M
mschrank
Guest
No, not as in typology, as in irritating people.
I think this board should have a big disclaimer and invitation for a certain type of person to scram.
I don’t mind intelligent discussion, but to be honest in the wrong hands literacy can be put to serious ill use! It seems like every time I get in a debate, either on here or in real life, I come up against the same stubborn sort of person.
I’m talking about the young, confident, brash atheist who is convinced that they have within their hands totally apodictic arguments against the existence of God or any higher power and honestly believes, with all their heart, that his (usually his, sometimes her… women are usually too subtle for such idiocy) beliefs are true.
Usually these people have no formal education in either philosophy, theology, history, or anything remotely relevant. Sometimes occassionally you get one from a science background, and who, due to atheist back-slapping in the lab at college, is convinced that science proves there is no God.
The existence of intelligent Christians makes little difference for this type. It doesn’t matter, because no matter how many famous Christian PhD’s you throw at them, they simply aren’t as smart as their atheist heroes. To them, philosophy and first principles have nothing to do with the question of God, it’s just about sheer intellectual prowess, a prowess posessed by the rationalist but sadly lacking in so many others.
Human beings are of course, inherently good and peaceful and lovely beings who need nothing more than for the detritus of religion to be scraped away so they can shine. Mention history to them, especially the 20th century and its wars of ideology, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and even ask the basic question “Why play nice?” and they’ll find some way to ignore the question and if they are especially bright, they’ll twist it around. Most simply flat out deny it was about atheism or even try to point out how Stalin and Hitler were “Christians”. Don’t mention to him that Hitler famously once said, “I see no reason why man should not be as cruel as nature”.
These people simply assume that the well ordered, secular, post enlightenment western European society they grew up in and which formed their thinking is ‘essential’ to the human experience and all other cultures and ways of being, including Christianity, are wrong and will eventually catch up. Time is a very important narrative to them, because in their eyes, the world is progressing, getting better and better every day. Of course, point out that human inequality on the global scale is growing and our own culture is actually becoming less rationalistic and more postmodern, and that if nothing else his own types tend to contracept themselves out of existence with falling birthrates, he’ll simply deny that too. Of course, regarding the last point of falling populations to him it does not matter so much because he believes in a bizarre kind of metaphysical realism, he believes that his own culture ‘discovered’ and did not ‘invent’ the truth to which he, as an elite intellectual, is privy to. There is no need to pass down his beliefs because they are fact, not value.
The thing that astounds me about these types is you have to take so many of their beliefs on sheer faith, even when the historical evidence suggests otherwise. As far as I see it, the 20th century killed Positive Atheism (i.e., the forward looking, non-despairing Enlightenment brand of Atheism). If you really look into the history of that idea, from the early humanists in the 15th century, to the libertines, then on to the great high-brow atheists of the 19th century like Bentham, you’ll see that things took a nasty turn in the 20th both in terms of history and philosophy. Nietzsche happened, Heidegger happened, the first world war happened, and the rest is history.
But of course, to these irritating types, we are the ones with ‘faith’ and they are simply calling it as they see it. They have the answers and the rest of us are just stupid.
‘When I was 16, my parents seemed like idiots. By the time I was 25, I was amazed how much more intelligent they had become!’
I think this board should have a big disclaimer and invitation for a certain type of person to scram.
I don’t mind intelligent discussion, but to be honest in the wrong hands literacy can be put to serious ill use! It seems like every time I get in a debate, either on here or in real life, I come up against the same stubborn sort of person.
I’m talking about the young, confident, brash atheist who is convinced that they have within their hands totally apodictic arguments against the existence of God or any higher power and honestly believes, with all their heart, that his (usually his, sometimes her… women are usually too subtle for such idiocy) beliefs are true.
Usually these people have no formal education in either philosophy, theology, history, or anything remotely relevant. Sometimes occassionally you get one from a science background, and who, due to atheist back-slapping in the lab at college, is convinced that science proves there is no God.
The existence of intelligent Christians makes little difference for this type. It doesn’t matter, because no matter how many famous Christian PhD’s you throw at them, they simply aren’t as smart as their atheist heroes. To them, philosophy and first principles have nothing to do with the question of God, it’s just about sheer intellectual prowess, a prowess posessed by the rationalist but sadly lacking in so many others.
Human beings are of course, inherently good and peaceful and lovely beings who need nothing more than for the detritus of religion to be scraped away so they can shine. Mention history to them, especially the 20th century and its wars of ideology, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and even ask the basic question “Why play nice?” and they’ll find some way to ignore the question and if they are especially bright, they’ll twist it around. Most simply flat out deny it was about atheism or even try to point out how Stalin and Hitler were “Christians”. Don’t mention to him that Hitler famously once said, “I see no reason why man should not be as cruel as nature”.
These people simply assume that the well ordered, secular, post enlightenment western European society they grew up in and which formed their thinking is ‘essential’ to the human experience and all other cultures and ways of being, including Christianity, are wrong and will eventually catch up. Time is a very important narrative to them, because in their eyes, the world is progressing, getting better and better every day. Of course, point out that human inequality on the global scale is growing and our own culture is actually becoming less rationalistic and more postmodern, and that if nothing else his own types tend to contracept themselves out of existence with falling birthrates, he’ll simply deny that too. Of course, regarding the last point of falling populations to him it does not matter so much because he believes in a bizarre kind of metaphysical realism, he believes that his own culture ‘discovered’ and did not ‘invent’ the truth to which he, as an elite intellectual, is privy to. There is no need to pass down his beliefs because they are fact, not value.
The thing that astounds me about these types is you have to take so many of their beliefs on sheer faith, even when the historical evidence suggests otherwise. As far as I see it, the 20th century killed Positive Atheism (i.e., the forward looking, non-despairing Enlightenment brand of Atheism). If you really look into the history of that idea, from the early humanists in the 15th century, to the libertines, then on to the great high-brow atheists of the 19th century like Bentham, you’ll see that things took a nasty turn in the 20th both in terms of history and philosophy. Nietzsche happened, Heidegger happened, the first world war happened, and the rest is history.
But of course, to these irritating types, we are the ones with ‘faith’ and they are simply calling it as they see it. They have the answers and the rest of us are just stupid.
‘When I was 16, my parents seemed like idiots. By the time I was 25, I was amazed how much more intelligent they had become!’
I KNOW! The internet is so full of those types. And I’m in college so you can imagine all the smart-mouthed “know-it-alls” I have to tolerate. Fortunately a lot of those types are just attention-starved people that eventually grow up. The irony of it that atheists claim that religious people are narrow and bigoted when they seem more bigoted, intolerant and self-righteous than anyone; secularists (is that word?) have been forcing their ways on us ever since they took over America in the 60’s or whatever.