A Freethinker Freethinks

From the Freethinker in the UK:

"In the UK we have “hard-line atheist” Martin Rowson, an illustrator, political cartoonist and comic artist. He describes himself thus on the National Secular Society website:

“As a hard-line atheist I have severe problems with the notion of Christian morality. Indeed, morality in general often strikes me as one of the more dangerous human attributes, empowering the self-proclaimed moralist to descend into levels of almost bestial immorality.

As far as I’m concerned, religion is the proper subject not for theologians but for anthropologists, sociologists and even biologists. Quite apart from the obvious shortcomings of religion – its misleading simplicity, exclusivity, intolerance, inadaptability, obscurantism and so much else – it’s also clearly and demonstrably wrong.

The fact that this is almost a matter of faith with me is, I know, rather ironic, but it also means that I simply cannot understand why billions of my follow human beings persist in choosing to be deluded into continuing to believe in their own chosen deity when it plainly doesn’t exist as anything more than a comforting extension of themselves.”

Let’s see. He has problems with Christian morality, and morality in general is “one of the more dangerous human attributes”. Should we take this position to the limit, under Reductio Ad Absurdum? Yes, let’s. The contrary to morality is not immorality it is amorality, and that equates to the old Darwinian “red in tooth and claw” evolutionary stance, certainly taken as the Reductio case. This renders him either dangerous or merely irrational; possibly both. What he probably actually had in mind is that he doesn’t want any rules in his life, period. But neither did the 20th century Atheist totalitarians.

So he launches into as many insults as he can muster to describe the onerous characteristics of “religion” – meaning just Christianity, undoubtedly – and then concludes that it is “clearly and demonstrably wrong”.

Really? Just taking the claim of “demonstrably wrong”, how does he justify that claim? Not only does he not (he doesn’t need to, since the intended audience is of like-minded drones, all “freethinking” the exact same thoughts), but he admits that it is a “matter of faith” to him. This astonishing admission of the religious fundamentalism in his own worldview is uncommon in Atheists, and might cause him to lose his “A” tattoo if he’s not careful. So he tries to level out that heresy by undertaking one more dismissive claim: it is “plainly” true that… well, it doesn’t matter, does it, since this is an admission of faith, of pure opinion, without a shred of evidence or logic, and without a single quantum of actual support for his position. He is attempting to create an axiom, but it is plainly true only to certain types, not to all or even most humans. So that fails, except as a personal gripe, untethered by any reasoning. He seemingly wants to be known as a curmudgeon but he also seemingly lacks everything which made up a Christopher Hitchens. And that is plainly the case.