Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: A point well missed ...
From: kmagnacca@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 28 Jan 93 22:02:41 EST
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <C1JuM7.6zB@darkside.osrhe.uoknor.edu>, bil@okcforum.osrhe.uoknor.edu (Bill Conner) writes:
> 
>    Yes, you get a prize; you were both civl and rational - the only
> response that was in fact.

   Not true.  I saw other civil, rational posts that you either ignored
or acted insulted at.

> It seems odd that I never stated my
> position on the central question, do I believe in the existence of
> God, yet was attacked by all and sundry, what does it mean? If
> atheists are veritable paragons of reason, the intellectual elite, the
> most rational of people, why do they get so hot when someone challenges their
> faith?

   (snort)

>    Your skeptical world-view is not really yours. To make the
> statement suggests (as Madalyn Murrey O'Hair likes to do about
> herself) that you are somehow exempt from the influences and pressures the 
> rest of us feel, that while we become ensnsared in folly, you managed
> to transcend beyond.

   I beg your pardon?  I saw nothing in Jim's statement that implied
this, unless you seem to think that not having God in your life makes
you a superior creature.  Jim certainly did not say this.  Do you care
to explain just what you meant?

> Granted this is sarcastic, but this kind of
> attitude is so common, I have trouble remaining genteel. My point is
> that we are all born into the same world with pretty much the same set
> of attributes; it seems ridiculous to pretend that some "special"
> people have an advantage, which in the case of the atheists who have
> responded to this posting, is exactly what is being implied.

   Just what have you been reading?  I have never seen anyone on a.a
say that they had a "special advantage."

>    All of us are exposed to various world-views, usually before we've
> developed the means to determine the most likely or valid. In my
> experience, skepticism follows belief else of what are you skeptical? At
> some time you believed in Santa Claus or something similar, you
> probably believed in fairness and justice, you may have even believed
> in God. You had, at that time, a different more credulous world-view.

   Right.  And now I don't.  BTW, unlike most of the people on a.a I have
*never* believed in God.

>    What I'm curious to know, is what made the difference, why did you
> change, and why atheism? Claiming to be a skeptical person begs the
> question it seems. The change from a child for whom God was at least
> possible, to a cynical adult for whom there is nothing greater than
> Man is radical at least.

   I don't see it as much of a change at all.  Going from someone who
believed some things unquestionably to one who questioned before 
believing is not nearly as radical a change as you would like to think.

   Overall I found your post to be highly obnoxious and insulting, more
so than most of the replies to you and certainly more than Jim's post.
Someone who whines constantly about hyperbole, sarcasm, and ridicule
and then goes on with misrepresentation, sideswiping insults, and 
strawmen ought to take a look in the mirror.

Karl

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Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc,alt.pagan