Bravo. Totally agree.

"Whenever we water down our rhetoric and kowtow to these niggling philosophical word games we accomplish nothing politically except to give theists hope that they have some loophole and to confuse fence-sitters into thinking we're losing the argument."

Yes, we can't disprove God using philosophical constructs, and all of the posts regarding this devolve into definitions of smaller and smaller words to denote what each one means. Living on the basis of reality the way it is, not the way some wish it to be...makes sense. That is all, put God in the same category as fairies and leprechauns. Everyone can have a different idea of God with his own philosophical proof, but no evidence for this belief exists, and until such evidence presents itself, we will live in accordance with the rational idea that GOD does not exist.

 In political speech, a reasonable adult person wouldn't actually suggest a belief in the Easter Bunny. I mean, it's just a kind of traditional game for kids. It would be nice to get to the point where we could be the same kind of "reasonable" about any of the other supernatural things.

In normal conversation, it's pretty easy to be a "strong" atheist. The supernatural is consistently and reliably non-existent. The reasonable conclusion is that religion was created to deal with frightening uncertainty. It's even understandable in a compassionate sense. Now that we're all grown-ups, we can probably drop it, but it turns out that it really has a hold on those who like authority and tradition.

I've always tried to explain it as an error of composition.*  It is an error to say that since we can never know for certain where an individual electron is located at a precise moment, that we never know exactly where we are,  and it is improper to say that the Incompleteness Theorem or the problem of induction are justifications for giving any real world weight to an unsupported claim.

The fact that we put up with such arguments, I think, is because only a very few atheists can actually explain it to a philosophy geek in a convincing manner.  Philosophy, as Tilberian mentioned, is very precise, and if you're just winging it, anyone who knows anything about it will be able to tell.

Just to be philosophically precise, I always say, "If God fails this test, then it does not exist as defined."  Usually, dullards and theists will smirk, confident that they've caught me in a point of weakness, but I follow it up immediately.  "And, since every known definition of god has failed, then the only rational thing to do is not believe in any god."

* The Fallacy of Composition is to conclude that a property shared by a number of individual items, is also shared by a collection of those items; or that a property of the parts of an object, must also be a property of the whole thing.

Hey Yeah, BINGO; I AM a, not so talented, atheist "political"/  preacher ! 

    You guys rock .... and damn most them politicians and preachers .....

Thanks for all the supportive comments. I think it is important that we don't get drawn into this endless, fruitless wrangle about what it is possible to know.

On the other hand, it might still be useful to go down that road every once and a while with someone who thinks that they've found the big "dead end" sign that will squash their doubt in ... whatever. Some people really think, for instance, that "Gödel's theorem" means "You can't prove God doesn't exist." The more of that kind of nonsense gets kicked in the face the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Eventually we should have a shorthand for that kind of poorly researched argument, and I hope it does end up being as simple as possible, so that not on the burden of proof, but the burden of work can be placed squarely upon the shoulders of those making half-assed statements posing as arguments.

I ask them this: why do you use a different method of belief formation when it comes to the question of God than you use in every other aspect of your life?

I rarely get an answer, and I have only ever gotten one that made any kind of sense. One theist told me point blank that she derived satisfaction from the belief that God was watching over her and therefore had made a deliberate decision to hold a belief in God on faith. Her reasoning was that the good feelings she got from her belief were available immediately and within her present frame of reference, whereas moving to a rationalist viewpoint would be a great deal of work and was not guaranteed to pay off with the same positive feelings. I had to admit that her approach was rational given her fundamental lack of curiosity and desire to only feel good about the world rather than feel confident that she really knew anything about it. I wished her well and we ended the conversation on good terms.

I would hope that most people would feel a little more motivated to possess truth.

I've encountered this several times, and I admit that it stumps me every time.  When someone looks me in the eye and tells me they choose to be irrational because it makes them feel good, I can't really dispute their logic.  Once, when I was feeling particularly cranky, I told a girl that it was her right to propagate a dangerous lie to make herself feel better, but I thought she was a very self absorbed and thoughtless person for doing so.

While we might feel constrained to acknowledge someone's right as a free person to choose irrationality in some private belief, the equation changes when those beliefs enter the public sphere. Sam Harris uses the hypothetical example of the belief that he has a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his back yard. Sure it makes him feel good, and sure it isn't hurting anyone for him to believe this, but, knowing that he has this baseless belief, would you trust him with a lit match?

We rightly make the assumption that a person who can be irrational in one part of their life can be irrational in another part, and we generally meet irrational positions with suspicion and treat them as character flaws. But, yet again, religion has managed to get itself a pass. It is a little scary when the sanest theist we ever encounter is someone who has made up their mind to be stark raving delusional about something...on purpose. If the topic were, say, the color of the sky, we would be much less forgiving when someone said they like pink better than blue, and therefore they had decided to believe that the sky is pink.

Geezz Tiberian,  you is so fun read. I don't know what else to say ..... you get me giggling,  feels good. Thanks > YOU ....   

Thanks IAGAO. Your posts make me giggle, too, though sometimes my head hurts for a while after I read them.

I need a "CAUTION" warning badge, hurts my head too !