How far from the culture atheists have drifted

I say God is love. So to disprove that some atheists are trying to link the emotion of love to evil.

Originally Posted by MarkUK

There are people who love the fact that the Holocaust happened.

Meta:

Not love. ok let's screw our heads on straight now and think oK? love in this context means the love of God from the News Statement which the word Agape It doesn't mean just anytime you like something. I don't agape ice cream. understand?

it's a certain kind of thing, where you accord the other the dignfiy due him/her as a human being. understand now?


MarkUk:

You seem to have imposed a "not evil = good" dichotomy. Why? 

Duh! that's only like the basis of christian thinking. what planet did you grow up on?

MarkUK

So not helping old ladies across the road is evil? What are you talking about? Oh - you're applying your false dichotomy again.

Meta:

maybe it is; BzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz question begging


same guy MarkUK in another thread:

 Conjuring a concept like "agape" out of nowhere isn't desperate, then...

In case you missed the point here this guy thinks I made up agape!


The Tide
another thread

 A little help from those theist posters who ask atheists to show evidence that proves that God does not exist.



Please take a moment to review the following list of deities that have been worshipped by humans at one to time or another;
(This is a partial list)
Agdistis or Angdistis
Ah Puch
Ahura Mazda
Alberich
Allah
Amaterasu
An
Anahita
Anansi
Anat
Andvari
Anshar
Anu
Magna Mater
Maia
Marduk
Mars
Mazu
Medb
Mercury
Mimir
Min
Minerva
Mithras
Morrigan
Mot
Mummu
Muses
Tawaret
Tefnut
Tezcatlipoca
Thanatos
Thor
Thoth
Tiamat
Tianhou
Tlaloc
Tonatiuh
Toyo-Uke-Bime
Tyche
Tyr

Now, if you wouldn't mind, please select a few of the deities, and prove with evidence that they don't exist.
This will provide us with an acceptable method that we can use in our attempts to show the non-existance of YHWH.

there are two reasons why this is abismally stupid:

(1) We don't believe in any of these 'gods' because we are Christians how is disproving them going to disprove what we see as the true God?

(2) This guy has been around me long enough to know (he's posted on carm for years) he should have heard his 500 times, these are all pointing to the reality behind all the constructs. There's  a real God beyond all the cultural constructs of God and all the constructs point to thta ralityi. So disproving them all is just nothing to do with the real God.


another thread:
 His supreme intellectual highness Royce: the all knowing said that my view of evil as the absence of the good is stupid, obviously BS ect ect.

Meta:yes it is. you show your ignorance in saying that because that hendges upon major wings of the chruch thought beginning with St. Augustine. you don't know Christian thinking well enough to be in his discussion.

Royce: I don't care if it's what Augustine or branches of the Church wrote; it's still false. There were a lot of claims made in medieval times that we now know to be false, especially since they were influenced by false claims from Plato and Aristotle. And I explained to you why saying "evil is the absence of good" is false.

The all knowing one says "don't confuse me with the facts." Look at his logic

we know some claims from the medieval times are false.
this is a claim from mideval times (not really but who cares)
therfore it must be false.

so in ohter words because some claims from the past are false all claims form the past are false.

Royce:Do you expect contemporary philosophers and people interested in contemporary philosophy, to simply take medieval claims as true even if they make no sense? 

 Meta:
Yes when they are right.

Royce:

For example: do you want to go back to the false Aristotlean biology they advocated as opposed to the modern synthesis? If so, then enjoy setting science back by centuries. If not, then please stop engaging in special pleading by thinking you can rebut my claims by showing that some medieval philosophers like Augustine disagreed with me.

Meta: Now class what is special pleading? It's when you say I accept the ruels of logic in all other cases but let me break it in this case for a special reason.


The Nizkor Project

Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in circumtance(s) C.
2. Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
3. Therefore A is exempt from S.

How am I doing that? he hasn't a clue. I guess he means to say that using Augustine as a special authority is soemthing I wouldn't do in other cases so that seems kind of special pleading except it would bit more appropriately under appeal to authority.

The reason it's neither is because I'm quoting a doctrine that I accept as a price of membership in the club of Christianity. I find that Augustine's has the most logical and acceptable explanation of that doctrine ie the doctrine of evil. So therefore I choose Augustine's view. No special pleading about it. As for appeal to authority this is appeal to the proper authroity. no fallacy.


In terms of the rest of the argument, his attack is base based upon guilt by association. The idea that certain ideas form a time period are wrong therefore all ideas form that time are wrong is just guilt by association.



this just in the dumb ass adds to his follow:


Originally Posted by Royce

Now your posts are becoming silly. One can be a Christian without thinking that evil is the absence of good. For example: see Wes Morriston.

 

 Meta

sure you can but I don't. I didn't say that's the only view. I said it's a respectable historically valid view Chrsitain wise.
Royce

Also, the position is false since there are morally neutral things that are neither good nor evil (ex: Darth Pringle's example of the chair in a cupboard, my example of an asteroid floating through a lifeless universe). Thus evil cannot be the absence of good.

Meta:
that doesn't prove it. you don't understand what the term is talking about. There is such a thing as morally neutral. Sometime is not a moral issue it's not good or evil. That doesn't' mean that evil is a positive radiate like heat.It means it's got the appearance of such like cold air..



Royce:

Next, you did commit the fallacy of special pleading since because you're willing to reject some false claims from medieval times and Augustine (such as Aristotlean biology) but when there are other false claims from those same times and that same individual, you decide to accept them. That's double-standard. That's special pleading. Even if it was their doctrine at the time, who cares. It's still false, since it runs afoul of the category of "morally neutral". Augustine was wrong.

 

 

Meta:
how stupid can you get? you actually said it's special pleading to reject false claims and accept true ones. I don't accept Augustine because he's form a certain time period but becuase he's respected in the chruch.I don't accept demonstrably false claims of cousre, it's only right to accept true ones. so I accept those I think are true even if they are very old.

This goes under: Atheists say the Darndest things

 A post by Dark Lady on CARM
DL put sup a post every day, ever single day about how evil God is in the OT. He rakes God over coals every day and never responds to the arguments Christians make. So every day is a new day about how evil God is. When she doesn't do it (almost never) I start worrying about her. This time it's hilarious becuase come up with the dopiest argument. She found what is essentially an S/m site that claims to be Chrsitain so is blaming Christianity on what she understands to be abuse. The funny thing is, I think it's abuse too but at least it's concentual but she doesn't seem understand what kind of site she found.

 This is a quote from a christian website (http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/home.html) that advocates husbands punishing their wives. It uses all the usual verses to back this up (Eph. 5:22-24, Eph. 5:25-29, Titus 2:5, Acts 5:29).

darklady:

"Most CDD marriages do use spanking, generally for serious offences, such as the "Four D's" (Disobedience, Disrespect, Dishonesty, or Dangerous [as in dangerous choices... reckless driving, disobeying doctor's orders, etc]). Some CDD marriages also use non-corporal disciplines, such as writing lines, or the temporary forfeiture of a favourite privilege"

This website is advocating spousal abuse.

Does one person have the right to hit another? No, they don't. Ever.
Does the husband have the right to punish the wife for anything at all? Of course he does not.
This is emotional and physical abuse.

 Originally Posted by WendyWrites

But in all seriousness, if some egghead Christian man in my church tried this, it would lead to seriously applied church discipline. The kind the Bible talks about--not this hooey on the website.

It would not be tolerated, period. He would probably be asked to leave the church and we would help the wife shelter away from him if it continued.

Jagella

This morality is not rooted in the Bible but in modern secular ethics which forbids spousal abuse. Christians adopt secular morality (which in some cases they must) and then boast about how wonderful their Christian morality is! I say give the credit to whom it is due: atheists.

Jag says something silly and Wendy says to antoher chriasin female poster "nomail" she says "HEY NO Email look what he said" so Jag says:

Originally Posted by NewJagella

Calling for help? That's a very good idea.

Wendy
Hey, noemail.....

Wendy:

NJ just claimed Biblical church discipline is not rooted in Christianity. Oh, and apparently the Bible allows for spousal abuse, too.

The plot thickens. LOL

Jagella

You need to read my posts more carefully. I referred to our secular society's forbidding the abuse of women. The Bible writers categorized women as chattel who might be impregnated against their wills.

Anyway, how's all this going for you, Wend? Are you converting people who read your posts to your religion?

Jagella--HAPPILY FREED from all the gods

Meta

wait a minute! DL starts out trying to tag this S/M fetish group (Or "discipline"Or whatever) and that get stomped on so then you try to argue that secular ethics is better though it's been established that the original site is not Christian and they not basing it on the bible.

you are still trying to Blame Christiantiiy for soemthing that essentually both sides admit is not christian, you say:

"This morality is not rooted in the Bible but in modern secular ethics which forbids spousal abuse. Christians adopt secular morality (which in some cases they must) and then boast about how wonderful their Christian morality is! I say give the credit to whom it is due: atheists."

I think you need to call for help. maybe with nets.

Announcement for Metacrock's Blog

See Metacrock's Blog today for an important topic. This is an issue that the entire chruch needs to face. It's centered around the shocking movement of hatred that charges Catholocism with being a space alien cult! No, I'm not joking.

see it here.

Atheism's Assualt on all forms of Knowledge

 


 Jerry A. Coyne* is on the war path against all forms of thought that are not science.On his blog, "Why Evolution is True," he defends scientism as the only from of knowledge. He doesn't defend science but "scienTISM." The thing about that is that term has always been used to refer to an phony exaggeration in the confidence one places in scinece. It's always meant a sort legalistic worship of science. Apparently those adjectives accurately describe Coyne's feelings about the subject. For him there's only one form of knowledge. He goes after Eric MacDonald who is actually opposing religious obstacles to the right to die. He runs a sight called Choice of Dying. Whatever his site is about he makes the satement oppossing scientism:

 I won’t go into the detail of the arguments (or non-arguments) presented in this thread. That was not the focus of my concern, which remains even when everything said here has been said. Certainly, for example, to say that Mozart is a greater composer than Hummel requires evidence, and the people who would be the best judge of what constitutes evidence in this case would not be scientists, but experts in music, composition, direction, performance, and appreciation. I don’t think that a study of the structure of music as related to brain structure or response would tell us very much. I may be quite wrong about this, but I think there is more going on here than simply those things discoverable by science. And that is precisely my problem with what I am here calling “scientism.” It is, basically, a “faith” position, since it is not in fact based, and cannot, in the nature of the case, be based on empirical evidence, for it is, essentially, a meta-claim about such evidence, and the belief that only those beliefs based on the kind of evidence in question constitute knowledge.

 This is too much for Coyne. He summarizes MacDonald's battle plan thusly:

 As I pointed out in the first part of my critique, these pieces espoused three themes: the failures of New Atheism, especially its inability to replace what religion gives people; the dangers of scientism, which Eric apparently sees as a pervasive and destructive attitude; and the fact that there are Ways of Knowing other than science.  Yesterday I analyzed—and disagreed with—Eric’s claim that New Atheism is an abject failure because it a). criticizes simplistic caricatures of religion rather than serious theological thought, and b). tears down religion without replacing the essential human needs that religion meets. This morning I’ll address “other ways of knowing.”

 MacDonald is saying that experiential forms of knowing are required and are valid forms of knowledge in their own right apart form the formal scientific collection of data. You can't really know music just by  knowing a lot of technical data about sound waves, without actually hearing the music. That's not good enough for Coyne. He complies a short list of forms of knowledge MacDonald says require other froms of knowing than just scinece and it includes:

• Aesthetic judgments
• Moral judgments
• Law
• History

 He points out that science is not a collection of people with Ph.Ds or a body of results but a method. In the broader sense that method invovles evidence that can be deduced systematically and can be tested by others. "Evidence that cannot be tested and confirmed by others is not reliable evidence: it falls into the purview of things like religious revelations, which many theologians do see as “evidence.” He asserts that construing scinece broadly one can include things like auto mechanics and plumbing. Well of course he fails to distinguish between using scientific methods or approach and applying them to problems rather actually doing science; something has to be said about science as inquiry. It's not just a pragmatic tool fo re-roofing your house it's about actually learning for the sake of knowledge itself. It has has something to do with knowledge about the workings of natural world not the workings of anything, so the workings of impressionists painters are excluded. If we make he definition too board in encompass everything then it's not even meaningful to distinguish bewteen science and not science. Of cousre he actually knew something about theology he would know that some aspects of it can be appraoch through replicable methods that yield evidence which can be checked by others, such as textual criticism.

 Then there's no reason why theology should produce that kind of knowledge. The purpose of theology is not mirror scinece. It's to answer problems and understand developments in religious tradition. the first thing scientistic types always do when they see anything about other forms of knowledge is hold up to scinece and assume that their purpose must be to imitate scinece. For them that's all life is about, science, its not about experiencing things its about collecting data. This gimmick of reducing everything to science is followed by Coyne until he incorporates all of the "other forms" into scinece. History and archeology, he argues, test hypotheses so they are scinece."Archaeologists and historians often act as scientists when trying to determine truth about the past. Indeed, that is the only way they can be credible.."

He does acknowledge that aesthetic and moral judgements are not in the same category (not scinece) because they can't be verified determined objectively. A set of criteria that might render a judgement true in that sense is nevertheless set up subjectively. But not only are they not reduced to scinece but they are not true either. So he reduced truth to that which suits the scientific method. He repudiates moral thinking on the same ground because it can't be given the official stamp of scinece (even though as we have seen there are schools of thought that think they are doing that). He accepts Math and philosophy as uses of logic that are "almost scientific." So he makes a small niche for something that is not scientific per se (no replicable, no empirical data). It's still on the basis of being able to discern an objective basis through the use of logic, making it an alley of science (he doesn't use that phrase). He says,"I think philosophy and mathematics are “ways of understanding”, and come close to science in that one can demonstrate truths within an accepted system of logic."

Literature she shuns because it tells us nothing external until scinece is use (again scinece in the loosest sense of anything that's not subjective) to confirm it. By that way of thinknig then psychology is out. Psychology ceases to be scientific. Of course individual judgement is out.

He reduces all to naturalism:

What I argue, then, is that anything that is claimed to exist in our universe can be verified only with the methods of science, broadly construed. I don’t see that Eric has convincingly demonstrated that there are real and objective moral and aesthetic judgments that can be demonstrated by “evidence.”  How can you test your claim that Mozart is better than Hummel by checking it against the real world? All you can find out is that many people think that Mozart is better than Hummel. But others may dissent, and who can prove them wrong? How can you prove someone wrong who says that it’s immoral to abort babies after the first trimester?

 Mozart vs. Hummel was MacDonald's example of a time when you listen to the music rather than gather data. He totally glosses over the meat of the point and reduces everything to data collection. There is no experience;  experience of the world doesn't give us truth, truth is nothing more than the simulacra that results from having put data through the process of replication. We are not getting reality, he's divorced truth from reality. Just as he's divorced music from listening. Of cousre he assume it has to be subjective, there can't ever be any kind of subjective value, which is no wonder he's just eliminated the arts completely. Then concepts like personal enlightenment wouldn't even appear on his radar. Whole traditions like Buddhism and some forms of Christianity and other oriental religions will just be left out and even confiscated,consigned to the nether world of "the subjective" and the 'not truth' because they seek the kind of verification he can control. Finding what people think about Mozart based upon actually hearing his music is good enough. After he's eliminated the concept of inter-subjectivity, but why should it be when it is verifiable? We have a sense of checking the subjective machinations of each others world views by comparing notes on the subjective. That all carefully designed to steer us into avenues scientists control and ordinary people can't have access to. His final statement says it all:

Finally, although this isn’t Eric’s aim, much of the “other ways of knowing” palaver is used to advance the “truth claims” of religion. But I hardly need to add that I don’t think religion is a way of knowing anything about the real world. That’s simply a truism, for our understanding of any divinities, transcendent beings, or “moral truths” derived from faith alone has not advanced one iota since the ancient Greeks. Hell, after millennia of apologetic and “proofs” of God, we don’t even know whether there is a god, much less one god or many, or what said gods are like or want us to do.

 Holy question begging Batman, so that's what it's all about? The exclusion of subjective ideas is carefully controlled to get rid of religion. Of course he's already got the ideology down, he's already opposed to religion before the deliberations even start. Everything he says in that paragraph is propaganda. It's all based upon the refusal to learn theology. He says other ways of knowing (which are just palaver) can just be ruled out because they support religion. Don't' show me the evidence, it might not concur with what I want to hear. That religion is not a way to know anything is clearly propaganda BS. First of all it's a way to know spiritual things and religious thing.s For that that "likes it" that's a good thing. Of course It's not for those who are predisposed to think of it as "the enemy." The idea that faith has not advanced, that's a matter of ignorance. the 20th was one of the most amazingly progressive times for theology. Theology made huge advances in the last century. I doubt Coyne would understand any of it as advancement because he can't control it and it doesn't advance the robot mind control ideas of atheism and reductionism and scientific.

One of the most amazing advances of the last century, in terms of religious knowledge, was the M scale, Hood's measurement study instrument or understanding the validity of mystical experience. That actually gives us a handle on empirical evdience for the existence of God, through the universal arguemnt made possible by the M scale (see the link). Speaking of that there's an interesting possibility by observing how Coyne reduces everything that can produce any kind of tangible results to scinece. Not only does that lose the distinction between science and not scinece but it also means that we can extend the same connection to religious belief and include it in the same way. Not does the M scale make this possible but also arguments like fine tuning that employ scientific data. He says we don't know if there's a good. I know there is. We have rational warrant for belief becuase we have wealth of argument and data to back them up. More importantly by employing the same strategy he does we can reduce everything to ethology. science becomes theology through the M scale and fine tuning data, God on the brain evidence, and that backs up the warrant for belief. It's can't be used with an atheist assumption since it's no part of theology. It becomes theological by the same token that all those other forms of knowing become scientific. The mediating principle that incorporates them is provide data backing the co-determinate.

The co-determinate is Schleiermacher's concept of an aspect of the naturalistic dimension of human experience that telegraphs the divine in human experience, such as the presence of God in the sense of the numinous. This fits with Tillich's concept of the correlation whereby doctrines of the faith are lined up with data from human behavior and experience. In other words do people in fact experience this presence and what does it do for them when the do? Just like a finger print this aspect is always there to  mark the presence of the other, as the print marks the presence of the finger though it is absent. In do doing, by the same logic that Coyne uses, we can make theology science and scinece theology.

 ____________________
*Jerry A. Coyne, Ph.D is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a member of both the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology.

The square one gambit and the Atheist assualt on Theology

 


Here's another example of that game atheist play where anytime you get them in a corner they run back to square one and say "but God doesn't exist." This time on CARM Trollala (tralala) quotes Pyscists Krauss saying:

"I have challenged several theologians to provide evidence contradicting the premise that theology has made no contribution to knowledge in the past five hundred years at least, since the dawn of science. So far no one has provided a counterexample. The most I have ever gotten back was the query, "What do you mean by knowledge? " From an epidemiological perspective this may be a thorny issue, but I maintain that, if there were a better alternative, someone would have presented it. Had I
presented the same challenge to biologists, or psychologists , or historians , or astronomers , none of them would have been so flummoxed. " L Krauss

 Various Christians play around with it:

Occam:

You are prioritizing empirical, scientific knowledge over deductive, philosophical reasoning. However, there are theists who would say that deductive reasoning should be preferred to inductive reasoning, because it leads to certainty. In their view, science doesn't really lead to knowledge, but merely inductive probabilities. So, why should we adopt your empiricist stance rather than their rationalistic stance?

 they go through a long thing about weather or nto Krauss an idiot, (a possiblity introduced bh Christian defender Damian:

 Isn't Lawrence Krauss the same idiot whose idea of nothing is the same as something?

Yeah, I don't put a lot of stock in atheist charlatans and their claims about anything.

The atheists are saying O no he's a great physicist! then


 Originally Posted by Fanghur

I would say that people oftheology, sometimes with theological motivations and sometimes not, have contributed to our scientific growth, but theology itself has not.

Meta: why should it? It's purpose is to be scinece.

this illucited:

Fang:

 You mean its purpose is to assert that which isn't evidently true or likely isn't true as absolute truth and oppose anything that contradicts its dogma. In my opinion the only reason why Christianity, or at least certain factions of Christianity, have adapted to modern science is because if they didn't they would eventually die off. I think they'll eventually die off regardless as more and more people embrace reason rather than faith, but they are doing all they can to delay the inevitable.

 No matter what the question is, regardless of the point being made, everything turns on this one issue.It doesn't matter how many arguemnts proving the existence of God you win, the atheist template says "no God" so there's no God. It's not a matter of proof not a matter of evidence, make a God argument they say "you can't make this argument because you are talking about something that hasn't been proven yet." but the reason to talk about it is to prove it. In other words you can't make the argument until you prove the arguemnt. That's just insane. that means you could never talk about it. That's like a law that they on the books in Texas at one time:  "if two trains meet on the same tack they both shall go to the siding and neither shall move until the other has passed." So they will never move.

We can never talk about god until we prove God and includes proving God. so how can we ever prove it?

What's going on here is the need to destroy theology. They are trying to do the same thing to theology that they did to the Bible. Why? Because theology pours water on the fire of animosity. You can't keep hate alive and nurse it into red hot action with cool headed reason an historical understanding. If they undersatnd what theology is and what's it's about they will know why religious doctrines are as they are and they wont be able to hold them in contempt anymore, at least not in a  way that makes them seem so stupid.If they have to study to learn about those ideas they can't consider them idiocy. Keeping hate at a red hot pitch really depends upon making the other into some alien stupidity that has not nothing at all to commend it. Without the Bible or organized academic theology religious belief is just a disorganize set of intuitive feelings are easily ridiculed and made to seem badly thought out. They have already done it with the bible. The bible could be saved with theology so they have to work on destroying theology.

Liberal theology makes belief in God seem rational. So they have to put a taint on the word "theology" so that it's associated stupidity and unreasonable unreasoning. This is their goal it's their project. It's phase II or whatever. We have to counter this with an unrelenting defense of theology every chance we get.

Atheists evoke fallacies as defense while demonstrating they don't understand specail pleading

I made a post on CARM the other day arguing that atheist miss the point about eye witnesses. This came after a couple of threads where they argued that eye witnesses are unreliable. here's my post:

 In that discussion in the previous thread the emphasis got off on the unreliability of eye witness testimony. I think the salient points were lost.

The major point that is far and away the most important to make is not that the Gospels are backed by eye witnesses so they are trust worthy but that history itself is ultimately backed by eye witnesses. The great historiographers of the nineteenth century who laid down the rules for making history a social scinece, such as Benedetto Croce, made documents the basic stuff of history. Yet documents are compiled by people, that means eye witnesses.

the real issues are:

(1) If we decide to ignore eye witnesses testimony completely then it's also curtains for history.

(2) It's not that eye witnesses are so accurate but given for what we need to know we need their specific input.

a) calcification

b) resurrection

c) miracle working.


there's no way to know these things just from documents removed from eye witness accounts, especially not in the ancinet world.

(3) The fact that the eye witness testimony was safe guarded and kept intact.

(a) they had an oral tradition

(b) they didn't have to guard it very long because it began to be written while the witnesses were still alive.

witnesses functioned as a check and they didn't have to do that very long.

here is my page proving they began writing only about 18 years after the events.

http://www.doxa.ws/Bible/Gospel_behind.html

 Every single response was arguing from  guilt by association.



 Drugstar says:

book of mormon has eyewitnesses too.

 Originally Posted by Metacrock

that's guilt by association. did you read the post? what did I say?you must know that guilt by association is a fallacy, why do you use it? do you know understand that fallacy means it's illogical?

Drugstar:

so is special pleading
why are the early xian eyewitnesses any more believable than the early mormon eyewitnesses?

 My response has nothing to do with special pleading. Saying that my witnesses are better is to special pleading. That has to do with  arguing that I shouldn't have to live up tot he same rule,which I did not argue.

When I pointed out they were using guilt by association I get this:

Originally Posted by Whatsisface

Just saying stuff like this doesn't make it so. In fact, its not an argument.

it's obviously so. Just read the matairal. Its' plalin to see they are brigning in things that dn't aplly

Meta:

you seem to have gone astray form the concept of logical thinking. you are still willing to accept logical fallacies and think that it's valid to bring in old things as long as it sticks it to religion. that's just not valid. that's not fair. you can't have a discussion it's totally diagnostic it' sjust lynch mob mentality.

It's very very telling. I can't think of a more frank admission that your view point is bankrupt and cant' be defended by logic.

Just saying it's a logical fallacy doesn't make it so? what else would it be but guilt by association when one argues "other eye witnesses are bad so these must be too?"

Frank admission because they don't even attempt logical defense but evoke fallacious reasoning while trying argue that move are fallacious, demonstrate that they don't understand what special pleading is.

The dishonesty and hate of atheist hate group

http://www.wikihow.com/Persuade-a-Christian-to-Become-Atheist

Wiki how to page there's on how to destroy someone's faith and recruit them into atheism.

The first thing they say basically says 'we dont' care what's true.'

While it may seem like we should get believers to recognize the fallibility of their gods, and religions, remember always that belief is deeply personal and often connected to emotion. Believers will raise questions or personal experiences of their own to justify their beliefs. The atheist ought to be prepared with well constructed and emotionless responses to some of the more common issues theist's raise.

It's not necessary to "win" arguments of belief. Simply giving the theist questions to consider and opening their mind to wider possibilities should be enough.

 They list steps, the very first one says:

Think about your friendship. Are the two of you close? If not, try to increase your friendship before attempting to change their religious beliefs. Religious debate can be trying on even the best of friendships and a firm foundation to stand on could make all the difference if the outcome is not positive.

 what Friendship? what of friend plots and schemes to destroy the faith of the "friend?" what kind of "friend" sets out to take away from the other something that means everything to them just so the destroyer can vent his rage against religion? Another example of atheist dishonesty is atheist seeks to justify ridicule. Keith Parsons on Secular out post

Someone named Randal Rauser thinks I am being mean to fundamentalists:
http://randalrauser.com/2013/06/laughing-at-fundamentalists-lessons-from-john-loftus-and-keith-parsons/
I am. I ain’t a Christian. I don’t turn the other cheek or love my enemies or pray for those that say mean things about atheists.
What justifies ridicule? The ridiculous deserves to be ridiculed. Well, we should spare the innocent ridiculousness of those who cannot help it–the genuinely, pathetically dimwitted or uneducated. But pernicious, aggressive ridiculousness by smart, educated people who are attempting to foist their ridiculousness on the rest of us–that richly deserves ridicule. Those who attempt to use the power of the state to cram their fatuous, hateful ideology down the throats of everyone else–by having creationism taught in the public schools, say–are contemptible and fully deserving of contemptuous laughter. I heard Lewis Black do a terrific rant on creationism. Priceless.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2013/06/10/parsons-is-mean/#sthash.T3HLQIwc.dpuf

Someone named Randal Rauser thinks I am being mean to fundamentalists:
http://randalrauser.com/2013/06/laughing-at-fundamentalists-lessons-from-john-loftus-and-keith-parsons/
I am. I ain’t a Christian. I don’t turn the other cheek or love my enemies or pray for those that say mean things about atheists.
What justifies ridicule? The ridiculous deserves to be ridiculed. Well, we should spare the innocent ridiculousness of those who cannot help it–the genuinely, pathetically dimwitted or uneducated. But pernicious, aggressive ridiculousness by smart, educated people who are attempting to foist their ridiculousness on the rest of us–that richly deserves ridicule. Those who attempt to use the power of the state to cram their fatuous, hateful ideology down the throats of everyone else–by having creationism taught in the public schools, say–are contemptible and fully deserving of contemptuous laughter. I heard Lewis Black do a terrific rant on creationism. Priceless.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2013/06/10/parsons-is-mean/#sthash.T3HLQIwc.dpuf

Someone named Randal Rauser thinks I am being mean to fundamentalists:
http://randalrauser.com/2013/06/laughing-at-fundamentalists-lessons-from-john-loftus-and-keith-parsons/
I am. I ain’t a Christian. I don’t turn the other cheek or love my enemies or pray for those that say mean things about atheists.
What justifies ridicule? The ridiculous deserves to be ridiculed. Well, we should spare the innocent ridiculousness of those who cannot help it–the genuinely, pathetically dimwitted or uneducated. But pernicious, aggressive ridiculousness by smart, educated people who are attempting to foist their ridiculousness on the rest of us–that richly deserves ridicule. Those who attempt to use the power of the state to cram their fatuous, hateful ideology down the throats of everyone else–by having creationism taught in the public schools, say–are contemptible and fully deserving of contemptuous laughter. I heard Lewis Black do a terrific rant on creationism. Priceless.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2013/06/10/parsons-is-mean/#sthash.T3HLQIwc.dpuf

Someone named Randal Rauser thinks I am being mean to fundamentalists:
http://randalrauser.com/2013/06/laughing-at-fundamentalists-lessons-from-john-loftus-and-keith-parsons/
I am. I ain’t a Christian. I don’t turn the other cheek or love my enemies or pray for those that say mean things about atheists.
What justifies ridicule? The ridiculous deserves to be ridiculed. Well, we should spare the innocent ridiculousness of those who cannot help it–the genuinely, pathetically dimwitted or uneducated. But pernicious, aggressive ridiculousness by smart, educated people who are attempting to foist their ridiculousness on the rest of us–that richly deserves ridicule. Those who attempt to use the power of the state to cram their fatuous, hateful ideology down the throats of everyone else–by having creationism taught in the public schools, say–are contemptible and fully deserving of contemptuous laughter. I heard Lewis Black do a terrific rant on creationism. Priceless.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2013/06/10/parsons-is-mean/#sthash.T3HLQIwc.dpu

Someone named Randal Rauser thinks I am being mean to fundamentalists:

I am. I ain’t a Christian. I don’t turn the other cheek or love my enemies or pray for those that say mean things about atheists.

What justifies ridicule? The ridiculous deserves to be ridiculed. Well, we should spare the innocent ridiculousness of those who cannot help it–the genuinely, pathetically dimwitted or uneducated. But pernicious, aggressive ridiculousness by smart, educated people who are attempting to foist their ridiculousness on the rest of us–that richly deserves ridicule. Those who attempt to use the power of the state to cram their fatuous, hateful ideology down the throats of everyone else–by having creationism taught in the public schools, say–are contemptible and fully deserving of contemptuous laughter. I heard Lewis Black do a terrific rant on creationism. Priceless.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2013/06/10/parsons-is-mean/#sthash.T3HLQIwc.dpuf

he admits that not all fundies are stupid, but he does say most stupid people are fundies. hardly.


I wrote in the comments that this person was an idiot. then I said since you think that we have the right to ridicle people fro dumb ideas, I think your ideas are dumb then I can ridicule you.I know you will understand. of cousre they didn't. they just says stuff "Dumb or Metadumb." It strikes me at this point that this whole atheist thing is just an internet game for trolls. I don't think they are serious about atheism they want something to ridicule it makes them feel like big shots.

These are acts of hate, trying to worm your way into friendship with someone to destroy their straight, mocking people who disagree with you. That's duress.

Things atheists do to drive me up the wall.

 


Pretending to be free of resentment and animosity then showing it in all that they say.

I put up several of these comments the other day. atheists insisting that they never feared hell and never resented religion for hell. then they say stuff like:


 Fanghur

No god that isn't evil and morally bankrupt wold care whether we believe in it or not. It would consider only how good, loving and generous we were in our lives, not whether we were gullible or not.

 

 Originally Posted by Nonprofit

 Or angered god by worshiping the wrong one or the right one in the wrong way, or for worshipping him at all... infinite possibilities and why the Wager is childish.

 Meta you are the one who is ludicrously silly. There is zero reason the third posit is impossible. That you would even take Pascal's wager seriously is just.... well just a pure facepalm.

Won't you be suprised if lose your "wager" and god condemns you for having faith and failing his test.

 after my smart come backs nonprofit uses this:

Originally Posted by Nonprofit

Why do you hate god so much meta? Why do you seek to lead people astray?

 Not an Atheist:

There's no one who fears Hell while simultaneously claiming Hell doesn't exist.

 Deist:

 This is an extremely dumb OP. Atheists don't fear something they don't believe in. They play the adult game of Lets Pretend and discuss hell AS IF it existed, only to show how ludicrous the notion is. There's no shortage of thread ideas, Meta. this one stinks more than burning flesh.

 Already this tells us that they didn't read the whole op. They totally missed the paragraph:

Meta:

 Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 Even when I explained this


 Originally Posted by RunnerFive

Saying "you are wrong" in bold doesn't make it so.

Are we to just take your word on how we think and feel?

I have been an atheist my entire life. I've never feared hell, because I never believed in it.

 add this one form yesterday:


Originally Posted by User55

Evilushun doesn't care about Mrs. Frog, as long as her genes are preserved. Survival of the fittest genetic configurations. That's life. Deal with it, or live a life wasted on fantasy. If there is a God, He would be disappointed in you though.

 Hey I'm not bitter and filled with hate just because those low life scum are too stupid to understand my arguments. Yes I'm saying they try to hide thier feelings but htey come out in the animocity of thier wrods.

Begging the question and playing the "you can't prove God exists card" every time they lose an argument.

 I have seen this numerous times. I see it today. I'm talking about something that does not involve the existence of God. Of course it's always there in my world view and it's a basic assumption I made but its' not the immediate issue. For example question does Occam rule out MV. we dont have to discuss the existence of God at all for that. It did come up tangential in issues of "beyond necessity" but didn't have to.

when certain atheists get behind the 8 ball arguemnt wise they run run run back to square one and assert "well you can't prove the existence of God."

now to be fair there is one way that it might be fair to bring it up, that's comparing the idea that MV requires empirical proof then why doesn't God? The simplest answer would be because atheists demand empirical proof of God and everything else so they have to give it. At least the atheists who make those kinds of demands all the time have to. I don't make such demands so why should I?

yet I find atheists begging the question by saying: "God doesn't exist so it doesn't matter you rule out MV, becuase God's not there anyway." That is evoking the ultimate point of dispute ( you don't know that god exist it's just a hunch what you theorize it's your feeling but it's not a fact). you assert doubt as a form of proof, you use the issue in dispute to prove your position in the dispute that is begging the question.

The dispute is not actually about the existence of God in this particular case an atheist brought that in then begging the question with the assertion that "I don't believe in God so therefore, there' no proof of God."

It's not valid to run back to the primary disbelief and assert it as though it saves you from being wrong on other matters.

It's not right to evoke the point in dispute as though it proves your position on the matter to assert it without resolving the arguemnt first.


 This tells me that they hold out belief in God as the ultimate stupidity. They see that as the fail safe to fall back on when they are losing, which is most of the time. It's bot to be a warped psychology.

Atheist Reading Comprehension The Fear/Resentment of Hell

Atheists can't understand what they read (as a general rule, of cousre there are exceptions) and they often dont' read the whole post. You might as well know if you argue with atheists they will not read most of what you say. If you skip over making good long posts and not explain thing that get's us into trouble latter. Debating atheists on message boards is really like keeping your fingers in the dyke. Maybe the only thing to do is head for the high ground. Two things I've learned, they don't understand what they read, and they don't read all the posts. Both of those must be expressions of contempt.

In arguing the other day with some atheists on CARM I realized that one of them was essentially making her own version of Pascal's wager. I pointed this out. that's all I said, "this is your own version of Pascals wager." About 10 atheists thought I said "gee I sure love Pascal's wager." They began bombarding me with arguments against it  and telling me what's wrong with it. Some of them had some intelligent things to say about it, if that had been the issue. Which it was not. But some of them got pretty surely. There are more than one thread on this. the Original atheist's wager was being carried off over two threads.

Fanghur

No god that isn't evil and morally bankrupt wold care whether we believe in it or not. It would consider only how good, loving and generous we were in our lives, not whether we were gullible or not.

 NotAnAtheist

You should cite "Professional Failure" on your resume

Nonprofit.

The wager is a childish false dichotomy assuing the only choices are bible god or no god.

Posit a third possibility, god despises faith. Faith is a test, and those who have it have failed. In this case Meta you have lost everything by believeing in god.

 Originally Posted by Nonprofit

 Or angered god by worshiping the wrong one or the right one in the wrong way, or for worshipping him at all... infinite possibilities and why the Wager is childish.

 Meta you are the one who is ludicrously silly. There is zero reason the third posit is impossible. That you would even take Pascal's wager seriously is just.... well just a pure facepalm.

Won't you be suprised if lose your "wager" and god condemns you for having faith and failing his test.

 after my smart come backs nonprofit uses this:

Originally Posted by Nonprofit

Why do you hate god so much meta? Why do you seek to lead people astray?

Harry C.

Then again you might have a God who went to a tremendous amount of trouble to make the universe appear to have no gods in it. He would be POed to have his handiwork undone.

what this has to do with anything I'm not sure but part of their visceral reaction to the mention of the wager was an attempt to make me feel afraid like I'm to hell for belief in Jesus. I think they are trying to say "this is how you made me feel"

skylurker

 In fact it has disvalue! The person welding it has already admitted defeat! That is why he ignores the actual problems with it and just attempts to snicker like he can read minds.

The "wager" is the last refuge of a failed theology.

what sense does any of this make? Not much but it gave me an idea for another thread. I thought maybe this the outcome of bitterness and anger having been mad to feel fear of hell as kids. I did a thread asking about that.

Metacrock:
Fear is not love. Love casts out fear the bible says, so if you are seeking god because you fear hell then you are not seeking God for the right reason. I think think fear of hell is keeping many atheists from seeking God. I came to this conclusion see how deathly afraid of Pascal's wager they are.

I didn't argue for Pascal's wager I just observed that one of the atheists was making her own kid of wager. They just all jumped all over me because they thought I was arguing for the wage. I don't think the wager is an argument. I think it was meant to be a tie breaking mechanism. It was based upon Pascal's discovery of mathematical probability. Be that as it may I don' think it's a good apologetic device and it only really appeals to fundies and people who are already believers.

How does fear of hell keep atheists from seeking god? I think they know instinctively that fear is the wrong reason to seek, especially to seek the source of love. So they resent it. to make matters worse fear of hell is a good control mechanism and people do get manipulated by it. This is one of the reasons I don't believe in hell. It just seems a childish idea that the true God not use, since God is love and prefect love casts out fear it doesn't' thrive on it. Perfect love doesn't manipulate people with fear, or anything else.

Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 The standard response on this one was "I am not afraid of hell.

 Not an Atheist:

There's no one who fears Hell while simultaneously claiming Hell doesn't exist.

 Deist:

 This is an extremely dumb OP. Atheists don't fear something they don't believe in. They play the adult game of Lets Pretend and discuss hell AS IF it existed, only to show how ludicrous the notion is. There's no shortage of thread ideas, Meta. this one stinks more than burning flesh.

 Already this tells us that they didn't read the whole op. They totally missed the paragraph:

Meta:

 Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 Even when I explained this


 Originally Posted by RunnerFive

Saying "you are wrong" in bold doesn't make it so.

Are we to just take your word on how we think and feel?

I have been an atheist my entire life. I've never feared hell, because I never believed in it.

 he's refering to my post showing them the paragraph they missed:

Originally Posted by Metacrock

what did I say? you didn't read it either.

Now atheists will say "I don't fear hell." You may not at this point. AT tome time you did and it's the remembering of it that creates even a stronger sense of resentment. Knowing that it's something you can outgrow just bakes belief seem all the more pathetic; but that only applies to belief based upon a fear of hell. True belief in God is not based upon a fear of hell.

 I'm not saying they are wrong I'm showign them what I siad rules out the accusation that they fear hell now.

see they can't understand what one is saying. Gee I really want to join a movement where no one understands and they don't read the whole communication.

Christain defender Occam pionts out this link about reading comprehension.

To the Editor:

For 30 years as a reading specialist, I have worked exclusively with students who score well on standardized math tests but get lower scores in reading comprehension. Usually, this disparity does not occur until around fourth grade.

I consistently see one or both of the following problems. These students have not learned to decode words of over three syllables. They are bright and math-minded, but they do not know how to identify clues that support inferences.

After learning advanced decoding skills and realizing that making an inference is not simply a wild guess, most students find that their reading scores improve dramatically.

TERRY THOMAS
Houston, May 30, 2013

Atheists tend to be Mathematical type thinkers, so they clearly dont' undersatnd words very well.
Apparently none of them fear hell, no one does. Funny how they also think it's a control thing since no one is controlled by it. For people who don't resent an attempt to control them very interested in making Christians fear hell too.

New Pew Study: Atheism NOT Increasing in World Population

 
 Pie chart: Pew Study

Recently I put up an article about a study that showed that atheism had was now at 13%of the world population. Now I find another study to call that one into question. That would be the Pew Study on Global Religious Landscape. I had reason to doubt the first study, which was done by an organization calling itself Gallup International. Its' not affiliated with the Gallup Poll in America. Here's why I doubted it:

(1)  the study was done by the rouge Gallop international which is a company started by people who were kicked out the real Gallup organization.

(2) they assumed northern Eruope is heavily atheist and Greely's study shows it's not. now a new study shows it's not. We will see the new study  smashes the myth of Northern Eruope as atheist strong hold.

(3) they also assumed Japan was 70% atheist, In many other studies Japan is 80% Buddhist. That just doesn't add up becuase even though atheists try to claim all Buddhists as atheists Buddhists have told me that ti's only in America that that thinking makes sense and that real Asian Buddhists would never accept being called atheists. Besides what sense does it make to think of "atheist" in the conventional sense we know when dealing with a culture that thinks of deity in such a radically different way than we do. If any of you have studied eastern religion you know what I mean.

The New study shows 16% unaffiliated with any religion.

Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group. A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.

 The demographic study – based on analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers – finds 2.2 billion Christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion Muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), nearly 500 million Buddhists (7%) and 14 million Jews (0.2%) around the world as of 2010. In addition, more than 400 million people (6%) practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. An estimated 58 million people – slightly less than 1% of the global population – belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, to mention just a few.¹
At the same time, the new study by the Pew Forum also finds that roughly one-in-six people around the globe (1.1 billion, or 16%) have no religious affiliation. This makes the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population. Surveys indicate that many of the unaffiliated hold some religious or spiritual beliefs (such as belief in God or a universal spirit) even though they do not identify with a particular faith. (See Religiously Unaffiliated.)

The unaffiliated includes those who believe in God. It doesn't say what percentage believe in God so it could be only 3% thus 16% unaffiliated and 13% of those atheist with 3% believers in God. The study doesn't say but there are reasons to think this is not the case. The best one is that the statistic of 16% tallies with the old data from Adherents.com,* they said half the unaffiliated believed in God. There's no real reason to think that changed if the 16% over all figure didn't change. Moreover, the Pew study lists percentages of atheists in each area and show for individual counties what percentage believe in God, "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults. ." On a world map showing distribution where a given religion is majority it shows for all of Europe Christianity is the majority although for Northern Eruope barely so. The majority of unaffiliated live in Asia-Pacific region  because of China. which due to the communist history has the most atheists. "The religiously unaffiliated are heavily concentrated in Asia and the Pacific, where more than three-quarters (76%) of the world’s unaffiliated population resides. The remainder is in Europe (12%), North America (5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (less than 1%)." That's interesting because it puts unaffiliated at 12% in Europe, which according to many atheists sources such as Zuckerman is counted as "the atheist countries." That tally s with Greely who puts hard core atheism at no more than 10% in Norway. Of cousre fora ll of Europe the unaffiliated percentage is smaller than it may be for any particular country. This is unaffiliated so some of them believe in God. The study doesn't delineate atheists much at all.



Pie chart: Adherents.com

* The pie chart is still up. But unfortunately the site has folded and been taken over. It was up as long I've been on the net. now it's gone. this is a real blow.

Aron Ra Strikes back

///A couple of days ago I put up a criticism of a blog by AronRa, "the Atheist Preacher man." My analysis was that he was in the mold of the fundamentalist preacher. He took this as a personal insult and responded in kind. I suppose to an ideologue there can be no greater insult than saying that he is just like his ideological antithesis. Like telling an anti-communist that he's Stalinist. Yet it was not my intention to issue a personal insult. It's just that his views are very strident and words his opinions in such a way as to make absolute, no holds barred, blanket statements. Of course his groupies chimed in for the real nasty stuff down in the trenches, demonstrating the sort of hatred and personal animosity that caused me to start Atheist watch thus proving my thesis that a certain segment of the atheist community can only deal in  hate. I can't really blame Ra for feeling attacked. AW has been labeled by the atheists "a atheist hating site" (which it's not) and it's been said to be cheap attack dog stuff which it's not. What is unforgivable (well so to speak--we Christians like to forgive) is that such ideologues can't be honest about the oppostion. To them all Chrsitains are fundies and they assume as a matter of course that I'm a cerationist even though I made it pretty clear I'm not. I did sort of give him a left handed compliment about his knowledge of scinece. You would think he could accept that in a lefthandedly gracious sort of way. The reaction of his groupies is really confirmation that I'm on target with the hate group analysis.
....The first sign that his response is not going to be critical in the intellectual sense but ad hominem, is  the title, "here come the loonies." I say he unwittingly puts himself in the mold of a fundamentalist preacher, he says I'm "Loony." Is that really commensurate criticism? He includes AW in a little list of fundie sites that say stuff about him. So that creates the impression "AW must be fundie and creationist because he's being listed with them." Guilt by association (still a fallacy btw)."So I find it ironic,"  he says, "that AtheistWatch calls me a “completely opinionated, hate-group bully.” Why ironic? because set down along side these other guys and I'm criticizing him too, so therefore I must be one of them. Thus i must be a hate group bully as Ken Ham and the creationists he talks about are (according to him). I may or may not have been unfair to call him a bully but I didn't try to lump him in with a group that he's clearly opposed to. This is obviously guilt by association and nothing more. But then atheists play that game all the time. They are always trying to lump Chrsitians in with Nazis and so forth. He also complains that i got it wrong that he lives in Denton. Well I can't remember where I saw that but I did see it on some internet thing that was talking about him. So it may be a mistake but not mine. It's no crime to come from Denton so it's not an accusation. He says he doesn't know the Kryptonite quote, but it was on Wiki page. Of course those things are changed all the time by anyone or his dog.
....He says:

My favorite of the criticisms against me on AtheismWatch is this one:

“the standard that he uses to hold the bible to sees the Bible as cliaming on behalf of God:“I know everything I’ve always been there here’s what hapepned in the past.” That’s a log of hog wash. It’s not true God knows all that is knowable but the bible never makes such a claim for itself. It never presets itself as an accurate history book such that it says ‘here’s what happened in the past.” That kind of blanket statement is the all or nothing bunck that atheists thrive on.”

It wasn’t me who recited that ‘log of hogwash’; it was the Young Earth Creationist, Ken Ham who described the Bible exactly that way. I was merely quoting his ‘bunck’. But it is nice to see how venomous believers can be when one of their own people says something wrong, -but they think I’m the one who said it.

Of cousre I meant "load of hog wash." Since atheists can't deal with substance they have to rag on superficial mistakes like spelling. Ok so he was quoting someone but he did it as though he's assuming that's "the Christian stance." So he's reducing the diversity of the faith to just the fudines and pretending the rest of it doesn't exist. So the rest of it get's the criticism and the guilt by association but no credit for avoiding the stupidity of fundamentalism. But why should he care? I'm sure he's willing to lump Bultmann and Crosson and Tillich all the liberal theologians in with Ken Ham and Kent Hovind the fundies. I once saw an atheist who called Thomas Kuhn a "fundie creationst hack." It's that kid of slip shod pseudo scholarship and lack of attention to truth that I'm criticizing him for. That's what makes him preacher man-like. He's more considered with getting the propaganda line out than with getting it right. After all I never say "all atheist are like X, all atheists are a hate group." I have always been careful to make clear that I don't include all atheists in the criticisms of the new atheists that I make or even all atheists. I call the segment of the atheist world that I criticize "Dawkamentalism." Maybe I should change the name of the blog to "Dawkmentalist watch." I don't think anyone would read it.
////He closes with "I wonder what the next paranoid tabloid sensationalist opposite-accusation of me will be." The criticisms I made of him were pretty accurate. Its' obvious I wasn't doing paranoid tabloid thing because I talked about ideas and the way he handles them. That is not sensationalism nor is it tabloid. I also notice he doesn't defend them or try to argue against what I said. Notice none of these guys argue ideas. Like most atheists on message boards they are totally focused on the people. Their number one come back to disagreement is "You don't don't conform to my ideology so you must be stupid."

Now let's see what his groupies had to say:

Monocle Smile

June 9, 2013 at 1:48 am (UTC 0)

Reply

About halfway through I was expecting something about six heads and breath of fire.
This is not meant to be insulting in the least, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that at least some of these bottom-feeding cretins aren’t mentally unsound.

O that's not hate motivated at all is it? I criticized the impression he gives about the bible and his reader says "they bottom feeding cretins." that's real fair.

John Nugent

June 9, 2013 at 2:25 am (UTC 0)

Reply

I just made an attempt at reading the Atheistwatch article…
I know, the spelling and grammar of an argument, has no bearing on the argument. However, if I have to work to figure out, just what is being said, then it does spread doubt on, whether or not, the poster should be taken seriously. Anyone too lazy to make a coherent argument, is probably going to be too lazy to research said argument.
But anyway, I kept on through it.
I do like the comparison of Aronra’s style to that of preachers, and quite frankly, I think this attempted insult, should be taken as complimentary. Fighting fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone! Hallelujah, brother, and amen! In other words, Aronra, keep it up.
But being a subscriber to Aronra’s channel, and now, to this blog, I cannot say, I agree with the other things, the poster wrote.
On the other hand, I still cannot make out, half the things, the poster wrote….

I always know they are desperate and clutching at straws when they go after the spelling. He admits he can't make out half the things I wrote, while my spell check says there are no mistakes. What is then that people are trying to encourage me to do when they say "use the spell checker?"  Maybe the reason the can't understand half of what I say has more to do with him and not me. Whey do they relate the preacher man thing to insult? Because they hate preachers. they assume i must hate them too. I don't hate them. It wasn't an insult per sue but I'm sure they take it as such because they are loaded with hatred against preachers.

It is a criticism there are problems with preachers, but not an insult. His little statement about "fighting fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone" really speaks volumes. First of all if they bothered to find out anything about me they would find that I don't believe in hell. But they are probably too  stupid to even understand why that means I'm not a fundie. Then it also shows that they are into an eye for an eye, fight fire with fire. So they perceive fudnies as hating them, they hate fundies so fight hate with hate. it's a frank admission that they are full of hate and are ready to unleash it.

Lord Narf

June 9, 2013 at 4:35 am (UTC 0)

Reply

He’s very dyslexic, which would explain a lot … except EVERYTHING has a spellchecker built into it, nowadays. I give a lot of room for issues like that, but it just seems lazy to post things to a blog with errors that a simple web-browser interface would catch. I don’t know what to think of the guy.

See, I got them on the ropes. they know they have no valid point to make.

Jingle Dela Torre

June 9, 2013 at 3:32 am (UTC 0)

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AtheistWatch says he was an atheist before there was an internet and reason led him to god. LMAO.

One of the more amusing aspects of the Dawkies their "you are not a true unbeliever" mentality. they are truly the mirror version of the TULIP Chrsitians. Of cousre this guy probably has no memory of the world without the net. So the idea  that atheism was different then is water off a duck's back. The reductionist/materialist types have destroyed their own intellectual heritage and they are too stupid to ever know what they've done.

here'a real moron:

michaelbusch

June 9, 2013 at 5:37 am (UTC 0)

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Do we know what fraction of evangelical US Christians claim to once have been atheists?
_
A little bit of demography says that less than 5% of American Christians can possibly have been atheists at some point in the past, and we might expect the fraction to be lower still in fundamentalist Christian groups. If we had the number that claim to once have been atheists, we could figure out how many are likely telling the truth.

His argument is "this guy couldn't be a real atheist becasue duh, there aren't enough Chrsitains who become Christians,.duh." I couldn't be in the 5% that's impossible. they have to deny it at all costs so their brain washed lackies wont hear that they can be forgiven and find God. Got to keep them in the dark. the determinists among them have to think that it's so impossible to change because that disproves little pet ideology. Now how do I conform to his assumptions for the prior when I was a Christian and a communist at the same time? how many people do that? I'm already breaking most molds.

Monocle Smile

June 9, 2013 at 4:15 am (UTC 0)

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AtheistWatch is strange. He’s wrong about the Bible in the opposite way fundamentalists are. Also, based on his Blogger user profile, he seems like a supremely boring person.
I stumbled through links onto this gem, which IMO demonstrates how so many of our counter-arguments just sail over the heads of these types.

there into such intellectual points. I seem boring to him. Shall I tell him him what he seems like to me? this is pure hate nothing but personal insults from people who don't know me. this is what made message boards the bottom of the barrel in the intellectual world. the are guys are screaming "hello I enjoy being stupid!"

That's enough. the hate group is alive and well. The mission of Atheist Watch is still fresh and needed.

Atheist black list Christian apolgosits

New Jagella on CARM says:
Hello Friends!

No doubt we have some fence-sitters in this forum, people who may not be too sure whether or not the Bible god exists. If any of you are in this situation, then I welcome you to this subsection. I also urge you to read carefully the posts of the following Christian members:

• WendyWrites
• Noemail001
• Ferengi
• Howie
• Metacrock
• StiggyWiggy
• Ignatius

As you read the posts of these members, ask yourself some important questions. Do you want to think like these people do? Are these people honest and sensible? Do they know what they're talking about? Are these members emotionally stable? Based on what they say, do you think that Christianity inspires love, harmony, and a respect for the truth?

what does it realy mean that he puts up this list. Isn't it really saying "here are the ones to go after." to the naive he is saying "don't apy attention to them." Even though he says "read their stuff carefully." does he really mean read it? I've proved before that atheist don't read all the posts. they don't believe in reading anything carefully?

black lists are part of the fascist agenda. who was black listed and by whom in American History? Now atheists are starting to fun their own black lists?

The Atheist Preacher Man

 
 AronRa

 ...A new category of being has emerged form the Internet atheist movement: the atheist preacher man. He's just like a Christian fundie preacher man but for atheism. Dan Barker was the first exampel of this form we saw. Fast talking, totally strident, knows all, totally opinionated. Another such character is found in Denton Texas, on the net  he calls himself Aron Ra. He has a Video on Youtube.
....He calls the authors of the Bible was written by "Bigoted and superstitious savages..." He makes the straw man argument that the Bible is the oldest book ever written. it's not so therefore it's a lie. But that is not a reflection upon the Bible, even if he was taguht that, it's just a reflection upon the person who taught him. He's not going to stop to make that kind of distinction. The open lines of his video are some of the most absurdly arrogant, stupid, and openly bigoted I've ever heard. the standard that he uses to hold the bible to sees the Bible as claiming on behalf of God:"I know everything I've always been there here's what hapepned in the past." That's a log of hog wash. It's not true God knows all that is knowable but the bible never makes such a claim for itself. It never presets itself as an accurate history book such that it says 'here's what happened in the past." That kind of blanket statement is the all-or-nothing bunk that atheists thrive on. That' the way they think themselves, for the most part. all or nothing. But they read that into the nature of the bible. Of course we can't blame them that much since it's the way fundies teach it. Yet we need to be aware of the truth. The Bible doesn't say that.
....He goes on to say the Bible "reads like man made mythology of uninformed deity with no  moral or factual relevance, no hint of factual information." It is true that in many places it reads like a man made mythology. That's not a problem.  I have expalined why that is and why it's not a problem.  Compare the fair blanket statements of Ra with my take on biblical revelation. The use to which the Bible  puts mythology is no disproof of divine input. No responsible Biblical schoalr today would make the sort hair brained blanket stamens that he's opposing, which really just amount to straw men. He's not the total Zealot mentality like we see in the most sincere fundamentalist preachers. He says "not even God can save the bible. if God exits the Bible can't be his word." Of cousre that assumes that one is dealing with the straw man all or nothing view of the Bible that we he was apparently brought up on. He asserts that the Bible was "not written by anyone who had any idea of what they were talking about on any subject." Not any subject, not even their own lives or cultures? such claims are childishly idiotic.
....He has a Wiki page, which obviously written by him.

 AronRa is an atheist vlogger and activist. His videos focus on biology, with an emphasis on countering creationist claims, and advocating rationalism in science education. He also posts written material on his website

 most of it is aimed at creationism. He says "science is kryptonite to creationists." here's everything he says under that heading:

AronRa's videos focus on the scientific evidence for evolution, normally avoiding the theological discussion. This is sensible, since scientists should not have to read Superman comics in order to refute the claim that a mild-mannered reporter took an unprotected stroll on the moon.

It's an advertizement for his Videos. His evolution website displays is an adequate understanding of evolution. He's had some kind of advanced training. Example:

Evolution never suggests that one thing ever turned into another fundamentally different thing.  Every new species or genus, (etc.) that ever evolved was just a modified version of whatever its ancestors were.  To understand evolutionary Theory, one must first understand that the transformation of fish-to-amphibians, dinosaurs-to-birds, or apes-to-men are each are just a matter of incremental, superficial changes slowly compiled atop various tiers of fundamental similarities. Those successive levels of similarity represent taxonomic clades which encompass all the descendants of that clade. For example, amphibians are still stegocephalian [fish], birds are still dinosaurs, and humans are still apes -the same way we are still mammals, and for the same reasons; according to all the characters which define each of those groups. 

that's who he spends his time debating so that's the level he's on intellectually. It's putting that understanding into use in a larger theological context that's his problem.


....Please read my whole article on Models of Biblical Revelation.

Part of what I say about Mythology in the Bible I include for those who are reticent to click on links:

 The most radical view will be that of mythology in the Bible. This is a difficult concept for most Christians to grasp, because most of us are taught that "myth" means a lie, that it's a dirty word, an insult, and that it is really debunking the Bible or rejecting it as God's word. The problem is in our understanding of myth. "Myth" does not mean lie; it does not mean something that is necessarily untrue. It is a literary genre—a way of telling a story. In Genesis, for example, the creation story and the story of the Garden are mythological. They are based on Babylonian and Sumerian myths that contain the same elements and follow the same outlines. But three things must be noted: 1) Myth is not a dirty word, not a lie. Myth is a very healthy thing. 2) The point of the myth is the point the story is making--not the literal historical events of the story. So the point of mythologizing creation is not to transmit historical events but to make a point. We will look more closely at these two points. 3) I don't assume mythology in the Bible out of any tendency to doubt miracles or the supernatural, I believe in them. I base this purely on the way the text is written.

The purpose of myth is often assumed to be the attempt of unscientific or superstitious people to explain scientific facts of nature in an unscientific way. That is not the purpose of myth. A whole new discipline has developed over the past 60 years called "history of religions." Its two major figures are C.G. Jung and Marcea Eliade. In addition to these two, another great scholarly figure arises in Carl Kerenyi. In addition to these three, the scholarly popularizer Joseph Campbell is important. Campbell is best known for his work The Hero with A Thousand Faces. This is a great book and I urge everyone to read it. Champbell, and Eliade both disliked Christianity intensely, but their views can be pressed into service for an understanding of the nature of myth. Myth is, according to Campbell a cultural transmission of symbols for the purpose of providing the members of the tribe with a sense of guidance through life. They are psychological, not explanatory of the physical world. This is easily seen in their elaborate natures. Why develop a whole story with so many elements when it will suffice as an explanation to say "we have fire because Prometheus stole it form the gods?" For example, Campbell demonstrates in The Hero that heroic myths chart the journey of the individual through life. They are not explanatory, but clinical and healing. They prepare the individual for the journey of life; that's why in so many cultures we meet the same hero over and over again; because people have much the same experiences as they journey though life, gaining adulthood, talking their place in the group, marriage, children, old age and death. The hero goes out, he experiences adventures, he proves himself, he returns, and he prepares the next hero for his journey. We meet this over and over in mythology.

Ultimately of course we have to blame the fundamentalists for creating an absurd model of the Bible in reaction to Darwin, a model that froze the Bible out of the modern world. We Chrsitains have to go about making for our own mistakes first, because we can expect to stop cranking out atheists. The appearance on the scene of the atheist preacher man can't be a negative sing for the fortunes on the Bible. It means that the atheist mentality has gone main stream. What was once an intellectual elite in the ivory tower of university life is not now part of the mob, the masses. That has to represent the degradation of atheist ranks. It means that atheist is subject to mass culture and what is the fad now will be laughed at tomorrow. In a couple of decades atheism will be in the same category with bell bottom blue jeans and rockabilly. 

Here is a good lecture by a real schoalr on the topic presumed in the video.