I don’t understand what you mean. Obviously I could link to all the threads I’ve been into about this (those that weren’t erased, at least), but I thought it would come off as annoying, so I tried to sum it up, briefly: the caricature is not imaginary. I have been literally accused of being foreign to all love and kindess because I rejected God, who was Caritas. “You reject God, therefore you are evil” is one of the knee-jerk reactions I talked about.
And you can still come across as one even while you are doing your best to be kind and soothing, simply because you are being too blunt or approaching from a wrong angle.
Ok, I’ll take your word that there are such people. I live in a country where that sort of behaviour is lunatic fringe, and I’ve never encountered it myself.
Do you have to deal with them? If not, that’s one possible approach: withdraw. This applies to real life as well as the Internet.
I know that several of my colleagues are Christians, and they may know that I’m an atheist, but it basically doesn’t come up in conversation. I have no mission to convert any of them, and I’d only discuss it at all if someone else started the discussion.
You might try asking these mad people, “How many cats have I tortured? How many babies have I eaten?” by way of a reality check, and ask if they would be doing these things themselves if not for the fear of God. I’m echoing here this post from the Sequences. More generally, eliciting their reasons for their beliefs might be more effective than setting out your own as an opposing line of artillery.
Just an idea, which may or may not get anywhere. As I say, I’ve never had to deal with such people. But I am sure that coming at them with fear, anger, and resentment will never work. It never does.
BTW, these people call you evil, but do they act like they believe that (i.e. putting you in fear that they’ll burn your house around you), or only as if they believe they believe that (i.e. they do nothing more than utter the words and keep their distance)?
ETA: I just remembered some context that I’d forgotten when I wrote the above. You were a Moslem, yes? Are the people you’re talking about Moslems or Christians? Fundamentalist hicks or the sort of more enlightened Moslem that you were yourself, and have moved away from?
You might try asking these mad people, “How many cats have I tortured? How many babies have I eaten?” by way of a reality check, and ask if they would be doing these things themselves if not for the fear of God.
I’ve met a frightening number of people for whom the professed answer is “yes”. Now, you know and I know that that’s far more likely to be an applause light or a hasty assumption than an accurate gauge of future behavior, but that’s hard to prove: naively it might seem that the lack of obvious atheist babyeating/cat-torturing counts as evidence for it, but in practice more theists take that to imply that those atheists aren’t thinking clearly, that their behavioral corruption manifests itself in subtler ways, or that they unconsciously fear God without acknowledging him (a version of the “atheists in foxholes” argument).
More generally, the problem with using reality checks based on your own behavior is that people will readily create individual exceptions to a pernicious stereotype without actually updating the stereotype; about the most you can accomplish individually, therefore, is to cast yourself into the role of the Token Good Atheist. Updates might happen if your theistic friend comes to accept several similar roles, but the problem wouldn’t have developed in the first place if that friend regularly came into friendly contact with atheists.
Citing statistics for your purpose is a way around this, but the data isn’t unambiguously in favor of atheism: there are a lot of confounding factors (income and education are the big ones), and some important metrics like self-identified happiness actually come out in favor of theism. That debate usually degenerates into a brawl over Puddleglum’s Wager.
Citing statistics for your purpose is a way around this, but the data isn’t unambiguously in favor of atheism: there are a lot of confounding factors (income and education are the big ones), and some important metrics like self-identified happiness actually come out in favor of theism. That debate usually degenerates into a brawl over Puddleglum’s Wager.
My understanding is that the statistics on this rate practicing religious adherents against people who are not practicing religious adherents. Although it could be that theism simply makes people happier on average, my primary hypothesis is that the social activity of church participation accounts for a lot of this. I’ve known priests who were amazing public speakers and community organizers, and I consider it a shame that strictly secular societies rarely provide proper venues for such people to put their skills to good effect.
Do you have to deal with them? If not, that’s one possible approach: withdraw. This applies to real life as well as the Internet.
Great advice.
I know that several of my colleagues are Christians, and they may know that I’m an atheist, but it basically doesn’t come up in conversation. I have no mission to convert any of them, and I’d only discuss it at all if someone else started the discussion.
There’s different degrees of belief and sets of belief. Some beliefs are so far removed from reality that you aren’t going to have much success arguing with them. If someone really believes that all atheists are evil, you probably aren’t going to get very far with that person.
However, as a general rule for internet conversations, you will almost never convince the person you are arguing with that their position is wrong. However, if you are firm and polite and have better arguments on your side, you do a good chance of helping convince more moderate people who aren’t part of the argument but are reading it.
I don’t understand what you mean. Obviously I could link to all the threads I’ve been into about this (those that weren’t erased, at least), but I thought it would come off as annoying, so I tried to sum it up, briefly: the caricature is not imaginary. I have been literally accused of being foreign to all love and kindess because I rejected God, who was Caritas. “You reject God, therefore you are evil” is one of the knee-jerk reactions I talked about.
And you can still come across as one even while you are doing your best to be kind and soothing, simply because you are being too blunt or approaching from a wrong angle.
Ok, I’ll take your word that there are such people. I live in a country where that sort of behaviour is lunatic fringe, and I’ve never encountered it myself.
Do you have to deal with them? If not, that’s one possible approach: withdraw. This applies to real life as well as the Internet.
I know that several of my colleagues are Christians, and they may know that I’m an atheist, but it basically doesn’t come up in conversation. I have no mission to convert any of them, and I’d only discuss it at all if someone else started the discussion.
You might try asking these mad people, “How many cats have I tortured? How many babies have I eaten?” by way of a reality check, and ask if they would be doing these things themselves if not for the fear of God. I’m echoing here this post from the Sequences. More generally, eliciting their reasons for their beliefs might be more effective than setting out your own as an opposing line of artillery.
Just an idea, which may or may not get anywhere. As I say, I’ve never had to deal with such people. But I am sure that coming at them with fear, anger, and resentment will never work. It never does.
BTW, these people call you evil, but do they act like they believe that (i.e. putting you in fear that they’ll burn your house around you), or only as if they believe they believe that (i.e. they do nothing more than utter the words and keep their distance)?
ETA: I just remembered some context that I’d forgotten when I wrote the above. You were a Moslem, yes? Are the people you’re talking about Moslems or Christians? Fundamentalist hicks or the sort of more enlightened Moslem that you were yourself, and have moved away from?
I’ve met a frightening number of people for whom the professed answer is “yes”. Now, you know and I know that that’s far more likely to be an applause light or a hasty assumption than an accurate gauge of future behavior, but that’s hard to prove: naively it might seem that the lack of obvious atheist babyeating/cat-torturing counts as evidence for it, but in practice more theists take that to imply that those atheists aren’t thinking clearly, that their behavioral corruption manifests itself in subtler ways, or that they unconsciously fear God without acknowledging him (a version of the “atheists in foxholes” argument).
More generally, the problem with using reality checks based on your own behavior is that people will readily create individual exceptions to a pernicious stereotype without actually updating the stereotype; about the most you can accomplish individually, therefore, is to cast yourself into the role of the Token Good Atheist. Updates might happen if your theistic friend comes to accept several similar roles, but the problem wouldn’t have developed in the first place if that friend regularly came into friendly contact with atheists.
Citing statistics for your purpose is a way around this, but the data isn’t unambiguously in favor of atheism: there are a lot of confounding factors (income and education are the big ones), and some important metrics like self-identified happiness actually come out in favor of theism. That debate usually degenerates into a brawl over Puddleglum’s Wager.
My understanding is that the statistics on this rate practicing religious adherents against people who are not practicing religious adherents. Although it could be that theism simply makes people happier on average, my primary hypothesis is that the social activity of church participation accounts for a lot of this. I’ve known priests who were amazing public speakers and community organizers, and I consider it a shame that strictly secular societies rarely provide proper venues for such people to put their skills to good effect.
Great advice.
Even better advice.
There’s different degrees of belief and sets of belief. Some beliefs are so far removed from reality that you aren’t going to have much success arguing with them. If someone really believes that all atheists are evil, you probably aren’t going to get very far with that person.
However, as a general rule for internet conversations, you will almost never convince the person you are arguing with that their position is wrong. However, if you are firm and polite and have better arguments on your side, you do a good chance of helping convince more moderate people who aren’t part of the argument but are reading it.