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Topic: Respect my ass (Read 45686 times)
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Simon K
Frungy champion
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I still dislike "Xtheist", though, for semantic reasons. I prefer "antireligious". I really prefer no label at all, because there's nothing special about us. We're natural thinkers.
Indeed.
The term "naturalist" is also a good way to describe my own stance about the nature of the universe, since I not only do not believe in gods, I also do not believe in magic crystal healing, ghosts and other new age junk that technically doesn't involve gods. It's just that in my native language, "naturalist" is practically never used, and is very close to the (much more frequently used) term for people who practice public nudity. :-P
I tend to use the terms atheist or antitheist when I'm specifically discussing religion.
About agnosticism, it does make perfect sense to me to say religious matters are unknowable. Even if miracles start happening tomorrow, maybe it's some amazingly advanced alien race? Maybe it's the operator of the Matrix? It's just a reasonable trail of thought. I think that saying "I believe that God does not exist" is more of a stance.
It does make perfect sense, and strictly speaking, religious matters are unknowable. It's just that there is an infinite number of unknowables (like the existence of tooth fairies, Voboblax the Happy Balrog, hyperintelligent cows conducting clandestine experiments on farmers, Russell's Teapot, etc.), most of which are so profoundly silly that any sane person implicitly assumes they do not exist, unless evidence implies otherwise.
For me, these *silly unknowables* include Odin, Thor, Ra, Anubis, Zeus, Athena and all the others. Yahweh too.
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Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Very interesting, but I have nothing to add to the main thread.
A few pages back, someone said there are dozens of versions of string theory.
I'm sorry, but that's off by over a hundred orders of magnitude.
String theory is a theory. It is a framework for understanding phenomena. It contains definitions and laws. It is not a terribly specific theory. However, it implies a set of far more specific theories, each of which assumes a 'compactification'. Each of the alternate compactifications has additional laws which renders it far mroe specific.
Over 99.99% of these compactifications have been ruled out as inconsistent with our world. We have a lot further to go before we can rule out all, or all but one.
~~~~
Science does not have a term for what it considers to be true, because nothing deserves this layer of semantic protection.
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Galactic
*Many bubbles*
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*notices a part of this thread he actually understands*
Blue.
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RedDaVinci
Zebranky food
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WE ARE THE CHENJESU. WE ARE THE MMRNMHRM.
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Question:
Why does every forum seem to have a space permanently reserved for what is believed to be theological dispute? It's dull, it's trite, and it gets nowhere. After following this ridiculous discourse for several pages, I can only come to the conclusion that nobody is really being open-minded, here. At all. I think it has something to do with having a religious epiphany on a Star Control forum that triggers one's brain to shut off entirely to very many new ideas.
It was something very simple that the original poster wanted to declare. If you'll pardon the presumption, I think he was just a little tired of what cannot be described any differently to be anything but "religious freaks", scraping our throats and promptly following this with increasingly more heavy doses of traditionalist hogwash and derisive rhetoric. All the while threatening your eternal soul to damnation.
I hope not to offend anyone in saying this, and I certainly hope not to presume to be speaking for the original poster, but it's what I believe to be what was on his mind.
That having been said, "Red".
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lakota.james
*Many bubbles*
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green.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Okay, it made sense in the 'pussy' thread, but what's this for?
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Valaggar
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Since I don't want to infest this forum with threads, I guess I'll take this opportunity to announce that I've recently (i.e. last week) become an antireligious atheist.
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« Last Edit: October 15, 2007, 09:00:55 pm by Valaggar the Wackrazy One »
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Valaggar
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That's great, another intolerent bastard that gives regular atheists a bad name.
Couldn't you just be atheist without being anti-religious? There is a difference between considering religion dangerous and considering religious people unworthy/dangerous/stupid/whatever. Just like hating leprosy doesn't equate to hating leprous people.
Ah, and, by the way, hating the blunt way Dutchmen use to criticize people doesn't mean hating Dutchmen. (I remember you were a Dutchman?)
Also, I have to say it again: I really don't think people should give themselves titles just because they don't have certain superstitions. At least not nouns like "an atheist". It feels as if they're on some camp, equivalent to yet another religion. It's nothing like that, we simply accept the world as it is. We were born this way. It's like giving a title to people who aren't , say, cashiers. There is a difference. The term "non-cashier" does not have (too much of) a practical application. It is necessary more often to refer to being skeptical about the existence of deities than to refer to not being a cashier. And what better way to refer to this sort of people than by using the term "atheist"? Of course, this term does have some limitations, such as not expanding the breadth of this skepticism to supernatural in general, but we have other terms for that as well.
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Valaggar
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If you say so... What's your rationale for disliking me? My verbosity? My love for finding unlikely links between completely unrelated things? Both of them? None of them? I see no reason for perpetuating this grudge.
EDIT: Ah, and I take it you understand that my "snipe" wasn't by any means intended to annoy you? It's just that I've read that old post of yours.
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« Last Edit: October 17, 2007, 03:20:07 pm by Valaggar the Wackrazy One »
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