The Atheist Apologist

Some time ago, I got into an unpleasant exchange with a guy named Tim O'Neill who calls himself an atheist, but whose attitude appears to be unreasonably hostile toward atheists.  I looked at his blog, which is called History For Atheists, and found many articles that are quite critical of atheists (especially the ones he calls "New Atheists") and the historical claims they make, and none that are even slightly critical of dubious claims made by religionists.  He often mocks the idea that atheists are skeptical.  This struck me as rather odd, because there's no balance.  He defends religious claims and beliefs, while criticizing the claims of atheists.  For example, he strongly defends the idea that there was no such thing as the "dark ages", which seems to be a matter of opinion, and that the church was always supportive of the advancement of science, which I think is patently false.  I'm all in favor of criticizing false claims, including those made by atheists, but this guy seems to go overboard - to the point of revealing what appears to be a clear bias in favor of religionism and against atheism.  And that's why I said that I "could find no reason to think that he is anything other than a Christian who claims to be an atheist."  He could well be an atheist, but he sure doesn't sound like one.  His brand of skepticism seems to be highly selective.

Misrepresenting Science

There are certain theists who are so beyond the reach of rational discussion or consideration that I simply dismiss them and all their rantings as being unworthy of my attention.  If their arguments are illogical and they refuse to hear anything that does not echo their own position, then there is no point in arguing with them.  In many cases, there is no point in listening to them - unless they might have some impact on the debate in the broader community of believers.  One such theist is Mikey, who blogs at Shadow To Light.  This guy is a rabid atheist-hater, makes terribly illogical arguments, and aside from searching their words for sound bites to use against them, never listens to anything they say and never makes the slightest effort to understand their position.  There's only one reason I read his articles.  He seems to have the ear of some other theists, who then spread his extremely poor thinking to a broader audience.  So from time to time, I feel that it would be appropriate to answer his ridiculous claims.

Wars Aren't Started For Religious Reasons

Victor Reppert makes a plea for the sake of honesty and historical accuracy: Religion is not responsible for most wars- can people stop repeating this nonsense?  Fair enough.  I think we should all strive for honesty and historical accuracy.  And of course, he's right - as long as you understand what is meant by the term 'responsible for'.  He cites an article by anthropologist Scott Atran, who says "the chief complaint against religion — that it is history’s prime instigator of intergroup conflict — does not withstand scrutiny."  And aside from the fact that this isn't really the chief complaint against religion, he's correct.  Wars are started for many reasons besides religion.  But it would not be correct to say that religion plays no major role in the conduct or sustainment of warfare.  So we need to understand Victor's plea in a nuanced way.  It's not as if religion has nothing to do with it.

Small Mind, Closed Mind

Over at Shadow To Light, the militant theist Mikey is so obsessed with trying to find fault with everything said by any atheist, that he is completely closed to the possibility that they might be saying something reasonable.  And what is it that he is raving about now?  An atheist has concluded that there are no gods.  How outrageous.  But it's not merely that this atheist doesn't believe in Mikey's fantasy.  What has Mikey drooling and frothing is the notion that the atheist is being inconsistent with his own "Official Position".  If this sounds strange to you, I would have to agree.  But remember, this is Mikey, and his capacity for reasoning is clearly limited by his affliction.  I'll try to make this all a little more clear.

The Conversion of Leah Libresco

I wrote an article some time ago about ex-atheist converts to Christianity.  The main point of that article was to note that by reading their own accounts of their conversion experience, it is usually possible to discern that they had non-rational reasons for making the conversion.  There are two key factors in these stories.  First, they had never completely abandoned the religious beliefs that they grew up with, but retained some core elements of it somewhere in their psyche (such as the feeling that there must be an over-arching reason for our existence, for example).  Second, these core elements of belief re-emerged when they encountered a period of stress or emotional need, and became the real impetus for their fully embracing religious belief once again, often accompanied by a sense of relief that they no longer had to pretend that they were atheists. 

Ten Tips For Atheists

Christian apologist John Dickson wrote an article some time ago with the purported object of promoting productive dialog between Christians and atheists.  It contains ten pieces of advice for the atheist to follow that he feels will advance this objective.  I applaud him for his effort, but I have to take issue with him on a number of points.  I'll address them one by one.  At the same time, I think there are a number of things that he (as well as other Christians who want to engage in robust debate with atheists or skeptics) might want to think about.

Why Should an Atheist Convert?

Victor Reppert ridicules the idea that a "real atheist" would never convert to Christianity.  He links to an article by Matt Nelson called Why Atheists Change Their Mind: 8 Common Factors, that gives various arguments for belief in God.  When I read it, my first thought was that these are typical arguments for God, but they are not reasons for an atheist to change his mind.  While they may be convincing to some people (including some who call themselves atheists), they certainly aren't convincing to me.  And I'm sure that plenty of atheists who have a similar way of thinking, especially those who have a scientifically-oriented perspective, would also find these arguments lacking.  So that raises the question in my mind:  What does it mean to be a "real atheist"?

Picking Cherries For God

He's at it again.  Over at Shadow To Light, Mikey has smeared Jerry Coyne with an accusation that has absolutely no basis whatsoever.  He says that Coyne is offended by PZ Myers' use of cherry-picking to distort the message of a "New Atheist" (Steve Pinker), by making the liberal Pinker seem to be part of the alt-right, but would happily agree with same tactics being used against a theist.  Of course, Mikey offers not a single shred of evidence to support this claim.  Because for people like Mikey, the truth has nothing to do with the anti-atheist narrative he is trying to purvey - that is, unless he can find an isolated fact that is useful to him.

What Matters Is What's True

Richard Dawkins, discussing what motivates religious belief, famously said:

Who cares what you feel like?  Who cares what feels good?  Who cares what makes you feel comforted?  Who cares what helps you sleep at night?  What matters is what's true. - Richard Dawkins

Religionists don't care what motivates their belief, or perhaps it's the case that they willfully ignore it.  But they take great umbrage at the idea that a non-believer could lay any claim to caring about what is true, because their faith tells them that Truth™ belongs exclusively to themselves.  This is a dogmatic assertion.  Don't bother trying to bring facts to the table.  Facts have nothing to do with it.  Reality has nothing to do with it.  To a militant religionist like Mikey at Shadow To Light, an atheist's relationship with the truth is "slippery".  But his own relationship with the truth is taken for granted, because God.  Mikey speculates that the only reason an atheist would place any value on truth is because he comes from a culture with a religious history that values truth.  So the first lie in his article appears in the second sentence.

Secular Privilege - Say What?

Shadow To Light is at it again - bending reality to conform with his distorted views.  So obsessed is he with his hatred of atheists, that he sees God-haters and Gnus lurking in every dark corner, creating all the world's problems, and persecuting the poor, innocent children of God like himself, who are pure as the driven snow, and who would never do anything to deserve even the mildest of criticism.  I have already noted that Mikey has a tendency to associate everything he doesn't like with atheism, regardless of whether actual atheists are involved.  And that includes Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), most of whom are not atheists.  But it doesn't matter.  To Mikey, it's all the same.  If he doesn't like something he'll blame it on atheists.

Now, Mikey was recently incensed by an article by Suzannah Weiss about "white privilege", giving nine examples of how white people enjoy advantages in current American society.  As you may know, I am generally in favor of social justice, but I don't feel any great affinity for the SJWs, who often go overboard in their defense of the oppressed, to the point of being oppressive toward the rest of us.  Nevertheless, this article is basically factual and level-headed   So naturally, Mikey had to respond with a diatribe on "secular privilege".  Actually, I think he is quite confused about the difference between 'secular' and 'atheist', but as I noted, it's all the same to him.  See my note about his conflating 'secular' and 'atheist' *.

Another Illogical Conversion Story

William Alston is a religious philosopher who worked with Alvin Plantinga to develop Reformed Epistemology, which is a way for religionists to justify their God belief on the grounds that such beliefs are foundational, in the same way that empiricists would claim that belief in the existence physical objects based on the evidence of the senses constitutes foundational belief.  Alston also taught at the University of Illinois in Urbana, which happens to be where Victor Reppert got his PhD.  I don't know if they knew each other, but Reppert has posted an excerpt from one of Alston's essays that describes his return to the fold of religious faith after a period of youthful denial of that belief.  It struck me that this conversion story was in some ways similar to that of CS Lewis, whose writing figures prominently in the thinking and works of Reppert.  Both had grown up with religious belief and turned away from it in their youth, in the academic environment where rejection of religion was the trend.  And both lacked the scientific framework of understanding that would have given them a solid rational basis for non-belief.  So they ended up returning to belief, and making it sound as if their justification is logical and rational, when it really wasn't.

It Follows That Atheism Is False

I came across this article by Richard Bushey, called If Atheism Is True, It Follows That Atheism Is False.  On the chance that it might be a worthwhile argument, I thought I'd see what Bushey has to say, because I continue to hold open the possibility that I will someday find the elusive theistic argument that is convincing to someone who is not already convinced.  I must admit, though, that my expectations are low.  The most sophisticated theistic arguments by highly educated philosophers may be logically valid, and certainly seem to be unassailable in the eyes of other theists, but still fall short of the mark in changing the mind of someone who isn't already a theist.  The main reason for this is that they all seem to depend on premises (whether stated explicitly, or simply assumed) that cannot be accepted by a non-believer.  To accept premises of this type would be tantamount to conceding that God exists before the argument is made.

Lying For Jesus: Blame It On Atheists

Shadow To Light is at it again.  Mikey is spewing more of his hate-filled propaganda against atheists in an effort to distance Christians from anything bad that happens, and pin the blame on those nasty atheists.  This time, it is the recent mass killing by Devin Kelley at a church in Texas.  Mikey wants desperately to attribute this tragic event to an atheist, so that he can point to it as evidence for his monotonous message: "How terrible those atheists are!"  But not surprisingly, Mikey is truth-challenged, as I will show.  In his latest two posts, he goes to some effort to make a case that the killer was an atheist, and then double down with the claim that the killing was an anti-theistic act against Christians.  And in his zeal to paint this event as an example of atheist rage against Christianity, he only succeeds in making a case against the ethical standards of Christian zealots like himself.

Problem of Evil - the Nuclear Option

This is a topic that I addressed some time ago.  The Problem of Evil, or POE, is basically that the ubiquity of evil in our world is incompatible with a God who has the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence.  The typical response from theists is that God has some good reason for allowing evil, and even that evil is necessary to fulfill God's plan.  People are evil by nature, and they must be granted free will so that they can rise above it and earn their place in heaven.  Bad things happen to teach us valuable lessons so that we will be worthy to abide with God, etc.  There are a number of such explanations, and they are called theodicies.

I Am a Fundamentalist

We often hear religionists accusing atheists of having religious fervor for their naturalist metaphysical views and the attendant empiricist epistemology.  Of course, religionists don't ever criticize these philosophical views directly.  You don't ever hear them say "You are militant naturalist", or "You adhere religiously to your empiricism, despite all the evidence."  But they do say those things about atheism, which seems a little silly to me, because atheism is a direct consequence of those philosophical views.  But religionists are apparently less inclined to criticize legitimate philosophical views, perhaps because they understand that their own philosophical underpinnings are on no more solid footing than those of the atheists.  But atheism, in its own right, is not a philosophy, although it is, in some sense, on a par with religion.  You believe in God or you don't.  If atheists can mock religious beliefs, then why shouldn't religionists mock atheism?

Shadow To Light Doesn't See the Light

For some time now, I have noticed that Mikey at Shadow To Light makes the mistake of identifying social justice warriors (SJW) with atheism (as well as other demographic groups, such as transhumanists).  See here, for example.  This is rather remarkable, because the majority of SJWs are not atheists.  This is what Mikey said recently:

It’s good to see that New Atheists have begun to figure out how reality works.  For a long time now, I have criticized one of the central claims of the New Atheist movement, the notion that if we could only get rid of religion, the world would be a much better place.  Not only was there no evidence to support this belief (which, ironically, was little more than faith), but the evidence we did have pointed in the other direction.  And what was that evidence?  The atheist community itself.  A crystal clear example of what I was talking about was Elevatorgate and the rage-filled rhetorical wars between the New Atheists and Social Justice atheists.  The existence of the Social Justice atheists, along with their power and influence, clearly showed there is no reason to believe that a world without religion would be any better than the one we have. - Shadow To Light

So Boghossian finally sees the light because he has criticized SJWs?  OK, the Elevatorgate debacle was an example of ridiculous behavior among SJWs who happen to be atheists.  But that whole episode just goes to show the absurd behavior of SJWs in general.  It says nothing at all about the broader atheist community, nor does it prove or disprove any claims about whether the world would be better off without religion.  Not surprisingly, Mikey fails to explain how he makes the logical link between atheist SJWs and the question of whether the world would be better off without religion.  (And incidentally, the idea that this is a "central claim" of New Atheism is just another of Mikey's lies.  There is no identifiable group called "New Atheists", much less a doctrine common to that group.)

Would I Become a Christian?

BK puts forth this question in his latest posting at Christian Cadre: If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?  He supposes that this is the all-time gotcha question that would force atheists to come clean and confess the truth of the faith, or expose themselves as being dishonest.  BK presents three possible responses that an atheist might offer to this question.   One is to deny Christianity without any explanation.  Another is to deny it with an explanation.  And finally the atheist might accept the truth and say yes.  But I think the question requires more depth of discussion before a simple yes or no answer can be given.

The Basics of Non-Belief

In my previous post, I noted that in conversions between Christianity and atheism, the stories people typically tell about their own conversion experience are starkly different.  The convert to religion is often driven by emotion, while de-conversion is often rational in nature.  This may have led some readers to think that my opinion of emotional experiences in general is negative, and that I treat those religious conversions derisively.  I certainly didn't mean to convey that impression.  Nevertheless, as an empiricist, it is my opinion that a belief that derives from a rational thought process based on objective evidence is likely to have better epistemic justification than a belief that stems from emotional experience.

The Grounding of Morality

Having been involved in many discussions with religionists on the topic of morality, I often hear claims that have no basis in reality.  It is particularly annoying when they arrogantly proclaim they hold a monopoly on morality, for example.  This is due to their belief that God is the source or the ground of all moral values.  Without God, they say, there could be no moral values and no moral behavior.  As with their belief in the existence of God, the idea that morality is dependent on God is not consistent with reality.

When Parody Turns On Itself

I have found myself the subject of yet another post at Christian Cadre.  This time, by none other than JP Holding.  JP is somewhat famous for making gratuitously insulting responses to well-known atheists, such as Ed Babinski, Robert Price, and Bart Ehrman.  Should I feel honored by this?  Hardly.  JP doesn't know the difference between a scholarly argument and a third-grader's crude retort.  To him. they're all just "fundy atheists", they're all stupid, and they can all be answered with facile responses.  Check out his channel at YouTube.  There, you will find many cartoon videos that go something like this:

Stupid atheist says some thing stupid.
Smart Christian says something clever to prove him wrong.
The End.