Kinda like this.
Hah! I knew it. Scratch the surface, and you’re just as much an infidel as everyone else. Admit it: you chew on your desk every day, don’t you? EVERY DAY!
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can proceed to the heart of the matter. Do you choose not to worship the fridge out of pride? Do you deny the existence of the fridge? Or do you claim ignorance of the fridge?
Why do you deny the fridge, Scylla? Confess. Who feeds you and offers succor in your heathen ways? Is it the microwave?
I take every opportunity to point out that what Sullenberger himself did was no miracle. It was the culmination of 30 years of going above and beyond the call of duty to polish his skills to the utmost. It does not at all diminish his achievement to point out it’s damned lucky that flight 1549 was piloted that day by Sullenberger instead of a hungover rookie. His achievement was pure hard work; the fact that he was there was pure luck for everyone else aboard that plane.
I do think too much is being made of the glider pilot thing. When it’s time to land, every pilot is a glider pilot. This was a landing job.
No. I’ve given you citations from multiple sources who all agree with me and disagree with you. The way this works is that you trot out citations of your own to show me that I’m wrong.
For someone who says that I don’t know what I’m talking about you sure don’t seem particularly knowledgeable yourself. I’ve become something of an expert on the various types of atheism as a result of a previous encounter with you when you went semantically batshit on the subject and started insisting that your special terms and weird usages were the correct ones while the rest of the whole world did it some other ways.
So, for your edification:
agnostic/weak agnostic - Can’t say for sure whether God exists or not.
strong agnostic - thinks the answer is unknowable (I personally think this is a stupid viewpoint since if God does exist he could choose to make his presence known and then the answer would be knowable)
Atheist - Thinks God does not exist.
weak atheist/implicit atheist/agnostic atheist - Lacks belief (never heard of God, never cared, not important, doesn’t think about)
strong atheism/explicit atheism/gnostic atheism - asserts the nonexistance of God.
There is no “hard atheism”
Now, I’ve gone a step further. It seems that Atheists agree with me, both Atheist America and American Atheists (not sure what the difference is between those two groups) define atheism as “The belief that there is no God”
I’m sorry American Atheists actually say “The belief that there are no Gods.” Apparently it’s an important distinction to identify what specifically you don’t beleive in.
Now, a few years ago we got this other term “Brights”
“Bright” is the new name atheists wanted to call themselves. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? It seems that there is as many names for atheists as their are atheists. That is, if you let them decide. They don’t necessarily agree among themselves. Even Atheist America is fighting American Atheists about “God” versus Gods.
The “bright” thing kind of pisses me off. It’s like PETA wanting to rename fish “Sea Kittens.” Personally, I think that anybody that fucks with perfectly good words in order to send a message should be shot.
So, no. The atheists do not get to self-identify. They have to live in the world with the rest of us.
So, you are an atheist if you believe there is no God or gods.
You are an agnostic if you don’t know one way or another.
If you feel you need to identify more specifically you can take your pick among the generally accepted distinctions within atheism agnosticism I’ve listed above. The beauty of these definitions is that they are consistently applied. I don’t have to speak a special DIO language to communicate. I can speak to anybody else and they’ll understand perfectly.
(I thought a “hard atheist” was someone who got a boner when they removed a cross from a public place.)
It’s been hard to believe in the fridge since they outlawed freon. I await its prohesied return.
What would be the term for a mixture of those views? For example, there are particular gods that I do believe don’t exist. But there are also gods that I have no opinion one way or the other on. Likewise, I think some gods could be knowable, and others can’t. What am I?
As an aside, I don’t think strong agnosticism is a stupid viewpoint. A god making itself known depends on that god wanting to make itself known - we have no way of knowing whether there are gods out there who elect to not interact, since, well, they don’t interact. And even if they did elect to make themselves known, that’s not surefire evidence that they are knowable, either.
I’m a Born Again Agnostic.
I believe I’ll have a beer.
So let people call it a “miracle” if they want. What do you care? I mean, you don’t know absolutely that it wasn’t a miracle, do you? (For what’s it worth, I’m as agnostic as you can get). I just don’t understand people who actually get offended when something is ascribed to Divine Intervention. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was all just a big coincidence, a random event where everything happened to work out to a happy conclusion for all involved.
But as one of my philosophy professors used to say (and I’m sure he was quoting someone; I just never bothered to look it up!): “Which is crazier? To hear the voice of God when it’s really only thunder? Or to hear only thunder when it’s really the voice of God?”
I think it’s: "What is crazier: to think you are eating God when you have a plateful of spagehetti, or think you are eating spaghetti when it is really God?
I like my professor’s version better. But, like I said, I have no idea where he got it! 
I saw some user comments on an article detailing the statistical survival advantage of seat in the rear of an airplane. Some comments said survival in a crash is entirely on God’s will, with a few specifically stating that love for God influences his decision.
Even if you believe in God, completely ignoring things you can do for yourself is like throwing your hand up in the air when driving a car, asking God to drive you to Home Depot.
Well, for this one, it isn’t that bad. I mean, if the assumption is that a person who believes or loves God is more likely to be saved, then they’re doing everyone else (who might not be so a believer) a favour.
All you’re doing is flaunting your ignorance. I tried to help you out and educate you. You prefer to wallow in sciolistic baiting. Whatever, Joe the Plumber. Go stumble in the darkness.
Hah! I actually recall this. The example was that many who may be unsure of the Christian God may believe that Zeus or any other gods are not real. Such a person would be an atheistic Judeo/Christian agnostic.
Which is possible so therefore the answer is not unknowable
Yeah, but as long as we don’t know for certain that they can’t then we can’t know that it’s unknowable.
In fact, if we knew enough to know if it was unknowable than we would already know. So knowing, we would know that it was not unknowable. It would in fact, be known.
So you see, as I said, it is stupid.
By the way, hardlyanyone uses the term “bright,” but it’s not synonmous with atheism anyway, but with empiricism. That’s yet another term you don’t know the meaning of.
Websters, Princeton, Wikipedia, Every source on Google, American Atheist, Atheist Americans, About.com, all have it wrong.
You have it right.
That makes you very special.
Rarely has an ass been kicked as completely as yours.
[quote=“Revenant_Threshold, post:106, topic:481720”]
What would be the term for a mixture of those views? For example, there are particular gods that I do believe don’t exist. But there are also gods that I have no opinion one way or the other on. Likewise, I think some gods could be knowable, and others can’t. What am I?.
If you lack theistic belief, you’re an atheist. It’s just that simple.
Your own cites support me, dumbass. Strong atheism (which can also be called "hard atheism. Google it if you don’t believe me) is a subset of atheism. You are trying to define it as synomous with the whole set of atheism, which is retarded and wrong and uninformed.
Agnosticism is the belief that it’s impossible to know, as your own fucking cites confirm.
You don’t know the meanings of the terms you’re trying to use. You have no facility with or comprehension of the debate you’re attempting to engage in. You’re making yourself look like a flatulent jackass.
Now fuck off back to your magic fairy.
Bolding added.
Are you kidding? Do you really believe that the reason the situation wasn’t doomed as soon as the engines quit can only be attributed to a miracle? That as soon as a bird hits the engine that the situation is fucked up beyond all hope outside of divine intervention regardless weather it is an experienced pilot or a brain dead moron at the controls? Because despite your qualifications in your post, you are saying that the skill of the pilot really didn’t amount to jack shit in the outcome of the situation.