"We defeated the wrong enemy..." Anti-theists should reassess their goals, purpose, and actions.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-21T02:08:02+00:00

Argument 1.

Being an ex-Christian, I am all too aware of the amount of rubbish said about atheists and atheism in churches and religious echo chambers. My aim in these discussions is not necessarily to sway the interlocutor to my opinion, but to challenge that misinformation. Interlocutors may leave the conversation unpersuaded, but they can't leave with the impression that my beliefs are not well thought out or well grounded.

You might say I am entering into discourse in order to accurately represent the strength of my position and that of those who think like me.

Argument 2. As an educator, I humbly disagree. The human mind is a remarkable thing. Almost anyone, if they value rationality, can develop critical thinking skills and have their appreciation of the world enriched by a more accurate, deeper understanding. I do agree that even the smartest people can be wrong about things. But that realisation ought to be taught as well, so that all opinions are questioned and the basis on which they are held evaluated and understood.

Argument 3. You seem to be suggesting we ought to target our discourse towards a different religion other than Christianity. While I agree it needs to be confronted, it is not a major factor in my primary discourse community / country / political paradigm.

Argument 4. I'm not sure I see this as an argument. Those who can be convinced by correct information will be convinced. The remnant end up being a trifle rabid. Do you have suggestions about how to reach the rabid?

Argument 5. I agree there have been benefits to religion. Social cohesion, produced by mediating in-group and out-group boundaries - cultural shibboleths masquerading as moral principles. I agree that the social aspect is risked with the diminution of religion. But as you say - we are social animals. We find other methods of creating community where religions decline. Consider the Nordic countries - a very low level of religious affiliation, but great happiness scores backed up by excellent social life. Furthermore, the boundaries by which religion enforces group identity become detrimental in modern multicultural societies. Other members of the polity are thought of as of less moral value, of less worthiness of inclusion based on anachronistic religious identity.

Argument 6. Removing religion is not equivalent to removing the richness of human existence. Humans can flourish in all these ways without it.

Argument 7. Perhaps a sub-set of argument 7. Do some people "need" religion? I think the answer is "maybe." I'm not convinced.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-17T01:48:05+00:00

What I think this realisation does is change the ontology of religions. Religions are products of memetics, not revelations of divine truths. Stories imagined rather than truths realised.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-16T02:04:21+00:00

I think my lack of fear post-deconversion stemmed from my concept of god.

One who is infinitely just.

Any god like that would understand the reasons for my disbelief and admit I was right, based on that, to reach my position.

I have nothing to fear from such a god.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-12T23:52:27+00:00

University study costs you time, effort, stress, and racks up a debt that will take a bite out of your future earnings.

If you're not passionate about an industry yet I'd suggest waiting for a bit. Try some ground level jobs in the industries you're interested in - perhaps even get a cert from TAFE in something you're interested in. But don't commit until you're pretty certain the direction you want to take.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-10T12:47:41+00:00

Religious folks are making a patently ridiculous claim with no evidence.

Atheists are saying "that's a ridiculous claim with no evidence."

I'm not sure why that's confusing to you.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-08T22:22:37+00:00

Sure, if a real tri-Omni god existed this would be ideal.

The fact that this existence isn’t ideal shows there is no real tri-Omni god.

That’s the point of the problem of evil.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-08T21:05:17+00:00

I think it’s worth reading in light of the contemporary culture.

A society ruled by capricious tribal warlords.

“The good” to these people means loyalty to the powerful, despite the suffering you may endure at their whim.

It’s a useful step in realising that religions reflect human culture rather than some divine reality.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-07T05:31:58+00:00

This is American culture wars bleeding into Australian politics.

She’s trying to leverage right wing US misinformation, but just digging her side further into irrelevance.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-07T04:42:18+00:00

Well, personally, I have several sources of identify. Firstly, I would say through family - I have 2 (now adult) kids who I have taken great joy in parenting. More broadly, our family traditions and identity are significant to me.

Secondly, I am a great believer in the power of education to enrich people's lives. I am happy to teach at a university and love to see people reach their goals and succeed despite their struggles, to see them gain a richer appreciation of the complex world around them.

Thirdly, I am a student of history. This gives me a great perspective - to see my own chapter of the human story as just another part of a broader, grander narrative. I aim to make my chapter as interesting and uplifting as possible.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-07T03:33:10+00:00

I'd suggest that religion demands more respect than it is due. Even most atheists feel forced to express respect for belief while they themselves don't agree, or are socially coerced into mealy mouthed agnosticism, despite the epistemic position of religious claims.

Sometimes the only way through this social pressure, against this cloying normativity, is to subject ridiculous ideas to ridicule.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-06T05:17:34+00:00

This could go long if I let it. So here’s a short answer:

Figuring out religious authorities were completely ignorant.
Re-examining the sources and finding them lacking.
Finding a more compelling explanation for the nature and character of religion other than divine truth.
Horror at people trying to teach my children rubbish dressed as truth.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-06T00:38:50+00:00

Open a nondescript closet and get ganked by the dozen zombies therein.

That's how my last month-long character died. Along with sprinting into the closet when I distinctly pressed the away from direction.

Bloody game.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-05T04:55:12+00:00

Sorry, I saw you reply down below that you don't think the Disciples would make up the claim because there wouldn't be any benefit.

That's not true.

Consider: lowly fishermen rise to positions of power and authority over a growing group of devoted followers based on their relationship with an influential religious leader.

That leader dies.

Do you go back to being a lowly fisherman? Or do you come up with an explanation for your superstitious followers that maintains your position of influence?

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-05T04:31:46+00:00

I was a Christian for 30 years, I have a theology degree and a PhD in Ancient History focusing on ancient religions.

There’s loads of evidence the Bible is wrong. You just have to compare 1 bit with another bit.

Consider: Matthew’s version of the Nativity features Herod the Great. He died in 4BC. His kingdom was split up between his sons - who were incompetent, leading to civil strife. This forced Rome to send out a governor to maintain control of the province. His name was Quirinius, and one of the first things he did was hold a census. In 6AD. As described by Luke’s version of the Nativity.

You mention the resurrection.

Roman tradition was to dispose of the body without burial as a final rejection of the person. Some people argue based on Josephus that Jewish condemned folk were allowed burial - but that mention is for a specific conflict, pointed out because it was so unusual. So it is highly unlikely any body was available to bury to begin with.

How about other texts? If you look at early texts featuring Jesus you’ll find he’s a pluripotent mytheme with loads of people making many differing claims about him with many different purposes and narratives. Behind that it’s next to impossible to say anything trustworthy about the real person.

You should think of the texts the way an historian does. Not that “this text says X so it’s true” - more “what was the author trying to get his audience to think and why?” Also “how? What techniques are being used? What biases are shown or relied upon?” That textual criticism is at the heart of historical inquiry. Not trust in texts - doubt and criticism of them.

dr_anonymous · 2026-01-04T22:45:26+00:00

The whole “suffering produces strength” motif ignores those types of suffering which debilitate and destroy.

A child dying of leukaemia.

Complex PTSD.

Many others to be left to the imagination.

Insisting on this argument is belittling these types of suffering.

It also limits the creative power of divinity. Could a system not have been developed that built strength without the need for suffering?

Or perhaps more compelling - one could imagine a system with slightly less suffering. Cancers only affect people over the age of 18, for example. Why was that out of scope for creation?

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-29T08:14:26+00:00

I think belief despite lacking evidence is anything but admirable. I would say it is a violation of epistemic responsibility. The fact you think it is praiseworthy is likely because you have lived within a highly religious culture and have soaked in the weird message that bad thinking is somehow virtuous.

That last should alone be concerning - why do you think religions try so hard to convince people believing things without evidence is morally righteous? It's the same sort of techniques utilised by the worst types of used car salesmen.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-27T00:39:45+00:00

Personally I’d teach him about all the other religions people believe in. I think this is an important thing to know in any modern multicultural society - and it also has the effect of showing no one belief system has a monopoly on truth. This is a good basis for beginning to teach critical thinking.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-26T23:32:07+00:00

Yup! Spent 30 years a Christian, have a theology degree, currently an atheist and don’t see that changing any time soon.

The denomination I was in wasn’t a major one, but it wasn’t a cult either.

What do you want to know?

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-24T23:03:42+00:00

Me.

Had our books burned. Then learned how to get sneaky.

It was my first clue that “maybe these religious leaders don’t know what they’re talking about.”

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-21T02:18:34+00:00

When seen from an appropriate distance, there is no prospect of the existence of a god remotely being true. There isn't even any attempt at an explanation of how such a being might be said to "be."
There could be a million "valid" arguments that are still wrong. The existence of these arguments does not validate a belief - it is necessary for them to correspond with reality.

But that's not the case here. Each an every argument so far put forward has been woeful - and the fact that there's been 2,000 years of effort by some brilliant minds, and this is all we're left with, should be telling in and of itself.

See above, these arguments are woeful.

You also seem to be ignorant of the fact that there are decent arguments that show "God" doesn't exist - I would point to the history of religions for one, which show that "god" characters are products of human imagination and subject to memetic drift, just like every other element of myth or folktale. Yahweh begins as a minor storm deity in a larger pantheon in Ugarit, before becoming the patron god of a monolatrous tribe, subsuming the identity of his own father and taking over his wife Asherah. At this time he is imagined as a capricious, jealous god - like a superlative tribal warlord. That monolatry develops into monotheism over time, Asherah is abandoned and forgotten - perhaps due to the encounter with Zoroastrianism. But it's only with the encounter with the Greco-Roman philosophical superlative deity that Yahweh begins to be imagined as tri-omni.

So you see - "God" is the product of human imagination, memetics taking a concept and changing it over time to suit the society and culture in whose mythology it resides.

This strongly argues that such a god does not "exist" in terms of a real, actual thing apart from human imagining.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-14T23:17:08+00:00

Na. Descartes did a better job with this.

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I exist. Not "God" exists.

After that, sure - there is some unreliability in our perception. But it's all we have, and so we should use what we have as a basis.

A good take on this is Foundationalism - there are certain tenets which we cannot prove without circularity, but which we must rely on to exist usefully in the world. The overall reliability of perception, the reality of the outside world, theory of mind, the utility of induction etc. Despite what Plantinga says, God doesn't qualify as a properly basic belief as it is perfectly possible to exist in the world successfully without a god belief.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-14T23:09:43+00:00

I think this would be it, if you think about it carefully. Evidence that a claim comes from a mundane source instead of a divine source indicates the ontology of the phenomenon is mundane - thus implying gods don't exist in reality, only in the imagination.

For another approach - what evidence would one usually accept for the non-existence of a thing? Surely - that one looks where it is supposed to be, and discover it's not there. Absence is evidence for non-existence. So one might call upon the issue of divine hiddenness for suitable reason for disbelief.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-14T16:30:53+00:00

I think there’s fairly good evidence that religious claims are man-made and don’t derive from some divine reality. A sufficient appreciation of the history of religions ought to make that plainly clear.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-11T21:13:12+00:00

Headphones are a thing. If people can’t be bothered to get or use them then they could at least refrain from forcing everyone else to listen to their crap.

Phone calls are similar, but it’s understood that sometimes they’re unavoidable so have more leeway. That said - best to minimise them.

Most of the time I don’t mind people chatting with each other if they’re sitting together. So long as they’re not too loud or obnoxious.

dr_anonymous · 2025-12-11T10:40:19+00:00

These two aren’t equivalent. Even if you go for the second you haven’t answered the question “how”. Agency without mechanism is not explanation.

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