NewDawn said:
You find few atheists that will devote the time and effort to the virtually impossible task of swaying a believer. But when they do appear on sites such as this they bring with them that which the theist most fears > being made to feel stupid.
actually, i feel stupid quite often. not usually because of my religion, though. it's not as bad as, say, worrying that my kid's school is going to be firebombed, either by religious nutters or people who disapprove of my ethnicity, some of whom are probably atheists, although i'm not suggesting that is what motivates them.
Nobody likes or is comfortable with that.
including atheists, i expect.
the atheist argument is essentially that theism is illogical and foolish.
you see, that is what makes atheism essentially "evangelist". to you chaps, you *must* share with me "the truth", which would, inevitably according to you, make me feel stupid. of course, that would require me to agree that it was the truth, or, if you prefer, that what i claim is false. as i am rather careful what claims i make or do not make, this tends not to bother me.
A brainwash or a suspension of plain observational capacity.
you're clearly not an anthropologist. anthropologists, i believe, have now begun to realise that "plain observational capacity" does not in fact confer understanding. we both might look at some australian aboriginal art (for the sake of argument) and say, well, that doesn't look very much like a snake to *me*. what's with all the colours? i've never seen a snake that looked like *that*. but we're not understanding how the artist experiences the subject. it's the same with music. to my way of thinking, atheists are tone-deaf, or, if you prefer, simply don't understand what i could possibly find satisfying about my religion, in the same way that i don't understand what anybody could possibly find musically satisfying about, say, dido. that, unfortunately, is not my problem. nor, in fact, is it your problem unless i am then coming round your manor trying to convert *you* and telling you, say, that you are going to hell unless you start agreeing with me. well, i don't do that - jews don't do evangelising because we don't maintain that you have to be jewish to be a good person. in fact, the very idea of election, i have observed using my own "plain observational capacity", is not compatible with any kind of moral high-ground. all it is is mitigating one's own fear of making a mistake by trying to convince other people that you're right.
Then there is the curiosity of trying to fathom the thinking of the theist. Again this may not be deliberately malicious but a genuine amazement/fascination of the illogical connections the theist must defend to remain one.
you've made two large assumptions here, which are a) that a theist must rely on illogic to remain a theist and b) that logic is the only source of wisdom. music is not governed by logic, either. neither is love, albeit i am sure both have perfectly arguable darwinian explanations as well.
You would think me a crank if I asked you to believe in the flying spaghetti monster, yet you may well get upset if I called belief in god equally ridiculous.
not really. my belief in G!D is based on my inner experience of the Torah, which i cannot effectively convey to you in language, both because of my own inadequacies and those of language itself. if you had these experiences, you might not consider the belief so ridiculous. note the "might" - i'm not making categorical assertions here, nor am i suggesting that my conclusions are the only possible ones. i'd also maintain that you could no doubt produce someone who could, equally untestably, talk about their experiences of the spaghetti monster, but it might be more difficult to establish that they were speaking in good faith. all i can really do here is to speak honestly and ask that you believe that i am doing so.
Atheists upset the props of the emotional self on which belief is constructed and will always make the theist uncomfortable.
not necessarily. you assume that belief is a prop, but people may undergo the same terrible experience with or without belief and come through it equally well or badly. you're also assuming that if it is a "prop", that is necessarily a bad thing. i'm sure atheists have props too - we are none of us completely independent existential triumphs.
The only solution is to ban them all from this site.
do explain to me again why you're here, then?
as far as the partner vs G!D question is concerned, it is not a bad question at all, particularly in a behaviour-based system like judaism. the thing is that G!D doesn't intervene in our judgements, at least not what you might call Officially, any more. what it comes down to in the end is "emunah", which is often mistranslated as "faith", but more properly can be understood as "trust". when i and mrs bb (who is not always motivated by precisely the same feelings as myself) have a disagreement upon a religious matter, we always find a way to work it out. your question, really, is a "when the chips are down" kind of question and, i have to say, if you get to such a point you've really left it a bit too late. in other words, it is far more important that the chips stay up. of course there are always couples who have such great disagreements about religion that they have to get divorced, then there are other couples who find other ways to reconcile their differences. and if they have to get divorced, then so be it - that's kind of why we have divorce in the first place, for just that kind of irreconcileable difference. the real crime would be to outlaw divorce.
as for luke 14:25-26, i have to say that personally, i find it a characteristically perfectionist christian statement; all very well in theory, but in practice rather on the impractical side, at least without widespread unpleasantness resulting.
b'shalom
bananabrain
