The “consensus” view among atheists seems to be that atheism is reasonable and that religious beliefs are not.
So why are atheists angry at God?
We can become incensed by objects and creatures both animate and inanimate. We can even, in a limited sense, be bothered by the fanciful characters in books and dreams. But creatures like unicorns that don’t exist ”that we truly believe not to exist” tend not to raise our ire. We certainly don’t blame the one-horned creatures for our problems.
The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at him.
I’m trying to remember the last time I got angry at something which did not exist. It’s been a while since I last played World of Warcraft, but that might be a candidate.
But atheists angry at God? That’s absurd. Assertions that there are empirical studies to that effect? Simply ludicrous. By definition, atheism is a lack of belief in God or gods. It is simply a matter of logical impossibility that atheists should be angry at God.
fifthmonarchyman,
Not every atheist is a former Christian.
I agree that on this site there seems to be quite a few of them, though.
Fixed that for you.
I agree but non-ex-christian atheists don’t seem to comment much when the subject is god.
I’m not sure why that is.
If I had to guess I’d say those kinds of atheists don’t have a particular axe to grind with a higher power they don’t believe in.
peace
Neil Rickert,
I haven’t seen many posts titled
100 reasons the Bible is the word of God
or
Problems with the scholarly consensus on Luke’s census
Isn’t that the sort of thing you’d find if we Christians were trying to convince ourselves of something?
peace
Well, what would you expect, since most of us grew up in countries where nominal Christianity is the norm, and is required for running for office. Being Jewish is okay, as long as you aren’t running for president.
petrushka,
Well, yeah–you certainly have to at least pretend you’re a good Christian to be elected to any statewide office in America, or to become mayor of most big cities. That’s changing though, and even some of the non-fake Christian officeholders don’t really believe anything much and never have. They just know they have to say certain words not to be stoned.
Petrushka:
That’s an interesting observation. In fact, I have been annoyed that Gaulin gets so much sustained attention at AtBC. Not annoyed at Gaulin – he is the crackpot that he is – but at the the AtBC participants who have strung that train wreck out for nearly three years. I glance at it from time to time, and don’t see any evidence that the “discussion” has moved one whit during that time.
FMM:
There’s are plenty of tu quogue responses available here. But mostly I don’t think that psychologizing and motive mongering one’s discussants has a valid place in these discussions.
FMM:
That stuff is all over the place, as you well know. It’s just not here.
Why the bible is true: About 130,000,000 results
—
Why the bible is false: About 43,100,000 results
Often the trouble with statements like yours is they are made by people who have never actually looked one way or the other. If you search for “why the bible is true” the first result is indeed: Top 10 Reasons the Bible is True
Perhaps the reason that you’ve not seen many posts like that is you simply don’t look for evidence that would undermine your point of view in the first place.
As, after all, it’s there if you care to look for it. As demonstrated. So it seems that many Christians are in need of resources to reassure them why the bible is true!
Ever tried getting into a position of knowledge, rather than guessing? Seems a big jump to me from one source of knowledge (the bible – infallible) to another (guessing at the motivations of an entire class of people and making insinuations based on those guesses).
That is a good point. There are lots of insecure Christians out there.
If you want to argue that sort of stuff you should not have a hard time finding dance partners.
Why do you all bring it up in a place where your position is clearly the majority and the other side is not particularly interested?
peace
FMM:
I fit that description. I’m not big on discussions doomed to futility from the outset. And, after all, what do I know?*
*No one does.
FMM:
I don’t bring it up.
That said, my operational definition of “interested” in this setting is, “posts a lot on the topic.”
You’re interested.
That’s mostly because I’m asked direct questions. Often it’s the same irrelevant question over and over even after I’ve answered it.
Then there are the times when I’m directly challenged to comment on something or other.
Finally there are the times when I feel obligated to correct grossly inaccurate conceptions of what folks like me believe.
peace
For me, sometimes it’s either this or go and wash the dishes.
walto, tired of Rousseau?
Nor do I visit Christian websites, etc. attempt to correct their misperceptions, field questions and challenges, etc. Not once. Not interested.
ID and UD got my attention because of ID’s attempts to pass off their hooey as science, and to insert same into my state’s curriculum. Although UD is so deteriorated now I’ve mostly stopped reading it.
That might be part of it, but it’s not the whole story.
Compared with other world religions, Christianity is very weird because it was strongly influenced by philosophy from the very beginning. As a result it places a huge emphasis on creed: on believing and saying the right things. Judaism and Islam have much less creed and focus much more on conduct — they are not so much orthodox (“correct opinion”) as orthopraxic (“correct practice”). Buddhism, Hinduism, and Shinto are likewise much more focused on conduct — meditation, offerings, prayers, sacrifices, fasting — than on whether or not one endorses the approved-of assertions. As long as one observes all the commandments in Orthodox Judaism, one is permitted to have whatever conception of God one wishes to have. I don’t know if Islam is similar but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were.
Hence, atheism in a Christian context is going to be focused on discourse — on assertion, evidence, and argument. Ex-Christian atheists are focused on playing the game of giving and asking for reasons because Christianity itself is. By contrast, a Jewish or Muslim atheist simply stops being observant.
This is also why there’s a deep (and I think irresolveable) tension within Christian theology between rationalism and mysticism.
On the one hand, Christian theologians often want to show that the creeds of their faith are sufficiently reasonable that only a fool would reject them — Aquinas epitomizes this tendency, and contemporary neo-Thomists are carrying it forward.
On the other hand, Christian theologians sometimes stress the ultimate mystery at the heart of the Incarnation: that Christ was both fully God and fully human, simultaneously both utterly transcendent and completely immanent. In light of that, credo quia absurdum seems like a natural response, and that in turn leads to fideism and anti-rationalism.
I think that the deepest problem with Christianity — but also, ironically, the greatest strength and virtue of Christianity — is that it aspires to be a rational mysticism or a mystical rationalism. I do not think that this is a stable position. The essence of all theology consists of playing the game of giving and asking for reasons only when one feels like, which is the same as not really playing it at all, but then insisting on playing it when others accuse you of not wanting to play it, and even then only according to rules that you’ve just made up.
And yet, it cannot be ignored that the attempts over the past millennia or so to resolve the tension between rationalism and mysticism have definitively shaped Western art, music, poetry, democracy, and science.
Here’s one of my favorite lines from the keiths Myth of Absolute Certainty thread:
keiths: “At UD, I argued that absolute certainty is unattainable even for God:”
Now who was it that mentioned hubris? Oh yeah, that was the same keiths.
But not cuisine?
God might really be in a big box by a bigger GGOODD? I liked it too, yes.
I think that is the most profound thing I’ve read here.
Thank you
peace
PS: we call that “the scandal of the gospel”
Mung:
Hubris isn’t hubris when you can back it up:
Is God a brain in a vat?
Let’s hear your counterargument, Mung.
fifth,
I found it quite appealing and gave it up reluctantly. But that doesn’t fit with the story you’re telling yourself, does it?
fifth,
1. We’re skeptics.
2. Christianity is still a huge (and largely negative) force in the world, deserving of opposition.
3. The other side (including you) is interested, as RB points out, by an obvious indicator: active participation.
4. Many of us are fascinated by humans’ ability to believe nonsensical things, and Christians are the most readily available specimens.
5. As an ex-Christian, I am sympathetic to those who are still drunk on the Kool-Aid. I want them to know how much better life is when you aren’t constantly fighting the evidence and when you seek out the truth instead of hiding from it.
Life choices can be full of conflict and angst when you are 13
😉
peace
Huh, I also found christianity quite appealing as a pre-teen/older teen. I happily went to church with my family and loved going to teen religious study every week as well. I would have given almost anything to fall into belief, once I realized that people really did believe. My most sincere dream was that I could go back in time and become one of Jesus’ disciples in Galilee.
My experience totally contradicts fifthmonarchyman’s assinine story that a christianity “storybook version” is what we “found unappealing as children”. Lord only knows what he gets out of telling himself that shit.
By the way, if anyone is interested in converting an atheist child to christianity, you could try this: The Bronze Bow. It almost worked on me. 🙂 Now, that literally is a “storybook version” but it’s an entrancing one — the message of love preached by the itinerant carpenter from Nazareth is much clearer here than it is in the gospels.
You’re disgusting, fifthmonarchyman.
You have no basis for implying that keiths was “full of conflict and angst” when he was 13.
“Reluctantly” is not in any way equivalent to “full of conflict and angst”.
Or, if you were just talking about yourself at age 13, then you should have made that clear.
It can be quite rewarding to your ego to think you are fighting evil by challenging the big bad Methodists on an obscure internet site.
That is as long as you ignore all the jihadi sites that you choose to leave alone with no opposition whatsoever.
by the way
I wonder how the local atheist population is fairing in the Islamic state?
peace
Typical christian filth shitposting.
what?
It’s called inference
Keith’s just said he found Christianity appealing and left it reluctantly and he has already revealed he was quite young at the time.
I’m not sure how any other conclusion could be reached than that his teen years were quite a challenge for him
peace
fifth,
Just doing my part to highlight the ridiculousness of Christianity.
And so are you, for which I thank you.
I sense a pattern 😉
Christianity was cool till the hormones kicked in. Then not so much. Funny how that works
peace
FWIW, there was a guy teaching at Ithaca College when I was going and later teaching there who later became a kind of name in the phil of religion world named Richard Creel. I think his first paper was called something like ‘Can God know that He’s God?’. I think his answer was No, and he was a committed theist. He didn’t seem like a particularly bright light to me, but I guess he became pretty successful, with a big Oxford U. textbook, guest lecturing gigs, etc. which shows what I know.
walto,
That’s interesting. I’ll have to look him up.
fifth,
Are you suggesting that your Christianity is due to a hormonal deficiency?
Fuck off, fifthmonarchyman.
Hormones have nothing to do with it.
Unless hormones explain why you’ve suddenly decided to go full-out scumwad.
hey walto,
I think that this sort of question is interesting in that it shows the jacked up understanding many folks have of who God’s is
If there is a being that can be unsure of his deity that being is not God by definition.
If there is a possibility that a being is a brain in a vat, That mere possibility proves that said being is not God.
Prediction: I will now again be accused of assuming my conclusion
peace
FMM:
That has more bearing upon the discovery of thy rod, and thy staff, if I remember correctly.
Groan.
There was some of that, too.
No, I pretty much abandoned my active faith in my late teen years too. The difference was I took a second look in my mid/late twentys when things had calmed down a little.
peace
fifth (and Mung),
How does God know that he isn’t being fooled into thinking that he’s God?
Oh, so you were talking only about yourself when you said “conflict and angst” and ‘hormones kicked in’, and you were totally projecting your own (teenage) irrationality onto us.
Nice of you to finally admit that.
That seems the obvious take to me too, but I admit that I never read that paper–and I never will. First, Creel didn’t seem very bright to me, and second, the topic doesn’t interest me.
I want to add, though, that Creel was nice/supportive to me, and I appreciate that. Maybe we were both wrong.
I never stopped looking. Part of being a good skeptic is not taking your beliefs for granted.
The evidence for Christianity is even worse than I thought it was back then. The more I look, the more ridiculous Christianity seems.
If a being can be fooled he is not God.
peace
Have you ever investigated Christianity with out assuming Christianity is false from the outset?
If so please list the presuppositions you worked from so we can evaluate them.
thanks
keiths:
fifth:
You’re not following the logic of my question. Suppose that God really is God, which by your definition means that he is not being fooled and that he knows he is not being fooled.
How does he know that he isn’t being fooled into thinking that he’s God?