Greta Christina’s Pretentious Pseudo-Evidentialism

Famous lesbian/Atheist Greta Christina pretends to create scenarios that would convince her to leave Atheism for theism. Her convicting instances are as she summarizes toward the end of a very long list of what would not convince her, which can be summarized thus: nothing theists can actually offer. Her list is here:

“The whole reason I don't believe in God is that every piece of evidence anyone has ever shown me in support of the God hypothesis has completely sucked. The whole reason I don't believe in God is that these criteria -- criteria that would be completely reasonable for any other hypothesis -- are not being met.

As many atheists point out: If God were real, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If God were real, it would be freaking obvious. If God were real, nobody would be an atheist. Nobody would even disagree about religion. The most obvious explanation for God's existence not being ridiculously self-evident is that God does not exist. As Julia Sweeney says in her brilliant performance piece Letting Go of God, "The world behaves exactly as you expect it would, if there were no Supreme Being, no Supreme Consciousness, and no supernatural."

And it's absurd to argue that this bar is too high. If God were real -- if there really were a God who created the universe and/or intervenes with it magically -- none of this would be beyond him. I mean -- he created the entire, 93- billion- light- years- across universe out of nothing! Surely he could make hundred-foot-high letters appear in the sky, or create a sacred text with scientific and prophetic accuracy, or consistently answer the prayers of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod! To argue that any bar is too high for him, that any standard of evidence is too rigorous for him, is ridiculous on the face of it.

Besides, just because God hasn't offered these pieces of evidence so far doesn't mean he never will. Maybe he'll decide that he tried sending his message with the flood, and he tried again with Jesus... but obviously none of that worked, humans can be kind of thick-headed sometimes. So hey, why not try that "hundred-foot letters in the sky" thing this atheist chick keeps gassing on about?

If he does, I'll change my mind.

In the meantime, I remain unconvinced.”

Well, only a small part of that is her list of what would convince her. Like the rest of her article, what she mostly is on about is stuff that cannot convince her. Why? Well, because she rejects it using various inapplicable standards such as “falsifiability” (which she obviously doesn’t comprehend), vague references to Materialism and Scientism, and “completely sucked” as logical arguments.

So let’s trim all that off the carcass and look at the three main things which would, in her terms, convince her of the existence of a deity.

First is her need for hundred foot high letters in the sky, readable in all languages, visible to all humans presumably simultaneously. This is one form of the “cheeseburger demand”:

The Atheist Cheeseburger Demand: if I were God, I would perform to the specified demand of some random Atheist denialist, to provide him with a material sign of his designation (e.g. hand him a cheeseburger on demand) just so that he will quit vilifying me and my existence. Yes, indeed; I would bend over backwards just to meet this one denialist’s demands on me. Why? Well, remember, I AM the denialist who is pretending to be God and know what God SHOULD do.

Unfortunately, pretending to be God and pretending to know what God SHOULD do has no possible bearing and no logical bearing on what an actual deity SHOULD do. This (circular) argument is one indication of an intellectual immaturity which is almost spectacular to behold.

Second, Christina demands a “sacred text with scientific and prophetic accuracy”. Christina is obviously a religious Scientismist blind-belief holder, who doesn’t understand science in the least but regardless, uses it as if it were an intellectual weapon. But this is akin to not knowing which end of a gun to point yet pulling the trigger anyway. Greta, science is never “true” and is never to be taken as “true”; it is always and forever contingent. So there is no point in demanding that scientific truth be prophesied; that demand is absurd. Further, the demand for such from a literature which does not pretend to do so is irrational.

The second part of her demand is based in a selective belief in historicity: If a prophesy of X was made, and later X actually happened, then the prophesy was valid. But all that is in the past; it is historical and we must either believe the history to be accurate or not believe it to be accurate. She said she would believe that if it were presented to her. Christians point to all the prophesies in the Old Testament which the birth, life and death of Jesus fulfilled. Undoubtedly Christina will not accept that, and will find excuses not to. But the fact remains that her specific demand has at least one documented instance of fulfillment. I suspect that her next caveat would be a demand for empirical validation, a demand which by its nature would nullify any claim of belief in historicity which is not susceptible to empirical replicative testing, and which then nullifies the premise of her whole demand.

Her third demand is that God “consistently answer the prayers of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod”. Her presumptions here are that God has NOT answered the prayers of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and that the deity considers their prayers deserving to be answered with affirmation of a material nature, with the affirmation available for Christina’s personal observation and validation. Both presuppositions are necessarily false, since Christina cannot possibly know either of those to be true. But what Christina was actually doing here was taking a casual shot at prayer under the presumption of its ineffectivity, purely for the benefit of her Atheist minions.

Christina has blustered confidently in her presupposed knowledge of what a God should do for her, specifically for her, in order that she believe the most basic and fundamental aspect – the deity’s existence. But every case she has given here is predicated on her a priori knowledge of what a deity is, and how her deity SHOULD behave, not on any attempted understanding an actual deity.

But she also addresses how her deity WOULD behave if her deity existed:

“As many atheists point out: If God were real, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If God were real, it would be freaking obvious. If God were real, nobody would be an atheist. Nobody would even disagree about religion. The most obvious explanation for God's existence not being ridiculously self-evident is that God does not exist. As Julia Sweeney says in her brilliant performance piece Letting Go of God, ‘The world behaves exactly as you expect it would, if there were no Supreme Being, no Supreme Consciousness, and no supernatural.’”

Actually, the physicalist universe and everything in it would be purely deterministic in its behaviors. That means that there would be no free will, no agency, no intellect, no creativity, no qualia, no appreciation for music because there would be no music, etc. There is no possible deduction which can proceed from the physical laws of deterministic mineral behavior to the non-deterministic behaviors of living creatures. Even Schrödinger’s “negentropy” theory of life cannot account for the non-determinism or the intricacy of the necessary complexities simultaneously inherent in the most simple of living creatures, and especially including first life.

So the Atheist complaint that a deity is not self-evident, that the universe is exactly as one would expect a purely material universe to be, is blindingly and necessarily false.

Christina is not a philosopher, not a logician, not even a diligent Atheist apologist. Her main appeal is that she is a lesbian who talks as if she knows something about which she speaks. There is always a market for that amongst the perpetual ignoranti. But with an application of logical analysis and actual existential evidence, her claims fall as if they were protons in the Hadron Collider, smashed to bits.

HT to JBSptfn for the link

Greta Christina Nukes a Black Atheist Clear Into a New Identity

A Black Atheist On Being Blocked By Greta Christina While Discussing Ferguson


"I’ve always respected Greta Christina immensely as a social justice warrior. I’ve never met her, but I’ve asked her for advice on a couple occasions and have generally liked what she had to say, although I haven’t always been sure about her apparent “my way or the highway” approach to social justice issues. I would like to think I believe in protecting the marginalized, but I also would like to be convinced, because I think that convincing arguments go further than mere shame, oftentimes, in making change happen (shame can be a useful tool, true, but I think convincing arguments need to be made, as well).

So when Greta Christina stated:
"There are some debates I am willing to have. The question of whether police should be able to shoot unarmed black men with their hands in the air, and not even get fucking indicted, is not one of them. If you want to have a calm, civil debate about this, save us all some time and stop following me right now. I don't want to have to say "Go fuck yourself, blocked" to every one of you."

I was a bit taken aback. Blind acceptance was not healthy, I thought -- it would hurt, rather than help, the rational argument that there were other very real, substantiated problems, and make it seem as if those that wanted these problems discussed were irrational ignorers of evidence. So I said something briefly -- and, in spite of the prior statement (and partly because no black individuals from the United States had yet seemed to comment on the situation), I thought there was a chance to make a difference with a relevant statement. I was sorely disappointed:
"

Christina has had her Messiah Narrative challenged by a designated Victimhood individual, one who thinks that Rush To Judgment based on racial prejudice might not be a good thing. Even if it satisfies the Oppressor Class/Victimhood Class Social Justice Moral needs of the AtheoLeft. That presents an unsolvable paradox for Christina: the Victimhood Class is always morally right no matter what; But this Victimhood Class individual is contradicting her Victimhood Narrative which is also morally right no matter what. The resulting mental collapse which Christina has is inevitable.

Undoubtedly Christina will continue with her demand for Social Justice, meaning that regardless of the situation, the black is always right and the white male is always wrong. And she will shut out of her mental landscape any thought that another black might also be right - that she is wrong.

Because here is the thing about being right: messiahs as a class are always right - always. So if they are challenged, even by a black, the black becomes an Oppressor, automatically. This black had his identity changed in the twinkling of Greta's keypad.

The Godless Perverts Social Club: Greta Christina Likes Pleasure

Greta Christina is taking her Atheism to its logical conclusion, not as Nietzsche did (logically), but this time claiming total valuelessness as a moral principle. Pride in the concept of hedonist, sexual, pan-freedom from all restraint, Christina is on a roll. (so to speak). Hedonism should be highly valued in Christina's social design for the rest of us. That requires, yes, Social Justice.

Complaining about religion is the full time pursuit of Christina, and her complaint here is that religious ascetism is holding her back. So she wants a society which is free from religious ascetism, which is otherwise known as self-control and sexual responsibility.

"And of course, in a culture where most people are sick, miserable, exhausted with over-work, with no time or energy to pursue pleasure, with no resources to pursue pleasure, just generally ground down by life, and with little or no hope for anything better, a religion that promises bliss in the next life as a reward for sacrifice in this one will have tremendous appeal.

I should mention that caricaturing religion into unrecognizable cartoons is a hobby for Christina. And so is searching for a society built around her crotch.

"So it occurred to me: If we want to create and maintain a secular society that values pleasure, we need to fight for social justice. We need to fight for a world in which sensual pleasure is not just a privilege available to the 1% at the top who can afford the pleasures and aren’t working themselves to exhaustion merely to survive. We need to fight for a world in which sensual pleasure — good food, comfortable homes, sex education, reproductive control, art and entertainment, pleasant and beautiful public spaces, time to enjoy our bodies, physical health care so our bodies can be enjoyed, mental health care so enjoyment is possible — is available to everyone.

We should do this anyway, just because it’s right — because bodies are something we all have, and basic enjoyment of those bodies should not be a special privilege accorded to the lucky few. But we should also do it because it will be a whole lot more sustainable. A culture that values pleasure — not as the only value of course, but as an important one and one worth pursuing — and that makes pleasure available to pretty much everyone… that’s a culture with a good chance of lasting. (I’m thinking, as I so often do, of Phil Zuckerman’s research in Society without God, showing that societies with high rates of atheism tend be ones with high rates of stability, egalitarianism, access to basic social services, and general happiness.)"

Hold on. Isn't Sweden a paradise for NON-Jews, but HELL for Jews? Would Jews be OK if they would just enjoy their bodies? What about China, Russia (Homosexuals in Russia? Really? Snowden is now preferring America prison to staying in Russia), Cuba, etc. Zuckerman is an ideologist, bent on ignoring the big picture in order to use dependent Scandinavians as examples for his rationalization.

American society is already focused entirely on itself. It has all the sex it wants, all the beer, alcohol, drugs it wants. The huge TVs showing more sex and libertinism. Cars to get to the malls. The normalization and protection of almost all sexual perversion. Porn on demand. Plenty of junk food. And restaurants are full every night of the week. Football, NASCAR and Pro Wrestling to substitute for gladiators. But that's not what Christina is all about, regardless of her deflection, above.

Christina wants shed of all hint of restraint anywhere in her society, even though she now has complete freedom of hedonism herself. No shadow of restraint can be tolerated. Social Justice must stamp it out.

But returning to the sex goddess:

"A culture that values pleasure, but only lets a few people have it, is not going to stick around. "

How did all this hedonist lifestyle workout for Greece? Rome? Never mind.

Christina is all about satisfying her own crotch within the confines of hating any interference in that pursuit, say religious-type constraints on behaviors. Libertinism is actually a social negative for several reasons, chief amongst which rank disease prevention and fidelity to a family core. Christina has an open relationship with her wife (or is it husband, I forget), which means do everyone and often, but live here. And that should be the basis for society, requiring Social Justice, as if American society actually had any restraints on Christina and her pal.

It's possible that, like many Leftist entertainers and Leftist "philosophers", Christina is merely pushing the envelope to garner outrage from her enemies and therefore the admiration of her fans, not to mention gaining a few extra hits on her Perverts website. She has managed her assaults in such a fashion that she cows other AtheoLeftists (Hemant Mehta caved to her outrage in a single day). In AtheoLeftist land, that is power, and it's the other, main, Nietzschean pursuit.

It's odd how we are forced to consider Christina's crotch with her every missive. It seems to be the main and possibly only focus in her life. She seems uninterested in anything else, unless it is the destruction of obstructions to considering her crotch.

Hat Tip to Anshuman Reddy

Greta Christina Publishes In Salon

I guess I can’t ignore this article by Greta Christina in Salon any more. Even though it is a cheap parody of religion, it seems to be getting some play around the ‘net. The initial thrust of the article is that the religious folk want the Atheist folk to lie about their Atheism. And to some small degree, and according to the anecdotes given, there could be some truth to that.

But the article goes on from there, with the fantasy that because religion cannot stand on its own, it relies on the consent of the religious victim; “social consent” it is called. For evidence of this the internet is given as a tool for increasing Atheism, and the evidence for that is the MIT study which says that religious unaffiliation is increasing as “mirrored by internet use”. The correlation as causation fallacy is implemented full on by denying any other correlative possibility, such as increased drug use and increased maleducation in government schools, for example.

Regardless, the need to have Atheists lie about their Atheism is attributed to the “Emperor’s New Clothes” syndrome, because no one wants to hear that their false belief is false.

Yet religiosity persists in the midst of a completely pagan media-driven social construction which now dominates TV, movies, advertisements, and print media, not to mention the entire Leftist political accumulation. The rise in Atheism is merely in single digit percentages of the population as a whole, despite the stealth advertising Atheism gets from its media.

If Atheism were robustly based in logic and evidence as claimed, then there would be no need for them to claim only to “have no theist belief”, which is so obviously a lie (they do have a belief: they believe it is false), and which is so obviously a dodge to get them relief from having to actually analyze theist propositions, using their self-vaunted logic and evidence. (It is blatantly obvious that Atheists have no compunction about lying; their underlying complaint is that they don't want to have to show any respect for theists or theism. As with Greta Christina, only contempt is to be proffered).

But Atheism is not robust; it is merely a VOID which is entered either in the childhood span of pre-development of the frontal cortex, or it is an excuse for justification of libertinism or the Nietzschean Will To Power. There is nothing more to Atheism than that.

If there were more to Atheism as a robust, unifying theory of existence, then surely Greta Christina could cough it up. But her thrust, as always, is to create false images to attack as if her straw men were actually representative of reasoned theism. Her religious position, Atheism, and her personal lifestyle depend on these attacks to be considered “true”, to be accepted, and not to be too closely examined. In other words, social consent: exactly what she claims about theism. Projection is a symptom of intellectual and emotional instability.

Greta Christina Has a New Book Out.

Greta Christina is all about hating religion and the religious and anyone not just like her, so she has a plan to get more people to be like her. Hemant Mehta "the Friendly Atheist" has printed a blurb from Christina's new book, "Coming Out Atheist". Christina's entire point is to "combat religion", as Hemant says, by denying yourself to religion. Here's Greta:

"Religion perpetuates itself through social consent.

And coming out atheist denies it that consent.

This, in my opinion, is one of the best reasons for atheists to come out. You don’t have to argue with people about their beliefs. If all you do is tell people “I’m an atheist,” you’re denying religion your social consent.

And as the years and decades roll on, this will have a snowball effect. The more of us there are who deny consent to religion, the harder it’ll be to ignore difficult questions about it, or to ignore the option of atheism. And as it gets harder to ignore difficult questions about religion, more people will become atheists… and as more people become atheists and come out about it… oh, you get the picture."

Sorta like a pyramid scheme, she thinks. But she lives in an atheist bubble, where she can't see the normal reaction to atheists:

"Oh, another person who has no fixed moral principles. Great."

Christina's atheism is functional and practical: she can't stand any criticism of her lesbian lifestyle, and she never neglects to use the term homophobia as often as she can. This time it's "faith healing and homophobia and stoning adulterers" which she connects to her opposition.

I am actually all for theists looking deeply and inquiringly into their beliefs. There is no need for believing blindly. That's for atheists, who cannot provide either any disciplined deductive logic or experimental empirical data which supports their claim of logic and evidence for their beliefs. Atheism starts with a void, empty of both logic and evidence as well as moral principles. From there, they make it up as they go. It's the Darwinian, inferential, story telling, inductive logic type of personal bias as truth. And that is all there is to Atheism.

Greta Christina and her wife visit the Mormon Tabernacle.

Atheist Greta Christina has taken on “All Religions” in an article at alternet, claiming that All Religions Are Equally Crazy.

”First, just to be very clear: I'm not saying all religious believers are crazy. I'm saying religious beliefs are crazy. I'm criticizing the ideas, not the people. And when I say "crazy" (or "nutty" or "batshit" or "lunatic" or what have you), I don't mean "literally, clinically mentally ill." I mean "crazy" in the colloquial sense -- radically out of step with cultural norms, or out of touch with reality.”

A religion should be in-step with cultural norms? Really? How can that assertion possibly be justified? Here, it is without justification.

As for reality, what exactly is Christina’s reality, where does it start and where does it stop? How exactly does she know? We shall watch for answers to these things as we go along.

”We're social animals, and we're wired to think that if everyone else thinks something, it's probably true. Or at the very least, that it's not batshit insane on the face of it, and we ought to give it serious consideration.”

This is just the set-up for the coming accusation that people have beliefs without evidence; people are too lazy and/or stupid to analyze the beliefs of other people, and just accept them uncritically.

”From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, this bias makes sense. Other people can, in fact, be a useful reality check: if everyone in your tribe is screaming "Tiger!" and you don't see one, it still makes sense to run. But it's a confounding bias to contend with when you're rigorously examining a truth claim. It makes it hard to voice unpopular perceptions... and indeed even to conceive of them. It's very, very difficult to be the first person to say out loud, "The Emperor has no clothes." It's even more difficult to say it to ourselves.”

Another step in the set-up. People are so subject to group mentality that they can’t think for themselves.

But she doesn’t defend the need for a religion to conform to cultural norms, she merely asserts that, and then declares that, if cultural norms are the metric, then Mormonism is a failure. And that’s it. There is no defense of the metric, she just uses it with the presumption that it makes sense. Possibly it does, to her (another of her opinions); but there is no reason given or rational case made for accepting that metric as a criterion for any religion. In fact, is generally the case that a culture will conform to the religion, not the other way around, and the standard Atheist charge is that religions are invented to control the populace, not that the culture drives religions. Christina is well off the Atheist ranch on this one.

”But if what you mean by "crazy" is "out of touch with reality"?
Then it's all equally crazy.
Any belief in a supernatural world that affects the natural one is equally implausible, equally the product of cognitive biases, equally unsupported by any good evidence.”

Christina asserts “implausibility” as if it were a universal truth rather than a personal opinion. But it actually is just her personal opinion, not an empirical fact. Christina does talk about evidence, and again hedges her opinion into it to make her personal judgment a mere opinion: it is “good” evidence that is missing, apparently not all or any evidence. And whatever it takes to make evidence “good” in her opinion is completely missing from the assertion.

Christina likes the term “cognitive bias”, which she uses to paint humans as nearly completely driven by prejudicial, almost deterministic responses, devoid of any analytical or critical thought processing. She makes this charge without any evidence for its support, it is merely a smear by implication. She uses the term often enough that one wonders if the concept she is pushing is actually a cognitive bias of her own. It seems impossible not to wonder if her own worldview is not driven largely by her lesbianism, a practice which is naturally at odds with virtually all religions except the new culturally-driven liberal pseudo-religions. That personal proclivity alone could produce cognitive bias against all religions, one would suspect. That might explain her view that other’s beliefs are actually their cognitive biases, because she is saddled with her own cognitive bias. After all, projection is another common human trait.

Nonetheless, Christina has produced accusations, or at least opinions, without any evidence. The idea that humans are susceptible to group think or that they cannot think critically is presented without evidence that it actually exists in every case she includes, and that it has actual causality for the cause and effect which Christina wants us to believe exists.

Christina has denied “good” evidence, without examining any actual evidence, and has produced no evidence to support her denial, nor any clue as to what she would accept as “good”. Christina has attributed falseness to cognitive bias without demonstrating actual cognitive bias, or demonstrating that falseness exists in the basic Theist propositions.

Christina has merely attacked ecclesiastic accoutrements which have accrued onto Theism, without even touching Theism itself. For her, if ecclesiastic claims do not meet her Philosophical Materialist standards, then religion is to be ridiculed (use the pejorative “magic” as many times as you can) and therefore, there is no god. But that is Non Sequitur, and blatantly so. Christina has not justified Atheism; in fact many Christ followers agree with many of her assessments of ecclesial additions to Theism.

”But all religions are out of touch with reality. All religions are implausible, based on cognitive biases, and unsupported by any good evidence whatsoever.”

This repetition seems to indicate that this is the extent of Christina’s charges: (1)implausible (opinion); (2)cognitive biases (unproven and certainly potentially applicable in the reverse); (3) no “good” evidence (another opinion: what is "good"?). These three charges seem to constitute her entire case, which she takes on as a dogma – a triune dogma of unproven assertions.

She has not developed an air tight case which falsifies basic Theism; she has merely asserted some of her own biases, without evidence other than that circumstantially regarding ecclesiasticism, not Theism.

And I just have to love this part:

”All of them ultimately rely on faith -- i.e., an irrational attachment to a pre-existing idea regardless of any evidence that contradicts it -- as the core foundation of their belief. “

Now is she talking about Philosophical Materialism, her own bias? Because that view of “reality” is aptly described by her own words here. And the internal contradiction of Philosophical Materialism qualifies as the “contradictory evidence” which she ignores regarding her own beliefs. Moreover, her own assertions (implausibility, cognitive bias, no “good” evidence) have had no evidence presented in their support, only implications of Guilt By Association, the Fallacy. In fact, should she ever read this, I challenge Christina to produce empirical, experimental, replicable and replicated, falsifiable and not falsified, peer reviewed scientific public data which refutes incorrigibly the claims made by the eyewitnesses to the miracle at Lourdes. That should keep her busy; or perhaps she will merely go into various denial tactics: we would see. Then she could explain what “good” evidence is in her opinion; she can produce empirical evidence for the cause and effect of the charges made in her triune dogma.

”All of them contort, ignore, or deny reality in order to maintain their attachment to their faith.
And by that definition, all religions are equally crazy.”

This charge is merely a fatuous opinion based on her opinion of that which “reality” consists of. She shows no proof that reality is limited to physical existence: none. Her apparent opinion that reality is limited to physical existence is a belief without evidence or logical support: a blind belief religiously held: the failed Philosophical Materialism. So along with the rest of this article, we have only been served up opinion, presented as truth, with no actual facts which are pertinent even to her triune dogma, much less the refutation of basic Theism.

What Christina has done here seems to conflate “religions”, which she attacks, and Theism, for which she provides no case. Anti-religion is not the same as a-theism, and she has made no case for Atheism. She harbors a great distaste for religion, a distaste which borders on hatred it appears, and manifests itself in opinion presented as fact, and ridicule, not factual, empirical refutation. And that just might be part of her own cognitive bias.