Atheist Reading Comprehension The Fear/Resentment of Hell

Atheists can't understand what they read (as a general rule, of cousre there are exceptions) and they often dont' read the whole post. You might as well know if you argue with atheists they will not read most of what you say. If you skip over making good long posts and not explain thing that get's us into trouble latter. Debating atheists on message boards is really like keeping your fingers in the dyke. Maybe the only thing to do is head for the high ground. Two things I've learned, they don't understand what they read, and they don't read all the posts. Both of those must be expressions of contempt.

In arguing the other day with some atheists on CARM I realized that one of them was essentially making her own version of Pascal's wager. I pointed this out. that's all I said, "this is your own version of Pascals wager." About 10 atheists thought I said "gee I sure love Pascal's wager." They began bombarding me with arguments against it  and telling me what's wrong with it. Some of them had some intelligent things to say about it, if that had been the issue. Which it was not. But some of them got pretty surely. There are more than one thread on this. the Original atheist's wager was being carried off over two threads.

Fanghur

No god that isn't evil and morally bankrupt wold care whether we believe in it or not. It would consider only how good, loving and generous we were in our lives, not whether we were gullible or not.

 NotAnAtheist

You should cite "Professional Failure" on your resume

Nonprofit.

The wager is a childish false dichotomy assuing the only choices are bible god or no god.

Posit a third possibility, god despises faith. Faith is a test, and those who have it have failed. In this case Meta you have lost everything by believeing in god.

 Originally Posted by Nonprofit

 Or angered god by worshiping the wrong one or the right one in the wrong way, or for worshipping him at all... infinite possibilities and why the Wager is childish.

 Meta you are the one who is ludicrously silly. There is zero reason the third posit is impossible. That you would even take Pascal's wager seriously is just.... well just a pure facepalm.

Won't you be suprised if lose your "wager" and god condemns you for having faith and failing his test.

 after my smart come backs nonprofit uses this:

Originally Posted by Nonprofit

Why do you hate god so much meta? Why do you seek to lead people astray?

Harry C.

Then again you might have a God who went to a tremendous amount of trouble to make the universe appear to have no gods in it. He would be POed to have his handiwork undone.

what this has to do with anything I'm not sure but part of their visceral reaction to the mention of the wager was an attempt to make me feel afraid like I'm to hell for belief in Jesus. I think they are trying to say "this is how you made me feel"

skylurker

 In fact it has disvalue! The person welding it has already admitted defeat! That is why he ignores the actual problems with it and just attempts to snicker like he can read minds.

The "wager" is the last refuge of a failed theology.

what sense does any of this make? Not much but it gave me an idea for another thread. I thought maybe this the outcome of bitterness and anger having been mad to feel fear of hell as kids. I did a thread asking about that.

Metacrock:
Fear is not love. Love casts out fear the bible says, so if you are seeking god because you fear hell then you are not seeking God for the right reason. I think think fear of hell is keeping many atheists from seeking God. I came to this conclusion see how deathly afraid of Pascal's wager they are.

I didn't argue for Pascal's wager I just observed that one of the atheists was making her own kid of wager. They just all jumped all over me because they thought I was arguing for the wage. I don't think the wager is an argument. I think it was meant to be a tie breaking mechanism. It was based upon Pascal's discovery of mathematical probability. Be that as it may I don' think it's a good apologetic device and it only really appeals to fundies and people who are already believers.

How does fear of hell keep atheists from seeking god? I think they know instinctively that fear is the wrong reason to seek, especially to seek the source of love. So they resent it. to make matters worse fear of hell is a good control mechanism and people do get manipulated by it. This is one of the reasons I don't believe in hell. It just seems a childish idea that the true God not use, since God is love and prefect love casts out fear it doesn't' thrive on it. Perfect love doesn't manipulate people with fear, or anything else.

Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 The standard response on this one was "I am not afraid of hell.

 Not an Atheist:

There's no one who fears Hell while simultaneously claiming Hell doesn't exist.

 Deist:

 This is an extremely dumb OP. Atheists don't fear something they don't believe in. They play the adult game of Lets Pretend and discuss hell AS IF it existed, only to show how ludicrous the notion is. There's no shortage of thread ideas, Meta. this one stinks more than burning flesh.

 Already this tells us that they didn't read the whole op. They totally missed the paragraph:

Meta:

 Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 Even when I explained this


 Originally Posted by RunnerFive

Saying "you are wrong" in bold doesn't make it so.

Are we to just take your word on how we think and feel?

I have been an atheist my entire life. I've never feared hell, because I never believed in it.

 he's refering to my post showing them the paragraph they missed:

Originally Posted by Metacrock

what did I say? you didn't read it either.

Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 I'm not saying they are wrong I'm showign them what I siad rules out the accusation that they fear hell now.

see they can't understand what one is saying. Gee I really want to join a movement where no one understands and they don't read the whole communication.

Christain defender Occam pionts out this link about reading comprehension.

To the Editor:

For 30 years as a reading specialist, I have worked exclusively with students who score well on standardized math tests but get lower scores in reading comprehension. Usually, this disparity does not occur until around fourth grade.

I consistently see one or both of the following problems. These students have not learned to decode words of over three syllables. They are bright and math-minded, but they do not know how to identify clues that support inferences.

After learning advanced decoding skills and realizing that making an inference is not simply a wild guess, most students find that their reading scores improve dramatically.

TERRY THOMAS
Houston, May 30, 2013

Atheists tend to be Mathematical type thinkers, so they clearly dont' undersatnd words very well.
Apparently none of them fear hell, no one does. Funny how they also think it's a control thing since no one is controlled by it. For people who don't resent an attempt to control them very interested in making Christians fear hell too.