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[Hiiri]

Most of those are anti-christian. What I pointed out in the other thread is that many new atheists seem to make the mistake that religion = Christianity. You can bash, destroy, and ridicule Christianity until it's a smoldering pile of rubble, but that will do squat in discrediting the concept of religion as a whole.

You're simply wrong. People attack Christianity the most, because it's usually the major religion in our societies. I assume most of us are from western countries.

Besides, biblical Christianity can be disproven, making it easy to attack.

[Siquo]

Nope. The radicalization of the Islam was caused by a rather tragic experience for the entire islamic empire: "The invasion of The mongols."
Which happened in the 13the century.

Well, that is the reason behind the change in the religion, but it was the change in the religion that did most of the harm, not the invasion directly (IIRC).

Was it? I was under the impression that the recent radicalization of Islam was due to post-colonialism and the collapse of the socialist/Arab nationalist alternative.

No, the mongols have kept quiet for a while now, we're talking 1300's here.

[scriver]

Though pretty much nothing of the ideals that sparked the Islamic Golden Age has survived into modern day Islam.

Which is too bad, but (and I'm usually the religion-defender around here) mostly the religion's fault.
Scriver, most of your images are strawmen, of course (bashing just one aspect of (christian) religion), yet still funny. You forgot one that I liked, though

Also, wrong name, yo. I'll have you know I don't use pictoral strawmen, in fact, I craft all my strawmen with my own two hands!

...Sarcasm? I can never tell 

No, it was truthful. I didn't know about the 'al' thing.

Yay! This will go down in history as the first time I ever mindblew a person over the internet.

[Leafsnail]

This post confused me a lot, because the first link makes a lot of good points (questions as to whether it needs to be a comic aside) and all the others are pithy jokes of varying levels of stupidity and strawmanning (the last one is at least kindof funny).  It's making horrifically weak arguments like those that allow your opponents to strike back.

The main thing about the first one is it actually makes an argument.  "Why is it ok to ascribe motives to extremists and dismiss them out of hand", "extremism is a symptom of a deeper problem" and "science not having answers doesn't mean religion automatically has them" are all decent points that are often ignored.

Your first link, for example: All his supporting points are attacking concepts promoted mainly by Christianity and a couple other major religions.

All religions to some extent must hold faith as a virtue, unless you can point me to a religion that provides scientific evidence for its claims.  That is what the first comic is actually criticising - I see absolutely no element of it that only applies to Abrahamic religions.

You forgot one that I liked, though

Most of the others were too old and tired for me to find them funny, but this one is great.

[10ebbor10]

Nope. The radicalization of the Islam was caused by a rather tragic experience for the entire islamic empire: "The invasion of The mongols."
Which happened in the 13the century.

Well, that is the reason behind the change in the religion, but it was the change in the religion that did most of the harm, not the invasion directly (IIRC).

Something similiar would have happened even if the religion hasn't been in charge. A traumatizing event can seriously harm a nation.
For example, 9/11 and it's effect(and that off following law changes) on the American economy. Quite the same story.

The problem with bringing religion into the mix is that it makes it easier for things to become parts of the ideology, cultural heritage and such. That causes it to last longer, more often than not.

Also, religions and religious, like all other organistations, tend to do mean things when threatened.

[Siquo]

Also, religions and religious, like all other organistations, tend to do mean things when threatened.

You've got a point; Religion is mostly a vehicle for anti-intellectualism, not the cause. There's a lot of atheist (non-religious) anti-intellectualism as well...

Food for thought.

[Leafsnail]

The fact that you aren't the only group doing bad things doesn't excuse you from doing bad things.

[Scoops Novel]

I realize it's there, but how have you experienced non-religious anti-intellectualism, asides from the odd idiot in high/secondary school? And why? The most obvious reason is the implicit change and potential shattered egos and envy it can bring, but what other reasons would you say, though feel free to expand this point.

[scriver]

Coming from a mostly irreligious country, I can tell you that "secular anti-intellectualism" exist everywhere for all the reasons, if that even needed to be said.

[Osmosis Jones]

Out of curiousity; has anyone here ever successfully convinced a religious person that they were wrong, and what happened next? I mean it's theoretically possible, but usually seems to occur when you have the zeitgeist of pondering how you life doesn't match up with your religion.  I would postulate it's very hard to convince someone who hasn't recently had a traumatic event (not that that is, necessarily, by any means the best time to raise such questions) or some other cause of uncertainty, who is also willing to debate. In other words, anyone achieved this with someone who's content to some degree?

While I can't say for certain there hadn't been any other motivators, I can also report a case. Much like Palsch, it was in a situation where actual debate was able to occur; myself and several others used to spend a lot of time on the FSM blog (not the forums, but responding in the actual blog comments; meant we dealt with the *really* crazy ones mostly). Anyway, one group of creationist christians started posting the usual "You're god is obviously fake, he's a mass of spaghetti!" and "You're all going to burn in hell" schtick. Most of them left after a little while, but one stuck around and started debating. As he was a YEC, a lot of his arguments involved things like arguing how you can't use carbon dating to determine the age of the planet, and evolution can't produce structures like the eye etc.

At that stage, I worked in a geochronology lab, so I was able to give him a very clear breakdown of how radioisotape dating worked, and we had another poster who worked as a microbiologist, who set him straight on his miscomprehensions there. Anyway, we eventually persuaded him that the idea of a Young Earth is farcial and that things like morality don't need a god, and that was the last we heard of him for 6 months.

When he came back, he said he had become an atheist, and wanted advice on how to reveal the fact to his devout mother. Apparently, after we had parted ways he'd realised that he didn't know as much about both the world and his own faith as he had thought, and had started doing some reading on the subject.

So it is possible, but it's rare, and it requires an open mind on the topic, something that is often lacking on both sides of the fence.

[Descan]

Yeah. You're not likely to talk someone who is religious out of being religious in one sitting. By the end of a debate, they might have a few niggling doubts, but they'll likely still believe in most of what it is.

To get someone religious to become an ATHEIST, though... That takes time. Like, years, even. Piles of evidence, that they themselves have to, (and tend to) seek out themselves, reading from multiple sources. There might be one or two people that were large factors, usually celebratheists, like Hitchens or Dawkins, but usually it's on them to figure it out themselves.

[Shinotsa]

Huh, my experiences have been with two best friends, two acquaintances in high school, and a long time on-again-off-again girlfriend.  The acquaintances were the cases we've talked about here where they were interested and did some research themselves after I brought up a few flaws with what they had been taught. One of them actually decided to try out different religions and did some spiritual exploration, last I heard he was looking into Buddhism. The two best friends were strange cases in that they realized that they only believed in a god because their parents had told them and hadn't put much thought into it, so now they don't believe in much of anything because they just don't care.

The girlfriend was a devout Catholic and... well let's leave that for another time. EVERYTHING with her is complicated

[Osmosis Jones]

Incidentally guys, if you do ever have to explain radioisotope dating to anyone, use this link.

It's extremely clear, simple, and non-confrontational.

[10ebbor10]

Incidentally guys, if you do ever have to explain radioisotope dating to anyone, use this link.

It's extremely clear, simple, and non-confrontational.

Is that Concordism? Seems like Concordism to me. While it might be a tad better than creationism, I still don't agree with it. It's just one other way of manipulating science and biblical intrepretations to accomplish a goal, ie showing that the Bible does indeed contain a scientific truth about the origin of the World. (Which it doesn't. At all.)

EDIT: Talking about the website, not the article itself. The article is fine.

[palsch]

Incidentally guys, if you do ever have to explain radioisotope dating to anyone, use this link.

It's extremely clear, simple, and non-confrontational.

I'd go straight to the original, and yeah, used that since I had to learn radiometric dating myself back in secondary school.