Historians Board Descends Into God Debate Over Dawkins and Grandma

A discussion on /his/ erupted this week after the original poster allegedly raised what they framed as a grievance about atheist rhetoric. “When you say God doesn’t exist, you’re saying I won’t get to meet grandma again and people like Dawkins won’t be punished for their pride,” the OP wrote, reportedly baiting what would become a chaotic thread.

What followed was a fractious melee of competing philosophical positions, with commenters variously invoking quantum field theory, Platonism, patristic theology, and personal climbing gym anecdotes in apparent support of either theism or atheism. The thread’s coherence deteriorated rapidly.

One respondent attempted to ground the debate in epistemology, arguing that belief in God rested on layers of unfounded assumptions. “The assumption that God exists demands more assumptions and any further inquiry on such assumptions lead to more assumptions,” they wrote, citing resurrection claims and the first mover argument as examples of circular reasoning.

Others responded with increasingly abstract metaphysical claims. One commenter alleged that “if infinity is mind, then by extension the ‘I’ is mind,” and that this somehow vindicated divine reality. Another asserted that quantum physics were “inherently metaphysical” and accused dissenters of mere “semantic wordplay.”

The thread devolved into accusations of intellectual bad faith. Users reportedly claimed that atheists like Richard Dawkins represented modern spiritual bankruptcy, with one commenter writing that “God isn’t even all that abstract. He was understood by proto hominids in fucking caves.” Another user sarcastically observed that “those who believed in God were considered the braindead morons of society,” but that recent “philosophical insight” had allegedly reversed this perception among intellectuals.

Toward the thread’s conclusion, the OP allegedly revealed the entire discussion had been performative. “Did you actually think my OP was sincere? The shit about Dawkins didn’t clue you in? lmao,” they reportedly wrote, suggesting they had been “here to laugh at the people who get baited into posting.”

One respondent summarized the prevailing sentiment among skeptics: “Unironically a better argument that trying to ‘prove’ that god exists through word games. I respect people who believe in god purely out of faith and feels more than the ones who pretend there’s a logical reason to do so.”

The thread remained unresolved at publication.