”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"?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.
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 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.
9 comments:
A religion should be in-step with cultural norms? Really?
According to the quoted text, that's not what she implied. She wrote "radically out of step". The implication is that it shouldn't be radically out of step.
That leaves room for non-conformance.
What Christina has done here seems to conflate “religions”, which she attacks, and Theism, for which she provides no case.
I think this is the core of most Gnu Atheism. The realization of that is what helped me to extricate myself from what I now realize was a quasi-cult, different in subject matter but not in kind from fundamentalist Christianity, young earth creationism, and all the rest.
In a way, it supports her point. Since I thought I was SOOOO open minded when really I was not, then who knows if this is happening to me yet again, right now?
Whateverman,
No externally-based religion is obligated to cultural norms, regardless of whether it is in step or radically out of step, or directly opposed to those norms.
Christina's position would declare that religion should have followed the German culture during the 1930's and 40's; but most Atheists declare that religion did not do enough to resist it. She is off the Atheist reservation here, too.
If a religion has actual principles, then what a culture thinks of those principles is without meaning to the religion.
Martin says,
"In a way, it supports her point. Since I thought I was SOOOO open minded when really I was not, then who knows if this is happening to me yet again, right now?"
There are logic tests which help with that. But that requires a submission to logic, not a completely open mind in the sense that Atheists use the term. If there is truth, then it closes off the desire to be open to falseness when it is shown to be false.
Which culture? Which norms? Heck, which time period for those as well?
It all sounds like she's created her own moral yardstick and is looking down at those that don't meet her criteria.
Islam is submission to God. Logic is God's rules. I truly believe that if a man is devoted to logic then he will discover the truth of Islam and will put aside atheism and polytheism.
Stan said:
"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."
I challenge her to refute incorrigibly the claims made by eyewitnesses that confirm that God split the moon in two for Mohammed. She can not. She must deny the truth to justify her wickedness.
"to the miracle at Lourdes.
Now you're claiming there was a miracle. Care to show us why you believe that?
"You can't prove me wrong!" is not the gold standard of rationality.
John
First:
You are challenged to disprove the existing claims. The claims have existed for over 150 years. If you disprove the actual orignial claims, using empirical, experimental, replicable and replicated, falisfiable and not falsified, peer reviewed, scientific methods which produce public data which refute the actual claims and the residual physical evidence for the claims, then you will be the first.
You don't know what I believe regarding the claims, except that I suspect that you will not refute them. Most Atheists who stray through here never even read the eyewitness claims, probably because they don't care about contrary evidence to their ideology, which they hold without either logical or evidentiary support: blind belief of an ideology. Perhaps you are more open minded, and will at least provide evidence for your rejection.
Second:
Atheists claim logic and evidence, yet they cannot or will not provide reasons for their rejection of the proposition of basic Theism, or for claims of non-physical interference instances. The rejection of a proposition which has no reasons for the rejection gives absolutely no reason to believe the rejection. A rejection without reasons is ideological not rational.
So if you claim that the miracle claims are false, then you must either support your own claim with adequate evidence, or your claim will be understood to be ideological, not rational.
Atheists cannot provide evidence for their claims that a non-physical entity exists. Their rejection is pure dogmatism manifested by their insistence on on believing things for which there is "evidence".
Of course this standard of evidence is unique to each atheist. Which leaves their ungrounded worldview free to dismiss any claim that conflicts with their view of "observable reality".
Eyewitnesses (far more credible eye witnesses than those present at Lourdes) attest to the miracle of the moon splitting and being reformed.
This irrefutable evidence attests to the glory of god and his prophet Moohammud. Those who deny this truth do so out of close minded dogmaticism to indulge in their low sinful natures.
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