Quite often on sciforums we find that the atheists are better informed about religion than the believers who come here to argue with them.
So, nothing, then?
And if we skip, then, over the series of anti-identifications, we come to this in the second post:
On the one hand, what you're told is correct. There is no "atheist morality". Atheism, per se, is not concerned with morality. On the other hand, atheists are not, on the whole, immoral people. On the contrary, there is some evidence to suggest that atheists are more moral than religious people, on average. So for the atheist there must be some moral framework that exists in place of the one supposed dictated by religion.
The truth is that our ideas of morality do not come from religion, primarily. Partly, they are built in, evolutionary adaptations. Some of these ideas have been developed and codified in religion. Elsewhere, moral ideas have been developed and solidified in secular philosophy
The thing that gets me about this is that it is such pabulum. Try it this way: After all these years, you go out of your way to craft that response that you would already know is insufficient? Or did you not know? James, we have seventeen years common experience here, 'twixt you and me. Why would you give me the introductory swindle brochure?
I call: Is the reason we only get glossed talking points like that because you aren't capable of offering anything more substantial, or are you just playing to the gallery?
No, really, it's almost like you don't actually know who and what you're responding to.
Of course. Ideas interact and inform one another. Atheism does not exist in isolation from other ideas, any more than theism does.
Well, that only took ... well, right, never mind. You're over a year behind schedule;
see #9↑ above, because our neighbor's answer makes the point that the demand for some manner of "rational" argument about God is arbitrary and aesthetic.
†
Meanwhile, a
functional problem: Atheism simply means without God; it is a statement or condition lacking belief in God, or explicitly refusing belief in God. And that's all it is. So the thing about reservation and interaction is that you're talking about atheism, and religion is a different subject.
†
That sounds like a specific criticism of our membership.
Out of curiosity, is that somehow news to you? The general tenor of atheistic representation at Sciforums verges into a Poe's Law consideration of stubborn but poorly executed provocateurism intended to discredit the idea that there is no such thing as God; it's been this way for
years. It's not actually a discussion of "religion"; it's a
political↗ discussion
about religion.
It would probably be best if you provide particular examples of the kind of thing you're referring to.
Well, I suppose we can go back and gather the examples from the period. And there have been some interesting episodes since. But there are some examples to consider in this thread, too. For instance, I
described↑ an episode in which the best argument one of our atheist neighbors could come up with is to screech about there being no "atheist movement", and, y'know, it was utterly a coincidence that we read news stories of Atheist congregational social gatherings, stylish logos, fundraising efforts, and a coalescing—their word—movement. That's also, I think, tied into the old story about redefining religion to make it easier for atheists to pretend they have a point.
I happened to mention that one, recently, and it turns out that the idea of atheism empowered enough to actually foul discourse kind of confuses ssome people. More recently, I've tried reminding that the fact of another being wrong does not necessarily require that one is correct.
It's not so much that religious people are wrong and these brave atheists want to make things right; it's more about covetousness.
But I've been at this long enough people occasionally decide what my religion is for me. Once upon a time, that was Christians. More recently, it has been atheists. This is a further notch of doubt about the discourse I encounter; the zinger here is that the enlightened should occasionally act like it. But also, as I said, people are having a political discussion about religion, and in that aspect some of this behavior makes perfect sense: Anarchists, for instance, want to
smash the state, and haven't much to offer for afterward beyond counterintuitive speculation about human behavior; revolutionaries, by contrast, generally prefer to
usurp the power structure.
In that aspect there are, compared to more traditional outlooks, responses and counterresponses that tend to reiterate the proverbial old way of doing thingts. Atheism, in the context of revolutionary usurpation, is its own question, situated as a response. When challenged, by either new response or ongoing counterresponse, this manner of atheistic argument generally utters counterresponses imitating what the underlying atheism would, by its interactions and information of other notions, spend more effort aping the faith-based behavior it would otherwise pretend to disdain. These seem more interested in usurpation than actually escaping the cycle; they would rather wield the judgment.
So, let me be clear about something:
"What about theists?" as the question recently went, isn't the all-purpose argument some would seem to think it is. Let us return to a string of anti-identifications:
Quite often on sciforums we find that the atheists are better informed about religion than the believers who come here to argue with them.
‡
For starters, we mostly attract American fundamentalist Christians to discuss the well-worn topics of "Is God real?" and "Is the bible literally true?" When it comes to biblical knowledge, for example, the atheists (some of us, anyway) often run rings around the self-proclaimed theists. There are many reasons why this might be expected, which we can discuss if you like.
‡
This sounds like a plea for a better educated brand of theist to visit sciforums.
‡
The quality of religious debate we tend to get from occasional theistic visitors is often low. In part this is because, for some reason, we tend to attract American Christian fundamentalists who come here to pick a fight, or else merely to preach or proselytise.
‡
On the one hand, we have threads started by theists. The level and topic of debate is often set by those theists themselves. If they choose to debate the topic of Genesis as literal truth, for example, then a certain level of ridicule almost inevitably follows. Mind you, that usually comes with concrete reasons as to why the assertion of literal truth in Genesis is untenable.
All these years later, and you still let "theists" lead you around by the nose. I don't know, James, is it easier than thinking for yourself?
Two other points you noted in that post:
• "On the other hand, we do get some threads started by atheists which attack religion (typically fundamentalist Christianity) at a fairly puerile level."
• "Point is: the level of any debate is determined largely by the participants themselves"
It's not that we get "some threads" from atheists that "attack religion … at a fairly puerile level"; rather, that's pretty much all we get from them.
Better theistic discourse isn't coming to Sciforums anytime soon; those people wouldn't waste their time on this balbutive bacchanal.
Word games and videos of political publicity stunts are political arguments. Toward that, perhaps we might consider the state of political discourse. History is easily a lie agreed upon, but every once in a while it is worth noting whose argument does what. To wit, we Americans still fight over Columbus Day, and the way the arguments work out, the pro-Columbus faction tends to juxtapose strangely with Holocaust revisionism. Where Europeans have experienced social convulsions that would downplay or deny the Holocaust by applying revisionist speculation and otherwise dysfunctional pretenses, our American dispute about Columbus denounces the revisionism of attending the primary source documents,
i.e., handwritten logs and journals. We Americans, given what Columbus himself wrote, to the one, and heroic make-believe warranting a federal holiday, to the other, apparently have trouble figuring out which is real. We have achieved, in recent years, the spectacle of cities going out of their way to hold official commemorations of tribal history instead of observing Columbus Day. Sure, Columbus being the face of the worst mistake in American history is a political judgment to some degree, but it's also a value judgment based on something real, and not feelgood make-believe. It's also an example of why we still fight about certain behaviors in the way we do; Columbus was pretty awful, compared to my twenty-first century judgment, but Americans can't get to that part because Columbus as the luckiest dumbass in American history is just too much for our Euro-American heritage to bear; even acknowledging his time is a useless concession, in the end, because it still describes Columbus as problematic. He
must, for these, be a hero, just as much as the Middle Eastern character named Jesus
must be white, and the Turkish bishop known to history as St. Nicholas
must be white.
Theists are as theists will; what about anyone else?
