Here is a guest post from frequent commenter Honshui. I'll see you in the comments.
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I was reading today about how atheists in santa monica have taken over the display space that previously held nativity scenes for Christmas. The Christians who have been crowded out from doing their festive display claim that the atheists "gamed the system" to get said space and they are none too pleased about the atheist statements about their blessed holiday.(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/us/santa-monica-nativity-scenes-replaced-by-atheists.html ).
As a committed agnostic I find the atheist religion amusing to watch. Like other intolerant religions, atheists cannot let people with other beliefs be. They feel a need to confront the other believers I presume in an attempt to convert them to atheism. Atheists are 21st century missionaries!
Now before the atheists get their knickers in a knot over being called a religion let me state my case that agnosticism is the only non-faith based position one can take. To be an atheist one must have faith that there is nothing like a god or higher power. If atheists truly understood science then they would see this but atheists are not scientists, they are philosophers relying on logic to infer the uninferrable.
Christians believe that there is a god. Atheists who believe that there is no god challenge Christians to prove that there is a good. If we were conducting this in a scientific way, then we would form a "null hypothesis" to test like: Ho: There is no god, against an alternative hypothesis Ha: There is a god. If empirical evidence could be generated to prove that there is a god then presumably the atheist would convert to christianity since the burden of proof would be to reject the null hypothesis. The tricky part for atheists comes from what to do when there is no evidence that there is a god. You cannot reject the null hypothesis. Atheists then make a flawed logical assertion that failure to reject the null means that one must accept the null -- ergo, there is no god. The problem with the atheist position that a lack of evidence that there is a god does not prove that there is no god. In the scientific method you can reject the null hypothesis but you cannot prove it is true. Thus, all we can say from this scientific test where we do not reject the null hypothesis is that we don't know if there is or is not a god. Ergo, the agnostic position is the appropriate one to take unless you have faith that there is no god. In this case, the faith or belief that there is no god guides the atheist making it just another religion that really doesn't fit well with science.
19 comments:
Wow. It's almost fractal wrongness.
Let me pick on one thing as I'm feeling under the weather and I'd rather chew this apart at work than on my free time.
"I find the atheist religion amusing to watch."
I guess we can stop reading right there. Unless, that is, you can point me to doctrinal works of this religion? Who are the leaders, what is the hierarchy, what is the creed? Tell me who atheism is exactly like a religion, other than your pithy reasoning of "I say it is a religion". Or...admit that's simply wrong and/or silly, and we'll get to the next point.
The modern day atheist relies on religious leaders like Richard Dawkins to tell them what to think. But that is more "atheism in practice" than the actual religious teachings, must like Christianity has become. Maybe we are witnessing the noble beginning of the Atheism religion, and it will churn out the next Catholic church in 200 years.
Dawkins is not a religious leader. There is no doctrine. You are an implicit atheist for any god you haven't heard of.
It can't be stated enough, atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Look, you don't have to have leaders to have a religion. You could go with anarchy or "extreme democracy" and still be a religion. That said, atheists do quote dawkins and others of his ilk. Certainly in the Santa Monica case there was leadership organizing the holiday display campaign.
You guys were taking me to town for not capitalizing god because as I learned about atheism listening to a steve martin song, atheists have doctrines and rules for how to respond to christians.
And for the record, I do see not collecting something as a legitimate hobby if not vocation.
"you don't have to have leaders to have a religion. You could go with anarchy or "extreme democracy" and still be a religion."
If you think this, then you are very much alone. Please point out some people who think a form of government qualifies as a religion. I'll wait.
Quoting a noted thinker obviously does not make that person the leader of religion. Stop being so overly precious and admit to being wrong on that point.
"You guys were taking me to town for not capitalizing god"
This is all about your hurt feefees over not doing a proper job of imitating a fundamentalist Christian? Oh for fuck sake. We pointed out that Christians require the capital G and the the lower case g is a tell. There are no atheist doctrines as it is not a movement, group, or religion. You can't make it so, no matter how many semantic knot you twist your language into.
If you see not doing something as a vocation, then you are being intellectually dishonest just to win a point.
In regards to you null hypothesis stuff:
1. the absence of gods is the null hypothesis, and
2. there is no contrary evidence to justify rejecting it.
Atheism is rejecting the existence of gods, not a claim to knowledge of their non-existence.
Glad to have cleared that up for you.
Love the logic mashing here.
If agnosticism is the only way to be "honest" then you can never have an opinion on any supernatural claims apart from "could be."
Invisible leprechauns, faerie ninjas, unicorns from the nth dimension, all those characters from any fantasy/nightmare ever experienced etc. Anything the febrile imagination can conceive of must be given equal credence in Ho's world; and a position on its extensional likelihood can never be taken.
Atheists have only one thing in common, they believe that there is no supernatural realm. All there is is the natural world. If somebody claims that there is a supernatural realm, then the onus is on them to show that there is such a thing. It really isn't hard. When ever you need a loan you can't just go down to the bank and make claims about collateral, you actually have to show that you have collateral. Physical deeds to the house etc are required before you get the cash.
Ho's logic on this is never better illustrated than through this statement.
"If empirical evidence could be generated to prove that there is a god then presumably the atheist would convert to christianity"
Nope! The xian would then have to show that the xian version of the deity was the correct one and then show that the version his particular form of xianity was a true reflection of supreme being. It isn't as simple as one first imagines, this nailing down of nothingness to a specific form of nothingness.
Science is the study of that which can be studied, philosophy is the study of maybes. Atheism is not only consistent with scientific thought, science demands that atheism should be a founding position for good results to occur.
I love that you zealots are playing scientist to justify your lazy thinking. "Not collecting stamps is a hobby"? "When you head down to the bank, blah blah blah, stupid"? Come on, man!
The continual reference to any concept of god as a "sky wizard" or whatever is just more evidence that not only can you not believe in a god, but to be a true atheist, you have to ridicule one particular concept of a god. That way you'll troll the most people. It's also one of the rules you have to obey to be on "Team Atheist", a team that refuses to call themselves a religion.
The question of "what makes a religion", while important, does not necessarily go against Honshui's point that atheists are always just looking for a fight with the majority, and there is no better time to make that point other than on "Gift Day".
Ha!
I should probably vet myself
Check this out, http://dome1972.blogspot.com/2011/05/i-may-or-may-not-be-your-lord-and.html
I see Fugle doesn't address any issues brought up but just answers the points he wish had been brought up.
"but to be a true atheist, you have to ridicule one particular concept of a god."
This isn't so, I'll hammer on hindus, buddhists,moslems and jews too and do do so regularly for the insanity they excuse. But I'll bite for argument's sake. Compare the above with being a true believer in a sect within a faith. These guys have to ignore and dismiss all other sects within all other faiths (and non-faith positions) and push one particular concept of a god. Based on what?
Why baptist instead of episcopalian? Why jew instead of moslem? Why shiite instead of sunni? What is the crucial bit of evidence that leads them to prefer one over the other? What is it that allows the myriad varieties of faiths to exist when by logic only one (if any of them) can be true? And just how full of hubris do you have to be to assume that you follow the one true one?
At least the atheist is consistent and rejects them all as similar variations on a theme.
Cool, atheists are the new Catholics because of a monolithic claim to truth. That's right, fuck off Protestants with your pluralistic visions of the truth.
You know harebell, you made my point above when you said "atheists believe there is no supernatural realm". They can't prove there is not such a realm so atheists retreat to " belief". How exactly is that science?
Merry Christmas all
Honshui
Here are some interesting tidbits from the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. First, from Erin Anderssen, "Oh God Can't We all Just Get Along?", Globe and Mail, Dec 24, 2011 page F1, it appears that Christopher Hitchens is the anointed "pope" of the atheists:
"His was the clever voice of secular superiority, though the argument against religion ultimately amounted to slugging it out with an opponent whose mind he was never going to change, and who had no chance of changing his. Mr. Hitchens and his cohort of fellow new atheists have sold a lot of books ... Mr Hitchens was doing his best to hasten what intellectuals in the West have predicted since the dawn of the age of reason -- that the Enlightenment would extinguish faith once and for all. This hasn't happened: God while certainly less "Great" in the West, nonetheless continues to hold sway .. over many other parts of the world. "
Anderssen continues:
"After all, our reliance on pure reason and its secular institutions -- government, the marketplace and even science itself -- has failed, or at a minimum, disappointed roughly 99% of us."
Licia Corbella in the Calgary herald today claims that the atheists, not the other faiths, are the problems at Christmas (Corbella: Thank commercialism for survival of Christmas):
"It’s also my experience that it is not newcomers or people of other faiths who have tried to kill Christmas. Indeed, every December we get numerous phone calls and cards from our Muslim, Jewish and Sikh friends. They don’t wish us season’s greetings, but a Merry Christmas. It’s the atheists from the dominant culture who use official multiculturalism as their excuse to quell Christianity."
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/holiday-guide-2011/Corbella+Thank+commercialism+survival+Christmas/5905948/story.html#ixzz1hVtTHGhn"
So atheists, what do you have to say for yourselves?
Fugle blarted: "to be a true atheist, you have to ridicule one particular concept of a god."
Really? Aren't you and honshui tired of playing hectoring assholes? Maybe, for one fucking second, you two assholes could stop telling everyone what they are thinking.
Anonymous honshui blarted: "atheists are the new Catholics because of a monolithic claim to truth."
Strawman. Next?
"They can't prove there is not such a realm so atheists retreat to " belief"."
Strawman again. Stop making shit up already, it's dull.
Hitchens is not an anointed pope; that is bullshit put forward by the religious who desperately need for atheism to be a religion, or by dummies who can't refute him. Deal with not being smarter than the guy. All this blather about the new atheists, if you spent as much time reading what they say as complaining about it, you might learn something. But then you might have to take a side, which would be too injurious to your desire to stand in the middle and wave a white flag and say "A pox on both their houses". Sucking and blowing, having cake and eating it, it must be a wonderful world for you.
And really, who give a flying figgy puddy what a shit scribe like Corbella writes in a rag like the Herald. All the oil in the world won't put a sheen of class on that crap hole of paper.
I'll say it again, fractal wrongness. Every single damn sentence from the two of you is wrong, and every word breaks down to more expanding wrongness. But it's good for the lulz as the kids say. So, yay.
Since we're letting reporters and journalists decide things for Honshui and Fugle:
"After all, our reliance on pure reason and its secular institutions"
Dan Gardner counters with "When has that described our society?"
More Gardner: "How many theists are actually the sweetly reasonable people portrayed in the article? Evidence suggests fewer than author assumes"
"The awful-extremists-on-both-sides-nice-people-in-the-middle thing is a pose. Reasonableness is evidence by reason. Not a lot here."
Let's recap for Fugle and Honshui. Honshui decided to attack atheists because his feelings were hurt because his trolling was called out. Fugle then accuses me of attacking people of faith at Christmas over a post Honshui wanted me to put up for him.
Why is your faith in your Abrahamic god so weak, so fragile, that you have to lose your shit like this? You don't have a good grasp of current apologetics, yet you dance around every point like you're the first person to ever think what you did. Enjoy your faith, as it will be your only recourse to peace in an ever-changing world beset on all sides by technology and reason. The Flinstones is a documentary.
Honshui
They don't retreat to belief.
The belief the atheist forms is based on assessable evidence. There is no evidence for a supernatural world, so it is appropriate for a rational person to form a belief that such a realm does not exist.
Science assesses evidence to to make real world claims about the truth.
Religions do none of this. They believe in the inerrancy of a book centuries old that has taken no notice of stuff discovered since then. Apart from the contortions of apologetics that is.
There can be no definitive evidence that something like a god does not exist. The view that the balance of a lack of evidence of existence of a god makes non-existence of god a reasonable position to take. But you can never know with certainty that you have the correct view (since atheists don't have beliefs).
Climate change zealots have same issue as atheists. They push too hard on something that is probabilistic ally true. Bjorne lomberg was vilified for pointing this out. While I personally believe that human activity has warmed the climate I think is not science to issue a scientific "consensus" statement to "prove" something.
What this debate has shown is that atheists don't want a debate, they want a crusade.
Merry Christmas!
They don't want a crusade because that would indicate an organisation and a pope.
The only thing I have in common with other atheists is that I see no convincing evidence for the existence of a supernatural realm. If the religious were honest, they would actually admit that for the majority of proposed supernatural realms they see no evidence for them either; just the one that they chose to favour. The evidence for all supernatural beings is exactly the same, none. It's just that the religious aren't consistent in interpreting the evidence the atheist is.
:)
I should send BobRN over here, huh?
It's good to know that if I read or quote someone, that's evidence of religion. I must worship at the churches of Zoolander, Star Wars, Kung Pow,and Stephen King, 'cause I quote them a LOT.
Interesting.
Part of your (Nonny and Fugle) bad faith argumentation is arbitrarily deciding what words mean, and how people think. You don't get to do that and then complain about the debate.
Watch, learn, and accept that you had it wrong all along.
http://youtu.be/7ncCNwbb5Jc
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