Tag: Atheism

Nemesis

I think I officially have an online nemesis. And I’m unworried. The Barefoot Bum has written a couple more posts about how many problems he has with me – and refuses to post my comments. How beautifully ironic given that he suggested I’d edit my comments after he posted his rant.

Anyway, don’t bother commenting there. It’s not worth the angst. He’s certainly pretty sure of his faith. And pretty abusive.

In closing, I give you this statement based on my experiences posting comments on atheist blogs this week:

Atheist communities are a group of people united by nothing.

June 8, 2009

Barefoot and fancy free

Well, the Barefoot Bum doesn’t like me. He called me a very rude word (that I won’t repeat here – don’t click the link if harsh language offends) in his latest post. And an authoritarian to boot. A Nazi even. Seems Godwin’s law doesn’t apply when you’re a raging atheist. Neither does context.

He didn’t like this comment I put on the previous thread:

If God is not hidden and the “priest, prophets, pundits” are his chosen messengers then you have every reason to believe me and/or them. Why would God personally reveal himself to you because your logic demands it? That doesn’t make any sense. When does a subject ever tell their ruler what to do in that manner?

Because somehow that’s “authoritarian” and I’m a Nazi.

“Nathan is essentially demanding that I obey him (or his chosen priests & prophets) because he asserts that he speaks in the name of god, and he denies any obligation whatsoever to justify his authority. [bad language removed] If you want me to do something, then make me. All “subjects” can demand their “ruler” coerce them. So coerce me.

*I have no idea if Nathan will alter the content of the comment; he doesn’t strike me as being any more honest than he is intelligent. I’ve reproduced the accurately and in full, adding emphasis to the particularly [Again, Bad language removed] authoritarianism.”

Right, so I’m neither honest, or intelligent, I’m a fan of censorship, authoritarianism and a Nazi. This guy knows me well.

“But don’t think that you have any right to escape criticism and condemnation for your slavish submission to authority or your demand that I submit to your authority.”

Slavish submission?

Here are some thoughts on the matter.

  1. Writing something on your own blog does not make it truth.
  2. Writing something in the comments of someone else’s blog also doesn’t make it true – no matter how insulting or ridiculous you find their arguments.
  3. Declaring something loudly on your blog and having your commenting sycophants back you up also does not make your statement truth.
  4. Being insulting to people you’ve never met does nothing for your cause.
  5. Showing disregard for context without questioning the context and posting inflammatory posts about people you’ve never met also does nothing for your cause.
  6. Burying your head in the sand on any counterpoints to your opinion will never end well.
  7. Logical fallacies are only logical fallacies if you presuppose that your opponent is irrational and illogical.
  8. You will always win an argument if you set the parameters and the parameters naturally exclude the person you are arguing with.
  9. If God exists then it’s not up for us to set the parameters for considering his existence on natural law. If God exists the concept of “natural law” does not apply past what we are capable of observing.
  10. The Friendly Atheist is actually friendly by comparison to this particular atheist.
  11. If you remove the fundamental authority and evidential standard from any argument – it falls over. So you can’t ask a Christian not to argue from their understanding of the Bible, a Muslim not to argue from their understanding of the Qu’ran or an Atheist not to argue from their understanding of Science*. All are equally subjective.
  12. As a follow up point from point 11 – atheists expect Christians to familiarise themselves with science, and Christians often do so superficially which frustrates Atheists – but when it comes to the “theistic” evidence they’re only prepared to take a superficial understanding of theology to the table. Because that’s easier to refute.

*Capitalised to indicate usage as a proper noun not the verb.

June 5, 2009

Big red A

This symbol is not an indication of quality on the blogosphere but a declaration of atheism.

Just so you know. I found out because “The Barefoot Bum” deemed my propositions on atheism worthy of his attention. And ridicule. His link to my post read “another mole to be whacked”…

June 4, 2009

10 further reflections on atheism

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook (and you’ll find a link to add me on the right hand column of this site) will know that my status yesterday was “is looking for a fight”. Well, I found one, a bit, over at the FriendlyAtheist. 

It’s an interesting site. I have some reflections from my discussions there that I think are worthwhile. 

  1. The vast majority of atheists come out of some form of theism – many of the commenters on that blog are former church goers from a range of denominations – there are also a bunch of Mormons. They see their atheism as a natural progression towards enlightenment. 
  2. American culture must be harder on atheists – they all seem so bitter and I suspect that’s largely because the culture of American Christendom is difficult. 
  3. “Good” and moral are different – Christians have made a mistake because of a semantic difference on the definition of good. While Christianity teaches that nobody – not even Christians – is capable of “good” behaviour – this generally means “behaviour that counts towards salvation” – for an atheist it means anything that would be considered selfless or moral. Atheists, as a general rule, seem very angry at the idea they are incapable of moral behaviour because they don’t have God. Which leads them to ask if it’s only God preventing Christians from living immoral lives. (Which was well considered in Andrew’s recent post…)
  4. “Strong Atheists” (those who believe “Absolutely, positively, there is no god.”) are apparently being taught to argue as though they are “Weak Atheists” (those who believe “I don’t believe in God because no one has provided me with any credible evidence that God exists.”) in order to shift the burden of proof to Christianity. 
  5. Thanks to Dawkins and co atheists continue to argue with a caricature of Christianity – and also put forward issues or challenges to Christianity that are considered and covered by the Bible as if they’re compelling evidence – and refuse to accept belief in the Bible on the basis of a history of bad translations, poor doctrine and bad application. For example – David Attenborough, the prominent nature documentary maker – argues that the existence of “evil” in nature (specifically a worm whose only purpose is to burrow into the human brain) is proof that God isn’t loving and doesn’t exist. This dismisses any theological thought put into areas like this – and in fact the basic Christian teaching of the Fall’s impact on God’s creation. 
  6. As a further point on that last one – when the Bible does speak to a “logical” problem atheists have with Christianity it’s rejected on the basis that “the Bible would say that wouldn’t it…” as though considering the issue is part of a grand scheme to dupe us. 
  7. Faith is seem to be a “superstitious logical jump” in the face of conflicting evidence rather than a conviction of truth without all the  evidence.
  8. Atheists hate being compared to Mao – but love comparing Christians to the Crusaders (or in fact any nasty people carrying out nasty acts in the name of Jesus). When you suggest that these Christians weren’t being Christian you’re guilty of breaching the “no true Scotsman” fallacy – when you suggest that their anger at the Mao analogy is similarly a “no true Scotsman” fallacy you’re told that Mao was not motivated by his atheism… is it just me seeing this as contradictory?
  9. A whole lot of bad teaching is coming home to roost – doctrinal clarity is important. Ideas like “God is love” that don’t speak to God’s wrath, holiness, or judgement have caused more harm than good. This is what happens when only part of the gospel is considered with another part swept under the carpet. 
  10. At the end of the day – my staunch “Reformed” understanding of evangelism and election means that I’m not in any position to convince those whose hearts are hardened to the gospel. The parable of the sower would tend to suggest that the standard atheist experience of a choked faith is natural and to be expected for many “converts”…  
  11. And a bonus point – “evidence” is seen to be some sort of magic bullet for atheists – but naturalism presupposes the supernatural – and as soon as something supernatural is demonstrably tested it’s no longer supernatural but just an undiscovered natural entity – God is, by definition, supernatural. He can not possibly be tested in this manner, because we can’t expect him to conform to our “testing” and act the same way over and over again… There are biblical examples of God being tested – Ezekiel and Gideon spring to mind – but these are of no value to this argument… because of point six. This link should take you to what I think is a nice little evidence analogy in one of my comments.

These reflections come from my experience and discussions on these posts. Feel free to critique my arguments or approach in the comments.

June 3, 2009

The Friendly Atheist

I’ve been reading a bit of the back catalogue of the Friendly Atheist, who is in fact a friendly atheist – it’s a same about his lunatic band of followers who deface every moderate post with comments about why Christianity should not exist… I’ve been doing this because I think engaging with just one or two posts from this sort of blog and getting all preachy in the comments is harmful. I like to understand context before I go off disagreeing (yes my specific atheist friends this is important to Christians…).

The Friendly Atheist, Hermant Mehta, achieved some fame ebaying off his time with a promise to visit churches identified by the winning bidder. He turned it into a book – which would no doubt be informative reading for anybody wanting to look at church practices from the outside. He also used his experience to write a couple of reflective posts – one about things about church that are annoying (and I agree with most of them) – as do many Christian commenters on the post (which is still getting comments almost 2 years later)… and this one – ten things Christians do better than atheists – which is a bit less friendly. I guess because both target the fringe parts of Christianity that I personally have struggles with… Which in itself is interesting. I think the “rational” evangelical arm of Christianity probably spends a lot of time agreeing with atheists and throwing stones at Christian brothers rather than focusing on the unity we have with our “irrational” fellow Christians. Which is pretty challenging. Especially in the light of passages like 1 Corinthians 1 (incidentally if you google the phrase: 1 Corinthians 1 biblegateway esv – the third result down is a page on the MPC website (dad’s church for the uninitiated))…

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

The more I grapple with, and try to convince my atheist friends of the rationality of the gospel the more I am convinced that this is the case – they’re going to read this and tell me I’m copping out for falling back on a proof text written in order to justify just this criticism – but that’s where I guess our “doctrine” of Scripture disagrees. If it’s a true representation of God’s intentions why wouldn’t the Bible say it?

Craig linked to the article from the Friendly Atheist I posted the other day, with a wise disclaimer encouraging Christians to be sensitive when posting – advice I perhaps failed to heed with my own comments – lest we give more ammunition to the disdain these atheists show for Christianity. It’s particularly pertinent advice given some of the “drive by” evangelism that happens in the comments on that blog – evangelism without relationship is pretty futile. As perhaps best expressed by this Friendly Atheist post of advice for Christians as they evangelise to atheists…

May 31, 2009

Sad

Nothing makes me sadder than this post on “the friendly atheist” and the tales of “deconversion” shared in the comments.

In short, he was much happier being religious. I think anyone would expect this, but the problem is that I don’t think he has found anything positive in atheism yet, and I think he’s finding it very depressing that there might not be a god. I don’t think that “better moral guidelines” and “seeing the universe as it is” can outweigh what could well be the loss of his entire family, at least not at this stage.

It’s sad that these atheists (the blogger in particular) – make it their life’s ambition to bring misery to people in the form of “enlightenment” – if they truly believe there’s no God – why proselytise aiming to deconvert someone and disrupt their family?

It’s also sad hearing tales of broken lives driven by broken understandings of Christianity perpetuated by broken people. There’s so much anger and anguish underpinning the genuine hurt many of these “deconverted” atheists feel having “wasted their lives”. It also seems many of them have been ostracised by their “Christian” families for doing so.

It’s stories like this, repeated time and time again, that make me angry and sad. For all parties involved.

I come from an Evangelical Southern Baptist strand of Christianity so I think our situations may be similar. I was truly a warrior for Christ – daily Bible readings coupled with prayer, tri-weekly Church visits and I made every decision in my life based on the Truth I knew from the Bible. Of course I was still a teenager at the zenith of my faith so my decisions can’t truly compare to those made about a spouse or career.

I was 22 when I told my mother that I no longer believed Christianity was valid and it initiated the single hardest time in my life. She effectively disowned me and we did not speak for several months. In her rage she told our extended family of my betrayal and even “outed” one of my friends to his own family. I was told that I was to no longer speak with my own brother.

May 29, 2009

Humble pie co

I subscribed to an atheist blog recently – just to see how the other side thinks. It’s called “the friendly atheist” and if this guy and his commenters are the “friendly” side of atheism I’m not looking forward to the unfriendly side. They’re generally sneeringly intolerant and arrogant – probably just what they say about most “Christians” (I put that in inverted commas because I’m talking about anybody who calls themselves a Christian)…

But this post is all about “questions which stump atheists” – the answer, from about 70 comments is “not much, we know everything”… and “Christians are dumb”… my favourite bit is where one commenter suggests his fellows eat some humble pie.

So, atheists (and I know at least two of you read), do you ever have doubts? I’m humble enough to admit that I don’t and can’t know everything. Are you?

May 27, 2009

Offensive offensive

Yesterday while I was thinking about Guerrilla Evangelism, it occurred to me that road safety ads could be easily edited to be ads about not leaving a decision about Christianity to the last minute. Death bed confessions only work for people who know they’re on their death bed.

This ad is slightly disturbing… so only watch it if you want to fully appreciate my argument.

Would you have a problem with an “offensive” ad like this – ie one designed to shock – being used to promote Jesus? I know a uni group copped some flack a few years back for dressing up as death and running around harvesting people with sickles.

I suspect imminent mortality is one of the only things that atheists find confronting.

May 25, 2009

I’ve run out of atheism headings

It seems to me that any time Christians (or theists) are critical of the nasty side of atheism we get shouted down as hypocrites. How can we pick on Dawkins, for how can we caricature them all on account of his vitriol when we had George W Bush as the public face of Christianity justifying unpopular wars with terribly out of context Bible passages? Or indeed or the televangelists et al who are a public bastardisation of the Christian message.

Is this a log v speck issue? Should we be trying to clear up the Christian brand (ie what the public think Christianity is) before we go charging at the bastion of angry atheism – namely Richard Dawkins and co.

Probably. Those loony fringes of Christianity are much better at garnering publicity than the mainstream evangelical orthodoxy. Like the woman in the US who kidnapped her kid because he has cancer and the State wanted to force him to undergo life saving medical treatment.

So long as that’s the public understanding of “Christianity” pushed by the media we’re going to have troubles criticising atheism because the public understanding of atheism is angry intellectual criticism of religious belief.

I actually started writing this post because there’s been a pretty angry response to that article in the LA Times the other day – and I wanted to talk about how angry atheists are, and how Dawkins seems to epitomise atheism, rather than being at its fringe.

That is all. For now.

May 22, 2009

The indefensible


When I first saw this I thought it was a piece of bad atheist satire on the way Christians use the Bible to justify killing people. Turns out I was wrong. Thanks Mr Rumsfeld. There are heaps more – and the SMH is reporting it, which doesn’t make it “fact” but makes it much more believable than I first thought…

That’s right people. We’ve been wrong all these years. The armour of God is a tank.

No wonder Christians get picked on…

May 19, 2009

LA Times on Atheism

I’m getting a bit bored with the whole atheism thing. While I haven’t engaged in any emailed debates for a couple of days the last 200 email saga is still playing itself out in my head. It just makes me angry. So angry that rather than beating my head against the desk I will share this recent opinion piece from the LA Times with you…

The problem with atheists — and what makes them such excruciating snoozes — is that few of them are interested in making serious metaphysical or epistemological arguments against God’s existence, or in taking on the serious arguments that theologians have made attempting to reconcile, say, God’s omniscience with free will or God’s goodness with human suffering.

What does strike me about the whole debate – and this article brought it home – is that atheists feel like they’re in the minority. In the US they may well be – it’s politically incorrect to be an atheist. But I’m not sure that the “religion” stats from censuses are anything to go by. And I’d suggest that in Australia being an atheist is the normal or default position (assuming that agnostics are just uncommitted atheists because most religions would suggest that if you don’t act like you believe in God, you don’t believe in God) – not the exception to the rule.

“A recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists). You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists’ failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.”

That’s certainly not consistent with my experiences where I would expect the majority of people I deal with to be either atheists, or agnostics.

I’m wondering why the whole debate bothers me so much – and I suspect it really is that somewhat selfishly I’d like to be taken seriously and not treated like an idiot for having “an imaginary friend”…

Atheists seem to assume that the whole idea of God is a ridiculous absurdity, the “flying spaghetti monster” of atheists’ typically lame jokes. They think that lobbing a few Gaza-style rockets accusing God of failing to create a world more to their liking (“If there’s a God, why aren’t I rich?” “If there’s a God, why didn’t he give me two heads so I could sleep with one head while I get some work done with the other?”) will suffice to knock down the entire edifice of belief.

May 19, 2009

Testing times

Lately I’ve been thinking about how churches should harness the power of PR a little more – particularly regional churches in cities like Townsville – where there’s a strong local media contingent and not so much clamour for media attention. I’ll probably turn that into a post all of its own at some stage – but for now, I have a case study for your consideration…

A group of researchers set out to conduct a series of experiments testing prayer. Their findings created a difficulty for those people who expect science to be capable of testing everything… both Christians, and atheists…

Christians who think science can prove God struggle because the people being prayed for fared worse than the people not being prayed for – and atheists because they’ll often argue that prayer should have a demonstrable psychological placebo effect – which it didn’t.

Christianity Today found a somewhat unpredictable spin to put on events. The study was conducted a few years back, but this article was produced pretty recently. Here’s a description of the study:

“STEP was simple and elegant, conforming to standard research norms and protocols: 1,802 patients, all admitted for coronary artery bypass graft surgery, were divided into three randomized groups. Two of the groups received prayer from committed Christians with experience praying for the sick. But only one group’s members knew they were being prayed for. The result: The group whose members knew they were being prayed for did worse in terms of post-operative complications than those whose members were unsure if they were receiving prayer. The knowledge that they were being prayed for by a special group of intercessors seemed to have a negative effect on their health.”

Here’s the Christianity Today editorial on the results:

The real scandal of the study is not that the prayed-for group did worse, but that the not-prayed-for group received just as much, if not more, of God’s blessings.

It’s an odd interpretation of the results and doesn’t seem to mesh well with the study itself.

Here’s the Harvard Medical School Media Release on the study – and a better description of the methodology… You’ve got to wonder who set these parameters and actually thought they’d work. This doesn’t seem to come close to any Biblical picture of prayer…

“The researchers standardized the start and duration of prayers and provided only the patients’ first name and last initial. Prayers began on the eve or day of surgery and continued daily for 14 days. Everyone prayed for received the same standardized prayer. Providing the names of patients directed prayer-givers away from a desire to pray for everyone participating in the study. Because the study was designed to investigate intercessory prayer, the results cannot be extrapolated to other types of prayer.”

Sadly, the whole report is now going to be used by misguided atheists to bash all Christians over the head as they call for amputees to grow arms.

May 18, 2009

Helpful Atheists

I’ve been challenged by my recent conversations with my atheist friends to consider my comments on morality – apparently atheists find the suggestion that Christians are more inclined to act morally somewhat abhorrent and arrogant – they argue that there are plenty of nice atheists. Which is true. 

I made my suggestion in what I thought was a logical and coherent manner. If atheists are prepared to acknowledge that Christianity – in its pure, biblical form complete with love and an other person focus, is a force for good – then it follows that Christians must be gooder than average. I thought that made perfect sense. It lead to vitriol and condemnation. 

I may have countered the standard accusation that “religion” has killed lots of people and done bad stuff by breaking Godwin’s Law – and invoking Hitler, and other terrible atheists who have killed many more people throughout human history as a response. This is altogether another argument and worthy of a separate post – this line was rejected on the basis that they weren’t motivated by their atheism. I disagree slightly, but take the point… anyway, that’s a rather long intro to this little story about a nice, helpful atheist who has agreed to help out those Christians who subscribe to rapture based theology. He’s going to send mail on their behalf, post rapture. You can choose from a series of letters and greeting cards… like this one…

So there you have it. Atheists can be nice people after all…

May 17, 2009

More on atheists

I’ve had a pretty long debate stretching over two days with my atheist friends. I have some observations I’d like to make… they are generalisations so come with the standard general disclaimer.

  1. Atheists being branded as they are will always immediately dismiss Christianity on the basis that they’ve made the debate occur a step before Christianity – this means not engaging with any Christian material (ie the Bible)…
  2. They’re a-theist not a-Christian. If you argue the questions from a Christian perspective they dismiss them immediately because you’re not tackling the issue at the root.
  3. They will also refer to God as “it” and remove any Christian terminology from the argument – which makes arguing from a Christian perspective difficult. The Christian then becomes an apologist for Islam, and any other theistic world view in the process. In fact, by doing this they bring in every non-credible and crazy religion and ask you to defend them on equal footing – which is why the “atheist movement” for want of better nomenclature – have invented the Flying Spaghetti Monster and describe Jesus as a Zombie Carpenter…
  4. In attacking the rhetoric this way they’ve moved the goal posts – and apologists must adjust accordingly.
  5. The fundamental differences between the two positions are, in my mind best expressed as follows: Theists look at a complex universe and say a big creator must have made this, atheists look at the complex universe and say it’s too complex for a big creator, it must have been small particles accidentally colliding, or its complexity is a product of infinite possibilities occurring in infinite time. Alternatively, as expressed by one of the atheists in the discussion:

Theism uses the impossible to explain the rational.
Science uses the possible to explain the irrational.

Where somehow, if I understand that point correctly, science is equal to atheism. Which comes as a surprise to me, and no doubt to many Christian scientists.

May 13, 2009

Prayer fail

One of the proofs that one of my atheist friends suggests would swing him towards faith is some sort of observable scientific testing of prayer.

The problem with this is that too often they then demand the test meet some “observable” criteria, that they set, like growing an amputee’s limb back…

I think prayer works, my personal experience of prayer suggest that it works, but then I tend to pray within the constraints of rational possibilities (eg not that an amputee will grow a limb back) consistent with instructions on prayer from the Bible.

There is however, another side of the coin. Where people can pray in stupid ways that just lend themselves to atheists pointing and laughing.

Like this 63 year old Indian man who has refused to bathe for 35 years as part of his regular prayer ritual.

I would suggest, that if you’re hanging on to some sort of superstition in order to achieve a particular, and stated aim, that 35 years is too long. Particularly if the aim is to have a male child.

An Indian man who fathered seven daughters has not washed for 35 years in an apparent attempt to ensure his next child is a boy, newspapers report.

Kailash “Kalau” Singh replaces bathing and brushing his teeth with a “fire bath” every evening when he stands on one leg beside a bonfire, smokes marijuana and says prayers to Lord Shiva, according to the Hindustan Times.

May 12, 2009