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Neil Degrasse Tyson on atheism and agnosticism

epepke said:
That's misrepresenting atheists and atheism. I dislike that because I put great stock in accuracy.

But we were talking about harm.

I'll gleefully harm atheism in another way that does not require kicking them in the crotch. I think the majority of atheists make a huge mistake in thinking that the concept of a god is coherent enough for the question of believing it to make the slightest bit of sense.
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Well, the concept of god needs to be defined for every single debate including the question of its existence.
 
Dissolution said:
And that would be fine, if he didn't go on to completely strawman one of those categories and parrot completely inane theist arguments.
His suggestion that atheists' conduct as a whole is somehow lacking is insulting, frankly.

This sums up the pointless and worse than useless position of a subset of agnostics, for me.
They're basically atheists that like to be condescending to other atheists and ease the fears of believers.
"Oh, I don't believe, but don't worry, I'm not like those other non-believers, with their nasty, antagonistic attempts to uphold the constitution!"

It's cowardly, disingenuous and damaging.
Read the comments on the video and you'll see what I mean.
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Am skimming through them now. This one made me nearly shoot coffee out of my nose!

"So basically, the reason why you don't want to call yourself an atheist is because they're all a**holes..."

Hmmmm.

I think he can only craft his positions based on his own experiences with atheists. If you think his experience doesn't represent the best that atheists have to offer, then that's a conversation that can be had, absolutely.
 
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OCaptain said:
Am skimming through them now. This one made me nearly shoot coffee out of my nose!

"So basically, the reason why you don't want to call yourself an atheist is because they're all a**holes..."

Hmmmm.

I think he can only craft his positions based on his own experiences with atheists. If you think his experience doesn't represent the best that atheists have to offer, then that's a conversation that can be had, absolutely.
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Maybe he's being a bit vague to preserve his market value.
 
OCaptain said:
Am skimming through them now. This one made me nearly shoot coffee out of my nose!

"So basically, the reason why you don't want to call yourself an atheist is because they're all a**holes..."

Hmmmm.

I think he can only craft his positions based on his own experiences with atheists. If you think his experience doesn't represent the best that atheists have to offer, then that's a conversation that can be had, absolutely.
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That's not actually far off what Tyson's saying though, sadly.
He simply wouldn't make that statement about Christians, Jews or Muslims.
 
OCaptain said:
Am skimming through them now. This one made me nearly shoot coffee out of my nose!

"So basically, the reason why you don't want to call yourself an atheist is because they're all a**holes..."

Hmmmm.

I think he can only craft his positions based on his own experiences with atheists. If you think his experience doesn't represent the best that atheists have to offer, then that's a conversation that can be had, absolutely.
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Heh, I argued in that thread. I forgot how silly it was
 
Atheist ready to eat your babies. Agnostic ready to take part in a respectful exchange of ideas.
 

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pharphis said:
Well, the concept of god needs to be defined for every single debate including the question of its existence.
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Has anybody successfully done that? Ever?

I'm kind of serious about this. I've never heard a description of god that made any sense.
 
epepke said:
Has anybody successfully done that? Ever?

I'm kind of serious about this. I've never heard a description of god that made any sense.
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I think so, yes. People define what their god is or at least some attributes of their god (created the universe, loving, etc, none of the above...).

Maybe there's something incomplete about the definitions for you t based on the information given if its not vague we can at least discuss the reasons it could or could not exist as defined
 
OCaptain said:
Why do you think he made that statement about skeptics/atheists?
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Because he wants to distance himself from the Four Horseman-style New Atheist stuff that the conservative Christians in America seem so afraid of, so that he can create things like Cosmos and not have people dismiss it as extremist propaganda, mainly.

He also appears to be echoing Sagan's own comments on atheism.
He's a big influence on him, so perhaps he's just making the same mistakes as the guy that inspired him?
 
Sadly, there do happen to be some people who add a lot of unnecessary baggage to the term atheist, and then take those beliefs to ridiculous extremes. Atheist is only supposed to mean a lack of belief in a god or gods. It's not supposed to mean all the other stuff. This is why one needs clearer and more specific labels, like Secular Humanist, by which to self identify.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
Sadly, there do happen to be some people who add a lot of unnecessary baggage to the term atheist, and then take those beliefs to ridiculous extremes. Atheist is only supposed to mean a lack of belief in a god or gods. It's not supposed to mean all the other stuff. This is why one needs clearer and more specific labels, like Secular Humanist, by which to self identify.
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I agree. Surely all that's required to be an atheist is to assert that, given no evidence for god(s) exists, it should be by default assumed that they do not - until evidence is found”. End of story.
 
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