Purchasing One's Atheism Cheaply

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

I didn't say I agreed with Deidre. I said you are playing word games to contort her view, seemingly to the end of patronizing her and calling her stupid. And your response was to contort my words, seemingly to get to the same end. I think you can be better than that; and if we could ever get past the "definition game" we could probably have a decent conversation.

*Edit- Perhaps I am a dew-eyed naif, but is it so unreasonable to think that playing the old political "So you deny that you beat your wife?" game is boring? I don't understand theism, and I'd like to understand it better, but all the purposeful misunderstandings and bobbing and weaving and word games make that hard. And Vinny, its certainly not confined to you- I've seen plenty of atheists play the same games. Instead of starting from a position of "how can I make you look stupid and wrong," why not start from a more generous position?

A first step to understanding any view, be it theism, atheism or any view in between, is to think clearly and stick to the logic rather than personal attacks.

If you are prone to complain about word games any time someone calls out bullshit definitions, you will never learn very much.

PS- Sorry if I come across patronizing. Some days I have a low tolerance for idiots.

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That's nonsense. Even if you define atheism as a "lack of belief in God", thereby framing your belief as "there is insufficient evidence to compel me to believe that a God exists",

...that would be a view you hold. It implies the view that belief in God entails meeting a threshold of evidence, the view that the threshold is reasonable, and the view that the threshold has not been reached.

Do atheists hold to such a view? Even if they misdefine their atheism, that is the view they hold.

So to claim atheists don't subscribe to a view is nonsense.

Besides, the shitty definition of atheism you guys like to use is actually the definition most typical of agnosticism, which rejects the views of both theists and atheists.

But in rejecting both those views, agnosticism itself entails a view, namely either that one cannot know whether or not God exists, or that one does not know whether or not God exists. I think the last one is closely related to, if not identical to, "ignosticism".

If you stop playing the victim and think carefully, you'll see we can even construct a reductio ad absurdum:

Take this axiom: According to some atheists, they (typically) hold the view that atheism is defined as the lack of belief in God, that belief in God requires a certain amount of evidence, and that amount of evidence does not exist.

1) Atheists reject all views. [According to Zazzy]
2) The axiom is a view that atheists hold.
3) Therefore atheists reject their own views. [Modus ponens]

The only way you could get out of this silly situation is to deny the axiom. Which would itself be incoherent.

Herp derp, Zazzy.

Vinny.... when you read something around here you need to keep in mind the context.
Zazzy surely didn't mean that "atheists reject all views", but rather, in context, "atheists reject all views pertaining to the existence of gods".
Hence, your 1) has no relation to 2) nor 3).... meaning you wasted a good opportunity to remain silent.

pocararas, this does not work either. Because "God does not exist" is "a view pertaining to the existence of god(s)", and some atheists do hold such views. Therefore it is not true that atheists reject all views pertaining to the existence of god(s).

I know many posters here are weak in their thinking skills, but surely you can check the reasoning above and tell me I'm right.