I LOL’ed.
So, what you’re saying is ‘how long before you reach your destination’ does not, to you, mean ‘give me an estimate of how long it will take you to get from where you are to there’, but ‘what time is it?’
Because, in the plain English interpretation of the question asked, your driver’s answer, while not precise, is at least on-point, being a basis for an estimate, whereas your desire for him to look at a clock is a complete non sequitur.
That’s awesome! 
There are many ways to misinterpret even the most basic questions. I set myself up for your question by not being specific about what I meant by “fast food restaurants.”. The first rule in crafting a question in my line of work is that you have to define your terms, no matter how obvious you think they are. If you don’t need to know their top-of-mind/unaided answe. r, provide the entire list you want them to choose from. Often,you also need to explain what ISN’T an acceptable answer. In my example, I might want to include national or regional chains, but not local chains or non-chain restaurants. I would have to figure out a way to be sure that everyone understands those terms. This is where Czarcasm’s OP might have fallen a bit short.
Where’s the damn cat? And my jackboots, I need them NOW!
Wow, pretty strong reaction.
IMO, atheism enjoys that special place in the world where it is both religion and nonreligion. As it lacks a doctine and traditional religious beliefs, it is not one. But if I had to answer a questionnaire, and one of the questions was what my religion is, you can bet that I’d put atheism there. The questionnaire gives me no choice in answering the the question, and therefore it assumes I have one (assuming I can’t leave it blank). I’m not going to put down Catholic just because atheism has no doctrine.
So from a civil and real world perspective, it most certainly is a religion.
Does that make sense?
But you haven’t even answered the question yourself. I generally find it a bit of a cop-out when people ask questions like this and expect others to answer without first letting us know their stance.
Then there should be a choice of “none”. As a last resort, there is almost always a choice of “other”, which in my brain would mean “none”.
If there is a questionaire that asks which of several board games I play, lists a few, and I have to check the last choice which is “None Of The Above”, that would make “None Of The Above” a board game.
Does this make sense?
Yeah, killing kittens is hyperbole, I still find it very irksome. I hate to be cliche, but atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color. Well, not quite. The latter is mutually exclusive while I suppose you could have a religious atheist.
How’s this, person A says you shouldn’t walk under a ladder because it’s bad luck. Person B says it isn’t bad luck. Person A claims that therefor person B is superstitious. That’s a ridiculous assertion right? He could be superstitious, but certainly not for that reason.
Just FYI, but even as an avowed lurker I wanted to post an answer to that thread. I thought the question was great, and saw the simple type of answer you wanted. Occasionally I like to pretend I provide useful data to the world and whatnot, you see.
However, as an avowed lurker I can not post to a thread without reading all the replies. Even for your thread, where duplication wasn’t something to be avoided, I simply /had/ to make sure what I was going to post was not already there.
Then promptly got so damn annoyed at the people who thought they were witty or smart or just had to fuck with you I closed the damn thread. To hell with the defenders of that, the SDMB is the one place ‘rules lawyers’ can’t get bitched-slapped so they go crazy.
ugh. Love this place but sometimes the natives get to be too much.
Why don’t you just default any answer that’s not on your list to "none of the above? That solves your problem.
That would be cool, the “CHurch of None of the Above”. It’s doctine would be entirely composed of statements of what its dogma ISN’T.
WARNING! LINK HAS SOUND! IS HIGHLY ANNOYING!
Somebody call the waambulance…
It’s the Dope. Posters here are going to be contentious for the sake of being contentious. If I went to MPSIMS and posted something like “snow is white”, I’d have three different people disagreeing with me for three different reasons within a day, probably within an hour.
Was your language less than painfully precise? Did you use the colloquial meaning of a word, rather than the precise logical meaning? Did you say “I like apples” and fail to explain that no, that doesn’t mean you hate carrots? TOO FUCKING BAD. You left an opening, and some jackass is going jump down your throat for it, because by God that’ll prove they’re smarter than you!
[ol]
[li]Single. Clear. One and only one, although polytheistic religions raise the question of whether an appropriate anwser is “Asatru” or “Thor”.[/li][li]Established. Unclear. Do defunct but real historical religions count? (Norse paganism, Mithraism) What about religions that began as fiction but have been made “real” (FSM, Jedi). Or purely modern creation/re-creations (Asatru, Wiccan)[/li][li]Religion. Mostly clear. “Atheism” being the point of confusion, and not explicitly disallowed initially – although covered later.[/li][/ol]
Atheism is a religion just like clear is a color.
Every time someone claims atheism is a religion, God kills a kitten.
Quite right too - it’s actually transparent.
Quite right-and just as snarky as pointing out the obvious error every time someone uses the term “sunrise”.
I might have to give you the second one. All established religions that have been utilized throughout history would be included-few religions are completely dead.
[Charter Member Hat On]
Oh, bitch, bitch, bitch…!
[/Charter Member Hat Off]