Monday 5 November 2018

At no point is any mainstream Atheist seriously suggesting . . .

A common trait amongst many people is to paint the enemy as these evil doers, horrid humans, but often it is false.  As far as Atheists and sceptics it is false to judge all by whichever troll you've been messed around by online.  Equally, one must not jump to conclusions.  The position of many is to build on ignorance, which is a poor foundation to say the least.  From a position of ignorance and a belief in knowledge, the arrogant form serious opinions, and the validity of which will be, by definition, in error.

In my experience, although it is amusing to me, I have witnessed many nonsensical claims.  Some were trolling, but many are so messed up that they believe in these irrational points.  These range from claims of a political alignment, such as saying all Atheists are big government supporters, even though many are libertarian.  Or that all atheists are liberal, some really really are not liberal.  Some believe that Atheists are communists or fascists or Nazis, etc.  No proof that all are, nor that most are, nor that you, personally, agree with those ideologies.

Some claims are that we Atheists want to ban religion, that we want atheist governments, that churches will be destroyed and bibles burnt.  Of the sum of western Atheists, a small proportion may want to do that, mostly sad cases on the internet, many of whom are after attention and offer anti-intellectual arguments for their extremism.  We Atheists, the average non-believers of any title or stripe, we do not seek such things out.  We don't want religion and government to mingle, we believe we are all better off letting believers live with their choices and not being dictated to by other believers or by those who lack belief in religion and the supernatural.  If you don't break the law then there is no real problem we will have, if you aren't trying to manipulate politics by telling your flock how to vote then we'll respect you are far more.

At the worst, the extreme end of everyday Atheism says you shouldn't be able to have tax free status or that you should earn your status through good deeds.  I would be far happier to see the very rich church do more soup kitchens for the homeless and elderly to earn a tax status, and I would love to see the money grabbing cult leaders get jail time or get hit with a big tax bill.  If you're a good church ad you help people, do good for goddness sake, nothing would change, but televangelists would suffer a tax bill.  This doesn't sound extreme to me.  

Now, one thing I wish to bring up is the repeated claim by believing New Age Spiritualists that I want to put them in camps.  I have never said I want to, I do not want to, no mainstream atheist says as much, and it wouldn't help to deconvert magical thinking pseudoreligious nutcases anyway.  And, for goodness sake can't we have a discussion about the evidence without most believers employing fallacies all the time.  I know experience is important to you, as might be stories from others or holy texts, but religious and spiritual people need to know how untrue their evidence claims are.  You do not know how deceptive you're being.

Lastly, I just want to make clear that most Atheists are moderate, they enjoy sports, entertainment, raising their families, socialising, comunity, and many other things that you probably enjoy.  They just don't buy into the god claim because of the lack of evidence for the claim and many rival claims that are equally as nonfalsiable.  So we don't know you're right, we don't know you're wrong either, but that's true of all other gods and magical beings and superadvanced alien beliefs, you can't prove a negative. 









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