Tag: atheism

Imagine!

What the godless fans of John Lennon always seem to forget is that there is a well-known place where there are no countries, no religion, and nothing to kill or die for. It is a very peaceful place, at least when seen from this perspective. It is called “the grave”. And it is no accident that so many people end up there every time a utopian – who is often an atheist, but doesn’t have to be – puts himself in a position of power where he can attempt to build a New Man, a New Society, or a New World Order.

It’s not atheism that causes this lethal utopianism. But the observable fact of the matter is that atheists are particularly susceptible to it.

Mailvox: undermining atheism

These emails tend to illustrate the effectiveness of refusing to permit atheists to make their evangelical claims unchallenged. I particularly appreciated the first email, as it highlights the importance of shattering the false intellectual pride that holds so many young and psychologically immature atheists entrapped. One man writes some encouraging words about the breaking of a spell:

I wanted to personally thank you for the impact you’ve had on my life. This was the first time in several years that I celebrated the holiday by worshipping Christ. Your debate with Luke broke the pseudo-intellectual spell that atheism/agnosticism held over me, introduced me to a sophisticated Christian theology, and helped to reconnect me with my faith. The unwelcome eviscerations of an AWCA found their way to a young man whose ego desperately needed a disemboweling. In a delicious twist of irony that Tolkien himself would have appreciated, your indifference towards my salvation has made all the difference towards achieving it. With the amount of hate mail that you must receive, sometimes it’s nice to know that your words do inspire. I’m truly grateful.

A lawyer reading TIA writes with a related question:

After coming across atheist trolls in the comments section of a CNN article, I was disturbed by militant atheism and its assertions after reading more about it. Writings from individuals such as Gregory Paul caused me trouble with my faith, so I bought your book, The Irrational Atheist, as a Christmas present to myself. I am enjoying your book – it’s entertaining and useful for strengthening my faith since I don’t have a lot of time to both read the claims of New Atheists and methodically consider them. I thank you very much for your work for packaging an analysis of their works into one book.

If you would indulge a question, I would appreciate it. While at Barnes and Noble, I decided to look for New Atheist works to quickly peruse and get a feel for them. While there, I encountered a book from Sam Harris called The Moral Landscape where Harris claims that science can determine morality.

My question is this: I am on page 66 of The Irrational Atheist, and, given Harris’ new book, I am curious as to what you would add to or subtract from the following statement: “The second possibility is that they genuinely believe science leads ineluctably toward certain moral conclusions. Although the careless reader could be convinced of this by a judicious selection of quotes, both Dawkins and Dennett specifically deny this to be possible and even Harris only dares to base his moral appeals on reason, not science.”

I would simply add what I have already written about The Moral Landscape, which is to say that Harris is correctly attempting to provide atheism with a science-based case for rational materialist morality. Without any form of universal warrant, rational materialism remains a barren and psychologically vacant philosophy that lacks emotional appeal as well as even the smallest modicum of moral authority. Harris understands this, which is why he wrote the book in a futile effort to provide a basis for both. I would also note that this attempt does not change the quoted sentence from TIA in the slightest, as Harris not only fails to begin making his case, and as anyone who has actually read the book will know, does not even claim to have done so but merely argues that such a case might one day be made.

But I’m not the only one undermining atheism; I have considerable help from within the godless citadel itself. In this very interesting review from danieljc, we can observe that Mount Chapter Four appears to have struck again!

I decided to give this book a chance seeing as how passionately anti-atheist the author is, I wanted to see if the author could muster up any reasonable arguments for his position. With an open-mind, I proceeded reading the first few chapters….and then I closed the book. The quality of the writing is abhorrent and haughty, not to mention unjustifiably egotistic since the author does not offer any reasonable argument for his position. The author goes on in hopeless drivel with repeated digressions attacking Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens that are almost all ad hominem. There was not an instance of reading this pathetic book where I felt my mind changing for the better, even worse I felt as if I was reading Christian right-wing propaganda. I tried to be as unbiased as I possibly could reading this, but the sheer amount of deceit and misrepresentations of facts forced me to close it for fear of vomiting my lunch if I read just another sentence. This is vile, contemptible nonsense ladies and gentlemen, this book adequately personifies everything that is wrong with the United States of America. This anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-reason, movement that marches under the banner of the Christian right. I tried to stay neutral, tried to stay balanced, but this book as forced me to take a side, the opposite side of whatever loathsome position this author seeks to uphold.

It is easy to see the deceit that is so habitual for many evangelical atheists, which ironically enough, is the very weakness that makes them so easy for the informed theist to defeat them in debate. This is precisely why I have repeatedly pointed out that one MUST assume they are lying snakes until it is demonstrated otherwise; that review is a beautiful attempt of the utterly shameless manner in which so many atheists attempt to deceive.

The amusing thing is that the book doesn’t pretend to be more than a critique of the fallacious arguments presented by the five atheists mentioned, and even if one wants to argue, however unconvincingly, that the critiques are flawed and the arguments are correct, one cannot possibly claim that any of the critiques rely upon ad hominem attacks. These “reviews” are not actual reviews, they are merely thinly disguised efforts to prevent people from actually reading the book and discovering how feeble the atheist arguments presented by the various New Atheists happen to be.

As the more intelligent atheists will recognize, this tactic is very counterproductive from an evangelical perspective, because if the effort is unsuccessful, the subsequent discovery that the book is not as it is described only underlines the popular sentiment that atheists are immoral, dishonest, and completely untrustworthy. This is not fair to the individual atheist who is intellectually honest and personally reliable, but is the inevitable consequence of the tendency of many atheists to rely upon attempted emotional manipulation rather than reasonable intellectual disputation.

The consequence of tolerance

Maximus destroys a conventional atheist defense in the process of pointing out a powerful reason for the appeal of Islam:

Can we come to a conclusion on the historical record between religious and atheist forms of man’s governance in terms of quality of life OVERALL?

I think we can conclude that while religious traditions, using the name of God as political cover, have committed much oppression and tyranny, atheism under the Communist banner committed far WORSE atrocities since they were committed in the name of NOTHING! Nothing, that is, other than a man made philosophy about how he should organize and govern himself outside the purview of God’s divine law since He does not exist. Man governing himself does not seem to have worked out all that well for him when he removed God from the equation.

This takes the common – if absurd – atheist defense of historical atheist crimes and turns it on its head. The fact that the crimes of atheists like Stalin, Mao, and others were not committed “in the name of atheism” not only doesn’t serve as an effective defense of atheism, (as I and many others have pointed out), but was actually a factor in exacerbating the magnitude of the crimes.

But this is actually the less interesting aspect of his piece. He notes that the appeal of religion, specifically Islam, was magnified by the way in which it mitigated the slaughter in Rwanda:

Islam…was a small faith in the country of Rwanda at the time of the genocide, almost non-existent. It is rising now faster then ever, mosques overflowing, and playing a part in healing wounds and bringing forgiveness to that country. Why is Islam growing in Rwanda? In their own words:

During the genocide, Muslims were among the few Rwandans who protected both neighbors and strangers. Elsewhere, many Hutus hunted down or betrayed their Tutsi neighbors and strangers suspected of belonging to the minority.

But the militiamen and soldiers didn’t dare go after Tutsis in Muslim neighborhoods like Biryogo, said Yvette Sarambuye, a 29-year-old convert. ”If a Hutu Muslim tried to kill someone hidden in our neighborhoods, he would first be asked to take the holy Quran and tear it apart to renounce his faith,” said Sarambuye, a Tutsi widowed mother of three who survived the slaughter by hiding with Muslims. “No Muslim dared to violate the holy book, and that saved a lot of us.”

For many Hutu extremists, Muslims were regarded as a group apart, not to be targeted in the genocide.

Muslims take God and the Quran VERY seriously. They don’t have faith or belief…they KNOW God exists and that his word came down to man through the holy prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

You will note that while Muslim Hutus did partake in the slaughter, but when they were confronted by their own religious community and asked to leave Islam because it forbids the killing of innocents, they put down their machetes, at least in Muslim neighborhoods. Islam saved lives…by the Koran alone. In contrast to the Christian majority that the country is now moving away from, the Bible did not save anyone as a holy book:

Although the Christian clergy in many communities struggled to protect Tutsis and often died with them, more than 20 Roman Catholic and Protestant priests, nuns and pastors are facing charges related to the killings. Rwandan courts already have convicted two Catholic priests and sentenced them to death.

The Rwandan church failed in much the same way that the Christian church in the West has failed. We tolerate the unrepentant sinners in our midst rather than doing what is explicitly commanded in the Bible, confronting them, demanding repentance, and expelling them from the church community if they will not do so. And in both cases, the resulting consequence is that people walk away from a faith that is not true to itself.

The church that will not confront the adulterer, the thief, the homosexual, the liar, or the gossip is one that will not confront the murderer either when he appears at their door, demanding the blood of the innocent.

Rope for the troll

A few of you have been wondering why I tend to leave the atheist TruthOverFaith’s comments when he regularly launches wildly inappropriate and off-topic attacks on Christianity. Below are the three of most recent examples made in the previous three posts:

TruthOverfaith 11/20/11 2:18 AM
And then Jesus said, “Sorry about that, fellas! But when the Son of Man needs to fart, he fuckin’ farts!!”-Jesus F Christ.

TruthOverfaith 11/20/11 2:24 AM
And then Jesus said, “How in the hell does my barbaric blood sacrifice fit in to this fucking conversation!! You need to talk about my precious, fucking blood sacrifice for your goddamned sins!!”-Jesus Christ

TruthOverfaith 11/19/11 5:09 AM
“neutrinos are the Tim Tebow of the physics world”

And I thought Tim Tebow was the anal sphincter of the physics world!

Oops, perhaps I’m confusing Tim Tebow with Kirk Cameron. Which one of those nutbags was on a stupid sitcom in the 1980’s?

“And then Jesus said, “Praise me, praise me, praise my holy name. The rest is total donkey sh*t. Amen.”-Jesus Christ, aka Mr. Messiah, aka Mr. Big Dick.

The reason I don’t delete these is that they demonstrate more cogently and convincingly than I ever could one of my major points about atheism, which is to say, that it is indicative of psychological disorder. Now, obviously not all atheists exhibit this incessant vulgarity, intellectual immaturity, and general social autism. But there is a sufficiently strong correlation than more research into the potential causal relationship is indicated; I note that the initial research into the subject has already offered scientific support for my original hypothesis of a link between atheism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Just as people judge Christianity by the Christian, atheism is judged by the atheist. And that it is why it behooves us to permit the public face of atheism to exhibit itself rather than sweep the ugliness under the carpet. There is no need to respond to this sort of comment, as it speaks sufficiently for itself.

Mailvox: what am I missing here?

Speaking of interlocutors, one of my occasional atheist emailers sent this in response to yesterday’s Mailvox. MD wrote:

‘ . . . the moment they decide to attempt to convince others that they are correct, they become targets.’

Never has there been a greater endorsement of the ‘new atheist’ movement than that last sentence! You’re cleverer than saying weak stuff like that.

I genuinely do not understand the point he is making here. The idea would appear to be that the New Atheism has made targets of Christians and other evangelical theists because they are incorrect. But I don’t see that this is the observable case at all. It seems to me if that X is attempting to convince others he is correct and Y decides to make X a target in response, the onus is therefore on Y to show that X is incorrect.

So, where do Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any of the New Atheists ever attempt to show that Billy Graham or John Wesley or Thomas Aquinas are incorrect? They very seldom attack anything that is even remotely recognizable as Christian theology, preferring instead to take on what appear to be poorly remembered Sunday School versions of it. The Courtier’s Reply of PZ Myers – which, to be fair, other New Atheists besides Richard Dawkins cannot be assumed to endorse – outright attempts to justify atheists knowing nothing about what they are so ineptly criticizing.

I even remarked on this bizarre failure to actually address the most basic Christian theology in TIA: “While Harris doesn’t once cite minor Christian intellectual figures such as Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Wesley, G. K. Chesterton, or even C. S. Lewis, he does find it relevant to provide one reference to Tim LaHaye, thirteen references to Hitler, Himmler, and Hess, and six whole pages dedicated to Noam Chomsky. Because, after all, no one is more suited to explain the Christian faith quite so well as an elderly author of pop religious fantasies, a trio of dead Nazis, and a left-wing Jewish linguist.”

Now Dawkins does mention Aquinas and the Five Proofs in The God Delusion, but he does little more than cry “infinite regress” and demonstrate that he has missed the point of them. (I did like his point about the natural terminator, although it doesn’t actually serve to refute any of the Five Proofs since they concern beginnings rather than ends.) He also shows that he has never actually read the Summa Theologica; it is telling to note that Dawkins immediately proceeds from his cursory glance at the Five Proofs to the Ontological Argument without realizing that Aquinas rejected it more than 700 years ago in Part 1, Question 2, Article 1 of the Summa.

“OBJECTION 2: Further, those things are said to be self-evident which are known as soon as the terms are known, which the Philosopher (1 Poster. iii) says is true of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, when the nature of a whole and of a part is known, it is at once recognized that every whole is greater than its part. But as soon as the signification of the word “God” is understood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. But that which exists actually and mentally is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word “God” is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition “God exists” is self-evident.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: Perhaps not everyone who hears this word “God” understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands that by this word “God” is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist.”

So, it seems to me that far from being the greatest endorsement of the New Atheist movement, my statement demonstrates its impotence, its ignorance, and its intellectual dishonesty.

A skeptic shows he’s a sucker

Whenever you encounter atheists claiming to be skeptical, rational, logical, and intelligent, you can be relatively confident that they will soon demonstrate that they are absolutely nothing of the sort. Consider these two contradictory claims from SkepticBlog:

1. “SkepticBlog is a collaboration among some of the most recognized names in promoting science, critical thinking, and skepticism.”

2. “Why has no one from Wall Street gone to jail for the financial meltdown? Bill Maher has asked this question several times on his HBO show Real Time. I have asked many experts myself, including economists, lawyers, and Wall Street traders. Answer: no one went to jail because they didn’t break any laws.”

Now, I rather liked Michael Shermer’s “The Mind of the Market” when I reviewed it a while back, but this post is almost astonishingly stupid and is so demonstrably clueless that I very much doubt Shermer has genuinely asked a single expert about this. One need look no further than the mainstream media to know that the Obama administration broke the law. Ben Bernanke broke the law. Henry Paulson broke the law. Every single “too big to fail” bank broke the law. Every bank that registered a mortage with MERS broke the law and evaded county taxes. Karl Denninger has a little list of four of the most obvious and egregious examples.

Shermer then goes on to ask “What, exactly, did these Wall Street people do that was so wrong?” That’s quite simple. Fraud, theft, forgery, money laundering, and tax evasion.

And after this preposterous demonstration of willful stupidity, the “skeptic” Shermer declares that “the government should regulate Wall Street more”. Right, because the answer to government regulators failing to enforce the law is obviously more government regulation. That’s some fine criticial thinking right there, isn’t it?

Shermer should know better. I know for a fact that he’s not as economically illiterate as this post makes him look, but it shows that he is demonstrably inept when it comes to logic. Keep this performance in mind when you consider the value of the science he is promoting and the legitimacy of his arguments concerning atheism.

The conundrum of the anti-Christian

Brian Philips examines the dichotomy of the Tebow hater’s cheering for the failure of the Denver quarterback:

I find myself half-consciously rooting for Tebow to fail, even though I have nothing against him, have lots of religious friends, am not especially tribal by nature, and wouldn’t want to be responsible for the nacho-related deaths of any prominent evangelical leaders, even if I detest their politics. Doesn’t matter. The part of me that wants to eat pork and not stone people just switches on and cheers for the blitzing linebacker.

There’s a problem with this, though, a problem that I’m convinced lies at the heart of the minor cultural puzzle that Tebow represents. The problem is that if you’re rooting against Tebow because he’s religious, you’re giving way to the trial-by-combat impulse. And the whole idea of the trial by combat is that there’s a higher power adjudicating the combat. It means something for the blue knight to kill the green knight only if God is moving the swords. So what I, many secular football fans, and Imaginary Daniel Dennett are really rooting for is for God to make Tim Tebow fail as a means of discrediting Himself, God, in accordance with our wishes, and against His, God’s, own interests.

This — arguably — doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

It all comes down to atheist logic. Which, as FA von Hayek could have pointed out for us, is simply not logic at all.

He bravely ran away, away

Richard Dawkins is still running as fast as he can away from William Lane Craig:

Don’t feel embarrassed if you’ve never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name either. Perhaps he is a “theologian”. For some years now, Craig has been increasingly importunate in his efforts to cajole, harass or defame me into a debate with him. I have consistently refused, in the spirit, if not the letter, of a famous retort by the then president of the Royal Society: “That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine”.

What a disgusting coward! As I have repeatedly noted, Dawkins is simply not very intelligent. He clearly doesn’t understand how contemptible this makes him look to those who are not disposed to mindlessly cheer his every action. His paltry original contributions to the catalog of atheist arguments are both trivial and defective; of all the various atheist apologists currently extant, only Sam Harris is more easily refuted. He is only comfortable “debating” elderly English churchmen, who are too genteel and polite to directly engage his flawed arguments; one need not be a believer to expose their copious logical and factual flaws.

And his rationale for ducking the debate is just intellectually appalling. Given that I am much more famous around the world than nearly everyone who comments here, should I similarly decline to address anyone’s arguments who does not look good on my resume? If I followed his example, I would be rightly castigated my cowardly pomposity. Dawkins, it is now eminently clear, is more a propagandist and a social climber than a genuine intellectual. He has sold quite a few books, to be sure, but then, so did Bertha Runkle.

Who is Bertha Runkle, you ask? Precisely.

UPDATE: The Fowl Atheist comments: “So Richard Dawkins has taken the time to explain why he refuses to debate William Lane Craig. It’s a terrific put-down. I’m going to have to steal from it next time that importuning dweeb Vox Day starts pestering me to debate him.”

I find it amusing that you’re still desperately trying to justify your cowardice, my chubby little atheist friend. And there is one small problem with your attempt to utilize what shall henceforth be known as “the Dawkins Defense”. I am more famous and successful than you are. You’re a professor at a community college. I’ve assisted Sam Harris on his most significant neuroscience project, interviewed John Julius Norwich and Umberto Eco, worked with most of the top entertainment companies, written four Billboard-charting singles, and published seven more books than you. My readership is bigger. One can even reasonably argue that my contribution to science exceeds anything you have done now that my hypothesis concerning atheism being a form of autism has been supported by the research being performed at Boston University, to say nothing of my modification of the core mechanism underlying the operation of the Austrian business cycle.

So, how on Earth is debating you going to help my resume?

Sam Harris is a psychopath?

It is science:

A study conducted by Daniel Bartels, Columbia Business School, Marketing, and David Pizarro, Cornell University, Psychology found that people who endorse actions consistent with an ethic of utilitarianism—the view that what is the morally right thing to do is whatever produces the best overall consequences—tend to possess psychopathic and Machiavellian personality traits…. Bartels and Pizarro found a strong link between utilitarian responses to these dilemmas (e.g., approving the killing of an innocent person to save the others) and personality styles that were psychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless.

And there is your scientific connection between the man who advocates a happiness/suffering moral metric and the one who also advocates killing people for the mere possession of dangerous beliefs. They tend to be one and the same, and in the case of Mr. Harris, they are.