Illogical atheists

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If someone cares if a proposition (such as gold being on Pluto) is true or not has nothing to do with if that proposition is true or false.

Similarly, it does not matter if you do not care if a proposition is 100% certain or 99.999% certain. The proposition will be 100% certain or 99.999% certain, regardless of our wishes.

I might chime in real quickly on something else.

Chewing over the illogical atheists, illogical theists, illogical anything question - a good part of being illogical is resting on one's laurels with only one perspective built up. For instance an illogical theist would be one who won't address the fundamental ideas and questions posed by atheists or one who will draw cartoon charicatures of atheists all day and beat those roundly but will refuse to address the real thing. An illogical atheist would be doing precisely the same thing with the opposite spin - that is relegating themselves to strawmen and not evaluating thoughtful points made by theists.

Understandably, especially for anyone under 40 whose been too busy trying to get their life together in terms of home, finance, career, etc.. circumspection can be a lot to ask and usually a person won't really feel comfortable trying to bridge out from their comfort zone and build a larger worldview until they've really gotten a good basic identity up and running for practical reasons. Still there are some of all ages who have a lot to say and strangely little in the way of curiosity as to where their own blind-spots might be.

I think that's what we're all best off doing if we can help it though, at least for those of us who care not just about the fundamental answers to the ultimate issues questions but also the nuance and application questions. Proof of God and life hereafter for instance should no more slay the place of science, logic, and reason (where else would these come from at that rate?) any more than proof of no God should slay literature, fine art, music, or symbolic utility of the subjective which are thoroughly intertwined with healthy and balanced human existence.

I have this problem with many theists on the question of faith. They say things like they choose to have faith in god because it makes their lives better, etc. To me, that simply says they are choosing to lie to themselves. They don't actually believe in god with conviction, they just believe having faith in one improves their lives. I'm not to say they're wrong to do so, but it seems to have very little to do with truth and more to do with choice.

Very true. It's tough to keep an open mind with theists sometimes, but keeping on trying to really consider their points instead of just dismissing them beats back our own prejudices and judgements a bit.

Exactly! I am an agnostic (the only rational position ). I imagine that if I believed in Santa I would be more happy. But can I will myself to believe in Santa? Not likely! Similarly, Pascal's wager is stupid!

I think the picture just gets woefully dumbed down and lots of content gets dumped into categories that it doesn't belong in. Part of that is politics and people trying to push chicanery, like intelligent design in school curriculums, etc.. The other thing, I feel like we're still a long way (content-wise) from having a proper handle on what the religious impulse is, what mystical states are, etc.. and while atheistic or theistic assertions may have their place the fundamental questions have much more to do with having an accurate grasp on the human subjective experience, what fuels it, what encourages vs. attacks it's health, etc..

You'd never, for instance, want to pick up something up and believe it just to feel warm and fuzzy but there are a lot of things in this area that you can use as tools toward solving internal roadblocks and challenges that wouldn't have been accessible for solution any other way. The idea of, say, building an imaginary friend on psychological steroids to help assist you in changing a certain ingrained habit (what people in the occult world often call servitor creation) and using that relationship to practical self-help ends is very different from making a sky-dad and trying to force other people to believe in him. Similarly if you wanted to do some woodworking for a younger cousin and make them a Christmas gift and you wanted to sort of channel the meme of Santa for your own creative ends - I'm sure that could have neat results. It would also be a very different thing from taking on a belief set that there's a 1700 year-old overweight Middle-easterner jumping down millions of Chimneys the night between 12/24 and 12/25 every year.