What Irks You Most About Atheists, Agnostics, And Non-Believers?

The Reverend Bob · Jul 20, 2019

Erebus said:
Drowning innocent little children is absolutely in line with fairy folklore.

It's like a damn hobby for the Fey in the folklore to drown kids

Erebus · Jul 20, 2019

ecco said:
Well, dang. Live and learn. After reading your post, I did a little digging. Gees. Among other stuff, I came across this...

Fairy Scapegoats: A History of the Persecution of Changeling Children
Writing in 1960, the Dutch scholar Jacoba Hooykaas found child-stealing fairy or elf types were feared in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Moravia, Greece, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary, with a modern-day variant in Bali. In Celtic territories, fairies stole babies and children — especially boys, and especially those with blue eyes and fair hair — leaving fairy substitutes in their place. Having identified such a switch, people did everything they could to make the fairies reverse it. To the end of the nineteenth century, and probably later, such children were ritually abused by their own parents to this end. Immersed in rivers or placed at the margin of coastal tides, stood on hot coals or hung over fires, exposed in freezing weather, bathed in poisonous foxglove essence, beaten, threatened and subjected to forms of exorcism, these babies and children sometimes survived, sometimes not.

Truly frightening. I guess my concepts of Faries came from the likes of Disney and the Cottingley Faries.

Thanks for the info.

My pleasure

You're certainly not alone in how you perceived fairies by the way. Disney has a hell of a lot to answer for in trampling over some fascinating (and often gruesome) folklore and history.

Darkforbid · Jul 20, 2019

ecco said:
What is it about this "study" that impressed you?

Was it this...(my emphases)

“It suggests that religious individuals may cling to certain beliefs, especially those which seem at odds with analytic reasoning, because those beliefs resonate with their moral sentiments,” said PhD student Jared Friedman, a co-author of the study.

In other words, the more rational something sounds, the more religious individuals need to reject it.

Did you notice this part?

The majority of participants in the study identified as Christian or non-religious; Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim participants also took part.

What? No atheists?!? That's one heck of a good study.

Do you have something else you would like to dazzle us with?

Well atheists tend to be grouped under non belief

Obviously

The Reverend Bob · Jul 20, 2019

LuisDantas said:
I think that you may eventually find out that you are projecting.

For all the attempt at making "New Atheism" a thing, there is really hardly any leadership among atheists. Because there is no need for any.

Once you consider how many of us exist, that is remarkable and hints at interesting things.

I am not projecting anything. Young people tend to look up to others. When a young person discovers atheism they often look to famous and outspoken for guidance and confirmation of their newfound atheism. It is a well known human practice that even atheists are not magically immune from. Hero worship. There is a strong psychological need to have role models, heroes and idols to look up to. Where you get the idea that atheists young and old have somehow been vaccinated from this need is beyond me.

About the whole "New Atheist" thingamajig, as far as I can see it was a marketing ploy to sell books and is meaningless to me. No I don't believe there is an organized atheist movement with a strong leadership and I doubt there could be. Thank the gods for that.

I don't find anything interesting or remarkable in atheism; atheism is merely the lack of belief in god/gods and that is as boring and banal as the day is long. Calling atheism interesting and remarkable is like calling a saltine cracker interesting and remarkable. Atheism like a saltine cracker is only interesting and/or remarkable when you add something to it and that largely depends on what you add

Augustus · Jul 20, 2019

Jos said:
OK useful but can you please be a bit more specific?

All of them.

Ideologies are subjective value systems that create sources of meaning where none objectively exist. We explain events to ourselves (and others) by turning them into narratives that are significantly affected by our cultural environment.

LuisDantas · Jul 20, 2019

The Reverend Bob said:
I am not projecting anything. Young people tend to look up to others. When a young person discovers atheism they often look to famous and outspoken for guidance and confirmation of their newfound atheism. It is a well known human practice that even atheists are not magically immune from. Hero worship. There is a strong psychological need to have role models, heroes and idols to look up to. Where you get the idea that atheists young and old have somehow been vaccinated from this need is beyond me.

Then you are projecting.

The Reverend Bob · Jul 20, 2019

LuisDantas said:
Then you are projecting.

Projecting what? The radiant light of the truth?

Augustus · Jul 20, 2019

ecco said:
If by "comforting fictions" you mean beliefs in non-existent gods, yes, all atheists believe that.

I find it strange that you would refer to religious beliefs as "comforting fictions". Was that a Freudian slip?

You wouldn't find it strange if you had read my post a bit more carefully

Augustus said:
Some characteristics that I'm not fond of which may be present among my fellow irreligionists:

ecco said:
hat's a really nonsensical statement - on many levels.
What's "their, and our species"? Are you saying that atheists and theists are different species? Is that your level of understanding of nature?

Punctuation my friend.

Their ability to be rational and our species' ability to be rational.

ecco said:
Ignoring that, we are still left with your assertion that many of us have "an excessive faith in ... our species', ability to be consistently rational."

That's obviously not true. We would have some "faith ... in our species', ability to be consistently rational" if 90+% of people were atheists.

Thank you for illustrating my point. It's these pesky religions that make us so irrational...

osgart · Jul 20, 2019

My grief is not representative of the whole. But here goes:

That their idealogue is foolproof and that the only reasonable people must take their position.

The flying spaghetti monster argument.

The assumption that all God believers are religious or adhere to a particular religion.

Everything is a logical fallacy from those they oppose.

If it does not logically follow for them, then it should not logically follow for anyone else. IOW, their intuition is superior to all other intuitions.

The attitude of ridicule.

The priesthood of scientific authority over all people's lives.

The idea that philosophy is useless, and only science reigns supreme.

Ultimate questions are all within the realm and grasp of science.

Rational Agnostic · Jul 20, 2019

The Reverend Bob said:
Their fanboy adulation of the Fearless Leaders such as Dawkins

The only one here who fanboys Dawkins is you. You made an entire thread to discuss him yesterday.

We all know you have a massive crush on him, but your obsession with him is bordering on the unhealthy. Did he reject you when you expressed your romantic interest to him? Time to move on. Perhaps you could ask Harris or Pinker out on a date instead.

Augustus · Jul 20, 2019

LuisDantas said:
Then you are projecting.

Millions buy their books, watch their videos, listen to their podcasts, go to their speaking tours, etc. but @The Reverend Bob is 'projecting' to suggest that some of these people may indeed look up to them, be inspired by them and take guidance from them?

SalixIncendium · Jul 20, 2019

Erebus said:
I don't want to generalise all atheists here since atheism itself isn't the reason I'd have an issue with somebody. If we're talking pet peeves though, there are a couple of things that make me wince.

Sometimes a person will find a particular criticism of Abrahamic Monotheism and think they've found an all-purpose foil to theism and/or religion in general. I suspect this is cultural as if you've grown up in the Bible Belt or somewhere similar, it's very likely you haven't had much experience beyond the dominant religion of that area. That's understandable but it becomes an issue if that view is maintained in the face of contrary information.

The comforting fictions thing that @Augustus mentioned is also irritating. It's doubly irritating when that same person possesses a starry-eyed wonder at just how gosh darned great humans are.

Finally it's the jokes. George Carlin's invisible man in the sky routine was funny at the time but that joke has since been pounded into the dirt by repetition. It's the Knights Who Say Ni effect. Also, when somebody compares deities to fairies in an attempt to be derisive, it makes me sincerely wish that more people would do some bloody research. It's not necessarily an unfair comparison to make but when somebody does it with sparkly ballerinas in mind they really are showing their ignorance.

Again, this isn't a criticism of atheists as a whole nor is it a criticism of atheism itself. These are just behaviours from some people that I find irritating.

ecco said:
In what way is it showing ignorance?

On the other hand, comparing gods to fairies is really not fair to the reputation of faries. Faries are kind to children and bring them joy, or money for their unneeded teeth.

Faries never horrifically drowned all the innocent little children and wooly lambs.

JJ50 said:
Very true.

Erebus said:
Okay so I'm going to have to cite Poe's law here because I'm genuinely not sure if you're being facetious!

Drowning innocent little children is absolutely in line with fairy folklore.

It really isn't.

Darkforbid said:
You should read some fairy stories.

Fairy folk are rarely portraid as good

ecco said:
Well, dang. Live and learn. After reading your post, I did a little digging. Gees. Among other stuff, I came across this...

Fairy Scapegoats: A History of the Persecution of Changeling Children
Writing in 1960, the Dutch scholar Jacoba Hooykaas found child-stealing fairy or elf types were feared in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Moravia, Greece, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary, with a modern-day variant in Bali. In Celtic territories, fairies stole babies and children — especially boys, and especially those with blue eyes and fair hair — leaving fairy substitutes in their place. Having identified such a switch, people did everything they could to make the fairies reverse it. To the end of the nineteenth century, and probably later, such children were ritually abused by their own parents to this end. Immersed in rivers or placed at the margin of coastal tides, stood on hot coals or hung over fires, exposed in freezing weather, bathed in poisonous foxglove essence, beaten, threatened and subjected to forms of exorcism, these babies and children sometimes survived, sometimes not.

Truly frightening. I guess my concepts of Faries came from the likes of Disney and the Cottingley Faries.

Thanks for the info.

Still, Faries never horrifically drowned all the innocent little children and wooly lambs.

The Reverend Bob said:
It's like a damn hobby for the Fey in the folklore to drown kids

Erebus said:
My pleasure

You're certainly not alone in how you perceived fairies by the way. Disney has a hell of a lot to answer for in trampling over some fascinating (and often gruesome) folklore and history.

This thread needs more...

ecco · Jul 20, 2019

The Reverend Bob said:
The above is a good example of certain behaviors some atheists display that I dislike. I hate the facetious and glib attitudes they tend to take when discussing religion.

You consider it glib when someone compares one set of entities that were created by man's imaginings with another set of entities that were created by man's imaginings. I don't see that glib.

But, OK. Let's have a serious discussion.

A couple of quick questions before we begin.
Do you believe God is eternal?
Do you believe God is omniscient?
Do you believe God is omnipotent?
Do you believe the Genesis story to be factual, especially the Adam, Eve, Tree part?

The Reverend Bob · Jul 20, 2019

ecco said:
Do you believe God is eternal?

No.

ecco said:
Do you believe God is omniscient?

No.

ecco said:
Do you believe God is omnipotent?

No.

ecco said:
Do you believe the Genesis story to be factual, especially the Adam, Eve, Tree part?

No.

The Reverend Bob · Jul 20, 2019

SalixIncendium said:
This thread needs more...

I wouldn't disparage the Fey folk if I were you. Where I come from we talk about them in hushed tones

sun rise · Jul 20, 2019

ecco said:
You consider it glib when someone compares one set of entities that were created by man's imaginings with another set of entities that were created by man's imaginings. I don't see that glib.

But, OK. Let's have a serious discussion.

A couple of quick questions before we begin.

Do you believe God is eternal?

yes

Do you believe God is omniscient?

yes

Do you believe God is omnipotent?

yes

Do you believe the Genesis story to be factual, especially the Adam, Eve, Tree part?

no

The Reverend Bob · Jul 20, 2019

Hubert Farnsworth said:
Perhaps you could ask Harris or Pinker out on a date instead

I wouldn't want to make you jealous.

Liu · Jul 20, 2019

ecco said:
If you want to be correct instead of ixxxxxxxxy axxxxxxt, you would have said: "what bothers me is that they can't see the psychological benefits of having a religion like I do".

I agree that I could have phrased it a bit less ambiguous to make clear what I mean, so again: "what bothers me is that they can't see the psychological benefits of having a religion like those effects which it clearly has on me and which it also seems to have on many other people".
Admittedly, on very many people religion has negative effects.

Out of curiosity, what phrase were you ***ing in your comment? (perhaps it's obvious but English isn't my native language).

ecco · Jul 20, 2019

The Reverend Bob said:
Also cowardly microaggressions also tend to be annoying

I quote from your linked article and you accuse me of cowardly microaggressions. Not just microaggressions but cowardly microaggressions.

Was it this...(my emphases)

“It suggests that religious individuals may cling to certain beliefs, especially those which seem at odds with analytic reasoning, because those beliefs resonate with their moral sentiments,” said PhD student Jared Friedman, a co-author of the study.

Or was it that I pointed out that in a study about atheists, apparently no atheists were studied?

Or was it that I showed that I was not impressed by suggesting that you had not dazzled us,

Wasp · Jul 20, 2019

1)That they think the reason they're not believers is that they're so smart.

2)Their frequent use of the adjective 'stupid'.

What Irks You Most About Atheists, Agnostics, And Non-Believers?

Fart Machine and Beastmaster

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Aura of atheification

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Nothing my eye, Something for sure

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The world is on fire

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