A passed test of loyalty? Or a failed test of ethics?

     Genesis 22 tells of a story about the biblical god commanding Abraham to offer up his son as a sacrifice. Now, I have heard many people point to this as a demonstration of admirable qualities of loyalty and obedience. But it has never sat well with me. This seems exactly the sort of order that one should never obey.
     Among human rulers, only the pettiest want such devotion. If there is a god and there is any truth to the story, it seems much more likely that the god would be testing to see if Abraham would have the courage to say "no" to a blatently wicked command. Perhaps we need to learn to be able to refuse even an "ultimate authority" when we know the command is no good. If that is the case, Abraham was simply not ready. I look at the world and see that many people are not ready.

Wow, it's like Randall Munroe knows me.

     Except that I don't drink alcohol at all. I guess he changed details to avoid any threat of a lawsuit.

On censorship

     It is often difficult to navigate the boundary between when someone should and should not be able to block certain types of discourse he may find offensive. The extremes are easy. Anyone should able to block the hurling of epithets in his own home if he finds it offensive. Contrariwise, no one should be able to block any type of speech that he would not even know about if he were not looking for an excuse to be offended.
     On my own blog, I will delete any comment in which the language turns blue. (I delete all of Clostridiophile's comments because it reached a point where everything he posted was a foul-mouthed string of personal insults. Someday, he might put forward a decent post. But I will not know. I have no desire to sift through that and will delete them without reading them.) But on other blogs, I do not focus on language turning blue for how it turns the language blue. I will note, for example, when it is turning an "admission of a mistake" into sarcasm. But then I am calling on the inappropriate sarcasm.
     There are some people whose idea of entertainment is a 30-minute, non-stop barrage of four-letter words. I have even been told that I have "no sense of humor" because I am not impressed with that sort of thing. Now, I do wish that that wasn't quite so prevalent. I like sublety and depth to my entertainment; and it is just difficult to find. The people who like that sort of thing are welcome to have it. I do not begrudge them their tastes. I just don't like the way it has become so ubiquitous that finding anything else is nearly impossible. It is as though the entire artworld were taken over by nothing but "the blue duck."

Copy of post at "Atheist Central"

Ray:

     I see you deleted my comment again. My comments have, of course, never violated your stated rules. But I do realize that you use pretense because you know that Jesus is just a lie you use to make your money.
     If someone gives an answer that you consider wrong, that is something to refute. Showing an answer to be wrong is a refutation. So, if you acknowledge that answers have been given to your "nothing created everything" play on words and you state that there is nothing to refute, you must believe the answers to be correct.

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     I mentioned a play on words in my response to Ray. There are two possible meanings to the expression, "nothing created everything." It can be an assertion that there was no creation event to the universe at large, with which most atheists would agree. Or it can state that first there was nothing and that somehow that the nothing was an active creator, which is what Ray lyingly insists it means, once he hears no objections.

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     I am reprinting this here as Ray is likely to delete the post again.

This is a comment I made in respone to Nathaniel on "Atheist Central."

Nathaniel:

     "'Atheist' is a term to describe someone who does not believe in gods. It is also used to describe someone who disbelieves in gods." [Emphasis in original]
     It is rather misleading to list the more common definition last. The way you have worded it, someone unfamiliar with usage might think that your preferred definition is more common. It is not.
     "This is not something just made up by atheists themselves."
     That is in dispute. Perhaps you would like to try evidence. You could quote several people (none of them atheists) talking about atheists in a manner that makes clear that they are using your definition. (I'm not holding my breath.) I don't think you can find any.
     "Seriously, give it up. You're starting to sound like Ray and his Crocoduck argument."
     Perhaps you should give it up. You already sound like Ray. And, as I have pointed out above, you have directly contradicted yourself. Furthermore, my definition is the one in more common use. Yours appears to be used only by people with an agenda. I suspect that you are frustrated because the facts are against you. So you tell me to go away.
     It might be interesting for you to try to find any instances of your preferred definition being used in a manner that clearly does not pursue an agenda. That would be seeking a counterexample to my claim. A dictionary listing does not fit the criterion will list all claimed uses. The writers are not using the definitions themselves; but are noting its usage elsewhere. In the case of your definition, that usage is invariably by people trying to impede the more common definition of the term.

******END OF MY COMMENT ON THE POST *************

     The dispute is fairly straightforward. He doesn't like that people use the word "atheist" in the common meaning of believing there are no gods. I regard the definition of "anyone who doesn't specificly believe in a god" (which would include infants -- indeed, most times I see that definition used is to say "really, even newborns?" in response to some generalization (warranted or unwarranted) someone has made about atheists) as contrived and deliberately disruptive of communication.
     "What I meant by the sentence you quoted what that I found your comments to be very hostile towards atheism, your definition of it, not mine."
     "I wrote, clearly, that you seemed hostile towards 'atheism' [quotes corrected] as a definition, not hostile against some of the people who could be described as atheists in particular."
     This is the self-contradiction to which I referred. I have no problem with atheism. It's individuals that want to include everything but the kitchen sink in the term (deliberate exaggeration here; I'm making a point) that upset me.

Salt of the earth

     It amazes me that any people would want to think of themselves as "salt of the earth." Consider. Salting the earth was a highly destructive practice that it impossible to grow crops on the salted land for years. Even if we take it as spiritual symbolism, such a person must be spiritually destructive. It seems to me that certain religions carry direct warnings that they are harmful.

On ridiculing ideas:

     I have seen some people quote Thomas Jefferson as saying, "Ridicule is he only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them." I don't know whether he actually said that. Either way, I disagree with the proposition. A proposition must be intelligible before one can ridicule it. An "unintelligible proposition" would be one that one could not determine any meaning behind. And there would be no point to ridicule.
     In actual usage, ridicule is used by people who don't want an idea considered, but are incapable of arguing against the idea. In essence, they find the idea challenges their indoctrination and they want it suppressed. For my part, I find those who use ridicule in place of argument to be useless to discussions. They contribute nothing.

UPDATE: Here is a site that brings my position into high relief. Interestingly, though it is not their intent, the people who use ridicule against christian ideas may as well be writing "Great post, Ray" to all of Ray Comfort's evolution posts. They are doing the same thing, even if they are not on the same side.