Skeptic Project

Do you ever get tired of having to defend religions because the criticisms are so intellectually dishonest?

Aryan fools believing Jews control the world.
Acharya S fanboys thinking there's a big Christian conspiracy.
Rightwing nuts that see creeping Islamofascism.

Why do people need intellectually dishonest conspiracy theories to criticize religions? Aren't they irrational enough and baseless enough all on their own?

Agreed. Same with Bush against truthers or Israel against anti-semites.

It really is. :(

Religion though, is still probably the worst because I don't really have any truther friends... sure there's an occasional Bush suck(s/ed) comment thrown here and there but I know way too many irrational atheists.

But that's the point though Aaron, religion doesn't need all these silly conspiracy theories to debunk something that's obviously irrational.

I don't go out of my way to criticize religion because in terms of charities there's a lot of good things religions do.

I'm indifferent to religion, but I do resent having to defend absurd ideas with even more absurd ones.

That's why I'm indifferent towards religion yet have a hostility towards CTs. Aside from a handful of attention seeking idiots like ID proponents, Christians don't claim that their beliefs are based on empirical evidence. CTs do. And that irritates me.

CTs also do not do charity work. They sell books and DVDs.

People who accuse you of being Christian or pro-war in Iraq are missing the point and are probably wasting your time.

@Muertos
"I consider myself a recovering atheist. I was a hard-core atheist until about a year ago, and while I didn't become "born again" or anything like that, I can state that I now firmly believe in God. Whose God--the Jews', the Christians', the Muslims', Buddha, Zoroaster, etc.--I haven't figured out yet.

I see religion as different than conspiracy theories. To me, CTs are something that are supposed to be factual. If they existed, you can prove them. If they don't exist, you can disprove them. Religion can't be proven. I can't prove to you that God exists. The evidence for God's existence is entirely subjective. But CTs, practitioners of homeopathy, etc., firmly believe that their views are objective fact. 9/11 Truthers shriek all the time about how they've "proven" a conspiracy. That, to me, is an entirely different category of belief than religion.

I guess what I'm saying is, I don't ever expect to find any facts proving God exists. It is unreasonable to expect that any such facts exist. (Anyone who DOES claim to prove the existence of God through empirical fact is obviously an idiot, and yes, for the record, I think intelligent design is as ludicrous as CTs). But it is not unreasonable to expect facts proving the existence of things that CTs regard as factual--like that the towers were blown up with supernanothermate--and to denounce continued belief in unsupported "facts" to be folly. It is."

I agree with you, I am a Christian and I know what your saying about the whole CT having facts and such..............
I really Hate the ethnic hating CT's promote, it is usually blaming all the worlds problems on a group of people. I don't care what religion you are, attacking people isn't the point. I honestly believe the origin of most conspiracy theories is one religion bashing another..............and with the recent uprising of TZM, Its just atheism (which in a way is a religious belief, or lack of) bashing everyone else, its people like Peter J that make atheists around here look bad, we should all be offended by CT's as human beings.

Intellectual dishonesty offends me far more than religion beliefs do.

If someone wants to say they believe in a magical sky god that watches over them, fine. I don't care. But I start to care when people start making crap up and trying to pass it off as history which is what Zeitgeisters constantly do.

Yeah I agree, I really don't feel like Peter J needs to have some sort of evidence to believe what he believes, If he simply thought all religions were similar so choose to believe in none of them that would make more sense then his "smoking gun evidence" he acts like he has. and in the grand scheme of things if he really was trying to change the world for the better then why does he even bring up the religion stuff, he is just alienating the audience. I would take him more seriously if he grew as a person and ACTULLY moved away from the bunk CT stuff and into his ideas for a better economy. Its kind of funny how there is that whole speech in Z2 about being wrong and changing and growing and peter really doesn't seem to get any of that.

@KingDavid8

Hey one thing I can say that could make you feel better is that zeitgiesters seem to need that sort of "evidence" to cling to their belief system, I'm sure other atheists that do not need that solid evidence, and thats fine, you could really get in a long philosophical debate on what does anybody really know about anything at all.
Long story short, Peter J and the like are probably really unsure about themselves.