1. Congratulations on becoming an atheist! You are now in possession of what is, to the extent that the concept is meaningful at all, the only ‘correct’ theological position: none.”This is blatantly false: they have a specific theological position. they just don't want to defend it with logic or evidence, because they cannot.
2. You will have noticed that a great many people take different positions, ones which are more or less fantastical, brutal, humourless, ill-defined, bigoted, intolerant, antiquated, misogynistic and flat-out idiotic.Could there possibly be a more prejudicial statement of non-fact? In fact, a position of hate speech, not of fact. But it is trumped by the following:
All these people take issue with the fact that there is no god. But many of them also take issue with homosexuality, evolution, the scientific method, sex for fun, other people taking different positions, women doing anything other than what they’re told, girls not having their genitals mutilated, predatory priests being subject to the law of the land, contraception, divorce, and drawing pictures of illiterate medieval nomads.
3. “We’re not denying that it’s fun to lambaste Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus for the silliness or toxicity of their beliefs. And it’s always comforting to have your own opinions validated. We do, however, suggest that you ask yourself the following important question:And it is the most egregiously false implication which can be made regarding Atheism, given that Atheism is the fundamental ideology behind the slaughters of hundreds of millions of innocent humans in the last century. This Atheist claim is the biggest lie possible. It almost makes the rest of the article ignorable in comparison to the falseness of this one point.
Are you content to be the type of atheist who spends her limited time agreeing with other atheists about how dumb religion is, or do you genuinely believe that atheism is a benevolent force which can mitigate the spectacular horrors humans visit on other humans?
This is the most fundamental decision you’ll ever make about your faithlessness.”
But let’s continue anyway.
4. “Let’s face it. In many cases, even the most polite and measured and mutually respectful conversation between an atheist and a religionist is a waste of time for both sides. The atheist will argue from logic and empirical evidence or lack thereof. Revealed religion operates through unquestioned articles of faith, so the believer will argue from tradition, authority, and that most impregnable of fortresses, nothing at all. The whole point of mystical faith is that you believe despite the illogic, the lack of evidence, the endemic inconsistencies in what is believed.”The cartoon of Atheism being rational (It is merely empty rejection without having to give any reasoning: “being without theist belief” is the dodge), is followed by the surreal cartoon of theism and theists which presumes that both the author and his readers never have and never will encounter an intelligent theist. The basis for this is either incredible ignorance or it is an insult intended for an audience which is presumed ignorant.
5. “From the lavish fastness of a Western middle-class life, tap-tapping on your iPad as you sip chai latte in your heated, ventilated, plumbed and electrified crib, luxuriating in the consequences of tertiary education and state-of-the-art healthcare, it is easy to the point of effortlessness to dismiss religion. Life, the catalogue of first-world problems you bemoan and are consoled about online notwithstanding, is preposterously good.”Here the meaning of life is defined for the novice Atheist, “scientific wonder, sensual delight and artistic diversion”, as if this is all that there is that matters in life. But first it is contrasted with the obligatory literalist dogmatic reading of the Old Testament as being the necessary God which theism is all about. So in the Atheist cartoon context (evil does not exist), God is the exception: maximally evil, at least in cartoon form.
It has been demonstrated that when life is effortless, humans think they must have created it. Same with tertiary education, where one seeks to know everything about a minute slice of physical reality.
“Why would anyone in her right mind buy the whole Abrahamic shell-game of a paranoid, sex-obsessed, egomaniacal God looking down on His contemptible flock (which He created in his own image) with alternating fury and indifference? Why fixate on a notional afterlife for which there is no evidence at all, when actual life is so replete with scientific wonder, sensual delight and artistic diversion?”
“When immanent life is literally unbearable, the act of grabbing at any available hope of something better is not a choice; it’s a reflex. The idea of a numinous sequel, in which wrongs are righted and the grimy slog of subsistence on the material plane made retroactively worthwhile, is too seductive to decline. Moreover, it’s logical. Given the reasonable assumption that the motivation behind all human activity is to maximise personal pleasure and minimise pain, having in mind the prospect of a hereafter, however fictional or absurd or dumb it may seem from your lush remove, makes the subjective difference between a life worth living and one as pointless and tragic as an unheard scream.”Theism is now defined as merely a grasping at a meaning which doesn’t exist. At least that is the claim here. The proof? Well, this claim needs no proof because it is just another cartoon, a caricature of theism in the form of yet another Straw Man in the list of Straw Men being set up here. Proof is not necessary in the business of propaganda.
6. “Multiple studies have shown a strong correlation between standards of education and prevalence of atheism. It seems that the more people know, the less they believe.”The correlation is not a valid one. A similar correlation can be (has been) made regarding Atheism as emotional incontinence, an impairing addiction acquired as a juvenile when the the frontal lobe is yet undeveloped.
Atheism is trivially small in American society, a society which is either presumably well educated, or if necessary to the cartoon, poorly educated (in leftist secular-Atheist government schools). Either way, Atheism does not do well in the argument from education. In spectacularly narrowly educated academia, the Atheists and Leftists are self-selected by a cloistered system which rejects non-congruent thought. But these are not the only highly educated humans, regardless of what they might think.
7. “Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Schrödinger didn’t make their discoveries just to thumb their noses at the almighty. They followed their constitutional yen for truth, found some astonishing stuff, and along the way happened to blast gaping holes in the walls of heliocentric/anthropocentric theology.”Theology in no way depends upon physical phenomena as fundamental to its precepts. The discovery of physical laws in no manner describes any necessity for the existence of those laws, a necessity which violates the null proposition of there being nothing, no universe, and no laws at all, which is more parsimonious, yet is not the case. The human discovery of the existence of laws, and the creation of those laws along with the creation of the universe, in turn blasts gaping holes in Atheist Materialism. And the assertion of Materialist Scientism as a fundament of existence is an immature intellectual Category Error which is itself not provable under its own rules, and thus is internally incoherent.
8. “Atheism advances subtly, hitching itself to the wagon of knowledge. It grows, slowly but surely, in soil fertilised by tolerance, education and compassion.”False, false and false. Atheism is nothing but denialism with no proof possible for its denial, hence it is an unfalsifiable religion. The “knowledge” it accepts is merely contingent in the form of current scientific claims, most of which are demonstrable false these days, and all of which are subject to being overthrown by future technology and more refined findings. That is hardly a basis for creating a true worldview and moral code. In fact, Atheism is the least tolerant of all religions, including Islam. Atheists are demanding a totally Atheist government, despite being a tiny fragment of the population, a pursuit that not even Muslims indulge. Atheists in academia discriminate against the Other.
Atheists tend heavily if not exclusively to the political Left, where they pursue the messiahist domination of both their designated Victim Class and their designated Oppressor Class. Hardly compassionate for either of their Classism foes.
As Leftist, Atheist education has reduced American education to malpractice on a wide scale, producing maleducated and ignorant adults for several generations now. Historical revisionism and historical surgical removal of much of American and world history in favor of minority elevation and enhancement studies – such as homosexual hero studies required by law in CA – have reduced the American public to victimized ignoramuses, i.e. perfect voters for the Atheist Left.
Atheism advances slowly by making ignorananti who actually believe that Atheists are tolerant, well educated, and compassionate, which amounts to believing their own lies as they are spread by the above. Most Atheists are made as cerebrally immature teens who are well into rejection mode anyway, and are far from having a fully developed frontal cortex. The addictive features of Atheism tend, like all addictions, to self-reinforce to the detriment of emotional development longer term; and as all addictions do, Atheism emotionally – not intellectually – rejects external control and self-discipline (this time the self-discipline of Aristotelian deductive logic and the humility to accept disciplined deductive conclusions regardless of ideological discomfort).
9. Finally I can’t ignore this piece of historical revisionism:
“…millennia of divergent geopolitical development in the Christian and Islamic empires (much of which involved the former violently colonising the latter)”…Only the most ignorant of children would accept this statement of egregious falsehood. Islamic hordes conquered north Africa and moved into Spain where they enslaved Christians. The Crusades were the response to that, as the Christian empire moved to free the Christian slaves from the Muslims, and to reclaim their land from the violent incursion of the Islamic invaders. The Atheist statement above is false, is inflammatory, and is ideologically motivated.
It is always interesting to observe the historical inversions which are necessary under Atheism, and its curious attachment to Islam, one of its designated Victim Classes under the current hate program against Israel. These compete with the cartoon god which Atheism has to create in order to "defeat". Atheism is truly intellectually challenged.
3 comments:
As far as I can tell, the tract is just one long ad hominem that assumes the Atheist rejection of everything held to be true - down through thousands of years by most of the wisest humans who ever lived - is simply wrong.
And it's wrong because they said so.
It casually accuses people neither the atheist or the prospective atheist has ever met - or ever intends to meet - of every horrible motive for their faith. As if the un-faith of the Atheist were somehow clean by virtue of its emphasis on self-worship.
- Christianity is false because the people who believe it are really too stupid and ridiculous for anything but raw contempt.
- And they are stupid and ridiculous because they are Christians.
I smell circular wishful thinking (it doesn't rise to the level of reasoning, as it is just one long emotional scream of "MINE!!!").
Furthermore, it drips of sarcasm worth of Jerry Seinfeld, the acknowledged master of post-modern irony (which is flippancy dressed up in a cheap suit). The joke is assumed by the tract writer to have already been made.
In reality, the only thing the tract assumes is that the target is as ignorant and willing to pursue power fantasies as the atheists pushing it.
In this day and age, with hordes voting in Obama and passing Obamacare under that old lure of 'something for nothing' (aka 'someone else will take it in the shorts while I get as much as I can grab'), the rubes are plentiful and ripe for this sort of trash.
I say let the atheist's precious Natural Selection do its work - the stupid always believe whatever flatters their egos, and in the end the corrupt always go down in ruin. It's not God taking revenge, it's not karma - it simply appears to be what happens to fallen souls who embrace the Nothing.
Almost like this world was built for such eventualities...
“Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Schrödinger didn’t make their discoveries just to thumb their noses at the almighty.
This atheist has deceptively tried to link these brilliant minds with atheism.
Copernicus and Galileo died as devout catholics.Darwin and Einstein were deists.There is some contention regarding Schrodinger's beliefs because he had some pro-atheist quotes and although he did reject traditional religious views,he did share some pro-dualism views also.
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
― Erwin Schrödinger
The apparent contradiction of his views could be cleared up if we knew the timeline of the pro-atheist and pro-dualism quotes.Which came first - the former or the latter?
Simply consider this:
“Atheism: being without theist belief”.
If that's all there is to it, then whence the self-congratulatory nature and call to action in the rest of this piece?
Consider the question:
... do you genuinely believe that atheism is a benevolent force which can mitigate the spectacular horrors humans visit on other humans?
(Never mind the resounding historical answer in the negative from the twentieth century...)
"Being without theistic beliefs" does not contain nor impart any force whatsoever, simply because it is an ABSENCE (at least according to the "Brights" who chirp that evasion so cheerily).
Perhaps the writer missed that old philosophical thesis argued by Parmenides, to wit, "ex nihilo nihil fit". Since it is obvious that the writer is historically deficient, that would be "Nothing comes from nothing."
"Nothing" to see or say here; moving right along...
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