Yes, it really is that stupid

[Username17]

OK, recently there was a largeish study that asked people about various ideas in various religions. Unsurprisingly, atheists and agnostics scored better than other groups. And yet, even that did not stop the continuous chorus from the religious that atheists somehow fail to understand the religious point of view and do not know what religious people "really believe." That somehow it remains inconceivable that we do in fact know exactly what the religious people believe and yet we continue to not believe those things for entirely rational and well considered reasons.

The fact of the matter is that religious teachings are everywhere. We get flooded with religious imagery and ideas constantly. Religion is shoved in our face every day. And yes, we recognize it, we understand it, and we still reject it. Because the religious ideas are in fact exactly what they say they are and they are still stupid.

For all the religious apologists hemming and hawing that we haven't considered the real deep reasons for belief in Christianity/Islam/Whatever, the truth is, we actually have. It's just, those arguments are really bad arguments and fail to convince us. The Ontological Argument is a stupid argument. The Teological Argument is a stupid argument. The Trilemma is a stupid argument. The Unmoved Mover is a stupid argument. There really isn't a good argument for belief. While the best and brightest of the religious have been spending over three thousand years trying to come up with a decent argument for the truthiness of their Bronze Age beliefs, the reality is that they have yet to com up with one that is better than "because I said so."

The next thing that religious people try to do is to present an ever moving shell game of possible beliefs. That is, whenever confronted on any point of theology and how incredibly, obviously, irredeemably stupid it is, they mumble something about metaphors and claim that isn't something they really believe and insist the "real" beliefs are more nuanced and plausible. But you know what? That is a lie. The truth is, they really do believe exactly the stupid shit they claim to believe. If you pound a nail into a cracker you get angry Catholics threatening to murder you, because they really do believe that a cracker is their all knowing, all powerful lord and savior. Really. If you draw an unflattering picture of Mohammed, some pissed off Somalian will burst into your house with an ax, Shining Style, because they really do believe that engraving an image of their prophet is sacrilege. And so on.

But it's not just the threats, and in some cases actual perpetration of violence. All that crap about their god being a literal bearded dude who glows and shit? Yes, they really believe that too. They'll fight you for it, but over and above that, this is the actual story they tell to children. And let's face it: if you weren't a child who took things on face value when an adult put "Because I said so" after it, you wouldn't believe any of this shit at all.

Yes, the major religions contain major inconsistencies and contradictions. Yes, the major religious books advocate a morality set that is horrifying and repugnant, embracing slavery, the subjugation of women, and the abrogation of basic human rights. And yes, real people are able to really identify those as being bad things. But they still believe that stuff anyway, because human beings have no problem compartmentalizing and believing contradictory things. We aren't computers, so we do not ht stop errors just because we have A and ~A defined.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

You know, this is obviously an offshoot of the IMHO argument. And you're retarded.

Nobody in that thread was arguing that an atheist should have a revelation and become a devout Christian/Muslim/Whatever because you know more about religion.

What I said, quite simply, is that you don't have a clue how most Christians/Muslims/Whatever live their lives.

Just because you're a Christian does not mean that religion dominates your life. In fact, that's the reality for most Christians is that religion does NOT dominate their lives. They subscribe to the general idea of a compassionate God of love, and that's it.

They don't dig up dogma. They've never read the Bible cover to cover. They don't bother to read what the Church's views on various things are. They simply support the general idea of what the religion represents. And the amount of time and effort they spend to maintain that belief in religion is really small.

You can call them shitty Christians. You can call them bad Christians. And the religious nuts will probably agree with you and say these people are going to hell. But these people still see themselves as Christians.

The problem really - especially with a lot of online atheists - is that they are unable to distinguish between these normal people and the religious fanatics who write and cling to shitty doctrine.

So when the Church adopts a stupid position (i.e. its long-running condemnation of Galileo that was only recently overturned), online atheists make statements like "Christians support the burning of scientists".

The thing is, most Christians aren't aware of the church's position. They don't care. Because they didn't sign up to be Christians to make fun of Galileo. They signed up because their parents were Christian and they want to follow tradition. They signed up because they like the idea of a compassionate God. They signed up because their friends and community did.

So really, when an Internet atheist points out obscure dogma and goes "Haha" to some lay folk, it turns those lay folk off. Because they didn't sign up for that dogma, but you're pushing that dogma on them.

And they're not about to make a major change in how they define themselves just because someone like Frank Trollman is a smarty pants. They'll instead see Frank Trollman as an asshole who's deliberately poking holes in their belief system for shits and giggles.

And this, in turn, lets people like Glenn Beck claim that the left is full of people "who think they know better than you." Because it's true. The left is full of inconsiderate assholes who don't realize that a Christian is not synonymous with "Fundamentalist loonie". That's why the looney right is growing.

The really smart people who study religion - those who study religion from the perspective of history, human nature, and mythology - know very well that the most successful religions are self-contradictory. Because such religions are meant to cater to a wide spectrum of beliefs, letting each individual pick and choose whatever elements they want of the religion.

In the Philippines for instance, Buddhist-Catholic families are kosher despite being technically heresy (so I'm technically a heretic). I'm not about to go to my grandmother's house and tell her that Jesus should technically NOT be placed in altar beside Buddha.

Instead, I understand that this situation is actually a product of the general attitude of the Chinese towards religion - which is that there are a lot of Gods and they should all be respected. Her religious views certainly don't cloud her judgement in any way, and they give her a measure of peace and happiness. It really boils down to burning some incense and putting some food on the altar, before some prayers.

So why rock the boat?

And really, that's what it boils down to. Many Internet atheists hide behind "rationality" and the march of progress. But how they act is really little better than being disrespectful hooligans.

[RobbyPants]

The next thing that religious people try to do is to present an ever moving shell game of possible beliefs. That is, whenever confronted on any point of theology and how incredibly, obviously, irredeemably stupid it is, they mumble something about metaphors and claim that isn't something they really believe and insist the "real" beliefs are more nuanced and plausible. But you know what? That is a lie. The truth is, they really do believe exactly the stupid shit they claim to believe. If you pound a nail into a cracker you get angry Catholics threatening to murder you, because they really do believe that a cracker is their all knowing, all powerful lord and savior. Really. If you draw an unflattering picture of Mohammed, some pissed off Somalian will burst into your house with an ax, Shining Style, because they really do believe that engraving an image of their prophet is sacrilege. And so on.

You're mixing several groups of people into one, here. You're saying that there are moderates who don't believe in some parts, and that that they're lying because there are also extreme fundamentalists who do believe it and will murder you. That doesn't make any sense. The ones who don't believe it aren't the ones trying to kill you.

I'm not saying the moderates aren't being irrational. They just recognize their beliefs as personal, and many of them are quite good at not forcing it on others.

[Kaelik]

You're mixing several groups of people into one, here. You're saying that there are moderates who don't believe in some parts, and that that they're lying because there are also extreme fundamentalists who do believe it and will murder you. That doesn't make any sense. The ones who don't believe it aren't the ones trying to kill you.

I'm not saying the moderates aren't being irrational. They just recognize their beliefs as personal, and many of them are quite good at not forcing it on others.

Moderates may not murder you, and they may be very good at not forcing it on others (They actually aren't. Moderates force it on others more successfully, because they do shitty things without realizing they are forcing it on others.) but that doesn't change the fact that they actually do believe these things.

Moderate Catholics also believe that the Cracker is Jesus, which is why moderates also get all upset and bitch when you stab a cracker.

It's not unique to crazies, other than that you have to be crazy to actually care what someone else does with a Cracker.

[TOZ]

When has anyone ever stabbed a cracker? Link?

[RobbyPants]

Moderates may not murder you, and they may be very good at not forcing it on others (They actually aren't. Moderates force it on others more successfully, because they do shitty things without realizing they are forcing it on others.) but that doesn't change the fact that they actually do believe these things.

Moderate Catholics also believe that the Cracker is Jesus, which is why moderates also get all upset and bitch when you stab a cracker.

It's not unique to crazies, other than that you have to be crazy to actually care what someone else does with a Cracker.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is some people really don't believe that wafers are Jesus. Those ones aren't going to threaten you over it. Some people don't have see a big deal in pictures of Mohamed. He's not going to kill you with an axe.

The ones who say they don't believe it aren't the ones getting all huffy. I think we're talking about two different things.

[Orion]

Cracker Stabbings:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008 ... ration.php

I'm pretty sure the religious right is growing because of america's shitty economy and the fact that civil rights keeps marching forward, terrifying the "aging racist" demographic. Atheists aren't even a significant enough force to cause something like that, and to the extent that atheists are getting loud now it's a reaction to rightwing religionaries.

Also, Atheists are not as a group ignorant of the cultural, historical context of religious text. Biblical scholarship, for instance, is well known to be a field full of atheist researchers. Of course, understanding a text is different from understanding a contemporary community. That said, in America at least I doubt you'd find a Christian who doesn't think Jesus is God.

As for you grandmother, it's nice that you have a good relationship with her. She sounds like a nice lady. Good thing we're not talking to her right now, or we might have to adopt a different posture. That said, as wonderful as she is, you've got a high burden to clear to demonstrate that her religion doesn't impair judgment "in any way".

[Username17]

When has anyone ever stabbed a cracker? Link?

Crackergate. And, The Great Desecration. Yes, really.

There are three parts of this. The first is that religious people claim that unlike the "fanatics" that they are harmless. This is demonstrably false. The supposedly "moderate" Catholics will flip their fucking shit if you stab a cracker.

The second part is where religious people claim that the crazy shit they constantly say they believe is not what they actually believe when you press them on it. This goalpost shifting horseshit is exactly that. The thing is, they really do believe all that crazy shit. If they didn't believe it, they wouldn't flip the fuck out or even get insulted when you mocked it. But they do. All the time.

And the third part is where they claim that there is "Reason to Believe". That the arguments that we trivially destroy are just straw men, and that the Very Serious People who contemplate the existence of gods have very serious answers to the Big Questions and should not be lightly dismissed. But that's a fucking lie. It's all turtles, all the way down. No matter how deep you get into serious apologetics, no matter how much you quiz the clergy or the lay followers of these religions, there are no good arguments. Anywhere. The best they have ever come up with is seriously This. When we make fun of that shit, we aren't strawmanning. That's the actual argument.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Actually, that poll indicated that only 55% of Catholics actually know that Catholic Transubstantiation was not a metaphor and that the Eucharist was the real deal.

If you consider that a hardcore Catholic is more likely to know that than a moderate, then it's probable that a moderate Catholic has no idea about the nature of Transubstantiation and only understands that stabbing the Eucharist is just really fucking rude.

[violence in the media]

Dan Savage has something pertinent to add about simple christians, and the areas dominated by them, in regards to LBGT youth.

[cthulhu]

I suspect that a solid 50-60% of catholics don't understand their religion at all, in detail, beyond some really big broad brush concepts like 'jesus was the son of god who came to earth to give us all a big cuddle'

My mothers family are all 'Catholics' and go to church, but they couldn't explain why they are different from baptists except that they say the our father differently.

Incidently, the funniest thing about Crackergate is when that retarded wanted to set the koran on fire (I personally think both the koran guy and stabbing a cracker are both pointless), is the no-one said how bad it is to set the koran on fire, they said don't do it while we have people in iraq and afganistan.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, but what I'm saying is some people really don't believe that wafers are Jesus. Those ones aren't going to threaten you over it. Some people don't have see a big deal in pictures of Mohamed. He's not going to kill you with an axe.

The ones who say they don't believe it aren't the ones getting all huffy. I think we're talking about two different things.

And what I'm saying is that they do believe the crazy shit, they just don't threaten you over it. Even Muslims who won't axe you over the issue still believe it is wrong to depict Mohamed.

There was an event where a bunch of people drew chalk stick figures and wrote "Mohamed" next to them.

Then some Muslims came through and drew boxing gloves, and added Ali.

These Muslims were clearly moderate non violent, relatively sane people.

But they still knew that depictions of their Prophet were a bad thing that needed to be stopped.

Likewise, if you stab a cracker, phil donahue will go nuts. But so will the local old ladies club of your neighborhood. They will talk about how terrible it is for you to deface your own property, because... Because that Cracker is JESUS.

Just because they are not getting huffy doesn't mean they don't believe shit, it just means they realized that what the believe sounds crazy to everyone else. They still believe it though, because if they didn't, they wouldn't care if you depicted Mohamed on a cracker, then stabbed him.

[mean_liar]

There are few logical or rational arguments for belief. The most compelling are the Mysteries, since they tap into human needs for explanations of otherwise easily-unexplainable events.


FACTOIDS I DON'T FEEL LIKE CONTEXTUALIZING:

The Eastern Orthodox church separates infallible Theoria (divine insight) from fallible Dianoia (rational insight) and Plani (false insight, a No True Scotsman insight). This is similar to the Zen concepts of Kensho (enlightenment) and Makyo (going crazy from overmeditating).

Early Christians actually hid their sacraments in order to prevent pagans from mocking them. How astute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplina_arcani

[angelfromanotherpin]

Dad used to be a Jesuit priest before he lost his faith, so he got the full training on all the classic arguments. Some of them are pretty clever, but that's to be expected because many of the best minds of Europe for hundreds of years basically did nothing besides try to wrangle the inherent contradictions of the doctrine instead of developing the germ theory of disease.

The official answer to the omnipotence paradox, for instance, is that omnipotence includes being able to give the finger to logic and will something to be both true and not true at the same time. God specifically gets to have his cake and eat it too.

But yes, a *lot* of stuff just straight up gets labeled a Mystery, which has the specific meaning that it is beyond human ability to understand, so just shut up with your questions already.

[Kaelik]

(I personally think both the koran guy and stabbing a cracker are both pointless)

Ironically, the original purpose of Crackergate was to demonstrate that most Catholics are sane people who are capable of seeing that what happens to a cracker is not a big deal, in solidarity with the kid who was being beaten on by crazies.

It backfired in that it turned out most Catholics are insane people. But that wasn't the original purpose.

However, the point behind treating other peoples religious artifacts with contempt is several fold:

a) Make them realize that their religious artifacts have no value to us, and they need to not expect or demand that other people treat them well.
b) Train them to be tolerant by making them tolerate things.
c) demonstrate that their artifacts have no magic powers.

Every time someone has to deal with a Catholic, if that Catholic understands that Crackers are worthless to them, it will decrease the amount of time that Catholics spend trying to force their own expectations on others.

If on the other hand, you treat stupid things like Crackers with respect, it will increase the chance that Catholics will expect you to respect their internal processes for dealing with Priests raping little boys.

[Kaelik]

There are few logical or rational arguments for belief. The most compelling are the Mysteries, since they tap into human needs for explanations of otherwise easily-unexplainable events.

Um... What?

How is a mystery a logical rational argument for "belief"? (Belief in what specifically? Oh right, you don't know, because it's a mystery.)

A mystery can't be an argument at all, much less a logical one.

[mean_liar]

All present day Christian Churches, and basically all Christians, believe that Jesus was and always was God, and at no point was a non Divine man.

Right on the second point, wrong on the first - see Jehova's Witnesses and Christian Unitarians. They can define themselves as worshipping God, but I don't think you'd be able to say that they weren't Christians.

I have it on good authority that Jews don't believe Jesus is god either.

Again, it depends on what you mean by, "the Jews":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism


...


The point behind my bringing this up is to reaffirm Zinegata's basic point that knowledge of the Bible or strict doctrine doesn't have much to do with actually knowing the ostensible worshippers of that doctrine. Certainly being a jackass doesn't help.

[Koumei]

Early Christians actually hid their sacraments in order to prevent pagans from mocking them.

It's a shame modern ones don't do that with their whole fucking cult.

[mean_liar]

How is a mystery a logical rational argument for "belief"? (Belief in what specifically? Oh right, you don't know, because it's a mystery.) A mystery can't be an argument at all, much less a logical one.

That's correct - it's not an argument and more of an explanation. My language was imprecise and should have read:

"There are few logical or rational arguments for belief. The most compelling reasons for belief are the Mysteries, since they tap into human needs for explanations of otherwise easily-unexplainable events, but they are neither logical nor rational and do not attempt to be."

You either get it or you don't. It's a little different than utterly blind faith in that there's an experiential component to it, in that you're not expected to understand a Mystery until you experience it, but you're correct - it's not an argument and it by design isn't intended to be a logical one, hence the distinction in the Eastern Orthodox Church between Theoria and Dianoia.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I was told one time that knowing the bible was a sign of lack of faith and that you should go by what's in your heart. Mostly because I was quoting scripture at someone and it was making them look bad.

I don't speak to that person anymore. she did the "If you've never had kids, you can't criticize anything I'm doing with mine" argument on a different discussion. She was very upset that I pointed out that statement justified any evil that is humanly possible.

[Kaelik]

EDIT: Mean Liar, you and I have very different definitions fro compelling.

As far as I can tell, yours make it a synonym for stupid.

"I'm a little confused right now, so I guess the only sensible thing to do is believe in a very specific entity that has literally nothing to do with the source of my confusion, and doesn't even answer the question that prompted my confusion, but makes me feel good." is actually really stupid. Like Fucking Magnets stupid. Because Fucking Magnets is exactly that, and you think it's a terrible reason, but apparently it's a compelling reason when it's about something besides magnets.

See Franks point. You just came right out and said that Fucking Magnets is the best reason you can come up with for God.

Right on the second point, wrong on the first - see Jehova's Witnesses and Christian Unitarians. They can define themselves as worshipping God, but I don't think you'd be able to say that they weren't Christians.

Actually, it's explicit that they worship a Unitary God and that Jesus is not divine to be a Unitarian at all.

But yes, a small minority of people call themselves Christians and believe the Jesus is not God, never was God, and never will be God. But in the spirit to fapping about tautologies, I will point out that small minorities are small.

Again, it depends on what you mean by, "the Jews":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism

Thank you for proving my point.

There exist people who call themselves Jews, and also believe that Jesus is/was God.

But yet, that doesn't make the statement "Jews don't believe Jesus was God/son of God/whatever." False. Or bigotry. Or wrong.

It's still true, because it's true of the vast majority of people who believe themselves to be Jews, and it's still something that the vast majority of Jews use to define judaism.

Try asking a Jew if Jewish Christians are actually Jewish. They say know. Likewise, try asking most Christians if someone who believes "Jesus is not and never was God or the Son of God, and was just ..." is really a Christian, and they will say they aren't.

The point behind my bringing this up is to reaffirm Zinegata's basic point that knowledge of the Bible or strict doctrine doesn't have much to do with actually knowing the ostensible worshippers of that doctrine. Certainly being a jackass doesn't help.

The point of you bringing up .01% of Jews and Christians not believing something that the other 99.99% do is to prove that the existence of one person who calls themselves and X and doesn't believe something magically shelters the 99.99% who do believe the stupid shit.

It's a stupid point, and you are stupid for bringing it up.

My point is that finding an edge case that believes something weird has no bearing on what most people actually believe.

.03 percent of adults are Unitarians. Not all of them are even Christian Unitarians, since Unitarian Universalism is the most popular version of Unitarianism.

So, here's the thing. I just won't count Baptists anymore. I will not mention a single Baptist whatsoever. Since Baptists are several thousand times more populace than Unitarians, they can also represent all the other tiny minorities you want to bring up.

Now I just have Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, all the various [country] Othrodoxies, and everyone else, and you have no one.

See, the problem is knowing what Methodists and Catholics believe and practice actually tells you a lot more about what Christians believe and practice than knowing what Unitarian Christians believe.

It doesn't hurt my understanding that I know more about the Bible or strict Doctrine than you, but the main reason I know more about religions than you is because I know Catholics and Methodists and Lutherans (and Greek Orthodox, but not Russian).

It's knowing that ostensible worshipers that actually allows me to know them.

[mean_liar]

Hey, if you say, "basically all Christians" I'd assume you were including Jehovah's Witnesses.

I'm mentioning minority religions precisely because you were painting in broad strokes every Christian. I'm betting that I can find doctrinal differences between every flavor of Christian church that necessitates exceptions to most every statement you want to make about Christians ("they hate homos/they love homos", "they think women are inappropriate to lead congregations/they're gender-neutral", etc).

I believe that's where Zinegata's bigotry comment comes from: vociferous atheists resort to inexact labels and being overly broad in their condemnations. Saying, "Prosperity Theology is offensive and stupid" is different than saying, "Christians are offensive and stupid".

[virgil]

I know at least one devout Mormon who truly doesn't agree with everything stated by an LDS prophet, despite their religious words being canonical, as well as a few other parts of canon. But here's the thing, while she fundamentally doesn't agree with it, she will defend it anyway if she perceives it being attacked by an 'outsider' (especially a complete stranger). This is just part of humanity, defending one's social group. And I know of one Catholic that heard about the hostage cracker, and what little opinion he could be bothered to dredge up (was largely of the opinion of 'so?') was that pointlessly provoking Catholics is kind of stupid.

I suppose that will end up looking like the same thing as what Frank says in practice a lot of the time, though I can see exceptions fairly regularly when believers don't feel like they're being attacked.

I'm technically with Frank on a lot of what he said, but I tend to mentally exclude the religious that don't try to spread their beliefs nor use it to moralize their immoral behavior. People will do bad things with or without religion, as far as I'm concerned.

And also, there can be religion that's only followed for tradition purposes without believing in any of it; for example, a Jewish atheist that still partakes in a couple religious ceremonies/holidays. It's possible for several Christian elements to take a similar cultural place in tradition without requiring practitioners to be believers.

[Kaelik]

Hey, if you say, "basically all Christians" I'd assume you were including Jehovah's Witnesses.

Because you are stupid? They don't even consider themselves Christians.

I get it, you count Mormons and Jews, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and Hindis as Christians, and I'm the bigot here.

Fucking monstercock! Are you trolling?

I'm talking about the vast majority of Christians, I make this clear by talking about most but not all Christians all the time, and you think that when I say that I am talking about all the piddly minorities that aren't Christian? Really? There is no sane conversation with you.

most every statement you want to make about Christians ("they hate homos/they love homos", "they think women are inappropriate to lead congregations/they're gender-neutral", etc).

I'm betting you are attributing your stupidity to other people.

Did I say "Christians hate homos."? No. I said. "Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ was God the whole time." And that's fucking true. So game the fuck over.

I believe that's where Zinegata's bigotry comment comes from: vociferous atheists resort to inexact labels and being overly broad in their condemnations.

I believe his bigotry comes from being wrong and not liking when people point out that he's wrong.

But thanks for proving you don't have a fucking clue too.

No one is being overly broad but you. Most Christians believe X. "But not all do, so therefore most don't. GRGRGRGRG!"

Is the entire summary of this conversation. We are talking about what the ones that do believe actually believe, and you are trying to talk about how Jews worship your lord and savior.

[RobbyPants]

The official answer to the omnipotence paradox, for instance, is that omnipotence includes being able to give the finger to logic and will something to be both true and not true at the same time. God specifically gets to have his cake and eat it too.

I remember thinking of that defense too. I've never heard anyone use it, but I wondered if it was a popular line of defense.

I mean, yeah, by definition, you could say that omnipotence puts you outside of the realm of logic, but then at that point, there's no more reason for logical discourse.