Scratch an atheist and you will find a skeptic!

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Vera_Ljuba

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A few people keep on repeating this nonsense: “Scratch an atheist and you will find a fundamentalist”. I have no idea who came up with this ridiculous idea first, but it is so irrational, and getting so frequent that it requires a response.

Fundamentalists consider every sentence in the bible being literally true and correct.
Atheists accept that some parts are historically correct, while others are allegorical, and yet others are pure fantasy or fairy tale.

How can these two, diametrically opposite views be considered equal? Only a completely irrational person can equate them. Unfortunately the most irrational ones are exceedingly loud, stubborn and beyond redemption. But hopefully the others see how ridiculous they are, and will not associate with them.
 
Vera_Ljuba said:
Fundamentalists consider every sentence in the bible being literally true and correct.
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Catholics have fundamentalists too, and they’re usually defined as the Catholics who know the religion well enough to have principled (negative) opinions on decisions made by the magisterium. For example, advocates of the idea that all masses should be given in Latin. For some reason, in Catholocism, they’ve invented a new category (traditionalists) which looks an awful lot like fundamentalism.
 
Vera_Ljuba said:
A few people keep on repeating this nonsense: “Scratch an atheist and you will find a fundamentalist”. I have no idea who came up with this ridiculous idea first, but it is so irrational, and getting so frequent that it requires a response.

Fundamentalists consider every sentence in the bible being literally true and correct.
Atheists accept that some parts are historically correct, while others are allegorical, and yet others are pure fantasy or fairy tale.

How can these two, diametrically opposite views be considered equal? Only a completely irrational person can equate them. Unfortunately the most irrational ones are exceedingly loud, stubborn and beyond redemption. But hopefully the others see how ridiculous they are, and will not associate with them.
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This is the first time I ever heard of this saying .
 
Vera_Ljuba said:
A few people keep on repeating this nonsense: “Scratch an atheist and you will find a fundamentalist”.
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But there is some truth to that. The reason many modern day atheists are atheists is because they believe the only way to read the bible is the way fundamentalists do.
Vera_Ljuba said:
Fundamentalists consider every sentence in the bible being literally true and correct.
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So you’re saying - when Jesus declared that Peter is the rock and that he will build his church upon him - that fundamentalist believe peter is now a…rock? I will take a wild guess and say even the most hard core fundamentalist see this as allegory.
Vera_Ljuba said:
Atheists accept that some parts are historically correct, while others are allegorical, and yet others are pure fantasy or fairy tale.
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Give me a fairy tale example.
 
Bradski said:
Animals two by two.
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And you just proved my point that Atheists are just as fundamentalist in their reading of Christian scripture as Christian fundamentalist are. After all…only atheists and Christian fundamentalist read the story of Noah’s ark as an historical event.
 
oyaji said:
And you just proved my point that Atheists are just as fundamentalist in their reading of Christian scripture as Christian fundamentalist are. After all…only atheists and Christian fundamentalist read the story of Noah’s ark as an historical event.
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Uh? You didn’t ask for an example of an historical event. You wanted an example of a fairy story.

I doubt that there is a single atheist anywhere on the planet who treats the story of the flood as being literally true.

And there’s no need to capitalise the word atheist, by the way
 
JapaneseKappa said:
Catholics have fundamentalists too, and they’re usually defined as the Catholics who know the religion well enough to have principled (negative) opinions on decisions made by the magisterium. For example, advocates of the idea that all masses should be given in Latin. For some reason, in Catholocism, they’ve invented a new category (traditionalists) which looks an awful lot like fundamentalism.
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All Masses used to be said in Latin. They changed it for a reason.
 
Bradski said:
Uh? You didn’t ask for an example of an historical event. You wanted an example of a fairy story.

I doubt that there is a single atheist anywhere on the planet who treats the story of the flood as being literally true.
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And very few theists. The difference being that theists find allegorical truths in the Flood and the Garden of Eden, whereas atheists find nothing.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
Catholics are usually not fundamentalists.
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See the last line I just added in the last post re the 40%. But then if your definition of ‘not usually’ means less than half, then you might be right.

How many millions would that be? 28 million?
 
Bradski said:
See the last line I just added in the last post re the 40%. But then if your definition of ‘not usually’ means less than half, then you might be right.

How many millions would that be? 28 million?
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I didn’t read anything about Catholics in your little snippet of a news story. I think most fundamentalists are evangelicals and Baptists. In any case, on this forum, you are mostly discoursing with educated Catholics who do not take the stories literally, so I find you rather insulting. Allegorical stories impart deeper truths than the literal ones, which are fine for children!
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
I didn’t read anything about Catholics in your little snippet of a news story. I think most fundamentalists are evangelicals and Baptists. In any case, on this forum, you are mostly discoursing with educated Catholics who do not take the stories literally, so I find you rather insulting. Allegorical stories impart deeper truths than the literal ones, which are fine for children!
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First it was Christians, but it was shown that there were very many fundamenalists. So it was changed to Catholics, but look, millions still. So now it’s educated Catholics on this forum.

And I think that the only insult so far is your insinuation that 40% of your fellow Catholics are uneducated, believing in stories that are suitable only for children.

Should we not treat their honestly held beliefs with some respect?
 
It’s hard to generalize about atheists and how they understand the Bible.

I think many have read the Bible because they were fundamentalist Christians at one time, so now they take delight in ridiculing a literalist approach. Yes, when you scratch those atheists you find their former selves.

But other atheists have never read the Bible. They don’t seem to care either way.

I think it’s rare to find an atheist-materialist who is fundamentalist about his own views. Dawkins is, somewhat - but he backs away from the implications of materialism when really questioned. Rosenberg, who wrote “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality” is a fundamentalist materialist. There are a few others who attempt a hard-core acceptance of blind, unguided, unintelligent materialist determinism. Interesting that Rosenberg actually attempted to speak for all atheists. There is kind of an atheistic magisterium - big-name leaders to make claims about “what atheism is” and what its beliefs are. But there are heretics also.

Nobody gets kicked out of the atheist community for false belief. There are atheists on CAF who believe in a supernatural world with godlike beings in it. But just as long as it’s not God, then they consider that atheism.
 
Vera_Ljuba said:
A few people keep on repeating this nonsense: “Scratch an atheist and you will find a fundamentalist”. I have no idea who came up with this ridiculous idea first, but it is so irrational, and getting so frequent that it requires a response.
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As I’ve observed from you with nigh-perfect consistency, yours is a problem of paradigm.

Allow me to illuminate:

“Fundamentalism” is not a solely religious word. As I have a penchant for Oxford concerning general definitions, here it is:
1 A form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.
‘there was religious pluralism there at a time when the rest of Europe was torn by fundamentalism’
1.1 Strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.
‘free-market fundamentalism’
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In this context, however, both seem to be fairly apt.

When you “scratch an atheist and find a fundamentalist”, you’re revealing that the atheist in question has lodged most of their religious counter-arguments against a very specific interpretation of some religious thing (usually a text).

They will generally insist that their interpretation of the text on behalf of the religion is the correct one, thus others are not - even if those other interpretations are provided by confessed practitioners of the religion in question. As such, the atheist’s counter arguments are axiomatically valid as their “fundamentally correct” interpretation is “really” the right one. :rolleyes:

This is a behavior I’ve seen the thread-starter engage in quite a few times, interestingly. 😉
 
Vonsalza said:
As I’ve observed from you with nigh-perfect consistency, yours is a problem of paradigm.

Allow me to illuminate:

“Fundamentalism” is not a solely religious word. As I have a penchant for Oxford concerning general definitions, here it is:

In this context, however, both seem to be fairly apt.

When you “scratch an atheist and find a fundamentalist”, you’re revealing that the atheist in question has lodged most of their religious counter-arguments against a very specific interpretation of some religious thing (usually a text).

They will generally insist that their interpretation of the text on behalf of the religion is the correct one, thus others are not - even if those other interpretations are provided by confessed practitioners of the religion in question. As such, the atheist’s counter arguments are axiomatically valid as their “fundamentally correct” interpretation is “really” the right one. :rolleyes:
**
This is a behavior I’ve seen the thread-starter engage in quite a few times, interestingly. ;)**
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yup.
Definitely.
 
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