave according to your prejudices, not our own.

Yeah, that'll be an interesting exercise. Why don't you demonstrate a respectful post about Hillary?
Or atheism?
Or leftists?

 

[fast]

This brings to mind a time when a public speaking professor spoke to a class about being able to argue a position on an issue regardless of which position they sided with. That brings up the relevant distinction (sometimes lost on people) between expounding on a topic versus espousing a view. I'm very well capable of walking a mile in the shoes of an atheist. I understand (comprehend, I mean) their position. In fact, I understand their position so well, I've actually helped atheists grasp the very position to which they identify with. Most long timers here, however, hold their own without the need of much assistance.

If I were to switch sides, well, not literally but rather as an exercise to expound on the topic of atheism without it being confused with my espousal of holding their worldview, I'd probably say to the theist that not even Billy Graham believes that we can conclusively prove through a scientific experiment that God exists. The atheist wants us to take their hands and lead them from our claims of evidence to our firmly held conclusions without invoking faith. Although I'm in the minority when it comes to what I believe an atheist is [as I believe an atheist is an agent that holds a belief that there is no God(s)], I can muster the strength to speak as they speak and regard an atheist as an agent that lacks belief that there is a God(s).

The atheist isn't necessarily one that doesn't want to believe, but what they don't want is gaps in the underlying evidence trail that would lead one to such a belief. Consider, for instance the difference between a weak atheist and a strong atheist. Both lack belief that there is a God whereas the strong atheist also believes there is a God. Here's a summary:

B(G) a theist that believes there is a God
~B(G) an atheist that lack belief there is a God

~B(G) & ~B(~G) a weak atheist that 1) lacks belief there is a God and 2) lacks belief there is no God
~B(G) & B(~G) a strong atheist that 1) lacks belief there is a God and 2) believes there is no God

The similarity between the weak and strong atheist is that they lack belief that there exists a God, but notice what the strong atheist has in common with the theist: they both have a belief. The theist believes there is a God whereas the strong atheist believes there is no God.

The question, however, is from where are these beliefs born. Most theists (presumably) will believe despite their idea on where the evidence trail leads them, as most true Christians will hold firm on faith alone. Atheists spend a great deal of time thinking, and if I were to tell them to stop and think about some spur of the moment idea I had, as if it could somehow jolt them out of their ideology, I would be ridiculed ... Well, not me, as my spur of the moment ideas are genuinely awesome, haha. The point is that what they're gonna care about is whether the evidence withstands scrutiny.

What is needed from theists is what I said earlier. You would need to hold their hand and walk them through the evidence trail that rationally, logically, and reasonably connects the dots such that one would naturally start believing in the existence of God. I've been on this forum for quite awhile and have never once seen anyone be able to do it. In fact, I don't think it can be done. That's not to say an atheist couldn't be converted, but it is to say that no scientific experiment or set of logical arguments can shed light on evidence that will satisfy the most seasoned atheists. That's not me taking a shot at atheists; it's a shot at the theists for not being able to lay out the trail of evidence that would necessarily lead the atheist to gain what they lack: an evidentiary based belief that successfully leads without holes to the belief that there indeed exists a God.

Now, as I step out of these hard-toed boots and slip into something a bit more comfortable, I cannot wish a theist too much luck in successfully demonstrating that God exists, for if they pull it off such that no reasonable atheist could deny His existence, then faith in God would be forever destroyed. Don't get wrong, everyone would believe, but your belief would no longer be a function of faith, and I, as a Christian, am not prepared to wish that taken away from fellow Christians.

 

[Angry Floof]

The atheist wants us to take their hands and lead them from our claims of evidence to our firmly held conclusions without invoking faith.

Bullshit. We'd like you to keep your inhumane, stunted ideology to yourselves and not try to infect public policy and schools with it.

We'd like you to examine the profoundly disrespectful views you hold of other human beings and stop pretending your belief system is fit for the well being of any group of humans.

We'd really like it if your ideology did not insist on itself being unquestioningly valued above actual living, breathing, suffering human beings, and maybe if you tried "switching sides" to any side, any belief system, that sees humanness before an instilled story of human sacrifice and self-righteousness.

Maybe try out one that is not rife with mechanisms that hijack your cognitive functions in ways that cultivate fear and hatred, and allow for the most heinous of crimes in the name of a magical "truth," and provide lots of social structure that protects child molesters, rapists, and con men.

Maybe try out one that allows you to face anything within yourself and not have a handy evil spook to blame shit on, and allows you to see why you don't need forgiveness from anyone, much less a disembodied figment of your imagination?

Maybe one that allows you to consider that you are responsible for your own capacity for goodness and evil, one that doesn't prey on your fears and foster self-loathing?

You don't answer to anyone for your beliefs, but you do answer to society for the culture you contribute to, that the rest of us have to share with you.

So you keep putting bullshit words in the mouths of atheists, and we will keep pointing out what you are trained to do your best to avoid questioning.

 

[Brian63]

"What if there really IS no God." [What have you lost by virtue of practicing Christianity?]

Oooh, sounds like an elementary version of Pascal's Wager. There is everything to gain and nothing to lose by being Christian, so we should all be Christian then, right?

Amazing how widespread Pascal's Wager is, and how much of a giveaway it is that the person citing it has not really looked at their beliefs to any kind of intellectual depth at all. They still invoke one of the most shallow arguments to try and prop it up.

Brian

 

[fast]

The atheist wants us to take their hands and lead them from our claims of evidence to our firmly held conclusions without invoking faith.

Bullshit. We'd like you to keep your inhumane, stunted ideology to yourselves and not try to infect public policy and schools with it.

We'd like you to examine the profoundly disrespectful views you hold of other human beings and stop pretending your belief system is fit for the well being of any group of humans.

We'd really like it if your ideology did not insist on itself being unquestioningly valued above actual living, breathing, suffering human beings, and maybe if you tried "switching sides" to any side, any belief system, that sees humanness before an instilled story of human sacrifice and self-righteousness.

Maybe try out one that is not rife with mechanisms that hijack your cognitive functions in ways that cultivate fear and hatred, and allow for the most heinous of crimes in the name of a magical "truth," and provide lots of social structure that protects child molesters, rapists, and con men.

Maybe try out one that allows you to face anything within yourself and not have a handy evil spook to blame shit on, and allows you to see why you don't need forgiveness from anyone, much less a disembodied figment of your imagination?

Maybe one that allows you to consider that you are responsible for your own capacity for goodness and evil, one that doesn't prey on your fears and foster self-loathing?

You don't answer to anyone for your beliefs, but you do answer to society for the culture you contribute to, that the rest of us have to share with you.

So you keep putting bullshit words in the mouths of atheists, and we will keep pointing out what you are trained to do your best to avoid questioning.

If a student says that a teacher wants their students to behave, that is generally true even if the teacher wants other things as well. I was not attempting to make a collectively exhaustive list itemizing what a typical atheist might want. Much of the ancillary wants hinge on the assumption that there is no God. I was focusing on the one thing that I think is paramount to the shared view between the weak and strong atheist position. The theist has not logically guaranteed the existence of God through accepted evidence-based reasoning. The idea is so deeply entrenched that the very meaning of the term "atheist" is becoming skewed in our lexicon. "Lacks belief" is such a croc of shit of a phrase because it has more to do not with what an atheist is but because of why an atheist is what he is. Evidence offered either isn't accepted as what it's purported to be evidence of or the evidence offered isn't considered to fully demonstrate the truth of the all important claim that God exists. The atheist welcomes evidence to demonstrate the existence of God, but until the dots are unquestionably linked such that no atheist can reasonably deny His existence, the atheist will continue to disbelieve because of that and merely claim that they lack belief ... Because of the perceived or actual disconnect between the evidence and the truth.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Much of the ancillary wants hinge on the assumption that there is no God.

And there's another problem with attempting to walk on the other side. It was never an assumption on my part, it was a conclusion.
Based, you are correct there, on the total inability of the believers to offer anything like a reason to think gods exist. But still, for one trying to 'switch sides,' you're still framing the differences based on your own conclusions.

 

[Kharakov]

God doesn't exist because people have made claims about God that are not true.

Religion is evil because various adherents have done evil things. So are universities, because of the Penn State scandal.

A metaphysical naturalistic approach is the only way to gain understanding of reality, because you can't test AoG scientifically.

God doesn't exist because there are stories of many warring gods.

 

[Bomb#20]

... That's not me taking a shot at atheists; it's a shot at the theists for not being able to lay out the trail of evidence that would necessarily lead the atheist to gain what they lack: an evidentiary based belief that successfully leads without holes to the belief that there indeed exists a God.

Now, as I step out of these hard-toed boots and slip into something a bit more comfortable, I cannot wish a theist too much luck in successfully demonstrating that God exists, for if they pull it off such that no reasonable atheist could deny His existence, then faith in God would be forever destroyed. Don't get wrong, everyone would believe, but your belief would no longer be a function of faith, and I, as a Christian, am not prepared to wish that taken away from fellow Christians.

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes like this:
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

- Doug Adams

 

[Kharakov]

I cannot wish a theist too much luck in successfully demonstrating that God exists, for if they pull it off such that no reasonable atheist could deny His existence, then faith in God would be forever destroyed. Don't get wrong, everyone would believe, but your belief would no longer be a function of faith, and I, as a Christian, am not prepared to wish that taken away from fellow Christians.

Ehh, the whole point is that absolutely sure evidence of God's existence fucks with your ability to act as if God doesn't exist. In other words, imagine if God was always looking over your shoulder, breathing down your neck... judging... judging... judging... like an atheist without a sense of humor.

A theist with an appreciation for natural law has far more than a creationist or an atheist. A much fuller, more encompassing worldview, that allows enjoyment of far more than a narrow minded creationist or antitheist.

So while you can say "heh, my way of thinking is far better than yours" and be telling the truth to any true atheist or creationist, people who are satisfied with their narrow, ignorant, incorrect view of reality are not likely to budge. Fuck the middle path... can't do highway robbery from down there.

 

[RavenSky]

What an interesting exercise it might be for everyone participating to switch sides, honestly,
respectfully.

You first

 

[Togo]

I used to do this routinely, arguing positions because they were interesting, irrespective of whether I believed them or not. Unfortunately I discovered that many of the most frequent posters found this too confusing. So, for the purposes of this board at least, I had to give it up.

I'm happy to do it again. In fact, I think it's very hard it discuss philosophy without it.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I have switched sides. I used to be a Christian, now I'm an atheist. I've argued from the perspective of both. Many of us here have.

 

[Saint_of_Me]

I have switched sides. I used to be a Christian, now I'm an atheist. I've argued from the perspective of both. Many of us here have.

I know I have.

A former Catholic altar boy and parochial school student. Who since that time has been on a steadily ascending, gradual, Gnostic path leading away from that dark forest into the brighter and more open-minded verdant world of Agnosticism and Logic and Humanism. With a dash of Taoism/Pantheism thrown in for good measure. LOL A pagan drummer in a Black Metal band, fer chrissakes! (see what I did there? LOL)

But this thread was supposed to have us take an opposing viewpoint, right? An opposite zeitgeist?

Hmm...OK *deep breath* Here goes............

"This I believe with all my Heart--Praise be to God:

Agnostics are merely atheists without the courage of their convictions. The ones who were formerly Christians are even more pitiable, because they once HAD Salvation and were embraced by God's Grace. They were on the Path leading to the Heavenly Gates--the Father's Mansion--and they wantonly threw it all away. They are sinners of the worst kind because they disavowed, nee, refused the Holy Spirit. Which, if I recall, is according to the Holy Bible--which, BTW, is the inerrant and literal word of God--just about the worst Sin you can commit.

We should all pray for their souls: these lost Atheists and Agnostics. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Let us pray......." Our Father, who Art in Heaven........"





Ouch. That sort of hurt a little. But it was kinda fun! LOL

 

[skepticalbip]

I find it impossible to argue the other side but only because there is not a single other side. There are many, many other sides. Aside from the hundreds of religions in the world, there are many, many sects in Christianity that are too different in their beliefs.

For example the largest sect, Catholicism, officially accepts the big bang theory and an over thirteen billion year old universe only they go further, placing God as the initial cause. Catholicism also officially accepts evolution, only seeing it as the method God chose to create the various species.

Compare this with another Christian sect that rejects both the old universe and evolution. They take the Bible literally (as they read it), a six thousand year old universe with all species created from scratch as they are today.

Other than these two extremes in Christianity, there are many Christian sects that hold beliefs that would lead to condemnation to hell by other Christian sects, plus other religions would condemn all Christians to hell. So you would need to specify which religion or religious sect I should argue from.

My personal problem with religions is that most deny facts that are obvious and insist that their followers deny them under threat of damnation. They also divide humanity into US and THEM camps, identifying those in the THEM camp (anyone not in their particular sect) as the embodiment if evil to suffer eternal damnation because they reject the truth that only their sect holds.

I could easily argue from a Deist position but that wouldn’t deny anything that science has found of reality. It only recognizes an intelligence behind the workings of the universe and science is finding how that intelligence set it all up. So this doesn’t seem like what the OP is asking for.