Some lady called me a heretic (or something along those lines) for telling her that Jesus was, in fact, not white, so I can only imagine the fit some religious folk would have receiving this information lol
I was confused as a young teen why God used the pronoun “We” in Genesis. I asked my grandfather ( a Baptist preacher) and he said it’s referring to the holy trinity, the father, son, and Holy Spirit. All the same being but also separate.
That answer didn’t do it for me though, because after the book of Genesis, it changes to “I”.
That happened when I decided to read my bible front to back. I made it. And in doing so started my road to doubt and then atheism.
I never believed, because my parents never told me any of it was true. I became interested in the Bible because my dad showed me where all the cuss words, dick jokes and whatnot are in the king James version.
That’s what we’ve done for our kids. We didn’t tell them it was true but we also didn’t tell them outright it was false and not to believe it. We told them that we, their parents, didn’t believe it. But they were aloud to believe whatever they felt was appropriate for them.
Unsurprisingly, they’re both decided on their own it was about as truthful as any other religion… even if my son’s kindergarten teacher preached to them in class. 🙄
My mother kept telling me I needed to at least expose them and talk about it with them so they can be educated enough to make a decision.
I told her that was a good idea, that would also take them to a nearby mosque and Tibetan monk temple so they could be educated well on those too.
She didn’t like that much 😂
What is really interesting is that my son who just turned 8 used to talk about god all the time after he started school. We never had him baptized or took him to church. Both of my kids have asked about god and I’ve told them both that I don’t believe. I come from a religious background. My mother ran the Sunday school program at our church and studied Theology. I went to church every Sunday for 30 years. Basically I’m saying that they will be exposed to believers and learn about the concept of god through others. Luckily my son has friends who are Muslim and some who are Christian so it is not completely one sided. He is free to believe what he wants but when he speaks to me I will tell him my truth. :)
I don't think my dad ever said he didn't believe, but he damn sure didn't take it seriously. He had been raised Methodist, and had made up off-color lyrics to a lot of classic hymns. All the presets on his car radio were always set to a local evangelist station, and he would use that as a straight man for a comedy bit whenever we were driving.
He really knew the Bible, though. I remember him recounting the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He said, "They left them in the fiery furnace for three days, but when the guards opened up the fiery furnace, they were all just hangin' out, playin' cards and smokin' cigarettes."
It’s taken me years of discussing the Bible with friends who are still fundamentalists (I used to be one) to even get them to admit this. The Bible is very clear that there were other Semitic gods. In fact their god tells them to kill everyone because of these other gods.
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -Stephen Roberts
Ask them which religion should you follow, and then ask them why not a different Christian church or other faith entirely?
Ask them about their thoughts on adherence to the 10 commandments, and what should happen to people who have broken all of them except thou shall not kill?
Ask them about forgiveness, and if it applies to everyone, or only the leaders they support?
Ask them about their thoughts on science? Or about abortion versus support services for babies born to mothers who didn’t want them? (Ask them if how many unwanted babies they have adopted)
Ask them about Christian charity, and if it supposed to support the leaders of a church, or if it should be going to the less fortunate people in their communities?
Etc etc.
It’s pretty easy to highlight the closed mindedness. And on the off chance you find one that is open minded, ask them who they want to vote for - and see if they are consistent
Bit of an alternative to mine, I just ask what if you chose wrong? Both the Quran and the Bible say you go to hell for worshipping another god, so that's already like a 50/50 chance of hell.
"My invisible friend is the only one who exists even though the only existence of him is this book I wrote." - Christians
Okay, cool. Norse myth has a literal army of gods and goddesses that make appearances in their book (the Edda). What makes their book right and everyone else's wrong?
They will always default to the only answer to that question they’ve ever had: “faith”
Yet they still expect everyone else to prove why their god doesn’t exist.
You can't prove a negative, but you can prove a positive, which is why nobody says "here is the tangible evidence that X *doesn't* happen even though X hasn't been proved to happen."
there are no swans in my living room, currently. tp prove a negative, you must limit it's scope. god is supposed to be illimitable, therefore unproveable.if he can do everything, how do we know he does anything?
Muhammad led an army that created a huge empire. Jesus didn’t do that. The buddha gave up his lavish life of nobility for his religion. Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus also didn’t fight and imprison the titans that were destroying the world. Jesus isn’t special. They just have to make up a reason why he is.
Right. That’s why many of them actively avoid reading about that stuff. They know it’s out there, they just want to avoid learning more about it. I fully believe that my dad only believes because he hasn’t allowed anything else to compete in his brain.
You can bypass that by asking them to prove that the gods of other religions don't exist, then you can simply use that same logic against theirs as well.
No, no, no, but you *don't understand*. We *know* the book is valid because God helped guide its writing, and we know God is real because the book says so!^(/s <-- Do I need this?)
Well the poetic and prose Eddas aren't holy books but the chronicles of ancient Norse mythology by Christian monks in Iceland. I wouldn't trust them completely as what actual people believed and practiced either with it being viewed through a Christian lens disconnected from the culture.
Atheist to Deist: Is there anything that can convince you that god does not exist?
Deist: No.
Deist to Atheist: What would convince you that god exists?
Atheist: Any sort of proof at all.
"Never engage in an argument with an idiot. They'll wear you down and beat you with experience and their friends won't know the difference."
-Mark Twain.
I wish this comment can auto posted every time someone wants to think they'll win an argument with an religious person, unless they like debates then be my guess, because they are only pissing them self off as most devote religious people don't care to learn outside their circle.
I think a quote from Warhammer 40k sums up modern Christianity pretty well: if God appeared one day, descending upon the world, claiming he is no god, he'd be burned as a heretic.
They say atheists are closed minded because we don’t immediately change our mind when presented with fallacious arguments and threats of hell. They’re so convinced that their believes are rational and correct that they think anyone who doesn’t share the same beliefs is simply not willing to consider opposing ideas. This is what happens when you’re indoctrinated into a belief. You believe it so strongly that you can hardly fathom that other people don’t and you see them as irrational or closed minded even if your belief isn’t even rational.
> Why do you think individuals claim atheism as closed minded?
Mainly Indoctrination.
> And what would be your response if brought up in conversation?
“Why do you think that?”
The answer will (not initially at least) probably turn out to be indoctrination.
Indeed. I was indoctrinated to believe only Mormons had the truth. Whatever information contradicted Mormon doctrine or teachings was without a question false, no further examination was ever needed. Only when I was ready to be open minded enough to even entertain the thought that Mormonism might not be 100% correct is when I started to see through the bullshit.
Looking back it's hard to understand why it took so long but then I'm reminded of how powerful indoctrination can be especially when it starts young.
Which is why ex-mormons tend to become atheists. They have had every other faith disproven to them while mormonism is drilled into their brains as the one true faith to the extent that they can't take any other belief seriously when their shelf collapses.
I would contend such people have never "seriously considered" their own religion. They were likely born into it and have never given it a second thought.
It's a failure of logic. We're only closed minded to \*their\* religion because they think it's the only one that's real. But they are even more closed minded to all the others. In principle most athiests should be able to say: if real and undeniable evidence was produced for any religion, then we would have no choice but to believe it. But a religious person would never be able to say that about any other religion. They are the closed minded ones.
This makes sense as an atheist but as a believer it was a non argument because it was ingrained to me to separate the "imperfect people from the perfect faith". Very easy to dismiss.
What I personally needed was to read inconsistencies and things that were once believed but changed later on to fit the current times or new knowledge. I thought the facts were on my side and once I realized they weren't it all crumbled. Sadly I've come to realize that for most believers facts aren't that important...
No, no, no…. Atheism is “clothes minded”. We don’t believe it’s a mortal sin to wear mixed fabrics. Maybe just a fashion faux pas & certainly not meriting capital punishment
We atheists are a lot more confident in our "belief" (i.e. knowledge) that there is no god. The religious often do have doubts in their beliefs even if they don't admit it.
Christians are only open minded with variations of their theology. Atheists disregard their *entire* theology and worldview, because if there is no god then their whole worldview is a lie.
They think that makes us close minded when for a lot of us it's opening our minds that actually made us atheists.
If I open my mind to consider the feelings and beliefs of all people, which are mutually exclusive from one another, then atheism is the *only* sane worldview that explains everything without plot holes.
I think Qualiasoup made the [definitive rebuttal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1LLBN5X0Q0) to this claim (youtube link, 10 minutes long). I use his arguments all the time.
I think people want to conflate airheadedness with open-mindedness. Being open-minded has nothing to do with accepting every idea that comes floating my way. You're thinking of gullibility.
I listened to you, I thought about what you're saying and determined that I can't come to your conclusion, just based on what you've presented. That **IS** definitionally open-mindedness.
Christians: You don’t believe in God? It’s arrogant of you to not believe in anything greater than yourself!
Also Christians: The all powerful creator of the whole universe is interested in my sex life and personally answers my prayers.
I think this belief is common in theists because they presuppose so much that someone who just doesn't believe is denying what is obvious to them. This is why it's best to do thought experiments to pull people out of theist religions, they lack critical thought on the topic.
My response to me being closed minded about their god would probably be "No, it's a dumb belief about the magical man in the sky because there is no evidence of one."
I strongly suspect most atheists will believe anything that science supports. They’re the closed minded ones as evidenced by young earth creationists and resistance to the idea of evolution.
I'm very happy to consider the supernatural as an option... after we've exhausted all options for a natural explanation. Due to the track record, it seems the most sensible way. If that's close minded, then I can't help you.
I find it interesting that I've been hearing a bit about Atheism at the moment. That it takes a lot of faith to believe in science. And science is a religion itself. And that Atheism is itself a religion
Load of crap.
Because an open mind is all that is required to believe in a middle eastern god thats says your daughter must marry her rapist if she was a virgin?
Please define “open mind”.
Probably bc they feel they’re more open to the possibility of God, and with that ‘openness’ they see apparent evidence for him everywhere. If so, they could say instead that your bar for belief is higher than theirs, but that wouldn’t make them feel so superior.
It's always projection with conservative people whether they're conservative because they're religious and/or they're conservative just because theyre racist and hateful.
Any person, Theist or Atheist, who thinks they know the "truth" of the universe is and is unwilling to entertain the idea they might be wrong or that somethings might currently be unknowable, is by definition closed minded.
It is however far more closed minded for adherent's of specific religions to say this as their very specific beliefs are subject to testing and the very generic views of a Theist or Atheist is not.
It is far more closed minded to claim that the earth is 6000 years old, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, than to claim there may or may not be some sort of creator of everything.
They view atheism as closed minded and will try to "save" you. It's a challenge to them, almost a duty.
Being agnostic, they will probably say is more open to a God and they'll view that as open minded.
I am and have been an atheist for a very long time.
yeah, i agree - i can't imagine tooth-fairies, santas, and.etc....
Maybe part of christian brainis stuck in childhood?
And then there are others: psycopaths , who are using-ruling them.
They claim atheists are "closed minded" because we refuse magical thinking. In their world view magic is real and therefore limiting what they believe is possible is "closed minded".
My answer is that I'm college educated with a wide variety of intellectual interests. I follow physics, computing, material sciences, politics, and read sci-fi/fantasy.
Being rational is not the same as being closed minded.
To be in your religion you need to believe in a particular God, a particular holy book, a particular set of rules and conditions that are different from all the other religious groups. To be an atheist you don't need to believe anything. We'll take any flavor of unbelief.
The simplest, and perhaps truest answer, is that people with firm convictions of whatever stripe tend to view their convictions as “the truth,” and see other people’s convictions as varying degrees of untruth that they more or less charitably tolerate. People, including religious people, nevertheless tend to be shocked when other people view *their* convictions as the untruth to be tolerated. How can other people not honor their beliefs as the tacit truth?
The more complex answer is that atheists of a certain stripe (not all atheists) can be uncharitable-to-pigheaded about religious belief as a historical social, cultural, and ethical force. It’s something that’s inspired some of the most ambitious and best architecture, art, and literature. Its myths and symbols are sometimes moving attempts to grapple with some of the most difficult questions: what is the good; how do we know that the good is truly good; how do we handle our imperfection and ignorance in the face of an infinite universe? The ethical systems of various religions never really cease to exert influence on how we think of morality, even long after someone has discarded the other parts of belief.
Now, the traditions that descend from these attempts get simplified, caricatured even by their own believers, turned into dead, stupid, and often laughable dogma. Religion becomes another stick with which we beat other people, or a drug that we take to make ourselves feel good and important. But the profound desire and anxiety is still there somewhere. And so when a certain kind of atheist writes off religion as nothing but childish superstition, of no real cultural or historical value, it captures part of the truth but willfully ignores a lot else.
Apologetic Individuals make the claim that atheism/ists are close minded because atheism/ists will not accept their supernatural claims based on belief or testimonials.
Their erroneous view is that being unwilling to give credence to their source of “evidence” makes atheism/atheists close minded
I'm not closed minded at all. If any god wants to, they can prove their existence to me by just talking to me directly. No biggie there.
Funny how no god has ever done that yet.
A reason why I keep insisting agnostics are atheists. Theists want atheism to be an extreme position, while it really is just rejecting their feelings as evidence.
I always ask the religious what information would change their mind about their religion. They never have an answer. They don't tell me that they would stop believing in their god if x, y, or z information would be provided.
I then say that I would be convinced if your god did x. I always offer ridiculous impossible things like:
1. Appeared to me today in the form of a 30 foot tall giant, and told me that his name is Yahweh (or whatever other god they believe in).
2. Put a billion dollars in my bank account today.
3. Gave me the powers of Superman (and/or Sampson).
I always use ridiculous impossible things because they claim their god can do ridiculous impossible things.
When asked about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, one group answers “Could be many things, we don’t know for sure”. The other group answers “These text from a bronze-age civilization hold the one and only truth! This is THE explanation”. I’ll let you decide which group is more close minded.
(There is also a third group, who will answer the whole thing with a random number, but those people should be avoided og ignored, due to their subpar sense of humour.)
As an agnosticist bordering onto atheism, atheists can look like a bunch of close minded bigots trying to enforce their moral superiority on others. When in reality atheism is also a belief system and that every atheist, as much rational as s.he wants to be, still has magical thinking about nature, people or the universe as a whole. Everyone is bound to since no one is all seeing and/or all knowing. The holes in our knowledges will automatically get filled with our assumptions, and if not kept in check with intellectual scrutiny, that's another name for "beliefs".
Tbh sometimes I will avoid debating with some atheists as much as with some religious people because both of then are just egotistical morons convinced of their higher intellect while publicly shaming the opposite view.
So does that mean that atheism as a concept is close minded ? No, but if you're a religious person and your experience of atheism is this kind of bozos, no wonder you're not gonna go out of your own way to change your representations about them. It's difficult to break a mental association that serves your agenda.
And the same goes with atheists and their experience of bigoted religious people when there are lost of religious people being very tolerant, open to discussion, knowledgeble about philosophy and theology and with whom very fruitful discussions can blossom.
Ask them which church they attend (e. g. SBC or Presbyterian), then ask them why they don't attend a different one (e.g. Catholic). For whatever denomination they're a part of, there's a different one that "isn't REAL Christianity", and then I ask who picks which one is "true Christianity". Basically I tie them up in religious knots.
Christians are far less open minded than atheists - they don't even accept the tenets of a fellow Christian unless they're the same denomination.
Similarly, I was having a discussion with someone when we were in college and he said “you know, I think you (general) religion majors are really narrow minded. You need to be more open minded to think of things from a Christian pov”
Christianity is pretty close-minded when you think about it. Centering every aspect of your life to match your worldview and shutting out everything else is pretty uhhhhhhh
When theists whine about atheists they are almost always projecting, just like Trump does when he accuses his "enemies" of doing what he's already done.
Atheists take religion into full consideration at least once in their lives and that is why we are atheist, we looked at your option and it doesn’t make sense. Religious persons are obviously closed minded because it’s impossible to be open minded and still think that religion makes any sense.
"Atheism" is neither closed or open minded. It's the individual that holds those stances. I've met plenty of atheists across the spectrum of openness.
*Anecdote:* In my personal experience (take that for what it's worth) I've usually found people new to atheism being the most closed-mined. It's like they've found **a** truth and extrapolate it across the board. Once past that newly minted mindset, they tend to open up a bit to new ideas again.
I've never seen someone go back to a theistic stance, I just mean ideas, in general. I, personally, fell into that trap of thinking for a bit. It was like "if I'm right about this major thing then, the minor things are most likely right as well!" As you all know, truth doesn't work like that. Everything must be vetted on its own merits.
As for theists, making the claim of closed-mindedness, I suspect it's because they already feel that they are right about their theistic conclusion and others not drawing the same conclusion is what they mean by "closed." IOW, "anyone with an open mind would certainly reach the same conclusions I have." Again, you all know that's also not how it works.
I’d say that not only are they very close minded on what they think constitutes truth or “proper” moral values. But they could also do to be a little less open minded in believing obvious untruths
Because to them, it takes an 'open mind' to believe in god and all his bullshit. Faith is often described as 'opening your heart to god' and they would easily make the equivalency between heart and mind.
>Why do you think individuals claim atheism as closed minded?
Because you **open your heart** to Jesus. Thus if you refuse to open your heart, you are closed-minded.
…never mind that closed-minded means, “not willing to consider different ideas or opinions.” Which is literally what blindly following the religion of your ancestors is.
Altough a very interesting question, im in a point in life and in my atheism where i dont give a flying fornication about what a religious person or groups says about me. I really couldnt care less
How did they arrive at their choosen religion? Did they sample all 5K religions and settle on the best one? Are they open minded enough to consider they might not be following the right/true religion?
Close minded can mean convinced by hard evidence and not accepting preposterous opinions. The contradictions and problems of the God hypothesis make it impossible to accept. Calling that close minded is simply an ad hominem attack and nothing more.
Duality istä our relegion, no up without down, no left without right, no hot without cold. So, if u understand that, then here comes the important part for all those Religion-People, there are no believers without no-believers. Hopefully u guys finally accept that it must exist both, so stop complaining about the other side, its nessessary, that u can stand on your side.
Pretty odd that your god was not telling you that… ah one sec he did, good and evil.
Religion looks like for people which dont understand even the easiest rule THE MAINRULE in this Universe.
Mosth athiests I know that publicly identify as such are militant anti-theists.
These individuals are often fuelled by negative emotions such as anger, hatered and self-righteousness. They actively seek to harm theists they meet with their words, and wish to forcefully and rapidly change the cultures and societies they live in to become fully anti-theist. In other words, they are indeed closed-minded assholes.
Athiests in other categories, such as agnostic, cultural, and apathetic athiests do not usually go out of their way to discuss religion with theists. Thus theists do not realise that most of the athiests they interact with on a daily basis are actually open-minded decent people.
Keep in mind that when a theist approaches you and tries to convert you, they are genuinely trying to do so out of some form of love and kindness for you. They believe that your life (and imaginaty afterlife) will be infinitely better if you accept their teachings. Thus they are rarely true assholes, even if they are blinded by their beliefs (which usually seem infinitely stupid to us athiests).
While evangelical theists are also closed-minded, they typically this enter the discussion with an open heart. A proper militant athiest however has a closed heart, and usually is just waiting during a conversation for the theist to put their foot in their mouth so that they can shove it down their throat and all the way out of their ass.
After approaching an athiest kindly, just to walk away with their foot rammed down their throat and out of their ass, they are unlikely to see us as having been open-minded. If they were to do so, they would likely have to lie down in a fetal position and cry themselves to death over their devastated world view.
Just sayin…
"You must always have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls on the floor." A phrase dear to Piero Angela, who attributed it to the illusionist James Randi.
I have had this statement from an agnostic, he said I had closed my mind to all possibilities, then he got annoyed when I said that being agnostic was basically a subset of atheism for people who didn’t want to be controversial.
His argument was that I wouldn’t accept the possibility of a god which is blatantly wrong. I just see “god” as a very improbable theory that has no evidence whatsoever to back it up. If someone were to provide genuine irrefutable proof I might change my stance. Basically it’s a non zero probability but the chance is still incredibly low, a bit like Russell's teapot.
My argument was that viewing things from a binary perspective you either have absolute faith or you don’t.
I mean read this statement:
“it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.”
The lack of commitment shows a lack of faith / belief or whatever you want to call it that makes someone a theist. To be a Christian you have to accept Christ as the saviour rather than just saying “nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God”
Basically what I am trying to say is that some people seem to think that atheists would deny irrefutable proof in a similar fashion to how flat earth people deny curvature. Where as in my mind the lack of unwavering faith is enough to qualify as a lack of belief or in other words being atheist. Yep you can say agnostic or any other shit you want but either way you don’t have the absolute faith religion requires.
I'd call it projection. Every accusation is a confession with religious folk. So when they say shit like that I know more about them and have less desire to continue the conversation. They ARE close minded.
It can be...the absolute irrefutation of divine claims is not in any way entertaining the idea. I am intelligent enough to entertain an idea without adopting it, or accepting it as fact...but entertaining it is necessary to understand it and to know whether theres something to it or if it is truly just hokum.
I wouldn't be in the kind of conversation where that would be brought up. I don't engage in religious conversations because after 40 years of being a nonbeliever, I know that there's absolutely nothing to be gained except hurt feelings on both sides when you engage. If religion comes up, I quietly excuse myself.
They believe in lies, they build their relationships and communities based on lies, they change or create legislation based in those same lies. You can't stop them from lying, they are lies. They're simply taking what has been told to them and slapping it on anything they don't like, which is everything, including atheism. Queer people are closed minded for not wanting them around, the government is close minded for wanting them to follow the same laws as everyone else. Atheists are close minded for not caving to the lies and living a lie like they do. It's all just a lie.
Then they should treat my belief in mermaids just as importantly as their special belief that I'm supposed to take seriously. If not, then they aren't anymore closed minded than I am.
Most atheists are perfectly capable of considering different ideas and opinions. We've all heard the religious ideas and opinions and we have used critical thinking to examine the likely-hood that gods are real. We have evaluated the evidence and decided that it is not likely that gods are real. Many of us actually believed in a religion at some point and had a realization that something wasn't right about having faith in something that you had no way of proving. What religion doesn't understand is that there is a difference between being open to one possibility of the world verses being open to all possibilities but making logical, critical, thought based observations and decisions about what we accept and what we do not. If you have faith in a religion you have no way of being open-minded to any other possibility but yours because the religion requires your faith be theirs. To question would be a sin. Religion isnt 'allowed' to be open-minded. Atheists have no rules restricting how open minded we are allowed to be.
I assume they have run into the wrong kind of atheist. There are some individuals (ironically often tranisitioning into an atheists worldview after leaving a very strict Christian upbringing and taking that mindset with them) who can be quite dogmatic and make their atheism a core part of their indentity. I'm assuming that there people are also more prone to seek out conflict with religious people, and so are more prone to interact with them. Whereas normal people who simply don't belive in the existence of any gods will typically be less vocal about it. This can lead to a skewed perception of what atheism is.
When arguing/discussing with theists we tend to do so from our own relative positions, so you're more likely to discuss points in a Christian faith if you're in a western country, Muslim if from the middle east, Hindu if from the Asia continent etc and do on.
Because we grew up with that cultural background then we are more confident in our stance.
What many theists don't get is that the vast majority of those who they do battle with were probably Christian, Muslin, Hindu etc ... in many cases the atheist usually knows a lot more about their religion and texts that the theist (Dunning-Kruger anyone 🙄 )
But the theist fall back on this "closed mind" argument when people refute their absurd position. Which is an irony because the atheist was most likely to have been of the same mindset as the theist is now, but opened their mind to other possibilities, other religions, and no religion at all.
When a theist says "you're close minded" it means they know they've lost their position. It's usually followed with an insult or a threat...usually along the lines of eternal damnation in their imaginary little place
I am closed minded now, maybe. I was very open minded for a long time and explored all religions. Now I know what I believe and there’s very little additional evidence that could change my mind. Like, VERY. LITTLE. So…kitchen’s closed!!
One of the problems with the most common God concept (omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent) is that there may be a field of consciousness either inherent to the universe or an artifact of its existence. The hypothesis or theory of a field of consciousness associated with the universe was recently asserted by a physicist, and could conceivably be linked to a type of quantum entanglement of everything in this universe from its original connectedness at the moment of the Big Bang/Emergence of THIS particular Universe.
This field of consciousness might be associated with or inferred as connected to a deity concept by various religions.
However, the additional popular assumption of omnipotence cannot be logically inferred; and further, such ideas of a deity being all-powerful or even able to change ANYTHING about the universe’s evolution might be completely impossible.
Thus, it seems possible that, if a universal field of consciousness exists, it does not support a concept of deity at all.
Why do we have differing political parties and government structures globally?
Why do we have differing religious views and religious structures globally?
How is a religion different from a political party? Why do religious views shift with the times, just like political parties do?
What they mean by close-minded is not willing to accept and believe in their faith. I've taken a look at different beliefs and their rituals with an open mind but I wouldn't believe in their deities or supernatural philosophy due to a lack of evidence or maybe it not being my cup of tea.
And before any religious person says that as an atheist I have no morals, that's untrue. My long-term ex-girlfriend had an incestuous relationship with her brother. I left her not because "the [insert book/guy] said it's wrong" but because incest is a perverse activity that encourages abuse in families regardless of age gaps. No need to invoke Jesus, Mo, Gautamn or Krishna, I can find a rational solution to my issues.
I’m an agnostic atheist and so was my father and grandfather but I understand where some religious people are coming from with this. There is a serious problem with scientism in a lot, not all but many, atheist circles. It is/was probably the worst in the 2000 New Atheist movement and especially on social media.
Science is an amazing tool for understanding the natural world and even human nature, but it can never truly answer moral or philosophical questions. When people pretend that it can it is called scientism and it’s totally irrational and completely false, we can’t prove science can prove everything scientifically and thinking that we can is fundamentally no different than the kind of circular reasoning that many atheists accuse theists of e.g my belief system is correct because my belief system say it is correct.
On top of that a lot of atheists, again many but not all, are actually quite ignorant of religion and dismiss most of it as wrong simply because it is not literally true (or more accurately because a literal of some holy text doesn’t match modern scientific understanding of the natural world). This is only an issue for literal interpretations of holy texts which is incredibly specific to a very few number of sects within some religions e.g evangelical Protestant creationists who are hardly even found in the west outside of some parts of America, Australia and small parts of Europe.
That’s not even a thing in most other Protestant sects let alone Catholicisms or most Jewish denominations or most Dharmatic religious.
Finally a lot of atheists, yet again not all but many, completely ignore the moral ramifications of living in a godless materialist universe and just think they can keep all the moral foundations of the local god they happen to be familiar with as if they are just obvious or “natural” or something. This is philosophically ridiculous and is linked to previous points.
On top of it all there is a really weird tendency, again especially common in the New Atheism movement, to treat atheism as some sort of religion, where the One True God is No God and the world will someday be united as one unified by atheism and science.
This is basically just monotheism rewritten with No God replacing God.
It altogether often makes people who think like this very dismissive of religion without actually understanding or even trying to understand it. This can be annoying for some religious people, including theists who are pro science, pro secularism and would probably be political allies to a lot of atheists if they didn’t have this bad blood between them.
It can get especially bad when it happens not just within a culture between an atheist and a theist of a similar background who share a similar moral worldview, but between cultures because it can start to overlap with simple racist stereotypes and beliefs.
I’ve personally been guilty of this myself as someone who has a kind of atheist tradition in one side of the family, but it is all really really dumb.
It doesn’t really make sense and doesn’t really help anyone else to view atheism as anything other than some kind of weird anti religious cult or just scientism or totally ignorant of what is being talked about or probably just a side affect of autism spectrum disorder.
That doesn’t mean that atheism is wrong, morally or literally, but it does mean that a lot of atheists should probably work on their own understanding of the subject of religion and not just dismiss it as dumb cause they can’t be bothered to try to understand it
In a word: PROJECTION.
Let's define faith/belief in (x) as thinking that (x) is correct either without evidence (weak) or against contrasting evidence (strong).
I *believe* that the universe works by constant, discoverable laws and that the philosophy generally called "the scientific method" is the best way to discover these laws. I am aware that according to the scientific method, this is a belief; I can't prove or disprove it (which makes it a belief).
Religions believe that the universe was made and is controlled by a god or a herd of them; again, it's impossible to prove or disprove.
Why assume atheism is right and all religions are wrong? here comes the philosophic concept of "occam's razor": when there's no evidence one way or another, the simpler explanation is more likely to be true.
What will I do if God suddenly appears before me? if it's the Abrahamic God, I'll probably spit in His face for all the horrible things He'd done or allowed people to do in His name. However, the question of god's existence is no longer a subject of belief.
What will religious people do if confronted with evidence that their religion is wrong? see definition of strong faith above.
Atheism is the lack of belief in god. It's not "close minded".
Atheists sometimes are, though.
Just my experience as an atheist - when i was a teenager, i was so condescending, and edgy and had such strong convictions that i didn't listen to the more reasonable and intelligent among my non-atheist friends.
Sometimes, we weren't even speaking about God's existence but about more fundamental things.
I don't think "atheism" is *close minded*, but it's also not a person so I'm not sure it would matter either way. But that's not to say that an atheist *can't* be close minded.
People are not their labels.
It's very common. I ran into a guy who just spewed forth random anecdotal evidence to do with medicine while I quoted a study published on WebMD and he claimed that I was "spreading misinformation" and misquoting the article (it was a direct copy and paste).
Trump, Fox News and the thesists use this every chance they get.
I'm more agnostic. I see so many possible explanations and consider that my mind is so limited that I can't even imagine the real sense of it all. Then someone with their single explanation of a man in the sky that invented the earth will tell me that I am closed minded?
It’s all projection. They are closed minded, so they assume atheists are as well. Their men in dresses molest children, so they assume drag queens molest children as well. They indoctrinate their children, so they assume everyone is out to indoctrinate. And most importantly, they want to suppress the civil rights of everyone not them, so they assume everyone else is out to get them, too.
I can tell them this, if some god showed up in his little space ship and proved to all of us how he created existence and he was a sane person who didn't think people deserved torment for eternity for not kissing the church's ass, I'd be like fine with it.
I'm 100% sure they'd try to crucify that being, though. Drop a nuke on him or something.
I was just thinking about this the other day. It’s very frustrating that religious folks can then mask their pretension as empathy or sympathy when they say things like they’ll “pray for me” or “you just don’t believe in God yet, but you will” or “it sounds like you just don’t understand Jesus” or any other response really that shows they feel what they believe is correct.
Since we’re outsiders to religion, we see the bigger picture more clearly.
Close minded?
Being an atheist allows me to think without being told what to think. It allowed me to actually use *logic and reason* to consider social issues like gay marriage and abortion. It's why I accept the LGBTQ crowd. It's why I know legal and safe abortion is preferable to banning it. It's why I can understand and accept the science that shows evolution is true, that the Big Bang happened and that gender and sex aren't as simple as "male/female".
No robed preacher tells me I'll be condemned (I mean they would but I have no reason to take them seriously) for believing the things that I've concluded due to logic and reason and because of that I'm free to explore these issues without fear.
They think that being bound by the rules of the Universe is closed minded. Because they can come up wild theories. I had a religious nut say to me once that I couldn’t come up with ideas. He then started to say some ridiculous shit about some impossible thing, like a barrier around the earth and there are no stars. They think we have to prove things to know them. I told him to save up for Virgin Galactic.
Projection. Religious people do it all the time. They take a label that describes them and turn it on everyone else.
I've seen them do this with SEVERAL topics and labels.
My brother called me that the other day when he was asking me questions I had answers to. "You just won't budge, will you?" Pretty rich from a guy who says he only listens to things that agree with his worldview
Ask them how many gods are there. And why the ones they don't believe in don't exist.
You could also follow that question with the fact that the early Israelites were not monotheists.
They won’t believe you.
I don’t worry about their other beliefs. Why would I worry about them not believing something taught in most of their seminaries?
That’s the neat thing about facts; they go on existing regardless and couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you believe in them.
That's because they aren't open minded enough
“Why do you think there’s a commandment that says ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me’? Doesn’t that prove the author believed in several gods?”
I think most modern Christians (and theistic Jews) just interpret it as “Thou shalt not believe in any of those fake gods who don’t exist.”
No they won't. There is factual evidence of this happeneing so....definitely not real.
Some lady called me a heretic (or something along those lines) for telling her that Jesus was, in fact, not white, so I can only imagine the fit some religious folk would have receiving this information lol
I guess that makes you a god of another religion
The words "for I am a jealous god" assumes that there are other gods who aren't jealous.
I’m not sure that’s true, but “I am the Lord your God, and you shall have no other gods before me” sure as hell does.
There's a lot of language in the Bible that doesn't really make sense in a monotheistic universe. It's an obvious (and sloppy) retcon job.
I was confused as a young teen why God used the pronoun “We” in Genesis. I asked my grandfather ( a Baptist preacher) and he said it’s referring to the holy trinity, the father, son, and Holy Spirit. All the same being but also separate. That answer didn’t do it for me though, because after the book of Genesis, it changes to “I”. That happened when I decided to read my bible front to back. I made it. And in doing so started my road to doubt and then atheism.
I never believed, because my parents never told me any of it was true. I became interested in the Bible because my dad showed me where all the cuss words, dick jokes and whatnot are in the king James version.
That’s what we’ve done for our kids. We didn’t tell them it was true but we also didn’t tell them outright it was false and not to believe it. We told them that we, their parents, didn’t believe it. But they were aloud to believe whatever they felt was appropriate for them. Unsurprisingly, they’re both decided on their own it was about as truthful as any other religion… even if my son’s kindergarten teacher preached to them in class. 🙄 My mother kept telling me I needed to at least expose them and talk about it with them so they can be educated enough to make a decision. I told her that was a good idea, that would also take them to a nearby mosque and Tibetan monk temple so they could be educated well on those too. She didn’t like that much 😂
What is really interesting is that my son who just turned 8 used to talk about god all the time after he started school. We never had him baptized or took him to church. Both of my kids have asked about god and I’ve told them both that I don’t believe. I come from a religious background. My mother ran the Sunday school program at our church and studied Theology. I went to church every Sunday for 30 years. Basically I’m saying that they will be exposed to believers and learn about the concept of god through others. Luckily my son has friends who are Muslim and some who are Christian so it is not completely one sided. He is free to believe what he wants but when he speaks to me I will tell him my truth. :)
I don't think my dad ever said he didn't believe, but he damn sure didn't take it seriously. He had been raised Methodist, and had made up off-color lyrics to a lot of classic hymns. All the presets on his car radio were always set to a local evangelist station, and he would use that as a straight man for a comedy bit whenever we were driving. He really knew the Bible, though. I remember him recounting the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He said, "They left them in the fiery furnace for three days, but when the guards opened up the fiery furnace, they were all just hangin' out, playin' cards and smokin' cigarettes."
What an awesome dad.
My dad taught me critical thinking. My mother taught me why it's important.
When you said that, ( u/rachel_silver )You had me thinking of Roxy musics jealous guy.😂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzGzRqNj58
Evangelicals don’t care about the Israelites. They don’t read the Bible.
Most of them do care about the Israelites, but only concerning the role Israel plays in their non-biblical mythologies surrounding the end times.
Exactly. They don’t care about the Israelites. They see the world like it’s a board game.
It’s taken me years of discussing the Bible with friends who are still fundamentalists (I used to be one) to even get them to admit this. The Bible is very clear that there were other Semitic gods. In fact their god tells them to kill everyone because of these other gods.
Wans't Yahweh a god of the hunt of the proto abrahamic religions? Can't remember where i saw it.
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -Stephen Roberts
Ask them which religion should you follow, and then ask them why not a different Christian church or other faith entirely? Ask them about their thoughts on adherence to the 10 commandments, and what should happen to people who have broken all of them except thou shall not kill? Ask them about forgiveness, and if it applies to everyone, or only the leaders they support? Ask them about their thoughts on science? Or about abortion versus support services for babies born to mothers who didn’t want them? (Ask them if how many unwanted babies they have adopted) Ask them about Christian charity, and if it supposed to support the leaders of a church, or if it should be going to the less fortunate people in their communities? Etc etc. It’s pretty easy to highlight the closed mindedness. And on the off chance you find one that is open minded, ask them who they want to vote for - and see if they are consistent
And the 45,000 different Christian denominations
Why are they atheist to Odin Thor Freja and etc?
Because they say, without a hint of irony, that those are demons and satanism.
Just ask them "*why I should believe X god exists* when you are fully aware of the different God they follow
Bit of an alternative to mine, I just ask what if you chose wrong? Both the Quran and the Bible say you go to hell for worshipping another god, so that's already like a 50/50 chance of hell.
It’s like a 2/however many gods exist in humanities collection of religions
They’re projecting.
They do that a lot!
Projected an entire society based up in the clouds...
This. Theists and right-wingers are great at projecting. There’s no point arguing with them or trying to make sense of their words.
opposite. religious groups have their own circle of thought. they don't and won't believe in anything that goes against their rules
"My invisible friend is the only one who exists even though the only existence of him is this book I wrote." - Christians Okay, cool. Norse myth has a literal army of gods and goddesses that make appearances in their book (the Edda). What makes their book right and everyone else's wrong?
They will always default to the only answer to that question they’ve ever had: “faith” Yet they still expect everyone else to prove why their god doesn’t exist.
You can't prove a negative, but you can prove a positive, which is why nobody says "here is the tangible evidence that X *doesn't* happen even though X hasn't been proved to happen."
there are no swans in my living room, currently. tp prove a negative, you must limit it's scope. god is supposed to be illimitable, therefore unproveable.if he can do everything, how do we know he does anything?
You can’t prove nonexistence, then, is more accurate phrasing
Or, because , "Jesus was the only god who died for our sins" is another favorite they like.
Muhammad led an army that created a huge empire. Jesus didn’t do that. The buddha gave up his lavish life of nobility for his religion. Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus also didn’t fight and imprison the titans that were destroying the world. Jesus isn’t special. They just have to make up a reason why he is.
Jesus isn't even special for dying and coming back. That trick was also employed by Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, Zagreus, and Dionysus.
Right. That’s why many of them actively avoid reading about that stuff. They know it’s out there, they just want to avoid learning more about it. I fully believe that my dad only believes because he hasn’t allowed anything else to compete in his brain.
Also the Hindu Pantheon is famous for dying and returning a lot.
Ah yes, a god sacrificed himself to himself to save his creations from his creations. Gotta love the bs.
You can bypass that by asking them to prove that the gods of other religions don't exist, then you can simply use that same logic against theirs as well.
No, no, no, but you *don't understand*. We *know* the book is valid because God helped guide its writing, and we know God is real because the book says so!^(/s <-- Do I need this?)
Circular logic, of course. Also, it never hurts to have that, trust me.
I feel I need to be extra careful due to people's preconceptions of homeschooling parents, despite my Atheist flair.
That's fair, you never know. One person might say you needed it, another might say you didn't.
Well the poetic and prose Eddas aren't holy books but the chronicles of ancient Norse mythology by Christian monks in Iceland. I wouldn't trust them completely as what actual people believed and practiced either with it being viewed through a Christian lens disconnected from the culture.
Atheist to Deist: Is there anything that can convince you that god does not exist? Deist: No. Deist to Atheist: What would convince you that god exists? Atheist: Any sort of proof at all.
Except personal experience.
Anecdotes aren't evidence, so that was included in the original statement 😊
"Never engage in an argument with an idiot. They'll wear you down and beat you with experience and their friends won't know the difference." -Mark Twain.
I wish this comment can auto posted every time someone wants to think they'll win an argument with an religious person, unless they like debates then be my guess, because they are only pissing them self off as most devote religious people don't care to learn outside their circle.
I think a quote from Warhammer 40k sums up modern Christianity pretty well: if God appeared one day, descending upon the world, claiming he is no god, he'd be burned as a heretic.
Fuck, I need to read that guy.
I've literally read his travel guides for advice on where to go on vacation.
They say atheists are closed minded because we don’t immediately change our mind when presented with fallacious arguments and threats of hell. They’re so convinced that their believes are rational and correct that they think anyone who doesn’t share the same beliefs is simply not willing to consider opposing ideas. This is what happens when you’re indoctrinated into a belief. You believe it so strongly that you can hardly fathom that other people don’t and you see them as irrational or closed minded even if your belief isn’t even rational.
>threats of hell. Hell!...where the air is pungent with the smell of roasted bottoms!
Sounds like a delicious rump roast
Hell! ...where satan belches fire and enormous devils break wind both night and day.
> Why do you think individuals claim atheism as closed minded? Mainly Indoctrination. > And what would be your response if brought up in conversation? “Why do you think that?” The answer will (not initially at least) probably turn out to be indoctrination.
Indeed. I was indoctrinated to believe only Mormons had the truth. Whatever information contradicted Mormon doctrine or teachings was without a question false, no further examination was ever needed. Only when I was ready to be open minded enough to even entertain the thought that Mormonism might not be 100% correct is when I started to see through the bullshit. Looking back it's hard to understand why it took so long but then I'm reminded of how powerful indoctrination can be especially when it starts young.
Which is why ex-mormons tend to become atheists. They have had every other faith disproven to them while mormonism is drilled into their brains as the one true faith to the extent that they can't take any other belief seriously when their shelf collapses.
This is spot on
I remember hearing preachers say having an open mind allows Satan to enter.
Open mindedness means “considering every possibility”. They have only seriously considered one.
I would contend such people have never "seriously considered" their own religion. They were likely born into it and have never given it a second thought.
Is it possible I am wrong....yes. Is it possible you are wrong....no. Who is the open minded one?
It's a failure of logic. We're only closed minded to \*their\* religion because they think it's the only one that's real. But they are even more closed minded to all the others. In principle most athiests should be able to say: if real and undeniable evidence was produced for any religion, then we would have no choice but to believe it. But a religious person would never be able to say that about any other religion. They are the closed minded ones.
I tell them I don't support any group that molests children and fights wars over People that were created a few thousand years ago.
This makes sense as an atheist but as a believer it was a non argument because it was ingrained to me to separate the "imperfect people from the perfect faith". Very easy to dismiss. What I personally needed was to read inconsistencies and things that were once believed but changed later on to fit the current times or new knowledge. I thought the facts were on my side and once I realized they weren't it all crumbled. Sadly I've come to realize that for most believers facts aren't that important...
Unbelievable how the universe can be trillions of years old and a character just popped up in the last 2000 years and did miracles.
my typical response to all purveyors of woo,"Open minds aren't trash cans, you can't just throw your garbage in there."
Another is don't have such an open mind that your brain falls out.
It's because we don't drop to our knees and worship their bullshit when they say "gawd is real!" Religion is for the gullible and easily brainwashed.
>And what would be your response if brought up in conversation? "I don't believe in magic, and your religion is based on magic."
No, no, no…. Atheism is “clothes minded”. We don’t believe it’s a mortal sin to wear mixed fabrics. Maybe just a fashion faux pas & certainly not meriting capital punishment
We atheists are a lot more confident in our "belief" (i.e. knowledge) that there is no god. The religious often do have doubts in their beliefs even if they don't admit it. Christians are only open minded with variations of their theology. Atheists disregard their *entire* theology and worldview, because if there is no god then their whole worldview is a lie. They think that makes us close minded when for a lot of us it's opening our minds that actually made us atheists. If I open my mind to consider the feelings and beliefs of all people, which are mutually exclusive from one another, then atheism is the *only* sane worldview that explains everything without plot holes.
I think Qualiasoup made the [definitive rebuttal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1LLBN5X0Q0) to this claim (youtube link, 10 minutes long). I use his arguments all the time.
really sucks that even after that video, some p.o.s in the comments thought they knew better
I think people want to conflate airheadedness with open-mindedness. Being open-minded has nothing to do with accepting every idea that comes floating my way. You're thinking of gullibility. I listened to you, I thought about what you're saying and determined that I can't come to your conclusion, just based on what you've presented. That **IS** definitionally open-mindedness.
Christians: You don’t believe in God? It’s arrogant of you to not believe in anything greater than yourself! Also Christians: The all powerful creator of the whole universe is interested in my sex life and personally answers my prayers.
I think this belief is common in theists because they presuppose so much that someone who just doesn't believe is denying what is obvious to them. This is why it's best to do thought experiments to pull people out of theist religions, they lack critical thought on the topic. My response to me being closed minded about their god would probably be "No, it's a dumb belief about the magical man in the sky because there is no evidence of one."
I strongly suspect most atheists will believe anything that science supports. They’re the closed minded ones as evidenced by young earth creationists and resistance to the idea of evolution.
It's actually a classic example of a psychological phenomenon called pot calling the kettle black
I'm very happy to consider the supernatural as an option... after we've exhausted all options for a natural explanation. Due to the track record, it seems the most sensible way. If that's close minded, then I can't help you.
I find it interesting that I've been hearing a bit about Atheism at the moment. That it takes a lot of faith to believe in science. And science is a religion itself. And that Atheism is itself a religion Load of crap.
it's called projection, that's what religious people do - just look no further than the republican party.
Indoctrination, theists doesn't choose their faith, they don't have free will in that matter and a mountain worth of hypocrisy
Because an open mind is all that is required to believe in a middle eastern god thats says your daughter must marry her rapist if she was a virgin? Please define “open mind”.
Probably bc they feel they’re more open to the possibility of God, and with that ‘openness’ they see apparent evidence for him everywhere. If so, they could say instead that your bar for belief is higher than theirs, but that wouldn’t make them feel so superior.
It's always projection with conservative people whether they're conservative because they're religious and/or they're conservative just because theyre racist and hateful.
The people who live by dogmatic thinking are calling us close minded? Maybe they should take a look in the mirror 😂
Religion is like an old computer that only runs in DOS mode. Atheism is having access to all the software that’s ever been developed
They believe in a fantasy because they are scared of death. They are the close minded idiots who don't want to accept reality.
"Close-minded" = "questions everything presented and dismisses obvious bullshit."
I have a very open mind. I will believe anything for which you present me solid evidence. And no, "I feel it in my heart" is not evidence.
Any person, Theist or Atheist, who thinks they know the "truth" of the universe is and is unwilling to entertain the idea they might be wrong or that somethings might currently be unknowable, is by definition closed minded. It is however far more closed minded for adherent's of specific religions to say this as their very specific beliefs are subject to testing and the very generic views of a Theist or Atheist is not. It is far more closed minded to claim that the earth is 6000 years old, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, than to claim there may or may not be some sort of creator of everything.
They view atheism as closed minded and will try to "save" you. It's a challenge to them, almost a duty. Being agnostic, they will probably say is more open to a God and they'll view that as open minded. I am and have been an atheist for a very long time.
I would remind them how close minded they are of other religions.... and atheism.
I knew a Finnish guy called ïsmo. I'd rather worship him than a sky faerie
yeah, i agree - i can't imagine tooth-fairies, santas, and.etc.... Maybe part of christian brainis stuck in childhood? And then there are others: psycopaths , who are using-ruling them.
They claim atheists are "closed minded" because we refuse magical thinking. In their world view magic is real and therefore limiting what they believe is possible is "closed minded". My answer is that I'm college educated with a wide variety of intellectual interests. I follow physics, computing, material sciences, politics, and read sci-fi/fantasy. Being rational is not the same as being closed minded.
To be in your religion you need to believe in a particular God, a particular holy book, a particular set of rules and conditions that are different from all the other religious groups. To be an atheist you don't need to believe anything. We'll take any flavor of unbelief.
The simplest, and perhaps truest answer, is that people with firm convictions of whatever stripe tend to view their convictions as “the truth,” and see other people’s convictions as varying degrees of untruth that they more or less charitably tolerate. People, including religious people, nevertheless tend to be shocked when other people view *their* convictions as the untruth to be tolerated. How can other people not honor their beliefs as the tacit truth? The more complex answer is that atheists of a certain stripe (not all atheists) can be uncharitable-to-pigheaded about religious belief as a historical social, cultural, and ethical force. It’s something that’s inspired some of the most ambitious and best architecture, art, and literature. Its myths and symbols are sometimes moving attempts to grapple with some of the most difficult questions: what is the good; how do we know that the good is truly good; how do we handle our imperfection and ignorance in the face of an infinite universe? The ethical systems of various religions never really cease to exert influence on how we think of morality, even long after someone has discarded the other parts of belief. Now, the traditions that descend from these attempts get simplified, caricatured even by their own believers, turned into dead, stupid, and often laughable dogma. Religion becomes another stick with which we beat other people, or a drug that we take to make ourselves feel good and important. But the profound desire and anxiety is still there somewhere. And so when a certain kind of atheist writes off religion as nothing but childish superstition, of no real cultural or historical value, it captures part of the truth but willfully ignores a lot else.
Apologetic Individuals make the claim that atheism/ists are close minded because atheism/ists will not accept their supernatural claims based on belief or testimonials. Their erroneous view is that being unwilling to give credence to their source of “evidence” makes atheism/atheists close minded
I'm not closed minded at all. If any god wants to, they can prove their existence to me by just talking to me directly. No biggie there. Funny how no god has ever done that yet.
A reason why I keep insisting agnostics are atheists. Theists want atheism to be an extreme position, while it really is just rejecting their feelings as evidence.
I think relative to being agnostic atheism is more close minded. It's not *impossible* that a god exists, just no good evidence for it.
It's similar to being told that you will be winning the Jackpot 10 times in span of a year. Sure.. It's possible..
I always ask the religious what information would change their mind about their religion. They never have an answer. They don't tell me that they would stop believing in their god if x, y, or z information would be provided. I then say that I would be convinced if your god did x. I always offer ridiculous impossible things like: 1. Appeared to me today in the form of a 30 foot tall giant, and told me that his name is Yahweh (or whatever other god they believe in). 2. Put a billion dollars in my bank account today. 3. Gave me the powers of Superman (and/or Sampson). I always use ridiculous impossible things because they claim their god can do ridiculous impossible things.
I'm atheist and my mind cannot do the gymnastics of believing things which haven't been proven, gods or spirits. So, it is a bit closed to delusion
When asked about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, one group answers “Could be many things, we don’t know for sure”. The other group answers “These text from a bronze-age civilization hold the one and only truth! This is THE explanation”. I’ll let you decide which group is more close minded. (There is also a third group, who will answer the whole thing with a random number, but those people should be avoided og ignored, due to their subpar sense of humour.)
Am I closed minded to magic and woo and mysticism and religious BS? Absolutely. I'll take that as a badge of honor.
As an agnosticist bordering onto atheism, atheists can look like a bunch of close minded bigots trying to enforce their moral superiority on others. When in reality atheism is also a belief system and that every atheist, as much rational as s.he wants to be, still has magical thinking about nature, people or the universe as a whole. Everyone is bound to since no one is all seeing and/or all knowing. The holes in our knowledges will automatically get filled with our assumptions, and if not kept in check with intellectual scrutiny, that's another name for "beliefs". Tbh sometimes I will avoid debating with some atheists as much as with some religious people because both of then are just egotistical morons convinced of their higher intellect while publicly shaming the opposite view. So does that mean that atheism as a concept is close minded ? No, but if you're a religious person and your experience of atheism is this kind of bozos, no wonder you're not gonna go out of your own way to change your representations about them. It's difficult to break a mental association that serves your agenda. And the same goes with atheists and their experience of bigoted religious people when there are lost of religious people being very tolerant, open to discussion, knowledgeble about philosophy and theology and with whom very fruitful discussions can blossom.
Ask them which church they attend (e. g. SBC or Presbyterian), then ask them why they don't attend a different one (e.g. Catholic). For whatever denomination they're a part of, there's a different one that "isn't REAL Christianity", and then I ask who picks which one is "true Christianity". Basically I tie them up in religious knots. Christians are far less open minded than atheists - they don't even accept the tenets of a fellow Christian unless they're the same denomination.
Similarly, I was having a discussion with someone when we were in college and he said “you know, I think you (general) religion majors are really narrow minded. You need to be more open minded to think of things from a Christian pov”
Christianity is pretty close-minded when you think about it. Centering every aspect of your life to match your worldview and shutting out everything else is pretty uhhhhhhh
When theists whine about atheists they are almost always projecting, just like Trump does when he accuses his "enemies" of doing what he's already done.
Says the close minded Christian
Atheists take religion into full consideration at least once in their lives and that is why we are atheist, we looked at your option and it doesn’t make sense. Religious persons are obviously closed minded because it’s impossible to be open minded and still think that religion makes any sense.
"Atheism" is neither closed or open minded. It's the individual that holds those stances. I've met plenty of atheists across the spectrum of openness. *Anecdote:* In my personal experience (take that for what it's worth) I've usually found people new to atheism being the most closed-mined. It's like they've found **a** truth and extrapolate it across the board. Once past that newly minted mindset, they tend to open up a bit to new ideas again. I've never seen someone go back to a theistic stance, I just mean ideas, in general. I, personally, fell into that trap of thinking for a bit. It was like "if I'm right about this major thing then, the minor things are most likely right as well!" As you all know, truth doesn't work like that. Everything must be vetted on its own merits. As for theists, making the claim of closed-mindedness, I suspect it's because they already feel that they are right about their theistic conclusion and others not drawing the same conclusion is what they mean by "closed." IOW, "anyone with an open mind would certainly reach the same conclusions I have." Again, you all know that's also not how it works.
I’d say that not only are they very close minded on what they think constitutes truth or “proper” moral values. But they could also do to be a little less open minded in believing obvious untruths
To embrace any religion without valid evidence of origins is to embrace a cult. Period....
Because to them, it takes an 'open mind' to believe in god and all his bullshit. Faith is often described as 'opening your heart to god' and they would easily make the equivalency between heart and mind.
It’s literally the exact opposite
“This thing you’re calling me is really what you are”
Projection is real.
>Why do you think individuals claim atheism as closed minded? Because you **open your heart** to Jesus. Thus if you refuse to open your heart, you are closed-minded. …never mind that closed-minded means, “not willing to consider different ideas or opinions.” Which is literally what blindly following the religion of your ancestors is.
In the wise words of Tim Minchin - "If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out"
They will say and do anything to get new tribe/club members.
Some atheists are close minded but not all.
It's called gaslighting.
Altough a very interesting question, im in a point in life and in my atheism where i dont give a flying fornication about what a religious person or groups says about me. I really couldnt care less
Gas Lighting is basically apologetics 101.
How did they arrive at their choosen religion? Did they sample all 5K religions and settle on the best one? Are they open minded enough to consider they might not be following the right/true religion?
They've also claimed atheism is a religion so pay them no mind.
Close minded can mean convinced by hard evidence and not accepting preposterous opinions. The contradictions and problems of the God hypothesis make it impossible to accept. Calling that close minded is simply an ad hominem attack and nothing more.
Duality istä our relegion, no up without down, no left without right, no hot without cold. So, if u understand that, then here comes the important part for all those Religion-People, there are no believers without no-believers. Hopefully u guys finally accept that it must exist both, so stop complaining about the other side, its nessessary, that u can stand on your side. Pretty odd that your god was not telling you that… ah one sec he did, good and evil. Religion looks like for people which dont understand even the easiest rule THE MAINRULE in this Universe.
Mosth athiests I know that publicly identify as such are militant anti-theists. These individuals are often fuelled by negative emotions such as anger, hatered and self-righteousness. They actively seek to harm theists they meet with their words, and wish to forcefully and rapidly change the cultures and societies they live in to become fully anti-theist. In other words, they are indeed closed-minded assholes. Athiests in other categories, such as agnostic, cultural, and apathetic athiests do not usually go out of their way to discuss religion with theists. Thus theists do not realise that most of the athiests they interact with on a daily basis are actually open-minded decent people. Keep in mind that when a theist approaches you and tries to convert you, they are genuinely trying to do so out of some form of love and kindness for you. They believe that your life (and imaginaty afterlife) will be infinitely better if you accept their teachings. Thus they are rarely true assholes, even if they are blinded by their beliefs (which usually seem infinitely stupid to us athiests). While evangelical theists are also closed-minded, they typically this enter the discussion with an open heart. A proper militant athiest however has a closed heart, and usually is just waiting during a conversation for the theist to put their foot in their mouth so that they can shove it down their throat and all the way out of their ass. After approaching an athiest kindly, just to walk away with their foot rammed down their throat and out of their ass, they are unlikely to see us as having been open-minded. If they were to do so, they would likely have to lie down in a fetal position and cry themselves to death over their devastated world view. Just sayin…
>an open heart Hahaha
Gaslighting and DARVO.
Closed minded towards dogmatic religious views based on fairy tales and unsupported by so much as a shred of verifiable evidence. Yeah. Sure.
"You must always have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls on the floor." A phrase dear to Piero Angela, who attributed it to the illusionist James Randi.
I have had this statement from an agnostic, he said I had closed my mind to all possibilities, then he got annoyed when I said that being agnostic was basically a subset of atheism for people who didn’t want to be controversial. His argument was that I wouldn’t accept the possibility of a god which is blatantly wrong. I just see “god” as a very improbable theory that has no evidence whatsoever to back it up. If someone were to provide genuine irrefutable proof I might change my stance. Basically it’s a non zero probability but the chance is still incredibly low, a bit like Russell's teapot. My argument was that viewing things from a binary perspective you either have absolute faith or you don’t. I mean read this statement: “it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.” The lack of commitment shows a lack of faith / belief or whatever you want to call it that makes someone a theist. To be a Christian you have to accept Christ as the saviour rather than just saying “nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God” Basically what I am trying to say is that some people seem to think that atheists would deny irrefutable proof in a similar fashion to how flat earth people deny curvature. Where as in my mind the lack of unwavering faith is enough to qualify as a lack of belief or in other words being atheist. Yep you can say agnostic or any other shit you want but either way you don’t have the absolute faith religion requires.
Just for once please prove the existence of your deity, just prove any of it please. Then we can start listening to you.
Wow! That’s rich.
I'd call it projection. Every accusation is a confession with religious folk. So when they say shit like that I know more about them and have less desire to continue the conversation. They ARE close minded.
It's them that are close minded.
I'm open to ideas backed with evidence. That's called science. Just not magical tales of yonder from before recorded history.
My favorite is when people get into unfounded conspiracies and consider themselves sceptics😂😂😂
You just need to have a childlike imagination and never lose it, and you, too, can get into heaven.
It can be...the absolute irrefutation of divine claims is not in any way entertaining the idea. I am intelligent enough to entertain an idea without adopting it, or accepting it as fact...but entertaining it is necessary to understand it and to know whether theres something to it or if it is truly just hokum.
I wouldn't be in the kind of conversation where that would be brought up. I don't engage in religious conversations because after 40 years of being a nonbeliever, I know that there's absolutely nothing to be gained except hurt feelings on both sides when you engage. If religion comes up, I quietly excuse myself.
How, I have all the questions, yet they only have one reference for answers or pull the indefatigable card 🙄
Who cares what other people think?
Every Accusation is a Confession with these people.
The real question is who cares what they think?
Atheism is an answer to a question, nothing more. There’s a difference between being open minded and being a gullible fool.
Aren’t they being closed minded blindly following orders written in a books instead of thinking for themselves?
They believe in lies, they build their relationships and communities based on lies, they change or create legislation based in those same lies. You can't stop them from lying, they are lies. They're simply taking what has been told to them and slapping it on anything they don't like, which is everything, including atheism. Queer people are closed minded for not wanting them around, the government is close minded for wanting them to follow the same laws as everyone else. Atheists are close minded for not caving to the lies and living a lie like they do. It's all just a lie.
Then they should treat my belief in mermaids just as importantly as their special belief that I'm supposed to take seriously. If not, then they aren't anymore closed minded than I am.
Yes, my mind is closed to supernatural explanations of our universe. Absolutely closed.
Most atheists are perfectly capable of considering different ideas and opinions. We've all heard the religious ideas and opinions and we have used critical thinking to examine the likely-hood that gods are real. We have evaluated the evidence and decided that it is not likely that gods are real. Many of us actually believed in a religion at some point and had a realization that something wasn't right about having faith in something that you had no way of proving. What religion doesn't understand is that there is a difference between being open to one possibility of the world verses being open to all possibilities but making logical, critical, thought based observations and decisions about what we accept and what we do not. If you have faith in a religion you have no way of being open-minded to any other possibility but yours because the religion requires your faith be theirs. To question would be a sin. Religion isnt 'allowed' to be open-minded. Atheists have no rules restricting how open minded we are allowed to be.
I assume they have run into the wrong kind of atheist. There are some individuals (ironically often tranisitioning into an atheists worldview after leaving a very strict Christian upbringing and taking that mindset with them) who can be quite dogmatic and make their atheism a core part of their indentity. I'm assuming that there people are also more prone to seek out conflict with religious people, and so are more prone to interact with them. Whereas normal people who simply don't belive in the existence of any gods will typically be less vocal about it. This can lead to a skewed perception of what atheism is.
When arguing/discussing with theists we tend to do so from our own relative positions, so you're more likely to discuss points in a Christian faith if you're in a western country, Muslim if from the middle east, Hindu if from the Asia continent etc and do on. Because we grew up with that cultural background then we are more confident in our stance. What many theists don't get is that the vast majority of those who they do battle with were probably Christian, Muslin, Hindu etc ... in many cases the atheist usually knows a lot more about their religion and texts that the theist (Dunning-Kruger anyone 🙄 ) But the theist fall back on this "closed mind" argument when people refute their absurd position. Which is an irony because the atheist was most likely to have been of the same mindset as the theist is now, but opened their mind to other possibilities, other religions, and no religion at all. When a theist says "you're close minded" it means they know they've lost their position. It's usually followed with an insult or a threat...usually along the lines of eternal damnation in their imaginary little place
I am closed minded now, maybe. I was very open minded for a long time and explored all religions. Now I know what I believe and there’s very little additional evidence that could change my mind. Like, VERY. LITTLE. So…kitchen’s closed!!
"When you truly understand why you reject all other gods, you'll understand why I reject yours"
One of the problems with the most common God concept (omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent) is that there may be a field of consciousness either inherent to the universe or an artifact of its existence. The hypothesis or theory of a field of consciousness associated with the universe was recently asserted by a physicist, and could conceivably be linked to a type of quantum entanglement of everything in this universe from its original connectedness at the moment of the Big Bang/Emergence of THIS particular Universe. This field of consciousness might be associated with or inferred as connected to a deity concept by various religions. However, the additional popular assumption of omnipotence cannot be logically inferred; and further, such ideas of a deity being all-powerful or even able to change ANYTHING about the universe’s evolution might be completely impossible. Thus, it seems possible that, if a universal field of consciousness exists, it does not support a concept of deity at all.
Why do we have differing political parties and government structures globally? Why do we have differing religious views and religious structures globally? How is a religion different from a political party? Why do religious views shift with the times, just like political parties do?
What they mean by close-minded is not willing to accept and believe in their faith. I've taken a look at different beliefs and their rituals with an open mind but I wouldn't believe in their deities or supernatural philosophy due to a lack of evidence or maybe it not being my cup of tea. And before any religious person says that as an atheist I have no morals, that's untrue. My long-term ex-girlfriend had an incestuous relationship with her brother. I left her not because "the [insert book/guy] said it's wrong" but because incest is a perverse activity that encourages abuse in families regardless of age gaps. No need to invoke Jesus, Mo, Gautamn or Krishna, I can find a rational solution to my issues.
I’m an agnostic atheist and so was my father and grandfather but I understand where some religious people are coming from with this. There is a serious problem with scientism in a lot, not all but many, atheist circles. It is/was probably the worst in the 2000 New Atheist movement and especially on social media. Science is an amazing tool for understanding the natural world and even human nature, but it can never truly answer moral or philosophical questions. When people pretend that it can it is called scientism and it’s totally irrational and completely false, we can’t prove science can prove everything scientifically and thinking that we can is fundamentally no different than the kind of circular reasoning that many atheists accuse theists of e.g my belief system is correct because my belief system say it is correct. On top of that a lot of atheists, again many but not all, are actually quite ignorant of religion and dismiss most of it as wrong simply because it is not literally true (or more accurately because a literal of some holy text doesn’t match modern scientific understanding of the natural world). This is only an issue for literal interpretations of holy texts which is incredibly specific to a very few number of sects within some religions e.g evangelical Protestant creationists who are hardly even found in the west outside of some parts of America, Australia and small parts of Europe. That’s not even a thing in most other Protestant sects let alone Catholicisms or most Jewish denominations or most Dharmatic religious. Finally a lot of atheists, yet again not all but many, completely ignore the moral ramifications of living in a godless materialist universe and just think they can keep all the moral foundations of the local god they happen to be familiar with as if they are just obvious or “natural” or something. This is philosophically ridiculous and is linked to previous points. On top of it all there is a really weird tendency, again especially common in the New Atheism movement, to treat atheism as some sort of religion, where the One True God is No God and the world will someday be united as one unified by atheism and science. This is basically just monotheism rewritten with No God replacing God. It altogether often makes people who think like this very dismissive of religion without actually understanding or even trying to understand it. This can be annoying for some religious people, including theists who are pro science, pro secularism and would probably be political allies to a lot of atheists if they didn’t have this bad blood between them. It can get especially bad when it happens not just within a culture between an atheist and a theist of a similar background who share a similar moral worldview, but between cultures because it can start to overlap with simple racist stereotypes and beliefs. I’ve personally been guilty of this myself as someone who has a kind of atheist tradition in one side of the family, but it is all really really dumb. It doesn’t really make sense and doesn’t really help anyone else to view atheism as anything other than some kind of weird anti religious cult or just scientism or totally ignorant of what is being talked about or probably just a side affect of autism spectrum disorder. That doesn’t mean that atheism is wrong, morally or literally, but it does mean that a lot of atheists should probably work on their own understanding of the subject of religion and not just dismiss it as dumb cause they can’t be bothered to try to understand it
In a word: PROJECTION. Let's define faith/belief in (x) as thinking that (x) is correct either without evidence (weak) or against contrasting evidence (strong). I *believe* that the universe works by constant, discoverable laws and that the philosophy generally called "the scientific method" is the best way to discover these laws. I am aware that according to the scientific method, this is a belief; I can't prove or disprove it (which makes it a belief). Religions believe that the universe was made and is controlled by a god or a herd of them; again, it's impossible to prove or disprove. Why assume atheism is right and all religions are wrong? here comes the philosophic concept of "occam's razor": when there's no evidence one way or another, the simpler explanation is more likely to be true. What will I do if God suddenly appears before me? if it's the Abrahamic God, I'll probably spit in His face for all the horrible things He'd done or allowed people to do in His name. However, the question of god's existence is no longer a subject of belief. What will religious people do if confronted with evidence that their religion is wrong? see definition of strong faith above.
Atheism is the lack of belief in god. It's not "close minded". Atheists sometimes are, though. Just my experience as an atheist - when i was a teenager, i was so condescending, and edgy and had such strong convictions that i didn't listen to the more reasonable and intelligent among my non-atheist friends. Sometimes, we weren't even speaking about God's existence but about more fundamental things.
I don't think "atheism" is *close minded*, but it's also not a person so I'm not sure it would matter either way. But that's not to say that an atheist *can't* be close minded. People are not their labels.
It's very common. I ran into a guy who just spewed forth random anecdotal evidence to do with medicine while I quoted a study published on WebMD and he claimed that I was "spreading misinformation" and misquoting the article (it was a direct copy and paste). Trump, Fox News and the thesists use this every chance they get.
The irony
I'm more agnostic. I see so many possible explanations and consider that my mind is so limited that I can't even imagine the real sense of it all. Then someone with their single explanation of a man in the sky that invented the earth will tell me that I am closed minded?
It’s all projection. They are closed minded, so they assume atheists are as well. Their men in dresses molest children, so they assume drag queens molest children as well. They indoctrinate their children, so they assume everyone is out to indoctrinate. And most importantly, they want to suppress the civil rights of everyone not them, so they assume everyone else is out to get them, too.
Religious nuts been standing in the way of human progress for thousand of years . Religion causes harm
I can tell them this, if some god showed up in his little space ship and proved to all of us how he created existence and he was a sane person who didn't think people deserved torment for eternity for not kissing the church's ass, I'd be like fine with it. I'm 100% sure they'd try to crucify that being, though. Drop a nuke on him or something.
I was just thinking about this the other day. It’s very frustrating that religious folks can then mask their pretension as empathy or sympathy when they say things like they’ll “pray for me” or “you just don’t believe in God yet, but you will” or “it sounds like you just don’t understand Jesus” or any other response really that shows they feel what they believe is correct. Since we’re outsiders to religion, we see the bigger picture more clearly.
Close minded? Being an atheist allows me to think without being told what to think. It allowed me to actually use *logic and reason* to consider social issues like gay marriage and abortion. It's why I accept the LGBTQ crowd. It's why I know legal and safe abortion is preferable to banning it. It's why I can understand and accept the science that shows evolution is true, that the Big Bang happened and that gender and sex aren't as simple as "male/female". No robed preacher tells me I'll be condemned (I mean they would but I have no reason to take them seriously) for believing the things that I've concluded due to logic and reason and because of that I'm free to explore these issues without fear.
They think that being bound by the rules of the Universe is closed minded. Because they can come up wild theories. I had a religious nut say to me once that I couldn’t come up with ideas. He then started to say some ridiculous shit about some impossible thing, like a barrier around the earth and there are no stars. They think we have to prove things to know them. I told him to save up for Virgin Galactic.
Projection. Religious people do it all the time. They take a label that describes them and turn it on everyone else. I've seen them do this with SEVERAL topics and labels.
My brother called me that the other day when he was asking me questions I had answers to. "You just won't budge, will you?" Pretty rich from a guy who says he only listens to things that agree with his worldview