| Argument |
Reality |
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1. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic
God loves you, if only you
faithfully do what he says, and
if you don't you will be punished
with unending pain forever.
In some cases, if you veer
from his demands then you
should be punished on Earth,
perhaps even with death.
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This is the profile of a fascist dictator.
If Jews, Christians, or Muslims
promote this view of their god
then they should rightfully be called
fascists and in a democracy
if they act upon these sentiments
should be called traitors and put in jail.
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| 2. Life without religion is empty and meaningless and not worth living. |
Heroin addicts say the same thing
about their drug, too. Hence the expression
"religion is the opiate of the masses".
The onus is on the religious person, not the non-believer,
to prove that living in an escapist religious fantasy world
(in which an invisible man in the sky
talks to them through a book)
is at all meaningful, and not a form of
psychosis or an addiction to cowardly escapism.
To most rational people, such a lifestyle is not
full of meaning, but is an utter waste of one's life.
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| 3. Evolution is bogus because it says that complex organs like the eye just came about from nothing without a creator. |
Lie. Evolutionary theorists
say no such thing. What they do say
is that little by little over millions
of years complex organisms have
come about due to the automatic
problem-solving nature of evolution,
which involves no transcendential
intelligence. It is simply the case that
sometimes disease and environment kill off some
organisms on the one hand, often preventing them
from breeding, and sometimes conditions permit others
to breed in excess on the other.
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| 4. God or the gods made humans in their image. |
Ridiculous. If there really are gods, we can safely assume
they are very intelligent since they created the universe.
If any humans were made in their image,
it was not those who reject science, reject logical reasoning,
or reject evidence because they prefer blind faith.
Any humans made in the image of the gods
would have to be intelligent, highly educateable,
rational thinkers who demand evidence before
they believe anything. So surely, it's the skeptics, scientists,
agnostics and atheists who would ironically be favored
by and created in the image of any
gods because they are more mentally disciplined
and capable.
If any gods exist, they would not want to touch
people of blind faith with a ten-foot pole.
Alas,
the logic of religion doesn't even support believers' hubris.
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5. You atheists pick and choose what information is
convenient for you to reject religion.
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While it is true that some atheists are no more rational
than a creationist, and no more knowledgeable about science
and logic (witness atheists who insist Muslims perpetrated
9/11, despite plentiful evidence to the contrary)
many atheists and agnostics are very rational and
very knowledgeable, and they argue from the established facts.
Science is marching on, finding out more
and validating more hypotheses.
There is scarcely any room any longer for supernatural beings,
let alone those invented by Middle-Easterners 2000 years ago.
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6. Passages in the Koran that justify discrimination by
taxing certain types of people in order to make them feel
subdued is not menacing, because
(A) discrimination is commonplace e.g. against immigrants,
and (B) taxation is commonplace.
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(This is a real argument from a believer.)
Discrimination cannot be justified because it already exists.
By that logic, murder is justifiable because people already
kill each other.
If a religion require subdueing anyone, that is just one more
reason why it should be abolished.
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7. You cannot prove that there is no god, so there is no
point in claiming there is no god and no reason to hassle
anyone.
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Friends don't let friends do stupid things.
Believing in gods is particularly stupid.
Granted if it is ingrained in a person's mind
due to childhood indoctrination (brainwashing) then perhaps
there is no point.
But as science progresses, there is less and less room for any
influence by any gods.
Might as well give up believing.
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8. When atheists say religious people are illogical they
are being condescending.
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No, they are pointing out that religious people are being
illogical and possibly childish by choosing to accept
illogical or irrational claims.
Show me an example of a person who is trying to escape
reality by believing in a make-believe man in the sky
who is logical or rational.
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9. Religious people are innocent if they don't ask others
to believe anything.
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Religious people typically condone and/or support
the forced imposition of religion on the young and innocent,
so they are not themselves innocent. Religious brainwashing of
children is a form of child abuse. In some cases it marrs
them for life. (Note, it is a very rare
religious person who agrees children should be protected
from religious indoctrination.)
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10. It's atheists who are intolerant toward religious people,
not vice versa.
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This is a typical "I'm not, you are" attack.
It's a conscious form of
psychological projection.
They project their own defect onto nonbelievers in order to
transfer guilt to their victim and feel less guilty themselves.
Religious people, whose have served as the poster-children
of intolerance for millenia, having no shame whatsoever
blame their victims (atheists, agnostics, skeptics)
and secular society for not showing respect for their
own extraordinary intolerance
and their insistence on believing without evidence.
They have no shame.
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11. Atheists and scientists think the Big Bang and evolution
are just the result of coincidental timing of all the
conditions being present, in the right place, at the right
time, and in the right quantities.
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This misconstrues what scientists claim.
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12. Religious people don't know what they're saying is bogus.
They really believe it and they have "faith" in the truth
of their claims.
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Suspicious. While religious indoctrination is commonplace,
it is not hard at all to tell when a person
knows he is lying, and religious zealots in particular
often exhibit an obvious dishonesty.
Religion at its base is all about conning people.
Surely there are a few true-believers, and perhaps
most believers only truly believe part of what religion
proclaims, but given the kind of garbage that is written
in holy books e.g. argumentation for killing and controlling
people, you have to wonder whether true-believers
are not in fact mentally ill.
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| 13. To say that the beauty of the world is caused only by evolution is unacceptable. It is too deep to be explained without religion. |
This demonstrates ignorance of what evolution is, and a willful ignorance
of what religion is.
Evolution is two things:
- It is the fact that DNA changes from generation
to generation. An extremely common example is
when bacteria adapt to new antibiotics, which is an
example of artificial selection.
Indeed DNA evens changes within an organism's lifespan,
as when a human contracts a Herpes virus.
-
It is a set of hypotheses about how species change
over time.
Most of these hypotheses are overwhelmingly supported
by evidence.
Some of these hypotheses have been demonstrated in
the lab.
Just because you prefer a religious fairy tale
to explain the world around you, that doesn't make evolution less true in reality.
Reality moves on without you.
Choosing a religious fairy tale
is a childish response to the deep truth about Nature, and
are ignorant of its mechanisms.
Furthermore, to cling to a belief that religion is deep and beautiful
is to engage in mental masturbation. Religion orders people
to kill, it justifies their hatred, and it has been a cause of much
war and conflict throughout history.
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| 14. Evolution is a fairy-tale for adults. |
This is an "I'm not, you are" response to atheists' common
argument that religion is indeed a source of fairy-tales
and fantasies for adults.
The counter-attack against evolution and atheists
doesn't prove anything, nor does it attempt to.
It is intended as an insult, whereas the claim that
religion is bunch of fairy-tales is essentially true.
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| 15. Religion provides all the answers. Why would you need anything more? |
I have heard this argument from Muslims more than any other group. Muslims seem especially eager to embrace religion as a form of totalitarianism to control every aspect of their lives. First one has to ask: What are they afraid of? Why is seeking out true and verifiable answers so horrifying for them that they have to seek refuge in the ready-made lies of religion? And if they are afraid of reality and facts and logic why are they living at all? Religion gives dumb people the idea that they know and understand by substituting facts and reason with a fabric of pleasing lies. Second one has to acknowedge that the wide range of lies and nonsense produced by religion is more than an escapist fantasy world for cowards. It is a complex construct that tells the believer that he or she is right and good. Religion gives dumb people the belief that they are right and just even when the facts show otherwise. Lastly religion tells the person who memorizes all the stories and bogus claims that he is superior to someone who knows less of it. Why else would anyone try to remember hundreds of arcane and pointless claims that have no bearing on reality except to feel like an expert. |
| 16. Why can you not just respect my beliefs and my faith? |
Two good reasons. - Religious people do not respect the beliefs of other people-- even other religious people. How can they when their holy book is the only true truth?
- Religious people embrace fantastical unprovable beliefs that scream out to be criticized. If they spouted crazy beliefs about something mundane like oranges or cars we would criticize them. So why give them a pass just because the topic is religion?
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