Honesty is a Precious Thing.
Not only do I value honesty, I presuppose it in people. While I know that is an error, I still commit it. Honesty is a subset of truth, and truth is a subset of the absolutes. For Atheism there are no absolutes, so by the time we get back down the chain from absolutes to honesty, there is none in the MaterialWorld of Atheism.
Now honesty might necessarily be feigned as a pragmatic effort to convince others of trustworthiness. So it not only is not a characteristic that is valued under Atheism, it is a tool to be exploited, used as far as it will go to the Atheist’s advantage.
Atheism is largely pragmatic. The main Atheist claim regarding morality is just that: behaving in a certain way is pragmatic and that is morality for the Atheist. The term for this is Consequentialism, where any goal which one desires should be pursued with whatever tactics are required to achieve it. Atheists might protest that this is a distortion, yet that in itself is a tactic being used.
The issue of honesty vs. Consequentialist pragmatism is why Atheists are not seen as trustworthy. There is no such thing as honesty which is attached to the concept of Atheism. That includes intellectual honesty.
Intellectual honesty requires humbling oneself before logic first, and material factoids last. But there is a strain of Atheism that refuses humility as an abrogation of “free thought”, which is just thoughts without anchors in anything meaningful. Free Thought, Atheism, and Philosophical Materialism are the keys to total freedom, unencumbered by the need for humility in the face of anything which is undeniable, such as incorrigible truth.
Thus logic becomes not a disciplined refection of a path to rationality, it becomes a malleable weapon which is to be tuned to the needs of the wielder. The Atheist assertion of “logic” is thus tautological, not actual: they define whatever they say to be “logical”. There is no urge to study logic as a discipline, nor to follow actual logical procedures. Whenever a fallacy in their “logic” is pointed to, they pull out as many Red Herrings as necessary to divert the conversation. I say this as a general principle because inductively, that is the case; there might be exceptions, and I hope to come across them in order to find out how they justify the logical chasms in their worldviews. But so far, not much luck.
There is no feasible Atheist defense against this observation. “Good without God” is transparently a relativist matching of a temporary “ethics” statement to whatever behavior the Atheist is currently fond of. Any possible Atheist protest of “personal integrity” is transparently just another tactic in the pragmatist’s toolbox. In fact, no matter what an Atheist says, it can be seen as a “tactic”, toward some objective, some agenda, which only s/he sees and knows. There is no possible way to encounter Atheists without suspicion, unless one is naïve to this characteristic.
So I should not be caught off guard while in discussions with Atheists. There is no reason to suppose that their arguments are sincere, that their facts match any actuality, or that their approach to their fallacies will help them learn anything. Atheists in general do not intend to learn anything, especially logic, which they have already redefined to be whatever they say. On the contrary, Atheists seem to have another objective, which is to preserve their total freedom so as not to have to be humble in the face of truths which they are powerless to change. In other words, "free" thoughts without grounding in anything but agenda.
So, there are no truths in AtheistWorld, and there is no truthfulness. So there cannot be any honesty, or for that matter, dishonesty. And that characteristic makes every Atheist suspect.
I, personally, value honesty. But it cannot be presupposed in people.
I need to take more care.
ADDENDUM:
This issue extends to the concept of “absurdity” also. Logical absurdity is a specific thing; it refers to a proposition which is logically non-coherent, or cannot be shown to be coherent, and this is found using Reductio Ad Absurdum, which takes the converse and hopes to show that it is contradictory (absurd). If the converse of a proposition is absurd, then the proposition itself is not. Clearly, logically inconsistent premises or logically unsubstantiable claims fit this category of determination of logical validity, including those propositions or premises which fail Boolean categorization.
The convenient but ungrounded and transient nature of the logic of Atheism is subject to producing statements which are logically absurd, but which seem perfectly logical under the transient processes of non-absolutist Atheism. In fact, linear logical discipline fails the transient processes of non-absolutist Atheism, and appears – I am instructed – absurd to the Atheist.
This is a serious fork in the ability to communicate, a dichotomy between those who choose logical dictates to rule their processes, vs. those who eschew any absolutist control over their free thought. For this reason, I have in the past taken the conversation to a point where an obvious fallacy is in play, and then stopped the conversation from progressing beyond that fallacy, and insisting on its recognition. This has produced considerable tension and sometimes behavior which resulted in banishment. But it is the right thing to do. No conversation should proceed when it is based on a fallacy or is logically absurd. Kindly remind me of that next time.
Showing posts with label Without God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Without God. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Atheists Are Guud
Wandering around fairly aimlessly I came across the following explanation of both Atheist morals and Christian morals as understood by an Atheist. The site is BackyardSkeptics.com, which is the group responsible for advertising their We Have Doubts and Good Without God Skepticism on bus stops in Southern California. The following claims are so non-coherent that I couldn’t resist taking them up here.
And yes, they will decide when it is ethical to lie or cheat. Or what ever. And that is why they are not trusted by anyone else. Who knows when they are going to decide to lie or cheat or whatever their momentary urge might be? In other words, they cannot be trusted to produce a single, stable set of behaviors, even for one of them, much less an entire group of them. So this is not an ethic at all.
However, we can depend upon them to distort the Bible, because they think that works in their favor every time they do it. The example above is a beauty. If your recollection of Numbers 31 is dim or non-existent, as was mine, then grab up a Bible and read, but start at Numbers 25. I don't usually take on biblical distortions by atheists, because that doesn't disprove the existence of a creating First Cause in any way. However, this guy first distorts and then claims it as a reason for believing that there is no God, which is another non-coherence in his statement.
The Atheist accusation is that the Israelites kept virgins as sex slaves, and the self-righteous moral outrage at the Bible is based on that accusation. But the verse in question doesn’t say that at all. It says, “save for yourselves every girl that has not slept with a man.” Now why would they do that?
Back at Numbers 25, is the answer: the Midianites had seduced the Israelites into sexual perversion and idolatry, and the some of the Israelites had been morally compromised and befouled beyond recovery. There is an order to slaughter all those involved, but the Israelite army did not kill the women and boys; so the order went out to complete the task by killing the non-virgin women and the boys, but to keep the virgin females. Now why keep them? The non-virgin women were a threat because they were seductresses. The boys would figure into inheritances and were a threat to family stability. But the virgin girls were not a threat. But were they kept as sex slaves? After the killing of thousands, including seduced Israelites, sexual immorality would not have been an option. So no, not as sex slaves, it does not say that and it is not a logical conclusion. However they might have been kept as household servants and treated with the legal protections afforded those. Or they might have been kept as de facto daughters.
But there is absolutely no possible way to conclude that they were sex slaves, if one reads more than just the one verse. Atheist versions of the Bible are based on searches for verses that offend them, which is odd, because they admit to having no morals dictated by their belief. In fact, the entire Midianite episode is entirely within the Consequentialistethic tactic that tumbles automatically out of the Atheist moral vacuum.
Bottom line: Atheists are always good, by their own definition that Atheism = good. In other words, it is tautological in their minds. They decide what is good in their own minds, so when they do it, they are good QED. Maybe in the Atheist case it should be spelled differently, maybe guud. Atheists = Guud. That’s definitely better.
Afterthought: usually Atheists take offense at the entire idea of God ordering the eradication of offensive cultures. Interesting that this particular one took offense only at the “sex slave” interpretation, which wasn’t even a valid complaint. One never knows just what it is that their morality of the day will find offensive. Or acceptable, for that matter. You just can't know what to expect from an Atheist, so as the old Boswell quote goes, "when he leaves, we should count the silverware".
“Many atheists feel it is the harder choice to not have a 'moral rule book' in their lives. Atheists take each situation separately and decide what is the moral thing to do. Many times it is very ethical to lie or cheat - for example, to defend your family, or to protect an innocent person. Some say this is a harder choice because atheists have to look at Christian's value system as will as everyone else and decide if their choices are moral. This is another reason I have chosen to be an atheist. – the Bible has so many unethical an immoral stories of death and destruction - it boggles the mind how Christians can believe such nonsense. See Numbers 31 and tell me that the taking of virgins for sex slaves is ethical. Amazing!”Yes, that is true: Atheists do take each situation separately and decide for themselves what is the moral thing to do. That is called relativism, and it is the position that Atheists can and do change morality on the spot, because it is convenient and they are extra- moral anyway. Relativism is highly unpredictable and cannot be considered an ethic, at least not if one expects consistent decisions of an ethic.
And yes, they will decide when it is ethical to lie or cheat. Or what ever. And that is why they are not trusted by anyone else. Who knows when they are going to decide to lie or cheat or whatever their momentary urge might be? In other words, they cannot be trusted to produce a single, stable set of behaviors, even for one of them, much less an entire group of them. So this is not an ethic at all.
However, we can depend upon them to distort the Bible, because they think that works in their favor every time they do it. The example above is a beauty. If your recollection of Numbers 31 is dim or non-existent, as was mine, then grab up a Bible and read, but start at Numbers 25. I don't usually take on biblical distortions by atheists, because that doesn't disprove the existence of a creating First Cause in any way. However, this guy first distorts and then claims it as a reason for believing that there is no God, which is another non-coherence in his statement.
The Atheist accusation is that the Israelites kept virgins as sex slaves, and the self-righteous moral outrage at the Bible is based on that accusation. But the verse in question doesn’t say that at all. It says, “save for yourselves every girl that has not slept with a man.” Now why would they do that?
Back at Numbers 25, is the answer: the Midianites had seduced the Israelites into sexual perversion and idolatry, and the some of the Israelites had been morally compromised and befouled beyond recovery. There is an order to slaughter all those involved, but the Israelite army did not kill the women and boys; so the order went out to complete the task by killing the non-virgin women and the boys, but to keep the virgin females. Now why keep them? The non-virgin women were a threat because they were seductresses. The boys would figure into inheritances and were a threat to family stability. But the virgin girls were not a threat. But were they kept as sex slaves? After the killing of thousands, including seduced Israelites, sexual immorality would not have been an option. So no, not as sex slaves, it does not say that and it is not a logical conclusion. However they might have been kept as household servants and treated with the legal protections afforded those. Or they might have been kept as de facto daughters.
But there is absolutely no possible way to conclude that they were sex slaves, if one reads more than just the one verse. Atheist versions of the Bible are based on searches for verses that offend them, which is odd, because they admit to having no morals dictated by their belief. In fact, the entire Midianite episode is entirely within the Consequentialist
Bottom line: Atheists are always good, by their own definition that Atheism = good. In other words, it is tautological in their minds. They decide what is good in their own minds, so when they do it, they are good QED. Maybe in the Atheist case it should be spelled differently, maybe guud. Atheists = Guud. That’s definitely better.
Afterthought: usually Atheists take offense at the entire idea of God ordering the eradication of offensive cultures. Interesting that this particular one took offense only at the “sex slave” interpretation, which wasn’t even a valid complaint. One never knows just what it is that their morality of the day will find offensive. Or acceptable, for that matter. You just can't know what to expect from an Atheist, so as the old Boswell quote goes, "when he leaves, we should count the silverware".
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Coyne: the Good Atheist
It seems that the institutional philosophers either are stuck in institutional thinking with its attendant fallacies or they maybe have time to write books but not think things through. For whatever reason some of them just can’t rid themselves of fallacies which they use over and over for proofs. A favorite is the False Dichotomy Fallacy. A true dichotomy has one option available; either choose it or don’t – two choices are all that are available.
The False Dichotomy offers two options which are diametrically opposed and which seem to be all the choices that are available, both of which are uncomfortable. But with two options, say P and Q, there are actually four ways to choose: P and Q; P and not Q; Q and not P; not P and not Q.
The deception which philosophers and other manipulators use is to present only two of the four possible choices. For P and Q, then, only the choices P and not Q, and Q and not P are presented as the available choices.
This then is the deception in Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma, which Jerry Coyne takes as the "logical" basis for dismissing a deity, disregarding the False Dichotomy Fallacy that his logic is based upon. Coyne is trying to make the case that Atheists are Good while God is Bad, which is the new argument being made by Atheists who are attacking the modern civilization in which they live.
Moving to Evil God, Coyne maintains that the Old Testament God did all sorts of things that he, Coyne, and the Atheists think are bad. Now God did order some things done that only a deity could justify, no argument there. But if a deity is justified in doing what ever a deity does, then Coyne has no case other than his own pique. Says Coyne:
What the Bible displays is a continuous cycling of obedience, betrayal, and correction. The correction is purposely visited upon a disobedient society by the use of an invading force which brings humility where hubris and contempt had reigned. And this after explicit warnings of what was to come. If one assumes these to be literally true, which Atheists always do, it is clearly the deity’s prerogative to handle his creation as he wishes. But this action, being that of the diety, is neither moral nor immoral in terms of human behavior. By taking on the Bible, Coyne should be obligated to at least understand its meanings and to use a meaningful model to criticize rather than his own fake model. Morality in human terms, according to the Bible, means obedience to the directives given by the deity. Now Coyne might not like the directives, and he might be tempted to compare the specific directives for action to the general directives for daily behavior and then declare his False Dichotomy. But as a declared intellectual he should act in dispassionate fairness when he passes judgment, rather than present False Dichotomies and Straw Man arguments. He does not, however, do that.
This is total blindness to the concept of a deity which is actually more powerful than Coyne is himself. Morality doesn’t come from the daily maunderings of institutional intellectuals; if it even exists it comes from an extrahuman source. The morals of intellectuals have never been consistent, and much less when put into practice have they been humane. Coyne’s argument against God and for Atheist Goodness cannot withstand the most cursory historical glance at the 20th century. Ah, say Atheists, that was coincidentally Atheists slaughtering hundreds of millions of their own countrymen, purely coincidence. In other words, excusing their own belief system for its slaughters.
But as fatally feeble as those arguments are, Coyne’s weakest argument is yet to come:
Coyne predictably defaults to the Atheist’s religious source, evolution:
But “secular reasoning” as a source of anything meaningful at all is the most absurd premise that can be made. Secular reasoning eschews any absolutes, so it has to base its premise support either on infinite regressions of subpremises, or on circular regression back to itself. Either way it cannot provide any firm grounding for… well, for any valid thought whatsoever, much less a guide for moral human behavior. This is the world in which the secular philosopher moralists live, a world which they make up and then want us to believe is real. For them maybe it is real, but I doubt it, because they do not actually live in the world they pretend is real.
And that is a true dichotomy: to make up rules and reality and then either (a) to live in it, or (b) not to live in it. If one asserts rules and reality, but chooses (b), then he might be hypocritical or maybe insane.
An example is the idea that “compassion” must become a human trait if one is to be a secular moralist. But then the real idea comes to the fore: it is not compassion but confiscation of other people’s wealth to be spread around. The compassion comes not from personal sacrifice but from sacrificing the Other on the altar of secularism. Sacrificing the Other is a large part of secular thought, so it must be moral according to the seculars.
Anyone who values “secular thought” as a way toward morality is suspect. In fact, as Massimo Pigliucci recently demonstrated quite adequately, secular thought is compartmentalized into sects, each of which condemns the other secular thought sects as dealing in “mental masturbation”. They are partly right; it’s just that ALL secular thought is mental masturbation. And Coyne is right in the middle of all that. Why is Coyne “Good”? Because he says so. What is "Good"? It's whatever he says it is... today. That’s the process of secular thought.
In fact Coyne wrote a book with a title that automatically places the entire book into the mental masturbation category: Coyne wrote: “Why Evolution Is True”. Assuming that evolution is a science complete with verifiability and falsifiability and is proven to be valid, it still is not capable of providing Truth. Science provides only contingent inductive factoids, from which deductive tests can be made, which show merely that no falsification has yet occurred. No matter how many tests are done, science never ever provides Truth. Scientists might presume a factoid to be valid for purposes of subsequent tests, but they do not declare Truth if they understand the basis for science. As both a philosopher and a scientist, Coyne flunks even the basics.
But for some reason, Atheists still respect him. Maybe it’s because he says what they want to hear.
[author's note: semantic correction, 08.07.11]
The False Dichotomy offers two options which are diametrically opposed and which seem to be all the choices that are available, both of which are uncomfortable. But with two options, say P and Q, there are actually four ways to choose: P and Q; P and not Q; Q and not P; not P and not Q.
The deception which philosophers and other manipulators use is to present only two of the four possible choices. For P and Q, then, only the choices P and not Q, and Q and not P are presented as the available choices.
This then is the deception in Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma, which Jerry Coyne takes as the "logical" basis for dismissing a deity, disregarding the False Dichotomy Fallacy that his logic is based upon. Coyne is trying to make the case that Atheists are Good while God is Bad, which is the new argument being made by Atheists who are attacking the modern civilization in which they live.
Moving to Evil God, Coyne maintains that the Old Testament God did all sorts of things that he, Coyne, and the Atheists think are bad. Now God did order some things done that only a deity could justify, no argument there. But if a deity is justified in doing what ever a deity does, then Coyne has no case other than his own pique. Says Coyne:
” Now, few of us see genocide or stoning as moral, so Christians and Jews pass over those parts of the Bible with judicious silence. But that's just the point. There is something else — some other source of morality — that supersedes biblical commands. When religious people pick and choose their morality from Scripture, they clearly do so based on extrareligious notions of what's moral.”
What the Bible displays is a continuous cycling of obedience, betrayal, and correction. The correction is purposely visited upon a disobedient society by the use of an invading force which brings humility where hubris and contempt had reigned. And this after explicit warnings of what was to come. If one assumes these to be literally true, which Atheists always do, it is clearly the deity’s prerogative to handle his creation as he wishes. But this action, being that of the diety, is neither moral nor immoral in terms of human behavior. By taking on the Bible, Coyne should be obligated to at least understand its meanings and to use a meaningful model to criticize rather than his own fake model. Morality in human terms, according to the Bible, means obedience to the directives given by the deity. Now Coyne might not like the directives, and he might be tempted to compare the specific directives for action to the general directives for daily behavior and then declare his False Dichotomy. But as a declared intellectual he should act in dispassionate fairness when he passes judgment, rather than present False Dichotomies and Straw Man arguments. He does not, however, do that.
This is total blindness to the concept of a deity which is actually more powerful than Coyne is himself. Morality doesn’t come from the daily maunderings of institutional intellectuals; if it even exists it comes from an extrahuman source. The morals of intellectuals have never been consistent, and much less when put into practice have they been humane. Coyne’s argument against God and for Atheist Goodness cannot withstand the most cursory historical glance at the 20th century. Ah, say Atheists, that was coincidentally Atheists slaughtering hundreds of millions of their own countrymen, purely coincidence. In other words, excusing their own belief system for its slaughters.
But as fatally feeble as those arguments are, Coyne’s weakest argument is yet to come:
” Further, the idea that morality is divinely inspired doesn't jibe with the fact that religiously based ethics have changed profoundly over time. Slavery was once defended by churches on scriptural grounds; now it's seen as grossly immoral. Mormons barred blacks from the priesthood, also on religious grounds, until church leaders had a convenient "revelation" to the contrary in 1978. Catholics once had a list of books considered immoral to read; they did away with that in 1966. Did these adjustments occur because God changed His mind? No, they came from secular improvements in morality that forced religion to clean up its act.”Religious people continue to improve or at least change their understanding of the deity and its wishes for them. Coyne conveniently ignores that it was the religious efforts of uberChristian William Wilberforce in Great Britain, and the Republicans in the USA that put slavery away – not the force of “secular improvements”. Taking credit for what one did not accomplish is intellectually dishonest, and none of the events he listed was forced by any secular superhero.
Coyne predictably defaults to the Atheist’s religious source, evolution:
” So where does morality come from, if not from God? Two places: evolution and secular reasoning. Despite the notion that beasts behave bestially, scientists studying our primate relatives, such as chimpanzees, see evolutionary rudiments of morality: behaviors that look for all the world like altruism, sympathy, moral disapproval, sharing — even notions of fairness. This is exactly what we'd expect if human morality, like many other behaviors, is built partly on the genes of our ancestors.”First the absurdity of asserting that “secular reasoning” and Chimpanzee behavior are in the same category as morality is absolutely glaring. But let’s take evolution first: making up evolutionary Just So Stories just doesn’t cut it any more, but Coyne hasn’t gotten the memo. I’m sure he will some day.
But “secular reasoning” as a source of anything meaningful at all is the most absurd premise that can be made. Secular reasoning eschews any absolutes, so it has to base its premise support either on infinite regressions of subpremises, or on circular regression back to itself. Either way it cannot provide any firm grounding for… well, for any valid thought whatsoever, much less a guide for moral human behavior. This is the world in which the secular philosopher moralists live, a world which they make up and then want us to believe is real. For them maybe it is real, but I doubt it, because they do not actually live in the world they pretend is real.
And that is a true dichotomy: to make up rules and reality and then either (a) to live in it, or (b) not to live in it. If one asserts rules and reality, but chooses (b), then he might be hypocritical or maybe insane.
An example is the idea that “compassion” must become a human trait if one is to be a secular moralist. But then the real idea comes to the fore: it is not compassion but confiscation of other people’s wealth to be spread around. The compassion comes not from personal sacrifice but from sacrificing the Other on the altar of secularism. Sacrificing the Other is a large part of secular thought, so it must be moral according to the seculars.
Anyone who values “secular thought” as a way toward morality is suspect. In fact, as Massimo Pigliucci recently demonstrated quite adequately, secular thought is compartmentalized into sects, each of which condemns the other secular thought sects as dealing in “mental masturbation”. They are partly right; it’s just that ALL secular thought is mental masturbation. And Coyne is right in the middle of all that. Why is Coyne “Good”? Because he says so. What is "Good"? It's whatever he says it is... today. That’s the process of secular thought.
In fact Coyne wrote a book with a title that automatically places the entire book into the mental masturbation category: Coyne wrote: “Why Evolution Is True”. Assuming that evolution is a science complete with verifiability and falsifiability and is proven to be valid, it still is not capable of providing Truth. Science provides only contingent inductive factoids, from which deductive tests can be made, which show merely that no falsification has yet occurred. No matter how many tests are done, science never ever provides Truth. Scientists might presume a factoid to be valid for purposes of subsequent tests, but they do not declare Truth if they understand the basis for science. As both a philosopher and a scientist, Coyne flunks even the basics.
But for some reason, Atheists still respect him. Maybe it’s because he says what they want to hear.
[author's note: semantic correction, 08.07.11]
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Without God
Some things come around again and again, and this is one of those things. It requires discussion because it seems to have become the substance of an attempted paradigm shift within the Atheist community. Paradigm shifts occur for a reason, and that will be discussed later. First we will discuss the new paradigm itself.
Despite claiming that “there is no God”, it now is declared that that statement is not a denial. Instead of a denial, it is a declaration that the Atheist is “without God”. How does this work?
How does a person come to be “without God”? And that without a denial? The first thought might be that the person had never heard of such a thing as a deity, a First Cause, a God. That would definitely leave the person without God, unless the person had a personal experience of the deity. Presuming it not the case that the person has had a personal experience of the deity, then that person would be “without God”. But that is not the Atheist condition.
Now if a person has heard of the possibility of such a thing as a deity, First Cause, or God, then how can the person claim to be “without God”, unless the possibility has been first rejected? In fact, the statement is a surreptitious truncation of this statement: "I reject God; therefore I am without God". Nonetheless, let's pursue the truncated claim.
If the possibility of a deity is not rejected, but is rather accepted, then the person cannot be an Atheist.
If the possibility of a deity is placed on hold pending the receipt of further evidence, then the person has assumed a stance traditionally known as “agnosticism”.
What other choices are available beyond a) reject; b) accept; c) place the decision on hold? Perhaps: continue in ignorance, having forgotten the whole thing? Atheists have not forgotten the whole thing.
Atheists have, during the enlightenment centuries and up until recently, directly and positively rejected the existence of deity without trying to conceal that in any form of word play. The exceptions are in places and times of persecution, which did exist: Hume rejected the deity but claimed to be a “sceptic”, in order to get a job professoring at the university – he was rejected because his claim was false.(Note 1) But now the Atheists are not persecuted, yet they insist on disguising their true belief behind word-play.
Atheists do not place the decision regarding the existence of deity on hold. Their claim of "without God" is made on the basis of having rejected God.(Note 2) So taking that position is a move taken to camouflage their actual rejection, and to protect themselves against an uncomfortable truth: Atheism cannot be proved using Atheist criteria for proof.
The paradigm is being consciously shifted because Atheism is vulnerable. It makes demands of others that it cannot satisfy itself. It resolves to a position of unproven and unprovable Faith, a religion in the same sense that Atheists define religion. That is the reason for the paradigm shift amongst Atheists during the past decade: they cannot admit to having denied [Q], because they cannot prove their claim of non-existence of [Q]. So they change their stance, rather than change their position. Rather than admit that they believe in a faith-statement, they deny their belief, and conceal it with a new statement claiming that they have not denied [Q]. This, they think, protects them from having to prove their position.
If they do not deny [Q], and they don’t believe [Q], then they are by traditional definition, agnostic on the subject of [Q]. (Or ignorant of the subject of [Q] altogether). And while claiming faux-atheism in the form of agnosticism outwardly, they think that they are not obliged to prove their position any longer.
It is agnostic-envy. And outright theft of the agnostic position.
To claim to believe in, say, [Z] while not really believing in [Z] is dishonest. There is no other way to say that, that I can see: it is dishonest. And at that point it becomes legitimate to ask, “why one would continue a discussion under those conditions, when the other side of the conversation is dishonest?” What rational conclusion can come from such a discussion, other than it is not ever profitable?
It is a clear indication of the religious, dogmatic character of Atheism: claiming to be logical and fact-oriented on the one hand, and blatantly dishonest on the other when it comes to providing “real” and “material” facts for supporting its own belief system - yet requiring just exactly that of competing belief systems. The conclusion, (no God), is more important than actual logic or actual facts to support it. The conclusion, (no God), is a purely religious tenet.
Atheists back-slap each other (virtually) on the cleverness of their ruse. But it is so totally transparent to outsiders that it diminishes the credibility of Atheism drastically. Maybe they have come to believe their own deception. That again says something about the rationality of Atheism.
Notes:
1) Hume considered himself discriminated against due to his Atheism; possibly. But it is also possible that he was not hired because he was a liar.
2) For a short time it was common to hear Atheists claim that they have "no god theory". That was transparent, even to Atheists. So now they have a new claim.
Despite claiming that “there is no God”, it now is declared that that statement is not a denial. Instead of a denial, it is a declaration that the Atheist is “without God”. How does this work?
How does a person come to be “without God”? And that without a denial? The first thought might be that the person had never heard of such a thing as a deity, a First Cause, a God. That would definitely leave the person without God, unless the person had a personal experience of the deity. Presuming it not the case that the person has had a personal experience of the deity, then that person would be “without God”. But that is not the Atheist condition.
Now if a person has heard of the possibility of such a thing as a deity, First Cause, or God, then how can the person claim to be “without God”, unless the possibility has been first rejected? In fact, the statement is a surreptitious truncation of this statement: "I reject God; therefore I am without God". Nonetheless, let's pursue the truncated claim.
If the possibility of a deity is not rejected, but is rather accepted, then the person cannot be an Atheist.
If the possibility of a deity is placed on hold pending the receipt of further evidence, then the person has assumed a stance traditionally known as “agnosticism”.
What other choices are available beyond a) reject; b) accept; c) place the decision on hold? Perhaps: continue in ignorance, having forgotten the whole thing? Atheists have not forgotten the whole thing.
Atheists have, during the enlightenment centuries and up until recently, directly and positively rejected the existence of deity without trying to conceal that in any form of word play. The exceptions are in places and times of persecution, which did exist: Hume rejected the deity but claimed to be a “sceptic”, in order to get a job professoring at the university – he was rejected because his claim was false.(Note 1) But now the Atheists are not persecuted, yet they insist on disguising their true belief behind word-play.
Atheists do not place the decision regarding the existence of deity on hold. Their claim of "without God" is made on the basis of having rejected God.(Note 2) So taking that position is a move taken to camouflage their actual rejection, and to protect themselves against an uncomfortable truth: Atheism cannot be proved using Atheist criteria for proof.
The paradigm is being consciously shifted because Atheism is vulnerable. It makes demands of others that it cannot satisfy itself. It resolves to a position of unproven and unprovable Faith, a religion in the same sense that Atheists define religion. That is the reason for the paradigm shift amongst Atheists during the past decade: they cannot admit to having denied [Q], because they cannot prove their claim of non-existence of [Q]. So they change their stance, rather than change their position. Rather than admit that they believe in a faith-statement, they deny their belief, and conceal it with a new statement claiming that they have not denied [Q]. This, they think, protects them from having to prove their position.
If they do not deny [Q], and they don’t believe [Q], then they are by traditional definition, agnostic on the subject of [Q]. (Or ignorant of the subject of [Q] altogether). And while claiming faux-atheism in the form of agnosticism outwardly, they think that they are not obliged to prove their position any longer.
It is agnostic-envy. And outright theft of the agnostic position.
To claim to believe in, say, [Z] while not really believing in [Z] is dishonest. There is no other way to say that, that I can see: it is dishonest. And at that point it becomes legitimate to ask, “why one would continue a discussion under those conditions, when the other side of the conversation is dishonest?” What rational conclusion can come from such a discussion, other than it is not ever profitable?
It is a clear indication of the religious, dogmatic character of Atheism: claiming to be logical and fact-oriented on the one hand, and blatantly dishonest on the other when it comes to providing “real” and “material” facts for supporting its own belief system - yet requiring just exactly that of competing belief systems. The conclusion, (no God), is more important than actual logic or actual facts to support it. The conclusion, (no God), is a purely religious tenet.
Atheists back-slap each other (virtually) on the cleverness of their ruse. But it is so totally transparent to outsiders that it diminishes the credibility of Atheism drastically. Maybe they have come to believe their own deception. That again says something about the rationality of Atheism.
Notes:
1) Hume considered himself discriminated against due to his Atheism; possibly. But it is also possible that he was not hired because he was a liar.
2) For a short time it was common to hear Atheists claim that they have "no god theory". That was transparent, even to Atheists. So now they have a new claim.
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