A Quote by Dennis Prager
Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists.
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Money is far more persuasive than logical arguments.
The new atheism as an old atheism, except it's much more aggressive. The new atheism wants to destroy religion. That's a very different thing. The arguments are not new, it's the aggression that's new.
Arguments do not erase prejudice any more than arguments erase scars, whether psychological or physical.
It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager.
I largely defer to the cognitive ethologists. I believe that the arguments that they make on this score are extremely persuasive. More than this, I do think as well that a priori objections by philosophers to successful research programs in the sciences have a very bad track record.
The world I want to live in is a world where everybody is a bit more uncertain about their arguments and is a bit more open to other people's arguments. I think that we can engage ideas without ad hominem attacks.
Even though their arguments did not invoke religion, I think we all know what's behind these arguments. They're trying to protect religious beliefs from contradiction by science. They used to do it by prohibiting teachers from teaching evolution at all; then they wanted to teach intelligent design as an alternative theory; now they want the supposed "weaknesses" in evolution pointed out. But it's all the same program - it's all an attempt to let religious ideas determine what is taught in science courses.
I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.
While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.
Because of mathematics precise, formal character, mathematical arguments remain sound even when they are long and complex. In contast, common sense arguments can generally be trusted only if they remain short; even moderately long nonmathematical arguments rapidly becomes farfetched an dubious.
Atheism is an effect of that knowledge [a poll showed atheists knew more about religion than anyone else], not a lack of knowledge. I gave a bible to my daughter. That is how you make atheists.
Highly technical philosophical arguments of the sort many philosophers favor are absent here. That is because I have a prior problem to deal with. I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not such much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored.
When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.
When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one, then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and cancelling them out, one against the other, I take the course indicated by what remains.
When sociobiologists start shitting in their backyards with dinner guests in the vicinity, maybe their arguments about innateness over culture will start seeming more persuasive.
People can make arguments from the Bible if they want to. But I want them to see that they should also give arguments that all reasonable citizens might agree to.
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