Re: @Toni - No point
An abusive parent builds the environment the abused child lives in. This should be allowed because the parent constructed the environment? If god is the father and we are his children then does it follow that the children should endure all the rules, right or wrong, and have no right to question or refute the rules of the environment? An unjust law cannot be morally obeyed without question, surely?
Strawman argument here. "God = father" is mainly a "mainstream" Christian idea, not necessarily shared by all sects of Christianity, nor by Jews or Muslims, and (AFAIK) some Christians hold the meaning of "children" to be literary, not literal. As a result, your analogy and subsequent refutation of it is actually criticism of the literal understanding of "God's children" in the Bible, not of the issue at hand.
We're not children. We're creation. There's a fine difference here.
"An unjust law cannot be morally obeyed without question, surely?"
You're not omnipotent/omniscient/omni-whatever-enough to determine if the law is really unjust or unfair. Suppose it was unfair as you suppose. Unfair according to whom?
This response is laughable. Aethists [sic] do not accept the presence of god(s) at all, so we do not need a god to not believe in. I don't believe in invisible pink unicorns either, so does that mean they must therefore exist? I think you need to chew that one over a little more. God, if such a being exists (and I do not preclude the idea, I just don't believe there is any more evidence for such than any other unfounded belief) then if I were to ask that being "who made you" what answer would I get? If its anything other than "my creator" then, by definition, the answerer does not believe in a Creator themselves, making them at least agnostic.
Define atheism.
It's the belief that God doesn't exist. The notion of God, whether existing or not, is there. Some evidence is there. A discussion is there, that it warranted the creation of a term to describe this position.
Regardless of whether God exists or not, the idea of God is there.
I was mistaken when I asserted that a God *has* to be there for atheism to mean anything. I'm correcting myself: only the *idea* of God has to exist for atheism to mean anything.
Moving on:
I don't believe in invisible pink unicorns either, so does that mean they must therefore exist?
The notion of them exists now, that you thought of it.
if I were to ask that being "who made you" what answer would I get? If its anything other than "my creator" then, by definition, the answerer does not believe in a Creator themselves, making them at least agnostic.
Okay, I *somewhat* agree.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
