Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

Why do people always get pissed whenever I bring up the fact that i'm an antitheist anywhere.

I mean they act like I'm some kind of bigot or something, but since I don't hate religious people, just the religions that they worship, becasue I feel that they are mostly harmful, that's not exactly true.

Religious people have a habit of internalising their beliefs to the point that they consider their religion and themselves one and the same. To them, you're attacking part of their identity.

edited 3rd Oct '14 3:51:36 AM by Elfive

It may also be that the term "antitheist" sounds like a form of aggression against people who believe in god(s).

@Electric Nova: What Elfive said. To many people, saying you hate religions but not religious people is like someone saying "I don't hate homosexuals, just homosexuality." I don't agree, but that seems to be the thinking behind it.

Which, ironically, is probably one of the harmful things about religion.

It's one thing to not like religion, another to declare oneself an anti-theist, an active enemy of religion. From what I know, anti-theism has a reputation for meaningless hostility, petty hatred justified by self-victimizing, and has that sour internet reputation of needing to announce how much a trigger word religion is for them.

Then again the only people who would be offended are the religious, which are on the opposing side of the board than you.

About that borrowed money: I think you should pay it back. I'm sure they'll be OK with having you pay it to any organisation they're affiliated with, so you don't have to find the same branch you borrowed from.

I don't want to endorse giving money to them but if you borrowed from them I think it'd be unfair not to return it. They will probably do some harm with it (to themselves or others) but it probably won't be as bad as just keeping money they borrowed you in good faith.

antitheist have are know as the religion whiners, they have sometimes a hoiler thant you(wit all the irony of this)

Of course many people just asume that religion influence everywhere is a normal thing, or that religion where always like this, so i can see you case

Antitheism always made more sense to me than "whatever, believe what you want as long as it makes you happy" forms of atheism/agnosticism. The latter is really insulting and condescending; the former will lead to fiery debates as a matter of course, but at least it engages believers as fellow thinking, truth-desiring humans whose beliefs and actions do matter.

As a theist myself, I vastly prefer people who openly disagree with me and claim that my beliefs are false and dangerous: we would argue about this, obviously, and chances are that neither of us will admit defeat and that we'll both end up reciprocally frustrated at the other, but at least we will share our perspectives as fellow human beings and — hopefully — learn a little more about each other in the process.

Perhaps some people react negatively when you claim you are antitheist because they suppose it to mean something along the lines of "I believe that God exists, I just hate him"?

EDIT:

edited 3rd Oct '14 1:38:47 PM by Carciofus

Hey, Carc - I'm glad you said that. Really. I don't hate religious people, I hate religion. I wish the two weren't conflated as often.

Why?

That could mean one of four things.

Why do I hate religion? To boil it down to a simple statement and paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, I think that it is infantile and sinister. I don't think the same of religious people, though. Yes, I think they have bought into a delusion, but I don't think any less of them for it. Bluntly, the world is insane and absolutely sucks for the vast majority of people, and I'm not going to hate someone who tries to make sense of it through something that brings them comfort, even if I think that it is false and ultimately brings them more harm than good. I do hate the architects and profiteers of such things, however.

........

You know, I think I'll make that my life goal, do something impossible and "supernatural"

edited 3rd Oct '14 3:48:44 PM by PersistentMan

This will come as no surprise to you, but I'm very much in agreement with you here - though obviously from the other side. I'm an antitheist myself (in that I don't want there to be a God, in addition to the fact that I don't believe there is one) and I've always found it much harder to understand and to agree to disagree with theistic positions than I have with people who say "it's not a matter that can be argued for or against" or anything along those lines. Of course I'll grant that I can't conclusively prove that there's no God, but anyone who'll at least try to make a case for God rather than saying that it's just beyond discussion gets my respect, even when I cannot agree with any of the points they're making.

I know that the line "believe what you want" is probably often meant as "believe whatever you happen to believe" but I think the language of wanting to believe is misguided here. Some people probably do believe things because they want things to be so - whether they'll admit (or even know) that it's so. (And I wouldn't be that surprised if there are atheists who are antitheists first; by which I mean people who don't want there to be a God and therefore don't believe that there's a God, as if wanting things to be so ever had any impact on reality.)

I would personally be offended if someone said "you're free to believe what you want" rather than "you're free to believe whatever you believe". The latter doesn't imply that I'm making a choice to believe things without regard to any actual argument or evidence. Even if I'm mistaken I would like to think that I'm mistaken based on an experience or argument that I've misinterpreted, rather than believing a falsehood because I want it to be true and haven't bothered to think about it. I'm sure that there are things where I'm wrong because I haven't thought about it at all, but if I've made the effort to talk about it with you and listen to your case and present mine I would hope to be granted the very basic courtesy of being taken seriously, even if you disagree with me. At least acknowledge that I've probably made an effort, even if I'm wrong in your opinion.

This doesn't mean that I'm against pointing out that people sometimes don't actually think about things before they pick a side in a debate, especially if their position is the same as that of their parents, peers, or any authorities they happen to respect; but when you get to the point where someone is aware of the main arguments on your side and can present a case that isn't based on "my parents say so" it ceases to be fair to say they're just choosing to believe something. They might very well be mistaken, and all their arguments might be (or at least seem) logically fallacious, but at least say that they believe what they've (perhaps wrongly) concluded to be right, rather than saying that they just believe what they want.

Now that I've said all this, the single most common response I get whenever I talk about the reasons I don't believe it makes sense to believe in God is "but if it makes someone happy would you take it away from them?" The impression I get is that these people - probably a majority among the people I know - actually do believe that people hold beliefs based on how much they want to believe those things, and challenging that is wrong because it undermines their happiness. In other words, based on my experience it seems that people generally don't assume that others actually think about things logically before they reach conclusions about God's existence.

I'm not convinced that the "but it makes them happy"-people are actually giving believers or nonbelievers enough credit. I don't think it's unfair to expect anyone willing to participate in a discussion like this to think before they reach a conclusion, and I don't think it's fair to assume that others haven't stopped to think before they reached their conclusion.

Of course there are people who merely inherited a position and didn't really challenge it properly at any point, but to assume that most people are choosing a belief for its "happiness value" is unfair, in my opinion.

So basically I'm agreeing with Carcioufus on that, as well.

edited 3rd Oct '14 7:42:24 PM by desdendelle

If it's bad for them or if they seem to genuinely want to make an effort to find out the truth. Even if it's something harmless like believing that the Solar System is near the centre of the Milky Way, rather than closer to the edge, if the person I'm talking to seems to be interested in it I will tell them that they're wrong.

Similarly, even if it somehow doesn't seem to make any difference whether you know that most (or perhaps all) of the people named as the authors of various parts of the Bible probably didn't actually write the text that survives to our day, if you seem to want to find out whether there's any evidence that they were the actual authors (or that others were) I'll try to help you find out because I'm interested in this and I don't even believe in most of the stories in the Bible. I won't try to shelter you from it if you seem to want to talk about it.

Yes, this does mean that if you want to talk about religion with me (which is basically almost the only situation where I'd normally bring up my atheism anyway) I will tell you why I don't believe in God, even if it might make you less happy for a while. If you're talking about it with me I'll give you credit for wanting to find out what others think and I will respect that by answering you honestly, rather than trying to somehow protect you from views that differ from yours (which presumably is what people who say "but what if believing so makes them happy" would want.)

edited 3rd Oct '14 8:07:57 PM by BestOf

Sent a check in the mail, with a letter to the man I borrowed it from. I feel better I guess.

So, I found this bit.

"The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 8 Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. 11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer)."

I don't know why stumbling across this tidbit piqued my interest. Out of all the Deuteronomy/Leviticus that seems to infuriate people to high hell, the real gold is in the crowns of these horrendous creatures. It's a joke. I just really like whatever creature this is.

(Whoever translated that from Greek didn't know Hebrew)
Wasn't it Hitchens that suggested that John was, um, under the influence when he wrote Revelations?

I guess he could've been, but it's not the first explanation I would go for.

The many issue against Antitheism is that "religion is bad and we should let behind" dosent really sound much diferent from christian evangelist "Im right, therefore anything I do is right no matter what" I give people a bad taste.

I dont like religion and their influence, i can Understand if people want to belive that, tell other people that they are wrong from their own good is just doing the same. is not really a answer.

I suppose there are a few different kinds of 'let's agree to disagree on this whole Religion thing, yeah?', and they have different connotations.

There's, 'Yeah, you believe in a God, so you clearly haven't thought this whole thing through. I'm not going to listen to anything you have to say on the subject, ever. But, I'll let you have your little delusion.' Which, while maybe accurate a lot of the time, does come off as rather condescending, because it's a dismissal out of hand. Yes, it probably comes from many such previous conversations where people failed to convince one another, but it, one, makes the assumption that of course you know better than they do, and two, that they couldn't possibly have any evidence or ideas you haven't heard before.

Then there's the, 'yeah, this is probably just going to lead to a fight and nothing productive. Let's talk about something else, shall we?' Which doesn't dismiss them out of hand, no matter what you might personally think of their ideas, but is just acknowledging that you're better off not discussing it.

And of course, one can be mistaken for the other. Sometimes intentionally. And have their counterparts on the theist side: 'Yeah, you don't believe in God so clearly you haven't thought this whole metaphysical thing through.', and 'Yeah, if I try to convince you to believe it's probably not going to end well. Let's talk about something else, yes?'

edited 4th Oct '14 11:06:24 AM by PointMaid

At least in the US, there seem to be plenty of atheists who bent over backwards to accommodate religion. They're even called "faithiests" at times by opponents. Not to mention, of course, that it's possible to be both religious and an atheist (like some Buddhist sects).

edited 4th Oct '14 12:43:15 PM by Fireblood

This will not end well...

Only if people don't want it to, Persi.