A cowardly anonymous commenter has been swinging by this Medicine Cabinet post to argue with me--I think--about atheism. He thinks atheist are smug jerks, and he thinks this argument has some bearing on whether or not an atheist worldview is defensible. I was polite for awhile, but everyone has their limit. His arguments are weak, emotional, full of insinuation, and grammatically sad. My final response to him (or her) over the jump:
I know my response will confirm in your mind the truth that all of the new atheists are assholes, but nothing was going to change that opinion of yours anyway.
Think about it from my perspective though, for just a minute.
I've spent years studying the arguments about God, and belief, and science, and philosophy, and the relationship all of those things have to each other. I've taken these issues very seriously, and have talked and written seriously about them. I have agonized over the various opinions and facts, and have attempted to arrive at the most honest and objective conclusion possible, and am still not a true believer.
Put yourself in my shoes for a moment.
Now imagine that some smug, snotty, obviously selectively informed (and poorly so at that) idiot comes up to you with a handful of sloppy and asinine arguments against a position you have very carefully arrived at, and not only does this idiot do that, they also demand (as an extension of the obvious poverty of their understanding of basic concepts) that you suddenly fill in all of the gaps of their poor education too, just so that you two might argue at somewhere approaching the same level. Talk about a sense of entitlement. Then imagine that multiple individuals similarly demand such reciprocity over and over and over again, and you might have some idea why I'm frustrated with you.
I am not being paid to give you a course in rudimentary critical thinking and logic. If you want to have a serious conversation with serious people, don't come to the table in clown shoes.
Epilogue:
This post isn't about religion. It's about respecting your argument enough to know however many sides of it there are, and to understand its dimensions on a deep enough level to talk about it intelligently. It's also about not being a stupid-jerk-poopyhead.
EVERYTHING IN THE MEDICINE CABINET HAS EXPIRED