Atheists Have Changed on God Arguemnts

I see a real change in the atheist attitude toward arguments fo God. It's ironic because apologists say to each other in private all the time that they never seem to really notice how often we prove the case for an argument, that it seems to make no dent in their thinking that we always win the arguments, they go right on insisting that we never do and that there is no evidence. It' clear that most God arguments are usually defended well, except in cases where the apologist didn't do his homework, which happens a lot. But in any argument where the apologist knows his stuff, the arguments almost always holds up and danceable. But atheists never seem to notice.

Despite their denials I think atheists do no notice. That conclusion is mad pretty obvious by the changes I see taking place in their attitudes. Years ago (1999) when I started doing this most atheists had a much more open attitude toward discussion of God arguments. There were some hot head thugs like Cygnus who was a cutting edge hate zombie, but for the most part atheists such Dan the Atheist on CARM seemed open and ready to discuss any argument. They didn't poison the well or beg the question that much. Their main strategy in those days was to just insist that we don't have direct evidence so it's not "proof."

Over these past eleven years or so there have been a lot of water under bridge. Atheists went through an extreme radicalization beginning in 2004, where they all began to sound like Cygnus (I honestly can't remember if he spelled that with a Y or not). In that period they got much more radical about God arguments, charging "there's no proof for your God." They always said that but they got more adamant about it. Now they have come to the point where they basically just refuse to argue.

That's the new attitudes I see. Whereas in the past all one had to do was put up a God argument and he would get 20 or so answers, even if they weren't very good. Now I put one up on carm I get no answers. There are a few little comments but they just amount to badmouthing. The new attitude seems to be one of just shut down the discussion. There can't be any proof for God no matter what the apologist says it just isn't possible so don't even bother thinking about it. Don't try to examine their arguments, just ignore them up front.

It's a dead give away what's going on once one becomes aware of the new discoveries made in anti-atheist studies. That awareness can be summed up:

(1) Atheism is a hate group

(2) Its' a cult

(3) it's brain washing

(4) it's an ideology one is socialized (brain washed) into

(5) their real motivation and the reason they come to message boards is the emotional charge they get from mocking and ridiculing those who disagree with the ideology; this makes them feel superior and that's what they really want. It has nothing to do with intellectualism or thinking.

In this light God arguments are just a barrier to be gotten around,not significant questions to be answered. The way they deal with a God argument is merely to compare it to their one and only standard of true knowledge "does it stack up to the atheist ideology of scientisim" Of course not. so therefore it can't be true so just don't bother with it.

But this attitude tells me that they know they can't answer God arguments. They know the arguments have bee proved and there's nothing they can do. So they had to change the strategy and stop arguing the arguments and start ridiculing them but in such a way that their brain washed lackeys will not go to the trouble to actually learn about them.

That effectively takes away the effectiveness of all apologetic. At the same time however if you understand it it's a frank admission that we are right. The refusal to participate in arguments for God is a frank admission that they really know there is evidence for God that they can't answer.

The Atheist Scam

We theists have to start getting tough with these guys. This garbage has gone on long enough. Their little games are getting really sick. They are a self deluded bunch of scam artists who are themselves brain washed by other who pulled the scam on them. I don't mean just having problems believing is a scam. There are clearly well meaning people who just don't see it, but when they get together in groups on the net and start frequenting the same websites all the time they pick up bad habits.

Atheism is a scam on the net in the websites such infidels and so forth. you can see this from their habits of argumentation. Here are some of the games they play:

there's no proof for your God

they will chant this mantra until they die. They will never never never never never never admit that anything not anything at all might even potentially qualify as evidence. for years I wondered why are they so hard headed? I mean even the most ludicrous ideas have some evidence for them. Such as Bigfoot, if you really study it the skeptical case against Bigfoot is pathetic and it's based upon ignoring most of the claims of evidence that Bigfoot "believers" bring forth.

I don't necessary believe in Bigfoot, I have big huge doubts that it could exist. When skeptics say things things "if they are there why don't people see them?" Then I go to a data base and see thousands of claims that people see them, you have to wonder, what's with such a skeptic?

Atheists are the same way. There are tons of good arguemnts for God but no atheist will ever admit not just there's evidence, they don't even admit anything could potentially prove it. I used to wonder why do they do that? Finally when I began to realized that atheism is basically brain washing and a scam I began to realize why do they do it. They are not evaluating evidence, they are comparing the one claim God exists" to their standard of atheist propaganda. They say "does this God argument stack up to what the atheist ideology tells me I must believe?"

Of course it doesn't because it contradicts. So they just dismiss it, it's not evidence because it can't be, nothing can ever be evidence unless it's in line with the brainwashing, which is the atheist ideology.

That's just subjective

Here's another favorite game atheists love to play. They can dismiss all the arguments given on the grounds that religion is experiential based and that makes it subjective and subjective is always wrong. One can see how idiotic this is just asking one simple question, Is it theoretically possible that some subjective evidence could be good evidence? Well when we consider how many things about reality are experiential based you have to figure that it can be good evidence at times. So their total blanket dismissive of "subjective" is largely jut crap.

The problem of other minds, it's resolution in the assumption of other minds, one's own existence, the trust that the sun will rise tomorrow, the idea of life as worth living all of these things re subjective or they resolve with subjective assumptions. Basically, humans are incapable of being objective. That renders the atheist dismissal of subjectivity pretty silly. It means that the charge "that's subjective" is just a meaningless slogan of their propaganda.

your reasoning is poor

This is another slogan that has nothing to do with reasoning. Most of these guys don't even know that logic as specific rules and it's own specialized language or that it's an academic specialty. In general when most people say "that's not logical" what they mean is "I don't like that. Atheists thrive on feeling superior. That's why they mock and ridicule all the time, because they need to feel that they are smarter than religious people. So they use phrases about logic and imply that they are considering the rules of logic and you are not, but in reality most of them don't even know that logic has rules, or at least they know no more about the rules than the next guy.

this happens all the time, I'll be pasting them in an argument they will just resort to "you are not using logic." But that's exactly what I am using and they are not. Just on this board in the last few days one atheist insisting that "irreducibility" must be a creationist concept as though no real science would ever say that. That's based upon the ID guys using the phrase so therefore the phrase must be wrong. That's not logical, it's also not well read, but that's their use of logic becuase they are not, using logic that is. Or in the argument on the God is not imaginary, I have 300 studies and they guy say "you haven't given any evidence." I put up links to several pages of evidence on my site and I posted 50 source right in the thread and he still, though he has not one single source of his own, has the audacity to say "you have no evidence." Why? Because they don't use reason. they don't use logic. "Logic" for them is just a slogan like saying "Yeah" or "boo that." "you don't use logic" means "boo that."

Orwellian use of language.

Like in the novels of George Orwell the ideological regime uses language bent to it's own purpose to control things. Atheists use language this way all the time. One good example is the use of the term "imaginary." God is just imaginary. they say that just means not proved.but obviously it carries consolations or stupid, childish irresponsible, baseless no good reason for it. they are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand they want to deny these insulting qualities but hey want to keep using it.


The kicker is they wont allow it to be used of their stuff. try to use it in the same way of scientific theories such as string theory they will not have it. They say "but that's a scientific theory so it deserves better" but they just go through saying it's no insult to call it "imaginary." Obviously it is and hey know it and they are fulfilling a fast one. they wont use if of their own stuff even if it's not proved. So that shows us it's a scam. Atheism is a scam. ti' snot about thinking it's about anger and resentment.



Here's a new one:

Provide me with your explanation here, and then supplement with a reference preferably through a filter of site:.edu or a respectable site written by experts and I'll happily oblige. You are constantly using stereotypes in your descriptions of atheists.

in other words this person is saying no evidence quoted by a non atheist can be true. Only atheist propaganda counts as evidence.

My Debaet with Mitch LeBlanc on CARM

This is my opening statement:


It's a 1x1 debate. The topic: Atheism is philosophically Banckrupt.


LeBlanc seems bright. He's one contributor to a blog called Urban Philosophy.

I wont transcribe the whole debate here. I may give a couple of summaries latter.


Opening Statment: J.L. Hinman


I don't expect any atheists on CARM to agree with me. I'm telling them that their main thing is bankrupt. I know they won’t like it. Lurkers will find it meaningful. I will present two arguments:

I. Atheism is not a complete Philosophy

This is a statement that will be agreed to by almost all atheists. Such was not the case before the internet, in the days when Madeline Murray O’Hare was one of them major forces behind atheist growth in America. But today most atheists accept the idea that atheism is merely the lack of a belief and nothing more. That is not an advantage it's a problem.

Like minded people tend to form alliances and tendencies emerge. Tendencies have emerged in atheism; while they do not constitute formal definition of atheism they do plague the atheist community. There is no way to stop this because there is no atheist ethics or code of behavior or any corrective one can point to and say "you are not being a good atheist." There is such a corrective in Christian teaching. There is no such thing in atheism.

A. Philosophies not corrected by atheism

This leaves the atheist community filled with tendencies of reductionism and with scientistic and also hate group mentality in some quarters. I have been doing the Atheist Watch blog for a couple of years now and I have large body of evidence to demonstrate this hate mentality. But it's there on every message board. No atheist had taken my challenge to go on a board pretending to be a Christian. I find it amusing and telling that no one will do it. They know and I know how they would be treated if they did.

I believe this hate group aspect is the result of hatefully minded people banding together under the rubric of "atheism" because there is no corrective, there is no ethics and are no teachings that would same them into civilized behavior.

One tendency I've noticed is atheists often become polarized in argument and fearing that anything could be a God argument take the nee jerk reaction and support extreme positions. I think this happened in the recent discussion about consciousness.


B. Logical Contradictions at the heart of atheism.


There three contradictions I’ll deal with here:

(1) Atheist thinking originally ruled God out of science on the basis that we had no need for that hypothesis since we had natural cause and effete to explain everything rather than God.

This is the famous statement made by La Place and that is basically why he said it, because he had cause and effect to fall back upon. But now atheists abandoned cause and effect to a great degree to get away from the cosmological argument. In so doing they have eliminated their basic ordinal reason for leaving God out of science.


a. Materailism based upon cause and effect
Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism"

"...the belief that everything that exists is ether matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence." Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999) http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?(this source is already linked above)

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offence to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable."

b) Something from nothing contradicts materialism
Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead.
NY: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

"We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... science which is employed in their development [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical causation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."[Whitehead was an atheist]

c) Causality was the basis upon which God was expelled from Modern Science

It was La Place’s famous line "I have no need of that Hypothesis" [meaning God] Which turned the scientific world form believing (along with Newton and assuming that order in nature proved design) to unbelief on the principle that we don’t' need God to explain the universe because we have independent naturalistic cause and effect. [Numbers, God and Nature]
2) Materialism Undermines Itself
a) Big Bang contradicts causality (see quotation above)
b) QM theory seems to contradict cause/effect relationship.
c) Rejection of final cause
3) Probabilistic Justification for assumption of Cause

We still have a huge justification for assuming causes inductively, since nothing in our experience is ever uncaused. The mere fact that we can't see or find a cause isn't a proof that there isn't one.


Alfred North whitehead pointed this out as a major reason for understanding a contradiction in science and atheism both. Because it leaves the field open for final cause but both atheists and scientists are afraid to take that up.



II. Atheism is Bankrupt because it denies the vastly well documented transformative power of religious belief while offering no such supported assumptions of it’s own.

A huge body of empirical data has been amassed through several hundred empirical studies by real social scientists. Religious experience, “mystical” or “peak” experience as it is called, has been demonstrated to provide real, positive and lasting changes. While atheists claim to “feel better” after leaving certain religious environments there is no one single study of any kind that backs up any such claims on the part of atheism.

Two major studies, the wuthnow study and the Nobel study both show a huge list of changes in people’s lives, for the better as a result of religious experience:



*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble:

*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion


2) States of consciousness and mystical experiences
The ego has problems:
the ego is a problem.
``Within the Western model we recognize and define psychosis as a suboptimal state of consciousness that views reality in a distorted way and does not recognize that distortion. It is therefore important to note that from the mystical perspective our usual state fits all the criteria of psychosis, being suboptimal, having a distorted view of reality, yet not recognizing that distortion. Indeed from the ultimate mystical perspective, psychosis can be defined as being trapped in, or attached to, any one state of consciousness, each of which by itself is necessarily limited and only relatively real.'' -- page 665


Roger Walsh (1980). The consciousness disciplines and the behavioral sciences: Questions of comparison and assessment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137(6), 663-673.



3) Therapeutic effects of peak experiences
``It is assumed that if, as is often said, one traumatic event can shape a life, one therapeutic event can reshape it. Psychedelic therapy has an analogue in Abraham Maslow's idea of the peak experience. The drug taker feels somehow allied to or merged with a higher power; he becomes convinced the self is part of a much larger pattern, and the sense of cleansing, release, and joy makes old woes seem trivial.'' -- page 132


Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar (1983). ``Psychedelic Drugs in Psychiatry'' in Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, New York: Basic Books.




Transpersonal Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and Theoretical Integration. Unpublished paper by Jayne Gackenback, (1992)
http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/cehsc/ipure.htm
"These states of being also result in behavioral and health changes. Ludwig (1985) found that 14% of people claiming spontaneous remission from alcoholism was due to mystical experiences while Richards (1978) found with cancer patients treated in a hallucinogenic drug-assisted therapy who reported mystical experiences improved significantly more on a measure of self-actualization than those who also had the drug but did not have a mystical experience. In terms of the Vedic Psychology group they report a wide range of positive behavioral results from the practice of meditation and as outlined above go to great pains to show that it is the transcendence aspect of that practice that is primarily responsible for the changes. Thus improved performance in many areas of society have been reported including education and business as well as personal health states (reviewed and summarized in Alexander et al., 1990). Specifically, the Vedic Psychology group have found that mystical experiences were associated with "refined sensory threshold and enhanced mind-body coordination (p. 115; Alexander et al., 1987)."



(4) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Recent Empirical Studies Prove Religious Believers have less depression, mental illness lower Divorce rate, ect.


J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090

Quote:
"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]
70% of the time believers are more likely than non believers (or at least experiences are more likely than non experiences) to have these effects of self actualization.

Atheism teaches one to doubt these effects even though hey are well documented. Especially the “new” atheism would evangelically and actively seek to disuad people from experiencing these effects even though they are basically the best thing in life. Atheism would seek to instill in its adherents a tendency to gamble with their own happiness and fulfillment betting on the depressed, less adjusted and less well end of the continuum of human experience merely because accepting the advantages would mean placing faith in a reality that atheists cannot control and that they cannot feel special advocating.