In article <475### [at] hotmailcom>, a_l### [at] hotmailcom 
says...
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > In article <475### [at] hotmailcom>, a_l### [at] hotmailcom 
> > says...
> >> nemesis wrote:
> >>> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> >>>> That is why, in public, I let the
> >>>> people that are good at this stuff make the statements. They are *fa
r*
> >>>> better at it. And some, like Greta Christina:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/
> >>>>
> >>>> do so with a profound grace and choice of words that often leaves me
> >>>> absolutely astounded.
> >>> looks like a slut and sounds like a slut.  oh wait, she's actually a 
pro... :P
> >>>
> >>> That was a loong rant, sir. 
> >> Indeed it was. I don't think that helps to get the message across. 
> >> Perhaps Patrick would also benefit from watching some Marx Brothers 
> >> movies ;)
> >>> The thing atheists don't seem to grasp is that they
> >>> sound just about as annoying and boring in their anti-religion rants 
as
> >>> religious fanatics in their convert stories...
> >>>
> >> As just another atheist I'd like to point out that atheism is a religi
on 
> >> too. Many deists think that an atheist is someone who is not convinced
 
> >> that God does exist (or worse: not yet). They are wrong. I *believe*
 
> >> that God does not exist and I mean that in the same way as a Christian
 
> >> or Muslim or whatever believes the opposite. I.e. I *know* that God do
es 
> >> not exit moreover my ethical values are fundamentally based on the non
 
> >> existence of God. If it turned out she did exist after all, I would ne
ed 
> >> a couple of weeks to rethink my ethics.
> >> We atheist have no reason to form churches and that means that we have
 
> >> no religious leaders. Sadly that means that our believe is less 
> >> protected than the church forming religions. That is already subtly 
> >> noticeable even in the Netherlands. In the US it seems to be much wors
e, 
> >> and under the inspired leadership of the current president it has 
> >> apparently even reached the level of discrimination. I think that was
 
> >> one of the more important points of Patrick.
> >>
> > Speak for yourself. 
> I did.
> 
> > You are what some of us call "hard atheists", and we 
> > do consider you as much a believer in unfounded woo as the other side,
 
> > even while you are on ours. 
> us, we, ours?
> > In fact, atheists run the gambit from those 
> > that just provisionally reject **churches**, but sort of kind of believ
e 
> > in some stuff that might lead to god, if anyone could ever prove that
 
> > one was believable, to those like myself, who provisionally reject 
> > **any** gods, both because none of the definitions make any sense, and
 
> > because there doesn't seem to be any valid reason why there needs to be
 
> > one, to those that, like you, insist that there absolutely can't be one
, 
> > which is *not* a rational conclusion. So, you want to claim you are 
> > religious, on the grounds that your own view is purely emotional, not
 
> > rational, then go ahead, but please, call yourself something else, 
> > because we have enough problems with the idiots that **want** to insist
 
> > atheism is a religion (never mind that the very definition of religion
 
> > means, "belief in the stuff atheists pretty much all reject as 
> > unbelievable".), without you giving the wackos something to quote mine
> > as some sort of ammunition for why secular views should be rejected 
> > **instead** of theirs.
> 
> Sorry Patrick for not using the words with exactly the same meaning as 
> you. I just wanted to make absolutely clear that being an atheist is 
> simply part of who I am. It is in every cell of my body, in every 
> thought that even remotely touches ethics, in how I interact with others
 
> and in all my scientific work. In short it is part of me the same way as
 
> believe in a God is for some others, that is why I said it is a 
> religion. If some moron rejects that word because in his views that 
> implies that it has to be unfounded, so be it. If you think it is an 
> irrational emotional thing, think again. Besides if you think that for a
 
> true believer in God that is only for emotional reasons and that that 
> can't be rational, you can not be more wrong than that.
> 
Its possible to use reason to reach entirely invalid conclusions, if 
your initial data is invalid in the first place. That is why religion is 
considered "faith". That said. I am sure there are atheists that do base 
things entirely on faith, in as much as they don't understand, or lend 
credence to ideas, which are not verifiable. Such people can be quite 
annoying, in that they tend to exaggerate what atheism means. And you 
are kind of doing the same thing.

A religion requires some fairly specific things. A) a unifying concept 
of what is true, b) a core set of ideals, including a moral code, which 
are not just shared, but held as sacred, c) an organized effort of 
enforce those ideas, and d) at least some basic consistency with respect 
to what one *should* believe. At one time Christianity as a whole fit 
that standard, but today, it fails in some criteria, but it still has a 
basic unifying set of ideas, not the least of which being that their 
holy book means something. Atheism... At its most basic level says 
nothing more than, "I reject current definitions of your god(s)." There 
is nothing ***in*** that statement which implies a central dogma, a 
specific moral code, an organized movement, a consistency of what things 
one should or shouldn't reject (other than gods), etc. People can just 
as easily think that UFOs and Astrology make sense, and be atheists. One 
cannot, fundamentally, be religious, without agreeing with **dozens** of 
basic premises or facts, and automatically rejecting a wide number of 
others. You are conflating one single statement/idea with a huge range 
of ideas that you *associate* with your own reasons for not believing in 
a god. And that is no better than the silly argument that religious 
people make, that atheism **is** the same as stalinism, maoism, etc, 
because those people had a mess of invalid and insane ideas, and 
happened to claim that they also didn't believe in god.

My rejection of gods is *informed* by the rest of the stuff I know 
and/or believe, but its not the only avenue to that result, nor do I 
claim that someone *has* to follow my path to get there, or that there 
is only one true version. Well, I think that getting their just because 
someone told you to think so is invalid, in that it lacks the core 
reasons and conclusions that "lead to" the idea, and is in fact no 
better than religion. And it can lead people to make conversions from 
one unfounded belief, based on what someone else told them, to another, 
with no more evidence or reasoned basis. But, that is a rejection of 
*how* they got to their belief, not the fact that they have it.

Let me put it another way. If, by your definition, atheism, which only 
demands that you either reject, or strongly suspect the nonexistence of, 
gods, is a religion, then by that loose a definition, there is not one 
single thing **anyone** believes that isn't religious, and you might as 
well stop claiming that the word actually means anything useful at all. 
Because the argument you give is either a) too vague to specify any 
clear reason for atheism to *fit* religion by any halfway strict 
definition of it, or you are projecting **your** views and definitions 
of how you got to that belief on the whole of those that have it. And in 
that case, you have **created** a religion, by insisting that only your 
path, definitions and/or arguments qualify to judge if it is/isn't one.

You can't have it both ways. The one makes everything a religion, and 
the other... demands that I accept your definition of what atheism is, 
and thus agree with your insistence that it qualifies as a religion. All 
I have to do is show that you can believe something that "isn't" in your 
definition, and still qualifty, to disprove the premise. If you want, I 
am sure I can even find people claiming to be atheist that disprove it 
by invalidating "both" of our definitions of how you become one, or what 
conclusions you need to reach to state that gods are unlikely (or 
impossible).

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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