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Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

27 points by pavel 15y ago

loup-vaillant 15y ago
Very brief attempt at answering that: many believers tend to think atheism is a choice. Most of the time, it isn't. My only choice was trying to see the world as it is. And the evidence at my disposal tell me that the Earth is very old, and that God does not exist (almost certainly so). I'm not at liberty to believe otherwise.
- melling 15y ago
  Not really solid reasoning. The reality is that you can't prove either case. You could spend a lot of time trying to debate either side, but in the end it's probably just wasted effort. Pick a side, be happy, then get on with solving "easier" problems. NP vs P is still open.
  - sofal 15y ago
    I don't believe loup-vaillant was saying that it is possible to prove a negative such as "no god exists". Rather, he was saying that since he doesn't perceive even the slightest bit of evidence for the claim "a god exists", he cannot simply make himself believe in that positive claim despite this. Remember where the burden of proof lies.
    - melling 15y ago
      I understood him. There isn't any evidence for intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, but wouldn't you say that it's fair to say that it could exist? Furthermore, until we've searched every planet, would shouldn't rule it out.
      - sofal 15y ago
        Since the existence of intelligent life here is established and unquestioned, it is fair to say that it could exist elsewhere as well. In the case of a deity, the mere existence of even one out of the thousands of proposed throughout history has not been established.
        melling 15y ago
        So, what can we conclude? There may or may not be intelligent somewhere else, and there exists no god such that...? In short, we have concluded nothing because as good scientists we know that we don't have enough information to conclude anything here. Back to HN stories?
        sofal 15y ago
        Can we conclude that it is reasonable to not accept claims for which there is no evidence?
        melling 15y ago
        Probably not. I wouldn't simply discount something. For example, for a long time people assumed that black swans didn't exist. Hence the term "black swan event." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory The world was flat for centuries. The earth was the center of the universe. The atom was indivisible. Nothing escapes a black hole. That's true, right? Nothing existed before the Big Bang? We pretty much knew everything about physics that we needed to know until Einstein came along. I would pretty much question everything.
        sofal 15y ago
        Sure, but there are an infinite number of propositions that you might want to consider if you're determined to not discount anything for which there is no evidence. For example, you may want to seriously consider the possibilities that danilocampos enumerated above, i.e. all-powerful rhinoceros, etc. After all, why should anyone discount those theories?
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    > The reality is that you can't prove either case. Perhaps, but under what circumstances should one have to prove a negative? We, similarly, can't prove that we're not living inside a magic pill ingested by an all-powerful rhinoceros who deplores our existence and wishes to excrete us at the first opportunity unless we all bake delicious lemon tarts and sacrifice them to the rhino by putting them into our toilets. We can't prove Tupac and Biggie, now at peace, aren't living on an island, with black Michael Jackson as their producer, cranking out new tracks and submitting them anonymously to YouTube. We can't prove there's no sea monster who looks identical to Regis Philbin, but bigger than Burj Khalifa, who is contributing to global warming. But basic examinations of the facts lead us to the conclusion that such claims, especially absent evidence, aren't worth arranging our lives around.
    - melling 15y ago
      Look, I could care less which side you take, or why you take it. I'm simply saying that just because you don't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Smarter people than you and me have taken different sides. I could easily make a case for either side. However, this is HN, and this discussion doesn't belong here.
      - sofal 15y ago
        The reason why this discussion "doesn't belong here" is that people are unable to critically discuss issues which are so closely tied to their personal identity, like cherished religious beliefs, without getting too emotional about it. The HN community is just as vulnerable to this as any other, and this is unfortunate.
      - danilocampos 15y ago
        > Smarter people than you and me have taken different sides. The existence of other people's opinions doesn't mean I get to abdicate my responsibility to form (or share) my own view. > I could easily make a case for either side. I'm not sure you could easily make a case for either side. One side requires faith, and making cases on that is notoriously difficult. > However, this is HN, and this discussion doesn't belong here. I think I most disagree with this point. Any reasoned conversation belongs on HN. We're all being reasonable here, so far. I'm more than comfortable being disagreed with, and as long as we all have the same comfort, it's all good, no?
- geebee 15y ago
  I agree, this is a common and major misunderstanding. It shows up in some statements that question the conviction of atheists, such as "there are no atheists in fox holes". I remember curmudgeon-in-chief Christopher Hitchens wrote about a priest who said "at the end of your life, I'll be taking your confession" and saying he wondered why the priest thought this was such a good point. Well, it is a good point if you think atheism is about honesty rather than reaching a conclusion based on reason and evidence. I've heard atheists admit that under the extreme pressure and terror of a fox hole or impending death bed, they probably wouldn't maintain the rationality and focus on evidence that guided their reasoning in a calmer, less terrifying situation. To some religious believers, this is about honesty and arrogance, and when the chips are down, the humbling truth behind so-called atheism emerges. If you see it this way, it really isn't that hard to understand why they don't like atheists much - atheists appear smug and insincere. To some atheists, it's a sober, rational conclusion (maybe one they aren't especially happy to be reaching), the sort of reasoning that is least likely to happen in a fox hole or on a death bed. But it's really just a conclusion, not an attempt to insult people or "put down" their beliefs.
- iterationx 15y ago
  The choice comes from whether a person exposes themselves to ideas that don't conform to their world view.
tokenadult 15y ago
The article itself answers the question posed in the headline by saying, "Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry." I'll expand on that point a bit, as an American person who was brought up with belief in God that was taught to me as a basis for personal morality and who no longer believes in God but still likes to follow standards of personal morality. Teaching of children in a great variety of religious organizations, not just Christian organized religions, presupposes that one rationale for morale behavior is the approval of the God or gods (or conformity with the thought of enlightened men) promoted by believers in that religion. Young children so brought up are not encouraged to consider the possibility of moral behavior on the basis of purely human, this-world considerations. In my own life, I was influenced at what I think is known to be a critical age for forming group allegiances (around the time of puberty) by two boys who were my classmates in junior high. They were my two best friends at that age. Both were very smart, eventually becoming engineers who have done challenging work in their adult careers, and one was deeply devout by upbringing, while the other was militantly atheist by upbringing. It happened, I would now say by coincidence, that the devout evangelical Christian I knew among the two friends was a young man of exceptional kindness and quiet self-confidence that never crossed the line into arrogance, while the militant atheist was a young man who delighted in teasing other students (even a girl in our class with cerebral palsy) and who never hid his pride in his IQ and his secularism. The religious point of view that resulted in kinder, less arrogant behavior was appealing to me, and with the example of the two friends in mind, I became much more evangelical Christian in my outlook during my school years than I had been brought up to be. Over quite a few years, including years when I was employed doing evangelistic work in another country, I have become entirely an atheist, but still very much interested in encouraging myself, and the children in my care, to be kind, non-arrogant, and willing to take on intellectual challenges. Meanwhile, my childhood evangelical Christian friend is a still an active church-goer, but now a member of a "liberal" denomination and certainly, as his career verifies, not at all "fundamentalist" in his view of science (as he once was). The formerly atheist friend is now a follower of the Baha'i religion. He seems to have mellowed out quite a bit in his middle age. I am much better acquainted these days with the first mentioned friend than the second, because the formerly atheist friend traveled to other far-away places over the years. I think many people rely more than they realize on salient personal examples to form their opinions on abstract subjects such as religion. Perhaps atheists in the United States will gradually gain more acceptance as more people have personal experience with interacting with kind, thoughtful atheist friends (as I have). Because the United States population includes a large percentage of people whose ancestors settled in America specifically because of their religious commitments (as did more than half of my ancestors), religiosity probably still has a long time to go as a characteristic feature of American national culture. On my part, I think the writings of Sam Harris go a long way to helping religiously committed Americans to rethink their point of view and to be open to the possibility that morality is separable from religion.

27 points by pavel 15y ago

Very brief attempt at answering that: many believers tend to think atheism is a choice. Most of the time, it isn't. My only choice was trying to see the world as it is. And the evidence at my disposal tell me that the Earth is very old, and that God does not exist (almost certainly so). I'm not at liberty to believe otherwise.

melling 15y ago
Not really solid reasoning. The reality is that you can't prove either case. You could spend a lot of time trying to debate either side, but in the end it's probably just wasted effort. Pick a side, be happy, then get on with solving "easier" problems. NP vs P is still open.
- sofal 15y ago
  I don't believe loup-vaillant was saying that it is possible to prove a negative such as "no god exists". Rather, he was saying that since he doesn't perceive even the slightest bit of evidence for the claim "a god exists", he cannot simply make himself believe in that positive claim despite this. Remember where the burden of proof lies.
  - melling 15y ago
    I understood him. There isn't any evidence for intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, but wouldn't you say that it's fair to say that it could exist? Furthermore, until we've searched every planet, would shouldn't rule it out.
    - sofal 15y ago
      Since the existence of intelligent life here is established and unquestioned, it is fair to say that it could exist elsewhere as well. In the case of a deity, the mere existence of even one out of the thousands of proposed throughout history has not been established.
      - melling 15y ago
        So, what can we conclude? There may or may not be intelligent somewhere else, and there exists no god such that...? In short, we have concluded nothing because as good scientists we know that we don't have enough information to conclude anything here. Back to HN stories?
        sofal 15y ago
        Can we conclude that it is reasonable to not accept claims for which there is no evidence?
        melling 15y ago
        Probably not. I wouldn't simply discount something. For example, for a long time people assumed that black swans didn't exist. Hence the term "black swan event." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory The world was flat for centuries. The earth was the center of the universe. The atom was indivisible. Nothing escapes a black hole. That's true, right? Nothing existed before the Big Bang? We pretty much knew everything about physics that we needed to know until Einstein came along. I would pretty much question everything.
        sofal 15y ago
        Sure, but there are an infinite number of propositions that you might want to consider if you're determined to not discount anything for which there is no evidence. For example, you may want to seriously consider the possibilities that danilocampos enumerated above, i.e. all-powerful rhinoceros, etc. After all, why should anyone discount those theories?
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > The reality is that you can't prove either case. Perhaps, but under what circumstances should one have to prove a negative? We, similarly, can't prove that we're not living inside a magic pill ingested by an all-powerful rhinoceros who deplores our existence and wishes to excrete us at the first opportunity unless we all bake delicious lemon tarts and sacrifice them to the rhino by putting them into our toilets. We can't prove Tupac and Biggie, now at peace, aren't living on an island, with black Michael Jackson as their producer, cranking out new tracks and submitting them anonymously to YouTube. We can't prove there's no sea monster who looks identical to Regis Philbin, but bigger than Burj Khalifa, who is contributing to global warming. But basic examinations of the facts lead us to the conclusion that such claims, especially absent evidence, aren't worth arranging our lives around.
  - melling 15y ago
    Look, I could care less which side you take, or why you take it. I'm simply saying that just because you don't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Smarter people than you and me have taken different sides. I could easily make a case for either side. However, this is HN, and this discussion doesn't belong here.
    - sofal 15y ago
      The reason why this discussion "doesn't belong here" is that people are unable to critically discuss issues which are so closely tied to their personal identity, like cherished religious beliefs, without getting too emotional about it. The HN community is just as vulnerable to this as any other, and this is unfortunate.
    - danilocampos 15y ago
      > Smarter people than you and me have taken different sides. The existence of other people's opinions doesn't mean I get to abdicate my responsibility to form (or share) my own view. > I could easily make a case for either side. I'm not sure you could easily make a case for either side. One side requires faith, and making cases on that is notoriously difficult. > However, this is HN, and this discussion doesn't belong here. I think I most disagree with this point. Any reasoned conversation belongs on HN. We're all being reasonable here, so far. I'm more than comfortable being disagreed with, and as long as we all have the same comfort, it's all good, no?
geebee 15y ago
I agree, this is a common and major misunderstanding. It shows up in some statements that question the conviction of atheists, such as "there are no atheists in fox holes". I remember curmudgeon-in-chief Christopher Hitchens wrote about a priest who said "at the end of your life, I'll be taking your confession" and saying he wondered why the priest thought this was such a good point. Well, it is a good point if you think atheism is about honesty rather than reaching a conclusion based on reason and evidence. I've heard atheists admit that under the extreme pressure and terror of a fox hole or impending death bed, they probably wouldn't maintain the rationality and focus on evidence that guided their reasoning in a calmer, less terrifying situation. To some religious believers, this is about honesty and arrogance, and when the chips are down, the humbling truth behind so-called atheism emerges. If you see it this way, it really isn't that hard to understand why they don't like atheists much - atheists appear smug and insincere. To some atheists, it's a sober, rational conclusion (maybe one they aren't especially happy to be reaching), the sort of reasoning that is least likely to happen in a fox hole or on a death bed. But it's really just a conclusion, not an attempt to insult people or "put down" their beliefs.
iterationx 15y ago
The choice comes from whether a person exposes themselves to ideas that don't conform to their world view.

tokenadult 15y ago

The article itself answers the question posed in the headline by saying, "Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry." I'll expand on that point a bit, as an American person who was brought up with belief in God that was taught to me as a basis for personal morality and who no longer believes in God but still likes to follow standards of personal morality. Teaching of children in a great variety of religious organizations, not just Christian organized religions, presupposes that one rationale for morale behavior is the approval of the God or gods (or conformity with the thought of enlightened men) promoted by believers in that religion. Young children so brought up are not encouraged to consider the possibility of moral behavior on the basis of purely human, this-world considerations. In my own life, I was influenced at what I think is known to be a critical age for forming group allegiances (around the time of puberty) by two boys who were my classmates in junior high. They were my two best friends at that age. Both were very smart, eventually becoming engineers who have done challenging work in their adult careers, and one was deeply devout by upbringing, while the other was militantly atheist by upbringing. It happened, I would now say by coincidence, that the devout evangelical Christian I knew among the two friends was a young man of exceptional kindness and quiet self-confidence that never crossed the line into arrogance, while the militant atheist was a young man who delighted in teasing other students (even a girl in our class with cerebral palsy) and who never hid his pride in his IQ and his secularism. The religious point of view that resulted in kinder, less arrogant behavior was appealing to me, and with the example of the two friends in mind, I became much more evangelical Christian in my outlook during my school years than I had been brought up to be. Over quite a few years, including years when I was employed doing evangelistic work in another country, I have become entirely an atheist, but still very much interested in encouraging myself, and the children in my care, to be kind, non-arrogant, and willing to take on intellectual challenges. Meanwhile, my childhood evangelical Christian friend is a still an active church-goer, but now a member of a "liberal" denomination and certainly, as his career verifies, not at all "fundamentalist" in his view of science (as he once was). The formerly atheist friend is now a follower of the Baha'i religion. He seems to have mellowed out quite a bit in his middle age. I am much better acquainted these days with the first mentioned friend than the second, because the formerly atheist friend traveled to other far-away places over the years. I think many people rely more than they realize on salient personal examples to form their opinions on abstract subjects such as religion. Perhaps atheists in the United States will gradually gain more acceptance as more people have personal experience with interacting with kind, thoughtful atheist friends (as I have). Because the United States population includes a large percentage of people whose ancestors settled in America specifically because of their religious commitments (as did more than half of my ancestors), religiosity probably still has a long time to go as a characteristic feature of American national culture. On my part, I think the writings of Sam Harris go a long way to helping religiously committed Americans to rethink their point of view and to be open to the possibility that morality is separable from religion.