Purchasing One's Atheism Cheaply

[Esquilax]

Then you will never have the depth of someone who had to work things out on their own. Its like comparing someone who created a new industry to someone who merely followed them.

I'm not saying don't attempt to formulate more answers, think harder, and critically evaluate existing answers. I'm just saying, don't be ashamed of using the progress of those who came before; I'm not going to be shamed by posts like the OP's for taking advantage of the progress our "predecessors" made, here.

[Angrboda]

"It doesn't count unless you killed it yourself."

What's next Vinny, a thread on what "Real Men" do or do not do?

[pocaracas]

"It doesn't count unless you killed it yourself."

What's next Vinny, a thread on what "Real Men" do or do not do?

I can't eat meat, since I can't kill an animal larger than a spider...
I'll starve!

[Gilgamesh]

Atheism never had anything to do with intelligence. It only ever had anything to do with god claims, which is to say, "I don't believe in them." The collective intelligence of atheists today is probably less than the collective intelligence of atheists 50 year ago, but that's only because there's a lot more atheists.

[Simon Moon]

The ONLY way to be a bad atheist is to believe in a god or gods. They're doing it wrong.

If an individual is an atheist, and they are also: a murderer, a rapist, a bigot, a slave holder, a thief, etc, that does not mean they are a bad atheist, it means they are a bad human being. They're doing the human being thing wrong.

Their atheism is completely unrelated.

[freedomfromforum]

Atheism has lost the weight of intelligence it used to carry. It has become cheap.

Theism has gained the weight of ignorance it loves to carry. It has become what it has always been - cheap.

[Tonus]

Some people seriously over-think atheism.

[Airyaman]

Some people seriously over-think atheism.

^ This. If people come up to you and tell you about fairies, you dismiss them without much thought. Really, fairies = gods, because they don't appear to exist outside of imagination.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

Most atheists nowadays call themselves skeptics. But they are not real skeptics. They are not skeptics of their own skepticism. They are not skeptics of atheism, of the beliefs, views and positions they cherish. It doesn't even occur to many people here that skepticism applied consistently involves skepticism of one's own skepticism, and that unless one has a good criteria for their own skepticism.

Do you know most atheists? More than that, aside from broad, hasty generalizations, you haven't provided any examples of what you claim. You might say, I'm skeptical of your views here.

I imagine this forum serves as exhibit A of my list of evidence.

How many atheists here have discussed a skepticism of their own skepticism? How many of them have discussed the question of whether skepticism needs a qualifier?

How many atheist blogs, or forums, or books host this discussion? Did anyone here even wonder about these questions? Can you provide a rational answer to them?

Some generalizations, it seems are supported by the weight of evidence represented by this forum itself.

edit: Poca is, I think the first person to engage with the question of an infinite regress of skepticism. His argument is a bad one, being arbitrary in it's application of "truncation" (I appreciate the CS-related terminology). But kudos.

[Jackalope]

So says the critic. Who, I might add, has refused to state his own position after many hundreds of posts.