Agnostics

[Excited Penguin]

Why do you not agree with soft atheism?

It's not that I don't agree with it.  It's that for me, personally, the soft definition is too trivial to bother with.  This is probably because I'm Canadian, and in my family and hometown, there really wasn't much in-your-face theism for me to both disassociating from them.  So when I use the term "atheism," it's in the sense that someone believes that there isn't a God.  It took me a while to accept soft atheism as a thing, and I argued against it for a while a few years ago.  But now, I've come to understand people here, their position, and why they find that definition meaningful.  It's cool with me-- just not the way I use the word in reference to my own ideas.

I'm sorry if I appeared condescending. I'll really make an effort now to have a conversation, no matter what it takes. Just fair warning for anyone else reading this, I'm disregarding what I know on the matter as of this point forward and will probably do some logic-bending efforts to attempt to reach some middle ground here, 'cause apparently being honest and sincere about what you know is being an asshole. But that's enough about that.

I didn't call you an asshole because of your argumentation or your position.  I called you one because you used insulting language.  You said I seemed stupid and uneducated.  While there are many bad things about me, I don't think being stupid or uneducated count among my faults.

It seems to me you are a little manic-- running hot and cold, very reasonable one post and very belligerent another.  So I'm willing to take at face value that you get steamed and have to step away sometimes, and I respect that.  I have no problem with you, personally.  But the problem here is that I've introduced every angle I can think of to support my position.  I thought the idea of conditional belief was original and compelling enough to deserve a few posts.  But there's not much more I can say.  I've said my peace, and I'm getting tired of the repetitive nature of the thread.

Unless someone can come up with a new angle, or interesting new examples, then there's really nothing left to do but disagree and move on.

I just think your views are incredibly simplistic, add no meaning whatsoever, and to think you're original because of them is ridiculous.

I shouldn't have called you stupid or uneducated though(now please point me to where I did). Instead I should've said(like I think I said), that your views are the result of a bad education and that you espouse great stupidity with every post on the matter.

If you think that counts as insults, that's too bad, benny, because I'm not going to sugarcoat reality because of your definition of insults(nor anyone else's for that matter). I agree with not insulting people(you're ugly, or too shart, or too fat, etc), but insulting ideas people hold is perfectly ok. Ideas merit no respect whatsoever. I'm sorry you can't differentiate between yourself and the ideas you agree with, but that's an incredibly infantile thing to do - notice here, again, I'm saying the idea of doing it is infantile, not you necessarily. You see, a person is incredibly multifaceted, just because you espouse stupidity on this issue, in my view, doesn't mean I won't find you brilliant on a wholly different issue. Every single person is incredibly complex and has tens of sides to them. Not one thing should define them, nor should they identify with any one thing about them too much - to the point where criticism of an idea affects them personally.