firedragon
Veteran Member
With that logic, the monotheists are so close to the atheists because they dont believe in many Gods?
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The cherry picking strategy
- Thread starter firedragon
- Start date
With that logic, the monotheists are so close to the atheists because they dont believe in many Gods?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
They could at least understand what it's like to be an atheist, given that they don't believe in most of the same gods I don't believe in.
firedragon
Veteran Member
See, its actually the flip side. I dont know about them understanding or not understanding which seems too subjective and superficial to make claims. But they dont agree. They reject all the other models of God, and they reject atheism as well.
But atheists use this same argument about them rejecting some Gods which is the same as atheists rejecting all Gods which is generally an expected reasoning.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
They reject all other models of god except the one they accept. They should easily be able to understand how I feel about all those other gods they don't accept, because they don't accept them either (and probably for a lot of the same reasons I don't accept them).
It's more of an observation than an argument, really.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Well, they dont think that way. This is a perception you have, and is a propagated perception by the Atheists who are on TV and other media debating theists.
You cannot observe how a theist thinks unless you ask them "do you think this way".
Anyway, why do you think this observation as you put it should be spoken of? What do you think it proves to a theist? If you think that it proves to them you rejecting their God is the same as them rejecting Thor, it is an unobserved imagination of the atheist who thinks its an observation. Unless you can provide some atheists who actually think that way.
Other than that, what does that prove? Why do you use it?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
I did read it full.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
They could if they tried. Perhaps my pointing it out to them will get them thinking about it.
Great. I don't recall saying I can tell how someone thinks without asking them.
My response was in regards to a post that said, “Not in those words, but that's their basic message. Maybe there are atheists who are mystics but they're obviously not the kind that are on on these forums.”
Augustus
…
It might be an interesting thread to start. I could come up with what I think is a useful definition, and then have everyone chime in and point out what I am missing. From there we can see if adjusting (or wholesale rewriting) the verbiage can reconcile the problems and leave us with an adequate and useful definition of religion.
I think we have a common sense understanding of what most easily fits into what is considered the category of religion. I think it would be about how bright we can draw the line between what can and cannot be considered religion.
The term as used today really emerged in a Christian context and doesn't readily translate as there is no trans-historical and trans-cultural way to define religion. This often leads to us misunderstanding beliefs and belief systems.
I've never seen even any robust way to differentiate religious from 'secular' belief systems and believe the distinction is generally meaningless and makes it harder for us to understand the world we live in.
The term religion may be a useful shorthand in many situations as we often need to prioritise brevity and convenience over accuracy, but if we are trying to be rigorous and create a clear category that belief systems either belong to or don't belong to then it is not really possible imo, even if we only included the major world religions.
firedragon
Veteran Member
So have you ever asked a theist what they think? If so what was their response?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Many times. I've been on these boards for years.
Also, like many atheists, I used to be a theist.
Some can relate to what I'm pointing out. Others can't.
firedragon
Veteran Member
So what is the best response you have got? Or if you like, what is the general response? Any answers?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Some people see it from that perspective and understand the point I'm trying to make.
Others insist they're not an atheist, despite my never actually calling them one in them first place.
My definition is simple - a religion is a worldview that includes a supernatural deity. That's the line that matters to me. Including atheistic worldviews such as atheistic Buddhism on the religion side of the line isn't helpful to me, so I don't do it.
But do we need to agree on a definition? Isn't it enough to know how the other guy uses the word - what he means when he uses the word religion. For some, it apparently means any world view or any part of a worldview, even a single opinion such as, "I don't believe in gods." That's a religion to some here, and if such a person tells me I have a religion, I know what he means, and it's not what I mean when I use the same word.
Actually, I think many here were waiting for you to do that. Your OP assumes that atheists are using deceptive and dishonest means - so called contextomy. Your entire argument seems to be based on your contextomy of an old song and offering that as evidence of what atheists do. But it's what you did.
Cherry picking is part and parcel of religious apologetics, at least in Christianity. I expect that it's the same in your religion, but I'm not familiar with your book, so am not able to say when something cherry-picked misrepresents the spirit of the book the way I can with Christian scripture. Consider when the Christian tells me that his holy book says love one another. I tell him to read the whole book. Not too loving by my standards. This deity's version of love includes building a torture chamber, stocking it with demons, and keeping the souls that didn't worship it in life conscious for eternity just to make them suffer to the benefit of nobody but a sadist. If you only look at the phrase love one another, you wouldn't know what was meant by that phrase in this worldview.
Any time anybody tells you that you've taken something out of context, they're implying that you have misrepresented the intention of the text by removing surrounding text that changes the apparent meaning of the cherry picked text. To make that an argument rather than a empty claim, one needs to reproduce the cherry picked alone and then with the context that reveals what the words really meant. Consider these two: "I'm getting a divorce. I hate my wife" and "I would never say that I hate my wife. That's a lie." In both cases, we can remove context and reduce it to "I hate my wife," and in both cases, the phrase has been removed from surrounding context, but only in one case does restoring that missing context reveal that the words meant something different in that context than they do standing alone. Simply saying, "You took that out of context" is not enough to make the case that the text was misunderstood or misrepresented.
Like I said, I'll bet many are waiting for you to do that - demonstrate with examples how dishonest atheists are.
At this point, you have nothing but an unsupported claim that you are using as a premise, a given. Nothing since the OP is meaningful to those who don't share your assumptions that atheists can be characterized by this behavior, and it needs explaining. Who's being deceptive here? Not the atheists.
Nope. That's your argument.
Having any gods at all makes one's worldview radically different from the atheist's. That's why my definition of religion sharply divides all worldviews with supernatural deities from naturalistic world views. Buddha's advice is radically different from Jesus'. I find no value in grouping the two under the heading of religion. It blurs the important distinction, which is the willingness to believe by faith. The thing is that there is no possibility of dialectic with such a person, as they don't share the same means of deciding what is true about the world. Nor do they have the same agenda, nor share the same idea of what ethical discourse looks like. So, there is no hope of reconciling differences of opinion. The rational skeptic embraces critical thinking, which has rules, the first of which is to not believe in gods or anything else without sufficient evidentiary support, and to challenge all received wisdom. That pretty much eliminates gods and demotes scripture.
I don't think too many atheists care what others believe. I like to know if I'm dealing with a faith-based thinker, but I'm not going to try to talk him out of his beliefs, just as I won't try to talk any of the theists present into abandoning their religions. If my neighbor wants to dance around the tree in his back yard at night shaking a stick with a bloody chicken claw while baying at the moon because that's what centers him and gives his life meaning, I'm fine with it as long as he keeps the noise down.
What we care about is when there are enough of them to impose their religions on the rest of us, reducing their numbers and their ability to impact the lives of any but volunteers.
- "I always flinch in embarrassment for the believer who trots out, 'Atheism is just another kind of faith,' because it's a tacit admission that taking claims on faith is a silly thing to do. When you've succumbed to arguing that the opposition is just as misguided as you are, it's time to take a step back and rethink your attitudes." - Amanda Marcotte
We deconstruct fallacious arguments. That's part of the drill in critical thinking, which implies the use of fallacy-free logic. That means having a command of the fallacies such as the one in the OP, the fallacy of assumption (unshared premises) - "When we reason using implicit assumptions or further propositions whose truth is uncertain or implausible, we commit the fallacy of unwarranted assumption and the truth of our conclusions is grossly affected. " This is one of the most useful functions of participating in these forums, others being witnessing a cross-section of believers and unbelievers to get a sense of how religion affects people, formulating cogent arguments, and practicing writing skills. That's what I'm doing here - not trying to change your mind or make you an atheist.
Isn't that pretty much what religious apologetics is (I realize that I am preaching to the choir with you)? And isn't that the fundamental problem with faith-based thinking. It's not empirically based, so it is not tethered to physical reality. Like poetry, it means whatever the believer wants it to mean. I think we're up to about 40,000 different denominations of Christianity, but still only one periodic table of the elements,. The reason is obvious - only the latter is derived from reality. How many different astrologies are there, each based on an arbitrary system of beliefs about how to read the stars and what they can tell one, but only one astronomy. Same reason - astrology is faith-based, and astronomy is an empirical science
The purpose of the thread is atheist-bashing. That's where a theist starts a thread telling us what terrible people atheists are for attacking their beliefs, and how smart we think we are, and how our beliefs are a religion, and theirs supported by science using sciencey sounding specious arguments that they don't understand are for Sunday school, not the marketplace of ideas like here. Those arguments are intended to make people feel better about their decision to embrace creationism over naturalistic evolution, for example, with arguments about 747s assembling in junk yards after a tornado, or why evolution is impossible because mutations can't add information, and nobody ever saw a cat evolve into a dog - arguments that are easily rejected by the scientifically literate and seasoned critical thinker, but not by the congregation, who are satisfied that their beliefs are on an equal foundation to the atheists, who are really just a religion anyway, so it's all equal, right? That's what the believer needs to hear, but such things only reassure the atheist that he is correct and the theist uninformed.
I saw an argument repeated from a creationist website recently that claimed that man couldn't have a common ancestor with the other extant great apes, since they all have 24 pairs of chromosomes, man just 23, and a mutation that dropped a chromosome would be lethal, not the beginning of mankind. I'm going to guess that everybody present who accepts the theory of evolution can tell us what's wrong with that argument, but no creationists. Who is that argument going to work on? As I said, the error is in the apologist not recognizing that presenting such an argument to scientifically literate actually undermines him with that crowd, and that the argument is for his people, who will buy it and feel better about their beliefs.
So, you're a lexical prescriptionist - the guy who holds out a dictionary and expects that others will use his preferred definition. That's not how language works. People modify the meaning of words to make them more useful to them, as I did with my definition of religion above. It doesn't matter which if any of your links likes my choice of definitions. I use one that works for me. All I need do when choosing a nonstandard definition for myself is explain how I use the word. If whoever I am talking with can't get past that because of insisting that I have to use the word the way he prefers, the discussion is over.
For example, we often see people defining atheists as people who claim that there is no god, and they can find that definition in dictionaries. But it doesn't work for me or any other agnostic atheist. It excludes us for saying that we do not deny the possibility of gods. In fact, that definition essentially ignores that we exist, or expects us to call ourselves agnostic rather than atheist when we are both. That definition simply doesn't work for me, so I don't use it.
But then the first theist one encounters rejects the usage and argues about how I have to use language, and, as I indicated, the discussion is over, often after the theist triumphantly proclaims that the atheist cannot prove there's no God. He's read and understood nothing, because he refuses to recognize that most atheists don't claim that they can or have ruled out gods. He's a lexical prescriptionist as well, and insists that if I call myself an atheist, I am declaring that there are no gods, even after telling him that that is not what I mean when I use the word. So what's the value in a discussion with such a person?
I only looked at the Wiki link, and found its definition of religion too broad to be useful to me. As I said above, the line of interest to me is between those believing in a god and those that don't. The next thing of interest is how that belief affects their other thinking.
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firedragon
Veteran Member
I can't remember the OP saying anything about an atheist.
And here we get into the debate about what 'OP' means. Is it "OP - the original post", or is it "OP - the original poster", or can it be used for both.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Nonsense. It's only false faith in a false idea that's silly.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Right back at you. That works in both directions.
firedragon
Veteran Member
And here we get into the debate about what 'OP' means. Is it "OP - the original post", or is it "OP - the original poster", or can it be used for both.
I meant the Original Post. For forum definition or whatever you wish to "debate" you can clarify from someone responsible and maybe inform the others as well.