Calling all atheists

Honk ! Honk !
(actually your photo does bear some resemblance to Harpo Marx !)



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You lose Frank, you lose, not because of any rules i made, but because of your many failures. You have failed to justify that idiot signature line of yours. You can't possibly know who is pretending to know something they don't know, unless you know yourself, which, by your criterion, would be a pretense, displaying weakness. You have failed to justify the distinction you insist upon as between putative supernatural beings. What makes a "god" less imaginary than a fairy? If you allege that the question of a god is more important because the idea of a god is more plausible, you will have claimed to know something, without providing any evidence, and therefore, by your own criterion, you will have displayed weakness.

No Frank, you lose because your expostion is a mess, and your claim to be logical is clearly false. In response to criticism, all you offer is snide, vicious personal reflections. That's because you can't back up your bullshit, so instead you to attempt to distract. You're pathetic.

Hummm...never noticed that. Neat. Thank you for mentioning it.

Hey, Set...still with me I see. I thought you would be.



My goodness, Set...you usually do not leave holes in your arguments quite this large.

Is there anything in my signature line that suggest I KNOW who is pretending and who is not?

If I do not KNOW that someone is lying...does that mean the cannot be lying?

My good friend...if someone is pretending to KNOW what they truly do not know...then it is so whether I KNOW it or not.

My signature line does not go to that point...but that was a very interesting straw man you built...and the arguments against it were just delightful.

Don't worry, Set, I am sure you will get back to being close to logical when you calm down.

You are still one of my favorites! And you still provide more laughs than most.

You are not, of course, any friend of mine, good or otherwise. I am calm when i talk to you Frank, i'd have thought by now that you'd have given up that silly, schoolyard taunt--it doesn't work. I'm just pointing out how meaningless your signature line is, as is almost everything else you post on this subject. It's really rich to see you criticize anyone else on the subject of logic, an exercise which is obviously completely alien to your thought processes.

You won't fool anyone with this latest lame attempt to distance yourself from your silly pronouncements. Your signature line was just another of your witless attempts to preen yourself on your alleged wisdom. Now you discard the force of the claim just so you can allege a straw man fallacy. Your conceit is well known, and you constantly attempt to suggest that others claim to know what they cannot know--it's basic to the silly bullshit with which you attempt to slag others around here. You can't pass up a thread with the word atheist in the title, because you're so eager to prove the excellence of your understanding. Once again, tediously, allow me to point out how pathetic you are.

Set, you are one in a million. I love when you try to pull this "calm" thing off!




That's 'cause I love ya, Buddy...and I know how important it is for you to "point out how pathetic" other people are.

The really hilarious thing about your posts on this subject are, Set...is that you are accusing me of doing the thing you make your specialty.

Hey, this is fun. Whatever you do...never carry through on your intimations that you are going to ignore me.

Frank, you're a liar and a bullshit artist. You're also doing your level best to dodge the criticism which is leveled at you . You quote the dictionary about fairies, and emphasize that they are imaginary. If that is the case, and you are contrasting them to god, then you must think that god is a part of REALITY (it's your idea to write REALITY all in caps, just as you do KNOW). But how can you know that, Frank? Of course, if you think that god is a party of REALITY, then that makes you a theist, not an agnostic. Otherwise, you have failed to answer the criticism that you make a distinction between god and any other putative supernatural beings--in fact you turned right around and emphasized the distinction. Pathetic. In your silly rant with which you have attempted to take over the thread you prate about what one can know--yet deny that your signature line is self-referential. You're rally piss poor at this, Frank.

I suspect that those with a Catholic upbringing (like Frank), or indeed any specific theistic childhood experience, are more likely to consider a preformed version of "God" as a potentially viable part of their "reality" (as opposed to a consideration of "fairies", one version of which were part of popular culture in Shakespeare's day). Perhaps one of the functions of philosophy is make us aware of such conditioning.

Frank has god in his mouth all of the time. He rushes into a thread like this so he can repeat his creed. He has simply replaced the creed of his childhood with this tortured and nonsensical creed of the "agnostic." As his reaction to the comparison of fairies to god shows, he definitely does have a sense of god as a part of reality, all of his protestations notwithstanding.

Set, calm down. You are going to blow a fuse, ole friend.

I have suggested that you speak with your fellow atheists if you want to discuss fairies, pixies and the such. They seem to be obsessed with them. I am not.

I have no idea of what the true nature of REALITY is...and it may be that a GOD...or gods...are involved. I do not know for certain.

If you ask me if a GOD exists...I will say I do not know and that I do not have enough unambiguous evidence upon which to make a meaningful guess.

Not sure why that disqualifies me from being agnostic on the question in your mind, but I have given up trying to figure out how you mind works.

So...you have a very, very low opinion of me...of my intelligence, my honesty, and my character.

Okay...I get it.

I guess I will have to bear up under the terrible pressure that puts on me!

Love ya, Set.. You are one for the ages.

Oh, Set...you kidder, you!

Listen...take my advice and go talk to another atheist about these fairies you seem so taken with. Or...alternately, so to a school for kids in K through 3. They, like atheists, are absorbed with fairies and elves.

You have of course avoided the point that "fairies" were taken seriously by adults in previous centuries. And anyway why not hypothesize " powerful alien experimenter" to account for "the unexplained", rather than "gods" ? The answer is that you have failed to escape from your present day conditioning and the attractive carrot of "an afterlife". You don't want to give up the promise of that dream ticket, do you, even though you suspect you've been sold a fake ! What better solution for you than to claim "agnosticism"...rather than admit to lack of intellectual fiber.

I have not missed that point at all, Fresco. There have been all sorts of mythical creatures that people of earlier days supposed actually existed.

But my curiosity deals with the question, “What is the true nature of REALITY…what is really going on here and what can we know about it.”

I have absolutely no interest in any of the mythical creatures…and my interest in gods really is limited to whether or not any might actually exist.



Why not, indeed!! I have posited that exact scenario many, many times here on the Internet and in other writings outside. This thing we call “the universe” may be nothing but an element of an experiment being performed on another level by an adolescent in that sphere. What makes you think I have not considered that?

I discount nothing as a possible explanation for the question I proposed earlier…which is why I do not discount the POSSIBILITY of gods. They MAY exist.



Why are you saying that? Nothing I have said leads to a conclusion of that sort. Of all the elements of modern religion, the one I probably find least attractive is the notion of a god that would reward or punish humans. The “afterlife” thing is an absurdity…born of fear of death. It plays no part in why I say I do not know if there are gods. The reason I say I do not know if there are gods…is that I simply do not know if there are gods—and I see no compelling reason to rule that possibility out. That demeaning speculation of yours is aimed to insult me rather than a logical consequence of anything I have said or written.



Nonsense, but I can see that I will most likely never convince you that I consider that nonsense…so live with it.




If it makes your life more tolerable to think that, Fresco, by all means think it. I want for you to be as content as possible. Frankly, I think I display a hell of a lot more intellectual fiber than I see being exhibited by some of the people arguing with me here.

Nice to see you only "think" that. What you certainly display is "persistent vacuous naive realism" which does not equate to "intellectual fiber".

Only because the dogma of your cult requires that you feel that way. Hey...it doesn't make you a bad guy. Kinda the difference between a "dupe" and a "dope."

For whatever its worth, I'd rather talk to an atheist about my beliefs than to one who thinks sinners will burn in hell.

I burned my toast this morning. That's bad enough.