Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.
Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…
12 Things Atheists Believe About God
This article has been doing the rounds for about a while now and seemingly getting retweeted a lot. From my point of view it’s essentially devoid of meaningful content, so quite what people see in it I’m not sure.
It opens with a rather selective definition of atheism from Websters and it is, sadly, the case that many non-specialist dictionaries don’t define atheism in its modern and most inclusive meaning. Simply being those who do not believe in god.
The author, a ‘Pastor Mike’ enters into the poorly judged tactic of trying to ‘drag atheism down to his level’ by asserting that atheists must and do believe things about god. A sort of ‘Ha ha, you believe things too!’ measure. Well, yes, atheists do believe in things, many things, just not god and asserting that they believe certain things about god is just silly.
Each example is linked to a Bible verse but since we have no reason to take anything in the Bible seriously or to treat it with any gravity at all I won’t both linking. It’s the usual fare.
The things we supposedly believe though…
1. He’s a figment of our imagination.
Well, we don’t believe he exists. It’s someone else’s imagination or delusion impressed upon others though so it’s not an internal process of your own imagination per se. If it doesn’t exist save as an idea, a loose collection of memes, what terminology would you prefer? This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
2. He’s not real.
Sadly, the idea of god is very real. It’s the actual figure of god that is not. This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
3. He’s a liar.
If we don’t believe he exists, how can we consider him a liar? He’s no more a liar than Saruman. In discussing the Bible claims and content this may come up because the character of god/Jesus in the Bible does lie. That doesn’t mean we think an actual entity lied.
4. He didn’t create the world.
Again, we don’t believe in god so how could something we don’t believe in create a world? This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
5. He wasn’t born a Man.
This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
6. He didn’t live a sinless life.
Again, this’ll only really come up discussing the Bible. Not the absence of belief in god. This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
7. He didn’t die on the cross for sins.
This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
8. He didn’t rise again from the dead.
This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
9. He won’t be returning to earth.
This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
10. They won’t be standing before Him for judgment.
This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
11. He isn’t named Jesus.
This is really part and parcel of not believing, rather than a positive belief.
12. They are Him. (Atheists are “god.”)
I don’t know a single atheist that asserts this. We’re human beings, same as everyone else. No special powers or anything.