When Atheists Attack (Each Other)

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.

Reciprocity does not prove the rights of humans.

No, reciprocity is the only reason why one person empathises with another, and can place himself in the other person’s shoes, to view the situation in reversal, and decide what he ought to do. This is why this form of the Golden Rule, also called as the Silver Rule, applies over the other form which falls victim to flaws such as masochism:

"What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."

Zi gong (a disciple of Confucius) asked:

"Is there any one word that could guide a person throughout life?"

The Master replied:

"How about 'shu' [reciprocity]: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself?"

Analects XV.24, tr. David Hinton.

Consider, for instance a society such as the Taiwanese. What is their source of rights? They are atheistic about your god, so that cannot be the source of their rights (if you claim an “innate footprint” of your deity in them, this is a fallacious claim that they can, with equal authority, claim about your deity as well). Why are they not killing one-another into oblivion? The last time I checked, their crime rate was quite low, too. What is their source of morality? Remember, I only need to provide an exception to the claimant of an “absolute morality” rule, in order to disprove the universal aspect of it. If claiming that telling a lie is an absolute moral wrong, this should have no exception.

If an exception exists to a ‘universal moral rule’, it can no longer claim to be absolute.

Please remember this point well. This is the basis for my method of disproving your dogma by raising situations where an anomaly exists.

I require a logical, irrefutable argument that Person A is wrong for depriving Person B of life or liberty.

The Golden Rule is as close as anyone can get, to a universal moral code. Man is a social animal – one that MUST have to be part of a society to function as Man does. As a solitary individual, Man is at the utter mercy of the pangs of Nature, and cannot be near as successful as a species as Man is today, without that society giving Man a framework to develop.

Person A will be wrong for depriving Person B of life or liberty because there is no guarantee Person A (or his or her descendents, who are persons of interest for Person A, and likewise, the equivalent for person B) cannot have his or her situation exchanged with the one Person B faces in that threat to his or her life. By ignoring this, and depriving Person B the right to life or liberty of Person A, Person A destroys the foundation of trust that the society is glued together by. Without trust, Person A cannot take for granted the stability in his or her circumstances, and must devote considerable resources and attention to merely ensure survival, in place of being able to thrive, because without the trust that is harnessed from the allowing of the Principle of Reciprocity to function in his or her social grouping of concern, every other person within that social grouping becomes a potent threat to the life of Person A, and vice-versa. Without co-operation, Man is no longer Man. All rights come from this understanding.

This is also why it took so long for Man to table these rights. If a deity really was the source of morality, then it wouldn’t take society millennia to come to a conclusion on what universal rights should be. The transformation from uncivilised to civilised should be instant. If it takes a social evolutionary pace to achieve this, then this is not the work of a deity.

Question 1: “What is to stop you from committing the worst of atrocities, and then begging forgiveness after the fact?”

Answer: The repentance must be real or the forgiveness doesn’t apply. While humans might be fooled, God knows the heart.

The problem with this “reasoning” is that what is real is subject to time. What was once real, cannot always be so, in this matter. A good man can become bad, and a bad man can become good, over time, however many times as possible. Repentance does not guarantee the impossibility of relapsing into the prior state.

To give you an example, consider a person who murders, then repents, and is forgiven. Now consider the very real possibility of this person forgetting about his past repentance (let’s assume for the sake of argument, a stroke-induced memory loss in this person) and the person relapses into the pre-repentance state, and continues to murder again, and then repents for it. What becomes of such a person? Remember, I only need to give you an exception. You cannot dismiss this exception because this is very much within the realms of possibility in human experience. Even a 0.000000000001 % probability of such an exception being realisable thoroughly destroys any claim of a universal moral rule. In mathematics, while disproving the absoluteness of certain rules, the method used is to show an exception, no matter how minutely likely. The possibility of an exception destroys the absoluteness claim.

Question 2: “how is the purpose of justice served when an unbeliever is murdered by a believer who later seeks forgiveness?”

Civil justice is not deterred. Civil consequences remain. In terms of God’s justice, when real repentance is sought (as with the Apostle Paul), the justice of God has been satisfied by God’s decree that a perfect one could take the place of an imperfect one. The power of God to allow a champion to stand in the stead of a weaker warrior is somewhat reflected in a president’s ability to pardon or grant amnesty.

I am not talking about any “civil justice” here. I am talking about how justice is meted out. Person A whose child is murdered by Person B can cause such grief in Person A that his or her disillusionment destroys his or her faith in any real deity. If Person B seeks forgiveness from this deity (which, for the sake of argument we shall assume as true) and is “saved”. Person A, on the other hand, is condemned. How does justice flow in such a circumstance?

In the not too distant past, the use of a “second” was acceptable. The logic behind the use of a champion is the inability of the offender ever truly to be able to stand on his own. Thus, human total depravity requires a champion for the human can never stand on his own.

Vicarious atonement is a travesty of justice. Substitution cannot be justice.

That argument is a complete fallacy. It begins with a false premise and deteriorates from there.

While it is true that anybody who has committed sin can repent and be forgiven, as the thief on the cross demonstrates, anyone who presumptuously sins like that, counting on obtaining forgiveness and using that as a license to sin, is NOT saved.

That is spitting in the face of God and trampling underfoot the blood of Christ.

Anyone with that mentality is not saved and not ever likely to be saved.

Get real, people relapse all the time. See my earlier comment to xzins where I’ve given an example where this can be possible “in innocence” – such as memory loss.

A believer does not murder. Anyone who murders is not a believer. Another false premise on your part.

Nonsense.

People relapse. People make mistakes all the time. Please get that very clear. See earlier post.

What’s your next reason/excuse for rejecting Christianity?

LOL, hold on to your horses here; don’t get carried away. You haven’t provided any answer capable of holding water to any of the anomalies I brought out to the “absolutes” you’ve claimed so far. Get back to that tribal example, and show me how such a person, is saved. If you manage to do so, tell me why faith in your dogma which the aforementioned tribal hasn’t ever heard of, is necessary for “salvation”.

So don’t go about cheerfully checking off any list before your homework is complete.

you can also repent at your last breath and be "saved" regardless what you did. That is not something that will make people try harder but rather it makes it easier for them to give in to their moment of weakness.

Try harder? What part of It is Finished is hard to understand. You are into wishful thinking and assumptions - that one would be in a right mind, and not in shock - in their last moments. If their mind wasn't on Jesus all along - you think it would be at their most critical hour? It they don't receive those words of Jesus now - in their final hour - somehow they will 'get it'? I believe FEAR will be reigning in their heart if they are aware their time is up. Not so, for a believer who has accepted Jesus as their Savior.

More than likely everything that was in their mind and heart all along - whether it be man made doctrine - which nullify His Word or expressed lies about God/His Word - will be what comes to them. God judges the heart - I doubt in one's last moments one would suddenly have a SINCERE desire to know Him but more of a cya desire. Fooling oneself through life does not mean one can fool The Almighty - only pride/deception would make that believable.

You've been given life/breath - what did you do with it --what have you sown? And what have you done with the Gift afforded to you? Left it unopened because you found a better way?

Gal: 6 - 7 "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life".

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