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.

Yes. I am not stupid. My skepticism is my way of searching for the truth. I am content. If you are able to address satisfactorily the exceptions and anomalies raised by me throughout this thread and beyond regarding the nature of your deity, then yes, I will, by way of reason, have to accept the truth.

FWIW, God addresses those in the Bible, which you reject. Hence, nobody will ever be able to satisfy your demands and give you what you would consider an *adequate* answer, and you will die, unsaved, reveling (or maybe more accurately wallowing) contentedly in your skepticism.

What exactly is the purpose of your grilling people about the salvation of *tribals*? How is that relevant to you? Do you not trust God to judge them justly? How is His dealing with them going to affect you anyway?

You are not a *tribal* who has never heard the gospel. You have heard it plainly and clearly many times over the years here on FR. What you are responsible for is what you do with the knowledge which has been granted you and with the amount of knowledge you have available, you have the greater accountability.

Distraction techniques with questions about the tribals is not going to fool God, nor change your outcome when you face Him. Every man gives account for HIMSELF, not others.

I take your second reply as an implicit admission of the fact that you inadequately answered the question, earlier. However, you're still obfuscating instead of providing a clear answer:

"What exactly is the purpose of your grilling people about the salvation of *tribals*? How is that relevant to you? Do you not trust God to judge them justly? How is His dealing with them going to affect you anyway?

You are not a *tribal* who has never heard the gospel. You have heard it plainly and clearly many times over the years here on FR. What you are responsible for is what you do with the knowledge which has been granted you and with the amount of knowledge you have available, you have the greater accountability."

See, I have clarified this earlier, repeatedly. All I need to do to prove your entire dogma as false is to provide a counter-example. This is how assumed theories are proven wrong. I am not speaking about myself here, but about an exception that fails the salvation test of your adopted dogma whilst being innocent.

Had you answered with a "yes" to the question whether the tribals are saved due to ignorance, then your entire scriptures, its dogma and its contents are not a pre-condition to salvation. Had you answered with a "no" then it makes your dogma inadequate to address the salvation modes necessary to make it applicable for all modes of human existence.

You are aware of this serious, serious problem, and hence, the obfuscation.

Saved or not?

Your misunderstanding of salvation is your problem.

Salvation is not by dogma, nor adherence to a set of beliefs. What you are describing is religion, not Christianity.

Christianity is about forgiveness through the person of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins. God’s divine justice, death for sin, was satisfied with the death of Christ on the cross. Since Jesus was sinless, death could not hold Him.

God has decreed that anyone who puts their faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, will be saved, by grace through faith.

Each man is accountable to God for responding to the amount of knowledge that has been given him. God’s justice in the matter will be just as He alone knows the heart.

You can carry on all you want about those who have never heard and whether they are saved of not, but it makes not one bit of difference when YOU are standing before God and He is asking you to account for yourself. Pointing to the tribals and demanding that God answer adequately about them before you answer to Him is not going to cut it.

It is merely a distraction technique that God is not going to be side tracked by. There will be no negotiating with God that if He give you an adequate answer, then you’ll tell Him what he wants to know.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.