Us and them

Allen Small fires off a salvo in our ongoing contretemps. Let me first deal with the substance of Allen's remarks.

Hmmm... Let me read it again...

Whaddayaknow... nothing of substance. Quelle surprise.

My issue with Allen has little to with communism or Libertarianism; it has everything to do with atheism. The only reason I pay Allen even the smallest attention is because he appears on Planet Atheism, an online "community", such as it is, of atheists. There are a lot of Libertarian bloggers on the internet, but I typically don't engage with them: As I mentioned in my earlier post, there's a lot of stupidity in the world, and I'm only one blogger.

Whether there should be an "us" and a "them" is beyond the scope of this post. I can note only that by creating a space called "Planet Atheism", Pedro Timóteo has created an "us"; by participating, the members of Planet Atheism, myself included, have consented to the division. The question becomes: who precisely is "us"?

I maintain that we are more than just people who happen to not believe in the existence of any deity, for any old reason. What makes us atheists, I think, is that we believe no deities exist because we are skeptics, because we value rationality, critical thought, and honesty. I don't think that atheists should all agree on some complex and detailed "line", but I do think we have and should maintain core values that go beyond simple disbelief. And I do not believe that Allen holds those core values.

I haven't brought up this aspect of the discussion before. People of good will and honest can disagree, sometimes sharply, on matters of substance. The post that started the contretemps discussed — at some length — the the substantive failings of Rev. William John Henry Boetcker Ten "Cannots", a particularly sloppy form of political-economic ignorance. It it skepticism 101 that criticism is not censorship: Everyone has the "right" to be wrong, and everyone has the right to criticize the wrongness without affecting the original author's standing to publish. Allen has every right to present and defend his political philosophy, and I have every right to criticize it, and criticize it without discussing his standing to publish it in the first place. But now I do want to discuss his standing to publish it in — and with the legitimacy of — our little community of atheist bloggers.

It is important to note that in a comment and two posts, Allen has yet to address the substance of the original list or the substance of my criticism of it. His sole "substantive" response has been to chant Stalin Stalin Stalin Stalin Stalin Stalin STALIN Kim Jong-il STALIN!!!!11!!1eleventy-one!!11!!. Indeed, as far as I can tell, Allen has never offered anything of substance about anything (but as noted before, I don't follow Allen's blog rigorously, so I could well have missed something); not only does he fail to offer anything of substance in response to his critics, he fails to offer a substantive defense of Libertarianism.

Allen doesn't ever write about atheism or any topic of special interest to atheists. He doesn't offer any kind of critical, skeptical examination of any topic. His posts consists of nothing but links, strident declarations of Libertarian dogma, blatant trolling (evidenced by his apparent relish at "rattling my cage"), and the occasional cartoon bear (apparently his exclusive source of economic "education"). Even on a broad definition of "us", Allen is just not one of us.

That being said, I am explicitly not asking, much less demanding, that Pedro Timóteo expel Allen from Planet Atheism. Quite the contrary: I want nothing but that Allen leave only of his own volition. (If, of course, Allen were to break the prosaic rules of PA, such as posting spam or pr0n, Pedro must act as he sees fit.) All I will do is keep the "heat" on Allen as a private individual with no authority over the content of PA. I will point out his dogmatism, trollishness, superficiality, lack of substance, and abhorrence of critical, skeptical thought.

Right wing terrorism: It works

Right Wing Terrorism: It Works.

The Infamous Brad makes the case that the right is beginning to employ the same terrorist tactics against the Democratic party that they have successfully employed against abortion.

I'll have to read the report Brad cites, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment

6 Killed, Congresswoman Injured In Ariz. Shooting

Only 16 left to go now, eh?

Atheism

Atheism is a complex (consisting of many parts) and equivocal antithetical position to the complex and equivocal position of theism. There are psychological, philosophical, political and social components to atheism, and even these components (especially the philosophical) are themselves complex and equivocal. But even given the complexity of the position, it's very very easy to understand.

As a social movement, "atheism" is a broad term of self-identification, legitimately held by anyone who does not believe "God exists" is a true proposition, i.e. anyone who lacks a propositional belief in the existence of any god. Even a "strong" atheist such as myself has to hold this "minimal" belief because of the complex and equivocal nature of theism: Some constructions of "god" (e.g. Yahweh, Allah) are known to be false, some (an omnimax being) are logically contradictory, some (e.g. metaphysical theism, God as the "ground of all being") are meaningless, some (e.g. deism) are unknowable and/or irrelevant, and some are just plain ridiculous. You have to tell me precisely what you mean by "god" before I can tell you precisely why you're wrong. (And if you can't tell me precisely and coherently what you mean by god, that's why you're wrong.)

Even the strong atheist position towards some gods is expressed in specifically knowledge-based terms: I know there's no such being as Yahweh (i.e. the character in the Christian bible is known to be fictional.) Knowledge is never certain; to say I know something is most definitely not to say I'm absolutely certain that something is true. To define knowledge to entail certainty is to define any empirical, scientific knowledge completely out of existence.

Even given the "limitations" of scientific knowledge, the intellectual and epistemic case for the existence of God is closed: We know beyond a reasonable doubt that all the constructions of "god" that go beyond the natural world are wrong, meaningless, irrelevant or stupid. There's simply no point in debating the matter further: Anyone who holds a position on "God" outside of Einstein's (unfortunate) use of "God" as a metaphor for the working of the natural world is either dishonest, incompetent, or deeply ignorant. You can't "debate" such people in any intellectually meaningful sense.

Given that the case is decisively closed beyond a reasonable doubt, atheists in ever-increasing numbers are turning their attention to "cleaning up" the vestiges of this failed paradigm on our society. We want to encourage a rational, scientific view of the world, a world of predictable and knowable natural law, in contrast to the arbitrary and capricious world of theism. We want to erase the social privilege given to superstition: No longer should a belief be immune from criticism precisely because it is ridiculous in some particular way. We want to eradicate a morality that does socially, economically and politically privileges those who claim to speak for God — a privilege that has extended not only to naked imperialism, genocide and slavery but also to enabling and protecting those who rape children — and replace it with humanism, which has as its core the well-being of all humanity.

We know where we want to go, the task is now to get there.

College upperclassmen still fail at scientific reasoning

College upperclassmen still fail at scientific reasoning

Most of us develop a sort of intuitive logic about how the natural world works. Unfortunately, a lot of that informal reasoning turns out to be wrong, which complicates scientific education. But as students make their way through the science education pipeline, they should gradually start moving beyond the informal reasoning of their earlier years. Or at least that's what we'd like to think; instead, a new survey of college students, some in advanced biology classes, indicates that most end up with a confused mix of formal and informal reasoning. ...

The end result, the authors conclude, is that "faculty are unknowingly speaking a different language from their students." They think that when they mention lost energy, the students know what they're talking about, or that their students' poor choice of wording doesn't represent a failure of logic. As a result, they see little reason to speak more carefully or devote instructional time to clearing up misconceptions. And, even if they wanted to, most biology textbooks consider principle-based reasoning beyond their scope.

The Conservative Constitution

The Conservative Constitution of the United States

We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.

(via David Ruccio)

Incisive criticism

Awwww.... poor Stan is all butthurt that I think he's an idiot. Debate and incisive criticism are just not possible for someone who shows such an advanced case of cranio-rectal inversion. Show a modicum of intellectual honesty and a minimal degree of argumentative competence, and maybe someone might actually take you seriously. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Asserting “non-belief” in a deity is superficial; it indicates that an answer which is convenient to the Atheist has been chosen without thought, or possibly it has been chosen to cover for the Atheist inability to prove his belief, which is that there is no deity. But the cover story is false, and the Atheist, who fails this cover is forced to see that his belief is an unprovable statement of faith, not a rational, empirical, scientific finding.

This is it, Stan. All you've got is just fallacy after fallacy: straw men, equivocations, excluded middle, argument by etymology, poisoning the well, ad hominem arguments, etc., ad nauseam. You demand depth, but you fail to offer anything but error, and only the most superficial of errors. You do not deserve debate; you deserve only scorn and derision.

The Stupid! It Burns! (racist edition)

Atheists Have A Diversity Problem

The assumption [according to Atheists' Diversity Woes Have No Black-and-White Answers] is that racial minorities fear “coming out” as atheists; that is, that they are really atheists but are just afraid to say so. That assumption is pretty condescending, indeed, racist in itself. Maybe the racial minorities aren’t atheists because they actually believe in God!

It's dodgy in the first place to rely on an explicitly Christian source (beliefnet.com) for information about atheists, but the cited article seems accurate and straightforward. However, the relevant quotation from the article is

One theory says minorities tend to be more reluctant than whites to "come out of the closet" as non-believers, in part because religion and culture tend to be deeply intertwined in minority communities, according to Anthony Pinn, a black humanist and professor of religious studies at Rice University.

"Within African-American communities, the question concerning black atheists is: Have they surrendered their allegiance to the principles and ideas that helped us survive?" said Pinn, who is also research director for the Institute for Humanist Studies.

The concern is that "the African-American atheists have surrendered some of what it means to be black and a survivor in the United States. They've lost touch with their tradition," Pinn said.

Clearly, Pinn refers to African-Americans who are already atheists, but who do not wish to publicly self-identify as such.

One has to wonder if the post author is able to understand simple declarative sentences in the English language.

The Stupid! It Burns! (an-ecclesiastical edition)

An Atheist Drops By

Anonymous says,

What a load of bollocks. Atheism is simply the non-belief in religion, not a page full of crap.

While this has the markings of a drive-by superficiality, I will address it. It is a common assertion amongst those Atheists in need of sound bites to support their belief system in lieu of concentrated thought.

Atheism is not non-belief in religion, it is a specific belief that there is no deity. Non-belief in religion would be an-eclesiasticism [sic], and is usually expressed in hostile terms rendering it to be Anti-ecclesiasticism. And in fact, to a high degree, I fall into those categories myself.

After this, I'll be retiring Stan to the same category as Ray Comfort: too consistently stupid to merit continued mention in this series.

The Stupid! It Burns! (angry at god edition)

The CNN article title [Anger at God common, even among atheists] falsely implies, “Even atheists” get mad at God.” When the article itself clearly states that the article SHOULD be titled, “Atheists get the MOST mad at God.”

Because that damn nonexistent being who isn’t even real just pisses them off to no end.

You’ve got to love how science and research just keeps demonstrating the truth of Scripture. ...

Deep down, atheists know the same thing the rest of us do. They’re just too dishonest – even with themselves – and too bitter to admit what they know. And so they just keep suppressing and suppressing the truth.

The referenced study has not been published; an article on CNN does not constitute "science and research". Dr. Exline's present studies, one of which seems similar to or an expansion of the referenced study, asks questions not just about respondents' beliefs about God but also about their beliefs about popular opinions of God, or (as the CNN article mentions) a "hypothetical image... what they imagined God might be like."

(link to Dr. Exline's studies via ERV)