Talk:Evangelical atheist

Evangelical atheist

Hello, I was browsing through this site, and I noticed the article at http://www.conservapedia.com/Evangelical_atheist which said you are the author of that page. I am new to editing here, so I thought to check with the original author about this before editing anything. The article states "claiming that one can be good without attending religious services or reading the Bible" as a technique used by evangelical atheists. This bring to mind something, as it seems to be claiming that only those who read the Bible can possibly be good people. But what if, for example, there was someone who followed a different religion that didn't include the Bible, but who gave money to charity, worked to improve people's lives, and did many works of good in their life. Even if they did not attend services or ever read the Bible, it seems they would be a good person just by virtue of their good deeds. Do you agree? I would appreciate it if that one phrase could be removed from the article, because it would seem to define a lot of people as "not good" on a single criterion.

Thanks,

T. Otru.

No, I don't think it should be deleted. The point is not whether it is theoretically possible for someone to be good in such a manner, but that evangelical atheists exaggerate the opportunity by insisting on it. In other words, the point is about the style and arguments of an evangelical atheist, not where there is a shred of validity to it.--Aschlafly 18:40, 31 December 2007 (EST)

If someone can be good without attending services or reading the Bible, then why is this a "technique" of evangelical atheists? It seems that them pointing this out doesn't force their beliefs on anyone else, but simply states that religion isn't required to be a good person; this is in line with atheistic beliefs, and to me it doesn't seem to infringe on religious beliefs at all. Would it not help the article to make a better case by removing such an assertion, which seems to merely restate atheists' belief system? The only problem I see in this article is that it seems to deny that there is any validity to their arguments, which you yourself said exists. -Otru

The statement, often used by evangelical atheists, that "one can be good without attending religious services or reading the Bible" is grossly misleading. It's like a tobacco company claiming that "one can smoke a pack-a-day of cigarettes and live to be 100." Sure, one in a million can. The other 999,999 are misled by the argument.--Aschlafly 20:20, 31 December 2007 (EST)

But can't religion be equally misleading? After all, the Bible mentions and supports practices such as slavery (Leviticus 25), witch hunts (Exodus 22), and purely religion-based killing (Exodus 32), things that are now clearly considered immoral. Maybe these atheists are misleading in some ways, and religion does encourage many people to do good, but you must admit that some things that comes out of the Bible and religion are at least as morally misleading as atheism.

It seems to be a completely different situation from tobacco companies (which I am glad to see you do not support); smoking is obviously harmful, but NOT smoking (with this analogy, following the Bible literally) certainly is not a cause of poor health. Could you then at least modify the page so that it does not seem to be making contradictory claims such as this? --Otru 31 Dec. 2007