Three Crucial Things You Must Know Before Challenging An Atheist’s Unbelief

I propose that there are three categories of atheists:

  1. Natural Atheists: Those brought up by atheist parents who never experienced the conflict between religion and rationality.
  2. Apathetic Atheists: Those whose faith was not particularly strong and who, without a compelling drive to believe or not believe, defaulted to atheism – becoming an atheist involved very little internal debate and conflict.
  3. Dissonant Atheists: Those who grew up with belief but who were overwhelmingly torn up over the incompatibility between faith and rationality. These people sought one thing – to rid themselves of the terrible cognitive dissonance cat #1 and #2 atheists are spared from.

I’m here to talk about category #3 atheists because, well, I fall in that grouping.

Three Things You Must Know About Category #3 Atheists

  1. We Sometimes Wish Were Wrong (Even Though We Know We Are Not): I think one of the biggest mistakes theists make is to assume an atheist’s decision to ditch god was arrived at without deeply studying the issue. They honestly believe that all they have to do is raise a little awareness and, viola, they will have an easy conversion. This is not the case for cat #3 atheists. For us, becoming an atheist was the biggest decision of our lives. After all, becoming an atheist, not only means (for 99.9999% of us) getting rid of god, it also means abandoning the idea of immortality (ourselves and our loved ones) and that makes it a very, very big decision. Many of us go through a very real grieving process over all of this. With all this on the line, do you really think we’d only put a half-assed effort into our decision?
  2. We’ve Heard It All Before: I’m amazed how often – in my short, six months as an atheist – I’ve been challenged by someone who thinks they have the ultimate argument for religion. Trust me, you have nothing new to offer us on this discussion. Why am I so cocky (clue: see #1 above)? We’ve heard all your objections and questions before – probably many times before. Where have we heard them? We heard them inside our own heads during our de-conversion process. We’ve run the scenarios and questions many, many times – over and over – in our minds and, eventually, logic won out over these objections and we accepted reality. Most cat #3 atheists will have read multiple books on both sides of the argument, spend hundreds of hours on the web, and viewed countless Youtube debates (frankly, once you’ve seen Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris demolish the likes of Dinesh D’Souza a few times, our own debates seem …rather lame). What you need to know is that by the time you come into the picture, your objections are not at all new to us.
  3. You are Projecting: What we’ve come to realize about your questions and objections (e.g. “What’s the purpose of life without God?” and “Why be moral?”) is that you’re projecting your thoughts, insecurities and fears onto us. Sure, we can answer your questions but, we know in doing so that our worldview troubles you, and that you ask those questions to help you imagine what it might be like to be an atheist. My advice is to keep on asking these good questions, but to also make sure you ask them of yourself. I think you’ll find that you can imagine there’s no heaven. You may even find that it’s easy if you try.

To be blunt, what all this means is that you have very little hope of converting a cat #3 atheist to your religion (you probably won’t have much luck with a cat #1 either). Seriously, your best chance probably lies in converting cat #2 atheists so you might want to start by asking a few questions before wasting time on the wrong category.

Now you have a better understanding of us. You also have a more specific target conversion market.

You’re welcome.

October 28, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, religion

86 Comments 

The Chocolate On Top of Shit Argument for God

sundaeI once asked a friend if he’d like to go bowling with my family. He said, “No thanks. I hate bowling”.

I tried again. “It’s not just bowling – it’s neon bowling“.

My friend: “Mark, do you like eating shit?”.

“Uh, no”.

“If I put chocolate on some shit, do you think you’d eat it”?

I laughed and dropped the subject.

I’m weary of the chocolate-on-top-of-shit argument for god.

Even people with a belief in god see the ridiculousness of fundamentalist Christianity. A 6000 year old earth, hatred of homosexuals and the jealous, vengeful god of the Old Testament do not ring true in 21st century society.

Common sense leads moderate, liberal Christians to focus on the kinder, gentler aspects of the New Testament. Only problem is, in doing so, they conveniently leave out two important parts:

  1. If you reject the god of the New Testament, not only are you denied entry to heaven, but you are also condemned to eternal hell. Note: Eternity is a helluva long time.
  2. Jesus Christ endorsed the Old Testament. How do you resolve this little problem? If it was good enough for him, why isn’t it good enough for you?

So much for the kinder, gentler version of Christianity the moderates and liberals want us to believe their religion is about.

But, hold on – there’s more. The cherry-picking of moderates doesn’t end there. As each year passes, we get even kinder and gentler versions of Christianity where believers try to convince us that we are to pay attention to even less of the Bible (e.g. let’s try not to talk about eternal damnation part). Does Rick Warren ring a bell for anyone?

This, is what I will henceforth call the Chocolate on Top of Shit Argument for God – the idea that, if we ignore enough of the Bible, and put a coat of chocolate on top of the crap underneath, it will magically become palatable.

Attention new-age Christians: No matter how much chocolate you put on your religion, it’s still based on some pretty mean, awful torturous ideas. Ideas based on virtually no evidence. Ideas that don’t jive with hundreds of other religions (they don’t like the taste of your chocolate shit any more than you like the taste of theirs).

All this to say that I don’t care how much you tell me “Jesus loves you” – I just can’t buy it. I can’t buy a sales-pitch that has all these shortcomings and that ultimately ends with the threat of eternal damnation.

October 13, 2008 · Filed Under Atheism, religion

18 Comments