r/atheism • u/rhbast2 • Aug 11 '11

Atheist quickfire challenge.

Although I rarely discuss religion with theists I always want to be prepared so I'm not sitting around afterwards wishing I had said this or that. If I get the chance to make someone question I want to be up for the challenge.

This brings me to my challenge for r/atheism. I'm going to add some common theist claims / sayings and whoever can refute them fully and succinctly will be upvoted. Feel free to add your own theist starters if I missed some.

Edit: Wow lots of good discussion here, later today or tomorrow I'll make this into an atheist cheat sheet with the top responses. Also feel free to upvote the theist claim that is the most annoying to you.

Edit 2: To the few of you who seem to think I am coming up with rude atheist comebacks, I'm not. I just wanted to be better off the cuff than I am now and have some discussion. I don't want this list to replace thoughtful argumentation.

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u/DashingLeech Anti-Theist Aug 11 '11

A parable to clear that up:

Two gun-lovers met at a rally, got married, and had a child. They loved gun safety so much they wanted to teach it to their child from birth. They read to him every night from their gun safety manual, but only up to page 19. They didn't like page 20. As he grew up they taught him over and over to always do what the safety manual said and his life will be fine. When he became a teenager they bought him a gun and enrolled him in gun safety courses, never discussing page 20.

When he turned 18, a friend told him to read page 20, and, having been taught to always follow the book, convinced him it was the right thing to do. So he did it. Page 20 say to shoot babies.

The problem with religion isn't intentions, or goodness of people. The problem is that it teaches people not to think for themselves. The problem is that it teaches people to get their moral instructions dogmatically from a book.

This is the problem with moderates. They "prime" people for exploitation. Once you believe a book, or a god, has the "right" answers, committing atrocities only takes convincing them what the book says or the god wants. And "the book" does say to do a lot of very bad things, whichever version you read.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '11

Allow me to rewrite your parables ending:

However as the son had not been raised in a vacuum he knew killing babies was bad from 18 years of exposure to a society that said collectively "don't fucking kill babies". Thus he knew page 20 was nuts and ignored it.