Rob Knop on Gnu Athiests

[Boozy]

The sarcasm is not helping your position.

And your smug superiority isn't helping yours.

Ahem.

I believe I've already addressed this kind of nonsense earlier in the thread. Here's your first (and last) reminder:

The moderators are getting somewhat concerned at the tone this thread is taking.

We do not want to see any discussions about a member's debate style. Those concerns should be addressed to a moderator via reports or PMs.

Go ahead and discuss Rob Knop's debate style. He's not a member here. Go ahead and discuss the debate style of "Gnu Atheists". But keep your comments generalized, please.

Many members will identify themselves as a member of a certain group, or align themselves with certain beliefs. That doesn't mean that you can shift focus to that member. The focus must remain on the group in general, or the set of beliefs in question.

For further clarification, please see my explanation in Site News.

[Talon]

Allow me to re-iterate: Correlation does not equal causation.

You are correct, I was mistaken to use the word "proof". Nevertheless, those testimonials do lend some credibility to the idea of a "recovering theist". Yes I know, credibility is not proof either.

Nevertheless, you yourself have argued that only the individual in question is qualified to truly judge whether their life has value or not. Well some of those people featured my link have made the judgment that their lives were wasted on religion.

These people are angry at themselves for not having realized sooner that religion was not for them. They're abdicating their own responsibility for their decisions to something outside their own control as a way of shifting blame. Of course it's not their own faults that they made the wrong decisions for themselves and didn't realize earlier that it was wrong.

That's entirely possible. It's also possible they're angry at being indoctrinated as vulnerable children, with the threat of eternal torture in an imaginary hell, from people they're supposed to look up to. How can adults make a fair decision regarding their beliefs, when their ability to critically examine their beliefs have been so stunted as children? They were done an intellectual disservice.

Yes, some of those children grow up and do come to terms, but some don't. Like the Mormons. It's not a fair choice when choosing non-belief can cost you your family and friends.

Further edit: To make my point clear, think about this: attempting to use testimonials on an Atheist page about how they recanted their religions to prove anything about whether people have "wasted" their lives to religion is about the same as going to www.paypalsucks.com and using the testimonials there to determine how satisfied people are with PayPal. It's an immensely biased comparison.

Biased you say?

Do you suppose the vast majority of testimonials I linked to skewed towards the dramatic? Like that bit about ex-Mormons and family strife I suggested earlier? If the site owner wanted to make religion look as bad as possible, wouldn't you expect that only the dramatic de-conversion accounts would be posted?

If you thought "yes", you'd be wrong. The majority of testimonials were from people who were already on the fence concerning atheism/agnosticism. Expressed feelings of personal liberation non-withstanding, they weren't very dramatic. Hardly the stuff of TV drama. I had to dig deeper to find dramatic accounts, and I don't recall them being very numerous.

Again I'm going off memory here, don't take my word for it. To the people who've been dismissive of what I've posted, I again invite you to read some of the testimonials before you judge.

[Andara Bledin]

That's entirely possible. It's also possible they're angry at being indoctrinated as vulnerable children, with the threat of eternal torture in an imaginary hell, from people they're supposed to look up to.

And that would be the fault of those peoples' guardians. Again, people, not ideas.

^-.-^

[AdminAssistant]

Again, people, not ideas.

Religion is just a collection of people who believe the in the same thing or hold similar ideals. So, I don't think you can say, "Oh, that's the fault of people, not religion." Would those people carry out those actions if not for the sake of religion?

I had a neighbor try to convert me when I was *five.* Yeah, nothing like telling a 5 year old that "the wages of sin is DEATH." Luckily, my mom told her to cut that shit out. But if the Baptist church didn't have such a colossal bug up its ass about "spreading the word" and "witnessing" and "OMG you have the duty to save your neighbors from everlasting hellfire!!", do you think she would have done such a thing? Of course not.

If people commit an action in the name of religion, then religion is the root cause. Religion can't claim all the good works that people do in its name and then ignore the bad.

[Andara Bledin]

People used to (some still do) treat blacks as second class citizens or worse. And yet, we don't blame racism for their actions; we blame the people who took those actions.

This is no different, no matter how much emotional investment anyone has in vilifying a set of ideas.

In that same vein, people are also the ones responsible for the good that is done in the name of religion. People volunteer to help the less fortunate, people donate money so others don't have to go hungry, people donate their time to visit the lonely.

Religion is merely one of man frameworks that people use to help them make their way through their own lives. They are social constructs.

^-.-^

[Boozy]

People used to (some still do) treat blacks as second class citizens or worse. And yet, we don't blame racism for their actions; we blame the people who took those actions.

Wait a minute - seriously?

I absolutely blame racism for racist acts and opinions. The culture of racism creates an environment where people feel safe and comfortable committing racist acts and saying racist things.

Obviously certain religious sects in certain geographical areas create the same sort of environment.

[Andara Bledin]

It's a factor, to be sure. But nobody is forcing anyone to do anything they don't, ultimately, choose to do.

If you choose to abdicate your own, and others', personal responsibility, that doesn't actually make anyone any less responsible.

^-.-^

[Ghel]

If you choose to abdicate your own, and others', personal responsibility, that doesn't actually make anyone any less responsible.

Are you still talking about deconversion stories? Because it seems to me that moving from theism to atheism means actually taking responsibility for your own actions, rather than letting your religion make all your decisions for you.