Atheist Tactics that Work

[Foster Zygote]

how do you know science exists except for having some experiences in relation to science, and trusting those experiences?

Are you really heading down that solipsistic road?

I don't think he even knows it's a road, or that it leads to solipsism. He seems completely oblivious of Descartes' writing on the subject or of the centuries of philosophy since.

 

[articulett]

I'm against trying to convert people. But I don't defer to religion. I will ask people about why god would care so much about "belief" rather than actions? --or other such questions that lead me to learn to think for myself. I may point out how there really is no way to tell one faith from another in regards to truth since none have any measurable evidence in their favor so people just tend to go with the one they were born into or that feels the "best". Or I'll point out that since I can't know if god exists--that means nobody else can either and lots of people have been known to fool themselves when it comes to such things often with some tragic consequences.

Sometimes I'll say that I don't see how souls could be real given the total devastation of personhood with various types of brain damage-- how could they be anything without a brain at all?

I've asked people what makes their belief system more likely to be true than Scientology.
Sometimes I'll say that I don't care about what people believe-- I care about facts... and I care about other people opinions (and I consider beliefs opinions) about as much as they care about mine.

But mostly I stay quiet... until someone expects me to defer or are doing the double standard thing where they can only see what is good about religion and only see what is bad about a non-believer.

Faith is a bad way to know actual truths. It's also one of the most common ways humans are known to fool themselves and manipulate others.

 

[Suggestologist]

I'm against trying to convert people.

Why?

Is it just that some religions are so annoying about the way they try to convert people? I'm not asking you to convert people. You don't have to do it yourself, to support the effort.

 

[Skepticybe]

Good OP.

I think one of the points that should always be made by atheists/nontheists when talking with theists is that any god will be completely and fully compatible with science. That doesn't mean science knows everything, or that science can prove or disprove the existence of some supreme being (however defined). It simply means that all things conceivable will be governed by inviolable rules. This can be a handy measuring tool to see where beliefs become rational, and any discussion is wasted on anyone who can't accept this simple principle. Science is not the enemy of god, only the enemy of false gods.

Plumjam brought up the point of personal spiritual manifestation directly from god. Something to keep in mind is the different realms of "evidence". A person's experiences in life are part of their set of evidence they use to draw conclusions. Very few people are able to assess the evidenciary (sp?) value of their experience as anything less than 100%.

If, for example, someone were to spontaneously regenerate an amputated limb, that would become irrefutable evidence of a miracle to all who witnessed it. But none of us could (or should!) consider this at face value without some extreme validation of the event. So, god talking to plumjam (imagined or not) is part of his evidence, but not ours. And we can't even start to evaluate his experience; it is uniquely and irrevocably his alone. The best we could hope for is for him to more objectively evaluate his experience and measure it vs science.

At the risk of sharing too much information, I enjoy hallucinogens including weed and magic mushrooms, something I decided to start in my 30's after much long research into potential risks and benefits. While under the influence of mushrooms in particular, I too have experienced profound and undeniable spirituality. Yes, I know I was on drugs and my perception was severely altered and unreliable, and the experience can only be tested to the extent that I can compare it against science for consistency. But those experiences nevertheless become part of my "knowledge base" which involuntarily forms my beliefs, precluding me from accepting pure and strict atheism -- for now, at least. However, I still identify best philosophically with atheists and don't accept the existence of an other-worldly supreme authority based on any form of parent/child or ruler/subject model.

More directly, I would say to plumjam, that my undeniable and incredibly vivid spiritual experiences (the most profound moments of my life) directly and almost completely contradict yours (as you've described them). Both of us can't be right, but we both can be wrong.

As a science enthusiast, I'm hopeful that psychedelics will eventually provide science with a far better understanding of the human brain, and may eventually provide the basis for validating or falsifying the existence of a spirit (for lack of a better term). It's truly a shame that psychedelics are used so much yet studied so little.

 

[Belz...]

What you're saying, really, (if I understand you right) is that the less an experience happens the more right we have to question its validity.

Ugh. This is painful.

What I'm saying is that you can't trust your perceptions as much as you seem to think.

The only reason you'd question seeing a ghost so much is that it's either never happened to you, or only very rarely... plus your (probably justified) belief that it also happens very rarely to other people.

Actually, you are -- again -- completely wrong. The reason what seeing a ghost would be a questionable experience is because it's much, much more credible to think that I'm having a hallucination than to think that somehow, some way, people's spirits survive death or imprint their patterns upon their surroundings.

People who have this belief tend towards a consensus-driven world view, which tends to dismiss and discredit the unusual and anomalous.

Plum, this isn't a belief, it's a natural consequence of looking at things scientifically.

I don't subscribe to this worldview...

Obviously.

because these unusual and anomalous phenomena have persisted throughout known human history, cross culturally.

Which, in and of itself, means nothing, because very, very often these "phenomena" are mutually exclusive, cross culturally. Take gods, for example...

I feel they demand better treatment than just outright dismissal.

They HAVE had better treatment, but nobody has ever been able to detect their existence. Take bigfoot, for example...

well you've created a catch 22 there, haven't you... so the believer can never 'win'.

Of course the believer can never win, because reality is not a matter of belief.

it would be just like me saying... "well, scientists are much more likely to conduct experiments... and the more fanatic the scientist, the more likely."

And... how would that be bad ?

 

[Belz...]

so your argument is like this:
without emotion we could create useless and damaging moral systems

Your ability to comprehend other people's points is abysmal, at best.

What I'm saying is what I've said in the post you were responding to. That this moral system would be "damaging" is entirely inconsequential to our discussion. You didn't say "good" moral system, in which case you'd still be wrong.

 

[Belz...]

The hijackers were hearing Allah's voice... and they were successful (may even be enjoying sex in the afterlife if their sect is true)

Sure, but after 5 or 6 billion years, they'll want more than just 72 virgins.

 

[Fnord]

You people are great!

I showed this thread to some fundie friends, and they're totally "Spun Up" about it. I hope that the one who claims to know Jack Chick personally was telling the truth, as I'd love to see Belz's avatar on the cover of a Chick Tract.

One of them said something about that Fnord guy being a Judas for even posting here, but...

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Atheist tactics?

I believed that the Iraq War was wrong, I felt it was wrong. But there is no power, no definitive morality to affirm that 'belief' as true.

You believe in God, you sense he is there, yet you ask this to take exception.

 

[INRM]

Well, any time I discussed atheism I never really came on aggressively. I also didn't call it atheism, I just called it not believing in God.

For some reason Americans aren't all that intolerant of Americans not beliving in God, but are totally distrusting of Atheists. Now try wrapping your minds around that...

The word atheism doesn't just conjure up a non-believer, but an angry "preachy" non-believer who accuses opposition of being mentally ill. Although not all atheists are like that -- Atheist just means a person who doesn't believe in God, but it has a connotation

 

[JetLeg]

Benefits of Belief​

People don't just believe because they were brainwashed as children. There are ongoing benefits that must be addressed. I will list a few that come to mind, but this is not an exhaustive list.

1. Family Cohesion (Don't want to hurt Mom's or Granddad's Feelings)
2. Social Cohesion (Friends, Parties)
3. Emotional Highs (During Religious Services and Individual Prayer)
4. Excuse for Normally Unacceptable Forms of Emotional Expression
5. Hope for Immortality
6. Excuses for Strange Behavior that Leads to Altered Conscious States (Such as Fasting)
7. Control of Others Behavior (Excuse to Demand "Righteous" Behavior of Others, Especially Your Kids)
8. The Approval of Others

These and other factors keep people from seeing what's really going on (the matrix -- used as analogy of course).

If you can't address them, you can't really change someone without causing emotional distress. Given the choice of not seeing reality or feeling emotional distress; guess which people will usually choose?

These are just ad hominem arguments.

 

[JetLeg]

He seems completely oblivious of Descartes' writing on the subject or of the centuries of philosophy since.

Don't you think that the arguments of Descartes are bullet-proof?

 

[JetLeg]

You have to make your arguments emotionally relevant first. Then back it up with rational arguments. People are convinced first by emotion, logic is only there to anchor their emotional decision in place. And atheists often come across as way too dry, or way too caustic. We need to express the full range of emotion in our arguments. The positive and the negative. Sagan showed some positive emotion in his awe of the universe, but even that, I feel, was much too dry. We don't want to be like the overly effusive, crying, screaming televangelists, but we can move much farther in that direction. And I think we must.

Look at the stem cell debate. I feel there was much too little emotional argumentation on the pro-stem-cell side. Yet the anti-stem-cell people had plenty of emotion in their position. And yet, there is much emotional material that could have been utilized to make the emotional point for the pro-stem-cell side. And some it was and is present (Michael J. Fox), but not enough, in my opinion.

So I say, don't be straight-jacketed to rational argumentation. Emotion sells first. Reason only backs it up. Show your genuine emotions, as full of a range of emotions as is appropriate. If you are emotionally closed, people will pick up on that, and they won't be persuaded. It's as if you have something to hide, ulterior motives at work. If they can't trust your emotions (because they don't see any), they can't trust you as a person. Work on being more expressive. You may have to exaggerate your emotions for them to seem even normally expressed. A logical rational argument will almost always lose to an emotional argument.

Weird that you say that. The ideal in rational thinking is precisely not being convinced by emotions, but being convinced by reason. Would you, as an atheist be happy if everyone believed that there is no god, due to arguments from authority? However, it is a logical conclusion of your views, since that is the easiest way to prove that.

And if the last sentence of your quote would be true, then skeptics would not exist.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

These are just ad hominem arguments.

Clarify; do you tu quoque, circumstantial, or abusive?

 

[Suggestologist]

These are just ad hominem arguments.

These are not arguments.
They are tactical factors.

These are factors I think should be taken into consideration within discussions with religious folk, to increase the effectiveness of arguments against religion. I'm not really concerned with any specific arguments, in that post of mine you quoted.

 

[Suggestologist]

Weird that you say that. The ideal in rational thinking is precisely not being convinced by emotions, but being convinced by reason. Would you, as an atheist be happy if everyone believed that there is no god, due to arguments from authority? However, it is a logical conclusion of your views, since that is the easiest way to prove that.

And if the last sentence of your quote would be true, then skeptics would not exist.

Skeptics back up emotional conclusions with logical conclusions. The religious, generally do not.

 

[Suggestologist]

A Few Points​

Some of these will probably be controversial among skeptics, but I'd like to hear opinions on such tactics:

Position yourself to their right.

People say "yes" more to people who are thinner than fatter. So lose weight if you need to.

Lean in a little when they are talking about what is important to them.

Get small movements, then escalate over time. (Foot-in-the-Door principle)
To get someone to do something, get them to take an action (physical).
Creating a picture in their minds is not as effective, as an actual experience.

When people say they are 99% sure, they are actually 90% sure.
People overestimate their own certainty levels.

Do some light cold reading to make them comfortable with you.
People do this all the time naturally.
By light cold reading, I mean tell them your general positive or neutral impressions of them.
It's OK to be wrong.

Give them a skeptical compliment as you cold read.
"You don't believe everything you hear, you like to make sure, don't you."
This sets up an expectation that they have questioned whatever supernatural beliefs they may present later. Remind them that they are skeptical people, when they bring those up.