(April 19, 2020 at 11:05 pm)Prof.Lunaphiles Wrote:(April 18, 2020 at 6:01 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Yes, lizards are atheists. So are rocks, bottles of milk, apples, roadways, roofing tiles, tins of baked beans, pocket calculators, newspapers, steering wheels, onions (pickled as well as fresh), Bibles, insurance companies, hypodermic needles, bicycles, and roast beef sandwiches.
Boru
Absolutely Hilarious. I have been monitoring atheist forums for 18 years, and this is definitely the outrageous extension of the erroneous definition for atheism that I have been looking for to present in my dissertation concerning the need for a reliable knowledge classification system. I would not have been able to generate such a possible claim for fear that atheists would accuse me of straw man, or something that I could not defend.
Thank You.
While I disagree with you on almost every point and definition you have posted here, I will agree with you on this.
I do not consider anything that is unable to cognitively understand and evaluate the god question, an atheist. Maybe nontheist would be a better description of a lizard. I guess I am in the minority on the forum with regards to this.
But that does not mean, just because I agree with you on this, any of your other definitions are correct.
Atheists are still people that are unconvinced gods exist, full stop.
Agnostics are people that take the position, that it is unknown (or possibly unknowable) whether gods exist.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.