The Atheist Experience

   For what purpose? You have no clear idea yourself.

   What you have accomplished here with all your efforts is to thoroughly establish time after time that

   A)  You are the problem here.

   B)  That is because you have a remarkably elementary (underdeveloped) understanding of words, their meanings, and the world around you. (You are a grunt.)

   C)  You fail to construct any case whatsoever and expect to defeat your opponents' case by claiming there is some "rule" they did not follow.

   D)  That is because you typically follow "rules" yourself without ever understanding any rules. (You are a grunt.)


   I advised you to avoid that practice since it only highlights in public that you do not understand any rules, and are not fit to apply them. Rather I recommended you show step by step what failure of logic you notice and why it is a failure. Had you followed that advice you wouldn't be making an idiot of yourself here.  Had the Republicans followed my advice they wouldn't have elected Donald Trump.


   In elementary school this practice of adapting definitions to immediate purposes is discouraged because it is necessary that students first acquire a foundation or base of knowledge from which later to more interactively engage the world around them. They are not introduced to critical thinking and their criticism, if any, of their education is usually not tolerated. There is no debate in elementary school (much) because students are not adequately prepared. In later levels of elementary school there is a very gradual introduction to the necessity of critical analysis of the things they are told. Many high school students are ready to engage in meaningful and constructive debate, but sadly many of them are still not. No one should go to college unless they have developed some skill for meaningful and constructive analysis.

   You are still not adequately prepared for debate. Grunts are not. That's what makes you grunts. Your only contact with the world is at a very elementary level. In "your mother's basement" with a "dictionary" (kids playing on the internet) you have no idea what you are doing and brazenly confront people who can show what idiots (grunts) you are.


   Perhaps you have met one of those "fundamentalist" Christians who felt strongly that you need to "accept Jesus." Perhaps you were confused or disturbed by their compulsion to such an ill defined commitment. Perhaps you asked them what that means. Many novice Christians indeed have no idea what it means. It is just a word, J-e-s-u-s. It could mean anything. Their own understanding of its meaning is rather elementary. Many of them are thus members for the sake of membership alone. Sadly many of them never develop any exact idea what difference it makes to "accept Jesus." Those are the people later who when they do it, it's fine, when anyone who is not a member does it, its evil. Lately the term "tribal" has been used to describe them. "Nationalists" can also have an inappropriate focus on membership.

   Notice that their definition of "Jesus" and your definition of anything, especially those words frequently at issue here, are remarkably inadequate to engage the world in any debate. Their concept of "Jesus" is remarkably anthropomorphic. I have explained, or perhaps I should say suggested, that children in elementary school are not yet prepared for the abstract concepts of religion and still require a "person" to engage their attention. The New Testament provides such an anthropomorphic convergence point in Jesus, but merely as an accommodation to children.

   You call me a "Christian" quite without my ever having given you a reason to do that. Your reason is that you need to put me in a convenient category that you can label as illogical and dismiss my arguments by invoking what you believe are rules.  The remarkable thing is how much like some Christians you are.


  Synonyms are not "definitions" of the sort required for meaningful and constructive debate. They do not typically advise how any label should be attached to any particular object or event. They are merely another label with the "same" purpose, whatever that is. That can point some people toward some meaning but it is not what formal debate requires.  You have provided other labels for "good" but no definition whatsoever.  Thus you are in no position to criticize mine.

   Formal debate requires criteria for definitions.  You still fail to understand the concept of "criteria." In order for a definition to be meaningful for the purposes of debate there must be some standard readily recognized and accepted by all parties to the debate. Exceptionally abstract criteria such as might be involved in definitions of "gnostic" are insufficiently recognized by the wide world, thus no definition develops.  Your "definition" of good is likewise without any criteria.


   I have offered a "definition" of religion as system concerned with abstract forces in nature and society that develops an ethical system.  There is nothing illogical about that.  That you believe so highlights what a complete imbecile you are.

   Nature and geography have defined our policies and ethics.  The "Equal Rights Amendment" will never be ratified because nature defies it.  Various states have various laws because their geography is different.  Our dependence on nature has lately been more thoroughly understood through ecology.  "I" have already won the use of nature in informing policy.  It has been won.  There is nothing your silly whining can do about that.

   As wonderful a thing as science is, and I have enjoyed and appreciated science all my life, it cannot address most issues in society.  It has no definition of good and cannot obtain one, as you have thoroughly shown.  The arts of religion and debate can.