Xequecal wrote:
The reason you never see belligerent behavior from atheists is because there is 1 atheist for every 100 Christians. Of course you're a lot less likely to encounter them. The fact that they don't have strength in numbers probably also discourages them from acting like assholes because they have no one to back them up if someone gets angry.
Atheists, like pretty much everyone else, tend to congregate with similar people so yes, they have people to "back them up". Furthermore, we've established that they DO act belligerent sometimes.
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The real problem is that unlike atheism, religious fundamentalism basically gives fundies a shield to hide behind. Atheists cannot make absurd claims like that the Earth is only 6000 years old or that God sends natural disasters to punish us for legalized abortions and gay rights, (These two claims courtesy of the Illinois Republican 9th district House nominee) and then hide behind their faith when people call them on their bullshit. "Men and dinosaurs lived together at the same time" being taught in "science" classes to millions of children is an utter farce. It would be like having a History class where you teach that World War I was fought in 1872. But it's grudgingly accepted by everyone else, because faith.
Except that none of those claims is fundamentally absurd, no matter what Talya says. They appear to be wrong
from the perspective of the atheist, and they rely on certain fundamental assumptions about the Bible and God that have theological and practical vulnerabilities, but they are not absurd because fundamentalists (hilarious, by the way, that "fundi" is ok with you but "nigger" doubtless is not) have supporting evidence from what they understand to be a historical account of that actually happening. The fact that other evidence appears to be much stronger makes that position scientifically weak, but by claiming it is "absurd" and that you are "calling anyone on their bullshit" you are right over the line into begging the question and circular argument.
THAT is the real problem - an inability on the part of atheists to not simply presume "our viewpoint is self-evidently true because science".
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Do not presume to say that stating fact as fact in any way equates to stating myth and superstition as fact. No I'm not talking about the existence of god. At this point, your personal beliefs aside, stating that the earth is 6000 years old, or that species were discretely and individually created, is akin to saying that the earth is flat and rests on the back of a giant turtle. By default, at this point, science is simply the assumed fact in any discussion. It is not proselytizing to teach it or to assume it. Stating otherwise, however, is proselytizing, as you are presenting ideas that go against observable facts, no less evident or plain than the earth being roughly spherical and orbiting the sun. Most religious people also accept this, so it has nothing to do with Religion vs. Secularism.
No. Do not presume to decide what is "assumed" or what is the "default". You do not get to do that. It is not prostelytizing to teach that science is science; it IS a form of prostelytization to extend that to claiming that anything at all is "myth and superstition". Religious people today have documentary evidence of certain past events happening regarding the world's origins. That documentary evidence might be allegorical, it might be actually true, and it might be completely inaccurate, BUT there is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever that it was anything other than completely sincerely written in an attempt, within the limits of its time period to document events.
We don't need to go over the relative strength of the evidence, we've hashed that out repeatedly and we both know that I don't support literal interpretations, and I agree the most straightforward interpretation of present evidence is the most likely, and that biblical original stories are allegorical. However, it
could be that this is all simply illusion, and the Biblical account is correct in a literal sense. This DOES NOT fall into silly "flying spaghetti monster" or "invisible unicorn" "it could be true because there's no way to disprove it" arguments, all of which are circular in nature (invented on the spot for the express purpose of appearing absurd, then proclaiming fundamentalist views the same thing by fiat). As pointed out, there is no reason to think Biblical accounts were written other than completely sincerely, so fundamentalists HAVE EVIDENCE, no matter how weak that evidence might be, or how unnecessarily complicated the conclusions they draw are. There is a huge difference between being WRONG and being ABSURD, and fundamentalists appear to be the former, which puts them firmly in the category of "mistaken about interpreting the evidence", not "believing in myth and superstition."
Other religions have their own stories, which may also constitute evidence for THEIR views, but those either are essentially the same as Christianity, or in many cases are clearly weaker since they lack the same strength of connection to later, well-known-to-be-true historical events. Arguing that "they're all the same" is based on "I don't believe any of them to be true, therefore they're all equally false."
It is NOT in the same category as talking about the shape of the Earth or it's orbit, which are observable and confirmable
at the present time, and which relying on rejecting observations of CURRENT conditions based on nothing more than obstinate insistence that the government is somehow fabricating evidence from space travel despite publicly observable launches of the technology in question to the point that it would actually cost more to fabricate it than it would to actually do it.
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