Tag: atheism

The intellectual poverty of the New Atheists

It would appear I am not the only one who has noticed. David B. Hart’s highly amusing essay at First Things pours disdain on the best efforts of a murder of atheists to rationalize their neurosociological shortcomings in public:

Take, for instance, the recently published 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Simple probability, surely, would seem to dictate that a collection of essays by fifty fairly intelligent and zealous atheists would contain at least one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God. Certainly that was my hope in picking it up. Instead, I came away from the whole drab assemblage of preachments and preenings feeling rather as if I had just left a large banquet at which I had been made to dine entirely on crushed ice and water vapor.

To be fair, the shallowness is not evenly distributed. Some of the writers exhibit a measure of wholesome tentativeness in making their cases, and as a rule the quality of the essays is inversely proportionate to the air of authority their authors affect. For this reason, the philosophers—who are no better than their fellow contributors at reasoning, but who have better training in giving even specious arguments some appearance of systematic form—tend to come off as the most insufferable contributors….

The scientists fare almost as poorly. Among these, Victor Stenger is the most recklessly self-confident, but his inability to differentiate the physical distinction between something and nothing (in the sense of “not anything as such”) from the logical distinction between existence and nonexistence renders his argument empty. The contributors drawn from other fields offer nothing better. The Amazing Randi, being a magician, knows that there is quite a lot of credulity out there. The historian of science Michael Shermer notes that there are many, many different and even contradictory systems of belief. The journalist Emma Tom had a psychotic scripture teacher when she was a girl. Et, as they say, cetera. The whole project probably reaches its reductio ad absurdum when the science-fiction writer Sean Williams explains that he learned to reject supernaturalism in large part from having grown up watching Doctor Who.

You really have to have read several of the New Atheist books to fully comprehend the astonishing lack of intellect, knowledge, and reason on offer. And I note with great amusement that the utter speciousness of Richard Dawkins’s “unrebuttable” argument does not go unremarked.

“But something worse than mere misunderstanding lies at the base of Dawkins’ own special version of the argument from infinite regress—a version in which he takes a pride of almost maternal fierceness…. But all the evidence suggests that Dawkins has never understood the point being made, and it is his unfortunate habit contemptuously to dismiss as meaningless concepts whose meanings elude him. Frankly, going solely on the record of his published work, it would be rash to assume that Dawkins has ever learned how to reason his way to the end of a simple syllogism.
“
It would be rash indeed. The “unrebuttable” Ultimate 747 argument, which Dawkins himself declares is the central argument of The God Delusion isn’t just wrong, it is provably wrong at multiple steps along the way. To say that it “scarcely rises to the level of nonsense” is almost too kind. This is precisely why so many intelligent individuals, religious and irreligious, have contempt for Richard Dawkins and why Dawkins has largely abandoned all debate. Having fooled a number of moderately intelligent people into thinking that he knows what he is talking about, he is now desperate to avoid being exposed for the charlatan and logical incompetent that he quite clearly and demonstrably is.

It’s a little late, Richard

Richard Dawkins reconsiders the wisdom of his war against Christianity:

Even among the world’s most famous atheists, the crisis of faith among Christians in Europe has been met with concern. Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death. I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”

Translation: “I’m beginning to worry that Vox is correct after all and the replacement for European Christianity may not be that shiny, sexy, secular scientific society of for which I have labored.” As I have been warning for some time now, atheism and scientific secular humanism are little more than speed bumps on the decline into paganism. And paganism, as the historically literate know, made for some horrific societal structures that took Christians literal centuries to stamp out. The legalization of abortion and euthanasia is only the beginning of the post-Christian Endarkenment on a silent continent that has rejected the Light of the World.

Social autism strikes again

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens once more demonstrate that while it isn’t necessary to be a consummate horse’s ass in order to be an atheist, it certainly doesn’t hurt:

RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.

The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.

Being a nondenominational Christian with Southern Baptist ties, I am not inclined to be a defender of popery. And being a casual student of medieval history, I am fully cognizant of the various crimes that have been committed in Rome, Ravenna, and Avignon by men who claimed St. Peter’s throne. I also see a clear distinction between Christianity and Catholicism; although many Catholics are Christians, many are not by any reasonable Bible-based definition of the latter term. While I respect the organization and the historical contributions of the institution, I do not confuse it with my religious faith. Nor do I approve of the sexual abuse of children; I would have absolutely no problem with every priest, schoolteacher, and sports coach confirmed to be guilty of preying upon the children in their care being taken out and shot, were it not for my opposition to granting the government a hunting license on its citizens.

Since, ironically enough, it is Richard Dawkins who has openly minimized the damage to children from sexual abuse, it is obviously the Pope’s Catholicism that he wishes to prosecute, not the Pope’s suboptimal human resources management 25 years ago. The fact that Dawkins is targeting the Pope, who is not even accused of committing any abuse, rather than the hundreds of English school teachers – including one of his own teachers – who have actually done so is conclusive evidence that this is nothing more than the world’s most famous atheist demonstrating the Argument from Social Autism. It’s a remarkably stupid PR stunt, even by the low standards of the Clowns of Reason

“Once, in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, as horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing up the child Catholic in the first place…”
– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 317

The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church is the direct result of allowing homosexuals to enter the priesthood. Unless and until the Pope addresses that ludicrous decision of his predecessors, more predatory abuses will occur. But the Pope is no more personally responsible for those crimes than the Minister of Education is responsible for the same crimes taking place in the English schools.

“The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can’t help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America.”
– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 316

It would appear that Mr. Dawkins isn’t quite as opposed to unfair demonization as he used to be.

Mailvox: a waste of time and effort

The Baseball Savant questions my time allocations:

Leaving aside the fact that we pretty much disagree about everything when it comes to Christianity, the one thing I have a problem with in reading your blog the last couple of years is your fight in atheism/religion. Admittedly I haven’t read “TIA”, but I think for this discussion I get the gist that you basically used the same logic that the unholy trinity provided to disprove atheism or at least show that it’s more unlikely than religious thought/belief. I might be oversimplifying it, but I think you get my point. My problem though is that you spend an enormous amount of time on this very topic. That I don’t understand. I would think even as an open theist we would have similar views on eternal perspective and the problem that I have is that your writing of TIA, although interesting, doesn’t further that cause too much.

I can certainly see the rationale behind it if you believe that you are the first domino to fall in that equation in that

ATHEIST –> READ TIA —-> DOUBT ATHEISM —–> DISREGARD ATHEISM —-> BELIEVE IN RELIGION —-> COME TO CHRIST

But the last part is very dicey. There are a million religions in the world, and it seems your argument is only that atheism is illogical. I agree with it. I guess I’m just wondering the end? Not that everything has to be done with eternal perspective in mind, but this is something that I think definitely coincides with that sort of thing because you are delving into religious matters. Does open theism teach that God is pleased if something comes to religion even if that religion is still pagan in nature and hell is the final destination for the person who converts to that religion from atheism?

If it’s all for intellectual masturbation then I get it, but you seem too bright to waste time on an endeavor such as this with no real cost/benefit analysis in the end.

Obviously you write for you. You’ve always said as much, but the time aspect is odd for me. What do you think?

First, I don’t spend anywhere nearly as much time on the subject as most people think. Because I read very fast and think a bit more quickly than the norm, it doesn’t take me very long to notice the flaws in an argument and use them to pick it apart. The only thing that occasionally takes an amount of time is doing the research to prove what I already have concluded to the satisfaction of others. Second, as always, I highly recommend reading the relevant material before commenting on it.

Because the Baseball Savant hasn’t read TIA, he isn’t aware that my ambitions for the book have always been modest. I not only think the last link in his chain is very dicey, I think the one preceding it is too. TIA is not a work of Christian apologetics nor is it even a theological work, the one speculative chapter notwithstanding, as it is nothing more than a work dedicated to destroying a collection of spurious, illogical, and demonstrably false arguments by a small group of well-known intellectual charlatans. Convincing the reader to disregard a specific form of atheism is the most that the book was ever even potentially going to achieve, and it’s quite clear that it has been very successful in that regard. The feeble and insubstantial protestations with which the Against the New Atheism slideshow has been met is testimony to the way in which even the most militant atheists have largely abandoned certain arguments they once believed to be powerfully effective.

Removing a bar to belief isn’t always going to lead to belief. I would even say that it usually isn’t. But, having seen so many well-meaning Christians struggle so ineffectively against unoriginal and outdated arguments that were fundamentally flawed, I thought it was worth the small effort it took to dismantle them in such a comprehensive manner that practically anyone who has read the book can now do the same with ease. I expect that I will continue to tear apart their future arguments since it costs me nothing and I find it more entertaining than sitting down and watching 151 hours of television per month like the average American. Needless to say, I will be providing a detailed critique of Sam Harris’s all-too-characteristically incoherent argument in favor of utilizing science to answer moral questions at some point in the future.

The truth is that I spend far more time on what could be characterized as even less important matters. I am currently designing five games, none of which are of any importance to the human race and only two of which will be potentially profitable to me. I am spending a great deal of time and money on a superior input device which will allow people to do useful, useless and even harmful things on a computer up to 50% faster. I am writing a sequel to a novel that probably didn’t sell more than 500 copies. I play board games and computer games, alone and with others. And I just finished reading a novel by Balzac that wasn’t particularly interesting and has taught me nothing useful.

The ironic thing about this email is the way it shows how people, even those who haven’t read the book, are still far more interested in discussing The Irrational Atheist than they are in discussing either of the two books I have published since. And this is despite the fact that we’re now in the midst of the very economic contraction that I describe in The Return of the Great Depression!

Time passes whether we spend it wisely or not. I have numerous regrets for opportunities and time I have wasted in the past, but writing TIA and discussing the related issues is not one of them.

Another atheist myth

Densa’s inability to understand the implications of comparing a large population to a small one got me thinking about some of the other myths about atheism. One of the many misapprehensions of the New Atheists is that the rapid growth rate of godlessness over the last 20 years will have grand ramifications for American society. And yet, the example of various former atheists such as CS Lewis and Anthony Flew indicates that atheism is nothing more than a transitive state for many individuals. The implications of this philosophical transience are often forgotten even when shifts in religious identification are being discussed. For example, the 2008 Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Survey is often cited to show that there is a national trend away from religious faith.

“Overall, 3.9% of the adult population reports being raised without any particular religious affiliation but later affiliating with a religious group. However, more than three times as many people (12.7% of the adult population overall) were raised in a particular faith but have since become unaffiliated with any religious group.”

That sounds like conclusive proof that lots of people are abandoning their religious faith, although a closer reading reveals that 36% of those “unaffiliated” people consider themselves to be religious. But even if we take the numbers at face value and assume that a loss of religious affiliation is tantamount to a loss of faith, the statistics don’t actually show what they are usually cited as showing.

Consider this. That 3.9% of the population that was raised without religious affiliation and eventually found one represented more than half of the 7.3% of the population that was raised without an affiliation. That means that the retention rate of the non-affiliated was only 46.6%! Whereas that seemingly impressive 12.7% who abandoned their childhood affiliation represented less than 14% of the religious affiliated population. So, religious affiliation has a much better retention rate at 86.3%.

The retention rate is even worse for the full blown atheist population. 60% of those raised atheist abandon atheism; 0.5% of the population was raised atheist and 0.3% of it left atheism. And while 1.4% of the population became atheist, the fact that nearly all of the nation is not atheist means that the non-atheist population has a retention rate of 98.6%, which is nearly 2.5 times better than the atheist retention rate of 40%. Therefore, the perceived rapid growth of atheism is nothing more than an artifact of the atheist population’s statistical insignificance. Even the dying Episcopalian church has a better retention rate than atheism does and the fact that 75% of atheist households contain no children under the age of 18 merely underlines the fact that atheism would be in decline if it were not already such an insignificant portion of the population.

Anyhow, it appears that this may call for the addition of another slide or two to the Against the New Atheism slideshow.

Who’s got next?

First it was Hitchens, now James Randi comes out of the closet:

Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.

I’m gay.

Let me first make it clear that I don’t think there’s any reason to mock the guy for his idiosyncrasy. From what I have observed from the outside over the years, it is apparent that the lifestyle is not an easy one. But his predilection is nevertheless relevant, as it was in the case of Hitchens, simply because it calls into question the primary source of his tireless opposition to religion. It doesn’t change the strength or weakness of his so-called rationalist arguments in the least – those have to stand or fall on their own merits – but since Man is above all a rationalizing creature it does indicate the direction in which Randi’s confirmation biases have been pointing for quite some time now.

Anyhow, I applaud the man’s courage for addressing the matter in a forthright manner since it was obviously difficult for him. And I don’t think it would be fair for anyone to claim it as “proof of the perfidy of the rationalist mode of life” since to the extent there may be a causal relationship, it would tend to run the other way.

All that being said, I must admit that I will, without a doubt, laugh myself silly if Dawkins is the next atheist to come out with a Very Special Announcement.

Ed Brayton digs a deeper hole

Fresh from debating himself over whether Ellis Washington challenged him to a debate or not, Ed Brayton manages to completely miss the point of a column which was an introduction to a slideshow entitled Against the New Atheism that showed eight of the primary arguments made by the various New Atheists to be false:

I had to laugh while reading Vox Day’s most recent bit of absurdity at the Worldnutdaily. It is, like nearly everything he writes, little more than a string of ad hominems and arrogant pronouncements rather than any actual arguments. He really does seem to think that a haughty sneer and an insult regarding some entirely irrelevant trait of one of his enemies magically defeats their arguments…. Notice what’s missing from all of that? Anything even remotely resembling a substantive argument. Is that really the best he can do?

No, you dimwitted journalist, what defeats the New Atheist arguments is knowledge of history and the citation of copious statistical evidence combined with correctly applied logic. That column was simply the introduction to blowing the following arguments out of the water:

1. Religion Causes War (Harris, Dennett, Hitchens)
2. Religion Causes Violence (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins)
3. Atheists Commit Less Crime (Harris, Dawkins)
4. The Red State Argument (Harris)
5. The Extinction Equation (Harris)
6. Religion Inhibits Science (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins)
7. The Improbability of Divine Complexity (Dawkins)
8. Atheists are Very Intelligent (Harris, Dawkins, Lynn)

After conveniently ignoring seven of eight of these refutations, which are not only substantive arguments but also happen to be conclusive, Brayton unwisely proceeds to comment on my refutation of Dawkins’s Improbability of Divine Complexity.

“Ai yi yi, I missed that one. The proper response would be “OR…..the mere size of a genome is not the proper measure of complexity.”

Unsurprisingly, Brayton isn’t bright enough to avoid lumbering directly into the trap. Is he saying here that variance in genome size is not variance in information? Or is he saying that “complexity does not concern information”? And what, pray tell, is the proper measure of the complexity which Dawkins is utilizing in order to attempt proving Divine improbability?

You have to be pretty stupid to claim that I do not make substantive arguments. You also have to avoid actually reading anything I write. The clueless ignorance of anklebiters like Brayton borders on the artistic, indeed, it approaches the Platonic paradigm. Not even the most rabid Neo-Keynesian or fervent Chicago School Friedman fetishist would dream of suggesting that my arguments are insubstantial. Wrong, perhaps, but never insubstantial.

Mailvox: in which the shining void is reached

MH stumbled across the column today:

I think Richard Dawkins is tremendous, and I’m not a socially maladjusted loser, although must admit that being called that is quite a convincing argument that perhaps I’m wrong! Maybe I should rethink my ways or I’ll be called names. I essentially believe in freedom, capitalism, individualism, and reason. I’m a conservative in all things non god-related, and can’t stand progressives and their broken ideas. What I don’t understand about conservative sites like wnd is that they can be so right on so many things, then at the last second have to throw in, oh we also believe in god, santa claus, and the easter bunny.

My experience tells me that people today believe in god mostly because of family pressures, or the mistaken idea that life has no meaning on Earth if they don’t so they can’t let go of the idea. But god is like phlogiston, an idea that had some usefulness before understanding of how the world works progressed to the point where it was obvious it was a human proposal that was just incorrect and needed to be discarded. The common thread between most progressive ideas is the desire to reach a certain conclusion at all costs, the determination that their conclusion must be true because they want/need it to be, then embark on a complex mission of torturing logic so they can desperately avoid reality. Most conservative ideas however embrace reality for what it is — until you get to this one glaring exception they can’t seem to let go of.

What book(s) would you recommend for someone seeking to learn more about people like yourself who seem otherwise incredibly intelligent yet can’t seem to let go of this one bad idea? I’m seeking books based on rational arguments, preferably low on the name-calling intimidation tactics you personally seem fond of that just undermine your cause.

First, I’d like to point out that I only described Richard Dawkins’s biggest fans – the former RD.Net crowd – as socially maladjusted losers. Any substantial perusal of those old forums will suffice to prove my point, further supported by Dawkins’s own reaction to his erstwhile fan club. Second, the connection that you are missing between freedom, capitalism, individualism, reason, and a belief in God is that the first four are heavily dependent upon the fifth. This is not controversial; non-Christians and even non-believers such as Socrates, Seneca, and Voltaire have subscribed to it. You would do well to examine the difference between historical pagan societies and Christian society before concluding that your phlogiston hypothesis is even remotely credible. Keep in mind that you still live in a heavily Christian society, where even the atheists, as Michel Onfray points out, are Christian atheists. And, as I’ve pointed out, it is already clear that it is not secular scientopia that is the post-Christian heir, but rather a return to paganism.

I don’t read apologetics, so I’m afraid I can’t recommend much in the way of a positive, non-argumentative case for Christianity although I’m sure a number of commenters here will have some recommendations for you. My Christian faith and my allegiance to Jesus Christ stems from my experience and observation of evil, so it’s not a line of reasoning that is likely to make a great deal of sense to anyone who lacks it. But I would greatly encourage you to read Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian War, Caesar’s Commentaries, and other works of pre-Christian history so that you will have a more accurate picture of what a society without God is like. Then, perhaps you will have a better perspective on the connection between those things you accept and that which you reject.

JC also shares his two cents:

Day:

Your slide show isn’t all that impressive. I’ll cross the IQ bridge first and get it out of the way. My IQ is 156 and I’m an atheist. I suppose that stupid ignorance would be blissful, but I can’t swallow Christianity.

Religion has been around longer than modern science – your point?

Here’s the deal, Vox. I don’t believe that an invisible man in the sky is talking to you. I think you’re blowing smoke – like the religious have done for centuries.

JC
Member and Sponsor – American Atheists

The relevant question isn’t if the slideshow is impressive or not, but is it accurate or not? It’s interesting how nearly every atheist who has emailed or commented today hasn’t dared to take any direct issue with any of the refutations and claim that the New Atheist arguments are, in fact, correct. And anyone with an IQ of 156 should have absolutely no trouble understanding the point regarding the significance of the degree to which religion preceded science in light of Sam Harris’s claim that religion + science = human extinction.

But, since even atheists with 156 IQs apparently have some trouble applying basic logic, I will spell it out. Since religion has only caused 7% of the wars in human history and has never once threatened the existence of the species in 11,600 years, at least 93% of the threat to continued human existence will remain even if religion is eliminated tomorrow. This means that the threat of extinction has virtually nothing to do with religion, it is the direct result of science. If the threat is real – and naturally we must assume that Sam Harris, PhD, knows whereof he speaks – then logic dictates the only way to eliminate it is to end science. To the extent that religion and science are in opposition, then, the only rational response to the threat of human extinction is to embrace religion, regardless of one’s personal beliefs in any religious tenets, and make full use of it to the maximum extent possible in order to eliminate science.

But I am humbly grateful to JC. While I can envision a more perfect state of indifference, it would take ten Siddharthas medidating ten centuries to reach this amazing state of Śūnyatā to which his assertion of his opinion has propelled me…. I can see… everything! I can feel… everything!

Monday column

Against the New Atheism

Now that its moment in the media sun has passed, the New Atheism is fading fast. Richard Dawkins has repeatedly demonstrated why he needs to be put out to intellectual pasture. He published an entire book dedicated to passing off an inference as a fact before belatedly discovering what everyone else knew already; his biggest fans are an unpleasant collection of socially maladjusted losers. Christopher Hitchens was repeatedly beaten up in debates by various Christians before being physically beaten by Syrians he had provoked. He then took Dawkins’s OUT campaign a little more literally than anyone had expected and announced that he was an occasional homosexual. Sam Harris’ two accomplishments have been to create the amusingly misnamed Reason Project, which was founded for much the same reasons and is expected to have about the same success as Air America, and to publish a wildly irrational attack on one of America’s most celebrated and accomplished scientists in the New York Times that was completely disregarded by the Obama administration as well as everyone else.

No one has any idea what Daniel Dennett has been doing, but that’s understandable because no one, including the atheists who claim to be his fans, actually reads his books.

Here is the slideshow addressing the seven New Atheist arguments mentioned in the column.

Atheist argument query

I’m in the process of putting together a tool that I think people may find useful in confronting aggressive atheists making spurious arguments. TIA has its place, of course, but the reality is that few people on either side of the debate are never going to read more than a few pages of any of the books that address the matter. Here are the seven New Atheist arguments that I’ve already addressed; you may note that I have chosen to select arguments that can be easily and graphically refuted utilizing empirical evidence.

Religion Causes War
Religion Inspires Violence
Religion Inhibits Science
Sam Harris’s Extinction Equation
Sam Harris’s Red State Argument
Atheists Commit Less Crime
Richard Dawkins’s Improbability of Divine Complexity

What arguments most demand attention in your opinion? Which arguments are most often brought up by the militant atheists of your acquaintance? Alternatively, if you are an atheist, what are the arguments that you feel most powerfully make the case for atheism?