Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Fabio on January 31, 2011 at 7:21am

I'm pretty much your average militant atheist. My lack of belief is no secret and I parade it offline - in conversations and debates or wearing the occasional t-shirt - and online - occasional blogging and commenting on public forums and such websites as youtube and mailfriends.com. The latter is a true hive of Creationist nonsense, a nexus of religious idiocy and reality-denial of the worst kind. I used to be pretty active on there, but life has a way of getting in the way and university has to come first. If you as much as enjoy the occasional debate and stupidity doesn't scare you, you should definitely give that site a go. Boy, does it need a stronger atheist presence.

Permalink Reply by Paul Lang on February 16, 2011 at 11:35pm

I'm going to start posting this around town. That and I use the Bible to show people that their god is a joke.

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Permalink Reply by TNT666 on February 17, 2011 at 1:06am

I'm confused as to how you see that image useful to fight for atheism, as it fails to criticise our own Christianity?

Permalink Reply by Paul Lang on February 18, 2011 at 2:24am

I thought an atheist challenged all religious beliefs and dogmas. I thought that we were to scrutinizing all fictitious claims of divine space daddys. I forgot that we are never to touch islam, pardon my misinterpretation.

As another point, I have no Christianity. With that in mind I would like you not to refer to me as believing in any religious nonsense. I am an atheist, that is why I am a member of this site in the first place. Christianity just happens to be a specialty.

Permalink Reply by TNT666 on February 18, 2011 at 12:10pm

My comment in no way was accusatory to you, I'm just saying the picture's politics is lopsided.

Permalink Reply by Keith Sewell on March 2, 2011 at 12:55am

 

Hello SB,

 

In answer to your question: I'm trying to get a book published which I believe could both break our roughly 80 year philosophical stalemate with the theists and position us to finally win our ancient debate with them. But I seem to be getting strangely little help or interest from our side. Its been kind of like trying to show a chainsaw to somebody who's totally preoccupied in cutting down trees with an axe. A sharper axe would be immediately understood, but as the chainsaw obviously isn't an axe it can't be worth the time that would be needed to take a good look at it. The latest installment was dead silence to my intruductory invitation posted here (in Strong Atheists) several days ago. For whatever it may be worth I've pasted below the very short essay that is now set as lead in to my blogsite.

--------

Crystal Blue Persuasion

 

The following is a simple three step guide for constructive engagement with any proselytizing theist. It is, in effect, synopsis and clarification of an 'app' from my main essay 'Truth?'. My hope is that by directing interested parties first to this short and explicitly practical essay some may then become engaged enough to try the longer and more challenging one.

 

1. Inform the theist that he is offering proposals that you do not believe him to be able to qualify, through any coherent procedure for knowledge selection, as knowledge. Offer to open the debate with him at that level. Specifically, to work with him to arrive first at a procedure that you will both be able to understand to be functional. Offer further that if this step can be completed then you will invite him to clearly state his theistic proposals for your mutual application of the procedure to them, and that if they then can be seen to qualify through it you will publically embrace them, on the spot. Explain politely that you do not wish to waste his time or yours on a further replay of the sterile debate that has been going on between our two sides for thousands of years. Simply, that if he is willing to match your level of commitment, in engaging within a format that you can both understand to be capable of clear and final settlement of our argument, then you are keen to talk to him. But that if he will only engage in the absence of any such format – to hold open his option for declaring a draw, through play of the 'faith' card or some related piece of hokum like 'warrant' or 'non-doxastic justification' as soon as he can see his position becoming rationally untenable – then you have other and more productive uses for your time. He can accept, or he can decline. If he chooses the latter, then it will be with pretty clear implications for both himself and those to whom he had been trying to propagate his theism.

 

2. [He has accepted, and you’ve mutually agreed on a functional procedure]. Invite him to state his theism's defining proposals. Specifically, those which distinguish it from the all of the others, and from science (unless, of course, he would just as soon have you embrace any of those). Write his proposals down. Get him to sign the sheet. Because once you start applying a functional knowledge selection procedure to them – and they start to melt like sandcastles in the rising tide – he will expect to be able use the standard theist's dodge of linguistically obfuscating and morphing them to avoid your selection procedure’s gates. As in: “Well, I didn’t literally mean……..” and “Of course '……..' should be understood only in a metaphorical sense”, and the rest of that ancient bag of tricks.

 

3. [You now have the functional procedure and the signed list]. Patiently and systematically apply the procedure to each one of his proposals. Show him how it clearly fails to qualify. Show him that any relaxation of the procedure’s tests that is sufficient to allow his proposals to qualify will also and simultaneously permit qualification of an effectively infinite number of other and logically exclusive proposals (including, and most naturally, those of science). So, and from which, he can see that his proposals simply cannot be coherently selected. That he can have them, but ultimately from precisely the same wishful-thought basis that a boy on a rooftop can have knowledge of his ability to fly like Superman after watching a Superman movie. Go ahead and put him explicitly in the position of having to publically renege on your agreement, or else renounce his theism. [Note: Our side has been in a position to do this for at least the past couple of hundred years; but, in general, we have not. For some thoughts on how and why that has been, and whether our reticence has indeed been justifiable, please see another of the short essays at my blogsite: 'The Cuddly Kitten'.]

 

Primers for Step 3:

 

The essay ‘Truth?’ (access via 'view my complete profile' at the blogsite).

 

William Clifford’s classic essay ‘The Ethics of Belief’.

 

George Smith’s ‘The Case Against God’.

 

Michael and Monier’s essay collection ‘The Impossibility of God’.

 

General recent writings of the ‘new atheists’ (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Victor Stenger, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Anthony Grayling, et al).

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SB: If still with me, and willing to go a little further, then this link  http://www.poppersinversion.blogspot.com will take you to the main essay. Any and all feedback much appreciated.

Permalink Reply by Donegal on March 20, 2011 at 5:42pm

I help the atheist cause online by proliferating relevant news and videos on Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, and this site, and by moderating an online atheist book club (please join us!) on GoodReads.

 

In person, I'm strong in my atheism but polite.  I don't bring up the subject of religion unless it is related to something already in discussion -- simply because if the subject gets brought up by a religious person and they don't appreciate my opinion, they cannot blame me for the conversation -- but I will happily debate friends and family (for example, I have totally owned, more than once, my dad on the subject of theism/religion).  I honestly haven't had much opportunity for debating in person; most of my friends are atheists or agnostic.  The only friends who have brought it up recently are a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses (mother and daughter) who we play cards with on a pretty regular basis, and the daughter gets so frustrated with my skepticism that I don't think she'll ever bring it up again.

 

Perhaps less effective, but still fun, I have a couple of atheist shirts that I take immense pleasure in wearing in public.

 

Doin' my part in rural Missouri!

Permalink Reply by Dr. Terence Meaden on April 29, 2011 at 9:01am

I am militant whenever the opportunity arises. Here is an example of one of my attacking methods from earlier this week in which I make unexpected use of the Ninth Commandment:

.

When I was at Stratford-on-Avon this week and seated on a long park bench with my wife, a female evangelist approached the couple next to us. I heard her asking if they were believers, and because they were they had a sort of mutual back-patting exercise for a few minutes.

The woman then moved on, and seeing me smiling approached asking if we were believers. 

I was delighted, because my smile was that of a crocodile.

"No", I answered, "We are atheists and proud of it, because we are right and you are wrong." 

She made a movement as if to get away quickly.

"No, wait", I said, "Tell me what is the Ninth Commandment".

She hesitated:         " . . er . . . not to covet thy ...", she began.

.

"No", I said, "It is "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" Exodus 20, verse 16."

"Indeed", I continued, "You are bearing false witness with your creationist preaching. You are part of a conspiracy of ignorance in which you deny the truths of evolution that have been supported by millions of learned scientists these last 150 years, but you prefer instead the camp-side stories of illiterate desert-margin goat herders from the archaic Bronze Age."

Moving backwards, she was muttering that there are scientists who believe the biblical version of creation.

.

"No", I said firmly, "Any so-called scientist who speaks like that is not a proper scientist, because that person is casting out basic truths of the scientific world that have been tested and proved time and time again by millions of honest scientists. 

Self-styled 'scientists' who deny the truths of science are pseudo-scientists---deficient ones if not wholly bogus ones. They carry no weight in the real world---the true world of sound academic reasoning.  

You have been falsely taught, and you are passing on obvious untruths to vulnerable innocent children and susceptible adults who trust you only because they know no better. 

True scientists should be preaching in your churches and schools, not phoney ones who hawk the hackneyed creation story . . . "   

(but, alas, now she was gone).

.

Of course, the ninth commandment was a biblical exhortation not to lie deliberately and unjustly; so I suppose that many bible-thumpers are not actually lying if they really think their myths are truths. Having been misinformed themselves, they do so to others. However, I saw an opportunity to use the 'false-witness accusation' as a quick and convenient means of attack. 

Permalink Reply by Dr. Terence Meaden on April 29, 2011 at 9:07am

"I was delighted because my smile was that of a crocodile."

 

Lewis Carroll put it this way:

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

Permalink Reply by Craigart14 on May 24, 2011 at 4:31pm

I usually teach a lot of comparative religion in my English courses because so much literature has to do with religion and culture.  So my students learn a little about what scholars have known for a couple of centuries about the sources and contexts of the Bible, as well as religious belief systems from around the world and through the ages.  We have a big push on now to improve students' critical thinking, so I do find ways to examine apologetics when I can.  Most students by now know I'm an atheist, and when they ask me about it, I explain my lack of belief in anything supernatural.  (These are students who have been taught to believe not only in Christ, but also in demons, witches, and the devil.)  Don't know how much longer I can get away with it.

Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on September 23, 2011 at 1:42am

I have a Darwin fish and a a bumper sticker that says "Can I teach evolution in your church?" on my car

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