>>10945
ok let's do it.
>>10908
>Atheists say "There is no such thing as god"
wrong.
atheists disbelieve there's a god. i.e., atheists don't assign the value of truth to the proposition that god exists, but whether atheists also assign the value of falsehood to the proposition is not implied by atheism. sure, if you believe that gods don't exists (that the theist proposition is actually false) it follows that you also disbelieve the existence of gods (because you think it's false you don't think it's true, but thinking something is false is not the only way to not think that something is true. lack of evidence in one way or another should make you a nonbeliever… an atheist).
> since if there is no god then there is nothing which the word "god" refers to
concepts aren't meaningless just because they don't correspond to reality when they are supposed to. however I do think the word "god" is highly meaningless.
mathematicians deal all the time with concepts that in my view don't refer to anything concrete in reality, and yet they show some of these concepts to be false and some others to be true within the system of logic and math. the fact that some propositions are false doesn't make the search for proofs of their falsehood useless. logic alone can show something to be impossible to exist. logic alone tells you not to try to explain vegetal cells using a theory in which light isn't involved, because you know plants die without it.
now when I say god is meaningless I refer to the ambiguity and vagueness of the term. people mean very different things by "god" and some of them even are mutually incompatible, yet theists like to group themselves to try to prove atheists wrong. Some of the attempts at defining god are utterly awful and actually at odds with logic or science. the vaguer gods are more difficult to disprove but they are less relevant and less connected with the world and the claims of most religions and most atheists. However as we said moments ago, the burden of proof is not in the one who doesn't believe but with the person making the claim that something is true or false.
>My point is that it would be better to argue with theists along the lines of a more practical atheism, one which does not acknowledge the existence of god in any way whatsoever but instead completely ignores any statement made by theists which aims to justify their beliefs.
this approach is always relevant and valid, I mean, whenever someone fails to prove his point. but on top of that sometimes it is perfectly valid to show that someone's claim isn't just unjustified but also demonstrably wrong.
>Another line of attack would be to ask whether the children of theists should be taken into state care, since the absurd and, frankly, insane beliefs of theists are damaging to the minds of children
this is a delicate topic. unfortunately I don't think it will change meaningfully as long as our species reproduces like this.
Indoctrination is awful and is one of the main sources for theism, but I don't think the state can do better. We should aim at secular governments, good universal education and more aperture in social discourse towards religious diversity, free speech and criticism of religion. Then in a distant future we might be able to survive without relying in the creation of half-assed humans that absorb any garbage you throw at their brains.