Internet. Serious Business.

Well it didn’t take long. My trolling has been called to attention and now I suppose I have to enter the debate on the terms that Atheists call for. Purely factual and no stereotypical mumbo-jumbo. Of course being the friendly internet PR and traffic helper that I am, I’ll give Austin another link to his article, Debating Religion Doesn’t Require Treating Atheists Like Equals, so that you know what the hell this is all about.

First let me say this. I am not an English major. I do not care if you are and I have no belief that capitalizing a word like Atheism should piss you off so much in a debate that you have to point it out as part of your point. It doesn’t matter. Please do not respond with remedial grammar lessons of this sort as it has no bearing to the context of the argument. I am not going to correct your typos so don’t bother correcting mine. It is wasted space and just re-enforces stereotypes that I have already described. Apparently most of you are happy to re-enforce them on your own so I really don’t need to point them out anymore.

Now let’s get into the recent comments and go through them one by one.

Mr. Troll,

You can be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time.

See: Atheism vs. Agnosticism

~John

I was very happy to see this brought up. Why? Because it is fallacy. Let me explain why. This instance is just another way to rephrase the made up term of “Weak Atheism”. Atheism isn’t a subjective term. All it means is that someone believes gods, God, deities, etc. do not exist. The same as most people believe there is no such thing as UFOs, mystical creatures, or ghosts. You either believe it or you don’t. You can’t be a “Strong Atheist” and REALLY believe gods do not exist anymore than you can be a “Strong Theist” and REALLY believe that gods do exist. You simply believe it or you don’t. Atheist/Agnostic? That’s a “Weak Atheist” and it is the exact same concept. You can’t BARELY believe that no gods exist. You believe it or you do not. There is no level of belief. The word does not allow that. People you might want to call a “Strong Atheist”, or a “Strong Theist” are just extreme people that are typically just fucking crazy and THAT is their label in the most general sense. They either believe gods exist or they do not. I can understand why the “Strong Atheism” aspect isn’t used as much as I used to see it.

I can understand the need to want to fit in and shelter a bit of the blow of taking on the label of being an Atheist since society has been in the past very hostile towards them. Many might call them anything from devil worshippers to just plain sinner, but ultimately those things shouldn’t matter. I’m as ignorant as anyone, but I don’t believe that atheists are evil people with no soul. No one is really that different except in extreme cases. In fact more and more people are taking the belief that no gods exist. It’s simple to understand. People don’t believe in magic anymore. It can neither be proved nor disproved, but obviously you can say that lack of evidence of a god is proof that none exists as well as you can say that the possibility it hasn’t been proved yet is still there.

The Troll wrote, “I haven’t taken an oath to say that I denounce all powers greater than I and that the possibility of no god existing is what i believe, but I’m not far from it.”

~Me

Crap. I must have missed the whole taking an oath part of atheism. Does this mean I’m not “really” an atheist?

~God Isn’t

Yep. Without the oath and the anti-baptism you aren’t a “True Atheist.” You also need to know the secret handshake.

~Patrick Quigley

These comments really amused me and did make good use of the way I wrote the statements about this subject. Contextually they are right on and it is my fault for wording it the way I did originally. Speaking strictly on the oath issue I should have described it a bit differently. I don’t want these guys to think that I believe they are in some sort of cult or secret society…lol

What I should have said is that I haven’t taken a “Leap of faith” and made up my mind to say that I do not believe in the existence of gods. Much as a Theist would when deciding that they believe there is a god someone that believes there are none has to take a “Leap of Faith”. Only reason I say this is because the idea behind the belief cannot be proven with hard evidence.

I think the 12 steps from Alcoholics Anonymous describe this pretty well. Specifically Steps # 2 and 3:

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Those steps are a “Leap of Faith”. The same way that one has to make a decision to believe in a God, supernatural being, or any sort of Deity, someone who does not believe in the existence of a god, or gods must make a conscious decision too. If the idea of a God wasn’t already there there would be no decision to make, but alas it is there so you have to consciously believe in it, or not believe in it.

Finally these comments from the author himself, Austin Cline (his comments are bolded, mine are not):

From personal experience this is a minority.

Generalizing about atheists over all based on personal experience is rather like generalizing about blacks or Jews based on personal experience. Anti-Semites and racists do it all the time, but their claims of “personal experience” don’t excuse them. Why do you think it’s OK for you? Would it be OK to say “Jews are typically greedy” or “Blacks are typically criminal”? Of course not — and it’s not OK to generalize about atheists, either.

You ARE an Atheist. You know why you have that philosophy.

1. Atheism and atheist are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized.

2. Atheism is not a philosophy.

Unfortunately there are many that say they are Atheist although they have serious doubts that no higher power exists.

There is nothing about being an atheist which requires that a person be absolutely convinced that no gods exist,

That is simply all I was pointing out.

You obviously don’t know what atheism, yet you presume to judge atheists through broad, unfair generalizations. That’s what I am pointing out. When you generalize broadly about atheists in the way you did, you are telling reader not to take atheists seriously and not to treat them as equals or with consideration. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t say “all” atheists — using “typically” and “most” is more than enough.

Now there is really no defense for me on most of this. I’m just going to ignore the nitpicky stuff here so don’t expect me to respond to some of it. It is true that I made broad generalizations about atheists. Like I said before I did it on purpose and for the effect. It doesn’t matter if you are an atheist, or a snake worshipper. Apparently the offense that atheists take from stereotypes is more than I had expected. Also, the understanding about my original post and being taken out of context was not expected either. It did provide a nice little argument and subsequent comments to the story and the post.

To be honest with you I feel no need to apologize. I’m just not going to. The political correctness in society today sickens me to no end so I’m not going to apologize when I do not mean it simply because things I said were taken the wrong way. You could have looked at my original post and taken it with a grain of salt like it was intended. Much like I would if a black comedian spent his whole act making fun of white people. That doesn’t offend me whatsoever as a white person so I’m not going to hide observations of my own for fear that someone will become offended. Take the stance that you have and just call me ignorant if you please. My comments should really not drive you to be so offended. I respect your beliefs and I enjoy the uniqueness of different gorups. The funniest things in life are the differences in what people believe and the little personality traits that we observe.

I do appreciate the fact that all of the people have taken it upon themselves to stand up for their beliefs. I have no problem with that and I certainly don’t have anything against what they do believe. Anyone can take pot shots at me for being white, or anything else including my beliefs by throwing stereotypes at me.

As for taking an atheist seriously…That isn’t something that is my responsibility to spread. This blog isn’t about being fair, or nice. It is about stereotypes, plain and simple. It is about the way people act online in various communities. I take offense to nothing, but it does not surprise me when others take offense and try to defend themselves. I am glad that most of the comments tried to stay a bit level headed, and am grateful to have a chance to talk with you all. For the most part I respect your opinions and the help at clarifying anything I may be off on. My “Know it all” aspect is nothing more than an online personality. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I thank you for this conversation very much. For the theme of my blog this is a real life experience for those who read it to learn from. Whether I get owned, or own anyone is irrelevant. Someone reading this should be able to learn from it.

Related posts:

The Religious Debate, The Religious Debate Revisited

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