Under my definition ("purpose"), about 0.1

[QUOTE=Nick;372604]The Christian exortation is "Love your neighbour [US: neighbor] as yourself".
[/QUOTE]

Rodney Dangerfield's response was:

"what am I supposed to do? Jerk him off too?"

[QUOTE=xilman;373956]Under my favourite definition of God, 1.0. Under that definition which you have previously posted, 0.0[/QUOTE]

If you mean my definition that began "an imaginary being that ..."
then sure. If you mean the definition that begins "an omnipotent,
omniscient ..." are you still at 0.0 ? ( I'm guessing, probably wrongly,
that your favorite involves a "FSM", but 1.0 for that? )

[QUOTE=davar55;374476]If you mean my definition that began "an imaginary being that ..." then sure. If you mean the definition that begins "an omnipotent, omniscient ..." are you still at 0.0 ? ( I'm guessing, probably wrongly, that your favorite involves a "FSM", but 1.0 for that? )[/QUOTE]Yes. And you guess wrongly.

I'm with Einstein, Spinoza and many other deep thinkers when it comes to a working definition of "God".

I can't argue with your appeal to brilliant minds like those
in your attempt to derive a definition of God you can live with.

I would just caution that this is the one issue that even
the smartest people have gone astray with.

If you define God in a way that makes him real, you're
already showing your preference. My own bias shows
in that I define God in ways that guarantee his non-existence.
But then I'm sure no God exists.

The Fight To Take Back Our Health Care System From Junk Science
 

[url]http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/06/05/3445016/secular-health-care/[/url]

[QUOTE][URL="http://safeandsecular.org/"]Keep Health Care Safe and Secular[/URL] is a new project hoping to expose the “powerful influence of religious dogma, psuedoscience, and misinformation on American health care” that is contributing to bad policy. The Center for Inquiry, a [URL="http://www.centerforinquiry.net/about"]secular humanist organization[/URL] that works to promote scientific reason, wants American voters to realize that many of the controversies related to health issues aren’t rooted in fact.
“The campaign, broadly speaking, is focused on two issues: the use of religious beliefs to limit access to health services, and the remedies and cures that aren’t scientifically sound,” Michael De Dora, who’s leading the new effort, told ThinkProgress. “We wanted to put all of those issues together in a coordinated campaign to make the point that health care should be guided by science and reason.”
[/QUOTE]

Does anyone remember this thread's original title?
Something about "atheism" and "pedantic".
The changed title is cute, but it doesn't carry
the original thread-point. So I guess anything
in religion or at4heism is fair game? But there
are other threads for religion. Oh well.

[QUOTE=davar55;375280]Does anyone remember this thread's original title?
Something about "atheism" and "pedantic".
The changed title is cute, but it doesn't carry
the original thread-point. So I guess anything
in religion or at4heism is fair game? But there
are other threads for religion. Oh well.[/QUOTE]
I seem to remember the title "Atheism for the pedantic", but I don't actually think this was jasong's original choice of title. I don't remember what that was.

So what's the thread about? Well, atheism I guess, and its competition with theism. And I think the current title, courtesy of one of our witty red-names, is pretty good provided that people are able to make the intellectual leap from "a theism" to "atheism". That shouldn't be too much for the readership to cope with. Or have I missed some subtleties about this epic thread?:smile:

[QUOTE=Brian-E;375294]I seem to remember the title "Atheism for the pedantic", but I don't actually think this was jasong's original choice of title. I don't remember what that was.[/QUOTE]You should have more confidence in your memory. The original title was indeed 'Atheism for the pedantic'.

The pervasive influence of the Illuminati inhibits me from revealing the identity of whomever it was changed it to the present title.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;375294]I seem to remember the title "Atheism for the pedantic", but I don't actually think this was jasong's original choice of title. I don't remember what that was.

So what's the thread about? Well, atheism I guess, and its competition with theism. And I think the current title, courtesy of one of our witty red-names, is pretty good provided that people are able to make the intellectual leap from "a theism" to "atheism". That shouldn't be too much for the readership to cope with. Or have I missed some subtleties about this epic thread?:smile:[/QUOTE]

The thread might be confusing, at times, for newcomers, unless they read the whole thing. But that is probably true of any long-running thread. I also remember "Atheism for the Pedantic," but I think that name was a very early >substitution/alteration/perversion< of Jason's original topic. Possibly also, the original was irritating in some way and Somebody pushed back.

One supposes that reading the whole thread would answer these questions, but I'm not up even for skimming 75 pages of wrangling, snarking, and mutual condescension. :gah: <--(Just noticed this, and had to use it.)

Any discussion of what this thread is actually about should probably include a consideration of the definition of the word "atheism".

The definition is sufficiently unclear to have caused a rather silly disagreement between Richard Dawkins and Andrew Brown (a religion correspondent working for "The Guardian"), and those are two people who normally know what they are talking about.

As explained in [URL="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/13/should-babies-be-considered-atheists-depends-on-your-definition-of-the-word/"]this article[/URL] by Hemant Mehta, Richard Dawkins made the comment that babies have no religion, and this was ridiculed by Andrew Brown who said that babies cannot possibly take an atheist position and so it is silly to ascribe them that by default. But, explains Mehta, Dawkins was not saying that babies are atheists when he said that they have no religion.

So what do we mean by the word "atheist"?