I often find myself a bit tongue-tied at the start of a conversation about religious belief - after I get warmed up it's easy, especially in response to opinions of others, but I still haven't quite decided on what the most important issue is.
There are so many separate issues:
-The coherence of religious texts: they're supposed to be flawless, so you can spend hours pointing out contradictions, logical fallacies etc that in themselves should be devastating enough to make other arguments irrelevant.
- The plausibility of the texts: you can also focus on the claims made by the holy texts and showing that the opposite is in fact true - this forces them to either stick to literal interpretations in the face of overwhelming evidence, or to reinterpret them in light of scientific discoveries, which highlights the weakness of the text and how much more believable it is to assume it's all man-made.
- The consequences of the belief: here, you focus on past crimes committed by leaders and members of the faith, the degree to which believers are happy, successful etc. A weaker argument, but devastating to people who don't know much history or about other cultures etc and who haven't really tried to compare their lives, practices and morality with other potential alternatives. Another looong discussion.
- The morality of faith and worship: this argument focuses on faith (ie, irrational or unsubstantiated belief) itself, rather than the specifics of the religion in question.
As you cannot know for certain that what you believe is true, or convince others that what you hold is true, you are obligated to live according to a set of moral laws that focus on the effects your actions have on other beings capable of pleasure and suffering, as allowing a world in which everyone acted according to what they each believed were unquestionable dictates from higher powers would result in chaos. If you believed that worshipping your god was more important than the wellbeing of your fellow man, your neighbours would cast you out, as everyone must follow a common law. Indeed, any extant god would have to acknowledge this, and could not require you to disregard the common morality for his own laws.
All these arguments are largely self-contained, but it's easy to skip between them and start getting involved with several at once before you've made your point on the argument you started with.
What do you guys think is the most persuasive answer, and do you have any good, concise explanations for why you are an atheist that you think would be the most effective starting point? The kind of sentence or quick speech that would sum the vital points up so efficiently that the rest of the conversation, if they dared continue, would just be clarification?
There are so many separate issues:
-The coherence of religious texts: they're supposed to be flawless, so you can spend hours pointing out contradictions, logical fallacies etc that in themselves should be devastating enough to make other arguments irrelevant.
- The plausibility of the texts: you can also focus on the claims made by the holy texts and showing that the opposite is in fact true - this forces them to either stick to literal interpretations in the face of overwhelming evidence, or to reinterpret them in light of scientific discoveries, which highlights the weakness of the text and how much more believable it is to assume it's all man-made.
- The consequences of the belief: here, you focus on past crimes committed by leaders and members of the faith, the degree to which believers are happy, successful etc. A weaker argument, but devastating to people who don't know much history or about other cultures etc and who haven't really tried to compare their lives, practices and morality with other potential alternatives. Another looong discussion.
- The morality of faith and worship: this argument focuses on faith (ie, irrational or unsubstantiated belief) itself, rather than the specifics of the religion in question.
As you cannot know for certain that what you believe is true, or convince others that what you hold is true, you are obligated to live according to a set of moral laws that focus on the effects your actions have on other beings capable of pleasure and suffering, as allowing a world in which everyone acted according to what they each believed were unquestionable dictates from higher powers would result in chaos. If you believed that worshipping your god was more important than the wellbeing of your fellow man, your neighbours would cast you out, as everyone must follow a common law. Indeed, any extant god would have to acknowledge this, and could not require you to disregard the common morality for his own laws.
All these arguments are largely self-contained, but it's easy to skip between them and start getting involved with several at once before you've made your point on the argument you started with.
What do you guys think is the most persuasive answer, and do you have any good, concise explanations for why you are an atheist that you think would be the most effective starting point? The kind of sentence or quick speech that would sum the vital points up so efficiently that the rest of the conversation, if they dared continue, would just be clarification?
