Am I wrong?

[Adam-a]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

There's no difference insofar as they're both engaging in fruitless endeavors.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

Hmm. You paint religion with a broad brush.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

Why would you think that this is your duty?

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so?

Heh... I suppose nothing's stopping you from doing it, but there's also nothing stopping people from finding it annoying and avoiding you.

Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

There can be, but it depends. A particular tactic doesn't go from "bad" to "good" just because it's being used in the service of atheism instead of theism.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind ...

Perhaps you hold it in too high esteem.

 

[S-word]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

No difference at all old mate, you are as bad as those who you condemn.

 

[MSizer]

Yeah, IMO, if a religious person is not bothering me, it's not really my business to shove my lack of belief in their face. Now, on RF I'm open about it, because we're here with the understanding that discussion and debate is expected, but in common social situations, I think the rules of politeness are a bit more stringent than a religious forum.

 

[Jackytar]

I'll defer to Monta on this one ----> link

Oh... and welcome to RF.

Jackytar

 

[S-word]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

If you are wrong old mate, then the greater majority of we are wrong also. You hold to the athist belief, while I am a Pantheist, and yet when people come knocking on my door trying to shove their rubbishing mysterious god down my throat, I hackle up and they end up crawling away with their tail between their legs.
But while they are here on this forum, I invite them to spruk their ignorance, while I will attempt to straighten them out, just as you would I suppose.

Be true to who you are, know who you are and you will be known.

 

[Mindful]

Why do atheists make so much noise? Are they proud of themselves? Are they preaching their religion to us? Are they just making whimpers for help? Atheists are people who don't go to the party, but like to criticize those who do as being hypocritical party goers.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Why do atheists make so much noise? Are they proud of themselves? Are they preaching their religion to us? Are they just making whimpers for help? Atheists are people who don't go to the party, but like to criticize those who do as being hypocritical party goers.

Pfft - point to an atheist who doesn't party, and I'll point to a liar. If there's one thing we atheists do well, it's party. It's too try to fill the void, you see.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Why do atheists make so much noise? Are they proud of themselves?

Speaking for myself, I'm certainly not ashamed of my atheism.

Are they preaching their religion to us? Are they just making whimpers for help?

I'm not doing either. But since I'm currently disconnected from the atheist collective hive mind, I'll let the other atheists respond with their own feelings on the matter.

Atheists are people who don't go to the party, but like to criticize those who do as being hypocritical party goers.

"The party"? You have been to church, haven't you?

 

[fantome profane]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do.

What exactly do you mean by “constantly”? Do you raise the issue of religion in casual social situation? Do you harass religious people at your work? If someone does not wish to discuss this topic with you do you press it? If you do any of these things I would say “stop it”. I am an atheist and I don’t tolerate this kind of behaviour from religious people and I don’t think they should tolerate it from atheists (and I don’t tolerate it from atheists either).

I don’t think there is anything wrong with promoting your viewpoint if that is what you chose to do, but there is a time and place for everything. Usually when people don’t want to engage with you there is no point anyways. There may be a better way to accomplish your goal rather than “constantly” confronting people, you might have better luck if you careful select the right time and right place. (and the right person and the right words)

btw welcome to the board, if you are looking to debate religious topics this is the right place. I recommend that when you feel the urge to “confront” people about their beliefs you come here. You will find people here that are willing and able to engage with you.

 

[Anti-thesisofreason]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

So in other words you proselytize which is no different from what Christians do to non-believers or people of different faiths. I and most atheists I know have a problem with it.

I personally don't care what you believe just don't try to force feed it to me. If I have a question about your belief system I will ask, thanks for playing.

Welcome to RF Adam!

 

[Herr Heinrich]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

You should treat them with kindness. Unless they openly say something to you about your beliefs you probably shouldn't argue with them. By doing so you are being just as bad as the fundamentalists who spout nonsense.

 

[Gentoo]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

And as a person of faith it is my duty to actively ignore such attempts or, more importantly, question why it's so important to you that I lose my faith. Another thing, why is it that atheists like you assume that we all just blindly follow our paths without question? Is it so far out to believe that we have questioned intensively, and our answers led us to our religions?

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs.

You're certainly free to try, but you won't get very far... I'd walk away before you could finish your sentence. Which is the same response someone would get if they were proselytizing another religion rather than proselytizing atheism.

Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

No and No.

 

[gnomon]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

Picking the wrong battles.

As an atheist I could personally care less if people believe in God or not. Or if people believe that Lucifer is the devil and Prometheus wrapped up in one. Who really cares.

It's better to confront people who posit dangerous beliefs. A belief in God is not an inherently dangerous belief. A belief that Big Pharma is misleading people to make a buck on vaccines (a la Jim Carey and host of others), a belief that the germ theory of disease is wrong (a la Bill Maher and a host of others), that various alternative medicines or faith healing are as effective as medicine (a la millions of people), dowsing can find bombs (a la the fools in charge of the Iraqi police who are using dowsing rods to find IED's), psychics, charlatans, etc.

A Catholic telling me a cracker is the body of Christ, while intellectually insulting, isn't really a big deal. People passing off the aforementioned concepts as true is a big deal.

As far as the religion inspired hate, war and pain compare that to the amount of ethnically inspired hate, war and pain. Religion doesn't even come close. So why are we not out there challenging every fool who adheres loyally to an ethnic identity over their basic humanity?

 

[nonbeliever_92]

Why do atheists make so much noise? Are they proud of themselves? Are they preaching their religion to us? Are they just making whimpers for help? Atheists are people who don't go to the party, but like to criticize those who do as being hypocritical party goers.

Really? Compared to the amount of noise generated by the religious minded fundamentalists, atheists barely whisper. Not many atheists criticize the people, but the belief. Atheist don't have religions and most of them certainly don't "preach."

 

[Adam-a]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, especially fantome profane.

I was starting to feel like a burden on facebook and with my peers because I was doing this. I felt that It was just a consequence of being right. Which, I still believe im right. BUT I am going to restrain myself from confrontation unless directly provoked or I feel that my opinion is required.

I guess this zeal is a product of my newfound lack of belief. Mind you I live in the southern United states and if you know anything about the area you can probably understand why I have reason to act in such a way.

But truly I can understand the negative effect of my actions.

 

[MissAlice]

Well at least you asked instead of making it your business to be right about your topic....

And welcome to RF Adam!

 

[ChristineES]

As an Atheist I am constantly in a position to confront people about their beliefs; and I usually do. I constantly hear the complaint that I am as fundemental as the religious that I am trying to inform (disprove.) I can understand this point of view but find it hard to hold my tongue when I am constantly reminded of the religion-inspired hate, war, and pain caused by people of faith.

I feel that as an atheist it is my duty to speak my mind and try to convince those with beliefs in the supernatural that God does not exist, but more importantly encourage them to question their advisors and texts.

What do you think about people who relentlessly try to point out the fallacy of your beliefs. Is it anyone's place to do so? Is there a difference between an atheist trying to convince a believer of the absence of God and a believer trying to recruit an atheist?

You and I could make a deal. I promise not to try and convince you that there is a God and you can promise you won't try and convince me that there isn't a God. :angel2:
And welcome to the forum.