Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Go to the red dot under the original for the usual bonus.)
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Stupid! It Burns! (immaterial edition)
Rise of the New Atheism Best-selling atheist books like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great suffer from this incoherence in varying degrees. They argue that God cannot exist because only material things exist. This is the naturalist worldview upon which atheism rests. By demonstrating that naturalism is false, it becomes easier to show why theism, not atheism, is the truly rational option.
Naturalism claims that only material things exist. And yet, it is self-evident that love, happiness, human rights, good and evil are real though immaterial. To be consistent, atheists are forced to argue that these things are just electrically charged chemical reactions inside the brain.
But if that were true, then there could be no such thing as “good” or “evil,” only behavior with which you agree or disagree. And if that were true, then there would be no use in appealing to “right” or “wrong” because those are nothing more than chemical processes inside the brain. In an atheist universe where God doesn’t exist, slavery, theft, murder, and cutting down rain forests would not be “evil” or “wrong.” They would simply be behaviors you dislike. Not even an atheist would want to live in that universe.
As is often the case, there's lots more stupid in the article.
The Stupid! It Burns! (moral capital edition)
The New Atheists and Their Recent Attacks If you’ve looked over the best seller lists recently you may have noticed two new books that champion the cause of atheism. One is by the Englishman, Richard Dawkins and the other, titled "Letter to a Christian Nation" is by the American, Sam Harris. [Letter to a Christian Nation and The God Delusion were published in 2006. I guess that's new compared to the Bible - ed.] ...
The atheistic fundamentalists are deeply committed to the belief that life formed by accidental collisions of atoms and death causes the ending of consciousness. Not surprisingly, they are deeply committed to evolution as an explanation of origins. ...
The rejection of God and of God’s morality because of Darwinism brought the rise of communism and fascism as atheist political philosophies. (Though Nazism was technically an occultic system it was heavily influenced by evolution based racial theories.)
The mass murders that occurred under Hitler, Stalin and Mao caused a radical pessimism and nihilism under Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The pessimism was the result of the fact that 300 years of modern philosophy did not result in the discovery of a system of moral absolutes that could unite the world in peace. Absolute morals are morals that apply to all people across all cultures. ...
I will say that the atheist worldview gives no real philosophical underpinning for morality. As Dostoevsky wrote: "If there is no God, All things are permissible." ...
As evolution and its implicit atheism is taught in taxpayer funded schools it has caused the secularization of society. The schools turn out many scruffy, ill-mannered people with no moral compass, guided only by their base, animal appetites.
The moral capital built up over generations when people learned the Bible at home and at school and at church is being spent and this valuable Christian moral capital needs to be replenished.
The article is long, and chock full o' stupid.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Stupid! It Burns! (annoying edition)
Why Some Atheists Annoy Me I want to list a few reasons on why some atheists annoy me. ...
Holding lectures and conferences seems so redundant. Why do you need to hold events like “Skepticon” or “ReasonFest”? I’d assume ...
It’s sad that these three bitter individuals have become the voice of atheism. By following these atheist authors blindly, atheism has become a religion in itself. ...
Yes, I know atheists are smarter than the general population. I know that 93% of scientists do not believe in God. So what? I don’t care if you read all of Dawkins books or if you can schpeel off Darwin’s theories to the last detail. Talk to me about philosophy, ethics, logic, and politics. Just because you think you know everything there is to know does not mean you are right.
How can atheists have a positive outlook? Life ends after we die. In the mind of an atheist, there is no afterlife. I really dislike how all the atheists I’ve met are always complaining and focusing on negative things. They are so critical it seems.
Shorter Joe: It really annoys me that some people are interested in events, authors, ideas and social issues I don't find interesting. (Sorry, Dan!)
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
A stupid question
A question with no answers, with no possible answer, is not a great question. It's not a profound question, a deep question or an important question. It's not a mystery, it's not a puzzle. It may be all of these until we discover the question cannot have an answer, but once we discover there is no answer, it becomes a stupid question, a question that can only be unasked.
The Stupid! It Burns! (ain't I great edition)
Why Do I Doubt Both the Atheists and the Theists? I am more excited about Divinity of Doubt: The God Question than any other book in my entire career, and I've had seven New York Times bestsellers, three of them reaching number one. Why? Apart from the fact we can all agree that there cannot be a more important subject than God*, the main reason is that we're talking about a 2,000-year-old conversation to which nothing significant has been brought to the table for a great many years. ...
What I discovered is so startling that if anyone who reads Divinity of Doubt is not stunned, they would be the type who wouldn't be surprised if they saw a man jump away from his own shadow. ...
*Well, a slightly more important subject would be the question of whether I will scratch my left buttock now, or wait a few minutes until the itchiness increases to make the scratching more satisfying. But that's just me.
What is this startling new development, that revolutionizes a subject barren for millennia? Hold on to your hat, gentle reader, Vince is about to blow your mind:
Although in Divinity of Doubt, I destroy through simple logic Christianity's main non-biblical support for such a God, Intelligent Design, I conclude that the other principal argument for his [sic] existence, First Cause, is very difficult to get around and goes in the direction, though not conclusively, of a Supreme Being.
Wow! The First Cause argument! And it actually goes in the direction of a Supreme Being. I'm truly shocked. I don't know why someone didn't think of this before.
To preempt my esteemed commenter Dan...
Shorter Vincent Bugliosi: God is an impenetrable mystery, and there are no answers. God is therefore the most important subject, and I have answers! Ain't I just fucking amazing!
The Stupid! It Burns! (Hitler re-re-re-...re-dux edition)
#1 Why Atheists Kick Out Hitler I see that Hitler is a real pain to explain for the neo-atheist. They all have such faith in their Atheist Leaders that without question, they must explain Hitler away at all costs. After all if they admit that Hitler had even ONE characteristic of an atheist then all atheists or neo-atheists will be brought into disrepute.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Stupid! It Burns! (shrewd, skeptical edition)
On Atheists, Part 2 I'm a shrewd, skeptical person by nature [who believes that] the parts of my body are infinitely more complex than the computer in front of me ... Somehow this organized, coherent, useful data in my DNA exists in a world that supposedly has no direction or intelligence. Does information spring out of mindlessness? Does life spring from inanimate material? Organized information is evidence of intelligence (e.g. SETI). ...
I ask that you'll fairly consider both sides with an open mind. What if there is a God who created this somehow and can assign value to you as a living being? What if he has expectations?!
If you're like most of us, this doesn't really come down evidence and arguments and philosophical debates. The real reason we don't believe in God is this: we don't want to.
Taxation
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation.
— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2
Thanks to adult onset atheist
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