The Warfare Is Mental

TWIM On The Atheist Blogroll?

July 1, 2009

Yep, you saw that right. First I somehow won a shared award for "Best Atheist / Skeptic Site of 2009", and now this. The other day, I emailed Mojoey from Deep Thoughts and said:

Hey, quick question: I think your Atheist Blogroll is an excellent service. I'm not an atheist, but certainly consider myself a rationalist / skeptic / freethinker, and was wondering if I could get added to your blogroll? Technically, I consider myself an agnostic theist. I believe, but will not know until I die… I make a distinction between belief and knowledge… [I later elaborated] I don't know that God exists, but I sure do believe it. So in that sense it's understood by many of my readers that I'm somewhat agnostic. I hope that makes sense. I usually try not to call myself anything, preferring for others to make their own assumptions, as we know they will.

Power Commenters On DD’s (So-Called) Evidence Against Christianity

June 22, 2009

Here are a few previews from the initial dialog between myself, Lifeguard, MS Quixote and Dominic Saltarelli, continued from here. Brad is currently absent:

…I was thinking more along the lines of there being certain elements in the GH that are decidedly non-Biblical, rather than simply a reduced set of Biblical attributes.(Dominic Saltarelli)

I think that DD could have made that distinction a little clearer…

…it appears DD desired to set a baseline hypothesis without reference to Christianity in order to construct an analytic framework from which to ultimately analyze the claims of Christianity… the GH, as proposed, does not represent a baseline common to all Christian faiths as is necessary to critique Christianity as a whole. (MS Quixote)

Although by no means do I imply my Power Commenters agree with me in full (actually, Quixote does), we can still clearly see that it's not exactly the same story as over at DD's, right?

Rebutting Atheist Universe 1.2

April 30, 2009

Last week, we stopped in the middle of page 34, and Atheist Universe had already racked up 4 hasty generalizations, 2 rhetorically bolstered arguments, 1 epistemological nightmare and 2 strawman arguments. In the positive, the chapter also aspires to a worthy cause, and contained 1 well-spoken observation that everyone can agree on. Let's return to see how the next ten points go…

On Blogging, Passivity, Party Lines & The Pursuit Of Truth

April 25, 2009

If you’re at all like I am, you probably consider the pursuit of truth to be pretty valuable. I think most of us can agree that the pursuit of truth is an important task. That’s the way I see it at least, and as an extension of that principle, I say one cannot accurately call oneself a pursuer of truth if they allow falsehood to remain uncorrected.

With that in mind, I’d like to discuss how passivity, especially selective passivity, can obscure the pursuit of truth – and more specifically – how these ideas relate to blogging.

Rebutting Atheist Universe 1.1

April 23, 2009

So, the first chapter in David Mills' Atheist Universe is titled, "Interview With An Atheist."

As I was reading, I quickly realized I was making lots of red marks in the margins and body copy. Of those marks, I include the strongest and most relevant arguments, and discard weaker, less persuasive ones. Even so, I could see as early as page 31 that my critique of Chapter 1 was going to take multiple posts. The chapter itself is over 40 pages long, and as a general custom, I'm won't critique more than ten points in any one post in this series. Ten is probably too many already.

I suspect much of this chapter's purpose was to rebut common misconceptions people have about atheists. This is a noble cause. I sympathize with any misunderstood minority party, because there's perhaps nothing more frustrating in life than having people insult you based on what they think you believe, which is often wrong. All in all, Mills does a good job setting some things straight, but unfortunately, he also affirms just as many common misconceptions about Christians. Nonetheless, considering that religious tension and distrust of atheists was still considerably high in this country when Atheist Universe was published (2004), I'd say the chapter was appropriate. Nobody deserves to be on the receiving end of ignorance, especially in a religio-political climate of hostility such as the first few years after 9/11.

Still, that doesn't mean "Interview With An Atheist" was without problems, and in my opinion, the first one worth mentioning comes on page 28.

Rebutting Atheist Universe: An Introduction

April 14, 2009

I've decided to do a book review post series, and should you choose to follow along with me, the first book we'll be taking a look at is David Mills' Atheist Universe (Ulysses Press, 2006, 978-1-56975-567-9).

From the backcover: "Using simple, straighforward logic, this book rebuts every argument that claims to 'prove' God's existence."

Really? Every argument? I already smell an inflated claim and we haven't even peeked inside, but I suppose if we are to call ourselves rationalists, we'll have to suspend judgment until further evidence appears.

In the Forward by Dorion Sagan, we get a small taste of what Atheist Universe might be about. Sagan begins with some blanket statements about creationists – always fun to shoot fish in a barrel – then moves swiftly into personal views of the biblical God as a, "2,000-year-old petty Middle Eastern tyrant." Sagan concludes, assuring us that Mills' work represents, "impeccable logic, intellectual bravery and professional clarity," and these will be part of the criteria by which I judge the book.

Why Aren’t Less Science Students Atheist?

February 18, 2009

After all, the general trend of science has been to reveal that things are exponentially bigger, infinitesimally smaller and vastly more complex than what was once beyond our weirdest and wildest dreams, right? I mean come on, beer galaxies? Really? Point is, there's always been far more to reality than we imagine. Instead of producing insurmountable discontinuities, the horizons of human knowledge and objective reality tend to expand astronomically. We used to think this world was all there was. We were wrong. We used to think this solar system was all there was. We were wrong. Some of us think that this universe and this existence are all there is. Especially in light of emerging evidence combined with past tradition, isn't there a reasonable chance that they, too, are wrong?

More Lee-ky Responses To Strobel & Co.

February 11, 2009

For the past few days, I've been evaluating various responses to Lee Strobel's questions that were posted on FriendlyAtheist. My latest stop was at a blog whose title I liked, Life Before Death, and is hosted by "biology student, secular humanist, beekeeper and Swede," Felicia Gilljam.

Now, in all honesty, those of you expecting something new here might be let down, and that's where perhaps most people on all sides can agree on Strobel's questions. Many are admittedly the same old washed-up ontological arguments one has already heard, especially if they've been even remotely following philosophy, religion and/or science for the past few years.

But what also discourages me is how overconfident many on the atheist & skeptic side seem to be in the perceived validity of some responses. Most every skeptical response I've seen to these questions contains some degree of logic-leak from drip to wave, yet in threads, too many skeptic backpatters rally around their dead fish like Piggy and the archetypal boys on Goldman's Lord of the Flies, proud and gleeful that they've pulled such beauts out of the barrel and aptly skewered them!

But how skewered are they? Let's take a look at three more and find out.

Atheists & Skeptics Use God Of The Gaps Reasoning, Too!

February 8, 2009

This is something that's been rattling around inside my head for some time now, and I won't be surprised if people disagree. I've written on it before, and I've never been able to come up with a fancy name for a skeptic's argument from ignorance.

We have to admit, when skeptics accuse believers of claiming that a gap in scientific knowledge constitutes evidence for God (for example in the transition from non-life to life), it's called a God Of The Gaps (GOTG) argument. It is essentially an argument from ignorance, in particular, an argument that a set of claims is true because their competing set of claims lacks a particular element needed to justify their conclusion and is hence assumed false.

And We’re Back At Square One! or, My Response To “The Big Guns”

February 3, 2009

So atheist-turned-believer Lee Strobel apparently offered to answer questions from the thread over at FriendlyAtheist, and I think Hemant (the site owner) has a really cool thing going by having this little dialog.

However, if you want to stump atheists with tough questions, the first thing you don't do is dust off the same batch of washed-up ontological arguments and let them go extra rounds. Although we can agree on lots of other issues, Greta wrote a recent post whose subtitle was Greta Answers Some Theologians. I gotta admit, when I first saw the title in her email notice, I immediately wondered with awe and even a bit of fear: Uh-Oh! Who'd she talk to? I imagined her giving Ted Haggard or somebody similar a proper railing! At the very least I'd envisioned an actual dialog with a theologian, much like what Hemant and Strobel have done.