@Setanta,
Quote:My experience teaches me to be cordial to those whom i meet who are no threat to me, and a native affection impels me to make the world as comfortable for those whom i value as i am able. I don't need somebody's imaginary friend for that.
Kim Jong-un would say that. So would Joe Stalin have. And Col Gadaffi. History is full of the bastards. One can see anyone coyly playing with the niece at a family do and the lackeys beaming complacently saying "he's a lovely fellow you see".
Setanta knows so little about history that you would have to put his head in a HKE (that's a history knowledge exterminator), before you could start applying remedies.
I can imagine the Founding Fathers separating Church and State with such benign platitudes before going off to a big, well appointed dinner and shagging a good looker they bought on the block. You can read page after page of Bertrand Russell and never realise what a resolute and avid shagger he was. Not as bad as A.J. "Freddie" Ayer mind you ; the world famous logical ******* positivist. Sartre cannot be discussed on a forum open to inexperienced eyes and the Divine Marquis should never really be mentioned at all. And Prof. Dawkins seems up to speed if his marital endeavours are anything to go by. Hitler was fond of ******* dogs.
A mouthful of trite, well rehearsed cliches, designed to flatter oneself to oneself, possibly others who are temporarily devoid of their wits, spouted in a computer room in some residence of the type the average A2Ker has the use of, some even believing that the own it, (using "own" in the way Beth used it the other day), is neither here nor there, misses the whole point and helps nobody, except the spouter, in any feasible direction.
I certainly don't wish to be ruled by an elite in whose salons "my experience teaches me to be cordial to those whom i meet who are no threat to me, and a native affection impels me to make the world as comfortable for those whom i value as i am able. I don't need somebody's imaginary friend for that, hurummppphh! " passes as polite conversation and is not greeted by guffaws and a bucket of whitewash from three feet.
Our Imaginary Friend is the only thing that stands between you and the dogs coming to rip your throat out. If you are not a good little boy being as good as you can I mean.
That's what you have to argue with. What happens when our Imaginary Friend is no more? Accidentally burning a couple of Korans will be a speck in the distance. (Why didn't we offer to let them burn a few dozen Bibles on the Strangelove principle to even it up.)
As I have said before on this thread, the atheist cannot help being an atheist. Belief does not come on a platter. But preaching aetheism is another level of activity. That can only be motivated by wanting atheism to come universally. We have Kant's word for that.
Perish the thought. This thread is for affected flouncing. None of our atheists want atheism to come universally. They would have no Aunt Sally for a start.