Listening to Young Atheists: Lessons for a Stronger Christianity →

ninjamein:

This is really fresh, encouraging, and challenging; a reflective echo of the cries of my own heart that gives new perspective on an old topic.

Fuck this ad hom bullshit. This whole story, which was written by a biased thoughtless numbskull, seeks to frame atheism as an individual’s problem with some church or set of religious ceremonies. The subtext, of course, is that they’re atheists because they want to be atheists. Like it’s cool to be part of the “new atheism” movement (if you can even stomach that fucking term.) That if only church were more engaging these kids would reveal that truly, in their heart of hearts, they believe in some god. He even subheads a section: “The Decision to embrace unbelief was often an emotional one.”

What a steaming load of pandering, dismissive, thought-terminating, condescending bullshit.

First of all, it’s not a decision to believe or not believe something. If that were the case, of course, you could decide to believe you were telepathic and you could have communicated this story to the whole planet without having to publish it (saving us all a lot of grief). You could have chosen to believe you can fly. Yet, you published this harmful bullshit where everyone could see it because you don’t believe you can communicate telepathically and you don’t walk off the Empire State Building because you don’t just believe you can fly. Not believing in your ability to fly isn’t the result of some low self-esteem or traumatic childhood, it’s based on what you know about the natural world. Not believing in gods isn’t based on being bored at church and your fucking single, pathetic anecdote doesn’t help your argument. Not believing in gods is based on the same observation and knowledge of the natural world.

goebel:

“I don’t believe in evolution, I accept that it is true.”
“I don’t believe in evolution, I understand why evolution is true.”

New atheists don’t understand what a belief is.

Sounds more like you don’t understand the nuance of the word “belief.” Words have different meanings in different contexts, you know that, don’t you? There’s ‘belief’ meaning ‘intellectual acceptance’ and there’s belief meaning ‘devoted conviction or faith.’

Outside of the context of religion, I believe in the Republican party in that I accept that there is such an entity, but I do not believe in the Republican party in that I have no confidence in their ideas or actions. I believe that the best science points to evolution as the actual process by which species develop and change over time. I don’t just accept it’s true because a pile of unhistorical stories were compiled about it the way people who actually believe a magical god character exists do.

See, not everything’s so easily reducible to smartass little blog posts.

Why it’s logically incoherent to think G-d needs a cause.

anvilofceleste:

Asking why does G-d not need a cause is like asking why a liar never tells the truth.

…because in either case the answer will be a lie?

Because of the definition of G-d as with the definition of a liar, it would be a logical contradiction to say G-d has a cause.

So, you’ve defined your concept of god into existence. That’s easy to do, but it doesn’t have any impact on the truth value of the claim. You can keep telling us about your concept of god and why it must exist and then provide excuse after excuse for why there’s no evidence, but we’re just going to keep asking your to point to evidence. This is an appropriate place to refer the allegory of the Leprechaun in a box (performed here by Jeff Dee and Matt Dillahunty.

 So the criticism of the cosmological argument that it doesn’t explain the cause of G-d is not valid. 

Actually, it’s plenty valid. You don’t know what logical validity is. You can’t just change the premise upon which your argument is built in order to force the conclusion to be sound because you end up begging the question. In other words, you can’t just say “well, whatever god I’m talking about has no cause,” without answering the obvious question, “how do you know that?” Now you’re stuck answering the question of A)  how you know that your god exists B) How you know it has no cause and, the original question, C) why it needs no cause when, presumably, other things do.

sweetpotatortot:

Why has marriage and Christmas and Easter basically lost its biblical bond? Atheists getting married and atheists celebrating the birth of Christmas. Why.

Because fuck you, I’m allowed to do what I want and I don’t have to clear it with your fucking backward, patriarchal, tyrannical church you fucking theocratic jerk.

No one needs or is interested in your approval or gives a shit about your opinion. Fuck. You. Fuckface.

wootgabby:

really though why are atheists so angry why the fuck do you care what other people believe in everyone needs to respect each other and mind their business

Atheist Student Questioned By Police For Being an Atheist →

…as I head to class my dad sends me a text, “Call me ASAP.” I do, only to find out that the police had been at our house looking for me. Two hours later they succeed and are waiting outside of my New Testament class. We talk, and agree that after I get my sandwich (there were only thirty minutes left in the meal period), I would come to the police station and allow them to question me.

The questioning was… interesting, to say the least. They started by asking why I felt it was not as big of a deal and from there went on to ask if I could give them names of five people that would be potentially capable of doing something like this. When I refused several times, the method changed to one person that I felt would be completely incapable of doing this. That would be everyone, so I again refused.

After this, they started asking about my involvement on campus. My two biggest involvements are with Secular Student Alliance at Presbyterian College and the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, so naturally they had to ask about those. Specifically how many members each group had, if I could give the names of any members, and fun questions as well, such as “Don’t you think it’s weird that as an atheist you go to Presbyterian College?” and “Are you a… homosexual?”…

conservativeginger:

THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MURDERING AND KILLING, ESPECIALLY BIBLICALLY.

The Commandment says “You shall not MURDER.” (NKJV)

It does not say You shall not kill.

So, if you don’t read the bible and don’t care about the commandments, at least educate yourself with a google search before you say that Christians shouldn’t be killing anyone or anything (animals) because God tells us not to, and we’re all hypocrites.

In other words, Christians are OK with killing someone, so long as they can rationally justify it. It’s always been that way, of course, just see Exodus 21:20-21 for an example of how far back Bible-based special pleading goes!

(via gingeredconservative-deactivate)

ionlymakealivingplease:

my mum found out i was an athiest tonight, not that its a secret. 

she sighed deeply, “i guess im the only one going to heaven”.

-i guess so, mum, i guess so.   

So, if you’re mom is going to heaven without you will she miss you when she’s there and you’re not? Cause if she will, that hardly sounds like heaven. Or, will she forget about you and not miss you at all, in which case, is it really your mom?

No! You Prove It

testedspirit:

I am sick and tired of atheists demanding that I prove to them there is a God.

Too bad, the burden of proof for anything is on the person making the claim. You say “there’s a god,” I say “nu-uh, prove it.” You can’t just say “prove there’s not!” That’s like if I said Leprechauns must be real because you haven’t proven that they’re not real.  

People have been worshipping God for thousands of years.

The length of time in which people believe a claim has no impact on the truth value of that claim. People believed that the Sun revolved around the earth for thousands of years too. People believed (and many still do) that their personal social interactions could result in particular weather events. Of course, none of it is true or reasonable.

In all that time science has never proven there is no God.

We’ve been over this, but just to expand on it: Science (which is not a belief system, but a formula for understanding the natural world) never proves there is no anything. That’s not the job of science. Science helps us understand the natural world, not investigate the basis of fairy tales.

So prove it if you are going to insist there is no God.

Oh, well, atheists don’t actually insist there’s no god, so you might not have any clue what you’re even talking about. Atheists simply admit that there’s no good reason to believe a god exists, just like there’s no good reason to believe Leprechauns exist. That’s not to say those things aren’t there, but I don’t accept claims for which there is no good evidence. Can you give me one piece of good, solid evidence? Give me your best reason to believe that the claim that a god exists is true.

No atheists in Egypt?