On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:32:50 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:10:04 -0400, John VanSickle wrote:
> 
>> >>   Another curious things is that many creationists seem to think
>> >>   that they
>> >> know what "evolution" is better than evolutionists themselves.
>> > 
>> > Which is the flip side of atheists who claim to know more about
>> > theological topics than believers do.
> 
>> Well, not really; a fair number of the creationists reject scientific
>> principles.  Atheists tend to know a lot more about theistic religions
>> than those who practice them, IME, because they've often been raised in
>> one and then decided it's pants after years of careful study and
>> questioning - questioning that *often* is answered with "don't ask
>> those kinds of questions!"
> 
>   There are certainly tons of atheists (a term which I'm using in a very
> broad sense here) who have all kinds of misconceptions about the Bible
> and the christian dogma, and which are quite easy to prove wrong, and
> which, basically, make themselves as foolish with their misconceptions
> as many creationists with their misconceptions about science.

Oh, sure - those who are *active* atheists, though (as compared to those 
who just "don't care" - which is more agnosticism than atheism IIRC) do 
tend to have studied a lot more than the average practitioner of a 
theistic religion.

>   On the other hand, there *are* many atheists who do know the Bible
>   better
> than most christians do, who do know which arguments against the Bible
> are invalid (because they stem from prejudice and misinterpretation of
> the text by ignoring its context), and they also know which parts of the
> Bible (which many creationists interpret literally) truly don't stand
> too much scrutiny in the face of scientific evidence. Of course these
> are the minority, in my experience.

If you count everyone who's just inactive in a religion as an atheist, 
then you're correct.  When I talk about atheists in this context, though, 
I'm talking about those who are *actively* atheistic - and not the people 
who just haven't been to church in a while or who perhaps have doubts.

Jim

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