Thursday, October 27, 2011

From PZ's Place: Peter Wagenaar, on Why I Am An Atheist:

I’m an atheist because I see no reason not to be. There is no compelling evidence for the existence of God(s) – and an awful lot to the contrary. Added to which, I don’t need “God” – whatever that really means – to validate the life I have now. Its worth is also not dependent on a future eternal after-party at what you once described so beautifully as a “Disneyland in the sky for dead people”.

I’ve often joked that after 2000+ years and any number of ‘second coming’ predictions, we can safely assume that Jesus is a ‘no show’. But maybe the following innocent comment from my three-year-old niece shows up the sheer ridiculousness of religious belief better than any lengthy treatise I might write: “Why do we have to pray? Doesn’t Jesus have a phone?”
Peter Wagenaar
South Africa

At least Wagenaar makes the claim that there is ”no compelling evidence for the existence of God(s) – and an awful lot to the contrary.”

But unfortunately, that is just an allusion; there is no information given on what information he has “to the contrary”. But it is doubtful that he has proven empirically that no deity can exist, or else he would share his experimental data with us. Instead he shares jokes; three jokes in two paragraphs.

Mostly he just doesn’t need any deity for any reason; he is independent and like many of the others, he is free. We are left to wonder what sort of logic he used, or uses, based on his reasons “To Be An Atheist”. Likely to be "free thought" or "free logic", I'd guess. Or maybe just jokes.

1 comment:

ahmed said...

Exactly. The love calling themselves "freethinkers" when what they actually are free-from-thinking. The fact you mentioned of them having no grounding for anything explains what "free" in their terms means.