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Shaun's avatar

> It is rather like creationists who know nothing about evolution but see fit to mock it, all without bothering to learn anything about it.

I think this is the cause of a lot of the new atheism stuff, since while there were atheists before the early 2000s, that was when atheism became culturally relevant. A lot of this was the creationism/evolution/intelligent design debate (especially in America, where the religious right wanted to "teach both sides" in biology class). I'd also argue it had to do with 9/11 and the war on terror to give a secular justification for the war in Iraq and Islamophobia more generally.

Anyway my point is that a lot of the people arguing for God are just as glib, uncurious, and philosophically uneducated as the New Atheist movement, which arose in response to that. Nowadays with atheism being so popular (at least on the internet), you don't really see the dumb theistic arguments as much unless you look for them or are raised in that mileu.

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Anlam Kuyusu's avatar

<< It’s at least a bit surprising that literally billions of people have powerful experiences of a being provided that being is non-existent. >>

Literally millions of people (if not billions) have powerful experiences of astrology as well. Are you also a believer in astrology? What's your sign?

Also, I don't think it's surprising that people believe in all sorts of stuff they wish to be true. Nobody believes in an evil god despite the fact that an evil god is far more probable and does a much better job explaining the suffering of sentient beings.

Imagine a scientist figured out a way to give mice "free will", put the mice in a big cage to interact and live with each other and decided to punish the "evil mice" by burning them at the end of the experiment. We'd have to think the scientist is a pretty evil person.

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