# Attention: Atheists. You do not "Know the Truth". **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 22, 2009, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708 "2009-10-22T03:42:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/361 "2009-10-28T05:18:12Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Pop Quiz, no looking back through the thread. > > 1. Am I a theist? Atheist. Supposedly. I’m more than a little suspicious of claims of atheism from people who then turn around and defend theism, using the same excuses theists typically use. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/362 "2009-10-28T05:35:49Z")
He just wants us to be nice to the credulous because we can’t disprove angels who dance on the heads of pins. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/363 "2009-10-28T05:42:12Z")
Why is it so hard to admit you might be wrong? That’s really the point of the thread. Nobody knows. The Ultimate Question comes down to a Cosmic Coin Flip. God/No God. Heads/Tails. Theists chose to hedge their bet, which is not necessarily an unreasonable thing to do. I prefer to play for higher stakes, so to speak. If I win, I get peaceful non-existence. If I lose, Eternal Damnation. What a rush. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/364 "2009-10-28T05:49:08Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > The Ultimate Question comes down to a Cosmic Coin Flip. That’s where you make your mistake. You equate the answer as a straight 50-50 proposition. It isn’t even remotely that. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/365 "2009-10-28T06:13:38Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Pop Quiz, no looking back through the thread. > > 1. Am I a theist? I have read this entire damed thread and I know you claim to be an atheist, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt about that. But you have walked yourself out onto a plank where ghosts and elves can be dismissed, because they are somehow ‘subject to investigation and verification’ – but God cannot. And God cannot because you insist on a definition of a god that is essentially undefinable. I’m paraphrasing because you have made the same point numerous times with slightly. The fact that you don’t believe in this god and possibly no one else on earth does is apparently irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat it, it’s still absurd. You have been trying to make the concept of theism intellectually respectable, which you apparently feel is necessary to convince atheists to avoid the use of some kind of ‘tone’ of superiority or arrogance when discussing theism. In an absolute sense you’re right that I don’t KNOW that there is no god to an absolute certainty. But reading your defences of the possibility of a god has crystalized just how lame those defences are, in my mind at least. You have reaffirmed and even strengthened my belief that theists are laughably ridiculous. You would have been better off arguing, “Don’t poke sticks at the poor theists. It’s not nice and they have enough problems without you acting like a jerk. We’re lucky we live in a world where they can believe in such nonsense and make it through the day without hurting themselves.” I believe that is a far superior rationale than the ones you’ve presented. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/366 "2009-10-28T06:24:59Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > The Ultimate Question comes down to a Cosmic Coin Flip. God/No God. Heads/Tails. > > Theists chose to hedge their bet, which is not necessarily an unreasonable thing to do. Over 300 posts in this thread and you’ve been a member here for over three years and you still believe in Pascal’s Wager and that God has a 50% chance of existing? ---
**Author:** ![DoubleS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7993a0/32.png) [@DoubleS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoubleS)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/367 "2009-10-28T08:35:03Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > God: An ethereal almighty creature that exists outside of human knowledge & awareness, while doing absolutely nothing with his superpowers. > > Religion: Makes sense of the above through endless and varied childish stories. > > Faith: What makes you believe in both absurdities. Ah! The big Sqazimanga that shat the world! I know that creature. It certainly exists! ---
**Author:** ![DoubleS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7993a0/32.png) [@DoubleS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoubleS)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/368 "2009-10-28T09:20:05Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Why is it so hard to admit you might be wrong? That’s really the point of the thread. Nobody knows. The Ultimate Question comes down to a Cosmic Coin Flip. God/No God. Heads/Tails. > > Theists chose to hedge their bet, which is not necessarily an unreasonable thing to do. I prefer to play for higher stakes, so to speak. If I win, I get peaceful non-existence. If I lose, Eternal Damnation. What a rush. We could all be software constructs in a virtual reality program. Since the proof would be outside our frames of reference then we’d have to do a Cosmic Coin Flip to decide whether we are are not. It’s equally possible by your argument. By the way God does exist. In exactly the same manner that an _idea_ exists. That fact that we are discussing him/her/it in itself creates that _idea_ that we are discussing. Proof given. Mayhaps now we can go on to discuss the various merits/demerits of chocolate ice cream… ---
**Author:** ![Containing\_Iron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/57b2e6/32.png) [@Containing\_Iron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Containing_Iron)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/369 "2009-10-28T09:27:19Z")
I’m sorry, but I can’t let this stand… I’m a happy-go-lucky kind of guy for the most part, but this is one instance where you crossed the line… big time > [@robertliguori](#): > > “Oh yeah? You fight like a cow!” . It’s [QUOTE=Guybrush Threepwood] “How appropriate. You fight like a cow.” [/QUOTE] now don’t do it again! ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/370 "2009-10-28T10:33:38Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Why is it so hard to admit you might be wrong? Pretty much everybody in this thread has done so, except for you regarding your non-committalism. What people disagree with is that every possibility is an equally reasonable pick. > [@](#): > > That’s really the point of the thread. Nobody knows. The Ultimate Question comes down to a Cosmic Coin Flip. God/No God. Heads/Tails. And that’s perhaps why some people seem to have trouble thinking of you as an atheist, since it seems you take your atheism entirely on faith, which would probably appear to be a contradiction in terms to most other atheists. Besides, I would have thought, until now, that the existence of this stance is actually just a strawman set up by theists to knock over – the ‘atheism is just another religion’-argument. That there actually are people who support their atheism in such a way is something of a surprise to me. In truth, this seems to me more like a religion, just one that lacks a god; so perhaps ‘religious atheist’ would be a more fitting term. I’m not saying this disparagingly, by the way; it just seems to me that you derive your atheism in such a fundamentally different way from how I derive mine that a distinction is called for. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/371 "2009-10-28T11:48:08Z")
So I registered online for some healthcare coverage. I was given a one-time password with a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols, and once logged in was supposed to have changed it to my own password. But after wrestling with the minutiae of healthcare for a half hour, I forgot all about the password. This morning I tried to log back in, but wasn’t able to of course, so I had another one-time password e-mailed to me. It contained a letter consisting of a plain vertical line. Too short to be a pipe. So it must be a lowercase l (ell), right? Wrong. It was an uppercase I (eye)! Fooled you! I requested another password, but was informed “We can only send you one replacement password in a day. Come back tomorrow.” GRRRR :mad: At least here the default font is Verdana which distinguishes I from l by adding serifs to the I, so it isn’t a pure sans serif. But in way too many sans serif fonts, like the one I was afflicted with at login, they are identical. The confusion of the two letters is why I have always hated sans serif and refused to use it (with the exception of the SDMB Verdana because it has fixed this bug). Yes, it’s a typographic bug, and it bites. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/372 "2009-10-28T11:51:12Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > So I registered online for some healthcare coverage. I was given a one-time password with a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols, and once logged in was supposed to have changed it to my own password. But after wrestling with the minutiae of healthcare for a half hour, I forgot all about the password. > > This morning I tried to log back in, but wasn’t able to of course, so I had another one-time password e-mailed to me. It contained a letter consisting of a plain vertical line. Too short to be a pipe. So it must be a lowercase l (ell), right? > > Wrong. It was an uppercase I (eye)! Fooled you! > > I requested another password, but was informed “We can only send you one replacement password in a day. Come back tomorrow.” GRRRR :mad: > > At least here the default font is Verdana which distinguishes I from l by adding serifs to the I, so it isn’t a pure sans serif. But in way too many sans serif fonts, like the one I was afflicted with at login, they are identical. The confusion of the two letters is why I have always hated sans serif and refused to use it (with the exception of the SDMB Verdana because it has fixed this bug). Yes, it’s a typographic bug, and it bites. Therefore, there is no god! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/373 "2009-10-28T11:53:04Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > So I registered online for some healthcare coverage. I was given a one-time password with a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols, and once logged in was supposed to have changed it to my own password. But after wrestling with the minutiae of healthcare for a half hour, I forgot all about the password. > > This morning I tried to log back in, but wasn’t able to of course, so I had another one-time password e-mailed to me. It contained a letter consisting of a plain vertical line. Too short to be a pipe. So it must be a lowercase l (ell), right? > > Wrong. It was an uppercase I (eye)! Fooled you! > > I requested another password, but was informed “We can only send you one replacement password in a day. Come back tomorrow.” GRRRR :mad: > > At least here the default font is Verdana which distinguishes I from l by adding serifs to the I, so it isn’t a pure sans serif. But in way too many sans serif fonts, like the one I was afflicted with at login, they are identical. The confusion of the two letters is why I have always hated sans serif and refused to use it (with the exception of the SDMB Verdana because it has fixed this bug). Yes, it’s a typographic bug, and it bites. Og truly does work in mysterious ways. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/374 "2009-10-28T12:10:55Z")
I thought the whole point of being an atheist was being aware that there is no “Truth”? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/375 "2009-10-28T12:18:17Z")
That was obviously intended to be an independent thread. My apologies. You know when you’re casually glancing through a thread and suddenly a new thread idea seizes you like _MUST. POST. NOW._ and you forget you’re in someone else’s thread instead of the forum main page, and you click on the first big blue button you see without thinking? The “New Thread” and “Post Reply” buttons look pretty similar if you don’t pause to read the words on them. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/376 "2009-10-28T12:22:35Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > That was obviously intended to be an independent thread. My apologies. You know when you’re casually glancing through a thread and suddenly a new thread idea seizes you like _MUST. POST. NOW._ and you forget you’re in someone else’s thread instead of the forum main page, and you click on the first big blue button you see without thinking? The “New Thread” and “Post Reply” buttons look pretty similar if you don’t pause to read the words on them. That was not at all obvious. It was at least as relevant to the discussion at hand as addressing the possible reality of elves and pixies. God could be a font – but one of those weird ones that is impossible to read, like wing dings. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/377 "2009-10-28T12:27:58Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > That was not at all obvious. It was at least as relevant to the discussion at hand as addressing the possible reality of elves and pixies. Ah, you beat me to it. As relevant and more compelling than what Oakminster has been posting. I can almost believe there is such a thing as sans serif!.. We should start a religion. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/378 "2009-10-28T12:36:04Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > Ah, you beat me to it. As relevant and more compelling than what Oakminster has been posting. I can almost believe there is such a thing as sans serif!.. We should start a religion. Sans god. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/379 "2009-10-28T12:53:51Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > Sans god. Well played, Sir. You win the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708/380 "2009-10-28T14:58:58Z")
I am now proclaiming **Shaff’s Law** , which explains virtually every aspect of Human Behavior; _Where Facts are insufficient, Lies will be invented._ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-atheists-you-do-not-know-the-truth/514708.md?page=20)