Points Requiring Emphasis, First Addendum

Here are some points that might be getting lost in the shimmering heat of Atheist wit and riposte:

1. This blog is about Atheism, and whether it is a rational position and can be defended using disciplined logical processes and/or empirical experimental data. This blog is not about Theism, although Atheist concepts of basic Theist positions must be corrected from time to time. So this blog is focused and asymmetrical.

2. Atheism has consequences. For example, Atheists cannot generate trust based on the Atheist Moral Code which doesn’t exist. If one knows only that a person is an Atheist, a lack of trust in that person is a rational position to take, even for other Atheists.

Atheists recoil in horror at this consequence, and declare it to be hate speech; but they present no contrary position which they can defend.

There are other consequences such as the common denial of absolutes, which eliminates any truth value for Atheist positions. This includes the elimination, a la Nietzsche, of good and evil, except as redefined by the individual Atheist. In general, evil is thought not to actually exist, except by the Theist God, which the Atheists presume the personal moral authority to judge.

Also eliminated along with absolutes is the submission to disciplined, logical deductive rules for argumentation. Submission to anything other than self becomes anathema, unless one could get arrested for it, and in that case Atheists see themselves as "good". Refusal to submit to overarching rules of logic results in (again Nietzschean) anti-rationalism. So rationalization becomes dominant, along with personal attacks and ridicule.

3. Because Atheism is only about rejection and rejectionism, it presents no positive characteristics in and of itself. (Total freedom from absolutes is not a positive characteristic). In fact, the commonly held list of beneficial character traits is frequently held as religious bias, and also too hard for some people and therefore discriminatory.

4. A rejection of a proposition requires a reason for rejecting that proposition; if there is no reason given, or if giving a reason is refused, then that rejection is seen as capricious opinion without a rational basis, and therefore is dogmatic faith based only on ornery rejectionism and nothing more.

5. Atheists who wish to defend their rejection of the Theist proposition are invited to make their case by engaging in the logic of their reasons for rejecting the proposition, and/or presenting the empirical data which they use to make their rejection decisive.

6. Attacking the writers who comment and post here is not an argument; it is a childish, petulant, logical fallacy.

7. Ridicule is not an argument.

8. I frequently view Nietzsche as perhaps the only honest Atheist. He declared his rejections and then he acknowledged the consequences of those rejections. Modern Atheists wish to avoid even claiming their rejectionism, much less admitting that there are any consequences. Compared to Neitzsche, that denial is intellectual cowardice and is totally trivial.

9. Atheist arguments which are based on their assessment of the morality of any proposition, person or deity are to be immediately rejected. This is based on the obvious lack of a moral position which inheres in Atheism as a basis for making moral judgments. Any moral declaration by an Atheist is not based on Atheism, it is based on personal opinion, which has been fabricated by some human, possibly himself, as to what morality must be in his view. Atheists have no moral authority to make moral decisions for any human other than for themselves. And most absurdly, to make moral declarations on an existing deity is the highest possible folly; to make moral declarations on a non-existent, fictional deity is merely literary criticism done without literary knowledge and on a faux moral basis.

These are some of the main points, and there are probably more. I should update this, adding as time progresses. I’ll try to remember to do that.

Addendum:
Added point 9.