Tag: atheism

Answering an atheist’s question

An atheist asks why believers are hostile toward atheists, then answers her own question in a manner she probably didn’t intend:

Why are believers so hostile toward atheists? Is there anything atheists can say about our atheism — or even just about our lives — that won’t make people look at us with revulsion?

The short answer is no, not really, because the self-styled atheist is usually an intrinsically repellent individual for the very reasons that caused him to primarily identify himself on the peculiar basis of one very specific non-belief. The reason that believers, agnostics, and even other atheists all dislike atheists who identify themselves as atheists is because they don’t like annoying, dishonest, and literally self-righteous people with social handicaps who reject every objective moral or ethical code. You don’t have to be an asshole to call yourself an atheist, but it quite clearly helps. After all, as the 2008 ARIS study showed, the even vast majority of atheists are not willing to call themselves atheists!

While atheism is defined as a belief that gods do not exist,(or sometimes an absence of belief in gods, although in practice it is really just a subset of a materialist philosophy), identifying oneself an atheist is a conscious choice to announce to the world that one’s disbelief in gods is a defining and important aspect of one’s life. I don’t believe in fairies, but I never describe myself as an afairiest because that does not define me in any way, shape or form. When asked about his religion, an atheist could just as easily say that he does not have a religion instead of making a contentious assertion that God does not exist – in fact, most de facto atheists do precisely that – but the self-proclaimed atheist prefers the latter. And therein lies the heart of the answer.

Only an atheist could possibly find it a mystery why believers might be just a little bit hostile towards atheists like Uber Dawks, who sent this email yesterday: Color me not at all shocked that your kind hastily pointed out Jared Lee Loughner’s highly debatable atheism. This only serves as further evidence that the religious right is completely intolerant of those who hold to an atheistic view. Like McVeigh or Seung-Hui Cho or James Jay Lee before him, Loughner’s atheism has absolutely nothing to do with his actions [Or Stalin’s, or Mao’s, or Pol Pot’s… they keep saying that and their co-non-religionists just keep inexplicably killing more people. It’s a mystery – VD] and to make any claim to the contrary is tantamount to bigotry-fueled profiling. It is more than obvious that the man was mentally unhinged and given his reading material was reacting irrationally and violently to the barrage of capitalist and biblical rhetoric coming from the right-wing. If you “money, guns n’ bibles” types would stop forcing your silly notions upon the rest of us, we might be able to prevent misguided and mentally ill young men like this one from taking this kind of action.

Unless religion is finally replaced with science and reason, this illness and the violent reaction to it will keep on perpetuating. That is what religious belief is, an illness. Whenever a Christian asks why religious scientists are not hired for certain positions in academia or do not get their contracts renewed, the answer is simple. It is because their religious affliction affects their ability to do their work, just as the affliction of an alcoholic or serious drug addict leads to a similar inability. Like the illness of alcoholism and drug addiction, we need to treat these harmful behaviors for the good of both the individual and the society.

There is an impressive abuse of logic in that little atheist rant. Unlike the small-a de facto atheist who merely doesn’t happen to believe that gods exist, the self-styled atheist is much more accurately described as an anti-religionist in general and anti-Christian in particular. And again, only a socially autistic Capital-A atheist would find it hard to understand why religious people might be hostile towards anti-religious people who actively want to eliminate their holidays, their jobs, and in some cases, even their lives.

Moreover, no one likes a liar and most atheists lie about the source of their atheism. Greta Christina herself is clearly not telling the truth when she writes: When atheists make it clear that we gave religion a sincere try, that we considered the question seriously and thoughtfully and finally came to the conclusion that the god hypothesis was implausible and unsupported by any good evidence… religious believers then have to come up with an explanation for why God hasn’t revealed himself to us.

We can easily confirm this to be untrue on several levels. First, while most atheists claim that they gave religion a sincere try, it is patently obvious when they haven’t because one can reliably expose an atheist’s ignorance of even the most basic Christian doctrine, let alone more obscure religious doctrines, with only two or three simple questions. Second, the age at which most people become atheists indicates that it is almost never an intellectual decision, but an emotional one. (This is why most self-identified atheists are angry, bitter, and immature. The anger, bitterness, and immaturity are usually the cause of the atheism, they are not, as many Christians erroneously suppose, the effects.) Third, Greta reveals her own ignorance of the Bible and Christian doctrine and her own dishonesty as well when she claims that “religious believers then have to come up with an explanation for why God hasn’t revealed himself to us”. No, as a matter of fact, we don’t. There are a number of explanations provided in various religious scriptures, including both the Old and New Testaments, among others.

He does not answer when people cry out because of the arrogance of the wicked. Indeed, God does not listen to their empty plea; the Almighty pays no attention to it. How much less, then, will he listen when you say that you do not see him….
– Job 35:12-14

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
– John 1:9-12

Or, to put it in omniderigent terms, atheists are among the vessels made to be broken.

The combination of ignorance, epistemic incoherence, and ill-founded arrogance that is necessary to label oneself an atheist is as distasteful to the average individual as it is contemptible to the intellectual. When one combines those qualities with the social autism and hate-filled evangelicalism that is all too commonly displayed by atheists, it is a wonder that they are tolerated as much as they are. All evangelicalism is not the same. If someone is attempting to save you from fiery destruction, their intentions toward you are clearly good. If, on the other hand, someone is attempting to kick the crutch upon which you are leaning out from under you, their intentions are clearly evil.

Few, if any, believers are hostile to people who simply don’t believe in God on the mere basis of their not sharing the believer’s beliefs. Pity is the much more common attitude. But hostility towards anti-religious, untrustworthy individuals with evil intentions is not only explicable, it is entirely justified. And if Greta genuinely wants believers to look at her with less revulsion, perhaps she should simply concern herself with living her life according to her own beliefs rather than spending it attempting to interfere with the lives and beliefs of others.

On a final note, let me explain one aspect of this very slowly for the less socially adept atheists. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that you are correct and that there is no God. We shall suppose that you are right and I am wrong. Let us also suppose, again for the sake of argument, that I am more beautiful than you are. Now, neither your being more right than I am nor my being more beautiful than you are has to have any affect on how we regard the other living his life. But how would you look at me if I went so far as to define and label who I am as being “not ugly like you”? What would you say if I asked you if there was anything I could say about your relative lack of beauty when compared to me that would not make you look at me with revulsion? And why do you think you can do that sort of thing to believers without suffering the obvious social consequences?

Mailvox: one less god and the banana

Lithp wishes to respond to my critique of Stephen Roberts’s One Less God argument:

All right. I’m interested in addressing your critique:

“1. No, we are not both atheists.
2. No, you are confusing God with gods. If you simply take the First Commandment into account, you will know that this is incorrect. Few atheists understand that monotheism concerns the worship of one supreme Creator God, not belief in the existence of only one supernatural being that demands worship.
3. Unless an atheist dismisses the Christian God because they believe Him to be an evil supernatural being falsely posing as a deity worthy of worship, he is not doing so for the same reason that Christians dismiss the pagan gods.”

On Point 1, the first part is not meant to be taken literally. Of course a monotheist is not an atheist. The point is that disbelieving in deities is not such a novel concept. I can proceed no further unless you clear up a point for me: Are you saying that you DO believe in pagan gods, you just don’t think they are what they claim?

“It is so eminently fitting that atheists should rely upon fake quotes to argue in support of their supposed dedication to reality.”

I should think the point matters more than who said it.

“Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers are no more philosophically sophisticated than the teenagers and make pretty much the same arguments.”

Okay. You really aren’t going to get a more in-depth rebuttal from anyone other than “no they aren’t,” because you didn’t actually demonstrate how this is so. This is especially problematic for someone such as myself, who doesn’t really follow any of these people. Additionally, I don’t see why you keep using the phrase “teenager” to describe an ignorant person. I’m 19 and I can tell you why Ray Comfort’s banana argument is a load of nonsense.

1. I am aware that Roberts’s first statement can be viewed as mere rhetorical exaggeration, even though most atheists who quote it do take it literally. That doesn’t make it any less false. The fact that he begins with a demonstrable falsehood doesn’t bode well for his argument, since it indicates he is more interested in the superficial sound of his argument than its substance. If you’re going to pose as a philosophical champion of material fact and reason, shouldn’t you really stick to strict factual accuracy?

2. That’s a reasonable question. Yes, I do believe in the literal existence of intelligent and supernatural beings that are not the Creator God and may or may not seek human worship. Some of the pagan gods in the written historical record are these creatures whereas others are mere human invention. The Bible describes both kinds. I would put Zeus and Amaterasu in the fictional category and Baal, Wotan, and Damballah Wedo in the non-fiction one based on the behavior of their human worshippers. As I have repeatedly written, atheists like Roberts and even some Christians fail to make the vital distinction between “God” and “gods”. There are many gods but only one Creator God who merits our worship and who sent His Son to die on our behalf.

Please note that one needn’t believe in the existence of either the Christian God or the pagan gods to understand that the distinction renders Roberts’s argument invalid.

3. Again, if you are claiming to be devoted to fact and reason, basing your self-proclaimed most effective argument on a fictitious statement at the very least renders your devotion to fact more than a little suspect. That being said, if the point stands, it stands, though obviously without the benefit of the presumed authority of the erroneously quoted individual who didn’t actually supply the quote. It also calls either the knowledge or the intellectual honesty of the individual providing the false quote into question.

4. First, the overlap between the arguments presented by the Reddit “teenagers” and the New Atheists is easily confirmed by comparing them. Second, I have actually demonstrated how the arguments of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Myers, and others are philosophically unsophisticated and have gone into considerable detail explaining precisely how those arguments are incorrect. Since I have published an entire book on the subject, I don’t believe it is either necessary or possible for me to rehash several hundred pages of material every time the subject comes up again. Of course, until someone reads the book, their opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevant.

Moreover, numerous atheists have reached precisely the same conclusion about the lack of philosophical and theological sophistication on the part of the New Atheists as I have. Dawkins and Myers have both openly admitted their own ignorance of philosophy and/or theology; you should note that the Courtier’s Reply is a feeble attempt to justify that ignorance. You may also wish to note that only Harris, Dennett, and Onfray even pretend to have any knowledge of philosophy.

5. Teenagers are, for the most part, almost completely ignorant without realizing it. They have very little experience of the world and the vast majority are badly educated and poorly read. Even the most intelligent seldom have enough information at their intellectual disposal to use that intelligence to any significant effect. However, in this particular case, it was asserted by someone else that the people who were posting quotes in the Reddit thread were mostly teenagers. Not being familiar with that site, I simply accepted his assertion, even though I consider it to be questionable.

As for Ray Comfort’s banana, I have no idea to what you are referring. But what little I have read of Comfort does not lead me to conclude that it would take much in the way of either intelligence or experience to successfully address one of his arguments.

An out-of-date evolutionist

David Sloan Wilson not only presents a fallacious and remarkably self-serving analogy for our edification, he also demonstrates why most scientists should probably stay very far away from logic, rhetoric, and philosophy. In the process of launching an inept attack on the potential legitimacy of creationism, he shows that he is neither up on the present state of science nor able to reach a correct logical conclusion from the facts on hand:

Imagine playing chess with someone who insists on continuing after his king has been taken. Or imagine a basketball game where the losing team insists on continuing after the final buzzer has sounded. These vignettes are so absurd that if they actually happened we would regard the protesters as insane. Yet something comparable happens all time when creationists protest that it is unfair for them to be ignored–including some recent comments on my blog.

The idea that it is unfair to be declared a loser and to be made to retire from the field profoundly misunderstands the nature of fairness in all contest situations. Science is a contest situation, no less than chess or basketball. In the ideal scientific contest, alternative hypotheses make different predictions that can be tested with empirical observations. When the predictions of a hypothesis are not confirmed, it is declared a loser and is made to retire from the field. New hypotheses are always welcome to enter the competition, including modified versions of rejected hypotheses, but science without losers would be as pointless as chess without checkmate and basketball without the final buzzer….

Nevertheless, the scientific contest does result in the accumulation of durable knowledge. The earth is extremely old. Continents do drift. Species are descended from other species. Those who claim otherwise and demand that it is only fair to be heard are either deluded or cynically making a manipulative argument, a point to which I will return below.

Now, Mr. Wilson is certainly free to respond or not respond to whomever he likes on his blog and I have little doubt that he is tired of shooting down the same arguments from fourth-rate, ankle-biting creationists over and over again. I certainly get bored with hearing the same ignorant and illogical arguments put forth in such a tiresome manner by the fourth-rate evolutionists who infest the Internet. But that does not justify Mr. Wilson’s attempt to claim that he is acting fairly when he is not or his pretense that science is something it quite clearly is not.

If you actually know what you’re doing, it’s no problem shooting down the invalid arguments presented by the clueless and the uninformed. When they’re presented again, as they surely will be, simply point them to the previous smackdown. But if you really don’t, well, you’re not fooling anyone by claiming that you’re too busy, important, or credentialed to deny them taking their best shot, hapless as it might be.

Now, Wilson’s imagined sporting vignettes are indeed absurd, but they are not legitimately comparable. Let’s first consider the accuracy of his analogy. Most sports and games have clear-cut rules to which both sides are equally subject, a definite authority, more or less impartial referees, and are based primarily upon ability rather than credentials. Sporting competitions end when the clock runs out or a specific and predetermined event happens. Science, on the other hand, has no rules, no definite authority, extremely partial referees to the extent that “peer review” can even be considered refereeing rather than gatekeeping, and operates on a hierarchical, credential-based paradigm that makes no allowances for talent and would exclude most of the great uncredentialed scientists of the past. Not only do scientific “competitions” never end, logic dictates they cannot possibly end insofar as science is supposedly dedicated to “the accumulation of durable knowledge” and the possibility of new information exists.

In other words, science is observably so intrinsically unfair to those both inside and outside the profession that it makes the old Jordan Rules look like a paragon of fair competition. To claim that scientific contests, ideal or sub-optimal, are in any way comparable to a basketball game or a chess match is so demonstrably false that it requires either willful stupidity, careless error, or the cynical manufacture of a manipulative and invalid argument. Which would it be, Mr. Wilson?

Wilson somehow manages to not only commit Daniel Dennett’s error in his Doctrine of Transitive Doxasticism, but goes Dennett one better by appealing to scientage (the knowledge base of science) rather than one specific disciplinary application of scientody (quantum electrodynamics). Following a classic Dawkinsian bait-and-switch in which he brings up “the ideal scientific contest” in which “alternative hypotheses make different predictions that can be tested with empirical observations” in order to defend his quasi-scientific discipline wherein inferences take the place of testable predictions and empirical observations, Wilson then commits a logical blunder of Harrisian proportions when he cites the historical dismissal of group selection without realizing that it makes precisely the opposite case from the one that he is attempting to make.

Sloan states that the evolutionary revival of the concept of group selection, which was considered to be as much of a scientific loser as the phlogiston and Lamarckism for nearly 50 years, is evidence that the scientific playing field is fair even if it can become, in Wilson’s own words, “highly uneven”. However, the group selection example completely undercuts the original argument that a scientific contest is comparable to a sporting contest by demonstrating that there is no buzzer in science. Are we to conclude that there is a 50-year post-buzzer grace period and that Creationism has missed the scientific statute of limitations? Apparently not, as Wilson goes on to admit that there is no final buzzer. But since there is not, then what is the logical basis for Wilson’s division between the legitimate revival of group selection and the illegitimate revival of Creationism?

Wilson confesses that there are perfectly good scientific hypotheses that can be derived from the concept of an intervening creator god. What he fails to admit is that the concept has provided scientific successes as well as failures; the defeat of the “steady-state universe” by Georges Lemaître’s “Big Bang theory” as the standard cosmological model was a huge victory for the Creationists, whose concept of a universal beginning was once dismissed by Wilson’s predecessors in the way that Wilson now dismisses other, less necessary aspects of the God hypothesis.

More importantly, Wilson reveals himself to be out-of-date with regards to the latest scientific evidence on the unreliability of science itself. His “uneven playing field” does not even begin to take into account scientific fraud, the decline effect, publication bias, selective reporting, and the long, sordid history of scientific facts that have been disproven over time by scientists and non-scientists alike. In fact, the more that even the hardest sciences are examined with the same skeptical lens that the likes of Dawkins would prefer to keep focused only on religion, the more it becomes obvious that his faith in it is badly misplaced.

For example, Wilson states that “The earth is extremely old. Continents do drift. Species are descended from other species.” And yet, the scientific evidence for these statements is much weaker, scientifically speaking, than the evidence for medical science that is not experimentally disadvantaged due to the daunting challenges of replicating historical events. So, the fact that “80 percent of non-randomized studies turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials” means that it is not only possible, but downright probable, that his statements will eventually turn out to be wrong.

Wilson’s attitude and his attempt to sound a buzzer that does not exist in order to declare the game over are both profoundly unscientific. It is not only more unscientific than the behavior of the creationists that he decries, it is actually dogmatic anti-science. The ironic thing is that Wilson isn’t even doing science when he engages in his customary evolutionary speculation, but rather fiction and philosophy because there is virtually no scientific evidence for natural selection, as leading researchers in the field such as Masatoshi Nei of Penn State readily admit.

(The idea that natural selection is the cause of evolution is a perfectly reasonable logical argument, but that’s all it is to date. Despite the oft-heard explanation that polar bears are white due to natural selection, no scientist has ever gone out there and painted polar bears pink, red, and yellow in order to produce evidence that colored polar bears are any less fit than white ones. It’s taken evolutionists more than 150 years to realize this, but now even Richard Dawkins is referring to a theory of evolution by (probably) natural selection and evolutionary researchers like Nei are attempting to retroactively find the evidence that they errantly took for granted all along.)

In fact, the one thing that we can predict with a high degree of certainty about Wilson’s field based upon its past record is that its “durable knowledge” will prove incorrect. Biology is arguably the only science that is more reliably off-base than economics; just last week the discovery of homo sapiens fossils in Israel appears to have once more upended the state of evolutionary scientage. And note that simply calling the consistent unreliability of science “self-correcting” does not turn the bug into a feature, especially since a good part of the “self”-correction comes from outside the scientific community.

A more accurate analogy would have been for Wilson to describe science as a collection of annoying fat kids who declare themselves the world champions of Foosketball, then refuse to define the rules or let anyone else play lest they be exposed, pinned down, and defeated. Despite their academic credentials, scientists are no more to be permitted special pleading than priests. Mr. Wilson’s inability to reach correct logical conclusions coupled with his stated refusal to entertain alternative hypotheses does not speak well for his scientific perspective, so it’s probably just as well for everyone that he works in a field where no actual use of the scientific method is required.

Update: Amy Alkon also posted on Wilson’s post. I left a comment there which I imagine a few of you will find more amusing than she does as the woman is in well over her head and makes what we have all come to recognize as the expected atheist errors. Seriously, what is with atheists and their inability to understand or utilize common word definitions? Not reading the Bible or other religious texts I understand, but what do they have against dictionaries?

Mailvox: let me explain how this works

Modernguy objects to my kicking around a few angst-ridden atheist teenagers:

You’re treating them as arbiters of the best arguments for atheism so you’re doing battle with them. And acting like you just spiked the ball in their endzone is comical considering they’re probably just a bunch of teenagers. In any case they are philosophically unsophisticated, so I would think below your weight class as internet superintelligence.

First, if I only limited myself to those of my intellectual weight class, I’d have to ignore nearly everyone. Second, it has always been my philosophy to take on all comers and give everyone at least one shot. So, if an atheist Neo-Keynesian with Down’s Syndrome wants to take his best shot, he’s welcome to do it. It’s not like his chances are going to be significantly worse than anyone else’s. And third, who is spiking the ball? I’m not celebrating, being from the Emmitt Smith school of having been there before and expecting to be there again soon; it is an unusual defense that cannot be run over with ease. What I find annoying about Modernguy’s protest is that for every atheist who wonders why I am bothering to kick around the ineffectual opposition, there are 10 clueless atheists who genuinely believe the kickees are making really good points and doing rather well.

The underlying problem isn’t that the atheist teenagers of Reddit are philosophically unsophisticated – and since we’re talking about internet atheists, the chances are good that they are not actually teenagers, it’s just that their intellectual and social development makes them appear to be – it is that self-anointed atheist champions such as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers are no more philosophically sophisticated than the teenagers and make pretty much the same arguments. Dennett and Onfray do somewhat better, but they’re still not in my class as their arguments are riddled with obvious errors big enough to drive fleets of trucks through. But don’t take my word for it, read TIA and make up your own mind. No one – and I mean absolutely no one despite tens of thousands of readers – has successfully argued that my critiques of the various arguments presented by these godless gentlemen are incorrect in any way. Few have even attempted to do so because the facts upon which I draw are so conclusive and easily confirmed. Whether it is the Courtier’s Reply or the Red State argument, the Extinction Equation, the Ultimate 747, One Less God, Extraordinary Claims, the Lancet Fluke, or the Epic Self-Evisceration of Christopher Hitchens, I have shown how their arguments to be both inept and invalid.

So, as I and various others have told Modernguy, if you think there is anything better out there, if you think there are any atheists arguments against religion, Christianity or God that are stronger or more valid, then by all means send it to me. I’ll post it here in its unedited entirety before picking it apart. And in the meantime, I’ll finish my post for later today explaining why a scientist who is apparently rather well-regarded in the field of evolutionary science simply does not know what he’s talking about when he prematurely proclaims a particular triumph of so-called science.

The best they’ve got

In case you’re still not convinced of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of atheism, consider this list of what atheists believe to be “the big guns” of the best atheist quotes.

Needless to say, I was deeply unimpressed. It was amusing to see that the thread’s creator actually cited the illogical and theologically ignorant “One Less God” quote from Stephen Roberts that Ricky Gervais plagiarized in his recent article: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

Three errors in just three sentences.

1. No, we are not both atheists.
2. No, you are confusing God with gods. If you simply take the First Commandment into account, you will know that this is incorrect. Few atheists understand that monotheism concerns the worship of one supreme Creator God, not belief in the existence of only one supernatural being that demands worship.
3. Unless an atheist dismisses the Christian God because they believe Him to be an evil supernatural being falsely posing as a deity worthy of worship, he is not doing so for the same reason that Christians dismiss the pagan gods.

There are the expected appearances of Dawkins and Harris, Galileo’s fictional quote, and the concocted quote that David Hume falsely attributed to Epicurus. It is so eminently fitting that atheists should rely upon fake quotes to argue in support of their supposed dedication to reality.

But let us be fair. Whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, select whichever quote you consider to be either the least nonsensical or most effective in support of the atheist case. Mine is the following, which is absolutely true:

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietsche is correct in that faith doesn’t prove anything. The problem, of course, is that it isn’t supposed to, by literal definition. Paul writes in Hebrews: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. The very fact that we have faith, is evidence that what we hope for is real.”

Of course, the common atheist confusion concerning the matter notwithstanding, “evidence” should not be mistaken for “proof”. Again, this should be completely obvious, as it is why linguistic concepts such as “competing evidence” and “weighing the evidence” are utilized.

Can you really blame God?

Ricky Gervais provides a vivid demonstration of the way in which many atheists are prone to vastly overrate their own intelligence and ability to reason. Possibly the most amusing thing is the way that a gaggle of less famous atheists fall all over themselves attempting to proclaim the brilliance of Gervais’s ignorant, illogical, and error-ridden article in the subsequent comments:

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith.” I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe,” comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

Arrogance is another accusation. Which seems particularly unfair. Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe,” this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me,” but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

No, you can’t have your own facts. And yet, that is exactly what Gervais attempts to do throughout his “sensitive and reasoned answer”. First, Gervais is too socially autistic to to understand that the statement “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe” is no more patronizing or impolite than science is arrogant.

It is Gervais himself that people find patronizing, impolite, and arrogant, not his illogical statement or anthropomorphized science. He is the walking, talking evidence of the existence of the definitive Dawkinsian atheist, who does not believe in God because he is an asshole. Despite his attempts to blame people’s natural dislike of him on other things, there is no irony to be found because there is simply nothing there.

No one accuses science of being arrogant, they accuse scientists of being arrogant, which they often are, sometimes even with reasonable justification. And they accuse science fetishists like Gervais of being arrogant, which they usually are on behalf of science in a weird, cultish, and totally unjustifiable manner. Gervais’s elevation of science into an anthropomorphized quasi-deity in which he places inordinate trust is downright hilarious, as science, by which he clearly means “scientody” or “the scientific method”, does not “know” anything, it is not “humble”, and “it doesn’t get offended” for the obvious reason that it cannot. Atheists like Gervais make a false god of science, place their blind and uncomprehending faith in it, then sputter in outrage when others quite reasonably point to what without question merits being described as religious behavior.

Gervais is not so much incorrect as completely incoherent when he says that science “bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence”. First, he reveals the usual atheist’s inability to distinguish between “evidence” and “scientific evidence”. Second, science does not possess either conclusions or beliefs and it does not base them or anything else upon evidence; Gervais clearly doesn’t understand how the scientific method works because it is used to produce evidence (of the scientific variety), it is not based upon evidence of any kind. Third, his example is spectacularly ignorant, as science not only did not develop penicillin, but the parochial arrogance of scientists actually retarded the development of the effective medical application of what had been the very sort of traditional medieval practice that Gervais disdains for decades. His knowledge doesn’t even rise to the level of Wikipedia: see the story of Ernest Duchesne and his 1897 paper that was ignored by the Institut Pasteur.

Speaking of facts, Gervais blatantly makes up his own when he claims that “75 percent of Americans are God-­‐fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­‐fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists.” But he has no basis for this and we KNOW he has no basis for this because no reliable statistical study of American prisoners has ever been done. And we also know he is not only wrong, but dishonest because he is using a bait-and-switch on his definition of atheist; only 0.7% of Americans actually call themselves atheists versus the 15% who the American Religious Identification Survey describes as Nones/No Religion.

Moreoever, we actually have comprehensive data regarding Gervais’s own country, the United Kingdom. (In fact, that’s likely where Gervais got his imaginary number for American atheists in prison, from the UK, which reported 122 atheists being held in English and Welsh jails That just happens to be 0.2 percent of the 65,256 prison population there.)

But in addition to those 122 atheists, there also happened to be another 20,639 prisoners, 31.6 percent of the total prison population, who claimed to possess “no religion.” And this was not simply a case of people falling through the cracks or refusing to provide an answer; the Inmate Information System is specific enough to distinguish between Druids, Scientologists, and Zoroastrians as well as between the Celestial Church of God, the Welsh Independent church, and the Non-Conformist church. It also features separate categories for “other Christian religion,” “other non-Christian religion,” and “not known.” At only two-tenths of a percent of the prison population, self-identifying atheists are, as previously suggested, extremely law-abiding. But when one compares the 31.6 percent of imprisoned no-religionists to the 15.1 percent of Britons who checked “none” or wrote in Jedi Knight, agnostic, atheist, or heathen in the 2001 national survey, it becomes clear that their practical atheist brethren are nearly four times more likely to be convicted and jailed for committing a crime than a Christian.

In other words, No Religion atheists are without question much more criminally inclined than Christians even if self-identified Scarlet-A Atheists are not. And since Gervais used the much larger 10% figure, he clearly had the No Religion atheists in mind, which shows the disingenuous nature of his original comparison between the ratio of Christians/Christians and Atheists/atheists. Remember, you can’t have your own facts, Ricky! There are many more errors of fact and logic that I have not troubled to highlight, but the reader should not find it difficult to identify them. Gervais goes on to plagiarize Stephen Roberts’s fallacious “One Less God” argument without crediting Roberts, admits his atheism is quite literally a childish belief, follows that admission with an exemplary demonstration of moral parasitism, and finally closes with a baseless and self-deluded declaration of his own good. This takes us right back to the starting point, which is that it is not science, but Gervais that is an arrogant ass.

Regardless of whether you believe in God’s existence or not,it is very difficult to read Gervais’s ludicrous attempt to justify his atheism and not reach three conclusions. First, it takes a truly epic fool to say, not only in his heart but in the Wall Street Journal as well, that there is no God. Second, this is less a case of atheistic evangelism than the agnostic variety as any intelligent atheist will be tempted to convert immediately to agnosticism out of sheer embarrassment. And third, if God does exist, it would be impossible to blame Him for deciding to throw such a smug and annoying little bastard into Hell when faced with the alternative of being inflicted with his company for eternity.

The glorious return of Uber Dawks

Speaking of social autism, Uber Dawks offers this timely reminder that atheists who believe in reason don’t actually tend to utilize it well:

I see that your and fellow idiot fundies at WND who are somehow trying spin the Florida School Board shooting story into an anti-atheist screed because the shooter listed his religion as “Humanist” and was obviously ultra-liberal. I am now anxiously awaiting the typical Vox Day commentary bereft of logic and reason, much like your belief in Jesus.

This is typical conservative bait and switch and it disgusts me. You and your WND comrades should be ashamed. The world would be a better place if you idiots would just realize that you are fighting a losing battle against progress, including atheism and social equality. You just don’t understand that the human society is evolving into a better social construct, much like humans themselves have evolved into creatures that transcend racial inequality and sexual biology. We are no longer driven by the need to herd and procreate but have progressed into a society where freethinking is encouraged and sexual preference has transcended basic biology.

I’ve said it before an I’ll say it again – YOU IDIOT FUNDIES ARE LOSING! Humanism is a philosophy that will take over because it is based on REASON – and no smear campaign against it like linking a crazed Florida shooter to humanism will change that. Learn to give up your myths and this season celebrate reason. You people infuriate me and I anxiously await the day that you have been pushed out by science reason and are gone from our society.

Ah, yet another atheist arguing that the actions of a humanist [and probable atheist] should not be cited as an argument against atheism even though he has cited the actions of religious individuals as an argument against religion in the past. No doubt he would similarly argue that mass murders committed by atheists cannot possibly be attributed to their atheism even as he “anxiously” awaits the day that “science reason” has pushed theists out of his society. No doubt that’s just a coincidence and has nothing to do with his own atheism, right?

And who but an atheist would ever think to take the example of a humanist committing suicide and attempt to spin it into evidence for the ultimate triumph of humanism. Remember, these people genuinely believe they are more intelligent than you are.

UPDATE: Uber Dawks adds the following: You are missing the point entirely. The man did not shoot at others and then kill himself BECAUSE he was a humanist or an atheist, which is the same mistake you make when you mention Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot. The conservative media is already pointing to his atheism/humanism in order to paint the same sort of idiotic argument you make when mentioning the atheism of Joseph Stalin, etc. Epic fail.

Interesting. And leads to the question, would Uber Dawk hate “IDIOT FUNDIES” and dream about “Science Reason” pushing them from his society if he were not an atheist? Isn’t it his atheism that is behind his hatred? Some people really need to stop deifying reason and start using it.

League of the juvenile godless

Despite their best efforts to conceal it under a facade of reason, they always eventually reveal the essential lack of intellectual and emotional development that underlies their social autism:

But nowhere has the reaction of believers been so forceful as in Fort Worth, to the delight of Fred Edwords, the national director of the United Coalition of Reason. The coalition’s local chapter spent only $2,400 for four bus ads, which will run through the month in a city with about 200 buses.

“That’s more brouhaha for the buck than we have seen anywhere,” Mr. Edwords said.

And thus are all the claims that their various ad campaigns are about anything but annoying Christians at Christmastime belied. Can you even imagine how upset Jews would be if Christians began running ads directly attacking Jewish beliefs during the high holidays in a similar manner? Or how ballistic Muslims would go if similarly attacked during Ramadan? Atheists constantly attempt to portray the public celebrations and positive assertions of Christian belief as some sort of attack on their non-belief, but that is nothing more than absurd and juvenile drama-queening. Consider the lack of equivalency here:

Christian: “God loves you.”
Atheist: “You know it’s [the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus Christ] a myth.”

The Christian statement doesn’t say anything about the atheist or his atheism. While one can correctly deduce that if it is true that God loves you, then he must exist and therefore contradict the atheist belief that he does not, it cannot possibly be considered an attack on atheism of any kind. The atheist statement, on the other hand, is nothing but an attack on a specific belief of a specific religion. This isn’t to say all of the atheist ads are attacks; millions of people most certainly are good without God. They’re simply not good enough to enter into His presence come Judgment Day.

Now, when Christians start running historically correct ads featuring quotes like “There is No God” and “Science is My Religion” along with pictures of notorious atheist murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Timothy McVeigh standing red-handed over the stacked skulls of their many victims instead of “God loves You”, atheists can legitimately complain that they’re being attacked. (Not that such attacks are not merited; they would be provably accurate whereas the atheist “myth” ad is not.) Until then, they’ve got absolutely nothing to complain about except for being alone of their own choice at Christmastime because a statement that contradicts your beliefs without making any reference to them is not only not an attack, it’s not even about them! And while it’s true that atheists happen to be America’s most-disliked minority, perhaps they should consider not behaving in such an annoying and thoroughly dislikable manner.

Not so much, mate

I completely agree with OneSTDV’s criticism of Half-Sigma’s support for the ridiculous and would-be offensive Christmas billboard erected by American Atheists this year, but I would be remiss if I failed to take exception to one of his statements:

HS likely doesn’t spend a lot of time on organized atheist websites or he wouldn’t naively presume the actual intention comports with the publicly expressed reasoning. Sure the atheist community has individuals like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who can articulate impassioned but logically sound arguments against religious superstition. And surely given the high rate of disbelief amongst scientists, atheism is often a position resulting from reason.

OneSTDV is almost surely right about the probable difference between the stated and actual intentions. However, in like manner, one can only assume OneSTDV has not read deeply in the New Atheist literature or he would realize that while the arguments presented by Dawkins and Harris are impassioned, they are most certainly not logically sound by any measure. If, on the other hand, he has read Dawkins or Harris and genuinely believes they both have presented logically sound arguments against religion, I should very much like to know specifically which of those arguments he means since I am familiar with all of them and “logically sound” is among the very last means I would use to describe most of them, along with “factually accurate”. Is he impressed by Sam Harris’s Extinction Equation or by Sam’s creative resolution of the Is/Ought Problem presented in The Moral Landscape? Does he buy into Dawkins’s philosophical magnum opus of the Ultimate 747 argument or is was he convinced that sexual abuse is indeed less harmful to a child than a religious upbringing? I’m not just being sarcastic here, I would definitely like to know!

As for the scientists, I note that it is incorrect to assume that a preponderance of atheism among scientists should be taken as evidence to indicate that atheism is often a position resulting from reason. It is a non sequitur; consider the implications in light of similarly strong predilections for sporting beards, wearing glasses, or voting Democrat.

As for the billboard itself, it is nothing more than the usual atheist obnoxiousness and Half-Sigma is simply revealing his own inability to reason correctly. He is too intelligent to not be disingenuous when he states: “I would not characterize the billboard as being anti-Christian. It’s pro-reason.”

Half-Sigma has it precisely backward. The billboard is anti-Christian because it is specifically attacking the Christian belief in the historical existence of Jesus Christ by declaring it a myth during the very time that Christians are celebrating the birth of Man’s Lord and Savior. The billboard is not pro-reason either despite the statement “This season celebrate reason”. The billboard is actually anti-reason due to the way in which the preceding statement “You know it’s a myth” is intrinsically illogical. Not only do the passers-by not necessarily know that the Christmas story is a myth, but American Atheists cannot reasonably claim to know it is a myth and unless they are claiming to be mind-readers, they cannot possibly know what the passers-by know or do not know either.

I don’t mind such billboards in the least. It’s mere public trollery and accomplishes little more than highlight the deeply unattractive social autism of outspoken atheists. To the extent they have any effect at all, I suspect they encourage more atheists to identify themselves as agnostics rather than the opposite. It’s rather like seeing a vegetarian try to argue about the evils of eating meat by farting at the Christmas dinner table; no one is going to be convinced that the baked ham is any less delectable, it’s only going to make them want to send Mr. Stinky outside to eat in the snow.

Misplaced faith in reason

Scott Atran scientifically demolishes a cherished atheist belief in his new book Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What It Means to Be Human:

Seeing humans as essentially driven by their passions, Hobbes cherished little hope that they would ever be guided by reason. Still, he never doubted that if people were more rational they would be less prone to violence. How could any sane person not seek peace? After all, everyone wants to go on living – or so Hobbes wanted to believe.

Something like Hobbes’s analysis (though without his refreshing pessimism or his wonderfully terse prose style) has resurfaced today in regard to suicide bombing. If you read evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins, you will be told that suicide bombers are driven by their irrational religious beliefs. ‘Suicide bombers do what they do’, writes Dawkins in a passage cited by Scott Atran, ‘because they really believe what they were taught in their religious schools; that duty to God exceeds all other priorities, and that martyrdom in his service will be rewarded in the gardens of Paradise.’ What is striking about claims of this kind is that they are rarely accompanied by evidence. They are asserted as self-evident truths – in other words, articles of faith. In fact, as Atran writes, religion is not particularly prominent in the formation of jihadi groups….

Unlike Dawkins’s assertions, Atran’s account of violent jihadism is based on extensive empirical research. An anthropologist who has spent many years studying and talking to terrorists in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Gaza and Europe, Atran believes that what motivates them to go willingly to their deaths is not so much the cause they espouse – rationally or otherwise – but the relationships they form with each other. Terrorists kill and die ‘for their group, whose cause makes their imagined family of genetic strangers – their brotherhood, fatherland, motherland, homeland, totem or tribe’. In this terrorists are no different from other human beings. They may justify their actions by reference to religion, but many do not. The techniques of suicide bombing were first developed by the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist group hostile to all religions, while suicide bombers in Lebanon in the 1980s included many secular leftists. The Japanese Aum cult, which recruited biologists and geneticists and experimented with anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction, cobbled together its grotesque system of beliefs from many sources, including science fiction. Terrorists have held to many views of the world, including some – like Marxism-Leninism – that claim to be grounded in ‘scientific atheism’. If religion is a factor in terrorism, it is only one among many.

This is precisely what I pointed out in TIA when criticizing Sam Harris’s error-filled The End of Faith, although I didn’t need to perform any extensive empirical research as a basic knowledge of military history was sufficient. But it is satisfying to see that more and more atheists are beginning to see what I explained two years ago: the New Atheists have not utilized any science in their ideological campaign against religion in general and Christianity in particular, they are nothing more than ideological propagandists attempting to further a specific and virulent form of secularist philosophy. And while they do utilize a good deal of reason – the cases they present are uniformly philosophical cases rather than scientific ones – the more important point is that they seldom utilize it correctly.

Anyone conversant with military history knows that suicide bombing is a fairly conventional weapon of the desperate and the weak. And it’s a remarkably ineffective weapon at that; even if suicide bombing could be reasonably connected to religion, it would make for a strong argument that religion is not only seldom a cause of war, it also happens to be almost completely useless in practicing war.