When Atheists Attack (Each Other)

Evolution News and Views ^ | April 28 2011 | Davld Klinghoffer

[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.

[Natural Law]

"My identity is in Christ, not a denomination."

This just means that she is actively church shopping. Every fringe Protestant has at least four churches at any given time; the church they are presently attending, the church they are exploring attending, the church they used to attend, and the church they wouldn't set foot in. Actual affiliation is only to the degree that the current pastor's interpretation of Scripture agrees with their own personal interpretation of Scripture.

Let's not downplay the importance of "looking like" the other members. I've seen a lot of Protestants drive an extra 10 miles to attend a white church when there are several black churches in walking distance from their homes.

[betty boop]

No, [Truth] is a concept, but not not within human reach simply because in order to know the whole Truth one must know everything there is to know, i.e. be aware of all information there is.

Strangely, this statement reminds me of the famous dialogue between the Marquis Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749–1827) and Napoleon Bonaparte. Laplace was a great mathematican and man about Court. Napoleon himself was a highly accomplished mathematician; he even wrote an important paper on ballistics.

Anyhoot, the "dialogue" as it has been handed down to our present age:

L: Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which Nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis ... to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes.

B: This "intelligence" of yours, would it be the Author of the universe, who I note you left out of your book, Méchanique Céleste?

L: I know what you are driving at, Sire, but I have no need of this "God" hypothesis.

So it seems that you, dear kosta, and Laplace are in the same boat: You both expel God from the universe. But, if not God, who/what could be the Intelligence that Laplace described? Certainly it cannot be a man, whose sheer finitude guarantees that he cannot possibly see all things everywhere, past, present, and future.

But does this mean that man cannot know anything at all?

It seems to you, dear kosta, Truth is a "by-product," the outcome or sum of the iteration of everything that ever was, is, or will be, everywhere in the universe. Thus it can have no meaning for us living in the present: It is incomplete, "unfinished."

This is the very reverse of my position, which holds that Truth is the measure of all existent things, which is prior to all existing things, and which transcends all existing things.

Rather you say that Truth can only be a "concept ... beyond human reach" — a concept devoid of all content I might add. But why even bother to name an unintelligible, contentless concept???

My point is, Truth is not a contentless concept: It points directly, squarely to God, its Articulator (if I might put it that way).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Truth is that which underlies and unifies being and knowing. I think this understanding may have been implicit in Descartes' observation that the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself.

The unification of being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology) is at the very heart of Natural Law theory. The theory "looks like" this (as drawn from Robert Rosen):

I asked you, "How can we tell whether the 'conclusions' you've evidently reached are rational or irrational?" And you replied, "Whether it corresponds to the real world we are subject to or not." And with this, you seem to give a hat tip to Natural Law theory....

...But you still stubbornly deny the unifying principle that places them into fruitful, dynamic relation — which is Truth.

Which gets me to wondering. What does it do to a person to live in active revolt against God and Truth?

Well, that's it for now, dear kosta. Thanks so much for your reply!

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“Doesn’t sound like you though it was “humorous” back in post #1885...”

I wasn’t going to mention your short-coming of lack of humor,
but now that you bring it up, I think you need to lighten up
and then learn more about argumentation too. It would improve
your temperament and enjoyment of life. It may even curtail some
negative spirit. I want the best for you.

ampu

[Alamo-Girl]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Truth is that which underlies and unifies being and knowing. I think this understanding may have been implicit in Descartes' observation that the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself.

Excellent insight, dearest sister in Christ, thank you!

[kosta50]

So it seems that you, dear kosta, and Laplace are in the same boat: You both expel God from the universe. But, if not God, who/what could be the Intelligence that Laplace described?

I believe I said it would be an assumed or "hypothetical all-knowing 'deity'". As  Laplace said, there is no need for such hypothesis. We can observe and study and gain understanding of the world without it. I think that is pretty much where science is to this day.

Certainly it cannot be a man, whose sheer finitude guarantees that he cannot possibly see all things everywhere, past, present, and future.

You are drifting way out of the field, bb. Initially I said that we cannot know the Truth because in order to know the universal truth we would have to know all there is to know. In other words, we would have to be able to get information and integrate about every phenomenon in this world, down to its very core, whether it is a wave, or whatever, and you yourself know that this is not possible with our "sheer finitude".

And yes, I define the Truth, the universal know-how of the physical world, and as such of this world, i.e. the way the world is . What, if anything, is "outside" of this world is a speculation, hypothesis, conjecture, assumption, etc. based on our fancy.

But does this mean that man cannot know anything at all?

That is asinine. I never said such  thing. But I did say that we cannot know everything (which is what is needed to know the Truth).

It seems to you, dear kosta, Truth is a "by-product," the outcome or sum of the iteration of everything that ever was, is, or will be, everywhere in the universe.

That is correct. If you know the Truth you don't have to believe (hope). You would know everything there is to know. Since we are limited by our "sheer finitude", we are unable to even theoretically reach such knowledge and therefore have to "fill in" the gaps with faith, hope, beliefs, and speculations of our own making.

Thus it can have no meaning for us living in the present: It is incomplete, "unfinished."

You are now not only drifting, but driving off the cliff, bb. So far you have thrown in the need for a "intelligent being" who is not of this world, being unable to know anything (like it's an all or none condition), and the "meaning" to our existence in response to my simple statement that in order to know the Truth one would have to know everything there is to know.

Yes, our existence is unfinished. It will be finished one day when either we disappear or the Sun swallows the Earth, or an asteroid slams into us, unless we can find another suitable planet to pollute. We are a work in progress.

Our civilization is constantly changing. We are constantly changing.  We are here and now whether you find meaning in it or not. The world is the way it is whether we know it or understand it or not. Meaning is not part of this world. It's a human construct, an invented (but false) necessity.

We don't exist because there is a "meaning" in our existence but because we were born and because conditions favor our existence. We are a consequence of those conditions over which we have no control.

There are no humans living on Mars because the conditions there are incompatible with our existence there. No one purposefully placed Mars too far and Venus too close, and the Earth just right. It's a probability. For if the Earth has a "purpose" to support us what is the "purpose" of Jupiter or asteroids or the Andromeda Galaxy in our world? 

This is the very reverse of my position, which holds that Truth is the measure of all existent things, which is prior to all existing things, and which transcends all existing things.

Yes, I know your position. But I disagree that the Truth is the "measure" of all things because it would have to be known and readily available to be used as a tool to measure anything. But in reality we don't know everything and therefore the Truth is not accessible to us as a measure.

What meaning does an asteroid have? Well, if we are in its path and it will disrupt our existence then it has a meaning, negative as it may be for us.

Rather you say that Truth can only be a "concept ... beyond human reach" — a concept devoid of all content I might add. But why even bother to name an unintelligible, contentless concept???

I could ask you the same thing with regard to your presumed Author of all things.

My point is, Truth is not a contentless concept: It points directly, squarely to God, its Articulator (if I might put it that way).

That is your belief.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Truth is that which underlies and unifies being and knowing. I think this understanding may have been implicit in Descartes' observation that the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself.

Your being has nothing to do with knowing. You were born, like all of us, without you even being aware of it. When you were conceived, neither you nor any of us knew anything, yet we existed.

The unification of being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology) is at the very heart of Natural Law theory. The theory "looks like" this (as drawn from Robert Rosen):

Philosophy is a great past time. You can practice it even while flipping hamburgers. :)

...But you still stubbornly deny the unifying principle that places them into fruitful, dynamic relation — which is Truth.

Existence and knowledge are not unified. Universal Truth is the way the world is whether we know it or not.

Which gets me to wondering. What does it do to a person to live in active revolt against God and Truth?

You are asking a wrong person.  I don't know what God is, so how can I be in revolt against God?  But I do disagree with some people, who put on their pants just as I do, who tell me as a matter of fact what they made their God out to be and what their definition of the Truth is.

[Cronos]

Is this true metmom — are you actively church shopping? I find it really sad that people split and resplit and bring their own little petty emotions and people politics into play in the church. Yes, we may not like our brother who stands next to us in church but we should forgive and stay together in the love of Christ.

[betty boop]

I believe I said it would be an assumed or "hypothetical all-knowing 'deity'". As Laplace said, there is no need for such hypothesis. We can observe and study and gain understanding of the world without it.

Leplace's description of the "Intelligence" is already a "God hypothesis" — as Napoleon clearly indicates in his follow-up question. Laplace simply refuses to call it by its proper name.

Like you, he's got blinkers on — which gives him a peculiar sort of tunnel vision....

This condition has been called "the refusal to apperceive." Which is the very thing that lets the fool say in his heart, "there is no God."

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed. Very well said, dearest sister in Christ!

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

No, it is a a concept, but not not within human reach simply because in order to know the whole Truth one must know everything there is to know, i.e. be aware of all information there is... We can "reasonably", that is—based on probability, expect the Sun to rise in the East tomorrow, but we can't know for sure that it will.

So, according you you, we must know everything there is to know before we can say that 2+2=4 is true, and since we don't, it follows that it isn't true that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and furthermore there is no reason to listen to your ramblings because nothing you say is true, etc., etc.

[kosta50]

So, according you you, we must know everything there is to know before we can say that 2+2=4 is true

Some people try really hard to be imbecilic. Are you one of them? I have gone over this several times already. Betty boop's "Truth" is God. The Universal truth of all there is. So, yes, to know the (universal, absolute) Truth, one must know everything there is to know. Knowing little truths, such as 2+2=4, is not all there is to know, or so it would seem to reasonable, rational human beings.

[kosta50]

Which is the very thing that lets the fool say in his heart, "there is no God."

And I suppose the anonymous fool who wrote it is somehow right?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

I have gone over this several times already. Betty boop's "Truth" is God. The Universal truth of all there is. So, yes, to know the (universal, absolute) Truth, one must know everything there is to know

Why is that? To you need to know the position and momentum of all the atoms in Bruce's mother-in-law before you can know that there is such a person as Bruce's mother-in-law?

Knowing little truths, such as 2+2=4, is not all there is to know, or so it would seem to reasonable, rational human beings.

So these "little" truths are smaller in some sense. Do you have a way of determining the size of truths? Do they weigh less? Less tall? In what sense is 2+2=4 smaller than "there is such a person as Bruce's mother-in-law"?

You seem to be confused (no surprise there) between two propositions: (1) P knows that Bruce's mother-in-law exists, and (2) P knows everything there is to know about Bruce's mother-in-law.

[James C. Bennett]

What does it do to a person to live in active revolt against God and Truth?

It's not as much revolting against a hypothetical, esoteric (or even Deistic) "God" as much as it is revolting against the God-figure of the known religions (including and especially yours) - all of which are flawed. To that end, these revolts, as you call them, are immensely rewarding - they help one get to know the World, the Universe, and life itself, better - and show with evermore greater clarity why your "God" and your "Truth" fail the test of reason and logic.

Over all of that, it's the confirmation of the suspicion of religious arrogance - camouflaged by the theology-of-the-fringes type non-arguments - that's most rewarding. It humbles one to know that one does not, and cannot know everything. To see claimants to the contrary who scream from the top of the roof that they're "saved" because a book tells them, brings the humour out.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

these revolts, as you call them, are immensely rewarding - they help one get to know the World, the Universe, and life itself, better - and show with evermore greater clarity why your "God" and your "Truth" fail the test of reason and logic.

No doubt it must be immensely rewarding for an atheist to "get to know" that the Sun is 2 degrees ahead of where it is, or 2 degrees behind where it is, or that you are made of waves of nothing, that physics is irrational, that anonymous posts are not the product of intelligences, and other postulations which may as well have been borrowed from the inmates of a lunatic asylum.

[kosta50]

To you need to know the position and momentum of all the atoms in Bruce's mother-in-law before you can know that there is such a person as Bruce's mother-in-law?

That is a particular truth.

Knowing why they exist or what is their "purpose" in this world is another story.

In what sense is 2+2=4 smaller than "there is such a person as Bruce's mother-in-law"?

In why that is.

You seem to be confused (no surprise there) between two propositions: (1) P knows that Bruce's mother-in-law exists, and (2) P knows everything there is to know about Bruce's mother-in-law.

It seems to me that you are the one who is confused. P doesn't know everything there is to known about Bruce's mother-in-law. You need to expand your horizons.

[kosta50]

No doubt it must be immensely rewarding for an atheist to "get to know" that the Sun is 2 degrees ahead of where it is, or 2 degrees behind where it is, or that you are made of waves of nothing, that physics is irrational, that anonymous posts are not the product of intelligences, and other postulations which may as well have been borrowed from the inmates of a lunatic asylum

Judging what you just wrote, it must be immensely rewarding to engage in verbosity void of content.

[James C. Bennett]

"...and other postulations which may as well have been borrowed from the inmates of a lunatic asylum."

Oh, you mean, like being forced to believe in talking donkeys and bushes, because one is forced by adopted dogma to do so?

[kosta50]

Oh, you mean, like being forced to believe in talking donkeys and bushes, because one is forced by adopted dogma to do so?

Yeah, the term 'lunatic' takes on a very special meaning...especially for people living in a belly of a fish for three days and then being able to talk about it. But pink unicorns on Jupiter are a unbelievable!

[betty boop]

In reply to my question, "What does it do to a person to live in active revolt against God and Truth?" you wrote:

It's not as much revolting against a hypothetical, esoteric (or even Deistic) "God" as much as it is revolting against the God-figure of the known religions (including and especially yours) — all of which are flawed.

And you know they all are flawed — HOW??? Are you "the all-seeing Eye?" Or rather, are you not imposing your own "measure" on God and the world?

Somehow, I don't think your problem is with "all seeing," but rather with a bad case of narrow, shallow thinking which excludes vast sectors of human experience and natural reality. This situation has been called (by the great Austrian novelist, Heimito von Doderer, in The Devils) "the refusal to apperceive." Much earlier, the Roman statesman Cicero called it aspernatio rationis — the contempt for reason. Plato considered it a pneumopathological disorder ("nosos").

But back to what is meant by "apperception." In psychology, it is defined as "the mental process by which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body of ideas he or she already possesses; fully conscious perception: an immediate apperception of a unity lying beyond. [Oxford English Dictionary Online]

Or as Eugene Webb put it, in Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington, 1981), apperception is

"Leibniz's term for the introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states. Contrasts with 'perception,' which is awareness of something external. Used by [Eric] Voegelin to refer to self-awareness, a combination of immediate and mediated, reflective self-awareness."

A common misperception nowadays is that all of reality "reduces" to the material (or "supervenes on the physical"); i.e., to objects which fall within the range of direct sense perception (as technically aided if need be). That is, there are no entities in Nature other than physical or material ones.

But this is precisely "the refusal to apperceive." Eric Voegelin analyzes the problem further:

The refusal to apperceive has become for me the central concept for the understanding of ideological aberrations and deformations. It appears in a variety of phenomena, of which the historically most interesting is the formal interdict of questioning demanded by Comte and Marx. If anybody should question their ideological doctrine by raising the question of the divine ground of reality, he will be informed by Comte that he should not ask idle questions ("questions oiseuses"), and by Marx that he should shut up and become a "socialist man"....

This attitude of not permitting questions regarding their premises — questions that would immediately explode the system — is the general tactic employed by ideologists in discussion. In numerous conversations with Hegelians, for instance, I have always come to the point where I had to question the premises of alienated existence that lie at the basis of Hegel's speculation. Whenever this question comes up, I am informed by the respective Hegelian that I don't understand Hegel and that one can understand Hegel only if one accepts his premises without questioning them. If the interdict on questions is understood as the central tactic of all ideological debate, one has gained at least one important criterion for diagnosing an ideology: the purpose of the diagnosis is to determine which part of reality has been excluded in order to make the construction of a fake system possible. The realities excluded can vary widely, but the one item that always has to be excluded is the experience of man's tension toward the divine ground of his existence.

Once the consciousness of existential tension is recognized as the critical experience that an ideologist must exclude if he wants to make his own state of alienation compulsory for everybody, the problem of consciousness of this tension moves into the center of philosophical thought. The understanding of both Classical and Christian philosophy, as well as of ideological deformations of existence, presupposes the understanding of consciousness in the fullness of its dimensions. The characteristic of what may be called the "modern conception of consciousness" is the construction of consciousness by the model of sense perceptions of objects in external reality. This restriction of the model of consciousness to objects of external reality becomes the more or less hidden trick in the construction of [ideological] systems.... Even in the core of Hegel one can observe, in his Phenomenology, that he begins with sense perception and from this basis develops all higher structures of consciousness. The case is remarkable because Hegel was one of the greatest connoisseurs of the history of philosophy; he knew, of course, that the primary experiences of consciousness as they appear in the work of the Classical philosophers are not concerned with sense perceptions but with the experience of structures (as for instance, mathematical structures) and the experience of the turning toward the divine ground of existence motivated by the pull exerted by this ground. I have not the slightest doubt that a man with Hegel's historical knowledge deliberately ignored the immediate experiences of consciousness and replaced them with the highly abstract, and historically very late, models of perception of objects in the external world, in order to put over a system that expressed his state of alienation. I do not know of any passage in Hegel where he reflects on his technique of intellectual fraud, but the technique has become explicit in the work of Marx....

If the experience of objects in the external world is absolutized as the structure of consciousness at large, all spiritual and intellectual phenomena connected to experiences of divine reality are eclipsed. However, ... they cannot be totally excluded — because after all they are the history of humanity.... — Eric Voegelin, "Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!", in Autobiographical Reflections, 2006. Emphasis added.

Regarding "This attitude of not permitting questions regarding their premises — questions that would immediately explode the system" — as "the general tactic employed by ideologists in discussion" — I'd say some of our collaborators here at FR daily show that they are definitely using this tactic. You can't get any of these people to answer a straight question!

Then, they just tend to slither away — but usually, not before a parting insult to their collaborator and his/her religious tradition (CHRISTIAN. They only seem to go after Christians. Go figure!)

Anyhoot, dear James C. Bennett, my general view/critique of these matters is not specifically Christian. It is based on historical, philosophical, and cultural studies whose earliest primary sources trace back to the Third Millennium B.C. ....

Thanks so much for writing! And good luck with that "revolt" thing of yours....

[James C. Bennett]

You can't get any of these people to answer a straight question!

What was the straight question, again? Please lay it out as straightly as possible...

That is, there are no entities in Nature other than physical or material ones.

This is not really the dispute. The dispute is how your "explanations" for these "other entities" point specifically to your adopted dogma.

"If anybody should question their ideological doctrine... "

Let's put it to the test:

1. What is the mode of salvation for, say the stillborn infant, of a member of a tribe that has not yet heard of your religion? Is it damned?

2. What is the mode of salvation for those born mentally deficient? Are they damned?

3. As we know now, mammalian cloning is a reality. If you were cloned with a muscle cell of yours, and brought to life through the application of known science, would this clone have a soul? What is its mode of salvation? How would it affect your very own?

There are more questions like these which seek to highlight the gaps that cause your dogma to fail, but for now, let's see how your religion can handle them. What would you answer to each of these?

Thanks in advance for any relevant replies, dearest Betty Boop!