Nugent at the Irish Times Starts to Explain Atheism to Us

”Atheists reject the idea of personal gods as moral guides or lawgivers. We do not get our morality from books such as the Bible and the Koran, regardless of whether we read these books literally or metaphorically.

“Instead, we apply our own sense of morality to the passages that we read in these books, and not the other way around. At best, you can use the supposed words of a god to selectively vindicate your existing sense of right and wrong, but not to get your sense of right and wrong.

“In recent centuries, at least in the western world, science has weakened the idea of gods as intervening supernatural beings, and secular democracy has weakened the idea of gods as moral guides.

“And so a growing number of religious people are redefining the idea of god to mean an impersonal force, or a set of universal values such as love and goodness, or even suggesting that the laws of nature are god.

“Atheists agree that there are impersonal forces in the universe, and that values such as love and goodness are part of our experiences as human beings.

”But describing such natural phenomena as “god” creates an illusion that there is a wider acceptance of the idea of a personal intervening god, because it uses the same label to describe a very different type of idea.

“In the coming weeks I will focus on atheism as a response to, and a rejection of, the idea that one or more personal gods exist as a supernatural source of reality and morality.”

Michael Nugent and the Irishtimes.com

The Irish Times carries quite a few articles about or by Atheists. This one is just an introduction to future articles which this author intends to submit. However, it gives a feel for the type of logic which will be used.

For example, the Atheist will use his own ethically superior opinion to interpret the “religious ethics” contained in (conflating these works) the bible and the Koran. Presumably the Atheist’s ethics are the last word in rational morality, or at least they are “true for him”. So there actually is no need to read any other source, because the Atheist is his own source.

Nothing new here: it’s the old reason why no one trusts an Atheist. His ethics are not those of any particular standard, they are merely of his own concoction, a concoction which he thinks is morally superior to all other sources. What that concoction consists of, and what it might be tomorrow is unknown. How are we to trust anyone who concocts his own morals?

The second thing to notice in this introduction is the idea that “growing numbers of religious people” think that “love is God” or that "natural laws are God". No data for this assertion, we are merely required to believe it, and its implication that it is representative of all religious people. Rather, why not try to understand the basics of theology and discuss that? Why restrict Atheist discussion to a suspect definition, off in a corner that might not even exist? Because it is easier to straw man and show victory over nothing.

It is quite common for Atheists to arrogate that they know exactly what every religion is all about and that all religions are all about the same thing. Frequently that thing is a trivial part of some remote human-derived ecclesiasticism. But it is designated “evil” in the Atheist’s personal system of morality-du-jour, and attacked as if it is a significant finding against theism. This author will likely continue this trend, so we will watch for references to the presumed characteristics of Islam projected onto Christianity, and the presumed characteristics of “fundamentalists” projected onto all followers of Christ. After all, it is Christianity that Atheists hate and fear the most, and it is Christianity that they mean when they say “religion”.

As for “changing their minds when evidence is produced showing they are wrong”, we will also watch for his definition of acceptable evidence. Since the usual tactic for Atheists is to use “rational” (actually rationalized) arguments in their favor, but to reject rational arguments against their position, we will watch for that too.

There is hardly ever anything new in Atheistville. It’s generally the same reheated stuff that they’ve believed for eons. We’ll see if that’s the case with Nugent, too.