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What I dislike about modern atheism

MrFliop said:
If people blindly follow atheism because its trendy right now then they're no better than religious followers.
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Citations, data, evidence?
All the people, including the young ones made the choice exactly through critical thinking.
:)

Mind you for me 'young' means under 25
 
MrFliop said:
it seems that many people (specifically young people) are becoming atheists simply because its edgy.
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I've seen some of this, not just with young people and not just with atheism, and I have some theories about why (Disclaimer - I'm an American living in America and I haven't done a peer-reviewed double blinded study of this stuff):

1. Kids, man. A certain percentage of them just like to be as "edgy" as possible, and then they'll look back in a decade or so and be really embarrassed.

2. While atheists are far from oppressed, there is some bias. This means that many atheists, particularly those still living with religious parents, will choose to keep pretty quiet about it. Since the more meek and non-confrontational ones are the most likely to be quiet about their atheism, you'll hear from the 'in your face' ones way more often and that skews our estimates of the population as a whole.

3. I think it's related to the same thing that causes a lot of the "college liberal" jokes and stereotypes. When you first start to learn that society isn't what you thought it was and there's something that is either untrue or unfair that is nonetheless prevalent everywhere around you you kinda flip a bit. It sometimes takes a bit for people to calm down and find a balance between "say nothing and be complicit in the system" and "stop watching a show I love forever just because of one offhand reference to an idiom that they probably didn't even realize has its roots in racism". To some of these guys, they may have just realized god isn't real and are still reeling from looking everywhere and seeing just how thoroughly religious thought is woven through society. Most of them, hopefully, will eventually stop harassing people on Facebook and insisting on calling god "sky-daddy" just to get a rise out of others.

4. A certain percentage of people, kids or not, are just that way. Actually a lot of the big mainstream atheists get on my nerves because of the "look how edgy I am" attitude they have, and I'm talking about people who are forty or older.

[/quote]If people blindly follow atheism because its trendy right now then they're no better than religious followers.[/QUOTE]

Eh. I get what you're saying but for me I think that's such a tiny part of what makes you better or worse than someone else that I can't even worry about it. The reasons people do or don't believe in a particular concept are typically complicated and can't be boiled down to "doing it blindly". Even if they are doing something pretty much blindly people contain multitudes and they might be all about critical thinking in other areas of their lives, or they blindly follow but they blindly follow all the right stuff and are awesome people while doing it so whatever.
 
Diablo said:
I think this could be a reaction to outspoken religious fundos like Evangelicals, militant Islamists etc who want to spread their rotten teachings, often at the expense of women and minorities.
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Yeah, that stuff can get scary quick.


Diablo said:
Quote:

The emboldened religious right has unleashed a wave of legislation across the United States since Donald Trump became president, as part of an organised bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society.
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It is interesting to note that there seems to be an upsurge in so-called "cultural Christians" who claim that western liberal values came, more or less, from Christianity. Douglas Murray, for example, holds such a view. I know the Bible can be cherry picked to say many contrary things, but western liberal values did on the whole arise in, well, wait for it...western Christian societies.

I would not be surprised if we see an upswing of interest in Christianity in areas in the EU with high immigrations from Islamic countries with such different values.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Yeah, that stuff can get scary quick.




It is interesting to note that there seems to be an upsurge in so-called "cultural Christians" who claim that western liberal values came, more or less, from Christianity. Douglas Murray, for example, holds such a view. I know the Bible can be cherry picked to say many contrary things, but western liberal values did on the whole arise in, well, wait for it...western Christian societies.

I would not be surprised if we see an upswing of interest in Christianity in areas in the EU with high immigrations from Islamic countries with such different values.
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I'm sure that it's possible to find passages in the bible endorsing democracy and equal rights for women and minorities, fair and independant criminal justice system etc.... or maybe not. It seems to me that some christian sects have evolved to keep pace with developments in society while others are lagging behind.

I doubt that christian sects will benefit from the influence of Islam; more likely, people will continue to embrace atheism, which is the current trend.
 
SOdhner said:
If people blindly follow atheism because its trendy right now then they're no better than religious followers.
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Eh. I get what you're saying but for me I think that's such a tiny part of what makes you better or worse than someone else that I can't even worry about it. The reasons people do or don't believe in a particular concept are typically complicated and can't be boiled down to "doing it blindly". Even if they are doing something pretty much blindly people contain multitudes and they might be all about critical thinking in other areas of their lives, or they blindly follow but they blindly follow all the right stuff and are awesome people while doing it so whatever.
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I agree. And I would like to add that those who follow blindly and aren't "awesome people while doing it," may not even be offensive because of whatever they're following blindly but for entirely different reasons. The one who's an obnoxious ******** as a Christian, often remains one after he's 'converted' to atheism, which is no surprise, really.
 
Diablo said:
I'm sure that it's possible to find passages in the bible endorsing democracy and equal rights for women and minorities, fair and independant criminal justice system etc.... or maybe not.
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Here you go.

Diablo said:
It seems to me that some christian sects have evolved to keep pace with developments in society while others are lagging behind.
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Unfortunately, the regressive and conservative sects are far noisier than the progressive ones, which tend therefore to be overlooked. Hence the overall impression - especially amongst outspoken atheists - is that Christianity as a whole is regressive and conservative, when that's not actually true.
 
arthwollipot said:
Here you go.
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Uh, no. The only thing even vaguely resembling what he asked for is about the justice system (e.g., that judges shouldn't take bribes in Deuteronomy), though even that is subverted by the law and the religion being one. For the other stuff he asked for, like endorsing democracy or equal rights for women and minorities, your list is a completely irrelevant as to make me wonder if you were trying to make a joke.
 
MrFliop said:
I am an atheist because I know its common sense that if there's zero proof of something there's no reason to believe its true. Therefore since I have yet to see any serious evidence for any deity's existence I have no reason to believe in any god.

I'm glad that atheism is no on the rise but it seems that many people (specifically young people) are becoming atheists simply because its edgy. Because christianity is the status quo religion so being an atheist is the counterculture to this. Or because people want to p**s off their parents. Or because they got dragged into church in their youth.

People should choose what they want to believe through critical thinking and what conclusions they come up with on their own. If people blindly follow atheism because its trendy right now then they're no better than religious followers.
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Seems to me like "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." (Hitchens.)

But more fundamentally, once you said that there is no reason to believe in X, that's that. That's the only thing that matters. You then don't need any particular reason to disbelieve X. It's just falling back to the null position. You can't then say that only reasons Y and Z are valid if you want to disbelieve X, because there are none required.

But the even more fundamental problem I see there is that you assume that basically some people people are p-zombies. In fact, worse, that basically they take decisions and do stuff without any thinking involved.

BUT anyone who took ANY decision, even stuff like flicking the light switch when going for a piss at night, HAS in fact weighed the reasons to and the reasons not to. Even subconscious decisions, not only we have a dedicated area on the brain where what happens is exactly that all the relevant data you have in the brain is sent for a "voting" of reasons to do it vs reasons not to do it, but we can even watch it happening in real time.

If they decided to not do it after all, it's precisely because the reasons to do it side was comparatively weaker.

Basically it seems to me like what they decided is exactly what you ask for: that there are no good reasons to believe, or at least not enough good reasons. They may not have gone deeply philosophical about it, but nevertheless that was the root of the decision being made.
 
HansMustermann said:
Uh, no. The only thing even vaguely resembling what he asked for is about the justice system (e.g., that judges shouldn't take bribes in Deuteronomy), though even that is subverted by the law and the religion being one. For the other stuff he asked for, like endorsing democracy or equal rights for women and minorities, your list is a completely irrelevant as to make me wonder if you were trying to make a joke.
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My point is that someone has already looked for it. This is a list of all the "good stuff" they found. Also, it complements the comment I made in response to someone else.

If you're looking in the Bible for progressive values that literally didn't exist at the time that the Bible was written, you're unlikely to find them. Seems an unreasonable demand to me.
 
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But linking that list is still not a "yes" answer to their question. Your second paragraph about would be a reasonable answer, but linking a list of completely different stuff isn't.
 
dann said:
"Honor thy father and thy mother" isn't good stuff at all! I know from personal experience what psychopathic parents can do. This commandment is perverse!
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While I'm truly sorry for your experience, please do not generalise your experience to the rest of the population, the majority of whom have good relationships with their parents.
 
What I criticize is the generalisation of the commandment! Please don't tell me about the majority!
 
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