Trolling for atheists

Each person’s twitter is their own and I’m not about to tell someone what they should and shouldn't do with their own twitter account.

But that does not mean I cannot question it, or that I need to understand it. Trolling for atheists is  one such thing that I do not understand. To get online, tweet deliberately inflammatory statements just to elicit reactions that you know will come your way. To then argue for a random period of time, only to then admit the ruse our simply fade away back to twitter obscurity – except for the tweets to friends and followers detailing what you’ve *achieved* so they can join you in mocking the ‘stupid atheists’.

The thing the trolls or “Poes” seem to fail to understand is that for every one of them there’s numerous people that ACTUALLY believe the things they’re saying. Sometimes they’re easy to detect with a quick glance at previous tweets – if someone’s timeline consists almost exclusively of Pokémon tweets and then there’s a ‘watch this’ followed by ‘Hitler did what he did because he’s an atheist and atheists are evil’ then chances are that’s probably not a legitimate tweet. But there are other’s that a less easy to distinguish (in the past I was not good at spotting them so I’ll take a moment to thank those that help me out by letting me know I’ve engage with a known troll/Poe. I am improving.).

At the extreme end are the accounts that are consistent; they don’t break character and persist with their claims for god and denunciations of atheists ad nauseam. They are essentially indistinguishable from genuine accounts and clearly the person or people behind them has seen fit, for reasons I’m unable to fathom, to dedicate a lot of time to the cause.

But shy of the extreme accounts we have people pretending to be people they’re not, simply, it seems, to waste the time of other people. Sometimes it’s even fellow atheists at the helm of the account. Perhaps they don’t like the way atheists are sanctimonious or arrogant or angry or whatever other negative stereotype seems to fit and they feel they have some duty to mess with people so they can somehow feel superior about themselves. Of course this is speculation, as previously stated, the motivation for such immature behaviour is beyond me.

I will say that I wish it didn’t happen, and not just because it wastes my time, but it wastes the time of others too. I don’t see the value in it. I don’t see how someone thinks this is a worthy contribution to anything. But I won’t go so far as to tell someone to stop. As I said at the opening, each person’s twitter is to do with what they please, and that includes being a time wasting dick.

What I will say though is if you engage in this behaviour and you do manage to spark some reaction, don’t feel like you’ve achieved something. Pretending to be an ignorant theist is easy. There are lots of them with their bizarre ideas and strange notions about the world in general and atheists in particular. Blending in with them is simple, it’s not an *achievement*. Pretending to be a believer having a go at atheists isn’t pulling off a great swindle. You haven’t orchestrated a sting that’s going to see you collect millions. You haven’t infiltrated a high security building and walked away with the information that will bring down a government. What you have done is pretended to be an idiot. 

So do it if you wish, but just know you’re nothing special.

Atheists are just as bad as believers....

‘Atheists are just as bad as the believers’. I hear this a lot. Apparently there’s a lot of people out there that feel what atheists do is just as bad as what the fundamentalists do. Usually fundamentalist Christians – at least that’s what I encounter.

The only fundamental here is the fundamental difference between the two groups. Christian fundamentalism is an offensive position. Although this could be in either sense of the word, I actually mean like in a sporting or battle sense. Christians are proactive. They will seek out people to speak to and hopefully – for them at least, convert. They’re the ones out influencing government policy in their favour, they’re the ones trying to get non-science taught as science in school, they are the ones that are consistently trying to legislate what a woman can and can’t do with her uterus, they are the ones campaigning against marriage equality. Essentially the religious side are the ones telling society that society should live by their rules – often to end up in hell if they don’t. And all this stems from an invalid base. These people are doing all this based on the words of an unsubstantiated, ancient, superstitious book.

Of course I’m taking a generalised view. I’m not, at all, saying that all Christians or theists are like those described above. But these ARE the kinds of people thought of when the ‘atheists are just as bad’ sentence is uttered.

Counter to this, the vocal atheist position is a defensive one. It’s reactive to what the Christians (usually - in the West at least) are doing. Atheists don’t seek out neutral people with the idea of ‘converting’ them to atheism. Yes, there are atheists trying to influence government, but these positions are based on secularism, and asking for a government that shows fairness to all. Vocal atheism is about standing up for equal rights. It’s saying ‘Your beliefs shouldn’t give you’re the right to discriminate, oppress, or negatively impact on the lives of others’. Simply put – If atheists shut up, we’ll still hear from theists. If theists shut up, they’ll stop hearing from atheists.

Basically atheists (as secularists) want a society that is free from religious based discrimination and oppression, not a society that enables it. This is the difference. 

Not believing in something does NOT mean you believe that opposite is true.

Not believing in something does NOT mean you believe that opposite is true. 

Of course I get told often that this is not correct. I get told that because I do not believe there is a god, I must necessarily believe there is NO god. I recently had someone block me on twitter because I was trying to show them this isn’t true.

It seems The Theist [i] is so determined to make atheism a belief or ‘faith’ on its own that they’re prepared to simply make stuff up about it. It’s an interesting strategy to reply to ‘Your faith makes no sense’ with ‘...yeah well you have faith too!’ rather than actually presenting an argument defending the reason for having faith. It’s almost as though they recognise that their position is so weak that it can’t be defended so their only alternative is to drag atheism down to the faith level, because then suddenly ‘we’re all the same’.

But that’s not the purpose of this post. This post will demonstrate that the statement - ‘If you don’t believe something, you believe the opposite is true’ – is false.

The existence of god is binary (but not necessarily a 50/50 chance). Either god[ii] exists, or god does not. Another binary possibility is the flipping of a standard coin. A coin has an obverse side and a reverse side. These are pretty much universally known as Heads and Tails.

If I flip a coin, catch it, and place it on the back of my hand, it is going to be either Heads side up, or Tails side up. They are the only possibilities.

So imagine I flip the coin, catch it, place it on the back of my other hand and keep the coin hidden from your view in the traditional style. But rather than ask you to guess before I immediately reveal the result, I simply tell you that the coin is heads. 

Would you believe me? I hope you respond with ‘of course not’. Why would you? I’ve kept the result hidden not only from you, but also from myself. I have no way of knowing which way the coin has landed and neither do you. So the logical and only reasonable response is to say no, you don’t believe me. Of course I could claim to ‘know’ that the coin has landed heads up. I could say that I was foretold that it would happen that way. I could say that I’ve got a really old book that tells me about coins landing heads. Hey, you might even just find I have a trustworthy look about me and that you just ‘want’ to believe me, or you may even feel that the consequence of believing me and being wrong is so small that you’re simply happy to say you believe me. But none of these things would give you good enough reason to believe me.

Now let’s agree you’ve said, and with good reason, that you don’t believe me that the coin is heads. The next question is – does that mean you necessarily believe the coin is tails? Again the right response is - of course not. Nothing you have said indicates that you believe coin is tails. All you’ve said is what you do NOT believe,  not what you do believe. Sound familiar?

The god/no god debate is the same. The claim is that god exists (the coin has landed heads) – and then the question: do you believe me? With no satisfactory reason to think the claim is true (despite any assertions the claimant might make), the answer is no, I do not believe that god exists (I do not believe the coin is heads). Does that mean I believe god does NOT exist (that the coin has landed tails)? No it does not. It simply means the claimant has not provided sufficient evidence to make their claim believable. Take note – ‘Their’ claim. Their claim is ‘A god exists’. This claim says nothing about god NOT existing. And since the claim says nothing about god not existing, the response of ‘no, I don’t believe you’ says nothing about my stance on god not existing.

Bottom line is – my lack of belief in the claims that there is a god does NOT mean I believe there is no god.

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[i] This is a term I’m going to use for a generic amalgamation of the theists I encounter, mainly on twitter. When I use this term I’m not saying this applies to ALL theists or that what I’m writing about in one post applies to the same theist I was writing about in a previous post. It’s a way I’m going to say ‘Some of the theists I’ve encountered’ but in fewer words.

[ii] I was indoctrinated into Catholicism as an infant before coming back to atheism later on in life and I live in a western democracy that’s population is largely Christian so when I think ‘god’ I’m thinking Yahweh – god of the Christians and the Jews (l admire Richard Dawkins’ description of the Old Testament god). But I use the term generically. Like ‘The Theist’ I’m using ‘god’ as a short way to say ‘gods or goddesses’. 

Yahweh loves me...right?

Yahweh loves me...right? This is what I hear a lot from Christians. Even though I'm an atheist, Yahweh loves me.  

The thing is, according to common Christian views, I'm still going to burn in hell. I get told this is my fault because I've been given free will. That's right - Yahweh has given me free will to decide whether or to believe in him. But should I use that free will to not believe in him, John 4:16 means I don't get to heaven. (Believe in me or burn forever! - Hardly what you'd call a fair choice)

The problem is, again given a common Christian version of events, that Yahweh allowed me, knowingly - because he's  omniscient, to be created without the ability to believe in him. You see I don't 'choose' to not believe in Yahweh - I'm not capable of it. The arguments presented to me for Yahweh's existence are not what I find convincing. One doesn't choose what they do and don't believe. I like to point out that I cannot believe in Yahweh just as a Christian cannot choose to believe I *am* Yahweh. 

Yet many Christians are still of the belief that this 'Yahweh' loves me. 

I have people I love and I would do whatever I could to prevent them from burning for eternity. My question to the Christian is this - Does Yahweh have the power to prevent me from burning in hell, even though I don't believe in him? If so, why does he not invoke this power? I am a human being that he 'loves', right? Remember, I'm not 'choosing' to not believe in him, I've been created without the ability to do it and this happened under his watch. 

Yahweh is omniscient so he knows what it takes for each individual to believe he is real. Presumably he knows this for me too. He has, for billions of Juedo/Christians, convinced them he's real. But not me?  As I type this I have no belief that Yahweh exists and no belief that the pathway to him is through Jesus. If this whole bible, Jesus, Yahweh thing is true, I'm hell bound.

So given I'm going to hell, and I'm doing so with Yahweh knowing, before I was conceived, let alone born, that this would be the case, - because he allowed me to exist without the ability to believe in him, and given that he could correct this situation in an instant if he wished - how exactly is he showing that he loves me?