I dun made a good point, but that makes me a pretentious, irrational asshole. Obscure comparisons, the Russel's teapot argument for example, are conventionally used in philosophy in an argument known as 'reduction to absurdity'. Reduction to absurdity shows that, if the argument used to support a certain conclusion is followed correctly, it will justify a conclusion that is known to be wrong, which means that the argument is unreliable and the previous conclusion is dubious. Absurd situations are a necessity for this argument to function, and do not constitute a personal attack. I'm glad you reconsidered your ideas and bothered to read about the subject, most people don't, but if you get the idea that someone else is trying to put you down then you might imagine that launching your response with about 5 different insults isn't a nice thing to do.
Well I never outright said "irrational", but I guess it was implicit in the way I was barging on. I was biased from the get go in holding that just as Theists and religious followers have garnered a reputation for being ignorant and unwilling to see fact, Atheists have garnered a reputation as people who -immediately- come off as pretentious and belittling. But again--that's my automatic reaction. I really don't believe in anything either way, but things I do put stock in are general respect and humility, and comparing someone's religion to a floating teapot immediately comes off as disrespectful and arrogant.
How ironic that I myself would go about losing all respect and humility the moment I entered the argument and then expect others to display the same. Emotional reaction induced hypocrisy. It was my personal complex to read the original comment as some grand attack. Apologies.
My own opinion aside, it doesn't make the teacup thing any less of a valid argument, and in fact it's a very decent argument that I know well and have long since been aware off. However,
it really had nothing to do with what we were getting on about. Be it as the ultimate counter argument to "no proof either way", you said it yourself--we were arguing semantics on religion and whether atheism could be viewed as one, and I decided to read that at first as
"See! There they go again!" . Eventually the fuzzy ass of the Simple Logic monkey landed on my face and I realized that semantics don't mean jack-shit when it comes to the establishment of the definition of a belief by its holders.
And yet by that time I was knee deep in an argument I'd construed as "Well shit! Here's the atheists barging in to drop their overused rhetoric in an argument where it's not even applicable, oblivious to their whole appearance as a religion as a whole." Then it occurred--well fuck. Everyone gets evangelistic about their values they hold close. Perceived irrelevance of arguments aside, my original statement didn't hold up within itself from the start. And if we wanted to play tit for tat on who's being the asshat, I was the one who kicked off the tone of the debate from square One.
Again, biggest thing I should take is just because I think X group are assholes it doesn't justify me being an asshole. Because shit, there's this small possibility that I'm personally biased due to past experiences, and that is one hundred percent my complex to deal with, and I'm the only one legitimately acting like an asshole in a situation where I'm perceiving everyone is simply because
it feels good to imagine that everyone I don't immediately agree with is this big douchebag.
What was that thing Albert Ellis went on about... He's a well known psychiatrist. Coined the term "Musterbation". Aka, "These people are saying things I don't agree with in a manner that I don't like--they MUST be assholes!" I fell into that to the T.
