A commenter at Uncommon Descent wrote
Keith, I am not convinced that you are an atheist. I believe that you are angry at God and suffer from cognitive dissonance. And to say that the evidence supports your materialist belief system is completely absurd!
I’ve seen versions of this “angry at God” accusation levelled at non-believers quite often and I wonder why those that use it think it makes sense.
The indomitable KeithS responds later in the same UD thread:
Okay, here’s some psychologizing for you guys:
You realize that atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God and that they make good arguments to which you have no intelligent response. This makes you very anxious. In a vain attempt to lessen the anxiety, you try to convince yourselves that the atheist isn’t really an atheist, he’s just angry at God. That way you don’t have to take his arguments seriously. It’s much easier to write them off rather than acknowledge the painful truth: you cannot answer them, and your faith is irrational.
I’m not sure I agree with Keith on “…atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God” and I would say myself that I have never had an inclination, need or desire to believe in “God” and thus never needed to convince myself that disbelief is a better option. I have never been a smoker. As a kid I tried to emulate others and puffed away but I couldn’t get past the point where addiction presumably kicks in. I have great respect for those who, having succumbed to addiction to nicotine, have been able later to kick the habit. Similarly, I can admire an ex-believer who has decided to quit. It must involve a great effort of will but at the same time I just can’t grasp the appeal of believing in the first place.
I’m sorry if the analogy regarding addiction is somewhat pejorative to people with religious convictions but I do find great difficulty in understanding the whole concept of “virtuoso believing“. I’m sure it involves emotion much more than reason. So while I’m puzzled that anyone could categorize an atheist as “angry at God” I can see why there is mutual incomprehension between believers and non-believers. Also being a non-smoker makes me less of a campaigner against smoking. As long as people don’t insist in blowing smoke in my face or that I should try this new/old brand of cigar, then I claim no right to stop other people from enjoying a quiet smoke.
I think there are one or two non-believers here. Is anyone angry at God?
The only thing that annoys me is religious trying to insert gibberish into my life. They can worship who they want providing they don’t hurt anyone. But don’t be trying to shape the laws of the land based on your dusty old book, or teach nonsense in schools.
I’m just in it for the hedonism, of course.
Or whatever. There are a few cliches used to keep IDists from ever taking origins science seriously, by accusing any on the science side as desperately avoiding the “obviousness of design.” Romans 1 tends to come in, with its claim that all who deny the creator are without excuse.
The important thing is to make origins science to be an excuse that thereby is unworthy of consideration. And quite obviously, most of them lack the kind of knowledge that would have to come from an honest investigation of evolutionary issues.
They don’t want it for themselves, and they don’t want it for others.
Glen Davidson
I don’t think that this commenter is really a Christian. He’s just angry at Vishnu.
Joe F:
Your comment is a double entendre. There’s a commenter named ‘Vishnu’ at UD right now. 🙂
I can recall from an early age — eight or ten — feeling left out because I was supposed to believe, but didn’t. I went through confirmation class at age eleven because my family expected it.
But for whatever reason, they never pressured me really to believe.
I don’t know what path I would have taken if I had grown up in a family that pressured me to believe. I do have close relatives who are believers. I have argued about evolution with a couple.
As a non-believer, it is very hard to put myself in the mind of a believer. I expect the same is true, in reverse, for believers. But for most non-believers God is just not an issue. We just don’t think much about it. Just as Christians don’t think much about Odin. As Joe F. suggests above.
I find it difficult to comprehend the very idea of “belief,” in the sense that informs discussions between theists and atheists. It sometimes seems to be functioning as the affirmation or rejection of the assertion that reality is a certain way, and it sometimes seems to be functioning as an expression of one’s attitudes towards reality as one experiences it. I find much of the language of religion deeply important to me — as a way of expressing my gratitude, anxiety, hopes, fears, and so on — but I don’t take that language as consisting of assertions. I don’t take myself to be affirming or denying anything about reality by using religious vocabulary.
It could be that, as a liberal Jew who spends almost all his time thinking about the relation between philosophy, science, poetry, and politics, I might be just a little bit atypical in this regard.
Of course “atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God” . Those reasons are incorporated within the definitions of God that believers offer.
Many God definitions require acceptance of a Young Earth and a Great Flood. I’d would say there are good reasons for rejecting a belief in that particular God. Many religions publish books that provide detailed histories of their particular God’s relationships, commands, discussions, prejudices, and foibles. Do these assertions make any sense? It seems to me there are good reasons to reject belief in those assertions.
Eventually you get down to the simple argument that “everybody is an atheist” with respect to all conceivable gods except the one they happen to prefer. Is there any reason to share their particular choice, presented as it is with no real evidence to evaluate? I’d say there are good reasons not to believe in those particular gods.
The problem is that many seem to take the vague idea that “yeah, you can’t rule out the idea that there may have been some intentionality behind the creation of the universe, and that might imply some intentional entity”, and jump to the conclusion “that vague potentiality of some undefined intentional entity is evidence for my particular version of God!”
I think there are good reasons to disbelieve this — the patent absurdity of it being one.
You’re tearing me apart, YHWH!
So much more emotionally deep than mere anger
Alan,
But I recall you stating emphatically that God is imaginary. (Am I misremembering?) Surely that counts as disbelief, and I presume that you have good reasons for it, right?
Many people would think that disbelief in god has deeper motives.
The bible says people are without excuse for not believing in God and christ.
So it implies there is a deeper rebellion as opposed to sincere, still in the night, conviction the universe was not created by a thinking being despite its complexity and so much of mankind has always thought so.
I think there is a lot of secret heart motives and anger might be one.
One always hears about HOW COULD A GOD let this person die and so on.
In fact the most aggressive atheists might be those who secretly think there is good evidence for God and so are really fighting their own doubts.
Sincere disbelievers probably would sincerely be disinterested in anything about God as creator or moral leader and followers.
The jails are full of sincere atheists.
They feel so threat from those who argue God exists.
Human motives are a murky sea.
Darth Vader would also find your lack of faith disturbing.
I’m sure all the current candidates on offer as gods are human constructs. But I’m suggesting that because there is belief without evidence that does not mean we have to disbelieve with evidence. For me, there is no effort or challenge involved. Bring me some evidence, some reason to believe and I might need to think harder about needing to disbelieve.
Sorry no time for more just now. Will pick up on other commenters’ points later.
The jails are full of sincere atheists.
No, actually they’re not.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/16/what-percentage-of-prisoners-are-atheists-its-a-lot-smaller-than-we-ever-imagined/
Robert Byers,
That is a disgraceful slander.
Allan Miller,
I don’t know how many atheists are in jails, but it is certainly more than the pathetically unscientific claims of the link you provided.
It only claims 161 atheists in the study, but then there are 37,000 with no preference, another 4300 who claim to be pagan, another 7500 that are unknown, another 6500 that are other, another 6800 that are American Indian Which God is that?) , and we have no idea how many converted to religion after they got in jail, nor do we know how many claimed a religious preference in hopes of getting an earlier release date.
Therefore, its pretty safe to safe atheists represent well over the 1.6% they represent in the general population outside of prison.
Not having been brain washed is a better one.
Projection is strong in this one.
But there is some anger.
Not at the mythical entity, but at people who kill and torture apostates and heretics and non-believers. Which has been the norm for most of the history of the Abrahamic religions.
And an occasional bit of pity for people whose argument is so lame that they are reduced to making impotent threats of torture in the afterlife. Or spouting lies about the behavior of non-believers.
Now you are doing exactly what you criticize. Non religious population in the US is 20% of total population. The same proportion as in prison.
Science is easy when you get to make up your own “facts”. No wonder ID is doing so well with people like you supporting it!
lol.
phoodoo,
You need to break down the general population in the same way you have broken down the prison population to justify your claim. You seem to be suggesting that the 1.6% atheism in the general population includes your aforementioned ‘no preference’, pagan groups etc. I bet it doesn’t.
shallit,
Posts crossed!
Beyer probably uses the ridiculous logic that a “true” christian would not commit a crime. The same logic that is used to claim that most atrocities are caused by atheists.
Allan Miller,
But the point is why did that website try to intentionally give such a false impression about the number of people who don’t believe in God in prison. The figures they state aren’t realistic in the slightest. Heck if you include the number of people who converted once they were in prison, plus people who just state a religion, without really believing in it, the number of non-believing offenders could well be over 50%.
No true Christian would sin. Remember “by their fruits”? People who sin cannot be Christians.
Something like that.
acartia_bogart,
Most atrocities in the last hundred years or so are way disproportionately committed by atheists.
Considering how disproportionately large the black prison population is, and that blacks outside of prison still profess well over 90% religiosity, that seems extremely unlikely.
I take it you agree it is a problem that religion is regarded so highly in the prison system, that your darkmatter atheist population feels it necessary to state they’re religious like every one else?
Actually most of the people who actively carried out those atrocities(in contrast to merely calling for them from a pulpit) were religious people. Gott mit uns and all that.
What about this “intentional false impression”:
“The jails are full of sincere atheists”
The fact is : the proportion of non religious people INSIDE jails in US is the same as outside jails. And the proportion of “sincere atheist” is very low, much lower than that of non religious.
When you have further data, take conclusions. So far, that claim was false.
I cannot think of an atrocity prepetrated by atheists that was based on atheismo itself. Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Comunist repression? Politics.
Unlike atrocities perpetrated by religious people, which are based on their faith.
I noticed your lack of citation for that claim. Still, to be expected from you I suppose.
In any case, most != all. So some atrocities were therefore committed by theists.
So what’s your point?
Said the expert in prison populations and how they answer surveys!
Your personal incredulity notwithstanding, what’s your evidence?
Although the Soviet Union was nominally atheist, the people obviously were not. Within a few years after the government collapsed, Russia and the other countries of the union are solidly religious. And Russia is behaving pretty much the way it did under the communists.
For the record, I do not believe religion or lack of religion causes bad behavior. Ideologies are window dressing, sheep’s clothing.
phoodoo,
Self-identifying atheists are a disproportionately small proportion of the prison population. Therefore Byers’s statement was wrong.
Non-believers as a group are about the same. Therefore the bigoted bastards who try to claim prison stats as evidence of non-believers’ greater immorality are incorrect. As are those same bigoted bastards when it comes to counting atrocities in Communist states as committed by ‘atheists’, and tar us all with that same affiliative brush.
I agree, mostly. I could quibble over the details, as always, but I’ll refrain. Instead, let me point out the massive difference between someone who thinks of the ideology as itself having causal efficacy and someone who thinks that ideologies are (perhaps) epiphenomenal.
When someone like phoodoo runs through the standard litany of “atheist atrocities”, he or she mentions all the usual suspects: Stalin, Mao Tse-Dong, Pol Pot. The idea here seems to be that their atheism was causally efficacious in their crimes against humanity — perhaps even the primary cause? — and that the whole host of social, economic, and political factors are secondary. (Perhaps mere enabling conditions that made their actions possible, but not genuine motivations generating the actions themselves?)
I think that this indicates a badly flawed picture of human nature. As I see it, social and economic conditions play a substantive role in shaping our desires and beliefs, and that the ideologies which confer a certain legitimacy to one’s world-view are mostly ad hoc, post hoc, and piece-meal.
I don’t think that either theism or atheism has much to do with moral character. It’s certainly true that the majority of people are both theists and morally decent, and that only a small minority of people are both morally corrupt and atheistic. But correlation does not imply causation.
Allan Miller,
No Allan, I think once again you are trying to spin things to make them fit some idea your argument, which is something you tend to do often in my opinion, which I find rather uninspiring coming from someone who claims to respect the science of the quest for knowledge.
I agree with Kantian Naturalist, that theism or atheism has little to do with moral character, however , I think the spin you are putting on the religious make-up of prisoners is disingenuous. Why not take it the other direction, what percent of the prison population (according to this study, as unscientific as it is) claims to have a religious belief in a God, compared to those in the general population (particularly including those that converted after their arrival in jail)?
If we take all of the “no affiliations, and pagans, and others”, it looks far more likely that there are less people who claim to hold a religious belief that exist in jail, then exist in the general population. Furthermore, there is an actual incentive to lie about holding a religious belief while in prison, as prisoners know it gives them a higher possibility of parole.
I am quite sure there are plenty of people in society who may have a proclivity towards some type of violent crime, but who refrained from it, because of their religious concerns about sin or immorality. The same can never be said about an atheist. There is nothing to really stop them from acting on their violent tendency if it exists, other than the fear of getting caught.
Like beheading infidels? Raping lesbians? Burning witches? Stone adulterers?
There is no book telling them to hurt others, either.
Yet, they have moral, as we all do. Moral are learnt from our parents, not from reading the bible. There is even an innate basis for moral.
Economic inequality provides a motive for supporting leaders who promise to ameliorate it. It is my humble opinion that people who like to boss other people around take advantage of this to gain power, and as a rule, do very little to improve the lot of the poor.
I accept healthcare as something that has absolutely improved, and I think the criminal justice system improves when the time scale is decades and centuries, but otherwise, I do not think things improve much. I do not see lack of money as the root cause of unhappiness, assuming one is not actually starving.
It’s rather telling that in your opinion the only reason theists are not violent is because of a fear of punishment, not because it’s the wrong thing to do. Let’s hope the more violent theists don’t lose their faith, as what will stop them then?
Your “logic” is laughable.
phoodoo,
What makes you think, from what I wrote, that I disagree with KN and Petrushka? You offered a heavily-spun interpretation of Mehta’s data, clearly insinuating that atheism was indeed more heavily represented in the prison population than in the world at large, and over-represented in the world of atrocity. If you are now backing away from those positions, I have no disagreement.
phoodoo,
Seriously? This would be something a a violation of basic human rights. Do you have any evidence? Oh sorry, you don’t ‘do’ evidence, do you?
phoodoo,
Let’s just re-examine the facts upthread, and see who is guilty of ‘spin’:
Mehta’s data and interpretation is only in relation to people who self-identify as atheists. And the figure is substantially less than that same question applied to the general population. [eta: I have not claimed that as a causal relationship, merely that it clearly argues against the opposite position]
But you then attempt to say that all the non-affiliated, pagan, etc, give the lie to that claim. You take self-identified atheists on the outside, and compare them to ‘SIAs’ PLUS the several ‘none of the above’ categories on the inside. It’s bogus. Compare like with like.
Raising that old chestnut that morality cannot exist without religion (or a god). Again, with absolutely no evidence to support this claim.
Perhaps there are some people like that — though it seems implausible to me, I’m willing to entertain the possibility — but “plenty”? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!
I would guess for every psychopath who is deterred by religion from committing crimes, there are ten who commit atrocities in the name of religion.
And I have the same amount of evidence for my claim as phoodoo has for his.
In all fairness, violations of basic human rights are not things that prison officials tend to give much thought to.
My prison comment was misunderstood. I don’t believe evil people fear god and are indeed godless.In effect atheists. however I’m sure some of the most moral people have also been atheists. i’m not scoring it. I pm;y meant evil people being sincerely non believers never have a interest in the subject and easily would say they believe.
my point was a aggressive, intellectually or in action, atheist is very likely one in doubt.
a sincere disbelief leads to apathy of the subject.
Of coarse no true christian can do evil or ever did. jUst pretenders including to themselves.
Of course, if Christians did no evil, Christ would be unnecessary.
A relevant comment from early this year. It’s bad news for phoodoo, of course:
William,
A comment I posted at UD in 2009:
llanitedave,
Depends what rights we are talking of, perhaps. ‘Basic human rights’ was perhaps inappropriate shorthand for what I meant. Depriving someone of liberty may be seen as such a violation, but treating people fairly and equally within the legal system is as much an intent on the ‘inside’ as outside, though of course practice frequently falls far short. But for those nations with separation of church and state, disproportionate parole treatment for atheists would be a particular issue.