Monday, May 21, 2012

Justifiable Fear of Atheism

I somehow got directed to a site pimping Secular Humanism which had a post called Fear of Atheism. The author, Martin S. Pribble, scratches his head trying to figure out why poor Atheists get such a bad rap. His immediate conclusion in paragraph one is that those who distrust Atheists are deluded by thinking that they are amoral:
"For many, the atheist represents everything that is bad in the world; without god, only evil is possible. Without the guiding hand of god on your side, then things like rape, murder, incest, cannibalism, stealing, lying, and deliberately causing pain and suffering to small animals are totally acceptable. But of course, just a moment’s thought by the person claiming this and they will see that this is not true at all, and only a person living with delusions or living in denial would give these assertions a second thought. Whether you like it or not, herein lies the problem; delusion and denial."
I doubt that many actually think that Atheists are raping, murdering, mother-schtupping, cannibals etc. as Pribble claims. He doesn't make any case which claims an actual morality exists for Atheists, he just thinks it is "delusion and denial" to think one doesn't exist. In the end, Pribble is completely unable to come up with the correct answer: Distrusting Atheists is a natural and logical consequence of the choice Atheists have made.

So I made this comment, which I was totally unable to get registered at the site, so I'll just make it here:
"Atheism is dangerous. It claims logic and evidence for itself, but it cannot prove its own position with either logic or evidence. Its main thesis is Materialism which is demonstrably false, being unable to prove its own tenets under its own evidentiary theory, rendering it non-coherent and irrational. Further, Atheist reasoning is post hoc rationalization, and never syllogistic deduction: so it is demonstrably irrational.

Atheism has no attached moral theory; Atheists get to make up their own morals du jour, tailored to match their own behaviors. When a theory is made to match behaviors, rather than behaviors made to match the theory, the theory is not a moral theory, it is a self-indulgence which is used to claim morality where it does not and cannot exist.

Trust requires that a fixed moral system exist and that behaviors match the moral theory, not the other way around. That Atheists do not understand this requirement makes them even more suspect to those around them.

Demonstrable irrationality and amorality are natural, necessary consequences of the variable and relativist universe which Atheists create for themselves. There is no religious bias here, it is the rational conclusion based on the inability of Atheists to meet the fundamental requirements of trustworthiness. Yet Atheists fail to even recognize the inevitable consequence of their choice, and call those necessary consequences "delusions", which indicates that it actually is the Atheists who are self-deluded, as well as irrational and amoral.

Self-delusion, irrationality and amorality; these are the inevitable natural and logical consequences of Atheism."

That's why Atheism and Atheists are not trusted, and are dangerous.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

As you did elsewhere, comment http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/2012/05/22/chasing-comments/

ReasonBeing said...

I am going to leave a long comment here as I initially planned to do. I agree with much of what the commenter above me stated.

I am curious why you were not able to post at my site. I have been out of town for the last week (hence the guest posts). I do not moderate comments and encourage opposing views. Did you have trouble signing up for Intense Debate or was the problem related to my site?

Lastly, and this is a general comment after searching around your blog. You seem to have one major point backwards. You demand the burden of proof regarding a deity to fall to atheists. That is a false starting point. The burden of proof is always for person making the claim. When it comes to the topic at hand, a deity, the burden of proof is on the person claiming a deity exists.

You point out that you were an atheist for 40 years. If that is true, you would or should know that most atheists are truly agnostic. They do not believe in the existence of a god because the mountain of evidence seems to show there is no deity. Just about every "atheist" I know from Dawkins to myself leaves the door open a bit. You fail to acknowledge this on many places on your site. It is a major failing on your part, particularly as you were once an atheist. From looking around your site, you seem to know very little about atheists or atheism. I find that intriguing.

Stan said...

The problem was getting into... I guess it was intense debate... requiring logging into a service I don't want, which wouldn't give me a username and ran me around for awhile. When I finally got in, it wouldn't let me post a comment unless I broke it up into parts - it was not that long a comment at that point - and I got frustrated and left that quick note instead.

That did result in the lengthy post over here, which I could manage better anyway.

Now, as for Burden of Proof. It is not kosher to merely declare that the proof is not adequate for your Atheist taste; a rebuttal (there is a Burden of Rebuttal) requires a reason that the rebuttor deems the propostion / proof inadequate. That constitutes an honest burden for providing evidence and or logic rebutting the case presented. That is what Atheists wish to avoid, because they want to say only that "you failed" without any evidence support their own claim.

As for Atheists being agnostic, first that is a mixture of concepts which I think is hardly acceptable; one is either one or the other. The concept of an agnostic Atheist is necessary as an escape hatch, in order - again - to avoid the responsibility for supporting their Atheist claims with any evidence or logic. They just want to deny, and that's all. They think that we should accept their denial as some sort of logical proposition, but of course, it is not.

Atheists are caught in their own fallacy: they demand a Category Error requirement from Theists, and they won't relinquish that. But when the same demand is made of them, they claim "unfair".

And that is Special Pleading.

Yes, Atheists come here all the time and claim "you don't understand Atheists" and then they make the same statements and logic errors that all the previous Atheists have made and then the same refusals to accept any error in their logic. I understand the Atheists that pass through here. Maybe you are different. They all claim that, but...

ReasonBeing said...

Intense Debate can be a hassle but it does a great job of keeping spam out. Sorry about that. If you finally got into it, keep your comments to less than 10 lines if you are using internet explorer (I have no idea why) and you can break it up into multiple parts.

Anyway, there was a typo in my comment yesterday. I meant to say that I am not going to leave a long comment...Like you, I posted my comment at my site. You are welcome to comment of course. http://reason-being.com/index.php/2012/05/23/the-straw-man/

Grung_e_Gene said...

"Distrusting Atheists is a natural and logical consequence of the choice Atheists have made."

So... Religion is a choice? I have a choice of which tenets to believe and which god-head to worship?

If these choices are never offered to me (admittedly less possible in the modern western world and even the somewhat connected third world) can I be condemned for not realizing the true faith?

But, more to the fact you seem to be claiming that Atheists are sociopaths because their atheism allows them to shed their morality.

I would contend that by the time a person becomes an atheist their morality is already formed, at least partially, in their psyche through all sorts of experiences and education.

And your statement, "Atheists get to make up their own morals du jour, tailored to match their own behaviors" can apply to any person. Even the most christian of humans has abandoned, modified, sought justification from religious authority to do whatever they wish.

Lloyd Blankenfein of Goldman Sachs, the firm very responsible for the economic collapse of 2007, stated "I'm doing god's work." even though up until a 1000 years ago most europeans would have considered usury a sin.