if you actively work against a belief, then it is dishonest to then say you believe people are entitled to whatever belief they want to hold.
this is completely false. entitlement simply refers to a right. my acting to remove a belief that people have a right to believe in does not impinge on their rights in any way, shape, or form, so long as i don't take away their rights in the process, which i do not, and have not advocated doing.
I'm merely calling Loren out on the fact he's saying he thinks people should be entitled to their beliefs, then basically saying "but I think they shouldn't have them for these reasons"
you've called me out. congrats. there's no contradiction in my position.
@ Evander: It might be useful if you even understood what weak atheism and strong atheism meant before you started talking about atheism at all. It's difficult to have a meaningful conversation when one side does not understand the implications and meanings of the terms in use. Your characterizations of the strong and weak atheist viewpoints are wrong and thus the arguments from those characterizations are wildly off base. Others have pointed this out yet you shrugged their points aside and continued using terms incorrectly to advance your viewpoint.
If you don't find wikipedia to be a reliable enough source, I'll provide links to other works that you will find more authoritative, hopefully, and will provide more insight into some different formulations of atheism:
That's a start and I'm sure Loren can provide more.
What if I told you that I actually disagreed with the "formal" definitions, if I felt that they were crafted by atheists specifically to make themselves seem more rational than hey actually are?
This is not an Observation, it is an Opinion.
I don't care for the semantics of terms. When I say Atheist, I am refering to some one who believes that there is no God. When I say agnostic, I am refering to some one who does not know whether there is a god or not. I am taking the literal meaning of each word in both circumstances, and it does not matter, in either case, whether it is active or passive. If you REALLY want to get into the etymology of it all, I'll be glad to handle that over PMs, butI'm dealing with the literal meanins of the words, and if some one who identifies as an atheist is really an agnostic, under he definitions I am using, then rest assured that I am considering them as an agnostic when I make statements about atheists.
You may not like my definitions, and that might be a debate for another thread, but you will find that they are consistent.
And the definitions really don't matter for he purpose of this thread, anyway. This thread was created to discuss the blasphemy challenge. a challenge created for the purpose of seeking attention, and bothering those who believe in god. Neither of which is a "noble" cause.
Evander on
0
Options
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I'm not understanding exactly where you're going with "art is irrational." Do you mean to say that art is irrational because painters largely follow their emotions and instincts rather than painting by a strict formula? I don't see how that makes art irrational--after all, it is perfectly rational to paint by instinct rather than by design, since (too forced) design has been shown to produce bad art.
Are you saying that it is irrational to love art, or produce art? I don't see how that's the case, any more than it's irrational to love milkshakes or cinnamon toast crunch. Rationality does not denying that our emotional or sensual responses to the outside world exist--it involves behaving in some basically reasonable ways, like not holding mutually contradictory positions.
I think I need a better explanation for what "art is irrational" means, especially when it's being used to justify the statement "it is sometimes better to think and behave irrationally." I feel like often people try to demonstrate the statment "it is sometimes better to think and behave irrationally" by claiming that some obviously desirable behavior is irrational, but without fully demonstrating why that behavior is irrational in any meaningful way.
:P
Well, that's the first time I've seen anyone suggest that emotion and instinct is rational. Also, random preferences. MrMister is wrong. Art CANNOT be rational, because otherwise it would have some function besides "amaze/please/horrify/inspire the people/ make the people think."
Evander, you should probably keep in mind that a weak atheist is basically an agnostic who, being aware of the impossibility of proving the negative, chooses to ACT AS IF the strong atheist position is true, so that one can go on living life.
This thread was created to discuss the blasphemy challenge. a challenge created for the purpose of seeking attention, and bothering those who believe in god. Neither of which is a "noble" cause.
To compare this to "coming out", which has been done previously in this thread, coming out is more akin to some one simply stating that they are an atheist. blasphemy is more like a homosexual individual attacking the concept of hetero attraction.
where, in that video, is he doing that? where, given the links in the OP, is attacking anyone encouraged? atheists are blasphemers. a person stating that he does not believe in god is a blasphemer. it is blasphemy to say that you don't believe in god. that's the whole point. blasphemy is an affront to god, and it gets you kicked out of heaven for good. and that's all these people are doing by saying "i don't believe...". you're justifying people being offended by people publicly asserting their atheism.
This thread was created to discuss the blasphemy challenge. a challenge created for the purpose of seeking attention, and bothering those who believe in god. Neither of which is a "noble" cause.
To compare this to "coming out", which has been done previously in this thread, coming out is more akin to some one simply stating that they are an atheist. blasphemy is more like a homosexual individual attacking the concept of hetero attraction.
where, in that video, is he doing that? where, given the links in the OP, is attacking anyone encouraged? atheists are blasphemers. a person stating that he does not believe in god is a blasphemer. it is blasphemy to say that you don't believe in god. that's the whole point. blasphemy is an affront to god, and it gets you kicked out of heaven for good. and that's all these people are doing by saying "i don't believe...". you're justifying people being offended by people publicly asserting their atheism.
What if I told you that I actually disagreed with the "formal" definitions, if I felt that they were crafted by atheists specifically to make themselves seem more rational than hey actually are?
Then, quite simply, you are retarded. Not just for falling back on the "It's all a conspiracy man!" defense, but for trying to claim your personal definitions are more valid than the commonly agreed upon ones.
This is not an Observation, it is an Opinion.
I don't care for the semantics of terms. When I say Atheist, I am refering to some one who believes that there is no God. When I say agnostic, I am refering to some one who does not know whether there is a god or not. I am taking the literal meaning of each word in both circumstances, and it does not matter, in either case, whether it is active or passive. If you REALLY want to get into the etymology of it all, I'll be glad to handle that over PMs, butI'm dealing with the literal meanins of the words, and if some one who identifies as an atheist is really an agnostic, under he definitions I am using, then rest assured that I am considering them as an agnostic when I make statements about atheists.
You may not like my definitions, and that might be a debate for another thread, but you will find that they are consistent.
Congratulations, you fail at both English and Logic. Definitions aren't a matter of opinion, and they don't change to support whatever position you feel they should.
Agnostic is right, or close enough to not really matter all that much. Your "literal" meaning of Atheism misses the complete goddam point behind even discussing atheism. There are more than possible interpretation of the statement "there is no god", and you seem to be unable to get that.
Strong Atheism is what you are describing, where the person believes the concept of god is ridiculous in the natural word. They extrapolate everything we know about reality, and say there is no room for a ominpotent supernatural being in natural. This is a positive claim, made with the exact same amount of concrete proof as religion (ie none), so could be said to be as much a "leap of faith" as religion.
Weak Atheism says that there is absolutely no proof of the existence of god or any associated supernatural phenomena (soul, heaven, hell, etc), so we must logically say there is no god.
Pay attention now, because this is important. When there is no proof of something the logical and rational thing to say isn't "it exists till you prove it doesn't" or "I don't know" or "Maybe", it's "It does not exist". That is the ONLY valid logical answer to a positive claim with no support, and is where the vast majority of people who say there is no god are. If proof were to ever be presented and verified, these people are willing to be logical and change their minds, but ABSENT THAT PROOF they follow logic and reject the unsupported claim.
And the definitions really don't matter for he purpose of this thread, anyway. This thread was created to discuss the blasphemy challenge. a challenge created for the purpose of seeking attention, and bothering those who believe in god. Neither of which is a "noble" cause.
If it doesn't matter, then why do you insist on defying every possible source but your own opinion to drag out a discussion for pages?
The blasphemy challenge isn't "purely to bother people". It's a publicity stunt that's supposed to make people think, drawing public attention to atheism, and pointing out how hypocritical it is for religion to claim the right to be insulted the second someone public breaks one of their dictates, while atheists are supposed to quietly sit down and accept the imposition of religion into their lives.
God damn, as annoying as I find Dawkins and the kind of people who do things like this, every time they do I'm reminded just how much more asinine I find the opposition.
Therefore, logically it shouldn't be allowed, as it is harmful to people/society.
did you really not get the racism analogy? it's legal for someone to be racist. certain actions can get you in trouble, but we allow people to believe what they want. and we, as a society, discourage them. we are intolerant of racism, and racists (generally).
People have mentioned intellectual dishonesty in this thread.
You cannot tell me that it is possible to both truly believe everyone is entitled to believe whatever they want to believe and then say
and we, as a society, discourage them. we are intolerant of racism, and racists (generally).
That generally means no, you do not believe they are truly entitled to it, otherwise you would let it be and move on instead of having some action occur against it.
it doesn't matter if it's a law or not, if an action is taken against it, then the belief is not approved, and therefore it is wrong to say you believe they have a right to it when you're acting to change their belief to something you don't find offensive to some degree.
People do not defend the rights of the Nazi party to assemble when they want because they think Nazis should assemble, they defend that right because once you put a limit on who can do what, the slope gets slipperier.
You can disagree with someone and defend their right to say it at the same time because you are defending it for the future sake of other's rights.
Posts
this is completely false. entitlement simply refers to a right. my acting to remove a belief that people have a right to believe in does not impinge on their rights in any way, shape, or form, so long as i don't take away their rights in the process, which i do not, and have not advocated doing.
you've called me out. congrats. there's no contradiction in my position.
What if I told you that I actually disagreed with the "formal" definitions, if I felt that they were crafted by atheists specifically to make themselves seem more rational than hey actually are?
This is not an Observation, it is an Opinion.
I don't care for the semantics of terms. When I say Atheist, I am refering to some one who believes that there is no God. When I say agnostic, I am refering to some one who does not know whether there is a god or not. I am taking the literal meaning of each word in both circumstances, and it does not matter, in either case, whether it is active or passive. If you REALLY want to get into the etymology of it all, I'll be glad to handle that over PMs, butI'm dealing with the literal meanins of the words, and if some one who identifies as an atheist is really an agnostic, under he definitions I am using, then rest assured that I am considering them as an agnostic when I make statements about atheists.
You may not like my definitions, and that might be a debate for another thread, but you will find that they are consistent.
And the definitions really don't matter for he purpose of this thread, anyway. This thread was created to discuss the blasphemy challenge. a challenge created for the purpose of seeking attention, and bothering those who believe in god. Neither of which is a "noble" cause.
Well, that's the first time I've seen anyone suggest that emotion and instinct is rational. Also, random preferences. MrMister is wrong. Art CANNOT be rational, because otherwise it would have some function besides "amaze/please/horrify/inspire the people/ make the people think."
what?
Well, if the reasoning behind what art is irrational, how can art itself be rational?
You can disagree with someone and defend their right to say it at the same time because you are defending it for the future sake of other's rights.
If that makes sense.