Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
So all children born out of incestuous relationships are "anti-christs", satanic offspring, only worthy of slaughter? That sounds positively Islamic...
It is the second son of David and Batsheba (the second Adam, Messiah) who becomes King over God’s people forever.
King Solomon was the "second Adam"?
Exactly. Everything "exists", and the whole "creation" becomes meaningless.
That is the absurdity. This absurdity has to be resolved by the deity you speak of. The only solution is to allow time to bring about the separation. Without time, the problem arises. With time, God is no more God
Oooops...so much for the first cause outside of time. :)
Because he's an atheist. They have a long history of that sort of thing, eg, Ingersoll. For instance, here is Robert Blatchford from 1904...
Is this unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter -- we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch our cities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him defiles and nauseates. We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil, this red-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews. (pg. 56)He sounds just like an atheist of today.Are we to believe that the God who created all this boundless universe got so angry with the children of the apes that He condemned them all to Hell for two score centuries, and then could only appease His rage by sending His own Son to be nailed upon a cross ? Do you believe that? Can you believe it? No. As I said before, if the theory of evolution be true, there was nothing to atone for, and nobody to atone. Man has never sifined against God. In fact, the whole of this old Christian doctrine is a mass of error. There was no creation. There was no Fall. There was no Atonement. There was no Adam, and no Eve, and no Eden, and no Devil, and no Hell. (pg. 125)
Yes, that is why they do bizarre things, like draw an equivalency between islam and christianity, as if there is no difference between the two.
You mean, for example, your notion that the sun is 2.1 degrees away from where we see it?
Did you read the thread title? This thread is about atheists attacking atheists.
If Christianity is not equivalent to Islam in every other context, why should they be equivalent "in the context of Pascal's Wager"?
the point still stands.
Hey everyone! I'm an atheist and I have a point to make. But first, everyone must assume something really really ludicrous, which I myself do not believe in any context, for the sake of argument. And that is, Islam is true. Muslims really are right! Imagine that right now, the terrorists who killed 3000 americans really are feasting in heaven with 72 virgins each, most of all Bin Laden, who has 73. Gosh! What if they are right? We've been wasting our time living as patriotic americans! Especially the Christian ones. See, my point still stands! And while you're at it, imagine that leftism and communism are true! See? It's just as much of a waste of time to be a conservative -- my point still stands even more!
“For a justification of our moral code we no longer have to have recourse to theological revelation, or to a metaphysical Absolute; Freud in combination with Darwin suffice to give us our philosophic vision.” — Julian Huxley
In post #2 of this thread, someone re-stated Pascal's Wager, saying that you might was well be a Christian rather than an atheist, because you won't lose anything by being the former if the atheists are right, but being the latter will cause you to suffer in a hypothetical afterlife if the Christians are right.
Precisely the same logic can be used to argue in favor of virtually any other religion, Islam included. People have been pointing this out since the 18th Century.
For that matter, people have been using variations of the Wager for millenia to advocate for their particular belief system. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager#Variations for examples involving the Greek Gods, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
Honestly, is this really so hard to figure out?
Mohammed is dead, buried, gone. He is no savior to anyone.
Jesus however, while He did die, is NOT dead, and is the Savior to many. He IS the way to God. I pray for you.
Thomas Jefferson, did have it right. It does me no harm if you wish to worship a rock. I will of course tell you that you are mistaken, that Jesus is the way to God and Heaven, but if you reject that, beyond me feeling badly for you and your soul, it does me no harm.
The problem arises with those mohammedans who not only take offense at the rejection of Islam, but will then take action against you. As well, the atheists ( or perhaps human-worshippers) who desire to drive God out of all things public.
Which is why (as I've pointed out before) I very much prefer to live in a predominantly Christian country vs. a Muslim one.
No it is morality for self interest, Libertarianism and Capitalism.
When you look at the stars in the Heavens are you capable of comprehending that the light from some of the stars that you are seeing came from millions and possibly billions of years ago and that many of those stars are gone?
Or does your cognitive dissonance cause you too much pain to gaze up into the Heavens when you know that God created it 7,000 years ago?
What is the hurdle that you speak of?
The Lord, during the time the OT was written, wanted, commanded, that Israel destroy that which was evil.
God is Good, all the time.
His ways are not ours.
It is NOT about being ‘religious’. It IS about trusting in God, accepting Jesus as your Savior.
Thankfully we already did. It is called the Constitution.
With all due respect LeGrande, this statement by you shows a lack of intellectual ability.
God / Jesus does not, has not changed.
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