Open Thread / Show #693: Jen & Tracie

As always, we air at 4:30-5:30 PM (CST) today (Sunday). You can watch live on ustream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-atheist-experience

My plan is to discuss a few of the willfully ignorant things theists say in response to discovering people are atheist activists, including statements such as "why are you so angry at god?" and "I think you're just searching for god."

Example: Person X has a loved family member who swears by a particular homeopathic doctor, who is conning them out of their money and resources and "treating" them for a dangerous and potentially fatal illness. The family member will not seek demonstrated effective treatments from a conventional doctor, because the homeopath has convinced them that modern medicine is a hand-puppet of Big Pharma and therefore an untrustworthy conspiracy. Eventually the family member dies. Person X begins a blog and a youtube channel to tell their story to help expose the dangers of homeopathy. They are contacted by others with similar stories, and they form an association to spread information to people about the lack of support for homeopathic claims and hopefully to help others avoid the same suffering they have experienced at the hands of charlatans.

They should expect to get letters from believers expressing they are wrong. They should expect to be accused of being cogs in the Big Pharma conspiracy. They should expect to get testimonials from well meaning people with anecdotes about their "successes" with homeopathy and the "good" they are convinced it does.

But I'm sure they would never expect some willful idiot will suggest that they are fighting homeopathy because they secretly want desperately to find evidence showing it really works, or that they secretly already believe it does work, and are angry about the fact it works.

These particular rebuttals to the anti-homeopathy movement would be ridiculous. It seemed to me time to provide a link calling it out as "stupid," for people to use. I'd rather atheist skeptics, anti-theists and activists spend their time letting theists provide their demonstrations for their claims of gods existence, than spend their time having to defend against accusations that even a fool should recognize as foolish.

I have heard theists confuse hypothetical uses of "god" with belief in god. But I find this utterly dishonest, because we all use hypotheticals routinely. There is no reason someone should suddenly be unable to recognize a commonly used method of examining a claim. I might say to you I think a problem with your car is that you have an oil leak. But you know of some reason that isn't correct. You say "If it were an oil leak, though, I would expect XYZ to be happening, too, right?" That does not mean you agree it's an oil leak. And nobody should misunderstand that. In the same way if an atheist says "If there were a god that killed all these people that would be morally inexcusable," the atheist is not asserting believe in god and belief in the claims of the Bible. It's clearly a hypothetical, and even more-so due to the fact he wears the clear label "atheist" to alert the theist he doesn't accept this god is real. There is no excuse for any misunderstanding in these dialogs. I'm convinced these "misunderstandings" are willful dishonestly and red-herrings to get the atheist off track and in a defensive mode so that the theist is then relieved of having to defend an indefensible position.

So, if it helps, save the link to this blog post. Whenever you're told you "hate god" or are "searching for god," copy-paste and tell them atheists are worn out arguing dishonest stupidity and unless they have something of actual substance to offer in support of their unjustified beliefs, you aren't going to waste your time debating people who can't grasp basic levels of communication such as how to recognize the use of a hypothetical, the meanings of common words ("atheist") or how to apply the simplest context ("I don't believe in god, therefore I cannot hate god").

*Correction: I updated the headline to reflect Jen replacing Matt today as host.