Theists & Atheists: What's an Argument that you Dislike from your own Camp? (And why?)

[vulcanlogician]

That god is Christian.

What particularly don't you like about that argument?

 

[syo]

What particularly don't you like about that argument?

It promotes Christianity.

 

[vulcanlogician]

It promotes Christianity.

Would you elaborate please?

 

[Yerda]

... but why the hate for the Problem of Evil? It doesn't get you to "therefore no gods exist," but it's useful for "this belief system is inconsistent so I'm not going to accept it" or (depending on the theist) "all the theistic belief systems that you, random theist, think are reasonable are inconsistent so I'm not going to accept any of them."

I have to say, I think the problem of evil wipes out a whole lot of possible gods.

 

[Erebus]

What's an argument often advanced by "your side" that you don't like?

That non-belief automatically implies closed-mindedness or a failure to search for god/s properly.

While anyone can be closed-minded (and that very much includes believers), considering your position to be obvious to anybody who puts the effort in strikes me as incredibly patronising.

 

[syo]

Would you elaborate please?

I'm pagan.

 

[dybmh]

That non-belief automatically implies closed-mindedness or a failure to search for god/s properly.

While anyone can be closed-minded (and that very much includes believers), considering your position to be obvious to anybody who puts the effort in strikes me as incredibly patronising.

Conversely, putting in the effort does not mean the effort was put in properly?

I mean, there is a right way and wrong way to do almost anything. But that doesn't justify rude judgy comments.

 

[Erebus]

Conversely, putting in the effort does not mean the effort was put in properly?

I mean, there is a right way and wrong way to do almost anything. But that doesn't justify rude judgy comments.

What sort of thing did you have in mind here? When it comes to gods, I'm inclined to believe that there isn't really a binary right/wrong approach. Even determining what a god is in the first place is very much open to interpretation.

 

[dybmh]

What sort of thing did you have in mind here? When it comes to gods, I'm inclined to believe that there isn't really a binary right/wrong approach. Even determining what a god is in the first place is very much open to interpretation.

1) The person spent a lot of effort in one religious pursuit, did not try others
2) The person spent a lot of effort as a child, but did not try again as an adult
3) The person is expecting binary right/wrong results to confirm their efforts
4) The person never really believed, but was faking it for many years, their effort was in vain
5) Repeating the same thing over and over ( even if it is in different religions ) expecting a different result
6) Following the crowd, instead of exploring an individual path, expecting what works for others to work for themself

Those sorts of things

 

[Erebus]

1) The person spent a lot of effort in one religious pursuit, did not try others
2) The person spent a lot of effort as a child, but did not try again as an adult
3) The person is expecting binary right/wrong results to confirm their efforts
4) The person never really believed, but was faking it for many years, their effort was in vain
5) Repeating the same thing over and over ( even if it is in different religions ) expecting a different result
6) Following the crowd, instead of exploring an individual path, expecting what works for others to work for themself

Those sorts of things

I appreciate the examples, have a like.

I'm not sure I'd consider these things to be wrong exactly though. Incomplete perhaps but that would describe all of us to some degree.

While it's difficult to put an exact number on how many religions there are, it's easily in the thousands. How many should we explore before we can say we've looked into it properly? How deeply should we look into each of those religions? Is it more appropriate to follow the religion as closely as possible or should we put our own spin on it? At what point do we conclude we've seen enough?

I'm not expecting you to answer those questions by the way. I also don't consider those questions to actually have definitive answers.

For what it's worth, I personally found tremendous value in exploring religions and god concepts outside of the Abrahamic religions. However, I don't consider myself to have the truth, nor do I consider the path I took to be the path.

 

[Exaltist Ethan]

Earthseed says that God is change. All of reality is simply processes that continually change, but I prefer to think of God as reality, because no matter how often things change, it’s God. The idea that God is change predisposes that whatever changes the most is the most divine, when in reality many changes that occur destroys that things ability to be divine. Simply put, all things are processes but without a substance there can be no process, and reality includes all changes, processes and substances.