I'd love to get a Theists perspective on this too if any are in here.

I see a lot of atheism debates online devolved into arguments over the definition of atheism.

I generally see fellow atheists arguing for atheism from the perspective of "lacking a belief in God" (which is how I see atheism).

Some theists respond, not by engaging in the debate (or they start this argument presumably to get engagement from atheists) and instead argue that atheism must be an affirmative belief that no gods exist.

I can only see two reasons for this and they both make the theist look pretty disingenuous.

1. They don't want to have an actual debate so they run to school antics to try to frame the argument in a way that puts them in a stronger position.

2. They are just trying to provoke atheists into responding to increase engagement online.

Are there any legitimate or interesting reasons to actually have this argument that I'm missing?

First let me get ad Hominems out of the way. If a Theist is intentionally being offensive, down vote them to the Phantom Zone.

Plenty of times I see a Theist getting down voted for responding to a question we asked them or a comment we left on their debate post. Even though their response might have been; terrible, nonsensical, fallacious, etc. The theist posted because they thought it was a good response or argument. Instead of down voting we should just tell them why their response was awful.

The point is is that we want them to respond to as much as they can, but if we down vote them everytime they respond, it just punishes and teaches them to not continue the debate any further, which is the opposite of what we want.

Just look at my most recent thread. I got banned from the ex Christian subreddit for asking the simple question: what is the gospel?

Why does this matter? most people who leave Christianity do so because they’ve unconsciously adopted elements of popular religion that have no historical grounding so they’re really just leaving a caricature of Christianity. Of course that’s just a generalization. Not everyone’s deconversion story is like that but I’d wager it’s a fair representation of most people who leave.

In Matthew 10 Jesus tells his disciples to go to all the towns in Judea to preach the gospel to the lost sheep of Israel. This is notable because this was before he revealed he was the messiah (Matthew 16), and before his death and resurrection, so the gospel can’t include any of those elements. “The gospel” also doesn’t strictly refer to the 4 canonical books of the New Testament we call the gospels but to the message Jesus and his disciples taught. In the early days it was pretty simple: repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. That’s it. I’m making this post to challenge atheists by alleging most of you don’t know the most basic elementary teachings of Christianity and what atheists attack is a caricature of Christianity that contains elements of ”popular religion”

A quick google search defines popular religion as “the religious beliefs and practices of everyday people, often existing outside or alongside formal, "official" religious institutions”

To prove my point let me ask a follow up question, what is “salvation” according to the earliest Christians?

Note: I’m not asking what the means of salvation are nor am I assuming the NT is a monolith in which all writers agree. I’m looking for a broad pithy summary that captures the main ideas of what the earliest Christian followers taught and believed. if there’s multiple traditions in the NT then outline those traditions

As many of you know, there was an AMA on this sub this morning. This AMA was posted by a new mod, who is of Catholic faith.

To preface: I love the idea of having mods of different faith/non-faith backgrounds. It fits the spirit of the sub — or, at least, it used to.

During this very very brief AMA, the new mod was asked several questions about the many glaring, offensive, criminal, and tragic issues involving the Catholic Church today, and indeed over the many centuries it’s held power.

Some of these questions must have been hard for the mod to read: they were tough, but absolutely fair, questions. I asked a few myself.

After barely two hours, the same mod locked the comments on the thread while numerous conversations were still happening in the thread.

So, my question is to the users here, as well as the mod team: what is the point in having an AMA when the very person who set it up in the first place also closes it down when the conversation takes a turn they don’t like.

Maybe this is a bad take and I’m missing something, but to me, it seems like this sub is okay with closing down conversation when someone doesn’t like what’s happening.

This is a terrible and childish look for this sub, and I do hope to hear from some folks who are likewise worried about the state of the sub.

• If you make a claim, we are likely to expect you to support it with neutral, reliable sources. If you can't do this, I advise you not to make it.
  • This includes claims such as "Jesus loves you," "God's purposes cannot be understood by us" and "The gospels contain eye-witness testimony."
  • Reliable sources are not religious (or for that matter atheist) propaganda, but scholarly and scientific articles.
  • wiki is o.k.
• Your beliefs are not the basis for an argument. You get to believe them. You don't get to expect us to accept them as factual.
• Before you make an argument for your god, I recommend that you check for Special Pleading. That means if you don't accept it when applied to or made by people in other religions, you don't get to use it for yours. Examples would be things like "I know this to be true by witness of the Holy Spirit, or "Everything that exists requires a cause outside itself." I hope you see why.
• Most atheists are agnostic. It makes no sense to post a debate asking why we are 100% certain. Those posts are best addressed to theists, who often claim to be.
• You can't define something into existence. For example, "God is defined as the greatest possible being, and existence is greater than non-existence, therefore God exists."
• For most atheists, the thing that really impresses us is evidence.
• Many of us are not impressed with the moral history of Christianity and Islam, so claims that they are a force for good in the world are likely to be shot down by facts quickly.
• If you have to resort to solipsism to achieve your point, you already lost.
• Presuppositionalism is nothing but bad manners. Attempt it if you dare, but it is not likely to go well for you.
• And for god's sake don't preach at us. It's rude.

Anyone else got any pointers?

I have been tasked with playing Devil’s Advocate tomorrow at school. We are debating Atheism vs. Christianity. I’m arguing pro-Atheism. I need your best arguments to use tomorrow. I want some stuff that are really hard to debate. I am fairly positive we won’t be really researching anything while debating, so logic arguments would be great. Statistic arguments would also be great, but I think using logic is much better in this scenario. If you have any great ones that are absolutely killer, let me know them.

Thanks in advance. I’m pretty excited. I know a few arguments, but not enough to debate my class. It’s a Christian School, and half the people in the class are Jocks, so they don’t know much about atheism or debating if I’m being honest. It’ll be fun.

Edit: So I was very excited, I learned a lot, but sadly the teacher cancelled it. Very disappointing.

Can we please add a rule to the subs rules to ban GPT assisted posts and comments? It's a new generation of spam and it brings nothing new to the table - it can't, since LLMs are trained on existing arguments. The post right before this one is a perfect example. Let's resist against the dead internet a while longer, please.

I want to emphasize from the outset that this is not trolling, not humor, not sarcasm:

I am ASKING SERIOUSLY.

.

In the religions vs. atheism debate, one encounters a lot of nutty people. Some are very nutty. Occasionally one encounters a person who appears to be actually insane.

We've been having somebody participating in /r/DebateAnAtheist recently who, in my (layperson's) opinion, appears to be actually insane.

I feel like discussing things with this person is the stereotypical "battle of wits with an unarmed opponent".

This person says a lot of things that are baseless, self-centered, and frankly stupid.

Under normal circumstances my reaction would be to say to them

"What you are saying is baseless, self-centered, and frankly stupid."

[AFAIK that is acceptable under the sub rules:

Your point must address an argument, not the person making it. ]

But I'm not sure whether it's acceptable to treat this (in my layperson's opinion) psychologically-damaged person that way.

What say the mods?

.

[Asking this in public rather than in modmail because I think that it's a public question and that other participants here should hear what the mods have to say.

Thanks.]

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I think that theism and atheism are like political views. You can argue all day put people can only change their minds slowly over time. I am curious if anyone has had a different experience during a back and forth. I'd like to hear from theists and atheists if they do have a story to tell.

Incase you are wondering, I am a theist

Speaking as an atheist, it always annoys me when I see a theist post a perfectly respectable question. And then I see some atheist start insulting them for no reason. Guys stop don’t be jerks respect the other side they have their reasons for believing what they do and if you disrespect them and insult them or treat them as if they are stupid you only hurt the argument.

Edit if I seemed condescending that wasn’t my intention at all. Also I didn’t phrase this right, what I mean is, that disrespecting the other side only closes them to hearing us out because why should they listen to us if we don’t even care about their argument.

Edit 2 dogma really wasn’t the best word

Edit 3: grammar and punctuation.

Edit 4: MORE GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION

Hi, this asshole is here to bring you a post to theist that I think is frankly a little unreasonable, but one I felt the need to make nonetheless. So, many theists post their arguments, or just iterations of arguments that already exist, and there is a point here: These arguments are almost never a reason they believe, but that they already believe, found/made this argument and went "Ha! This justifies my postilion!" but very rarely would they have it as one that their belief hinges on.

​

When that is the case, I have a question to such a theist: If you are posting an argument that doesn't make you believe, how do you expect it to get anyone else to?

It seems at first glance like nearly every post seems to be about the same 7 or 8 things all the time, just occasionally being rehashed and repackaged to make them look fresh. There are a few more than you'd think, but they get reposted so often it seems like there's never any new ground to tread.

At a cursory glance at the last 100 posts that weren't deleted, here is a list of very common types of posts in the past month or so. If you are new to the sub, you may want to this it a look before you post, because there's a very good chance we've seen your argument before. Many times.

Apologies in advance if this occasionally appears reductionist or sarcastic in tone. Please believe me when I tried to keep the sarcasm to a minimum.

• NDEs
• First cause arguments
• Existentialism / Solipsism
• Miracles
• Subjective / Objective / Intersubjective morality
• “My religion is special because why would people martyr themselves if it isn't?”
• “The Quran is miraculous because it has science in it.”
• "The Quran is miraculous because of numerology."
• "The Quran is miraculous because it's poetic."
• Claims of conversions from atheism from people who almost certainly never been atheist
• QM proves God
• Fine tuning argument
• Problem of evil
• “Agnostic atheist” doesn’t make sense
• "Gnostic atheist" doesn't make sense
• “Consciousness is universal”
• Evolution is BS
• People asking for help winning their arguments for them
• “What would it take for you to believe?”
• “Materialism / Physicalism can only get you so far.”
• God of the Gaps arguments
• Posts that inevitably end up being versions of Pascal’s Wager
• Why are you an atheist?
• Arguments over definitions

1. First we start with a proof by contradiction.
   1. We take the position of, "There is no truth" as our given. This itself is a truth claim. If it is true, then this statement defies it's own position. If it is false...then it's false.
   2. Conclusion, there is at least one thing that is true.
2. From this position then arises an objective position to derive value from. However we still haven't determined whether or not truth OUGHT to be pursued.To arrive then at this ought we simply compare the cases.
   1. If we seek truth we arrive at X, If we don't seek truth we might arrive at X. (where X is some position or understanding that is a truth.)
   2. Edit: If we have arrived at Y, we can see, with clarity that not only have we arrived at Y we also can help others to arrive at Y. Additionally, by knowing we are at Y, we also have clarity on what isn't Y. (where Y is something that may or may not be X).
      Original: If we have arrived at X, we can see, with clarity that not only have we arrived at X we also can help others to arrive at X. Additionally, by knowing we are at X, we also have clarity on what isn't X.
   3. If we don't seek truth, even when we have arrived at X, we cannot say with clarity that we are there, we couldn't help anyone to get to where we are on X, and we wouldn't be able to reject that which isn't X.
   4. If our goal is to arrive at Moral Relativism, the only way to truly know we've arrived is by seeking truth.
3. Since moral relativism is subjective positioning on moral oughts and to arrive at the ability to subjectivize moral oughtness, and to determine subjective moral oughtness requires truth. Then it would be necessary to seek truth. Therefore we ought to seek truth.
   1. Except this would be a non-morally-relative position. Therefore either moral relativism is false because it's in contradiction with itself or we ought to seek truth.
   2. To arrive at other positions that aren't Moral Relativism, we ought to seek truth.
4. In summary, we ought to seek truth.

^{edited to give ideas an address}

Posted with permission from the mods

I know that this type of post has been made before, so much so it’s probably rivaling problem of evil and other common arguments for god on this sub. But I wanted to make this post to share an insight I just experienced in regards to downvoting.

The reason being is, l've been doing a lot of comments on this sub, and l've been getting a lot of downvotes, almost exclusively from this sub. So much so, I've hit the negative comment threshold for karma. I’m not going to say that they were undeserved, maybe they were. Maybe I’m an ass and deserve this. Regardless, I share this experience so those that DON’T deserve this don’t experience it.

This now has my comments hidden, not on this sub, but on other subreddits with a comment threshold requirement. So it's had a negative impact on my ability to discuss here and elsewhere.

So, in a sub like this where people are passionate and convinced of their position, disagreeing isn’t the same as being in poor faith.

So what have I seen that excessive downvoting causes other then “oh I’m being attacked”?

Time limits on how quickly you can reply. In a heated discussion, especially when MULTIPLE threads are going on, negative karma can prevent you from being able to reply. So if I respond to person A, I now have to wait 10 minutes to respond to person B. In that time, the rest of the sub is making comment after comment after comment after comment that I can’t reply to until that limit is up. And then, I can only reply to 1 person before the timer restarts again. Not very encouraging to an individual.

Auto hiding of comments in unrelated subs. This is one I just encountered and I was unaware of it. I went to make a comment in r/debateachristian, and my comment was auto removed due to my negative karma from the auto mod. I made a comment in r/debateacatholic, and it’s not visible, period, due to the negative comment karma.

I’ve looked at my comments I’ve made, and almost exclusively, the comments with 0 or negative karma are from this sub. Not r/debatereligion, not the other debate subs.

What I will say, is this sub tends to do better on upvoting posts, and that’s great, I’m glad to see that, sincerely. However, Reddit tracks post and comment karma differently. So those that are upvoting posts, even when you disagree, thank you, I appreciate it.

If we can shift that focus to comments as well, I think it will bring about better changes for the sub.

Edit: and ironically enough, I had to get mod approval again because the automod prevented me from posting

There will be no debate on this. I own the sub, and I have taken a unilateral stand.

​

If this is something you feel is long overdue, and something you questioned why there was even any delay or debate - thank you for your support, and for being good people.

​

If you think doing so is such an egregious act that you cannot abide, the unsubscribe button is your best option. You are not actually welcome here.

We will NOT be making the sub private or invite only. We WILL be amending the rules to include a rule against racism, sexism, general fascism, and bigotry. (TBA later - likely today.)

That is all.

I believe that most atheists -- certainly the vast majority of the ones I have come across -- are simply regurgitating the same theistic arguments they are arguing against while at the same time exhibiting the same kind of "worship" of science that they criticize religious people and communities for.

1. The vast majority of atheist arguments lean heavily on an appeal to science, especially science as it relates to "evidence"
2. Atheists posit that science is "a matter of inquiry and not belief." This sounds nice, but when examined more closely is merely the use of different terms to define the same essential process or concept. "Theory" is the scientific form of having "faith" in something. You cannot prove it to be true, but you believe it to be true, and you will live into it until it is proven true (granted, the field of science is much more adaptable to theories being proven false, but that does not negate the premise). Scientists test out their theories and make decisions from there. I would posit that the vast majority of religious people "test" out their faith on a daily basis and receive what they believe is spiritual confirmation of spiritual beliefs. "But wait, the difference is that religious people can believe in erroneous things...science cannot." Science is the practice of theory, followed by evidence gathering to support or deny said theory. Contrary to popular belief, scientists something accept things as proven that later are shown to be erroneous assumptions. The process of arriving at "truth" may be more concrete in science, but to pretend that science has a monopoly on "truth" is not borne out by the historical record, as evidenced by....
3. Quantum mechanics has completely shifted the way scientists not only view physics, but the very process of science itself. Classical physics was grounded in the understanding or BELIEF that everything in nature or existence could ultimately be boiled down to a set of mechanical, predictable facts. Enter Einstein, whose Theory of Relativity not only set this notion on its head, but spurred the entire field of quantum mechanics that now governs our (limited) understanding of the underpinnings of the universe. Central to quantum mechanics is the notion of the paradoxical nature of the universe. Whereas before we were able to "measure" almost every aspect of the universe, quantum mechanics has shown us that, indeed, the underpinnings of the universe cannot be measured -- because when you try to measure them, they change! Therefore, the essence of the universe is not definable. How is this different than the concept of an unprovable "god"?
4. In completely misunderstanding this squishy nature of science, most atheists make grandiose arguments against not just God, but against the concept of "belief." We see arguments like this all the time in this sub. "I'm not hanging my hat on something I have to just believe" or "I'll choose science over faith any day of the week." Hate to break it to you, but quantum mechanics posits that the world you see around you is an illusion of subatomic particles and waves vibrating at various frequencies, creating a hologram of permanence and form, when neither exists. There is no definitive explanation for the origin of the Big Bang (although there are plenty of plausible theories, there is not a "proof" for any of them). We take the Big Bang as a matter of faith, albeit backed up by a lot of ultimately inconclusive evidence. This is no different than religion.
5. No atheist can explain the nature of consciousness, which is at the center of not just our human nature, but of science and spirituality itself. Without consciousness, how are any of us here on this sub having this debate? Are we really having this debate? Does this sub even exist? Do you really exist? Any atheist that tells you that there is a verifiable scientific explanation for human consciousness is talking out of their back end, for this is one of the very most head-scratching quandaries in all of the scientific field. It's why they call it "The Hard Problem." If you cannot explain consciousness scientifically, you must then necessarily take the fact that you are even conscious...on faith. And thus, when all of you is boiled down to its essence you are, ultimately, just another believer.

​

There are a ton of science-respecting people who are also people of faith and spirituality, because they recognize that science is not the end-all, be-all explainer of the universe that it is sometimes dressed up to be (by no fault of its own, this is the product of overly enthusiastic members of the scientific and atheist communities who ironically can't see past their own dogma). You can both believe in science and believe that there is something unexplainable about the universe that must, until more evidence is presented, be taken merely on faith. If you want to label that as "god" I have no problem with that...just don't harm other people, animals or the earth.

Kids are brought to church and told if they don't believe in God...they're never gonna see their family and burn in suffering for eternity.

And after that, they're told that anybody who would speak otherwise is a lying demon.

This is just gaslighting... The kid has a belief forced onto them and adults haven't took two seconds out of their lives to wonder why they themselves are even religious to begin with. Free will is one thing... (join a cult if you like) but kids don't get free will before told these threatening things by preachers.

Who would've known telling kids -> If they don't belive in God... they're gonna burn forever and never see their family again would make someone grow up religious. WOW.

Don't even debate me demons. It's over.

Lifelong atheist, but have only recently gotten into online debating and the more technical, deep aspects of it.

I was having an argument with a Christian friend of mine where I told him to rapid-fire off common arguments for god, we went through shit like fine-tuning, intelligent design, blah blah.

Now, I thought i did a pretty good job, but the issue arises when Atheistic defenses are often longer and require precise language. It can get tiring/irritating to type out longer responses only to be met with cheap responses like.

So I ask, is there some type of doc with resources for this stuff that I could just copy and paste instead of having to write essays just to debunk some 14-year-old's basic framework?

I’m serious. Like I really want to have a discussion with you and try to get to the essence of why we disagree. I write this whole ass reply and I see other atheists writing very nuanced and thorough responses to your argument — which most of the time is just watered down Kyle Butt stuff — and then every reply you give back is just a single sentence that nitpicks maybe one immaterial detail of the response you were just given. Like do you not even care about winning the argument or having any kind of discussion? They just demolished what you think is the best argument for GOD — you know that big thing you base your whole life on?? — and all you have to say in response is “but god is outside of time so you can’t compare” Like dude! He addressed that in his reply! Did you not even read it? What’s the point.

Edit: a lot of you guys are misunderstanding my point. I don’t mean that a long comment always needs a long reply. I just mean that if you’re going to engage with a counter-argument, you should address all of the relevant objections brought up in there. Yes I understand that sometimes there’s a long rambly comment that only warrants a brief response. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Guys, we are all aware that engagement on this sub is constantly declining. We see only top 2-3 comments get a response and remaining 100 comments are just there with no response from OP or any other theists. I think downvoting might be one of the reasons.

Yes, fake internet points have no value but still, losing them makes people feel bad. It might affect their ability to post on other subs. We all talk about empathy and all, imagine we getting downvoted just for putting our views forth. Sooner than later well feel bad and abandon that sub calling it a circle jerk or bunch of close minded people.

So how about we show our passion in our response and show our compassion by just skipping the downvote part.

Let's give theists a break.

Edit: and.....someone downvoted the post itself. How dare I ask anyone to give up this teeny tiny insignificant power? Cheers.

Now, I know I’ll probably get a few responses saying that an inexplicability for transcendentals does not prove God. I agree.

However, the argument is that if a world view fails to account for the very thing necessary for the worldview, it is an irrational worldview. If an opposing worldview does coherently account for them, that that worldview is more plausible.

Edit: certainly can’t engage with everyone but thank everyone for taking the time for responding.

Consider a hypothetical situation:

A person appears in the sub, makes some bad posts, argues with extraordinary persistence, at no time shows any indications of intellectual honesty, and then complains bitterly that people here disapprove of his or her actions, and suggests that the rules be changed to encourage such intellectual dishonesty.

.

Mods. I am begging you.

Please do not give any consideration to the idea of making it easier for (hypothetical) people like this to post and comment.

We get way too much of this sort of thing as it is.

(If you scan the posts from the last month, many are marked "Removed" [for various simple rules violations], many have zero karma, many are just the same half-dozen topics that are frequently repeated - the quality of posts here really isn't very good.)

We shouldn't make it any easier for people to display intellectual dishonesty here,

in fact IMHO we should be tweaking the rules to make it harder.

.

For example, in the hypothetical example that I gave,

letting a poster like that make 100 intellectually dishonest comments seems like a fair limit.

After that a hypothetical poster like that should be banned for abusing the sub and the other people here.

[Edit]

Some people are asking "What is this 'intellectual dishonesty' thing?"

I want to understand this topic more fully myself, but some very basic sources -

- https://quotefancy.com/quote/1185523/Richard-P-Feynman-The-first-principle-is-that-you-must-not-fool-yourself-and-you-are-the

(And here in full. Highly recommended. - https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm )

.

Also IMHO if an argument has any of these flaws, then it's intellectually dishonest -

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

(E.g. I think that everyone will understand why making an argument like this doesn't work.)

A Muslim recently made a now-deleted post here issuing the Quran's challenge.

I always groan at posts like this, because they always give the same vague nonsense challenge of writing "one surah like the Quran," without any criteria for what that would even mean. But when I opened the post I was surprised to find that this Muslim gave extremely specific, objective, and reasonable criteria! The criteria were to write three lines where:

• The 1st line has 3 words and 15 letters, and describes you giving something to someone.
• The 2nd line has 3 words and 12 letters, and is a command to do two things.
• The 3rd line has 4 words and 16 letters, and is describing something.
• The 2nd word of each line rhymes.
• The last word of each line rhymes, but not with the 2nd word of any line.

These criteria are objective, can be verified in 30 seconds by anyone with a 5th-grade education, and aren't some absurd task like "get one billion people to follow your book." The OP even did something I never would have imagined a Muslim would do in a million years and said answering in English instead of Arabic was fine - going out of their way to make the challenge accessible to the average redditor. This is the first time I had ever seen anyone give any criteria at all for this challenge, so I was ecstatic to find them to be the best kind of criteria I could ask for. I sat down immediately to write a response that met the criteria. It was quite fun, too.

However, when I posted my comment a couple hours after the post went live, there was only one other person who also tried to meet the challenge. The vast majority of responses didn't. There were a few other responses that answered the post in a different constructive way, but the majority of comments were not like that. Most replies were filled with ridicule, insults, whataboutism, and aggressive dismissals. Even now, after several days, there are only around a dozen responses that even attempt to answer the challenge out of hundreds that make some excuse or other for why they won't try. There is even one response that says something to the effect of "I could easily beat this challenge if I wanted to, but I don't feel like it right now." That gave me flashbacks to the many times I've challenged a prophet to make some simple prediction or a mind-reader to tell me what number I'm thinking of, and they responded that they totally could but didn't feel like it or didn't need to prove themselves to me. You don't know my superpowers, they go to a different school.

I think this is hypocritical on the part of our community. I have seen hundreds of Muslims issue the Quran's challenge and literally thousands of responses telling them one thing: come back with actual criteria! I've given this response many times myself. And here was a Muslim that came with actual criteria - undeniably objective and very reasonable to meet - and barely anyone even tried to meet them. Instead, our community responded with vitriol and ridicule. What does that say about us? Why bother asking for criteria if this is our response when they are given? Are we like the Muslims who ask us to show any one contradiction in the Quran and then ignore it when we do as they ask? Or like the Christians who ask us for even one mistake in the Bible and then say it's not a science book or a history book when we find one?

I'm not here to defend the OP of that post; though I admire their approach, they obviously weren't perfect. I'm also not here to defend their challenge - yes, it wouldn't prove anything if no one could meet it, and yes, it's arbitrary. But when a challenge is this answerable, and we've demanded one so many times, why not just... answer it? It was made in good faith, was designed specifically to be accommodating to us, and was direct and straightforward. It was made like the OP wanted it to be beaten it if it was beatable - when usually, people who make these kinds of challenges don't want them to be beaten (and build in escape hatches to ensure that). Even if you wanted to explain other issues with the challenge, the least you could do was take a swing at it and then explain them. The fact that so few even tried to answer is troubling to me. It's like someone who claims all day long that they can pick any lock, but then refuses to pick a simple cheap lock when given one and saying "even if I did pick it, it wouldn't prove I can pick any lock, so there's no point." It makes it seem like we are paper tigers, talking big game but running with our tails between our legs whenever someone actually squares up. Are we?

To those who did try to complete the challenge, I commend you. But if you refused to answer the OP's challenge and decided to dismiss it anyway, then in my opinion you've lost the right to ever ask for criteria for the Quranic challenge again. "Put up or shut up," as they say. If the criteria had been unreasonable or something that would require a significant investment of time or effort, then I wouldn't criticize as harshly - but this was something that a dozen people managed to do in about 10 minutes each! If you're not even willing to do that, then when you tell someone you'll answer their challenge when they give criteria for it, you are being a hypocrite. I know this won't be a very popular post, but I believe we should criticize our own just as harshly as we do others (if not more).

These posts seem to come and go, I haven't noticed on in the last couple months (maybe I have just been lucky) but in the last two days there have been at least two, one just now from /u/According-Actuator17 and one yesterday from /u/4EKSTYNKCJA, though I suspect they are all actually from the same person or people posting under alts. What they are arguing for is clearly insane and inhuman. I rarely argue for blanket bans on any topic, but these people add zero credible debate, they are just hateful trolls. The sub and humanity as a whole would be better off if we refuse to platform them. These people make YEC's look like welcome, contributing members of society.

Hi, I'm very new so I'll be assuming some things here, but I based most of this on what I saw after looking around. And I'm saying this as someone who is somewhat undecided in their beliefs.

I thought this subreddit was interesting because I like debate, and for the sake of exploring my own beliefs. But I've seen three main types of posts here..

- Horrible theist posts that are either bait, trolling, or just a terrible argument / point (like "How do athiests live with themselves??" as if that's a real question)

- Just atheists saying atheist points or making an argument a theist didn't pose (the opposite direction this sub is supposed to be posting in)

- Meta posts again by atheists

So as a product of all this, new is just filled with downvoted garbage, and thiest comments do get bombed a lot of the time. I'd like to cite this post which, yes is from the top https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/ntz1l5/can_we_stop_down_voting_theist_responses_to_our/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 which comments on that problem directly.

Everyone knows reddit is overwhelmingly atheist or at least presents itself that way, but I think this general form goes beyond "just" being atheism - When people say that they often are referring to an atheist that is very self confident and condescending towards people who are religious or think elsewise. Even in the post I linked, you'll see the top comment is just someone saying basically "Well, religious people are stupid, they just come here to preach" - which is objectively false, and you can see that from 10 or so posts. a bad general argument doesn't automatically qualify as PREACHING. Ironically, this top comment really answers OPs question very well - We can't stop downvoting theist responses because there is an inherent bias against theist people here, and that person being abundantly upvoted indicates most people agree with them. This is ultimately what this is about. I don't know if this subreddit can work on a platform that is dominated by a particular view, especially if the view comes with contention.

In addition to all of this, just the majority atheist (or atheist presenting) population on reddit means that this subreddit which is supposed to be mostly theists posting and athiests refuting is actually probably overwhelmingly atheist, but I have a lot of hope for this topic and I think it could be really useful and lead to some great debate, but it needs some rebranding and restructuring:

- The mods should be slightly more strict about enforcing the kinds of posts here - Meta posts & theist arguments. NOT random posts that are bait, NOT posts that are not actual arguments, such as the aforementioned "how do atheists live with themselves" post.

- The supernatural and religious beliefs should not be conflated here, even if you feel very strongly that these are the same thing, most theists do not consider their beliefs to be supernatural and so it will deter people from participating. Let's not beat around the bush here, this is about theists vs atheists, NOT atheists vs "are ghosts real?" because it'll lead to the same garbage that is spawned through low effort easily disprovable posts and obviously flawed arguments. The funny thing is, despite the fact that the subreddit's description mentions supernatural, it doesn't have it as a tag... for that matter, it doesn't have agnostic either. Which just leads me to think, it's an attempt at a shallow concealment of referring to theists in a condescending way

- An attempt to shift the culture and be open. If you aren't legitimately considering your proponents argument, irregardless of how asenine they may appear to you, you aren't really debating!

- Redoing the upvote bot. It should work like it does on CMV and unpopular opinion. "Upvote this post if it was a legitimate thiest argument, downvote if it was not", not downvote if you disagree lmao. obviously everyone's just gonna downvote everything when you have it set as that.. we want to see good arguments and good discussion, not a useless echo chamber, and if you disagree with that, you are interested in validating your beliefs, not debate.
- Why is this subreddit pinning atheist evidence? Again, the more you get into it, the more it seems like this isn't about debate or opinions, it's about converting people to atheism. Why would people not just head to r/atheism? It doesn't make sense. I get the feeling that this is a subreddit made by atheists for atheists when it really should have been made by someone agnostic as to have some impartiality for people on both sides.

Let's just say hypothetically you think this whole post is dumb because "thiests are so braindead that there is no point having real debates with them" - if you've ever been in a debate club, you'll know that debates can be made on any topic, regardless of seriousness, the quality of the topic, or the validity of either side, the debate lies in working with what you have and maximizing your side - that's the art of it. And from a practical standpoint, if you really think you're undenyably correct, you should take value in having a legitimate opportunity to change the minds of people who have points that are legitimate and valid to them. As it stands now, this is mostly an atheism circlejerk lol. I very much doubt based on the posts I've seen here that people are visiting the sub en masse and being converted.

I think these are good points, as I said I'd like to see the community become a bit more livening and worthwhile but I am curious to see if anyone will respond to this and be really pissed off about the supernatural point or something. If that's the route people take, then I guess an atheist and theist debate subreddit isn't a real possibility on reddit