[karajorma]

And five years on, the STD rate is actually the same amongst people who take "True Love Waits" style pledges and those who don't (They tend to have less sexual partners but are also less likely to use protection).

[InsaneBaron]

I'm impressed.

I got frustrated with you guys, esp with Karajorma who seemed to be threatening me if I refuted his points...

And it turns out you guys were NOT trying to defend a worldview as extreme as I thought.

I'm impressed.


e: To give a little background, it was late at night when I posted this, and I was tired and frustrated, plus I had just gotten back from the dentist. I probably should have realized this would effect my ability to answer and just gotten some sleep before posting anything. As it was, I made a pretty significant error by associating opposite worldviews regarding birth control and chastity with opposite worldviews regarding stable homes for children and Planned Parenthood. Getting up in the morning in a better condition to think, I began to realize how bad this post was and how much it would upset people. Getting on, I was impressed to see that the worldviews of my opponents were not as bad as I had thought.

That said, I'm willing to take this thread down in a little while.

[karajorma]

Ummmmm. Where did I threaten you? Or even say anything that would come off as threatening?

The only threatening thing I said was well after you posted the post that started this thread and that was me speaking as an admin. I'd have said much the same to anyone who posted something like that about Christians. 

[InsaneBaron]

Ummmmm. Where did I threaten you? Or even say anything that would come off as threatening?

The only threatening thing I said was well after you posted the post that started this thread and that was me speaking as an admin. I'd have said much the same to anyone who posted something like that about Christians.

I said seemed. You had basically told me not to dare dispute you over the HIV penetrating condoms debate, so instead I said something that I now retract.

[The E]

Just for the record? No matter what kind of excuses you come up with, posting what you did especially after going to great lengths in other topics to make sure that HLP stays a welcoming place for you, is pretty much inexcusable in my book.

Also, unless a topic is very clearly the product of a spambot, it is not deleted.

[InsaneBaron]

Just for the record? No matter what kind of excuses you come up with, posting what you did especially after going to great lengths in other topics to make sure that HLP stays a welcoming place for you, is pretty much inexcusable in my book.

Also, unless a topic is very clearly the product of a spambot, it is not deleted.

What this proves to me is that a person who's not in a good condition to think through what they say is liable to say something that violates their own standard of conduct. And yes, that post I made was certainly not an exceptable post, now that I'm in a condition to realize that.

I'm pretty sure that as the original poster I can remove the thread.

[The E]

You probably can, but it will be reinstated. One of the traditions on HLP is that you should only delete a post if it has not been replied to. Once a discussion has sprung up around it, the post is no longer "yours", in a sense.

[karajorma]

Just for the record? No matter what kind of excuses you come up with, posting what you did especially after going to great lengths in other topics to make sure that HLP stays a welcoming place for you, is pretty much inexcusable in my book.

Furthermore, even if you retract it, some points are very hard to take back. If you call someone an idiot, you can claim it was just in the heat of the moment, but if, for instance, you call someone a racial epitaph, you can't take that back later without everyone thinking you're a racist. If you make claims that atheists don't want to form stable relationships, it betrays that you have some deeply-rooted misconceptions about what atheists are.

Ummmmm. Where did I threaten you? Or even say anything that would come off as threatening?

The only threatening thing I said was well after you posted the post that started this thread and that was me speaking as an admin. I'd have said much the same to anyone who posted something like that about Christians.

I said seemed. You had basically told me not to dare dispute you over the HIV penetrating condoms debate, so instead I said something that I now retract.

I said not to try to justify them lying. If you could prove they weren't lying, fair enough.

[Bobboau]

so far there is no official 'Book of Atheism'

there sorta is, let me transcribe it for you.

"Is there a god? I cannot say that there is."

That's it. It is a single position* on a single question. It has no further requirements.

*(rather the logical negation of a single position)

[InsaneBaron]

The problem is that there ARE atheists who hold these views, and said atheists have been known to claim that they speak on behalf of atheism, and that Christianity is bad because it opposes these views.

My mistake was thinking I was dealing with a viewpoint similar to that. What I was actually dealing with was something much more reasonable. (even if I don't entirely agree).

Even if I had been dealing with a worldview like that, my post would still have been a breach of conduct.

[karajorma]

I've always said that there is no cause so right that you won't find an idiot following it.

If you want to argue why Christianity is wrong I'm happy to go at it with you. But the argument always should be on the issue, not inventing a strawman to argue why that is wrong. And in this respect I've seen some rather fundamentally incorrect assumptions dotted throughout this thread (not just from you).

I think the biggest problem is that most people have a fundamentally incorrect assumption about what an atheist is. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a god or gods. That's it. There's nothing more to it than that. Belief that there is no god is not required, simply a lack of belief. We thrashed this all out on a thread a while back actually.

[Ghostavo]

so far there is no official 'Book of Atheism'

there sorta is, let me transcribe it for you.

"Is there a god? I cannot say that there is."

That's it. It is a single position* on a single question. It has no further requirements.

*(rather the logical negation of a single position)

Actually, that's slightly incorrect. By using that definition you are excluding strong/hard/positive atheism.

I think the biggest problem is that most people have a fundamentally incorrect assumption about what an atheist is. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a god or gods. That's it. There's nothing more to it than that. Belief that there is no god is not required, simply a lack of belief. We thrashed this all out on a thread a while back actually.

And under wide definitions for atheism, buddhists are atheists also, which can lead to some comical conversations.

[Aesaar]

The problem is that there ARE atheists who hold these views, and said atheists have been known to claim that they speak on behalf of atheism, and that Christianity is bad because it opposes these views.

And there ARE Christians who hold these views, and have been know to claim to speak for all Christianity:



So yeah, judging a whole movement based on the actions of a vocal few is just stupid.

[InsaneBaron]

I've always said that there is no cause so right that you won't find an idiot following it.

If you want to argue why Christianity is wrong I'm happy to go at it with you. But the argument always should be on the issue, not inventing a strawman to argue why that is wrong. And in this respect I've seen some rather fundamentally incorrect assumptions dotted throughout this thread (not just from you).

I think the biggest problem is that most people have a fundamentally incorrect assumption about what an atheist is. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a god or gods. That's it. There's nothing more to it than that. Belief that there is no god is not required, simply a lack of belief. We thrashed this all out on a thread a while back actually.

I acknowledge I had a fundamentally incorrect assumption about you and the other people I was arguing with. Quite frankly, I'm very happy to discover I was wrong.

[Bobboau]

Actually, that's slightly incorrect. By using that definition you are excluding strong/hard/positive atheism.

oh? so they can say there is a god?
I think they simply go beyond the base requirement, in addition to not saying yes they also say no.
"I cannot say that there is. In fact, there is not."

[InsaneBaron]

The problem is that there ARE atheists who hold these views, and said atheists have been known to claim that they speak on behalf of atheism, and that Christianity is bad because it opposes these views.

And there ARE Christians who hold these views, and have been know to claim to speak for all Christianity:



So yeah, judging a whole movement based on the actions of a vocal few is just stupid.

Basically, I mistook the people arguing me for... well, the Atheist equivalent of that, which turned out to be highly inaccurate. So yeah, it's important to know whether or not you're dealing with those vocal few, who I've had to debate in the past.

[Ghostavo]

Actually, that's slightly incorrect. By using that definition you are excluding strong/hard/positive atheism.

oh? so they can say there is a god?
I think they simply go beyond the base requirement, in addition to not saying yes they also say no.
"I cannot say that there is. In fact, there is not."

But according to strong atheism (also called anti-theism, perhaps it's clearer that way) means that the answer to "Is there a god?" is not your provided " I cannot say that there is." but is instead "No.".

"No." is different from "I cannot say that there is." in the same way "I cannot say that there is." is different from "Yes."

[Luis Dias]

Bobboau is rigorously right in the logical phrasing of the definition of atheism Ghostavo. You should read it more carefully.

Atheism *can* be defined as saying "I cannot say that there is a god", this logically includes positive strong atheism. Strong atheists will say this and then more "I cannot say that there is a god PLUS I can say it definitely isn't a god", just like communists will say "there is no god PLUS Marx was right", etc.

It's additive, and Bobboau's phrasing includes both strong and weak atheism.

e: When someone says "I cannot say that there is a god", read this phrase literally. It means that the person cannot truthfully state that there is a god. (if he will then deny god outright or just be agnostic over it is a further, different question).

[Ghostavo]

Ok, I didn't read "I cannot say there is a god" literally. I understood it as "I cannot answer that question.". In the former sense, yes, the definition is true.

For sake of completeness, when I said:

"No." is different from "I cannot say that there is." in the same way "I cannot say that there is." is different from "Yes."

I was trying to say the equivalent of :

Belief of the negative is as different to disbelief as disbelief is different to belief of the positive.

[General Battuta]

The post that started this thread remains so personally hurtful that I'm still debating whether I want to continue reading InsaneBaron's posts, or just leave him on ignore to avoid that kind of pain. Even as the product of a bad day and a rough situation it was still revelatory. I've had personal hate mail that was less charged.

I can understand being raised with a particular worldview that teaches how 'the enemy' thinks, but after so many posts on his part calling for a dignified, sensitive, multilateral forum, this post felt like a quiet neighbor suddenly getting up in town hall to explain that Jews want to run the world and should be banned from government.

None of the reaction from InsaneBaron has involved any kind of personal apology or recognition that he treated a huge swathe of the planet and the forum as less than human. It's all carefully caveated 'oh, well, there ARE atheists like that, at least you guys are some of the good ones' qualification.

Frankly, I'm surprised we've given him as much room as we have. I've never before been accused of a personal devotion to genocide, especially as a component of the central and most important loving relationship in my life.

Thinking back over InsaneBaron's posts here, it's hard to avoid concluding that he basically sees this as a battleground in a culture war instead of a place for multipolar exchange. Even after such a colossal gaffe he's still pushing back against Kara, trying to guard turf, trying to delineate between the okay atheists here, the Good Ones he's met personally, and the vile promiscuous abortion factories out there. How do you walk in to a reaction like this from people, from other human beings you've hurt, and say 'I'm impressed. You guys aren't as awful as I thought. It's good you're not the kind of atheist that genuinely believes in [insane ideological construct].' Where's the compassion in that?