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When Atheists Are Angry at God

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AdjustedSanity
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22 Mar 2012, 1:21 pm

LKL wrote:
AdjustedSanity wrote:
LKL wrote:
donnie_darko wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:

Atheists ARE "open skeptics".


Not really. I would say agnostics are. Atheists, despite what they may claim, usually are NOT open to the possibility of anything supernatural. They are die-hard physicalists.

If someone asks whether there are any fairies in your garden, do you say, 'I do not know, and it is impossible to know whether there are any or not,' or do you say, 'there is no evidence that any fairies exist in my garden.'?


the idea of God is a fair share more complicated than fairies. Nobody is killing each other over who has the best garden fairies. We did not call the idea of a creator, The Fairy. Fairies are fairly unimportant in that light.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iceland
quote:
The Icelandic Tourist Board claim that 80% of Icelanders are prepared to believe in fairies or elves, or at least not dismiss their existence. Furthermore polls find that 54% express a positive belief and 25% even claim to have seen them. Certainly a high proportion of Icelanders take these beliefs seriously. [6]

Roads in Iceland have been diverted in order to avoid their homes, the chief of which is a rock formation known as "Alfborg". Furthermore, and it is quite common for experts from an "Elf Medium" to be called in to construction sites and cable laying in order to negotiate with the elves and buildings and cables are often moved as a result. This will usually happen after problems with workers being taken mysteriously ill or equipment failures.

There is even a college, run by Magnus Skarphedinsson, called "Álfaskólinn" which awards certificates for their study. The fairies are claimed to wear traditional clothes while the elves favor pointy hats and shoes.

According to the Álfaskól there are 13 sub-types of elves, 3 types of fairies 2 types of troll and 4 types of gnome plus 4 hidden peoples (including the Blue People). It is not known if the trolls are fed, or what variety of creature Björk is. [7]

Before Americans start to laugh at the Icelanders, however, we need to remember that, while only 4% of Americans believe in fairies, between 40 and 50 percent believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago.[8] There are many more Americans than Icelanders.


Fairies are quite important in iceland then. God is still a good deal more important philosophically than fairies. God is the name we give to a sentient creator. Fairies are minor magical creatures that cause minor mischief. God only gets ridiculous when we start worshiping him and building alters to him. Fairies are always ridiculous.Even when they exist.



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22 Mar 2012, 4:03 pm

Oodain wrote:
Declension wrote:
This idea seems plausible to me. (Although not the Christian bits.)

It seems clear that most people naturally believe in God. So if one of these people decides to become an atheist, they will constantly have to be "reminding" themselves that they don't believe in God, even though their mind wants them to. They want to defend the intellectual position of atheism, but their intuition (rightly or wrongly) tells them that God exists, so they end up in a confused state where they are battling their own intuitions, which can look like "anger at God".

It reminds me of the debate about free will. Many people have convincing intellectual reasons to not believe in free will. But does anyone actually not believe that they have free will? I don't mean when they are reading philosophy. I mean, does anyone really believe that they don't have free will while buying milk at the dairy? I don't think so.

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In the wake of a negative life event, anger toward God predicted decreased belief in God's existence.


This is a separate issue. I think that this has a more obvious explanation. This "anger toward God" is simply a re-evaluation of the likelihood of a God who will prevent bad things happening to you in the wake of a negative life event. If this is the only sort of God you have ever heard of, then a negative life event will make you less likely to believe in him.


i for one never did believe in a god and i see no reason to want to,

i actively denied the tradition of confirmation at age 13 for one.

i think Yupa hit the nail on the head when he said the major problem with christian sources is the assumption that humans are "wired" to believe in god.


I think mot humans are wired to actually.

Does that mean it's "normal"? I guess it's technically normal since it's the norm but it's not sane IMO.

I don't really talk about being an atheist and have thought the majority of atheists are angry at God since I was a teen. I stay away from them and don't let them know that I'm also an atheist. This people are obsessed and define themselves by a "non belief" in something. Why would someone care so deeply about not believing in something?

I've seen the same kind of behavior from people who claim to be gay, it's very clear some are rallying against their own nature.

SOME, I am gay and I of course know that some other people really are too.


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22 Mar 2012, 4:19 pm

TheHouseholdCat wrote:
Do Atheists ever get angry at God? I always thought it was about getting angry at those who believe it's the only answer. ^^


I could definitely see an actual non believer becoming upset and angry at religion if they'd had shoved down their throats growing up.

My family was somewhat religious, not extremely. I would have let go of the anger though, once I was removed from the offending situation. Maybe some don't.

What I don't get about being angry at religion is the aspect of caring about what other people do with their lives. I suppose if I wanted to bond with every member of society and share the same views as them I'd also be angry.

I have and still have Christian friends though. They ARE my friends because they aren't bible thumping types. I find this kid of thing annoying from any kind of person, it isn't about God. Any kind of extremist who constantly reminds you of their views concerning a particular subject.

All of that said though militant atheists are at least the most vocal of the atheists and they actually are angry at everything. God, religion, all of it. And they usually throw nasty names at Christians and insult their intelligence.

Screams butthurt to me, sorry.


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22 Mar 2012, 4:51 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
I lack belief in god.
I'm finding it hard to take seriously the notion that I'm not an atheist by virtue of holding no affirmative beliefs about the god concept.


I agree with this.

Militant atheists have given other atheists bad name IMO.

But I don't blame people for holding the views that they do because militant atheists are the most vocal and well-represented group, you can't (or I wouldn't) blame people for forming some of their impressions of other atheists based on the things these people say. That's the old "blame the radicals" argument and it gets old. If the radicals define a movement and you don't agree with them, maybe you should abandon the movement.

Royal "You" there. Not talking about anyone here.

I am like an agnostic in the sense that I know I cannot disprove the existence of GoD, nor would I try to.

But I am still an atheist due to the simple fact that I lack the belief. It's "a"theism, it isn't "anti"theism.


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22 Mar 2012, 5:22 pm

donnie_darko wrote:
What I don't get is why atheists have this tendency to be such, well, dicks about their irreligion. I also get the idea that they would reject evidence that suggested they were wrong, if it ever did surface.


Occam's Razor does have a tendency to fall on the side of no deity.



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22 Mar 2012, 9:34 pm

myth wrote:
LKL wrote:
It is not known if the trolls are fed, or what variety of creature Björk is. [7]

This comment here made me question the seriousness of your source so I looked into it. Rationalwiki is not a joke site but can have opinions and slanted veiws. Here is a quote from wikipeda which may be referencing the same poll.

Quote:
The question of the "level of belief in elves" in Iceland is somewhat of a cultural topos, with survey results published in 1975, 1995, 1998, 2006. Interpretations of the survey results vary. Based on the 2006 figures, Magnús claims that while only 26% of Icelanders believe in elves (summing the responses 'certain' and 'probable'), 80% "do take notice" (including the replies 'possible' and 'unlikely').[11]


Regardless. Imo the belief of god and fairies are the same thing: Belief in the supernatural. If someone asked me if there were fairies in my garden I might respond something like "I haven't seen any" because I do consider myself open to the possibility of things outside our current (limited) knowledge of the universe. But I would require some evidence before I made the move from "open" to "belief".

It is, indeed a humorous site - but it is also true that people generally believe in fairies in Iceland. Roads have, in fact, been re-routed to avoid disturbing the fairies.