The Atheist Experience

   Clarify something here. Are you saying that because you are "right" you are not insulting me? Or that you are insulting me, but it's okay because you're right?

   Suppose I am right. Could I then justifiably insult you? Would it even be considered insulting? Remember what I said about you failing to see in yourself the flaws you see in others? Well, there it is again.

   This might help you quit that. You leave the impression that you're certain "belief" is a disease others have but you don't. It has become obvious that yours are just as much beliefs as anyone else's. I don't think it matters how much you believe you're right, you're still insulting to others. I suppose it might become necessary to be insulting, but pretending to be special when you're not is the problem. Furthermore you are not right, so it's much worse the offense.

   Belief is not a disease, by the way. I have explained that belief can be very efficient. If people just do what they are told, things can work out wonderfully. It can save the time, expense and heartache of testing bad ideas over and over. Grunts who haven't the skill to form their own opinions and just believe in authority can be the most marvelous citizens with very rich and productive lives.  I suppose for example that you are a decent enough person.  The fact that you are a grunt would not be a problem except for one tiny detail. You have allied yourselves with the wrong authorities.

   You have convinced yourselves that you are "logical" and that you arrive at your decisions through well honed science. You are not logical or scientific yourselves and you just copy what you believe is science. In fact it is a pack of lies aimed at convincing yourselves and others that you do not "believe" anything.

   Yes, I remember that everything you said about it is irrelevant because you're trying to follow "rules" you do not understand and force others to follow you, and do not realize that you are not the police.

   Dictionaries are compiled by people in my profession and I have a clue or two about how they work. The entries that appear in dictionaries do so according to their usage. That means the definition you see in the dictionary is used by many people or some significant group of people in that way. It does not mean that definition is "right." It only means people choose that meaning and are understood. My problem with you here is that you still fail to see that utility is all that matters. There is no "truth" in a label except as it is properly attached to something. You keep trying to prevent more useful definitions by claiming they violate some rule.  You are operating in elementary school mode where you blindly accept whatever your teachers tell you without question.

   Trying to say that nature cannot define what is good is not useful, and therefore not logical. I suppose it is also not useful expecting nature to define all good automatically either, thus the Britannica article. I'm not proposing either. We do however need to address nature and society in developing a system of ethics.