https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/todays-atheists-are-bullies-and-they-are...
Anthony DeStefano published this opinion piece on the Fox website. I was intrigued by the following assertion.
"Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them."
He means that the vast majority of people throughout history have been theists. That may be true, but the vast majority of people have also been forced into orthodoxy by various despots, and their beliefs have ranged from the life-worshipping Jains of India to the baby-burning Baalists of ancient Carthage.
The evidence of history is that religions evolve out of local cultures, that they hate each other more than they hate atheists, and that when people are free and educated, they tend to wipe religion of their shoes and walk on.
For the record, I don't mind people saying "Merry Christmas" or eating hot-cross rabbit eggs as long as they don't force me to join in or expect to pay for their folly. So yes, I'm an arrogant bully.
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RE: OP: ""Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them."
This would be a bullshit Christian tactic - "SHIFTING OF THE BURDEN OF PROOF." Whether or not ATHEISTS believe people have been wrong IN ALL TIMES AND IN ALL PLACES, the fact remains that the majority of human beings, from all periods of time, and all places on earth have been unable to validate or substantiate, in any way, those beliefs which were most important to them. And - we, THE ATHEISTS, are still waiting for them to do so.
What atheists believe is not even a part of the equation.
Where does he get the idea I'm ignorant from? The average atheist knows more about religion than the average theist does, nevermind any other subject.
About 76.5% of the US population is theistic, around 70.5% Christian. About 3.1% of the US population are atheists and we're bullying them? How? We don't have the voting power to force them to do anything.
The author seems to advocate atheists keeping their mouths shut. The kind of tolerance I expect from Fox News, which if I had an opinion piece I wanted to be taken seriously, I would submit it elsewhere.
I believe that 76% may SAY they are theistic, but I would bet a large number of those are “pretenders”.
@Pirate Jack & Skeptical Kevin
I agree with both, on paper, (a 2010 census perhaps,) 76 will put down some sort of religion, but I would say at least 50% of the population is too tired, too busy, too distracted to really even care one way or another. Even many more devout religious folks their own level of "faith" may spike around sunday morning, declining the rest of the week, only to spike back up again from their weekly sunday morning drug inject (mass.) Or whichever holy day they have.
I know in my teenage and early 20's I really just did not care, which in some senses I would agree is the way to go, the god ideas have zero power, only the people that "enforce" their god idea's will is there any power at all, and these days, where I live, those people are pretty easy to avoid. I just take a more active stance now as I have learned here and elsewhere just how awful and destructive just about all the major religions in the world are.
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▮I am an atheist that always likes a good debate
▮Please include @LogicFTW for responses to me
▮Tips on forum use. ▮ A.R. Member since 2016.
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HAY! Jest caws I iz pertier an' mower een-tell-uh-jent then awl yew uther peepuhl ain't gahtta meen I iz air-roh-gant. An' they ain't nobuddy smahler an' weeker 'en meh ehvver gaht aweigh width cawlin' meh uh ingernt bullee. Butt I IZ dane-jer-us, tho! Yep, sew dam dane-jer-us I ain't uh-loud ta yews da bar-bee-q greel no mower.
Tin - You gotta get some Red Lock Tight for them bolts buddy. They are all coming lose again. If you don't tighten them soon, we are going to be scooping up parts of you all over the place.
Saporro: "Where does he get the idea I'm ignorant from? The average atheist knows more about religion than the average theist does, nevermind any other subject."
This. Complete agreement (whole statement; emphasis mine). Many times have I had a short debate with those Jehovah Witnesses who pass out those useless magazines and I knew more about their religion and their unholy texts. Go figure.
And if theists want to assume I am arrogant for speaking my mind, then they should get the First Admendment abolished. I have been silent about the Pure Evil of religion for far too long. Religion has NOTHING further to offer in contribution to human wisdom and knowledge. NONE! Religion has NOTHING further to offer on how to live a moral life. NONE!
As Arthur C Clarke once said, “One of the greatest tragedies in mankind’s entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn’t require religion at all. Religion is the most malignant of all mind viruses.”
In all my years of researching religion and its supposed miracles, not once have I ever seen ANY OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE to prove magic from an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent supernatural Sky Faerie, an undead Magic Lich Virgin, or that ghastly Comical Spook. In fact, not once have I ever seen ANY OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE to prove the Bible and/or Qu'ran is anything other than an anthology of plagiarized myths and legends from FAR! older myths and legends. Many thousands of years older.
Never once have I seen ANY OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE to prove prayer has any efficacy other than helping ONLY the person who is praying. Never has prayer EVER worked for any others being prayed for. Or, is it being preyed upon?
And Robert A Heinlein even once said the perfect proclamation about any deities (paraphrased), “Men rarely, if ever, manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods men have created have the manners and morals of a childish, spoiled brat.”
And something I myself have said, “I can attest to the aggressive tactics of Christians. The main reason behind their aggressiveness is due to the indoctrination processes they are put through. Essentially, they are taught that they are to go out and "save souls" even if it kills us godless heathens.”
And if I am so damned ignorant, then how come I tend to possess more knowledge of the "real world" than virtually ANY theist?
Fine. If theists wish to believe that I am arrogant for practicing my First Admendment right, and I am ignorant for possessing more knowledge than they do, and I am dangerous because of these two facts, then so fucking what? I could care less. They can just shut themselves behind closed doors, and they ain't got to worry about me bothering them. However, as long as they keep coming after me to fling their bullshit at me, I shall forever have Cognostic's Shovel on hand.
• Cognostic's Shovel: When someone starts slinging bullshit at you, get a shovel and sling it back.
I'd rather be arrogant, ignorant, and dangerous than to live a life believing in bullshit lies.
rmfr
I just love one of the replies to the article:
"Nice try, Tony, but anyone who spent a day on an elementary school playground knows this game: push a smaller kid down, wait for him to fight back, then report him to the teacher for bullying."
Pretty much sums up religion's, and especially Christianity's, approach to atheism.
All humans are either ignorant, arrogant and/or dangerous... to deny this would be indeed arrogant and ignorant and have that odeous stench of utter bollocks.
The different between theists and atheists in my opinion is that atheist do not demand special treatment because of their belief structure.
Just because you have an imaginary friend, that should not entitle you to be protected from ridicule, especially if you will not demonstrate any objective evidence to support the notion that your beliefs are true and not simply gullible, simple minded fuckwits who think they can be twats to others but simply saying sorry to their imaginary friend makes it all better.
"Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them."
Er, so does Anthony DeStefano unless he's claiming to believe in every deity humans have ever created. That aside it is an obvious Argumetum ad populum fallacy, just a bare appeal to numbers.
It;s clear Anthony DeStefano is the ignorant bully. judging from the hate fuelled diatribe in that article. It's a cliched list of theistic lies, and the odd half truth.
I like this by William Blake, it seems apropos given this moron's determined attempts to twist the truth.
"A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent."
This however was my favourite piece of duplicitous rhetoric:
"many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries, first published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young, reveal clearly that the Fuhrer was a rabid atheist:"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries
Does he not know those diaries have been exposed as fakes? Unlike Mein Kampf of course in which Hitler repeatedly claims to be "doing God's work", though of course it hardly matters as it is an unassailable fact that 96% of Germans identified as christians in a 1939 census. Where one wonders does this moron think antisemitism comes from exactly?
If anyone is interested then here's a very well written response to DeStefano's hate filled bigotry:
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/03/20/christian-author-atheists...
@Sheldon: Does he not know those diaries have been exposed as fakes?
Indeed. The forger couldn't read German Gothic script, so he accidentally monogrammed the diaries with "FH" instead of "AH".
Like it or not, Hitler was a good Catholic boy doing god's work.
This about sums it up I think...
"Who knew Christians were unable to talk? I thought churches and bookstores and podcasts and websites and damn near everyone in Congress were enough to get their message to a wider audience.
Good thing we have the guy who wrote a book and published an excerpt from it on FoxNews.com telling us how no one lets him speak.
His whole book is like this. It’s a lot of whining with no substance. It’s a lot of conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality. It’s a lot of name-calling and dog whistles."
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/03/20/christian-author-atheists...
DeStefano is a whining pussy, he needs to suck it up, as no one likes a crybaby...and yes I am being facetious.
I feel it apposite to post a warning here.
It's bad enough that duplicitous misrepresentations of atheism have been a staple of apologetics, and the harm done by that particular source of duplicity in this respect is all too well known, among those of us who refuse to treat mythology uncritically as fact in the same manner that supernaturalists do.
But now, the same, and in some cases, even more venomously duplicitous misrepresentations of atheism, are moving out of the realm of apologetics into the political sphere, with a vigour not previously observed, and this individual's screed constitutes one of the first developments in this dangerous trend. I describe this trend as dangerous, not least because it is backed by an assortment of very powerful and underhand eminence grises. DeStefano is himself part of a hardcore right-wing "think tank" (though the idea of "thought" being associated with the neo-con right wing strikes me as an oxymoron) , and this "think tank" is funded by the Koch brothers.
Given the frankly inhuman glee with which hatred of Muslims has been pursued by assorted right wing zealots, it doesn't take much imagining to predict the likely trajectory of this development. We are dealing with people who have built, and continue to build, lucrative careers out of manufacturing synthetic "enemies" for the gullible rubes to hate, and some of those rubes have gone on to act upon the hate propaganda they've been fed in a violent manner. Worse still, some of those hatreds have been given the "royal assent" of approval from the very top - the White House is now occupied by a demagogue who routinely presses hate speech into service, in order to keep his base mobilised.
Quite simply, I suspect this is the opening gambit in a very nasty future variant of the "culture wars". One in which those of us who cherish discoursive integrity will be targeted for suppression, if not outright extirpation. I'm reminded at this juncture, that a part of the plot of Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale centred upon ruthless religious conformists teaming up with similarly ruthless corporate vampires in banking, to destroy the ability of people such as ourselves to function economically, before moving on to more familiar methods. If you need to know what sort of people we're dealing with here, then a good place to start would be to look up "Dominionism".
DeStefano is, in short, the Julius Streicher of supernaturalism, and his book is likely to become the Christofascist version of Der Giftpilz.
Too bad it is happening to Americans with a sane head on their shoulders. I'm really disappointed by the state of affairs now.
I aslo like your use of the Handmaid's Tale.
@Cali Re: "Quite simply, I suspect this is the opening gambit in a very nasty future variant of the "culture wars"."
Well...... shit.... *heavy sigh*...
Tried Absinthe for the first time this evening. Here are my results... *hiccup*... Now I understand while Poe and Van Gogh liked it so much...
Wishful weeping wolves
Wander wayward west
While wildfires whisper
Waging wicked waste.
Which will win
When wind whips wills
With wisps whence
Wiggle weltered waist?
Wailing waning warring
We wonder weakly wilting,
What was wanting
Where walls wait?
Wherever willows water
Whistling waxy woes
Within woven wired windows
Without wan weary weight.
Tin-Man
03/03/19
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder...
Eyefangew...
@Sheldon Re: "Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder..."
LMOA... Thanks for the good laugh this morning, Shelly! That was great!... *chuckle*...
I have to imagine someone confident in his beliefs wouldn't say and think such things about atheists. Perhaps this screed is because atheist ideas register as accurate on some level with the author and he finds that threatening to his identity.
The majority of human beings up to the 19th century were wrong on many issues. Can you find anyone today who believes that
disease is caused by the devil or worships the sun as a God. People believed all sorts of nonsense in the past. And now they say
atheists are ignorant because they do not find our beliefs convincing enough.
It is common in the US to find people who believes the devil (or his demons) causes diseases in people. It is taught by many churches and it part of the doctrine of at least a few. Which kind of makes sense since the bible is very clear on the matter (read the book of Job), and many people believe every word of the bible is true.
@John
"atheists are ignorant because they do not find our beliefs convincing enough."
John, can we agree that we are all entitled to our own opinions and the right to free speech?
If you make a claim, I can offer different responses from "I agree" to "please explain", or I disagree". I am listening, I am collecting information, and I am explaining why I do not agree. Just exactly what about my actions are "ignorant"?
Funny thing is if you read the comments they are almost 100% spot on. Most could have been written by the contributors here.
That gives me "faith". The intelligent won't be silenced any longer.
@David Killens
You've made a mistake.
If you take John's post, and remove the spurious line breaks that are contained therein, the result is this (emphasis mine):
Those spurious line breaks tell me that he wrote the post in Windows Notepad, then saved the post on his hard drive before posting. If you do this, then copy and paste the post here after saving it in Notepad, then Notepad inserts additional line breaks into the copied and pasted text. Since I use Notepad a lot for my posting, I'm aware of the issue.
There are two solutions:
[1] Copy and paste the text from Notepad before saving the file;
[2] Clear Notepad with "File -> New", then reload the saved document with "File -> Open", whereupon copied and pasted text from the document no longer contains spurious line breaks.
Incidentally, if you're using Notepad for keeping the text offline while you edit it, you need to turn Word Wrap on if you're using Notepad for forum posts, because if you don't, additional line breaks are inserted into the text, and if the Notepad window is small enough, this results in a LOT of line breaks being inserted into a decent sized post.
Hope this clears several issues up at once.
Meanwhile ...
@John
Take note of the above exposition of issues arising when using Notepad for posting. While Notepad is a useful tool for keeping your post text intact even if the server loses it after posting, it needs to be used with care, for the reasons given above. Plus, one useful tip I can hand out is this: copy and paste your text from Notepad into the forum text box before saving, and you can take advantage of the browser's spell checking to correct errors before hitting "Submit". Once you've corrected the spelling errors you've tracked down, you can then copy the whole, corrected version back to Notepad before saving. Click in the forum text box after your spell check, hit CTRL-A, then delete the text from Notepad, and hit CTRL-C in Notepad, to copy the corrected text. Then, click on "Submit", and away you go. :)
Similar issues arise if you use one of the older Unix type text editors (Vi being a particularly problematic example) instead of a more modern, GUI based editor such as Kate for KDE, or whatever the Gnome equivalent is if you're using that GUI on Linux. Even then, you need to make sure Word Wrap and soft insertion of line breaks is customised correctly. It's even worse if you try using a programmer's text editor for the task, because these are line-based, and insert line breaks in places you don't want in a normal text document, because those line breaks ARE wanted when you're writing code.
Of course, one possible solution is to go for a full blown word processor, but who wants to fire up 37 megabytes' worth of Microsoft Word (and that's just the .EXE), or whatever size the OpenOffice equivalent is, just for a forum post? Especially as you won't be using 95% of the WP tools for that post?
Oh, and finally, since this board supports HTML entities, and converts them into Unicode characters when rendering the post, make sure you save your posts in Unicode format in Notepad, so that any special characters (e.g., Greek alphabetic characters) are properly preserved.
Calilasseia: "Those spurious line breaks tell me that he wrote the post in Windows Notepad, then saved the post on his hard drive before posting. If you do this, then copy and paste the post here after saving it in Notepad, then Notepad inserts additional line breaks into the copied and pasted text. Since I use Notepad a lot for my posting, I'm aware of the issue."
And that is the reason I shall never, ever, use Notepad for anything. I use HTML-Kit which saves ALL files as if ASCII-based (UNIX) text files, instead of the ANSI-based files that Windows uses, regardless of whatever extension you give the file. HTML-Kit has toolbars one can download that inserts special characters with just a couple clicks. You can also select text and surround it with the HTML tags supported by these forum boards with just a click.
Check it out here: http://www.htmlkit.com/download/ (scroll down until you see "HTML-Kit 292")
And the plugins: http://www.htmlkit.com/plugins/ (NOTE: Follow this link, NOT the one on page above)
rmfr
"Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them."
As if scientists don't do this all the time: germs & disease, electricity, weather patterns, heliocentric solar system, size of the universe.
Wording the accusation in a way that makes us sound like assholes doesn't make us wrong.
I will never understand the fear Christians have for Atheists.
What reason do the Christians have to fear the Atheists? Nothing anyone else says or does can force a person to change their beliefs. All the Christian God asks is that they accept Jesus as their savior. What can Atheists do to stop that? What, are they afraid that if the ten commandments don't appear on government property that God won't accept them into his happy place?
@Skeptical Kevin: What reason do the Christians have to fear the Atheists?
Perhaps they consider us a threat to their bottom line. Atheists aren't known for putting money in collection plates or sending it to tele-evangelist flimflam artists, so more atheists equals less money to buy mansions and executive jets.
Some of us also campaign end the special treatment that churches get under tax systems.
In the US, Christians outnumber Atheists by almost 25 to 1. Plus they have this infinitely powerful guy who is keen to send us to hell right after he confirms which sexual positions are ok for his followers.
*shrug* I gather that maybe their faith isn't that strong if they feel that they have to slander Atheists.
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