From PZ's Place: Cody Feldman, on Why I Am An Atheist:

"I grew up in a town in southeastern Idaho. Where Mormons outnumber the “real Christians”. I was raised a Methodist, and we always made fun of the Mormons but I never looked at my own beliefs to think that maybe they are as unwarranted as the Mormons. At the age of 19 my father died of esophageal cancer and I still believed. I believed that God was real and Jesus was real but he didn’t do anything to help. His days of miracles were over.

I went away to a community college in Kansas and friends there were believers. I wanted to know what they knew so I tried to wash away my beliefs and start fresh. I started listening to other people’s beliefs and enrolled in a class titled “Biblical Archeology”. Hoping that it would help solidify my beliefs in the historical accuracy of the bible and then I could start to accept the words of the bible.

I am not the outspoken person I am today, another benefit of my atheism. So I sat in class and listened. I tried to take it all in even though 99% of everything the instructor said made no sense. I wanted the class to show me what was found in the archeological records and then show how that is related to the bible. Instead the class showed what the bible said and then desperately searched for something that could possibly be related to it. The final straw was a piece of wood found in China that was said to be part of the Ark. A quick internet search showed it to be a forgery.

Out went the bible and in came a flood of authors. Hitchens, Dawkins, Krauss, Coyne, and soon to be P. Zed. I am going back to school and majoring in Ecology. Thanks to just a little bit of critical thinking and a nudge from the god believers themselves. And I thank every atheist author and blogger that always had things for me read or listen to so that I didn’t have to use more than reason to figure out what was going on in the world.
Cody Feldman
Idaho, United States

A single teacher in a single class destroyed this person’s worldview? Can a worldview actually be that fragile? In reaction to this teacher, rather than reflect on whether the teacher is a rational reflection of the worldview, Feldman rejected everything. Then he looked for Truth from the opposition.

The Atheist book market offers a considerable field of “critical thinking” books. These books promote a bastardized version of critical thinking that is essentially Skepticism packaged as rationality. Under Atheist Critical Thinking, the idea is to be critical. It’s that simple. Criticize. And acquire the presumption of Philosophical Materialism, which is beyond criticism and is the basis for your worldview.

Skepticism, of course, cannot be defeated because it makes this demand, over and over, in response to every subject with which it takes issue:

”You can’t know that; you must provide scientific proof!” (Note 1)

One of the off-limits topics for Atheist Critical Thinkers is science itself; one cannot mention the contingent nature of science, nor its dependency on Induction / deduction and the associated Inductive fallacy, nor the inability of science to deal with non-physical subjects, nor the opportunity for internal fraud when science is publicly funded by politicians with an agenda, etc and etc.

Those who are educated only by Atheist books are never introduced to actual principles of logic, the actual process of honest rational thought or the pursuit of something which is True, or even the possibility of an objective (non-subjective) incorrigible Truth which supercedes personal opinion and Atheist books.

This appears to be the state in which Feldman exists presently. His final statement is a position of intellectual dependency on worldview pimps, rather than on personal development of analytical techniques based on logic. And he is grateful to the worldview pimps, and considers his dependency on them as “reason”.

Notes:
1. This position is self-defeating. It cannot be used as a principle to provide proof of Atheism, or of Philosophical Materialism, or of any pseudo-moral position which an Atheist might claim. Demands of proof made from within a worldview which cannot be proved itself is paradoxical: it violates the Principle of Non-Contradiction and is non-coherent.