Stop talking about atheist being the anti-christ or satan worshippers and we’ll stop talking about you.

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Last time I checked, ice cream flavors and favorite colors had nothing to do with stem cell research, etc.

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What a poor article.  The guy went on for several long winded paragraphs to discuss the whole spectrum of atheists – some are smart, some are not, some are tall, some are fast!  LOL What a guy!  Before reading this article I did not know that some atheists are well read, some are not, and others are somewhere in between!

Let’s stop talking about God?  I don’t think this guy gets the point.  We or I anyhow, don’t talk about God and monotheism for the sake of discussing it.  I talk about it, because religion/faith are the most immoral and wicked ideologies that plague modern society today.  Could you imagine what would happen in the United States if all atheists vowed to not mention God for say 6 months or something? 

Or maybe the person who wrote this article was cringing himself as he wrote a crap piece to make a deadline?

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Athiests will GLADLY stop talking about God (it being such a dreadfully tedious topic) once people stop brainwashing their children into such irrational states that they have to be deprogrammed before they can accept reality

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Dear Kris,
While your idealism is duly noted, sorta cute and marginally appreciated, how ‘bout other atheists and anti-theists stop challenging other atheists and anti-theists to stop talking about god. If you don’t want to then don’t, but stop trying to stop others, including the immature, those who “bight [sic] off more than they can chew,” the belligerent, and the semi-literate—it’s good practice for them—from expressing themselves on the topic of god if that’s what they want to talk about. The “movement” will move along just fine, even if you think some make missteps in spreading the joy of intellectual honesty.
Discussion of sensitive, and formerly taboo, subject matter becomes an issue for different reasons and at various points in individuals’ lives and what’s “old and tired” to you might be new and refreshing to someone else. A verbal bash over the head might work for some, wit or comedic jabs for another, whereas others might prefer to hash out whether there are valid, logical reasons to believe or disbelieve in a god or gods. If people stop talking the discussion stops, it doesn’t magically “collapse” into a “non-issue.”
Unfortunately, god is not a black hole.

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I’ve often wondered why the abolitionists of the 19th century talked so often about slavery. Surely they should’ve just stopped talking about it, and just have treated slavery as a non-issue? Why use logic and reason against the institution of slavery, when the slave-owners themselves are claiming that they don’t need good reasons in order to treat human beings like farm equipment?

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You know, one of the things I like so much about the Reason Project is that it gives so many different points of view. Not all the articles are well thought out, or well written and perhaps we do not agree with everything, but I like to read it anyway. (Tickles me brain, ya know.) It’s entertaining and I like to think that even the articles that are complete garbage might possibly have a thread of something worthwhile.

For example, in this article, the truth is that some so-called atheists really do need to keep their mouths shut. Thay are doing the movement no favours when they come across as uber-smart arseholes. You all must agree there is a right way and a wrong way to approach people about atheism. The right way is by no means keeping quiet about it, as the writer of this article suggests, but perhaps there is something practical in the fact that you attract more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.

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Oh dear… Saying “stop talking about God” to an atheist, is like saying “stop talking about crime” to a police officer.
God and religion in general are the “subject” of atheism. Theism and atheism are just different and in this case opposed approaches on the same subject.
Is this so hard to understand or is the true meaning of this article simply to say “shut up!”?

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1. Anti-theists talk more about religion I think you’ll find.

2. Religion occupies so much of the public arena, from foreign policy to health-care, that allowing people to make decisions based on their beliefs in what their non-existent God wants and keeping quiet about it is naive and dangerous.

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There are a few very good reasons to keep the debate going, and to keep hammering at the reasons why religious belief is a threat to human evolution.

-1st, making a lot of noise about the arguments helps them be heard. It helps them diffuse and seep down into popular culture.
Increasingly, I meet people who question belief with arguments that I used to find only in philosophy books. It used to be that the vast majority of people simply didn’t question what had always been presented to them as obvious, as beyond questioning.

-2nd, in History, many such debates, opposing reason against supernatural and irrational beliefs, have ended up bearing fruits: At least in some places, and often after very long battles.
For example, the argument against slavery (as already mentioned), or the fight for democracy and Human Rights against “blue blood” rights, in most Western countries.

-3rd, to relentlessly challenge believers into explaining themselves forces them to show their cards. As they do, more people can see through their bluffs.

...
Believers can - and do - often fall back on the argument that god and belief are not rational things, and thus cannot be demonstrated rationally. But, in reality, there always comes a point when they pretend to posses rational arguments for what they are trying to sell. Simply because Humans are, after all, rational beings, and will seek explanations for what they are told to do or think. So the religious peddlers always end up encountering people who need convincing: People who will ask for arguments. We need to keep making those arguments available to them, and maybe give them opportunities to develop a rational reflection about the topic, so that they are less easily confused by religious sophism.

Like science, reason is mostly counter-intuitive, Brains need to be trained in order to attain it. Debate and education are not luxuries we can afford to risk here.

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I concur with elc@4, that if the discussion is squelched by the ‘please don’t talk about my God crowd’, then they won’t have to forever follow their children covering their ears against the melodious voices of reason, while insisting they listen to the cacophony of their revealed ‘truths’. (Sorry about the plethora of pronouns)

If you think exposing the hypocrisy of the past and current imaginary godma (not a typo) is not appealing to you, then grow up and defend your faith to the best of your ability. It is just that it is becoming increasingly obvious and apparent that the ‘revealed’ parts of religious authority are untenable and its apologists are using the same staid lines of unreasoning and logical fallacy for over a millennium. I would even chance a wager on the ‘revealed’ nature of religious godma to be a compounded mixture of portent hallucinations and machinations for power.

Outspoken freethinkers, agnostics, atheists, anti-theists, non-theists, skeptics, secularists or humanists have been around since the Greeks. They will continue to be around until the human species expires by whatever end. Their most basic message is and always will be the same: one cannot profess to know, what it is impossible to know. To do so is the profession of a charlatan. A poser. A hypocrite.

Now, the usual retort by the theist will be then, “You are then a hypocrite, because you say there is no god and you cannot know for certain!” But, saying you do not believe there is any god or gods, is not the same as saying there is no god or gods. Subtle distinction, but a world of philosophical difference. The non-believer who does assert there is no god or gods has just not yet thought through their reasoning.

That is why discussing loudly from the rooftops, “Does god exist?” (or try, “Does any god need to exist?”) is of such importance. The devoutly religious say they have, “No doubts,” but this is surely the lowest hanging fruit of faith, the question-less certitude of ignorant bliss. The aim, no, the nature of science and reason is doubt and inquiry. Progress is made no other way.

The overwhelming inanity of all religions’ spurious truth and miracle claims confounds the senses of anyone intellectually honest enough with themselves to take the time to accept what they do not know, realize what they cannot know and appreciate fully what they can know. True knowledge encompasses this ‘trinity’ and no other.

The imagined realities and the presumed certainties of believers are, essentially and sadly, the easy way out. Somebody will do all of your thinking for you, as long as you believe what you are told.

Sounds like tyranny to me.

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Yea , favorite Ice Cream and the existence of God, that’s a fair comparison. Having passion for a subject and wanting to have animated conversions about it is a good thing. If you don’t want to join fine, no problem, but please don’t go thinking that conversions on reason are comparable to someone’s favorite ice cream.

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