I’ve noticed this in arguments, especially on here and to tell you the truth, threats of hell (in any religion), doesn’t scare me. But what baffles me is that is the next question Christians have after you tell them that you don’t believe in their sky wizard.
I’m thinking that wouldn’t common sense dictate that if you don’t believe in their god, there’s most likely a very high probability that you also didn’t buy into the mythology or an afterlife either and just don’t care?
I don’t care. I don’t get annoyed like I used to. But I often do think that it’s a very dumb question to ask an Atheist.
It’s not dumb from their framing of reality, faulty though it is. For someone steeped in hellthreat, it is just a given. They can’t understand why we aren’t at least worried if not terrified of our post-death fate because to not think you’re immortal and under threat of eternal perdition just isn’t thinkable to them; it’s a basic assumption. On their side of belief, they can’t imagine how they’d ever let go of that.
Most such people can’t imagine not believing in their god and all the stuff that flows from it. They keep looking for ways you secretly / subconsciously are just like them but are fighting it. They think if they poke around enough it would be doing us the favor of putting us in touch with our worries about such topics. They literally cannot see that we LACK those worries.
Put another way: it’s one thing for them to imagine that we hate their god (which we also don’t do) … hate, after all, is just disappointed love. It’s a misundersanding that could be cleared up. But what they can’t conceive of is that we’re INDIFFERENT to their God, their cosmology, their afterlife … it means NOTHING to us. It BORES us.
THAT is a bridge too far. It wounds them, to the extent they can even comprehend it. Mostly, it just doesn’t compute, and should a little bit of light dawn on them, it will just piss them off. Or they will attribute it to “arrogance”, etc.
I believe this threat may tie into Pasqual’s Wager.
I have often had religious Christian people ask me if I was so sure of my beliefs that I was willing to risk eternal torment . . . and–sometimes–my answer is: “What do you say to a Muslim person when they ask you the same thing?”
If God exists, then I assume that God is reasonable, and if God is reasonable . . . then He won’t condemn me to eternal torment for my sincere beliefs, and my desire to reject the violence and nastiness associated with organized religion.
If God is unreasonable (like the God of the Bible and the Koran), then all of the sincere religious belief in the world doesn’t make a difference and we’re all screwed anyway, which also means that the religious threat of eternal hellfire is both pointless and stupid even if there is a God.
When I was a believer my presuppositions did not come from Pascal’s Wager. I was simply open to the “reasoning” of the Wager because I already had the presuppositions. And THOSE came from my childhood indoctrination.
When you’re a young child, you tend to look to the adults in your life for guidance (which is, or should be, an extension of their protection and nurture). You assume they know what they’re doing; after all, if they know how to fix your boo-boos and comfort you when you’re upset and so forth, then surely they understand reality better than you do. And they tell you practically from the cradle that you’re a sinner that needs saving and what you need saving from is eternal separation from god.
The first time this “clicked” for me, I was 5 years old. And they hastened to explain that all I had to do was just reject my tendency to sin, believe my sins were paid for, thank Jebus for doing so, and all would be well. So, 3 months shy of my 6th birthday, I was led in the Sinner’s Prayer and that was that.
Now I had this earwig in my head, so when I was introduced much later to Pascal’s Wager, it seemed perfectly sensible. Mine was the True Religion, and the Wager seemed like a compassionate way to entreat skeptics and unbelievers to consider God’s claims on their lives. “Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” “Taste, and see that the Lord is good.” “Listen to the Good News!” etc etc
I suppose that the Wager also works for people who are less convinced of the Gospel than I was. If they had doubts, they could tell themselves they had the bases covered, just in case. These would be people born with better bullshit detectors than I was, I guess, but who are troubled less because the evangel seems sensible to them, than that they swim in an ocean of people who are always gaslighting them about it.
I am amazed that pointing out that they’re just as comfortable rejecting Islam or Hinduism or Christian Science doesn’t work better than it has in my experience. Someone on another forum once called this “the determined funda-shield of ignorance™”. They are so used to special pleading as a thought process that they don’t see the point you’re making – because those are “obviously” false religions. They are talking about the One True Religion, after all!
I always just assumed it is because they (theists) care about hell, and they can’t imagine that it is possible for someone else to not care/believe it.
Just like how they cite the Bible as evidence for the claims of the Bible, they can’t fathom that we don’t necessarily believe everything the bible says, so it makes sense to them to quote it to us as a source.
Well, I read it… people repeating, “Look, I’m not worried…”“Oh, I’m not worried either, why do they think I’m worried?”
This is so pathetic… I think it’s better to leave you alone. Look, I want the best for each one of you, but I have no idea what your problem is… something just seems fishy here.
No where did anyone say those things in this thread. You’re just making crap up. I think it is you who have deep seated issues. Not only do you have a grandiose religious problem, but you’re also mental.
Probably for the best, as it’s clear yet again, that rational debate is utterly beyond you. This emotional outburst says it all, you simply can’t bear it that others don’t share your unevidenced superstitious beliefs, yet over many months you have demonstrated again and again that you have no reasonable or rational response, or any rational or objective basis for those beliefs.
Pure projection, it is your posts that exhibit endless subjective bias, and not anyone here, your inability to accept rational objections, and your dishonesty in falsely labelling those objection as irrational, yet failing to ever explain which principle of logic they’ve violated or why, speaks for itself. Again all anyone need do, is click on your profile and read your posts from the very first.
Truth doesn’t come from a closed minded and blinkered adherence to subjective beliefs that you’re emotionally invested in, this is just a recipe for a biased and therefore closed mind. Until you learn that much, you’re doomed to continue with this facile reasoning, that simply labels everything else false or bad.
You’re being played by the beliefs you’ve been indoctrinated into, they’re designed specifically to do this. Critical thinking, and objectivity is the only tool that will help free you from this indoctrination, and only you can choose to free yourself from it. You’re lashing out, and taking out your frustration on us, but the source of your frustration is the rational critical objections to your beliefs and claims, for which you have no reasonable, rational or objective response.
Nope, the thread is asking why theists think atheists care about their imaginary posthumous torture chamber, when they must know we don’t believe any deity exists. So you likely don’t grasp what atheism means, and have a very poor grasp of the English language, try running your finger more slowly over the words in the title, note the question mark at the end, see if this helps.
Also why do you care? I don’t give a fuck what you believe, as long as you don’t seek me out to debate how irrational and unevidenced it is.
Never saw it going any other way tbh. Threatening atheists with the “long arm of the lord” is never going to fly. It’s bizarre how theists don’t understand this. Your fairy stories don’t scare atheists, because atheists don’t believe they are true, it’s that simple.
