(February 15, 2015 at 5:09 pm)dreamsofpotato Wrote: Got into a small debate with someone over atheism, thought i'd come here for some advice:
I said i'm an atheist. He responds and said he could never be one because atheism says there is absolutely no god and nothing created the universe. I disagreed with that definition and said that I'm pretty sure the only absolute claim that atheism makes is that Religion has no validity, no credibility in any sort of cosmological debate, that religion is made-up and the gods of those religions are made-up. As for cosmology, I said, most atheists leave that question to science.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this argument. Should i not have argued and accepted his definition of atheism? Was I wrong in my definition? Does such a claim warrant a correction? Or were we both splitting hairs?
His definition is a deliberate strawman. There are some atheists who feel that way, but I believe they're in the minority. I'm replying to your OP without having read the thread so I may well be wrong -- at least here -- but if you take one thing away from this thread, I'd say, don't worry about how anyone defines atheism. If he wants to define it unrealistically, let him harvest the fruit of his own poor planting.
If this asshole wants to impute views to you which you don't hold, let him do that, and surprise him with views he hadn't considered, planned for, or perhaps even conceived. Mental judo, in a manner of speaking. Let him overstate his argument, and undermine it by giving it a fair but sturdy hearing.
