Many believers think that non believers believe in Satan, which is clearly ludicrous as we don’t believe in any gods, good or bad. Some even believe non-believers are Satanists, which is even more ludicrous.
In the book “50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God”, Guy P. Harrison discusses the topic of believers linking non-believers with Satan. He counters most of the arguments but this one:
… you [atheists] are an “unwitting” agent of Satan.
Harrison has this to say about the suggestion put to him:
How do you reassure someone that you are not consciously serving Satan? If you were, you wouldn’t know it. Of course you will deny it because the devil is controlling you without your knowledge.
Harrison states that he finds this argument difficult to respond to.
Whilst I (and I’m sure Harrison does as well) know the “unwitting agent of Satan” argument is ridiculous, how do you respond to it?
I would greatly appreciate if anyone can come up with a good argument to counter the “unwitting agent of Satan” accusation.
5 November 2009 at 9:04 pm
Ah but how do they know they are not the unwitting agent of satan. He is the great deceiver after all.
And what’s this? A blog post- two in one week ?
5 November 2009 at 11:37 pm
Indeed. If I were satan, I’d manipulate the writing of the bible, either writing it completely or just changing and adding things here and there.
Within a few centuries, you have poor Christian puppets, thinking they are obeying God’s will, committing atrocity after atrocity, tumbling head-over-heels into hell one after the other.
6 November 2009 at 8:30 am
@Prettymolecules Hi, welcome to the blog.
Hmmm, egads! Satan is real, that or the bible was written and re-written by people who knew little and/or wanted to influence the sheeple.
6 November 2009 at 8:27 am
Thought I better write a few posts before I get kicked off the atheist blog roll for not updating. LOL
6 November 2009 at 8:38 am
Remember that we’re trying to come up with an argument that works within a theistic framework so the person you’re replying to understand it.
…that was an unneccesarily long sentence.
Anyways, the point I was trying to make is that if they believe Satan exists, their deepest beliefs may well be his commandments.
6 November 2009 at 9:19 am
It’s a good argument Prettymolecules (I was trying to be funny, but failed).
Return the accusation that “I’m being unwittingly manipulated by Satan”, to a question “How do you know the Bible hasn’t been manipulated by Satan?”
There’s certainly enough flaws, errors and contradictions in the bible to indicate it may have been manipulated.
5 November 2009 at 11:20 pm
My response is to point out that anyone can make this sort of claim:
You reject Scientology? That’s because your spirit is under attack by the souls of dead aliens.
But the obvious question is “how do you know the dead aliens/demons/whatever exist”.
One can’t reasonably defend one unsupported assertion (Christianity is true) with another unsupported assertion (you don’t believe because Satan’s mind rays are distorting your thinking).
6 November 2009 at 8:38 am
@David hi, welcome to the blog.
Unfortunately the Christians seem to be able to defend totally unsupported assertions (well, at least in their own minds, certainly not under any proper scrutiny).
Religious people also seems to be able to totally reject any other doctrine as being wrong/unsupported/foolish but see nothing wrong with their own particular doctrines.
One of the biggest proofs against gods in my opinion – the “which god” argument.
7 November 2009 at 12:08 am
“Harrison states that he finds this argument difficult to respond to.”
Harrison has made an error. An assertion has been made—not an argument. It is not Harrison (or anyone’s) responsibility to disprove unsupported assertions.
Yes, Christians are free to irrationally demand we disprove their baseless claims. And we are free to point out the baselessness of the assertion and move on.
Until such a time as they actually attempt to make an argument in support of their claim.
6 November 2009 at 2:42 am
I just read Sean’s comment. I can’t believe I missed your other post. I’m going to go and read it now. I’m following _SATAN_ on Twitter. Funniest tweets, like ever!
Hope you are happy and well,
T
6 November 2009 at 8:39 am
I also follow _SATAN_ on twitter, very funny.
I’m well and as happy as I can be, considering (but that’s another story).
6 November 2009 at 4:57 am
Just tell them it’s what they’ve been told to believe their whole lives, so believing it makes sense to them. Ask them to tell you what evil things they think you do, other than simply not believing, that would make you an agent of Satan. When they say things like “cheat” and “lie”, tell them believers do those things, too, sometimes more often. If they say horrible things like “murder” and “rape”, just be honest with them about it.
11 November 2009 at 5:04 am
IMO, the stock ‘atheists believe in Satan’ nonsense from religionists is so absurd that it doesn’t really merit response.
If you must bother yourself responding to such smug, boring, bog-standard religionist crap, merely point out that it’s a strawman argument, an intellectually dishonest contrivance designed not to reveal any truths, but indeed, simply intended to make the respondent expend effort addressing a non-existent issue.
10 December 2009 at 1:12 pm
if god supposedly gave us free will – how does making the choice to not believe make one a tool of satan? isn’t it within the bounds of god’s plan that i exercise my free will?