Look at how much time they spend defending thier religion. It's amusing, really. "We believe in nothing and we want you to believe in nothing too!"
I don't think too many atheists care what others believe. I like to know if I'm dealing with a faith-based thinker, but I'm not going to try to talk him out of his beliefs, just as I won't try to talk any of the theists present into abandoning their religions. If my neighbor wants to dance around the tree in his back yard at night shaking a stick with a bloody chicken claw while baying at the moon because that's what centers him and gives his life meaning, I'm fine with it as long as he keeps the noise down.
What we care about is when there are enough of them to impose their religions on the rest of us, reducing their numbers and their ability to impact the lives of any but volunteers.
- "I always flinch in embarrassment for the believer who trots out, 'Atheism is just another kind of faith,' because it's a tacit admission that taking claims on faith is a silly thing to do. When you've succumbed to arguing that the opposition is just as misguided as you are, it's time to take a step back and rethink your attitudes." - Amanda Marcotte
they argue against anyone who does believe in a deity.
We deconstruct fallacious arguments. That's part of the drill in critical thinking, which implies the use of fallacy-free logic. That means having a command of the fallacies such as the one in the OP, the fallacy of assumption (unshared premises) - "
When we reason using implicit assumptions or further propositions whose truth is uncertain or implausible, we commit the fallacy of unwarranted assumption and the truth of our conclusions is grossly affected. " This is one of the most useful functions of participating in these forums, others being witnessing a cross-section of believers and unbelievers to get a sense of how religion affects people, formulating cogent arguments, and practicing writing skills. That's what I'm doing here - not trying to change your mind or make you an atheist.
Is it any wonder that all of this stuff is so confused and twisted up? When you,
@firedragon, can read a line of text like this and glean from it whatever you want to, make something up about what it says, and then react to that instead of what it actually says.
Isn't that pretty much what religious apologetics is (I realize that I am preaching to the choir with you)? And isn't that the fundamental problem with faith-based thinking. It's not empirically based, so it is not tethered to physical reality. Like poetry, it means whatever the believer wants it to mean. I think we're up to about 40,000 different denominations of Christianity, but still only one periodic table of the elements,. The reason is obvious - only the latter is derived from reality. How many different astrologies are there, each based on an arbitrary system of beliefs about how to read the stars and what they can tell one, but only one astronomy. Same reason - astrology is faith-based, and astronomy is an empirical science
Then is the OP simply a call for those on RF to pause and reflect on how we engage in discourse? If that is the case, why focus on Atheists? By calling out Atheists specifically, do you not run the risk of playing into, and reinforcing, the confirmation bias of Theists? Your comments imply most Atheists employ this fatal flaw (you allow a limited exception for some professionals). How will this be perceived by Theists? Won't it reinforce their bias that it is specifically Atheists that are missing something, that it is the Atheist who is blinded by bias? I would suggest your framing of this issues does not meet with the standards you claim to uphold.
The purpose of the thread is atheist-bashing. That's where a theist starts a thread telling us what terrible people atheists are for attacking their beliefs, and how smart we think we are, and how our beliefs are a religion, and theirs supported by science using sciencey sounding specious arguments that they don't understand are for Sunday school, not the marketplace of ideas like here. Those arguments are intended to make people feel better about their decision to embrace creationism over naturalistic evolution, for example, with arguments about 747s assembling in junk yards after a tornado, or why evolution is impossible because mutations can't add information, and nobody ever saw a cat evolve into a dog - arguments that are easily rejected by the scientifically literate and seasoned critical thinker, but not by the congregation, who are satisfied that their beliefs are on an equal foundation to the atheists, who are really just a religion anyway, so it's all equal, right? That's what the believer needs to hear, but such things only reassure the atheist that he is correct and the theist uninformed.
I saw an argument repeated from a creationist website recently that claimed that man couldn't have a common ancestor with the other extant great apes, since they all have 24 pairs of chromosomes, man just 23, and a mutation that dropped a chromosome would be lethal, not the beginning of mankind. I'm going to guess that everybody present who accepts the theory of evolution can tell us what's wrong with that argument, but no creationists. Who is that argument going to work on? As I said, the error is in the apologist not recognizing that presenting such an argument to scientifically literate actually undermines him with that crowd, and that the argument is for his people, who will buy it and feel better about their beliefs.
Yeah, definitions are not your strong side:
Google: What is religion?
religion | Definition, Types, List of Religions, Symbols, Examples, & Facts
Religion - Wikipedia
What is Religion?
"It is a rather common misconception to think that religion has to do with god, or gods and supernatural beings or a supernatural or spiritual dimension or greater reality. None of that is absolutely necessary because there are religions that are without those elements."
So, you're a lexical prescriptionist - the guy who holds out a dictionary and expects that others will use his preferred definition. That's not how language works. People modify the meaning of words to make them more useful to them, as I did with my definition of religion above. It doesn't matter which if any of your links likes my choice of definitions. I use one that works for me. All I need do when choosing a nonstandard definition for myself is explain how I use the word. If whoever I am talking with can't get past that because of insisting that I have to use the word the way he prefers, the discussion is over.
For example, we often see people defining atheists as people who claim that there is no god, and they can find that definition in dictionaries. But it doesn't work for me or any other agnostic atheist. It excludes us for saying that we do not deny the possibility of gods. In fact, that definition essentially ignores that we exist, or expects us to call ourselves agnostic rather than atheist when we are both. That definition simply doesn't work for me, so I don't use it.
But then the first theist one encounters rejects the usage and argues about how I have to use language, and, as I indicated, the discussion is over, often after the theist triumphantly proclaims that the atheist cannot prove there's no God. He's read and understood nothing, because he refuses to recognize that most atheists don't claim that they can or have ruled out gods. He's a lexical prescriptionist as well, and insists that if I call myself an atheist, I am declaring that there are no gods, even after telling him that that is not what I mean when I use the word. So what's the value in a discussion with such a person?
I only looked at the Wiki link, and found its definition of religion too broad to be useful to me. As I said above, the line of interest to me is between those believing in a god and those that don't. The next thing of interest is how that belief affects their other thinking.