Oh I understand your position just fine. The fact still remains that it is an illogical, untenable, intellectually dishonest one. You can keep crowing it as much as you like, but that won’t even begin to justify it. Something that we usually insist on in this forum.
How do you know you understand it?
You have spent this whole post insisting that you can’t possibly be wrong. How do you know you’ve even begun to consider what I have to say?
Is there a name for the “If you actually understood me, you’d agree with me” fallacy?
You’re at risk of using at least three, but I can’t decide which:
Argument from ignorance
Argument from repetition
Argument from silence
If you think talking to me is useless, fine. We can stop.
AAAAAAAnnnnnd it’s “No true Scotsman” (a weird mutant form but nonetheless) bringing up the rear. That ought to be the whole pack then.
Because what you have said, exhaustively, and at length, has long been tucked up and put to bed by philosophers and thinkers. There is a logical counter to every one of your logical fallacies, and the only real escape from them is willful ignorance. I’m not the only one who has pointed this out to you in this thread. So either you are woefully under read on the topic, are a novice debater, legitimately hold the beliefs you are so inadequately defending, or are simply trolling the thread for attention.
Further, your hijack didn’t even really address the core question of the thread: Does the responsibility to educate trump the responsibility to care for another persons’ feelings or emotional well-being? Your position seems to be a mash up of the following:
1.Everyone should be able to believe what they like, regardless of how ludicrous it is.
2.Beliefs are all equal
3.Beliefs are separate from actions, even if those actions are derived entirely from the beliefs
4. Nobody ever really changes their beliefs from challenge, so you shouldn’t try unless they specifically engage you in a conversation; in which case you should be respectful and treat them with kid gloves at all times lest you offend and be seen as a jerk.
5. Atheism is either equivalent to or IS a form of religion.
All of these have been addressed at length in books, articles, and debate here on this forum. All of them have been soundly answered in the realms of logic, scientific studies, and philosophy.
Post it back to me then, in your own words, so I can confirm it.
Wow, how’d you get that out of that?
Please stop telling me how smart you are and identify, in detail, the alleged fallacies.
The negation would be “not everyone should be able to believe what they want.” Do you agree with that? Do you think atheists come out ahead?
Nonsense.
Of course that’s true.
You wouldn’t want someone attacking atheism because of what atheists do, would you?
I don’t think you have done much to disprove this one.
Nope. What I’m saying is that atheists can be intolerant, smug, obnoxious, and completely disrespectful of other people - just like the religious people they complain about. Atheists should know better.
Then it’s settled! Life’s hard questions are answered! We can all go home!
I think you’ve proven my point pretty well. I’m done.
We can hope.
Atheism isn’t a belief or belief system. Analogy fail.
Acid Lamp has accused you of being disingenuous, your response here illustrates that quite clearly I’m afraid.
Asking him to confirm that he understands me by allowing me to hear what he thinks I mean is disingenuous? Just the opposite.
Atheism is a belief that God does not exist. It’s a belief system in that it relies on rationality. Nothing wrong with that, nothing controversial about it, nothing suggesting that it is a religion or any of that.
What really impresses me is how atheists can, while still being atheists, act exactly like the religionists they complain about.
Yes. Your thoughts are not that deep, there is no need to be coy.
Start a new thread if you want to discuss the status of atheism vis-a-vis religion and belief. We’ve done that a million times and it doesn’t affect the narrower issue raised by the OP.
I most certainly do not want to discuss that one.
No personal attacks please.
That wasn’t a personal attack, you already have a Pit thread going for that.
I think it was. But the mods can decide.
If it wasn’t an attack, it was irrelevant. So you have nothing more to say, I guess.
I don’t care.
Though I wonder if people are attacking me like rabid religionists attacking an atheist though.
Please report the post rather than weighing in yourself.
Enough already. Get back to the subject rather than making pronouncements about atheists (or on behalf of theists).
I think this must also answer the titular question of the thread. Atheism cannot impart responsibility, if it’s just an absence.
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Yes, but the fact that we are human beings does impart responsibility in pretty much every moral philosophy, so atheists have responsibilities anyway; which brings us back to the question in the OP, which ones do we have?