Thursday, July 15, 2010

More obtuse nonsense regarding Atheists- When will it end?

It is quite evident that some "Christian" (I deliberately use scare quotes here) fundies have way too much time on their hands, as they still manage to write loads of rubbish on their blogs regarding atheists. One has to wonder if they even read what they actually write! I believe if they did read it, they'd be amazed at how it comes over to any thinking person. But never mind, they conflate, change word meanings, dismiss and then invent new strawmen all to conform to their distorted perceptions of atheism without getting to the core issue.

And, of course, since they can't get to the core issue they're unable to mount any cogent or logical attack on atheists since they've already invoked an aimless, emotional level of debate and engagement.

Let's take some choice howlers from a fundie's recent blog:

He writes:

"Atheism is a denial of the existence of God in the midst of full knowledge that the true God does indeed exist ! "

Well, other than in this fundie's febrile brain, WHERE? IF "he" exists as claimed, then WHERE is he when the most abmoninable evils are perpetrated on INNOCENTS? Where was he, what was he doing, other than sitting on his ass (assuming he exists) when over 200,000 children younger than 4 were simply tossed into Hitler's ovens? Would any decent parent stand by while his children are trapped in a burning house? NO! The decent human parent would at least make an effort to save his offspring! This is the very definition of a minimal morality as noted by Kai Neillsen, in his Ethics Without God.

The fact there wasn't one single scintilla of action, even to cause Hitler's ovens to misfire or stop working, shows NO ONE was minding the store! There was NO action because nothing exists that could have altered anything done to those innocents!

Yet the make believe fundies will insist this "god" is all around, though he never ever acts when it counts. I mean, he could at least have caused the Hatian earthquake - which killed 250,000 - to occur in the ocean, and spared all those lives. He is all powerful, is he not? But he didn't. He can't even control his putatively "designed" creation and you expect we are imbeciles enough to believe your gibberish that we are "in the midst of full knowledge he exists"? You must be mad! Or else schizoid, and nearly mad.

Unperturbed by this the fundie goes on:

"Atheism is the ultimate of satanism. Ask Satan does God exist and he will deny it. "

Hold on there now, pard. Just back up a wee bit.

I know you can't recall what you write from one day to the next but this is absurd. Shortly before, in an earlier blog you condemned fellow Christians (like Catholics - "an unbiblical cult") to Hell and argued that simply believing in God is no assurance of getting a pass into the afterlife. As you put it:

'EVEN SATAN believes in GOD'

In other words, arguing that merely believing in God, like my friend John Phillips the Spiritual scholar does, isn't enough. So now, what? Satan doesn't believe in God? Make up your mind, my friend! I know it's hard but sheesh, this is getting ridiculous.

Not known for his appreciation of irony he bloviates on:

"If we told them ( the atheists ) that we believe in "Peter Pan," would they DENY HIS existence as vehemently as they deny God's ? If not , WHY ? "

Well, uh....doh....let's see, maybe because:

- There is no 'Peter Pan' Bible you could use to justify condemning us to "Hell" for not believing in Peter Pan

- you wouldn't use Peter Panism to justify killing abortion providers.

- you wouldn't use Peter Panism to justify the biblical edict to kill homosexuals (or wait, should we not take that literally?)

- you wouldn't use Peter Panism to try to do an end run around our secularist government and install a Peter Pan-ocracy forcing all legislators to wear tights and try to fly - probably off the tops of the Capitol Bldg. .

Oh, and by the way, we don't "deny" God, we simply withhold acceptance of the claim YOU make that this allegedly all powerful entity exists which won't even lift a finger to stop natural holocausts, or spare innocents in man made ones. He acts like the bystanders in New York City a month ago who just stood by and watched as a guy was stabbed multiple times. Nice useful deity there! But again, if It doesn't act when needed what's the point? (As those seven little girls in Ala. back in 1994 who ran into a church during a tornado expecting succor, and the tornado blew it up, killing them. Hell, It won't even protect innocent kids in Its or "His" own house!)

Again our innominate would-be attacker goes on:

"I have also mentioned in past posts that it is impossible to "prove" the existence of God beyond the fact itself and beyond the overwhelming evidence in all of God’s creation . "

What? Where in all creation? Give examples! What you provided here is a naive child's answer. No details, no specifics. We are just to look at Sun, Moon and stars and gasp....'Ohhhhh.....ahhha...it must be.....GOD!'

But what about dark energy, maestro? The 73% of the universe we know is now ripping it apart. HOW do you process or see God in that "creation"? How do you account for the fact this God can't even control his so-called Earthly creation to the point he couldn't even manufacture a planet that didn't have earthquakes, so those quarter million Haitians didn't have to bite the dust?

Overwhelming evidence my ass. All you have is imaginary pseudo evidence of the most meager type designed to satisfy a meager intellect. But nothing substantial.

You tell me how exactly dark energy discloses this overwhelming evidence, and I might take you 10% more seriously, as opposed to a deluded bloviator.



"However , the type of challenge atheists make to Christians is both foolish and an impossible task "

Nope, not at all. You're just plain old lazy! I don't want ironclad proof at all, just basic explanations, and you could throw in those necessary and sufficient conditions for your claimed entity to exist, so we can isolate it from all the other gods that all the other religions claim are real and working wonders.


He now resorts to the liar tactic:

"What the defense attorneys do is cleverly discount the evidence in the minds of the jurors and shift focus from the overwhelming evidence to challenging the prosecutor to prove their client’s guilt to the jurors beyond the evidence"

That's nonsense and as a former cop you ought to know better than that. FYI, the legal standard in any court is to show guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" - not "beyond the evidence". Beyond a reasonable doubt means what it says. Unless the prosecutors can prove guilt beyond what a normal person would consider reasonable doubt, the defendant is not guilty. But I guess in a theocracy you'd be happier because you could just get a theocratic court to declare guilt then stone the poor SOB to death without the fuss and muss of juries.

Not one to be perturbed by intrinsic levels of verbal absurdity, he continues- and this one is classic:

"All atheists think in this deceptive manner. They think since they deny the existence of God, they cannot hate Him. But its really the other way around: they KNOW He exists, that's WHY they hate Him. It is true that you cannot truly hate someone who does not exist. However , atheists rationalize that the only existence of God is the "false god"

Of course, this is so off the wall it barely merits the dignity of response. But because so many people often believe gibberish if repeated often enough (like the tea partyers believing Obama is a Nazi), it does need to be addressed.

As noted earlier, we "deny" no existence of any deity. We are making no active claim and that includes denial.

If a neighbor runs to my door and claims an eight foot tall invisible alien is hiding in his attic and I reject that claim unless he shows me evidence am I "denying the existence of the invisible 8' alien"?

Of course not! Common sense informs that. One cannot "deny" an a priori addition to existing physical reality which has not been supported, and is merely claimed. That's because common sense also recognizes that the ball is in the claimant's court, not the one to whom he professes his claim. After all, "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence".

Nor is it enough for the alien claimant to bring me George Adamski's (1950) book on giant aliens as a kind of bible to offer me "evidence". No, that will not do! He is obliged to show me actual hands on evidence I can see or admit he has nothing convincing. This is even more applicable to a claimant for an "infinite, all powerful, omnipresent supernatural entity" that is alleged to be able to do anything - yet can't even lift a pinky finger to save one innocent child being tossed into Hitler's ovens, or 7 little girls seeking shelter from a tornado inside a CHURCH! (If not protected THERE, in HIS house, then when, maestro? WHEN???)

So no, we don't "hate God" any more than the neighbor's claimed 8' invisible alien hiding in his attic (Well, the attic is only 2.5' high but heck, the alien is invisible!) We merely say to the claimant, 'show us the money'....errr. ....evidence.... or at least give us the necessary and sufficient conditions for it to exist. If you can't even do that, you're talking no more substance than a wino drowning in Ripple and blabbering about monster spiders chasing him.

But this is a common straw man tactic because the lazy and incompetent fundagelicals are incapable of making their case for their invisible claim in any compelling way. At least this one is.

And pardon me, but if a guy doesn't even understand what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means and he confuses it with "beyond all evidence" - why should we take him seriously at all? He clearly can't discriminate between thesholds of evidence, so in any case wouldn't even know a God if it came to him and bit him in the a$$.

But this is the level of debate we have, though the fundie whines:

"A few atheists have invited or challenged me to debate with them about the existence of God , which I did do when I started this blog back in April , 2009 (which btw , they are still there on here in the archives in their entirety ) , but I now always turn down such invitations. The reason being is that such a debate is like them denying their own existence and me debating with them about their true existence."


Hmmmm.....denying his god is like denying our "true existence"? By which I presume he means our physical life and existence which we can instantly verify (we eat, reproduce, build tall structures, rockets ....and whoa! Even save kids trapped in burning homes or apts!)

In other words, he conflates our actual hands on, visibly and tangibly REAL existence with his imaginary being's existence, that he claims to be overwhelmingly evident except that it can't act on behalf of innocents!

I guess in that case, there's an easy way to resolve this debate once and for all: Do like the Hindus do and just accept we're each manifestations of God! Then our "true existence" and God's are one and the same! And you can go home and find something more constructive to do than pick fights with atheists you can't win.

If he doesn't like that, the fundie will have to go one better and clearly show us how his claimed deity has existence apart from us. (And no, citing chapter and verse in your KJV won't cut it! But giving those n-s conditions would at least be a start, as opposed to perpetually running from the simple demand.)

But it's doubtful he'll deliver as he's been unable to on anything else! He does like to bloviate, however!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull, Some have weird names , and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box .............................................................

Caleb Shay said...

Wen Ho Cho (?) wrote: We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull, Some have weird names , and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box

Yeah, right, except for one little thing you forgot: humans aren't crayons!

Crayons are non-sentient. And passive unless acted upon by some outside agent (human? Wind?)

Crayons would never even "think" of making atheist crayons register like "sex offenders" just for disbelief.

Well, what am I saying? Crayons can't think anyway!

Nice koan though!