Ok, in the spirit of understanding rather than dissecting if you will, let's back up a bit to get the larger picture. In a thread about the presence of females (women) on this forum, as such things usually proceeds, the subject forks to be about atheism as well (I'm actually surprised Hitler hasn't been mentioned yet - or did I just miss it?). Then Starmaker makes the following contribution:
Starmaker: This is too beautiful to not share:
The ducks are gonna get you! Note that while this person is most likely religious, her argument is atheistic. In fact, I heard the same argument from atheist CS majors IRL.
Now, if this thread had been fractionally hi-jacked to be about evolution, home-schooling, homosexuality - or even ducks - the "atheist" label put on that non-sensical argument would be less of an issue. However, as the topic was atheism, it's quite difficult - for me anyway - to understand this to be anything other than an attempt to make atheism "look bad". Mind you, the 14 year old girl didn't even mention atheism, only Starmaker did.
I have no problem seeing that this, I don't know what to call it, "vision" of a future where ducks take over the world because of homosexuals not being "properly surpressed" has absolutely nothing to do with atheism, but I see it as "fuel on the fire" in regards to theists vs atheists. Instead of jumping the guns and making a lot of assumptions I asked for a clarifaction. The two follwing posts pretty much confirmed my intial understanding.
What I did "wrong" (I put it in quotes because I don't believe it to be that wrong) was that I didn't just call it a load of crap and leave it at that, allowing everyone to keep whatever opinion they'd possibly already formed. He/she would've expressed his/her opinion, and I'd expressed my opnion. However, I'm not that interested in just sharing my opinion, but also the reasoning behind it. Blame it on the company I usually keep - there's hardly anyone in "my circles" of the "it says so in the paper so it must be true" variety (which, I know, is the majority of the population).
So, with that "backdrop", allow me to go through your points. I can assure I haven't been offended by you. My wish for you to leave "the shit" out of it is because such things often leads to less rather than more understanding. I wish I was better at keeping sarcasm out of my own posts, for instance - even when taken as sarcasm it doesn't really do anyone much good; it's an reaction not a reply.
I'm not a linguist but a programmer. Apart from a computer language being Turing complete (it can actually be used to solve problems, if you will) the most important thing is that everything has one and exactly one meaning only (it's unambiguous). The programmer may still misunderstand what the code actually does, but there is (should be) always only one correct way to interpret it.
Human languages aren't even close to that. Absolutes like "everything" and "never" are rarely used as such, we have literally contradictory terms like "acting naturally" and "opinionated" contradictions like "public servants" etc. Ambiguity is what makes it possible for us to formulate ideas and concepts before they are properly formed, an indespensable tool for the evolution of human understanding, but also a constant source of misunderstanding.
Because of the ambigous nature of language, context is very important as it reduces ambiguity. Yes, making three people of different nationalities agree on the meaning of a word - using a language that isn't native to either nationality, no less - can be difficult. It ought to be a lot easier to agree on whether or not said word makes sense in a given context (which is a far more loosely defined entity).
My uderstanding has been that both you and Starmaker understood that I objected to atheism being used in that particular context, e.g. being a property of the 14 year old girl's argument, and you seem to confirm this in your post. Where I think we disagree is the "place of logic" - I don't agree at all that logic must come after the definition of a term - logic works both before, during and after. Logic that is one-way only is, well, not logic.
To visualise: "2 + 2" and "4" are different sides of an equation. They are different ways of saying the same. "1 + 3" and "x" however, only mean the same if, and only if, x actually equals 4. Hence, if my understanding is that atheism is used incorrectly, I can use logic to deduce the relevant aspects of both "atheism" and the argument presented, and if the result of this (significantly) contradicts what's the general consensus on what the relevant aspects mean, the use of that context is "proven false".
The result of the above has two implications: Either at least the context is wrong, or Starmaker's definition of "atheism" differs (significantly) from what's believed (by me) to be the general consensus of what those aspects mean. My starting point was that I disagreed with the context, hence I tried to highlight how the apparent meaning of "atheism" conflicted with "my" definition of "atheism". Thus the next step is finding out which one (or both?) is actually the case, which means a clarification is needed from you and/or Starmaker - both if you agree/disagree with the result and if you agree/disagree with the validity of the propositions.
Anyway, as we all know by now, that went exactly nowhere, so what I'd like to know is: What should I/we have done differently? Made it clearer that I understand what you're saying before jumping to the parts where I disagree? What can one expect "goes without saying"? Are there other/better ways to illuminate the differences in opinion? I keep circling back to calling it a pile of crap and leave it at that...
Nicole28: LOL! That'd be sweet indeed. Or maybe I should do a good turn and gift someone a game this christmas. :D 
saramakos: That'd definitely have an effect on your rep! It's odd... in this thread I have found little surprise about the male/female ratio on here. But on another thread I was actually actively surprised to find that I am in the average age on here. I guess on a site primarily devoted to classics I shouldn't be... The average age of all gamers is 30, which fascinately enough is actually 7 years lower than it was last year. "Mainstream" video gaming has really only been around for 40 years. The mentality of "video games are for kids" is simply carried over from the '70s and '80s (atari and nes) when video games were marketed as high tech toys. Here's to the fight to break free from that stereotype!
