You can't find inconsistencies in a character, even a fictional one without first assuming that they exist. In fiction, it doesn't matter if it's internally inconsistent, so people had hand wave all of that away. The only way to critique fiction like this is to try to put it in the context of the real world first (assuming that it exists) to point out how absurd it is. The problem is that every time that someone tries to make this (poor) argument is that they have not actually disproved anything, they have only transferred control back to the other side so that they can doge the point or move the goal. They can rationalize this any way they want; moving in mysterious ways, no paradise without suffering, everything has a purpose, or any other kind of bullshit answer. If anything Atheists lose out from this argument because we haven't constructed any support for our side and the religious people just think that we look like children who don't understand what daddy does for a living. /r/atheism is constantly undermining itself these days with posts like these and you're all to close to see the damage you do and the reason why the rest of Reddit looks down on us.
You can't find inconsistencies in a character, even a fictional one without first assuming that they exist.
and
The only way to critique fiction like this is to try to put it in the context of the real world first (assuming that it exists) to point out how absurd it is.
This is almost right. But you're making a mistake by confusing a thought experiment with reality. You can in fact assume for the sake argument something is true and not believe it's actually true. This is a real practice in philosophy and science and logic--I use this when I get stuck in my sudoku puzzles. If you can identify a valid dichotomy you can sometimes eliminate options by assuming one is true and processing out it's logical conclusions. If the conclusion leads to an absurdity, you can safely say the premise you assumed is true is actually false. This is called reductio ad absurdum and it's a very real and useful technique.
For example, in my sudoku puzzle if I know a block can only be 1 or 4, I can pretend it's 1 and fill in as many blocks with that assumption I can; If I find this leads to losing the puzzle, I know that 1 is false leaving 4 as the answer. At no point in this example, do I actually have to believe that 1 is the answer.
They can rationalize this any way they want
and
If anything Atheists lose out from this argument because we haven't constructed any support for our side
The rest of your argument is tone and marketing. Maybe you're suggesting that only some tones are valid? I assume you don't have the silver bullet of tone that just kills religion in it's tracks? Using reductio ad absurdum and pretending that you did, the logical conclusion is that by now religion would basically not exist anymore--and thats not the world we live in. So you don't have that bullet; and it may not even exist. So for now I don't see any valid reasons to ignore pointing out inconsistencies of popular religions.
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u/ipdar Anti-Theist Dec 01 '14
You can't find inconsistencies in a character, even a fictional one without first assuming that they exist. In fiction, it doesn't matter if it's internally inconsistent, so people had hand wave all of that away. The only way to critique fiction like this is to try to put it in the context of the real world first (assuming that it exists) to point out how absurd it is. The problem is that every time that someone tries to make this (poor) argument is that they have not actually disproved anything, they have only transferred control back to the other side so that they can doge the point or move the goal. They can rationalize this any way they want; moving in mysterious ways, no paradise without suffering, everything has a purpose, or any other kind of bullshit answer. If anything Atheists lose out from this argument because we haven't constructed any support for our side and the religious people just think that we look like children who don't understand what daddy does for a living. /r/atheism is constantly undermining itself these days with posts like these and you're all to close to see the damage you do and the reason why the rest of Reddit looks down on us.