Atheist Ireland Forum

I work with with a girl who flips out when I say there's no such thing as God and thats my opinion based on lack of evidence.

I get the usual "well where do you think you came from?"

I like to respond by saying "My parents had sex."

Then it goes on and on about "well try to explain life so?"

pfft....... anyone got any good snappy comments to keep these folk from driving me insane. :S

no idea, I normaly don't want them to chill out

Welcome to the forum by the way

Welcome to the forum.

I'd usually advise asking them the questions instead and wait for some inevitably ridiculous answers but this person sounds annoying, so in this case I'd just ignore them.

Generally people don't like to be ignored and it's the best way to annoy someone with minimal effort.

I usually counter with "where did your god come from?"
Religious people argue that, as atheists cannot prove a first cause, this is proof of their god, when all it does is raise the same question for their irrational theory.

I always enjoy having a good go around with religious people who are actually capable of discussing things without getting upset, sadly any that are willing to actually debate will usually get upset when their few one liners are dissected and shown up for the empty homilies they realy are. I usually settle for them acknowledging that nothing they believe has any evidence.
I think it is good practice when starting these discussions to set out some guidelines (I love this sort of talk, they walk right into it) So i ask if they can accept that no evidence will ever be absolute, there can be no complete facts in the discussion and all we can do is look at finding things that as in law are beyond reasonable doubt. Keep reminding them of this and then present everything you have that is beyond reasonable doubt, Most will either have to admit they can not argue within that agreement or will flounce.
You have to accept that for a lot of your discussion they will just be going La La La inside there heads, so get them to repeat back what you have said and ask them to deconstruct it, It realy is an unfair fight, but that's their problem and you may even help them break free!!
I wonder has anyone on here ever successfully and absolutely persuaded a religious person to question their Faith to the point of actually ditching it? I like to think i have helped a few along but i cant claim a full conversion, However If I can get them to agree that their beliefs are their own and should not hold prominence or that religion should have no special place in society I would consider it a success.

Beliefs can be held collectively in a society with the individuals holding them in a shallow part of their consciousness, accepting them rather than analysing and confirming them. It is only when confronted with a reality, such as a scientific proof on the nature of thunder, or when confronted by reasoning from a person who has questioned faith, that a religious person begins to reason for him/herself.
Priests and Imams know this and are at pains to make their beliefs legally enforceable, or at the very least, socially enforceable, with rules and laws forbidding the 'insulting' of religion, for once a significant number of individuals question these beliefs, the whole house of cards can tumble down. This is what is happening in Ireland today.
There is value in trying to reason with people who won't or can't argue their beliefs and we should try. If I had not been confronted by people of reason in my youth, I might still be a blind follower of woo.

I had a conversation with my sister recently about her belief in ghosts. She basically accepted everything I said about the supposed evidence for the existence of ghosts being bunk and then concluded by saying Science has not disproven the existence of ghosts yet. I decided that I was arguing upside down.

Right from the beginning I should have directed the conversation towards the efficacy and utitlity of empiricism. Why a belief based solely on wishful thinking is so likely to be false that there is no point entertaining it at any level. The fact that a belief, with no evidence suporting it, has not been "disproven", doesn't give it credibility. Burden of proof. Occam's Razor. Then we could have moved on to the 'evidence'.

In your specific scenario, you're dealing with a combination of an argument from ignorance and special pleading. You won't get far with her by simply stating this though. I'd start by establishing the importance of empirical evidence and the folly of wishful thinking. Then explain that in the absence of evidence all you can do is say "I don't know" and evaluate the available hypotheses through the goggles of occam's razor. Give her the available options you are aware of (ie. god creature(s) are eternal, the universe is eternal, universes can spontaneously pop into existence on their own). Finish by explaining why the hypotheses that don't invoke complex intelligent entitites 'just existing' are simpler and therefore more likely to be true. Add that it is possible that the real answer is none of the above.

If she has read up on the argument she is using, she will try to claim god exists outside of our universe and therefore outside of time. This also doesn't stack up. While that could explain 'eternity', it doesn't explain how a complex being manages to 'just exist' without cause and effect. It's therefore a red herring. And besides, if a complex god creature can exist outside of time, why can't bog standard dumb energy/matter?

I think there are two topics to tackle here:
1. Their religion and what it stands for.
2. The belief in a god.

I think trying part 2 is a total waste of time without fully addressing part 1. Often decovertion is done by someone who starts questioning their own personal religion and starts seeing the flaws, they often attempt to patch the cracks up with blind belief, but the cracks are there.

Like Catholic divorce, how can somone be a catholic and be divorced ?

Another topic is that religion is seen as a force of good, understanding and of love, yet the most important religious place on the planet, 'The Holy Land' has been one of the most bloodiest places for decades and centuries.

If the chat is coming to an end, get in the old ''I'll pray for you'' before they get a chance to say it.

As regards to 2. I think thats more personal and a personal journey, I respect someone who has left a religion but believes in a non-religion-based-god, if it came up in a friendly chat like 'do you belive in god?' I would state my views, if they want to question/know more about it then ok and leave it at that, I wouldn't try to force Atheism on them, as then, I would be no different/better than theists who believe they have the right to force their god-down everyone's throat.

I think ''do you believe in a religion?'' and ''do you believe in a god?'' independently are totally different.