"You are just mad at god"--Are we actually encouraging this by mistake?
You've all heard the claim that we aren't really atheists, we are just mad at god. (Or you will see such things as "so and so claims to be an atheist.")
Today, though I saw an argument in chat with a theist, and someone else's account of an argument they had out in public, and I stopped to wonder if maybe we aren't sometimes encouraging this line of bullshit, albeit unwittingly.
What happened in both cases was the atheist began recounting all the sorts of horrible things Yahweh is portrayed as doing or believing or commanding. In one case, I saw the atheist say "why should I love god when he won't love me back?"
The problem with this sort of thing is we usually don't take care to phrase our remarks to make it clear that god is a character of fiction. When discussing the misdeeds of Yahweh we tend to fall back on a convention we use when we talk about a fictional character in a book. We refer to him by name and talk as if the guy was real and the book was not fiction, for example, "In George Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith was arrested for thoughtcrime," not, "In George Orwell's 1984, the character Winston Smith..."
We know what we mean, because we both know Winston Smith (or god) is fictitious. But they don't know god is fictitious.
Talking this way with someone who believes the fictional character is real might cause him not to understand you are just following the convention. Your phrasing sounds to him like you accept god as real, he "knows" god is real, so he assumes at some level you think god is real.
What I am suggesting here is that you ever want to bring up how nasty this being is, you make it clear that you don't think he exists, make sure you put "fictitious" (or equivalent) in every other sentence at least, and not let them think for a minute that you assume the existence of god.
Yes I know that when you just said you were an atheist this shouldn't be necessary, but obviously many of these people don't understand atheism in their guts, so don't let their paradigm default you into a "believer but mad at god" box.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Eric Strus on -
if i start pointing out to theists the things that would make god an awful and unethical being, i always start with "if god did exist, which i believe he doesn't, but that is a different argument altogether. so hypothetically, god is an awful despicable being because..."
i keep my ass covered, ;P
but it's good to point out, because not all atheists tie themselves so strictly to formalities in conversation.
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Permalink Reply by thelonely on -
God does ‘not exist is this a fact? Is this scientifically proved?My main point here is: we can not prove “non existent” (the fact that does not exist).You may agree with me that science is for answering us to the How questions, how this and that is made and maybe when or when,(it’s very worthy and important and no one can give us such answers like Science)Science would show us how this universe is or was made,or how to treat diseases….also science is Why question which is ratio why this is that ….. maybe behind this there is Who question or there is not,maybe science one day find s.o sitting in the end of the long line of his work waiting him to reach that point or maybe will find no one,till now we don’t know(if your answer is we know so you admit that we have the final science which I doubt!)so science with all respect can tell us just where it stands now but not for more than one inch,it will remain give us answers and that’s great and very human,but to answer about the question WHO I think scientifically we should address to this WHO,and of course we can not,so the answer would not come from science. you know why? if science do this this is not science maybe this is after-science, doctrine or philosophy…..but not science. Either we wait until science reach the limit to answer us or maybe we seek another way or just ignore it. Also believe in God is not science and no one say this if you are agree so there is NO SCIENCE IN BOTH BLIEVING OR DENYING.THEN WE CAN PROCEED.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
RE: "God does ‘not exist is this a fact?"
Which god would that be, Lonely? Thor? Odin? Zeus? Do you believe those gods exist?
You see, it it the obligation of the one saying that a god exists, to provide evidence to prove his case. Believing has nothing to do with knowing. One plus one equals two - I don't need to "believe" this, because I know it, and I can prove it by placing object A and object B in front of me and counting them. Thus I have proved that 1 + 1 = 2, and there is no need for belief.
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Permalink Reply by thelonely on
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I am not asking to prove that God exists so it's not an obligation .but you answered to my question that it's beleive not knowing,you are right.Now "there is no need to beleive "this is another issue .did you know what is lying and what is saying the truth?or you beleive that we should not say lyies because in some cases truth is not only about 1+1=2?not all the truth in world are calculatabe !
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Permalink Reply by thelonely on
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Hi POPE there is 2 not 3 ways to misbeleive God either you humanize him or you dyfei your self (i am not talking about you)that's how Mankind act either the God is human being or man itself is god?remember what saying frederic nitschke the german phylosoph.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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I can't buy that Lonely - to "humanize God" is to accept that he exists, and I don't, I can't humanize a nonexistent being. I also can't deify myself, because that would mean becoming a god, or thinking of myself as a god, and since there are no gods, neither of those is possible.
You really can't even understand can you - and the language barrier has nothing to do with this - that someone can completely refuse to believe any god exists? You can't even imagine such a concept, can you?
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Permalink Reply by thelonely on
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No archaeopteryx,i can understand that someone is free to be atheist,but i can not understand that this is science!and i started before asking questions about everything and I maybe setteled the issue as i am now,respecting people what ever they beleive.Humanize God this christianity ,and deify oneself this pharaoh for example and dictators.and you should not accept this but think about it and look around you will recognize that Man can be more harmful to human more than everything.all societies give us many examples of this from the west to the east.
about butt yes women and others like what we call butt praise.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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"calculatabe"? - no, "provable"? Yes.
And as to the question of whether or not we should "say lies," clearly you've never had your wife come to you and say, "Do these pants make my butt look big?"
Given a choice between lie or die, I choose life --
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Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on -
Do you believe a unicorn exists, and rules the universe? We don't have to completely disprove something to decide it's not reasonable to believe in it.
It makes a lot more sense that mankind invented several gods in man's image (which we do know for a fact), and hasn't yet given up inventing variations of those beliefs.
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Permalink Reply by thelonely on
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ofcourse we need to disprove something to decide it's not reasonable to beleive in it.So we can go through this Unicorn and we see if he rules the univers or not other wise we are beleivers not think atheist.thank you.
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on -
Not really. There are infinite hypothetical somethings to be disproven in the universe. It's impractical and unfruitful to consider them all simply on the basis that they have not been disproven.
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Permalink Reply by Obfuskation on -
People seem to conveniently forget that the burden of proof is on the person who makes the claim, not on the person who doesn't believe the claim.
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