I had an great conversation with my daughters boyfriend (Lenny) the other day about God, death, music, atheism & DMT over coffee. Dad of the year over here!
Anyway, I hope I can find a way to clearly articulate this thought.
Most of us on the forum have watched as Hitch, Dawkins, Harris, etc have absolutely carpet bombed theologians in debates time and time again. What's odd is that during this conversation with Lenny, I realized that when I WAS a believer, I had myself convinced that the fact that an atheist could so easily dismantle a theists arguments somehow gave credibility to the theist. Since the atheist relies on evidence I just saw them as lazy! At some point this changed. One day it's as if I just decided to stop burning all of this fuel on believing the unbelievable. It became clear that the path of least resistance can in fact, not just be the most pleasant one to take, but can truly be the best.
I hope this made sense. I've had a lot of coffee this morning so my thoughts feel a bit scattered.
Has anyone had a similar experience?
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JB I see where you're coming from, but you lost me toward the end. can you elaborate a bit when you transitioned to the path of resistance and how that applied to the beginning? I'm sorry. It just flew over my head this time.
As far as how the path of least resistance relates to the mentioned debates?
Yeah.
I knew I was going to fuck this one up. I'll rethink and restate.
Lol no I think I'm distracted. I was working. On break now.
I don't see atheism as the path of least resistance. You've got to resist the pressure from societies where religion is still the norm, and you've got to resist the pressure from an inner voice screaming out for eternal life. Atheism is a long steep path to freedom.
But once you get there you can really have some fun. When smug Christians ask you to say grace, you can thank the bees for pollinating the plants and the bull for siring the veal. When people ask you what your religion us, you can answer "I'm sane" or "I'm a money worshipper."
JB, I think I know just what you mean. It has to do with the believer's perception of atheists as the ones who have not fully considered the majesty of god's creation, and that anything exists at all, and all of the other wondrous mysteries that the believer assures himself can only be explained by god. Why can't those atheists see the TRUTH?! Why can't they see that eternity must be real and the only way anything makes sense is GOD?! And what about morality! And wings! And eyes! You think they just popped into existence?! Where did those come from? Those godless atheists aren't doing the hard work of considering everything and realizing what god wants them to know. They just want to sin. They want to pretend that god isn't real and be their own god, even though the bible says god has put his knowledge into every man's heart. Oh you poor sinner. I'll pray for you. I hope you see the light before something terrible happens (god forbid!) and you burn in hell. Oh please, dear atheist, believe in my stupid, vicious god. It would mean so much to me.
Yeah, JB. If my parody was close to what you're talking about, I know what you mean. The christian doctrine has grown into a surprisingly solid bubble of logic that traps a believer with answers to all of the obvious objections that any rational Atheist would pose. "Lean not on thine own understanding", "godly wisdom comes from on high, worldly wisdom is of the devil", "the fool says in his heart there is no god", and thousands of other pearls of supposed wisdom have armored the believer to refute the plainest logic. And when it is so desperately embarrassing to hold such stupid beliefs, there is a robust set of verses waiting to help. "If they mocked and rejected the Son of Man, they will reject you, too" kind of nonsense. They'll quote a verse from Isaiah that the earth is a circle and voilá, the bible proposed the heliocentric model! And the crowning jewel of retorts from christians is that the devil, like educated Atheists, knows the bible inside and out and uses it against the faithful. So when one of us describes in hi-def detail what is wrong with the bible, they assure themselves that this is just what satan did to poor little jesus. 'Those atheists are just trying to confuse us.'
See how hard it is to be a christian?? Those godless atheists just aren't trying hard enough.
Note: I guess I kind of went off with this post. It drives me to distraction to see how religion poisons the human mind and leaves otherwise good, intelligent people in a state of irretrievable delusion. And any attempt to aid a fellow human so afflicted will only convince them that you, the Atheist, are the deluded person. So yeah, JB, I think I know what you're talking about.
Thank you Truett! That's what I was trying to say! Once I shifted from the former to the latter mindset my internal gears stopped grinding in a hurry.
Pun intended.
Also, if I have to listen to one more theist pose the " complexity of the eye" argument, I'm going to go fucking bananas.
If you have to imagine something to be true it's because it does not rely upon its own weight of evidence. It isn't self evident. What do we do with that? We wear ourselves trying to sell it to people who do not buy off on anything that isn't self evident. In the case of all things theist, those people are atheists. This has been the burden of theism since its inception. It's a counter-intuitive thing to sell to an intuitive man and quite a tiring chore at that. If not for the sheer weight of money to be had it would have died a short lived charade.
I think this is why they get together on the "holy day" every week for year after year after year after.... Brainwashing is what it is I say!