Ask an atheist

[ciphergoth]

In a discussion about religion in wildeabandon's journal, meihua writes: "this seems to have turned into me interrogating you. [...] Is there anything you'd like to challenge me on, instead?"

I think it's only fair enough to open up my own beliefs to the challenges of others, since I'm always keen to respond when theists invite me to give my perspective on some aspect of their beliefs as wildeabandon has in a series of recent posts. So, is there anything you'd like me to respond to?

Rules:

• You don't have to read this thread. This post is an invitation, not a challenge; if you don't like to read me talking about this then feel free to skip this.
• Be honest. Please don't advance arguments you don't personally buy, unless you're also an atheist and you want to discuss how best to counter it.
• If you come to change your mind about the validity of an argument, think about how you can generalise the lesson learned so as not to misassess similar arguments in future.
• Don't just match the politeness of what you reply to, but try to exceed it - see Postel's Law. Otherwise it is very easy to end up with a thread where each contributor thinks they are merely matching the snark level of the other, and yet the thread starts with the very slightest suggestion of rudeness and finishes with "please choke on a bucket of cocks".

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

I feel similarly to the way you describe feeling in response to friend_of_tofu. Looking at you - and at people like tongodeon, with whom I have similar conversations at times - I wonder how it is possible that that (often) highly intelligent, thoughtful, probing head can spend so much effort on what I see as a huge waste of resources.

I'm struck by your (lack of) response to my bringing up that comic strip you posted - you asked for an example of you linking to an asshole, I produced one, and you seem to have gone off thinking that I didn't and you "won" that point. You seem to think that you can feel okay about yourself because you really have never linked to an out-of-line commentator. You appear not to see anything wrong with endorsing that comic strip; you appear to think it's okay and not highly likely to impair your credibility.

Similarly, I had a conversation with tongodeon about quotation marks (http://tongodeon.livejournal.com/709821.html?thread=3D7042493) that seemed to go around, and around, and around, without ever really going anywhere; to this day I think he doesn't see anything actually wrong with putting the words associated with a view he disagrees with into scare quotes, even though he correctly stated the implications of doing so. He stopped (in that one case) because I said it was important, but has shown no indication of understanding why it's important; he seemed to be just humouring me.

I don't understand how you or he can do things like that, and that makes my brain itch.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Let me reiterate my thesis and try to set out what I consider to be the evidence for it.

It appears to me that religion is guilty of special pleading when it comes to criticism of religious belief. A level of criticism that would be considered normal and healthy in any other field of human discussion, in politics or philosophy or economics, is considered shocking and shameful when it is applied to religious discussion. This applies to religious people too, incidentally; religious people that openly go around saying that other religions are mistaken get stick for it.

As a result, when atheists criticise religion, they are accused of being disrespectful. As a result, our words are misperceived; they are seen not as a criticism of the belief but an insult to the believer. In this discussion two fairly clear pieces of evidence have come out that back up this interpretation of your words for me.

The first is that you arrived believing that I have approvingly linked to articles that claim all religious people are idiots. This never happened. I linked to things you have other objections to, but the specific accusation you opened with never happened. As per my point 3 of the rules, when you catch yourself making an error like this, I ask that you don't just brush it off and focus on what you still believe; such an error is an opportunity to re-calibrate the way you approach these things to avoid such errors in future, and I urge you to take that opportunity.

The second piece of evidence is the total absence of atheists who criticise religion itself in a way that you don't find disrespectful. I don't think my meaning of "criticise religion itself" is obscure or unclear; I mean only that they argue directly for the point of view that religious people are mistaken about what they profess. If it were possible to express this point of view without you finding it disrespectful, someone would surely be doing it - and you'd probably already know of examples before you came to this thread.

Taking these things together, it seems clear to me that I cannot argue for the point of view that religion is a mistake without you finding it disrespectful, and therefore I can't take your outrage as strong evidence that I'm being any less civil than I can possibly be while advancing that point of view.