When they are told that they are as religious as theists or when they are told that atheism is itself a king of religion, they inevitably respond with the canned answer, “No atheism is not a religion or philosophy. It is simply lack of belief. You obviously don’t understand atheism!” ...
The most astounding thing about this canned answer is that it isn’t even logically viable. Babies have no logically definable belief in God, yet they are by no means atheists. ...
[W]hen an atheist claims he is being rational in claiming there is no God, or doesn’t believe in any god, he is following a self-imposed willful blindness to rationality itself, rather than the openness he claims. ...
Under atheism, all life is a mere accident of a mindless, non rational, purposeless universe. How does any non rational process create mind and rationality? To pre-empt the typical responses to this problem – such as that we have observations that confirm the reliability of our minds – I add, no you cannot test the reliability of the human mind by using the human mind. A fatal and salient contradiction occurs in the attempt!
Friday, August 13, 2010
The Stupid! It Burns! (lack of belief edition)
Is Atheism Mere Lack of Belief?:
4 comments:
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I hate it when theistic advocates use the word "accident" to describe processes such as evolution or scientific theories such as the big bang.
ReplyDeleteBut when that blogger said "Babies have no logically definable belief in God, yet there are no means atheists." - Why so oxymoronic? The baby is totally unaware of any religious concepts or the conceptual idea of God and has an absolute lack of belief. That characteristic alone means you can have appropriately label the baby an atheist.
Babies are small human beings. Rocks are small. But rocks are not babies. Therefore Babies are not small human beings.
ReplyDeletePeter Sanger's entire ethical philosophy (AFAIK) rests on a version of this elementary fallacy: we eat only non-sapient animals; babies are non-sapient; we don't eat babies; therefore it is hypocritical and inconsistent to eat non-sapient animals.
ReplyDeleteDamn, Gary, your comment made my eyes bleed, so I decided not to publish it.
ReplyDelete