"Are atheists mentally ill?"

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Using mental health as a blunt instrument in these sorts of religious pissing contests is always a disgusting tactic no matter what direction it's coming from.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The question really should be opposite (Are the mentally ill atheists?) in some cases.

But that's the equivalent of 'Are the mentally ill Christians' in some cases or 'Are the mentally ill Dutch, Latino, Rich.'

I was thinking of it in the way people say that babies and animals are atheists.

That's a horrible thing to say about mentally ill people, and not because it's ipso facto insulting to be called an atheist.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Apparently Nathan objects to the term 'invisible sky wizard'. Generic it may be, but accurate nonetheless.

Any scholar of religion with two brain cells to rub together would at the very least have concerns about using it to describe Christianity, unless Christianity is being understood solely on the level of its symbolism (without reference to what those things are supposed to be symbols of), in which case one is essentially sneering at people for having different taste in art than oneself and is as such an even more insufferably smug piece of work. I actually doubt that this is the case, however. I think that most of the people who say this sort of thing think that it is actually a fair characterization of what Christians (or Muslims, or Jews, or whoever else) believe, and that isn't really worth going to the trouble of holding in contempt.

Actually, any scholar of religion with two brain cells to rub together would object, either out of genuine sympathetic and humane feeling or simply for fear of gaining a richly earned bad name and being known as a terrible excuse for a scholar of religion ever after, to reducing people's beliefs to demeaning cliches regardless of accuracy, but why allow those kinds of considerations to interrupt our thinking when we obviously know what's best?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Apparently Nathan objects to the term 'invisible sky wizard'. Generic it may be, but accurate nonetheless.

Any scholar of religion with two brain cells to rub together would at the very least have concerns about using it to describe Christianity, unless Christianity is being understood solely on the level of its symbolism (without reference to what those things are supposed to be symbols of), in which case one is essentially sneering at people for having different taste in art than oneself and is as such an even more insufferably smug piece of work. I actually doubt that this is the case, however. I think that most of the people who say this sort of thing think that it is actually a fair characterization of what Christians (or Muslims, or Jews, or whoever else) believe, and that isn't really worth going to the trouble of holding in contempt.

Actually, any scholar of religion with two brain cells to rub together would object, either out of genuine sympathetic and humane feeling or simply for fear of gaining a richly earned bad name and being known as a terrible excuse for a scholar of religion ever after, to reducing people's beliefs to demeaning cliches regardless of accuracy, but why allow those kinds of considerations to interrupt our thinking when we obviously know what's best?

Yet you seem to show little concern for the simplification, clichés and misrepresentation of what people without faith hold dear even in this very thread. I'm patient but the 'Dawkins LOL' type responses I kept getting to quite thorough and personal posts or no responses at all has pretty much made me just leave you guys to it.

This actually is a legitimate criticism of my attitudes and behavior but, in all honesty, I tend to consider those particular misrepresentations stupid and offensive in a more self-evident way (at least, self-evident to the people who frequent this forum) than what Joe was saying. I'm also pretty sure that Cathcon, at least, was being partially facetious, although I understand why one might not think that necessarily makes it any better.

Again, though, it is a legitimate criticism. In particular I'm much quicker to defend religions that aren't my own than non-religious belief systems that aren't my own, and I recognize that that's an unfair bias and one which I have a hard time checking and uprooting for reasons of which I'm really not sure.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You also like to make it perfectly clear that you've read a lot of Very Important Books^TM, and aren't afraid to casually namedrop religious philosophers you know virtually nobody else here will have heard of.

But hey, whatever you want to waste your life on.  Not what I'd pick, but that's just me.

I don't consider 'developing informed opinions about topics I wish to discuss' at all wasteful, but that's just me.

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I've already made it amply clear what I think your thoughts on these matters are worth. This doesn't add to that. I have better things to do.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I fail to understand how adopting a belief system that makes one happier is any way "smart". In my opinion, those who believe there is a reason for existence or "hope" are deluding themselves. I think the more intelligent position is to go with whatever all of one's experience tell one. If that leads to the conclusion that "life" is really nothing and that there is no possible hope for any being in the universe, so be it. Everything I know indicates that that's the way it is. From my perspective, it is mentally ill to think otherwise.

Again, I really think the best way to respond to something like this is to point out that this kind of argument is profoundly nasty and uncalled-for, not to engage in it oneself. Saying that people who have a different interpretation of the facts of their experience from oneself are mentally ill is entirely inappropriate because it amounts to calling experiences of life that differ from one's own pathological.

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Your counterarguments against the aspects of the quinque viae that barfbag was invoking don't really have much to stand on, because they don't address the fact that the God for Whose existence the quinque viae are attempting to argue definitionally has properties that distinguish Him from created objects in terms of how the concepts of causality and complexity can apply (and that the quinque viae know full well that they require this definition of God in order to work--i.e. what's supposed to be established precisely is an uncaused cause, and God isn't seen as complex anyway (which makes the argument from complexity a terrible argument for other reasons, just not the one you, or Richard Dawkins who makes much the same counterargument somewhere or other, appear to be advancing).) This fact in itself makes the arguments seem suspect to a lot of people, and there's ample reason to accuse the quinque viae of not accomplishing what they set out to accomplish, sure.

(The argument from complexity isn't technically one of the quinque viae, but I'm using it as a shorthand. Sorry to any Thomists who might read this!)

ETA: What I was saying about the argument from complexity ended up a little contorted and unfair to both you and barfbag; sorry. I did another run-through of my understanding of the arguments in question and reread parts of the thread because I wanted to get this right.

The reason why the argument from complexity is a terrible argument is that it has to do one of two things. It has to either assume that God is more complex than anything in His creation, which not only flies in face of most other theology but does open itself up to your (and Richard Dawkins's) counterargument unless it's used in conjunction with the first cause or some other argument of that kind (in which case even venturing into the argument from complexity seems like a redundant and counterproductive muddying of the waters), or posit that anything no matter how complex can come from a simpler cause as long as that cause is God, which strikes one as flatly ridiculous and hence makes the entire premise fall apart. (If there's any third option here that I'm somehow missing that makes the argument from complexity less terrible, I'd love to be told about it!)

So in that respect your counterargument is more astute than I originally realized, although I still don't think it really works as an argument against the existence of God.

Rereading barfbag's initial post it says at least some good about him that he didn't actually advance the argument from complexity, although it was still more-than-characteristically stupid and tacky of him to have advanced the first cause argument in the context and manner in which he did.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

...I've...never seen a Christian theology that concedes the notion that God is complex before.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've already made it amply clear what I think your thoughts on these matters are worth. This doesn't add to that. I have better things to do.

Similarly, I can't say I've ever completely read through any of your boring lectures, such is their value to me.

You have your hobby; I don't share it.  Normally I'd leave you to it, but of course many millions of people share the same weird hobby, which in turn affects society, which in turn affects me.  So naturally I will continue to protest it and its influence, and highlight how ridiculous it is to the outsider.

It's funny to see you get so blustery though.  You even seem to namedrop more obscure philosophers and concepts the more worked up you get.

Wow.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Indeed, if it is ascertained that homosexuality and heterosexuality are both valid expressions of human sexual desire and sexual activity with none inherently more right or wrong than the other (in the same manner in which male and female is neutral) then why can’t belief and non-belief, or empiricism and intuition, be considered along similar lines? Of course if this was the case and holding a belief or refusing to hold belief were neutral positions, then if it turns out there is a god, then this status quo benefits disproportionately the non-believer who has nothing to loose in his non-belief (if non-belief is naturally ‘ordained’ by the god as one of two possible outcomes of human development). However the believer is not only investing energy in a belief that in the end won’t curry additional favour with the creator, but may be actively believing something that is contrary to the will of the creator which may in turn be detrimental if that creator is capricious. That in part influences my own position; I feel that my position of non belief is not detrimental to me, or more accurately is the least detrimental to me should a variety of different theological arguments turn out to be correct.

(In fact the last paragraph I've wrote is the first time I've given that dichotomy much thought. I should perhaps return to it)

I think you should. That's a very interesting line of thought and one I for one would like to hear more of your take on.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

...I've...never seen a Christian theology that concedes the notion that God is complex before.

With the Trinity there is both unity and diversity, and in that sense one could say God has aspects of both simplicity and complexity.  Theology that focuses just on the simplicity and risks abstracting God into a concept and ignoring God's relational and personal nature.  If God is relating to his complex creation and all of us in our complexity, it would seem to me God has, at least in some sense, the full measure of reality's complexity within himself.

Good point. This is something I hadn't fully considered before.