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

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

If I may answer this question for myself too - I think there are two reasons.

Firstly, I see religion as not simply a pastime like sport, it's about claims that are made about the Universe. So I am interested in that from an intellectual point of view, no different to any other kind of claim about existence of things or about events that may have happened.

Secondly, a reason why I concern myself more about religious than other philosophical claims is because religion does have a great deal of influence on the world, from prayers in schools, the push to teach creationism in science lessons, as well as it's influence on morality (and hence, politics) where arguments may be based on claims of what God says. A lot of my focus is not just the validity of religious claims themselves, but on political issues surrounding religion and atheism. (In the context of discussing with friends who are Christians, it is usually primarily the first reason that is more relevant, though.)

[jhg.livejournal.com]

I know! You don't get, for example Mill's followers having a big fight with Locke's.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

You're not going to the right parties ;-P

(Irvine Welsh once wrote quite a funny short story about entirely this kind of concept)

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I see religion as not simply a pastime like sport, it's about claims that are made about the Universe

I wouldn't deny tat, but it varies from person to person. For some, sport is more than just a pastime; for others, religion is not he be-all and end-all of their activities.

The political impact of religion is, of course, a whole other area from the beliefs and practices, and I think that's very important. But one doesn't have to be an atheist to find control by religious means worrying.

Again, I wasn't making a direct comparison in terms of the way religion and sport play out in the world - I was simply giving an example of something which is a very big deal to a lot of people but not to me.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't deny tat
Nor would I - it's a key element of religion as a pastime!

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't deny tat, but it varies from person to person. For some,
sport is more than just a pastime; for others, religion is not he be-all and end-all of their activities.

Well, my interest is "claims made about the universe". That doesn't cover any sports that I know, and it covers most religions. If there was a sport that involved involved making claims about the world that I disagreed with, I'd argue against that too. And any religions that don't make any such claims (Buddhism?), I tend not to debate or dispute.

So yes, I agree that there could in principle be an overlap, but the fact that I've never come across such a sport, whilst most religions do fall into this category, mean that in practice I find myself in religion debates more than sporting ones :)

Getting back to your "Personally, I don't like most sport", another thought occurred to me: there's two senses of "like" here. It's possible to not like a particular thing, but still have an interest in the subject matter (an obvious example would be having an interest in some historical event, where the event itself was something that I didn't think was a good thing). I don't believe the claims made by religions, and I have concerns about many things associated with religion - but I still have an interest in religion, both the question of why people think the way they do, as well as questions such as origins of the Universe and whether people can come back from the dead.

But one doesn't have to be an atheist to find control by religious means worrying.

I agree. I would hope that even if I suddenly became say a deist, it wouldn't change my views on any of those issues.