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.

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.

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' *.

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.

The Dark Side of Irrational Discourse

Over at Shadow To Light, Mikey is at it again.  In his never-ending crusade against "New Atheists" and all things that he can construe as being an affront to his religionism, Mikey has shown once again that there is no room for rational debate of issues that touch on any topic where he holds religious-based beliefs.  This time, his decidedly emotional rant is about a TEDx Talk by Gregg Caruso on The dark side of free will.  Now, this talk isn't about religion, and it doesn't directly attack religious beliefs in any way, but it does make a comparison between beliefs associated with free will and those associated with determinism.  In particular, it contains a chart that shows the results of empirical studies making a correlation between free will belief and other associated ways of thinking that may have negative social consequences for society.  Those correlations are religiosity, punitiveness, "Just World" belief, and right wing authoritarianism.  Even though the talk didn't include any discussion religiosity or right wing authoritarianism - it was focused entirely on punitiveness and "Just World" belief - the mere fact that they were included in that list of correlations was enough to set Mikey off, accusing Caruso of being a "New Atheist":

Whoa! “Religiosity” is the “Dark Side.” It looks like the professor is peddling the “Religion is Evil” talking point of the New Atheist movement. As for “Right Wing Authoritarianism,” does this mean Left Wing Authoritarianism is correlated with a lack of belief in free will? Or maybe for the professor, there is no such thing as Left Wing Authoritarianism.

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.)

Mikey's Subjective View of Reality

If you talk with religionists about evidence for God, they invariably insist that it is clear and indisputable, if only you are willing to see it.  Atheists, they say, willfully ignore the evidence.  They don't have the "eyes to see", and this is their own fault, because seeing the evidence is simply a matter of choosing to accept the truth of religious belief.  And having done that, all is revealed.  The problem for the skeptic is that this is a catch-22 situation.  The skeptical stance is to withhold belief until sufficient evidence is revealed.  But the evidence isn't visible until you first believe.  Once you become a believer, then evidence of God is everywhere you look.  Ask any theist, and you will hear the same thing.  The evidence is overwhelming, they say, and the skeptic is blind for not seeing it.

Mikey's Alternative Facts

Never admit you're wrong.  This is the modus operandi of arrogant and dishonest people for whom winning is everything, and the ends are justification for any means.  When Donald Trump is caught in a lie, he doesn't admit that he's wrong.  He doubles down, piling more lies on top of his lies.  It's a show of strength.  Better to be seen as strong man who can fool lots of people than a weakling who fools nobody, and will compromise his values on the altar of truth.

The Dishonesty of Atheists

Those darned atheists.  One of them says one thing, and another says something somewhat different from that.  There is no consistency, and more importantly, no honesty among them.  Or so thinks militant religionist Mikey at Shadow To Light.  In one of his customary tirades against atheists, Mikey has outdone himself with another showpiece of incoherent, mindless raging against the atheist beasts.  Why would I call it mindless?  Because it is difficult to discern exactly why he is so outraged, and why his complaints shouldn't apply equally to religionists, or all of humanity, for that matter.

Religion As Child Abuse

Richard Dawkins famously argued that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse.  Militant theists have used that in an effort to make Dawkins and like-minded atheists seem unreasonable, typically by distorting the meaning of the atheists' words, and trying to make a nuanced position seem much more extreme or outrageous than it really is.  At Shadow to Light, Mikey thinks he has scored a devastating blow against New Atheists who argue that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse.  He summarizes his main argument in this way:

Atheist activists commonly argue that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse and thus religious parents have a moral obligation to refrain from instilling their religious views in their children.  This position is fatally flawed.  It ignores the findings of social science that demonstrate a healthy bond between parent and child is essential for the development of a person’s emotional and psychological well-being.  By trying to thwart religious socialization in families headed by religious parents, the atheists are advocating that harm be done to the children.  What makes this even worse is that the atheist position is grounded in hypocrisy, given that the arguments against religious socialization apply equally to political socialization.  That is, while atheists argue that religious indoctrination is child abuse, they have no problem “abusing” their own children with political indoctrination.   The atheist position is essentially nothing more than disguised bigotry that has the potential to do great harm.   Reasonable and ethical people should oppose it. - Mikey

De-Politicizing Science

Shadow To Light objects to the idea of Congress recognizing Darwin's contributions to humanity by designating his birthday as "Darwin Day".  He seems to think this is culture warfare, and undue politicization of science.

This is all yet another example of activists and politicians stinking up the place with their culture warring.  For this is nothing more than grandstanding that attempts to turn science itself into a political weapon and political debate. This is not “honoring science.”  It is politicizing science.  And the last thing Western civilization needs is the further politicization of science. -Mikey

Gosh, Mikey.  Why such a visceral reaction?  What in the world is political about this?  Oh, wait a minute.  I think I understand.  Mikey was reacting to a statement made by Hermant Mehta that says "it’s nice to see a member of Congress honoring science instead of denying it."  You see, what many politicians have done is to politicize science by de-funding or shutting down programs that don't advance their own political or religious agenda.  Mikey objects to politicians stepping away from those policies to simply celebrate science.

The Decline of the New Atheist Movement

There has been much ballyhoo among strident religionists about the decline and fall of the so-called New Atheist movement.  This has been going on for at least six years now.  Nearly four years ago, the Catholic Herald announced that "New Atheism is Dead".  Many others have been talking about the decline of the movement, as evidenced in this Conservapedia article, or the ongoing pronouncements of Shadow To Light, where these claims form a steady drumbeat, culminating, perhaps, in an obituary for the movement. Nevertheless, I don't expect to see Mikey stop beating a dead horse anytime soon.

Why Don't Scientists Believe in God?

Mikey at Shadow to Light is stumped once again by the views expressed by atheist scientists.  He has dug up a three year old a video compilation of fifty scientists (actually one of a series of similar videos) making brief comments about their views on atheism or agnosticism as proof of his contention that the scientists' atheism is unjustified.  The problem is that this video doesn't make any claims about providing arguments to justify atheism.  It merely contains brief snippets of scientists talking about belief.  The video was compiled by Dr, Jonathan Parajasingham, who says:

I do not claim that this video demonstrates there is no God. It is not an argument against God in itself ... Parajasingham

So what is Mikey's beef?  It seems that no matter what atheists say or do, he is bound to find fault with it.  But that has no bearing on the truth of what they say.  He either fails to understand or he deliberately misinterprets everything that doesn't agree with his ideological beliefs.

Skeptical About Skepticism

At Shadow to Light, Mikey has outdone himself.  Turned a news story about the zealotry of Christian Trump supporters into a full-blown conspiracy theory about hoaxers trying to make the Christians look bad.  And he does this in the name of skepticism.  It seems that the story, after appearing in a number of news outlets, was repeated by Hermant Mehta, at his blog, The Friendly Atheist.  What's the problem with that?  According to Mikey, Mehta should have been more skeptical about the story, because he didn't raise the question of its being a hoax.  No, what he did was to report it pretty much the way the initial news reports did, without embellishing the facts with speculation about what might really have happened.

Religionist Frothing at the Mouth

Over at Shadow To Light, Mikey wages a never-ending campaign of hatred against "New Atheists", or Gnus, as he often calls them.  Now he's picking on a kid for simply advocating secularism in the home.  That's all.  This 17-year-old, known as Cosmic Skeptic, seems pretty level-headed to me.  Did he say anything hateful or unkind toward religion or religious people?  No.  Did he make some snarky remark, or use ridicule?  No.  He simply expressed his opinion that parents should allow their children to make their own decisions about religious beliefs without being coerced into any particular religion by the parents.  And for that, Mikey has branded him with the pejorative label of "Gnu".

Labeling the Enemy

When I started reading Victor Reppert's Dangerous Idea, it quickly became apparent to me that many of the theists there have little interest in conducting a friendly dialog with non-believers.  People are divided into camps with an attitude of defending their own side and attacking the other.  When the us-against-them mentality becomes prevalent, then reasoned discussion tends to lose out.

Sure, Victor pretends to be a champion of Socratic debate and rational discussion, but then he never fails to get his digs in against the likes of Richard Dawkins, whom he has repeatedly labeled as a "gnu" atheist.  Dawkins is one atheist that Victor will never listen to and never understand, simply because he is one of those on the other side of the divide.  It really doesn't matter what he says.  It doesn't matter if he makes a statement that is reasonable and nuanced and worthy of discussion.  Victor will take an uncharitable view of it, dismissing any possible merit it might have, and at the same time dismissing any possibility of rational discussion on the very issues in which he claims to bemoan the absence of reasoned debate.

God of the Gaps Reasoning

"God of the Gaps" is a term that atheists often use to describe the nature of theistic belief in a world where science provides increasingly more natural explanations for things that were once explained by God.  Perhaps the most striking example of natural explanations replacing theistic ones is the origin of animal species.  This was once though to be the work of a divine intelligent creator, but now science has eliminated the need for any "goddidit" explanations.  There is a powerful and elegant explanation that does a much better job of answering some of the tough questions associated with the old theistic theory, such as "why are there so many apparent design flaws that are shared among related species?"  The theist at best can offer only a hand-waving rationalization, while the evolutionist can give a detailed explanation of how these things occur.  And so the natural explanation proves to be superior to the theistic one, which falls by the wayside.  And this is what happens in one field of science after another.  As science progresses, theistic explanations vanish.  Theists who once explained all of nature in terms of godly and supernatural forces are reduced to invoking these explanations for the dwindling number of things that have not yet been fully explained by science.

Fundamentalism Is About Fundamentals

After the terrorist attack in Paris, Richard Dawkins tweeted the famous line "If you don't like your religion's fundamentalists, then maybe there's something wrong with your religion's fundamentals".  This often-repeated statement echoes the sentiment of many skeptics of religion who believe that religious scriptures encourage the kind of violent behavior we see so often these days perpetrated by fundamentalist Christians and Islamists.  As described by Jake Stimpson in this article, the fundamentalists are the truest adherents of their religious traditions.  It is the religious moderates who deviate from them.

Sam Harris and others have written extensively on this topic.  Harris is critical of religious moderates for their role in perpetuating Iron Age barbarity, as seen in this excerpt from his book The End of Faith.  But as we know, Harris is a "new atheist".  As such his every word is subject to harsh criticism from self-appointed defenders of religious nonsense like Mikey at Shadow To Light.   Mikey is so intolerant of reason that he refuses even to listen to the argument of any so-called "gnu".  Instead he proceeds to cut down a straw man.  And as is his custom, he makes a complete fool of himself.