What do atheists think that "to know God" means?

Grumpy said:
So we can safely add parody and satire to the long list of things you have shown no understanding of? Like "guesses".
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Will the irony never end?


And the concept of tongue-in-cheek as well? They are simply illustrations of the irrationality in believing in unevidenced things and the impossibility of disproving such absurdities. No one takes them seriously, though they are good illustrations of the point.
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That says absolutely nothing about parody establishing core ideas about the said parties concept of the subject. Such is parody that it doesn't even require that the said party even believe it or have evidence.

eg

China%20racist%20T2%20copie.jpg


The lack of evidence of African people being apes doesn't somehow undercut or prevent the viewer from comprehending key values in the author's assessment of the situation

One could even compare the parodies of religious ideas and events as composed and advocated by theists and atheists alike to discern key values that distinguish how both parties conceive the subject




Your analogy assumes we needed a pilot in the first place, it also assumes that pilots actually exist. There probably are no pilots(metaphysically speaking, of course)and your aircraft is in your control, so quit worrying about non-extant pilots and get on with your life.
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Once again, you miss the point and go on a tirade like a collapsed library shelf in the science section.

The analogy is about it being reasonable to do away with anxiety in certain scenarios. My point was that in such cases the anxiety of flight is delegated under the umbrella of certain persons who we most certainly think would be worried whether the plane crashes or not.
In the case of the bus billboard, I said that the anxiety surrounding the proper treatment of the subject (god) is not dealt with in that matter. Rather, it is dissipated by the message coming from reading between the lines "god really doesn't exist, so enjoy life", and ironically, the rest of your post backs this point up (and even serves as a point to explain
key differences between atheist and theist concepts of god, etc).
 
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This is getting us nowhere. I've already demonstrated why your cherry-picking of the Bible is not representative of Jesus's teachings, how the good ideas are not exclusive to Jesus and are better taken from sources not tied to death cults, and how wrong your ideas on the foundation of Christianity are. If you want to pretend there's still some useful argument here, have at it, but I'm done.
 
AlexG said:
Theists advocate god, which is just as silly as FSM.
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Hence its the nature of the party offering the parody to latch onto key qualities which they feel explain the subject.

IOW atheists are advocating their own unique definition of god (for the sake of parody)


In this scenario, the suggestion is that evolution has simply turned africans into bigger apes

China%20racist%20T2%20copie.jpg


Hence the racists offer their unique definition of evolution (for the sake of parody - even though one would hazard to guess that they really don't think evolution functions like that)
 
JDawg

This is getting us nowhere. I've already demonstrated why your cherry-picking of the Bible is not representative of Jesus's teachings, how the good ideas are not exclusive to Jesus and are better taken from sources not tied to death cults, and how wrong your ideas on the foundation of Christianity are. If you want to pretend there's still some useful argument here, have at it, but I'm done.
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Whether it gets us anywhere is up to you. I carried my points and stand by them.

Grumpy:cool:
 
lightgigantic

Was the racist cartoon necessary for some point you were trying to make? Or was it an excuse to express what you actually think?

Grumpy:cool:
 
Grumpy said:
lightgigantic

Was the racist cartoon necessary for some point you were trying to make? Or was it an excuse to express what you actually think?

Grumpy:cool:
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Like I might have just posted it for the sake of being racist just like you posted this for the sake of insulting me?

:shrug:
 
lightgigantic

You posted a blatantly racist cartoon, not me. I was just asking why.

Grumpy:cool:
 
lightgigantic

If you are not a racist why did you post such a racist cartoon?

Grumpy:cool:
 
Arioch said:
@Dave --

I will never argue that people don't have a right to believe as they wish, however the freedom from ridicule that you extend to them disappears the instant any inane prattle leaves their mouths, in my view that is.

I agree with Jefferson on this, ridicule is our only weapon against unintelligible ideas. And what is the theistic concept of god if not an unintelligible idea?
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I guess my concern is when the ridicule becomes institutionalized. We stop listening to the arguments in front of us because we prejudge what it will be. True, 99.9% of what we end up hearing is not new, but that's no excuse.

This thread is an example. We've gone 470 posts now. In all those posts, the OP has never once defined his/her terms, yet we've all had plenty to say. I suppose, technically, one could consider every single one of those 469 responses as straw men - us placing the target for the benefit of our own arrows. Or if not straw men, at least red herrings.

I think that's kind of what Wynn was getting at when he/she started this thread.
 
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Wow. That is offensively racist.

But guys, you're unfairly targeting lg. He posted something as an example to make a valid point in a discussion. You can't accuse him of promoting the message in what he posted.

If I had posted a picture of the FSM in this discussion, would you confidently declare I am a faithful follower of the FSM*?

* may He embrace me with his Noodly Appendage. Oops. Is this mike still on?
 
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DaveC426913

It is true that lg did put a little frosting on that pile of crap, but that doesn't make it a cupcake. He could have made the same point with a parody or ridiculing cartoon without the racist slant, but is this an attempt to inflict more of an attack, is it malicious mischeif or is it just youthful and stupid overexuberance and thoughtlessness.

Whatever, it is way over the line.

Grumpy:cool:
 
Grumpy said:
DaveC426913
without the racist slant, but is this an attempt to inflict more of an attack, is it malicious mischeif or is it just youthful and stupid overexuberance and thoughtlessness.

Whatever, it is way over the line.

Grumpy:cool:
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We've just spent 470 posts ridiculing believers - and right to their faces. One racist cartoon is where we draw the line?
 
Yazata:

Yazata said:
I think that Wynn was just suggesting that if some of the atheists are going to speak with such seeming assurance about "God", "reality" and "existence", some kind of underlying theory that justifies that assurance is implied.
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Is a theory enough, or is evidence also required? And if evidence is required, where does that leave the theists with their underlying theory?

The thing is, our atheists have been insisting that atheism is simply the absence of belief in God. They insist that atheism doesn't imply any other views in addition to that.
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And they're right.

It is true that the "new atheism" often correlates with a number of other beliefs, but those beliefs do not follow from atheism.

That suggests to me that these atheists hold a whole set of additional views alongside the simple lack of belief that they are willing to acknowledge. There's views about what religion is. There's views about the evidence that supposedly justifies religious ideas. There's epistemological views about what is and isn't good evidence. There's ontological views about the kind of things that do and don't exist. There's views about religion's role in history. There's views about religious individuals personally. And there's a variety of sometimes scathing value judgements about all of these things.
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You're right. Atheists do hold such views, in the same way that theists do. But views on these things do not automatically follow from atheism. In fact, some of them may be logically prior to atheism.
 
DaveC426913

I have no problem with ridicule, I've done my share. And I don't know the motivation for LG's choice, but racism had no place in this discussion and he brought it into it. I'm not even a person of color and I found it offensive in this context. Growing up in the South in the late 50s I saw seperate drinking fountains and all the other real horrors, I remember Emit Till, I lived in Greensboro when the KKK shot people down in the street there. I'm zero tolerance of those things ever being able to show their faces in public again without swift and stern reaction to same. It was at best a thoughtless and stupid thing to do.

Grumpy:cool:
 
lightgigantic said:
IOW atheists are advocating their own unique definition of god (for the sake of parody)
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If you think that's what FSM is about, you're nuts. FSM is a silly way to illustrate an important point, that there are an infinite number of things one cannot prove. It's a response to those apologists who dare us to prove that God doesn't exist.
 
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