(August 3, 2012 at 9:27 am)Ben Davis Wrote: ...says the man who continuously tries to assign values to the word 'atheism' so that he can create strawman stereotypes to support accusations of discrimination against and/or persecution of religious people.
...I don't really know what you're talking about. You think I have some kind of ax to grind with regard to discrimination against religious people, and that to this end I've come up with my definition of 'atheism'?
First, the only reason I even talk about bigotry here is because pretty much since my first post--and I was being polite--I was constantly barraged by people who willfully misconstrued what I was saying and peppered every other response (as in, every response to a quote from my post) with gratuitous insults like "christard". This kind of response is typical, here. I was shocked, since at another debate site I've contributed to for a long time, atheists and theists have far more polite debates.
Second, the definition I use for 'atheism' is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about; if I were to become an atheist, it would be with that definition in mind. I think it's an accurate (atheists are considered 'atheist' under my definition) and useful (gives you a way to compare and contrast properties of belief systems). It certainly wasn't done for some nefarious victim-status argument.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
