Written by Mathew Naismith
I know a lot of people don't like me
pointing out the obvious, but to not do so in my mind would be of the denial of
the real truth in favour of a desired truth. As I experienced recently in
search of a free thinking group of people, denial in atheism of the real truth
in favour of a desired truth was too obvious to ignore. I was looking for a
group of people who are of free thinking, was I stupid looking for free
thinking people in an atheist group? Not at all, especially when atheism in the
West proclaims it's about free thinking, a thought process not governed by the
biases of dogmatic doctrines!!
One of my first responses to the question
of free thinking within this atheist group was to blatantly assume I was a
theist, only because I stated true atheism. It would seem stating that there
was a true form of atheism, as opposed to a false form of atheism, was an
immediate sign, by the creator of this group, I was a theist. I was
subsequently treated as such without any supporting evidence to this claim that
I was a theist in any sense of the word. In the end I was also accused of being
an internet troll and you guessed it, without any supporting evidence
whatsoever. This made perfect sense as I supplied numerous forms of material to
support my claims; this obviously did not go down to well. At no time did
anyone in this group supply any kind of evidence to support their numerous
claims.
Atheists in this group, as I have found in
other Western atheist groups, totally denied that atheism was
governed by dogmatic doctrines, even after supplying various supporting
material to this claim and obvious fact. This was strange because this atheist
group boasted it was against any claims that are false. It certainly seems this
only referred to any theist claims, not to atheist claims as I found out.
Atheists in this group made numerous unfounded claims, even to claim over and
over again atheism wasn't of dogmatic doctrines as atheism was only of the
disbelief of deities of any kind. Of course it was also stated they were also against
any false claims as well!! Again at no point was any supporting evidence
supplied to their counterclaims that atheism wasn't of dogmatic doctrines.
Faith also came up in the discussion; the
total denial of atheist having any kind of faith was too evident. Even after
supplying supporting matterial to the claim even atheist express a form of
faith, this was denied over and over again. I even supplied material from a
psychology today which clearly stated everyone expresses some form of faith. As
of one of the examples I gave, going from (A) to (B) to these atheists is not
of faith but of statistics, even though the definition of faith is simply a
confidence of getting from one point to another and not of statistics. Once
again no supporting material was supplied to support their counterclaims that
atheists don't express a form of faith. In the end I was of course removed from
participating in this group any further.
Supplying evidence to your claims can
indeed create a very volatile response, often a response that is irrational and
abusive. You must consider the circumstances you are in when supplying evidence
to your claims as this can be taken offensively. Yes, telling the actual truth
is often scorned upon in favour of a desired truth in accordance with our own
isms and/or ideologies.
