<I think that intelligent liberals, seeing the peril of the West, mostly became neoconservatives quite awhile back>
As X pointed out, that is, by your definition, an 'attack,' though you call it a 'poke.'
There is a real problem with tendentious definitions such as the one you gave. It's obvious that they are composed not to be objective, but to romanticize one's own 'image' and denigrate that of one's opponent. That agenda is perceived by those who are its intended victims (for example the ones who aren't intelligent enough to have yet converted to your political faith) as distinctly disrespectful.
Again I think of my Psych 101 textbook, Chapter One, "The Effect of Motivation on Perception." IMO, there is a motivation on your part to perceive that comment not as an attack, or as very disrespectful, but as a mere innocent 'poke.'
I feel that referring to God as an "imaginary friend" is a genuinely funny poke, and makes, legitimately (and satirically), not to mention succinctly, a basic and inescapable point about what theism looks like to atheism. But I gather (I missed a lot) that the consensus here is that it's a term that shouldn't be used because it is "disrepectful" of the beliefs of people whom atheists see as imagining that they have a Friend called God.
Not all religious people are offended by the term, btw. Some think it's very amusing. I tend to think they speak from great inner security about their relationship to their "imaginary friend," and partly it probably comes down to something as simple as what makes one person laugh and another not. |
