Criticism of atheism Puns

This is not a criticism of Christianity. In fact, I think it applies to everyone. However, the reason I made the thread here and directed it at Christianity is that i find discussion of philosophy and religion interesting and fun. Plus, I live in the U.S., so Christianity is the religion I am most familiar with and prepared to debate about.

For context, I am an agnostic atheist. I'll be defining objective as "without influence from emotion". If this definition does not please you, let me know, and I'll try to reframe what I mean under different definitions, but please do your best to approach this with nuance. I will attempt the same.

I made this thread specifically because I have seen quite a few debates about religion before, and a common criticism of atheism/reason for people accepting religion has to do with the fact that it provides objective morality, while atheism does not. I do not think the first part is true. Morality is inherently a subjective experience. I am sure this assertation is where I'll get the most questions. It can not be separated from subjectivity, because it focuses on how certain actions make each other feel and what our goal "feeling" is like. If something is wrong because it displeases God, that speaks to God's subjective experience being important, not that it is, strictly speaking "objective".

Even if you say, "God is almighty and all good, and therefore his will is a property of the universe and is objective morality", then you have essentially said, "ok sure objective morality under the classic definition of objectivity isn't real, but if you start with the assumption that God's will is best and the ultimate goal is pleasing him, then Christian morality could be treated as objective." I would question where you got that assumption, but if we assume it, I don't necessarily disagree with that.

However, if we are allowed to have an assumption with respect to a goal, like for example "our subjective enjoyment is good/ suffering is bad" atheists can have an "objective" morality in the same sense, and lack of objective morality becomes a nonviable criticism of atheism.

To clarify, it's ok to draw conclusions from emotion, because that is the only possible way to make any kind of "should" statement at all. Any goal you have is automatically subjective. "God is real" is a statement of fact, which is why it requires objective evidence. "I should go to Church" is a should statement that depends on certain

We apologize. We all realize we have been rather harsh and inconsiderate of religious people.

We want you all to know we respect your beliefs, which have set back scientific development for centuries.

We respect how you terrorize innocent children with stories of a hell where they will burn for eternity, and inject your warped morals into their heads. We respect how you judge and chastise homosexuals and make them to be lesser people.

We respect how in many regions of the world you are directly responsible for violence and death in the name of your imaginary friends.

Not really, you can all go fuck yourselves.

....

EDIT: Because the post I made as response to the negative comments isn't getting exposure, and it's tiring to reply to everyone individually who's missing the point. This is an imaginary conversation between one of you and one of us:

Everyone on /r/atheism is a judgmental, arrogant scumbag and just as bad as religious nuts.

Sure. Care to explain?

Well.. you all judge Christians and cast generalizations...

No, we don't. We criticize Christian belief and practices that go against knowledge and common sense morality and respect for others.

Yeah, well, not all Christians behave the way you make them out to be. I know many decent Christians.

As do we. But we won't be made to be politically correct about a belief system which praises horrible acts and serves as justification for hate and evil, whether many decent religious people decide to conveniently ignore this or not. For example:

---Misogyny and the inferiority of women

Genesis 3:16: "...thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

Leviticus 27:6 "And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver."

---Homosexuality is an abomination comparable to bestiality.

Leviticus 18 22 “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable. 23 “‘Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion."

---God sends bears to kill children for making fun of a man.

2 Kings 2:23-24 "From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. 'Get out of here, baldy!' they

This event is not known outside of Turkey however it was a tragedy and pushed many Turkish atheist organizations under ground. I think more people should hear of it since 37 people died to advance the cause of Atheism in the Middle East. The one location where it needs to be pushed the most. It started with famed Turkish atheist Aziz Nesin, a man who single handily created the basis for the modern Atheism movement in Turkey. Aziz was a curious boy from a young age who was born in the last Islamic Empire on Earth. Like many Turks of the time he was born without a last name and got to choose his own in the 1930s. He settled on Nesin which literally means "what are you?(what am I?)". Over the course of his life and religious education Aziz began to question Islam and became and Atheist. Aziz gave talks about Atheism and argued priests on televesion. He was also the first Turk to translate Salmon Rushdie's famous book The Satanic Verses which greatly angered Turkish Islamists.

In 1993 he decided to hold a panel about Atheism at a music and arts conference in the conservative city of Sivas in south eastern Turkey. The conference was a music and arts conference organized by a religious minority in Turkey called Alevis. Aziz was supposed to speak on Friday the holy day of prayer for Muslims. Majority of the cities Muslim population had ben alerted during their prayers that Aziz was supposed to speak at a conference near by. Once they finished praying they formed a mob and tracked Aziz and his fellow conference guests to his hotel.

Despite the police and national guard interference the mob quickly surrounded the hotel and then set the building on fire. You can see the hotel burning in this video. About 37 people died in the ensuing flames in what be called the Sivas massacre. The majority of the dead were actually artist and musicians and Aziz was able to escape the building just before his death. The secular government of the time ended up arresting and charging 31 members of the crowd with life sentences. Today the more Islamist government does not even acknowledge what happened and the memory of the events is remembered only by personal gatherings.

It’s a non-prophet organization

I have seen a few comments from people complaining that on r/atheism there are many comments that seem hostile and intolerant towards theists. Some people may even say we appear to be a bunch of bigots. I am not going to deny that maybe some of these accusations might be true. Some of us do vent hatred towards people of various religions and sometimes it is taken too far.

We must remember who these people are, though. Many of us do have very valid reasons to be angry. Many of us personally suffered the abuses of religious environments. Religion, to us, has been a hurtful and damaging influence on our lives. I, personally, was forced into a mold which left me miserable, friendless, and hopeless. The religion I was raised in believed in strict isolation from 'the world' and used unethical means of enforcing control over it's members. I am not going to go into details now, but I assure people that any anger I might express is justified.

What are we suppose to do if we cannot vent our frustrations from being forced into a life we did not choose to live? Knowing that there are people on the internet who are understanding and supportive of my situation has greatly helped me in my life. I know there are people here who were far worse off than me. What good is brought about by telling these people to remain silent?

I recognize that there certainly are religious people who are good and kind. I have no problem with anyone personally. When we criticize religion we are criticizing something that has led many people to justify abuses. Any group can be guilty of the same, not just religion, but religion is the form in which this abuse has happened to some of us.

Original thread, my response is 6 comments down: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/94mow/to_the_constant_influx_of_newbie_atheists_some/c0betfo

He is deluded about what love is, unwilling to accept evidence given to him, unwilling to do his own google search and seems to think it has some bearing on the validity of his own beliefs.

to warboner sent 6 hours ago

Love (scientific and empirical information)

I saw you asking constantly in your post to the atheism subreddit for people to empirically prove love. I posted a response to a few of your replies to criticism but i wasn't sure if you would find and read them, so im sending you this messege now.

Some simple searching around the internet can provide you with the empirical studies on love that you seek. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_%28scientific_views%29 If you read and understand that wikipedia article you will see a list of many sources at the bottom.

from warboner sent 5 hours ago

re: Love (scientific and empirical information_

I see a lot of theories there, but not much hard evidence that it is indeed love they are looking at. Yeah, you can see stuff happening in the brain, but what does that really tell you about it? What is the effect, and what is the cause? If you feel only sexual attraction but not genuine affection, would the same things happen? How could you really know if the person felt love or not? They could lie if they wanted to. My point is, this all looks in the very experimental stage and I would hardly call anything I saw there as empirical proof of love.

to warboner sent 9 minutes ago

re: Love (scientific and empirical information_

Hopefully you looked through those sources at the end of the article because many of them link to hard data (your empirical proof) from which scientists and we as reasonable people can draw conclusions about how the mind and thus love works.

You are asking for people to prove something to you, and provide you with evidence, as i have kindly done so. But at some point you have to either accept the evidence provided or if not then go out and search for the evidence yourself that will suffice. Simple google searches turn up massive mountains of data on the scientific basis for love. If you have access to a Univeristy database you will find many journal articles on the issue. If you do not have access to university databases then i recommend google scholar http://scholar.google.com.au/schhp?hl=en&tab=ps.

*Yeah,

I'm sure that there's gonna be a storm of people posting this, but whatever. [The post in question.] (http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/11eop6/i_hate_to_say_it_but_its_true/)

First, look at the title. Look at the fucking title. Sometimes I wonder if /r/atheism was actually taken over by /r/circlejerk a long time ago, and they just haven't told anyone yet.

Of course the comments are as brave as ever.

>The more religious you act, the less intelligent I consider you to be. +628

Wow, way to be progressive, guys, that's absolutely what we should be doing, stereotyping people because of their beliefs. You're so much better than those stupid little fundies.

Then someone at least tries to go against the circlejerk with this.

>True. Having said that, the minister at my church is a good friend and has a PhD in Chemistry. +101

Okay, so he started off agreeing, but at least he tried to make some form of argument. But then of course someone responds with this brave as fuck comment.

>They can be smart. But the part of their brain that detects bullshit is definitely malfunctioning. +262

If you didn't notice, more people agree with this guy.

I always liked to pretend that it was just a joke for the most part, but it just isn't. /r/atheism actually believes that they are smarter than everyone else. No matter how much they love denying it, they do think that they are all paragons of reason and virtue. When really they're just as prejudice and close minded as the fundies they claim to be better than.

I could go on forever about this shit, but the thread itself is a perfect example of all the reasons that /r/atheism deserves to and should be made fun of.

/rant

A recurring theme on /r/atheism is that people post about the "reasons" that brought them to atheism and then theists questioning their "decision". I believe that this is the result of a misunderstanding because of (in part) sloppy vocabulary. I'd like people to look into this and reflect on how we can express ourselves more precise.

Please keep in mind that I base my following take on this understanding of words:

^(Also I'm german so please forgive eventual unwitting misuse of words.)

Theism: The mental state of being convinced of the existence of a god.

Atheism: The mental state of not being convinced of the existence of a god.

Gnosis: Being sufficiently convinced to the point of accepting it as knowledge.

Agnosis: Being not sufficiently convinced to the point of accepting it as knowledge.

Knowledge: Accepting some conviction as true for all intents and purposes with no anticipation of ever having to update that conviction.

Conviction: The mental state of being convinced of something.

Realization: The inadvertent process of updating ones convictions.

Decision: The conscious act of accepting a conclusion or passing judgement.

(I'd rather not debate these definitions - because they are in no way perfect - they are just here to inform you how I intend to use them)

Now here is my take on it:

I think some people first have to understand that atheism is not a decision people make, it is a state of their convictions. If you are not convinced (that god exists), you can't really make yourself convinced. Likewise, if you are convinced, you can't just decide not to be. If we are honest with ourselves, we have little control over our own convictions, all we can do is question them and improve our understanding of reality, thus changing our convictions through realizations, one way or another.

Becoming an atheist is a realization, not a decision. There might be reasons (causes) influencing the realization, but they are not the same as reasons (motivation) to decide to be an atheist. And that is where that misunderstanding comes from.

I think people do not decide, are not motivated to be atheists, because of some instance happening to them, but the instance was - likely one of many - causes of realizing that they were no longer convinced.

Having said that, we can make a decision of whether or not we want to apply a certain label to ourselves. We can pass judgem

What the hell did Pete Townshend do?!?

It seems like there are the psycho fundamentalist protestants on one side, and the lovely level headed atheists on the other. I'm an Anglican from New Zealand, and I can't relate to the toxic evangelical "christians" who are so outspoken. I much more relate to the atheists. For example; I believe in evolution, and think that any opposition to it is unimaginative and stupid, even from a theological point of view.

P.s I'm also new to this subreddit, and I'm very impressed by how tame, polite and educated it is (or seems to be). :)

I'm telling you up front that this is a ramble/rant that's been on my mind since I read an article on the evils of FP this morning. There may or may not be a bigger point here so consider this your fair warning.

This article was written from the perspective of a Go developer responding to some of the common criticisms of Go (something something generics) and a good portion of it was spent deriding FP concepts relating to list transformations and the inherit slowness/Big-O complexity therein. While well meaning, the comments were largely in agreement with the article. This isn't the only FP criticism I've seen in this vein and it's been bugging me enough that I'm sitting here on a Friday night complaining about it.

Edit: a few people are (rightly) saying that I use Big-O notation here in a way that's incorrect, missing the point of Big-O. That's completely correct, but I decided to express it this way because it seems clear and I'm not sure what the preferred alternative is. For any newcomers unfamiliar with Big-O, know that O(n * 3) isn't a real thing and is equivalent to O(n) and that I am using that notation to highlight that certain approaches need to iterate over a list multiple times.

The assertion: given a task such as "take every even number in a list, multiply them by 3, then find the sum of these numbers" FP is inherently inferior because each operation is O(n) for a total of O(n * 3). Compare that to Go's O(n) for the whole shebang since for loops > all.

I disagree for a few reasons:

1. It's not true
2. Readability > speed for the vast majority of applications

Hot takes, right? I'm aware I'm preaching to the choir here but it'll be cathartic to go over this.

For comparison's sake, one Go solution could look like this:

func ContrivedFunction() int {
	nums := []int{1, 2, 3, ..., n}  
	n := 0
	
	for _, x := range nums {
		if x % 2 == 0 {
			n += x * 3
		}
	}

	return n
}

Readable enough and, as promised, it's O(n). Contrast this to an idiomatic-ish Elixir solution:

defmodule Foo do
  def contrived_function do
    nums = [1, 2, 3, ..., n]
  
    # For clarity I'm pretending that Enum.sum/1 doesn't exist 
    nums
    |> Enum.filter(&Bar.divisible_by_two?/1)
    |> Enum.map(&Bar.multiply_by_three/1)
    |> Enum.reduce(0, &Bar.add/2)
  end
end

Check it out! It's O(n * 3) and that's only getting worse as you add more

So, recently, I searched some subs where religion/spirituality/atheism-related topics can be discussed, and of course, I fell on r/atheism.

Now, I'm an atheist myself, but this sub is too "agressively" atheist for my tastes. My girlfriend and likely future wife is Christian (protestant in her case), and it would never come to my mind to try and change her views.

In Belgium, French-speaking one at least, religion or absence of religion is a totally private matter. Christians leave atheists alone, and atheists leave Christians alone ; most of the time, you don't even know if the person you speak with has a religion or not.

/r/atheism however seems to be dedicated to militant atheism and vehement anti-religion. I would prefer an atheism sub where people are open-minded, and were atheists and religious people alike can discuss things related to said theme (a bit like /r/christianity seems to do).

What is your opinion on the subject?

Frankly the dev's comments were taken way out of context. They were replying to personal threats and disgusting slurs. For the most part, they were not attacking the community as a whole. But it's perfectly understandable that we've turned into a circle jerk as if they had. Why? Because that was the ONLY feedback we got from them.

Respawn did not address any of the actual issues. The only change they made to the Iron Crown event was unanimously rejected. 99% of us jumped in on the thread and said "sorry, but that's not good enough". A minority of reddittors resorted to slander (surprise surprise) and which context did they decide to address? The dicks and ass-hats.

As someone who is part of the community, having spent hundreds of hours and dollars on Apex, and many, many work hours on the subreddit, I feel like those comments were as close as we're going to get to feedback on our actual concerns.

EA has pulled this before, without consequence, Respawn has apologised before, without consequence. Many of us are outraged by the Iron Crown scam, and for a lot of people it is simply the last straw and are now fed up.

So what are we supposed to do? Keep making respectful comments for them to ignore? Turn their monetization into memes to laugh at? The backlash they've recieved over the last week is about as monumental as it gets in this industry, and yet there seems to be little-to-no consequence - and worse - almost no rectification.

Give us a reason to focus on something other than the drama.