The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

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xChrizOwnz
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The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by xChrizOwnz »

Well, just as I was arguing with every single person in the world it seemed about why I am what I am and who I am and nearly everything else. I did run into some people that broke logic and used circular reasoning. I have two reasons to be on this forum, to think, and to make others think. It wouldn't hurt for anyone and everyone to think.

Growing up in a Christian family I easily distinguished that my family was brainwashing me and were being brainwashed. I realized my mom was donating large amounts to the church, which would never 'bless' her. Left us broke like before. Not only that but my family blamed God for everything good but everything bad was just caused by itself. "Thank God" for this "Thank God" for that "Thank God" he didn't die. "Thank God" he's in a better place.

After telling my parents what happened and challenging middle school students I don't even know why such a religion like Christianity exists and spreads. When I told my parents why I was very sure with evidence that God wasn't true, they were lax about it. However, they wanted to prove to me that Christianity is true. Now only logic and critical thinking can pave the way for me. Which is very ironic, since before I was an atheist I ran away from things like logic.

I saw the video 'Earthlings' luckily I can proudly say i'm mature. The video still touched my heart and got me to think if eating meat was necessary at all. Or if that pain was worth it. For the animals, for the future. I can honestly say I'm going to stay a meat eater. In the south, being a vegan is not really such a thing. Meat is something i'm going to keep thinking about for the rest of my life. We are animals, it's a fact and it's no metaphor. Animals will do what animals do.
K I L L

Thinking is a fun activity for all ages and I think everyone should join in. I respect all religions, but I do want people to think about things, instead of being told things are true, and they are because of appeal to authority. I want kids like me to think about things. Question everything and anything, search for maximum evidence. Sadly, kids can't do that because of the hardcore brainwashing. I'm here to get them thinking, especially in my school. Or at least for them to accept atheism.

Thank you if you read these collections of stories, paragraphs, words, and letters. I will likely be very active. Choose for yourself, and use the brain 'god' gave you.
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TheVeganAtheist
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Re: The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

Welcome to the forum xChrizOwnz!
Do you find the forum to be quiet and inactive?
- Do your part by engaging in new and old topics
- Don't wait for others to start NEW topics, post one yourself
- Invite family, friends or critics
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Hi, glad to see you posted an intro.
xChrizOwnz wrote:I can honestly say I'm going to stay a meat eater.
No, you can only honestly say that you don't know the future.

And unless you're very stubborn and closed minded, you can only say that whether or not you change in the future will depend on the information you receive, and whether or not it is enough to change your mind.

Christians insist they will believe in Jesus for the rest of their lives no matter what, don't they? Are you keen on doing the same thing?

xChrizOwnz wrote:In the south, being a vegan is not really such a thing.
Yes it is, you may just not have met many yet. You will meet more in Highschool. Look, you're twelve years old, and with that comes a certain inevitable degree of inexperience, particularly socially. Most kids your age are completely ignorant- you're a few years ahead. When you get to highschool, other students will be questioning this too, and you'll notice a few of them are vegan. At this point in your life, and in your social sphere, it's less common.

I also recognize that you're under the dominion of your parents, so being vegan may not even be an option for you until you're 18. But that doesn't mean you can't recognize that it's the right thing to do, or hope to do it in the future.

xChrizOwnz wrote:Meat is something i'm going to keep thinking about for the rest of my life.
Is this more fortune telling, or do you think that smokers should never stop smoking because they might "think about it" later in life?
When you stop eating meat, you crave it for a few weeks, but like cigarettes, those cravings become less and less, until you don't want it anymore.

Do some reading on the topic of addiction.

xChrizOwnz wrote:We are animals, it's a fact and it's no metaphor. Animals will do what animals do.
K I L L
This is a really terrible appeal to nature fallacy.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature

Yes, we are animals. It's also very natural for animals to RAPE.
Study evolutionary biology; the penis evolved to enable rape (a penis is not necessary for consensual intercourse- many species of birds lack them, for example).
The penis evolved for forceful penetration, and often to create suction forces to slurp out the semen of other males that came before and replace it.

So, according to you, we should all rape too, right? Because it's natural, and that's what animals do -- particularly many of our closest relatives.

Or, as rational beings, do you think maybe we can consider our actions, and make a choice not to do some harmful things that might be natural, but also bad?


Atheism has no use if you're just going to replace the bad rationalizations and logical fallacies of religion with new fallacies.

Now instead of "Because god said so", you're saying "Because it's natural" -- it's just as irrational.
xChrizOwnz
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Re: The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by xChrizOwnz »

When I say think about it, i'm going to think about the choices I make with meat, and what I did for the rest of my life. I worded that wrong.

I would consider this more of a fact than anything else. From a Darwinian perspective raping would be naturally acceptable but not socially acceptable. It's two different things. I'm not saying that if nature does it it's correct, because I have subjective morals. Simple first grade science should tell you that there are animals that are carnivorous, herbivore, or omnivore. Humans have the leisure to eat whatever they want. The fittest survive from a natural perspective. We use our resources like the animals around us and others.

I don't find "..because it's natural" anywhere as irrational as saying because god said so. The nature of humans can be studied, observed, tested and more. We can test why we think the way we think and how we think about things. It's natural to rape, but by subjective morals we say that that is wrong. I've never said eating meat is good or anything in that sense. I don't necessarily enjoy the killing of animals at all. Nor do I find killing anything good.

Morals are a part of human kind, and we've created laws to stop things like rape and murder of our own species. We've advanced to where we don't rape, we don't go naked in public. These are things that are totally subjective to the person who wants the laws made and how they feel society should be. Que sera sera.


Long thing short - Animals kill for food and resources that we don't have. Although you may find that these animals are being abused. I see it that poor people are being given fur, food, and things they don't have. This is totally subjective to your standard of morals so I don't see the argument here.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by brimstoneSalad »

xChrizOwnz wrote:When I say think about it, i'm going to think about the choices I make with meat, and what I did for the rest of my life. I worded that wrong.
Vegans don't have to struggle with that cognitive dissonance.


There are not a mere few vegans who went vegan just to avoid having to worry about meat and whether what they are doing is morally acceptable.

Animal agriculture is the largest easily preventable contributor to human disease, climate change (and the harm to humans that causes), and non-human animal suffering.

It's bad for YOU, it's bad for the world. No rational person in a first world country would choose to eat meat -- the only reason people do is addiction, or irrational rationalizations.
xChrizOwnz wrote:The fittest survive from a natural perspective. We use our resources like the animals around us and others.
From a Darwinian perspective, eating meat decreases our fitness as a species today, because it is wasteful, destroys our habitat, and causes a high rate of early mortality in the working population, additionally increasing the burden on our health care systems.

If you are remotely rational and support in any sense the thriving of the human species, you would oppose animal agriculture on those grounds.

However, that has little to to do with morality by itself (the consequential chain to reach that point is much longer).
xChrizOwnz wrote:I don't find "..because it's natural" anywhere as irrational as saying because god said so.
Well, that is where you misunderstand logic.

In logic, either a proposition is valid or not; these two propositions are both equally invalid. Because of that, it doesn't matter if the premises are true or false. If the logic is invalid, your argument is not sound, and it is irrational to use the argument.

xChrizOwnz wrote:The nature of humans can be studied, observed, tested and more.
And it's completely irrelevant to the issue. Why did you bring it up? You brought it up in the context of an excuse for your actions. You were defending the rightness of your eating meat by noting that it is natural for animals to kill. Look at your implicit argument there.

You just shouldn't have mentioned it at all, because by mentioning it you made a logical fallacy.

Something being natural or not should not factor in AT ALL to your decision to do it or not, or into any kind of excuse, reasoning, or justification.
If you factor that in, you are being as irrational as theists, because you're using the same kind of bad reasoning -- possibly even worse reasoning.

xChrizOwnz wrote: Morals are a part of human kind, and we've created laws to stop things like rape and murder of our own species. We've advanced to where we don't rape, we don't go naked in public. These are things that are totally subjective to the person who wants the laws made and how they feel society should be. Que sera sera.

You're acting like a very typical nihilist atheist; the exact kind of atheist that theists use as an example of why atheism is evil. Atheists like you are why theists think atheists are amoral monsters.

Rape, murder, public nudity -- it's all just personal opinion!
No. You have a lot to learn. Some things are rational, some things are not.

Do you think if you happened to feel like raping somebody, and changed your opinion and decided that rape was good, then maybe rape is OK for you, and it would be moral for you to rape?
Or do you think it's based on the society? So if you lived in a society where rape is OK, then it would be right for you to do?
How about those societies where female genital mutilation is OK? How about where Atheists are killed for not believing in the official God?

The society that YOU live in now considers you immoral for not believing in god. Therefore, you're immoral. Is that right?


xChrizOwnz wrote: Long thing short - Animals kill for food and resources that we don't have.
False. We have the food. We feed it to the animals instead, wasting a large portion of it (see trophic levels, and thermodynamics), merely changing the form and taste of the food, and making it less nutritious.
There is no useful resource made my animals that we can't make more efficiently (less waste) and more healthfully by plants and microbes alone.

xChrizOwnz wrote: Although you may find that these animals are being abused.
I don't find that these animals are being abused, the ANIMALS find that they THEMSELVES are being abused. This is a matter of empirical fact, not opinion. It's a fact of neurology.

If I tie you down to a table, and cut off all your skin while you're alive and pour lemon juice on you, is it just my opinion as to whether or not you are suffering?
It's OK as long as in MY opinion you're not suffering, right? If you think so, let's try that and find out.

xChrizOwnz wrote:I see it that poor people are being given fur, food, and things they don't have.
Again, FALSE. Do your research. Animals are not useful for these things. Hundreds of years ago? Yes. Today? No.
In rare cases in third world countries, maybe. In the first and second world? No. You do not live in a third world country, so you don't have this excuse. The fact that you're on the internet alone is enough to deny you this excuse.

Animal agriculture is not GOOD for us and BAD for the animals. It's not some kind of trade-off. It's BAD for everybody. It's what's called a LOSE-LOSE scenario, and it's completely irrational.

Animal testing for legitimate MEDICAL purposes is sometimes different. Harm some animals, make some treatments for diseases -- that's a trade-off.
It's getting less and less useful compared to cellular methods, though. Very soon, animal testing will no longer be useful for anything either.

xChrizOwnz wrote:This is totally subjective to your standard of morals so I don't see the argument here.
False. There's nothing subjective about it at all.

Neither is there anything subjective about rape. But that's something you'll have to learn. Don't be the cliche atheist that theists want to attack.
There is such a thing as rational, consistent, secular morality.

There are a number of books on the subject, which somebody will probably link to shortly.

Off the top of my head, I can think of:

http://www.samharris.org/the-moral-landscape
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2938 ... Liberation
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Jebus
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Re: The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by Jebus »

Welcome to the forum.
xChrizOwnz wrote:I can honestly say I'm going to stay a meat eater.
I don't think you will stay a meat eater. You are obviously an independent thinker with brain power way ahead of your age group. If you keep reading, learning, and reflecting you will eventually conclude that the consumption of animal products is bad for you, the animals, the people, and the environment.
How to become vegan in 4.5 hours:
1.Watch Forks over Knives (Health)
2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
Congratulations, unless you are a complete idiot you are now a vegan.
dwindley
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Re: The Twelve-year-old Atheist.

Post by dwindley »

i was raised a christian just the same here in the UK. though i was in my late teens when i got wise to the bs.

i can understand your vigor to make people think. but don't get to hung up with those who wont.
sometimes, regardless. the only way we will learn (if we ever do) is the hard way.
some people are so well brain washed they may never be free of it.

all the best
If i knew anything.
Time and space would merge.
Into a fabulous cake!

www.soundcloud.com/dwindley
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