Tag: atheism

One thing I always enjoy about atheists is the shameless way they perform the Atheist Dance. They are such hopelessly muddled thinkers that they constantly define and redefine words as it happens to suit them at the moment, not infrequently contradicting themselves multiple times in a single article, blog post, or book. An atheist will claim that there is absolutely nothing that can be determined about him by the mere fact of his atheism except for his non-belief in a creator God, then immediately turn around and insist that of course he doesn’t believe in the power of crystals or Noah’s Flood… because he is an atheist and therefore obviously doesn’t believe in anything insufficiently “proven” by science… except for historical events that a sufficient number of people believe to be true… except for those related to religion. And so forth.

The observation that most atheism is little more than a juvenile psychological disorder tends to be supported by the fact that left-wing politics are far more central to most atheists, including some of the most outspoken ones, than their “atheism”, whatever that might actually happen to be. Consider the Fowl Atheist’s recent statement that godless goals are progressive goals:

All the big shots in the secular organizations I’ve met seem like rather progressive individuals who would agree entirely with Watson’s [radically pro-abortion] position, and I’ve seen some published statements here and there that support such liberal (i.e., rational) causes as women’s rights and gay rights and equality in general, but otherwise, these particular civil rights issues seem more assumed than advocated by the major organizations — they certainly don’t oppose them. I can understand how a non-profit might have to tread carefully on political claims (they can’t come out and damn the Republican party, after all), but Watson has a point.

Maybe there should be more overt activism for civil rights in general, in addition to the more focused attention given to atheist/humanist issues. Freethought movements should be about human dignity and freedom in all domains, not just religion. We should own these issues; we need to be on the right side of history….

Of course, such a move would piss off the libertarian/conservative wing of the atheist movement, but I can’t see a down side to jettisoning them, anyway.

That’s fine with me. I’d quite pleased to have libertarian atheists and conservative atheists on my side; they are proof that godlessness is not completely antithetical to political sanity. And it is amusing that PZ thinks that murdering unborn children is “the right side of history”; I have absolutely no doubt that the atheists of the future will be denying that pro-abortion equalitarians were motivated by their atheism in much the same way that atheists today deny that rabidly murderous Communists were motivated by their atheism.

Calling a feminist a feminazi is an insult to the German National Socialist Workers Party. The feminists and equalitarians have FAR more blood on their hands than the National Socialists ever did. Consider that in India, there are only 893 girls born for every 1,000 boys. In China, the girl/boy birth ratio is .855. And the more educated and wealthy a woman is, the more likely it is that she will murder her daughter.

“That decrease was even more marked in families where the mothers were wealthier and had 10 or more years of education compared with a poor and uneducated mothers – presumably because the wealthy are more easily able to obtain illegal abortions.”

In the name of progress and equality, up to 12 million Indian girls have been slaughtered in the last 30 years. This is not about human freedom and dignity, it is not “the right side of history”. It is nothing less than the greatest crime yet committed by humanity against itself. These progressive atheists and equalitarians will forever bear the curse of the hundreds of millions of innocents whose deaths they have not only demanded, but celebrated.

A few days ago, one of the less intellectually gifted atheists here was insisting that atheists are not anymore inclined to be overweight than anyone else. That may or may not be true, but it’s hard not to notice that one of the many Biblical precepts rejected by militant atheists of the evangelical variety is the notion of the human body being a temple of God.

PZ’s response to Pharyngula readers pointing out the obvious in this picture was more than a little amusing: “Cinnamonbite and MonkeyBoy are hereby invited to submit photographs of themselves so I can post them and everyone can imagine all kinds of hideous things about them.”

I’m not sure what sort of pagan temples these bodies might indicate, but I must confess that the terms “Lovecraft”, “frog-like” and “Innsmouth” spring insensibly to mind.

The Telegraph reports that Richard Dawkins is exhibiting some well-founded cowardice:

A war of words has broken out between the best selling author of The God Delusion, and his critics, who see his refusal to take on the American academic, William Lane Craig, as a “glaring” failure and a sign that he may be losing his nerve.

Prof Dawkins maintains that Prof Craig is not a figure worthy of his attention and has reportedly said that such a contest would “look good” on his opponent’s CV but not on his own. An emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, Prof Dawkins last year supported a plan to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity for his alleged involvement in the cover-up of sex abuse by Catholic priests. Prof Craig is a research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, in California, and the author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles on Christianity. He has debated with leading thinkers including Daniel Dennett, A.C.Grayling, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Wolpert and Sam Harris.

Prof Craig is due to visit Britain in October this year. Four invitations to take part in public debates were sent to Prof Dawkins from The British Humanist Association, The Cambridge Debating Union, the Oxford Christian Union and Premier Radio.

Prof Dawkins declined them all. He told The Daily Telegraph that he had recently debated Prof Craig, in a boxing ring, in Mexico, and claimed he was not impressed by his opponent. His critics say this event was a six-person discussion, not a rigorous debate, but Prof Dawkins disagrees.

“I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion,” he said.

Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig. In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part. I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”

First, the idea that Dawkins would accuse anyone else of a “relentless drive for self-promotion” is amusing. Dawkins is one of the most self-promoting individuals on the planet. Even The God Delusion was little more than a belated attempt to jump on the atheist book bandwagon that Sam Harris and Michel Onfray got rolling. Second, it is encouraging that some atheists are intellectually honest enough to refuse to defend Dawkins’s clear cowardice. Third, note that the invitations Dawkins is rejecting are not coming from Craig, but from various organizations, including one with which Dawkins is affiliated as a vice-president.

Still, Dawkins is likely correct in asserting that the contest would look good on Craig’s CV and bad on his own, because the chances are good that Craig would destroy Dawkins in much the same way that he destroyed Harris. Of course, at his age, Dawkkins isn’t concerned about his CV so much as his legacy. Dawkins’s concerns don’t stem from Craig being a particularly formidable debater, although he is quite clearly a competent and successful one, but because he has presented as case against the existence of God that is absolutely full of factual and logical flaws that are easily exposed. Anyone who has read TIA and is quick enough to recognize Dawkins’s deceptive little bait-and-switches and call them out would be able to beat the man in a debate without too much trouble. This is because Dawkins is not only a coward, but as Melanie Philips has pointed out, “is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.” The man is simply no longer a credible intellectual figure.

I have no doubt that Dawkins’s cheerleaders will attempt to justify his cowardice, just as PZ Myers’s fans attempted to justify everyone’s favorite community college professor’s repeated retreats from my debate challenges. And while the cheerleaders will loudly proclaim the deathless courage of their godless heroes, they know perfectly well that the reluctance to debate demonstrated by the likes of Dawkins and Myers whenever a formidable opponent presents himself is not founded on confidence in their intellectual prowess or positions, but rather the awarenesss that they cannot successfully defend their positions against competent opponents. Dawkins is avoiding a debate with Craig for precisely the same reasons Myers has been avoiding a debate with me. They are the Brave Sir Robins of atheism.

The Fowl Atheist recently confessed: “I’ll also cop to the obvious fact that, knowing that reason will not get through their skills, I’m happy to use emotional arguments as well. Passion is persuasive. Look at all those assertive Gnu/New Atheists — they are not making Spock-like dispassionate arguments only, although there is a strong rational core — we are hitting people in the gut and telling them to open their eyes. It gives us that unseemly aggressive reputation, but at the same time it’s a very effective way to let people know we think they are dead wrong.”

Note that PZ is readily admitting to “the obvious fact” of his use of logically invalid appeals to emotion. It is obvious, it always was obvious, and he is not the only New Atheist to rely upon them. But I must correct him: Myers provides emotional arguments in the place of reason due to the way in which his attempts at reason-based arguments tend to be inept and incorrect. See The Courier’s Reply for both proof and amusement. That’s why PZ is terrified to debate anyone who is his rational and intellectual superior and instead seeks out debates with half-educated creationists who couldn’t argue their way out of a paper bag and don’t know how to deal with his naked appeals to emotion. What passes for PZ’s “reason” can’t get through our skills because his arguments are irrational and unfounded in correct fact and logic.

As for Spock-like dispassionate arguments and the claimed “rational core”, there isn’t a single New Atheist who reliably produces substantive logic-based arguments. Christopher Hitchens relies upon telling personal and historical anecdotes, Sam Harris usually asks leading questions before leaping to unsupported and incorrect conclusions, Richard Dawkins offers constant bait-and-switches in lieu of argument, and Daniel Dennett doesn’t even construct many direct arguments on the subject at all. None of them have managed to produce much of philosophical relevance that Jean Meslier hadn’t already articulated in 1729.

Contra the assertions of various factually- and logically-challenged individuals, the evangelical efforts of Richard Dawkins and his Scarlet-A campaign would appear to have fizzled:

A national UK survey out Monday found no traces of an “autism epidemic,” despite earlier reports that the developmental disorder has been rising quickly in recent decades. Researchers found nearly one percent of Britons older than 16 years have autism, a rate that is similar to that seen in children. Younger people were no more likely to be affected than older ones, however, which would have been expected if the condition were truly on the increase.

“It was surprising to all of us,” said Dr. Traolach Brugha, a psychiatrist at the University of Leicester, who worked on the study. “If this study is correct, it does put a big question mark over the autism epidemic.”

On a related note, I was more than a little amused to encounter John Keegan’s assertion of the way in which most people naturally “flee the company” of “the compulsively argumentative” while reading The Face of Battle today. But if it is not a mild form of autism that renders so many atheists completely incapable of recognizing it is their behavior that people despise and not their lack of belief, what else may serve to explain this compulsively argumentative truculence?

Why, oh why, he wonders, do those stupid and evil Bible thumpers who know nothing about science, and shouldn’t be allowed to vote or raise their own children, dislike someone so objectively wonderful as me?

Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.

Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.

It never ceases to be amusing when socially inept assholes take the trouble of listing the reasons why they believe people should like them. Never mind the fact that the guy shows himself to be both disagreeble and dishonest in the very article where he is lecturing America for not liking him.

It’s really not that hard to explain. No one likes people who offer them unsolicited advice, much less tell them what to do from an unwarranted position of assumed superiority. And as anyone who knows more than two or three atheists has experienced at one point or another, far too many atheists simply do not understand the concept of “live and let live”. No one hates atheists because they don’t believe in God; agnostics don’t believe in God either. People tend to dislike atheists because so many of them are socially autistic jerks who are simply a massive pain in the posterior. The whining about Christian incivility is as hilarious as it is untrue; many atheists are so emotionally undeveloped that they cannot bear to be treated in the same manner that they habitually treat everyone else.

If everyone thinks you are an obnoxious prick, the solution is not to attempt to argue them out of their opinion, but rather to stop behaving like an obnoxious prick. And to think these are the very people who believe they are more rational than everyone else.

NB: I am obviously not describing all atheists here. There are plenty of perfectly likeable and intelligent atheists who are quite willing to leave others to live and believe as they like. But if the gentleman writing in the Washington Post is going to attempt to defend the likeability of atheists in very broad and general terms, he must accept the validity of contrarian evidence given in the same manner.

The long-term rivalry between Celtic and Rangers is further dismantling a cherished atheist belief in real time:

Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, who is facing a difficult election next month, blamed the violence narrowly on what he called a “lunatic element,” but Devine, the historian, sees a more sinister threat.

“I think it’s ironic that in a post-Christian, secular society, the problem seems to be intensifying,” he said, adding: “What’s happened over the last few days is unprecedented. There have been riots, but sectarianism in Scotland has never had this violence and criminality.”

Of course, the situation is only ironic if you still subscribe to the inaccurate notion that religion is a primary cause of group conflict and war. Even when religion happens to serve as the marker for the inter-tribal violence, that doesn’t mean it can’t be mitigating the situation.