When dealing with religion and religious people, it has been my observation and experience that the majority of Atheists do NOT take advantage of reason in a neutral, level-headed, unemotional way, but instead prefer reason fuel by or inspired by anger and feelings of injustice.
For example, a phrase that's often touted as rationally obvious in the Atheist community is:
"Religion is bullshit."
Okay, so there are aspects of religion that are nonsensical to you.
So is that all there is to it or can we ask questions to dig deeper?
-Is religion nonsensical because you were never raised in the church to sincerely believe these things?
-Do you know a former Christian who better understands Christians who think like this because that's how he/she thought as a Christian?
-Is faith, to a healthy normal mind, more of a natural mental function than reason?
-Is this why a very educated and rational person, such as a Francis Collins, can also make room in his mind for faith, because it's such a natural predisposition?
-Is the "relevance" of religious faith that it has to do with only emotions and experience and not necessarily mental logic?
-Should we explore natural spiritual experiences as an alternative to religious spiritual belief?
These are examples of neutral, level-headed, unemotional, rational questions and they are progressive, moving the debate/dialog in an actual direction..
But I don't hear the vast majority of Atheists bringing up these type of questions. WHY?
Because those questions are not as satisfying and convenient as:
"Religion is bullshit."
"There's so much hypocrisy in religion."
"Christians know that they're being irrational in what they say."
"Religious people are idiots."
"You're dumb to believe in the resurrection."
"Religion teaches people to not think for themselves."
"Religion is a substitute for dealing with reality." etc.
These statements are often the centerpiece of sarcastic comments and often fueled by or inspired by anger and feelings of injustice and don't move us in a progressive direction...
And to be clear, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with sarcasm, anger, and feelings of injustice, but these will discourage you in following the evidence WHEREVER it leads and studying WHEREVER there is knowledge to be found.
Sure, anger can drive you to analyze religion, but it's my conclusion that anger will not keep you open-minded enough and it will not make you more understanding, wanting to learn wherever there is knowledge to be found..
I like debating a person's position but it's my biggest priority to understand WHY people are believers..
For example, there is much psychology in religion and how one goes about belief so TO NOT LOOK at the psychological and even sociological elements of religion and the belief practiced therein is to not do justice in approaching WHY PEOPLE ARE BELIEVERS.
Now, you may say,
"I only want to understand why believers stick to their arguments, I don't really want to understand why they're believers. I just want to understand why as believers they hold these particular arguments that I find irrational."
Okay, the problem is that many of these arguments are not simply ideas that they hold.. No, many of these are powerful truths that their lives revolve around. Who they are as people and these truths go hand in hand. To remove one is to not fully understand the other.
It is too easy for a person who is disappointed with religion to only focus on the things wrong with religion and yes, there are many terrible things, over the centuries, that people have done in the name of religion..
And because this history of religion can solicit such emotions makes it all the more necessary to ask certain questions:
-What really caused these people to do these things?
-How much of it was the ideology and dogma of religion?
-How much of it was the individual's state of mind?
-How much of it was from or affected by a lack of education, poverty, social status, etc.?
I'm trying to drive home the point that it is complicated and that you will not find the answers convenient. The study of human nature is never simple, but it is crucial..
If you don't want to approach understanding believers in this way in addition to poking holes in the logic of their arguments for God and planting seeds of doubt, which is your choice, at least acknowledge to yourself that you will have an inadequate understanding of the context surrounding the Christian and their viewpoints and therefore you'll be guaranteed to have some false assumptions and misinformation about those Christians, very fertile ground indeed for dogmatic thinking....
Wasn't dogmatic thinking one of the reasons you left Christianity in the first place..?
