One of my biggest flaws is I let people suck me down to their level in forum discussions. You troll me, I'm going to throw it in your face, I'll sink right down. No group does this to me more than modern atheists. You know the kind, the ones that dominate Reddit, have never studied a day of philosophy in their life, are so dogmatic and fundamentalist that they make creationists look sane... that is what I am talking about. Some call them "militant" atheists but the term is a matter for another debate.
I think what offends me so is that at least groups like creationists know what they are about. The are not pretending to be objective thinking, fact seeking, scientific individuals, but rather pride themselves on their faith! The atheists in questions do not do this, instead taking something great about humanity like science and philosophy, and openly perverting them for their own religious purposes. They push for science while rejecting mountains of scientific data at face value because it does not fit snuggly with hardcore material reductionism. They even often claim things that are scientifically proven as false, such as by saying that the effects of religion are always solely negative! Bathing in the glory of the childish power of nihilism, they ironically make it their purpose to proselytize the truth of physicalism, material monism and reductionism, the supposed "obviousness" of nihilism.
It's not even just the behaviors, but when critically examined, no rational, unbiased person could accept the positions! For example, one of the most common dogmatic claims is that there is no evidence for gods. This is unbelievably and obviously false, for there are thousands of years with millions of claims of evidence ranging from the thoroughly unconvincing to quite plausible. They will claim that they do not believe there are more likely 0 gods than 1+, will try and pretend they hold some sort of default position, that people are "atheists at birth," that they have no need to defend their positions even when they are making blatant claims. And physicalism is well exposed as absolute nonsense, unable to address even the most obvious and basic of its philosophical problems, nor provide a single piece of evidence to support reductionism.
Now don't get me wrong, this obviously does not describe every atheist out there. One of the reasons it pisses me off so much is that some of my closest, most respected friends are atheists, and we have had hundreds of perfectly civil and reasonable conversations. They fully understand that materialism may be false, that there are pragmatic benefits to religion if nothing more, that there are many plausible arguments for many different positions, even that an atheist can be spiritual. But at the end of the day there's still no similarity between them and a raging troll mad at daddy's religion.
/Rant
I think what offends me so is that at least groups like creationists know what they are about. The are not pretending to be objective thinking, fact seeking, scientific individuals, but rather pride themselves on their faith! The atheists in questions do not do this, instead taking something great about humanity like science and philosophy, and openly perverting them for their own religious purposes. They push for science while rejecting mountains of scientific data at face value because it does not fit snuggly with hardcore material reductionism. They even often claim things that are scientifically proven as false, such as by saying that the effects of religion are always solely negative! Bathing in the glory of the childish power of nihilism, they ironically make it their purpose to proselytize the truth of physicalism, material monism and reductionism, the supposed "obviousness" of nihilism.
It's not even just the behaviors, but when critically examined, no rational, unbiased person could accept the positions! For example, one of the most common dogmatic claims is that there is no evidence for gods. This is unbelievably and obviously false, for there are thousands of years with millions of claims of evidence ranging from the thoroughly unconvincing to quite plausible. They will claim that they do not believe there are more likely 0 gods than 1+, will try and pretend they hold some sort of default position, that people are "atheists at birth," that they have no need to defend their positions even when they are making blatant claims. And physicalism is well exposed as absolute nonsense, unable to address even the most obvious and basic of its philosophical problems, nor provide a single piece of evidence to support reductionism.
Now don't get me wrong, this obviously does not describe every atheist out there. One of the reasons it pisses me off so much is that some of my closest, most respected friends are atheists, and we have had hundreds of perfectly civil and reasonable conversations. They fully understand that materialism may be false, that there are pragmatic benefits to religion if nothing more, that there are many plausible arguments for many different positions, even that an atheist can be spiritual. But at the end of the day there's still no similarity between them and a raging troll mad at daddy's religion.
/Rant
After all, many of the forums are a debate forums, not the choir.
