Assessing the constitutuency

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As many of you may know, I am running for the 2010 category of most STRIDENT atheist on WP's PPR.

This thread is to let people voice their opinions for what they want from a STRIDENT atheist, so that these may be part of my campaign promises.

So, I ask that you please voice your opinions on what you think befits a STRIDENT atheist so that way I can satisfy your desires and fit gleefully into this vision, if not stereotype.

Thank you for your time and attention,

Awesomelyglorious

(Also, please note: any campaign promises made are contingent upon victory. I have no obligations to any promise made if I do not take this office)

(This message has been paid for by the commission to awesomize Awesomelyglorious)

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 02 Jun 2010, 10:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm still sitting on the fence on this one, so consider me among your "undecideds" or "swing" voters. I don't think anyone in the PPR forum can afford NOT to vote on this very important issue.

I do have a suggestion, however, and I don't feel right going about this myself. What I find is that your efforts over the last day have become more ENTERTAINING than strident, and I don't think you really want people laughing at you, I mean, if you're sincerely going to most strident. My suggestion would be to start a thread, maybe with a poll also, about who we think the most hated CHRISTIAN is on here. It seems to me that Christians are especially despised among the theists. I wouldn't complain if you put my name on there, though I'm concerned that if you list other WP Christians it might be seen as a personal attack and violation of TOS. I don't know, and you've been here longer than I have. Like I said, including my name there would be fine by me if you deem it necessary, and you could even extend that list to include prominent Christian philosophers and theologians.

It's only a suggestion, but it might help build your Christian base.

Yeah, the past few days you have been more amusing than anything else. Still, I think you're starting to close the gap on Sand.

Perhaps a poll for the most [adjective] Christian, with your choice of adjective that doesn't get you reported to the mods, would be interesting to run in parallel to the "most strident atheist" poll.

A strident atheist should be way too arrogant to ask for opinions from others.

Shut your god-filled pie hole!

Yeah, well, I like inserting the STRIDENT into everything way too much.

Yeah, that is also a concern. On principle, I don't think I could start such a poll. But it wouldn't stop me from participating if someone else did!

It would have to be "most hated," though, and would likely be misconstrued too much as an attack. AG's attacks are on EVERYONE, and the self-caricaturization keeps it just above the attention of the mods.

As to where I stand, I'm leaning more towards AG than Sand. With apologies to Sand, I came across Sand's semi-vitriol against other so-called "stupid" or "psychotic" people and ideas and, by error on my part, went immediately on the offensive. What came out of that is that Sand is not really an atheist in the strictest sense... His doubts regarding the existence of God have more to do with the idea that God's existence is merely improbable, NOT impossible. AG's position is the more illogical, unreasonable assertion that existence of God IS impossible, not merely unlikely. The poll itself, however, includes non-theists as well as atheists, which is a little more inclusive and the only justification that Sand is even in the running.

Of course, certain Christians could also fit the criteria. At one time Christians were persecuted on the basis of atheism because they renounced the idea of Greek and Roman pantheism. That made them atheists in the sense that they rejected "gods."

I myself am a pantheist Christian--I may not understand all of it, even the nature of God Himself, but I do believe that it will all "pan" out in the end.

You should have lobbied before I voted.

Well, I think there might be a runoff election anyway.

Not only that, but you should have held off your vote until I lobbied!

The conservative Christian God is pretty much impossible, and saying so is not unreasonable. The really unreasonable people are the ones who say that such a being exists.

personally i always thought less is more

Too bad it is election season. Right now there is the campaign trail, a place that can only be won by absurdity and lies.

Ah, but we aren't really talking about the Christian God. We're talking about the possibility that there is a "Supreme Being" at all. Actually, it wasn't a debate about whether God exists or not that I railroaded Sand on--it was on the nature of the existence of abstractions, etc., which made an ugly turn for the worst when the discussion moved on to the nature of reality itself. I'm not trying to revive past ugliness, but I think what happened was that Sand made the mistake of thinking I was about to trap him into having to admit to the existence of God when the discussion really had nothing to do with it. It was, however, over the course of this exchange that Sand freely admitted (without any provocation) the possibility, however minute, that God (or any god) might exist.

Speaking of which... Take a look at your own statement, come to think of it: "The conservative Christian God is pretty much impossible." What makes such a statement perfectly reasonable is the underlined text, which implies that you also would rather not rule it out completely. One MAY reason that God exists, however, as it has been done in the past in varying ways. To say, with absolute certainty, that God (or any god) does NOT exist is much closer to being unreasonable than saying the opposite.

Could it be that our Awesomelyglorious does not truly practice what he preaches and is corrupted by agnosticism??? Oh my... What scandal this will cause! In whom shall we place our hope for the godless future???

Well, a "Supreme Being" probably does exist. Who else would be there to have tea with the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the Invisible Dragon in Carl Sagan's garage on weekends?

The problem is that it is still true that none of these beings care about us or have anything to do with our lives.


Well, I am big on qualifying all truth statements. My "pretty much"s are what other people are willing to place as "certainly"s. I don't rule anything out completely completely, but the "conservative Christian God" is in that same realm as 1+1=3.

Now could one "reason that God exists"? Not the conservative Christian God at all. And as for a Platonic Supreme Being? Possibly in an earlier age, but such speculations seem absurd and ad hoc given our neuroscientific times, in which all of Plato's essential intuitions seem like bunk.


Technically, I hold to the Dawkinsian scale as more valid than what you are likely invoking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_o ... robability

Pretty much, most atheists are pretty solid 6s on the matter. Usually people start taking the title of agnostic if they are 3-5. In any case, the way that most people assess agnosticism ends up being pretty silly. The explanation is found in the wikipedia article I cited:

I'm willing to vote for you, but I'm reserving the right to move for impeachment.

Just so long as the issue won't be having sex with an intern and lying about it, I think I'll be fine.