Caveat Lector

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Disproving a negative is a heck of a challenge - I'd hate to have that on my back. What I think most of them realize is that their beliefs, as well as any theists, are based on their core emotional impression of life, that its all they have - impression, and by being tremendously insulting they feel that its their only tool in expressing their impression in sufficient nuance to articulate why everyone should come to the same conclusion they do or why their conclusion is ultimately superior.

The other big challenge they have, which I'm sure must drive them up a wall every day of their lives, they're that guy screaming "I have the answer! I have the answer!" - on instinct most people ignore that person and even saying it like that is typically damaging to one's credibility.

An interesting point. I know - needless to say, spectral academic - the feel of having the answer no one can or will hear. What I cannot wrap my mind around - personality type in this case - is going to the trash talk. I will do it in my head and to friends off site - but the way I am built, if others will not listen to reason I will walk away.

I can kind of see, with my brother, why he is as he is - by his standards I am not only a reprobate but also a terrorist attacking the foundations of his civilization. But even he has no interest in changing my mind, any more than I want to change his - it would just be nice to talk like humans.

Yeah, people will make confrontational choices - I think its part desperation, part vitriol, just like also there are scores of atheists as well here who won't engage in that sort of talk either. I guess its the squeeky wheel that gets the grease or gets noticed, and usually the wheels that squeak the loudest...well....don't do so for the fact that they have higher intelligence or better things to say than those who don't.

There is no dispensing with emotion in the matter in the long run. Everybody's patience has its limits. It is so obvious that religion is a social mechanism for control and all its bells and whistles are firmly founded in fantasies that are rather cleverly situated in areas outside the mechanics of valid observation. It is frustrating and enraging to see the useful utilities that the human nervous system has evolved to confront reality manipulated and perverted to subsidize a parasitic social group for the purposes of their sustenance and power and resulting in totally unnecessary violence and completely distorted understanding. Vitriol is easily decanted out of this useless misery.

" I guess its the squeeky wheel that gets the grease or gets noticed, and usually the wheels that squeak the loudest...well....don't do so for the fact that they have higher intelligence or better things to say than those who don't."

My mother's < my grandfather's version : "The empty barrel makes the most noise"

The best Christian apologists have to counter antitheists are ambiguous, unsupported assertions?

You may convinced in relation to atheism. But you still need to do more than throw insults and suppositions. You need a logical argument. If you don't have that then you do your side no credit.

You cannot use logic on a delusion. Defenders of a faith that demands belief with no evidence make their assertions out of emotion based on ignorance not intellect since their lives are oriented around a fantasy reward for conforming to the dogmas presented. Some sort of yet undiscovered medication is required.

One could make the same argument in relation to the perceptions held by people who believe in anything. If you want to believe my world-view to be wrong, then follow it with a supposition that it is also dangerous and conclude with insults and a stated desire to destroy faith and religion, then your argument will require more. Logic can be used to argue for God, it can also be used to argue against. To state that we are not entitled to it is insulting to those great logical thinkers like William of Ockham and Georges Lemaître.

What you are claiming is that people can be entitled to schizophrenia or heart disease or cancer. You cannot argue that out of people. I have tried. If it is taken as an insult that I desire concrete repeatable evidence for the existence of gods or angels or fairies or anything along that line I can only assume something inherently out of commission with their nervous system.

This sounds like very strict and sanitized utopian thinking. Some people hypothesize that the world would be perfect without capitalism, some without government, some still without one race or another. Your particular pick on that is religion.

You have to have noticed by now, radical stances simply don't work. We don't live in the kind of world where human experience ever aligns 100% or where anyone can be sure of much of anything; doesn't really matter what you haven't seen or experienced to date, as much as someone seeing a cross in the sky may need to be careful as well on how far they take that conclusion or how loudly they go out and belt their assertions from that experience.

One thing we need to just put to rest already - that any belief in spirituality or hereafter, or a deity, means that it will be in the law or that believers will be blowing themselves up or creating holy wars on until they are utterly stomped out and everyone has been cured. It's straw through and through.

Who said anything about perfection? Polio is pretty well eliminated. Does that make the world better? I would think so. But does that make the world perfect? Really?

The assumption that religion is just a matter of showing how foolish the bulk of the beliefs are and how unsupported they are by a close inspection as to how the world works simply is an unfunctional approach. It's as if I could teach someone to fly an airplane by merely explaining the controls and how they affect the way the thing flies and then sitting the student in the plane with confidence he or she could fly it. It is very simple. I have a pilot's license and I know. But until the network of interactive comprehensions is validated by actual experience under supervision it would be suicide to send someone up.
Religion is a far more deeply embedded nervous implantation which entangles a wide range of human conduct and interpretations of data. It is a major distortion of the psyche and very frequently causes frightful results. For someone to strap on a vest of explosives or spend time torturing people to convert or to burn people up for disagreeing bends normal decent behavior in a monstrous way and it is not a matter of logic alone but a total paradigmatic modification which, to put it mildly, is no easy task to cure with success a sure thing. It is a medical proposition.

Deconfuse me, please. "Religion is a far more deeply embedded nervous implantation which entangles a wide range of human conduct and interpretations of data. It is a major distortion of the psyche and very frequently causes frightful results."

??! ! Did I not see you in an earlier post saying people CHOOSE religion?

Further - logically, if indeed it be a sickness, why talk to it at all? I would walk away and perhaps call the men in white coats, not do the bandar-log thing. Why spit venom at the walking wounded?

To a major extent religion is infused into individuals as children when their critical facilities are at a minimum and they are very vulnerable to this infection. And some do choose religion as a good many choose to enslave themselves to drugs. Do you seriously propose people in general recognize this as the disease it is? Why indeed spit venom on cancer or tuberculosis or athletes foot. With your mind set you would delight in these diseases. I pity the sufferers, not the disease.

I guess I should be pointing out two magical precepts:

1) People believing in something spiritual, at all, will ultimately lead people to kill over it via holy war or blowing themselves up, that its a fundamental aspect of how this whole thing works (question ignored earlier - guess I'd take that as agreement).

2) That we don't naturally have the kind of abstract reasoning circuitry to where we'd come to some spiritual belief or intuition about our universe and surroundings - without our parents intellectually molesting us, shooting us up with needles full of cancer, AIDS, heroin, or whatever an anti-zealot might liken it to. To say that is indicating a firm belief that without parental influence we would have this pure clean godless society by default.

I mean, even if these are difficult to pull evidence against from physics, chemistry, or mathematics, they're very needy precepts - needy in that they're built on logic that needs a lot of protection, a lot of bullheadedness, otherwise a light breeze blows the whole structure down.

"To a major extent religion is infused into individuals as children when their critical facilities are at a minimum and they are very vulnerable to this infection. And some do choose religion as a good many choose to enslave themselves to drugs. Do you seriously propose people in general recognize this as the disease it is? Why indeed spit venom on cancer or tuberculosis or athletes foot. With your mind set you would delight in these diseases. I pity the sufferers, not the disease."

Not sure how to interpret "to a major extent" - many cases, most cases, signigicant number of instances?

I think "infused into individuals" is more elegant than my brother's "infected by religious memes". I am looking for that letter - I do think you would enjoy him.

But - you need to find a way to account for exceptions. No way were my siblings and I "infused". I do not actually know of anybody who chose religion. Your drug analogy suggests they got led astray by wicked companions and evil pushers who gradually got them hooked. Not sure id that is truly "choosing".

No, of course I do not claim that significant proportions of humanity see religious belief as a disease, nor [pace Marx] as a drug. Nor do I [though of course my brother would tell you I have been infected] believe that it is. I will say that if my humbling classmate described in an earlier post was diseased, I really wish more people could catch it. He was amazing.

As for your conclusion: " Why indeed spit venom on cancer or tuberculosis or athletes foot. With your mind set you would delight in these diseases. I pity the sufferers, not the disease." - you must allow for my deranged mind. I actually got the impression that some of your seemingly less than sympathetic remarks were aimed at the religious people you say you pity.