When Atheists Are Angry at God

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Hey, if one of the thousands of gods throughout history came to be proven as real I'd be a believer in a second because it would be the logical position. Then, it wouldn't be a belief because the existence of god would be fact.

I'm not looking to convince a religious person that they are wrong, thats like trying to convince a rock that it has consciousness. However, what I and many other atheists seek to do is to limit the influence religion(s) have in our society because to govern and create formal norms based on something which is not factual is a less than optimal route for humanity to take. To put it bluntly, I don't care about a person's feelings being hurt or myself being considered rude or disrespectful when religious people make the kinds of claims they do.

The flying spaghetti monster is not a joke, its an analogy which demonstrates exactly how asinine religious faith is.

Atheists ARE "open skeptics".

Not really. I would say agnostics are. Atheists, despite what they may claim, usually are NOT open to the possibility of anything supernatural. They are die-hard physicalists.

Most atheists ARE agnostics.
The two words deal with separate questions, those being knowledge vs. belief.

Atheism is a lack of belief in god, full stop,
regardless of your personal perceptions about what they're "open to".

From wikipedia: Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[2][3]

The former, 'weak atheism' if you will, which is essentially identical to agnosticism, I would say is an open minded position. The latter though, I would consider to be rather narrow minded if one rejects even the possibility that deities may exist.

Rejecting the possibility of a deity is actually really damned simple. Here's the process:

There is no strong evidence for any god. People have been searching for said evidence for thousands of years. Therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that the evidence does not exist, and equally reasonable that gods do not exist.

I love reading uninformed people's theories about atheism one of the best parts of being an atheist!

I tend to define it better:

Atheism - The position that there are no theistic deities. A reasonable atheist will admit that the existence of a deistic god is possible, in fact in terms of probability, the existence of a deist god (IE a creator god that does not interact with the universe but is the creator of it) is equally probable as the Universe being an alien ant farm or something else. In simple terms, I'm an atheist when it comes to every religious god, but an agnostic when it comes to the deistic position. However, in the case of the deistic position, the existence of a god does not matter because it does not affect our lives in any way.

There is a huge difference between a theistic god and a deist god and the term "atheist" isn't really applicable to the deistic position. A position as an Atheist if evidence of the existence of a theistic god can be found, is an unreasonable position and not congruent with the empirical mindset that is the foundation of an atheistic position.

If someone asks whether there are any fairies in your garden, do you say, 'I do not know, and it is impossible to know whether there are any or not,' or do you say, 'there is no evidence that any fairies exist in my garden.'?

I believe it is possible to be angry at the concept of something ficticious if such a concept offends your moral sensibilities. People have dislike or hatred for evil TV characters and movie characters although they know that this person being portrayed does not really exist. It is the portrayal and the description of traits that people can find offensive.

I think some people would be offended at the notion of homicidal unicorns that torture people who they don't like. Especailly when such a concept is touted as factual and just.

Note: This is not my personal opinion but I know someone who thinks the Christian concept of god is evil and immoral so I am just pointing out that that veiw probably accounts for a few of them.

I lack belief in god.
I'm finding it hard to take seriously the notion that I'm not an atheist by virtue of holding no affirmative beliefs about the god concept.

I grew up in a non Christian home with non traditional values as well. So I cannot possibly be angry at "God" if I do not believe in him nor want to believe in him. I have stated over and over again religion is inferior. The reason I say this is the many thousand examples I give of this. Look at any ancient civilization or any tribal civilization. They have Gods for the weather, for the harvest, etc. They explain science through magic. We once did this as well. But now we have science. Now we have things thta give us evidence. We may not have all the answers, I do not think the universe will unlock everything to us. But now we have ways of explaining the weather, evolution, etc. without magic or Gods. Religion is obsolete in our society. The only people I meet that believe in "God" believe in "God" for two reasons they were born and raised into it. They were indoctrinated into due to emotional manipulation. Religion is a cult.

The aspects of a Cult Mind control, Potential for harm, Joining, and Leaving.

Mind control

People are put in physical or emotionally distressing situations; - "Car accident nearly died, I found God"; "Abused child. Tormented. I found God"
Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized; "God. God can make their lives better"
They receive what seems to be unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader or group;
They get a new identity based on the group;
They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled "Intelligent Design, denial of Evolution", etc. I can continue.

Religion is a cult. "God" is obsolete and doesn't fit in todays world.

I might ask them for their definition of a fairy.

the idea of God is a fair share more complicated than fairies. Nobody is killing each other over who has the best garden fairies. We did not call the idea of a creator, The Fairy. Fairies are fairly unimportant in that light.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iceland
quote:
The Icelandic Tourist Board claim that 80% of Icelanders are prepared to believe in fairies or elves, or at least not dismiss their existence. Furthermore polls find that 54% express a positive belief and 25% even claim to have seen them. Certainly a high proportion of Icelanders take these beliefs seriously. [6]

Roads in Iceland have been diverted in order to avoid their homes, the chief of which is a rock formation known as "Alfborg". Furthermore, and it is quite common for experts from an "Elf Medium" to be called in to construction sites and cable laying in order to negotiate with the elves and buildings and cables are often moved as a result. This will usually happen after problems with workers being taken mysteriously ill or equipment failures.

There is even a college, run by Magnus Skarphedinsson, called "Álfaskólinn" which awards certificates for their study. The fairies are claimed to wear traditional clothes while the elves favor pointy hats and shoes.

According to the Álfaskól there are 13 sub-types of elves, 3 types of fairies 2 types of troll and 4 types of gnome plus 4 hidden peoples (including the Blue People). It is not known if the trolls are fed, or what variety of creature Björk is. [7]

Before Americans start to laugh at the Icelanders, however, we need to remember that, while only 4% of Americans believe in fairies, between 40 and 50 percent believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago.[8] There are many more Americans than Icelanders.

This comment here made me question the seriousness of your source so I looked into it. Rationalwiki is not a joke site but can have opinions and slanted veiws. Here is a quote from wikipeda which may be referencing the same poll.



Regardless. Imo the belief of god and fairies are the same thing: Belief in the supernatural. If someone asked me if there were fairies in my garden I might respond something like "I haven't seen any" because I do consider myself open to the possibility of things outside our current (limited) knowledge of the universe. But I would require some evidence before I made the move from "open" to "belief".