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.

Prove me wrong, but you can't use the Scriptures, because they were created by the evil God in order to trick you. If you use Scripture, you only proof the supreme God IS all evil. You will be proving how bad he tricked you. Now, please... prove me wrong.

Your opinion based upon - you opinion - and your empirical evidence is?????? You have no empirical evidence goml. Epic fail.

History records Jesus Christ - that he was a miracle worker, taught a new way of knowing God and that he was killed under Pilate. Historians, other religious teachers and others have noted that Jesus' moral teachings were astounding. History records that his followers promulgated his teachings throughout Europe and Asia within the first two centuries. During that period those believers were persecuted and killed for their beliefs. They refused to denounce that belief. History also records that he was considered God and worshiped.

Jesus' opponents have developed mythology to denounce and attack the historical message of his followers. By doing so, they validate what message was, because were it false, they wouldn't have given it second thought.

Now that your delusions of deity have passed (since you can't have absolute truth on the point unless you knew it all). You have one flaw - you acknowledge the existence of God. Now provide empirical evidence to support your bleat - your unsubstantiated opinions are worthless.

Pecisely Betty, because Christ didn't exist back then.

Seems to me that is an unwarranted conclusion.

Historically, Christ wasn't "there yet." That is, as an historical personality Who people of the time could recognize as such and relate to, in human terms. But that doesn't "prove" anything about whether or not Christ — fully God and fully Man — "existed" from the Beginning. Nor does anything you know disprove this either.

But I can be persuaded otherwise, provided you can adduce persuasive — note I do not say "certain" — evidence. That means you can't get away with providing a laundry list of ill-sorted, ill-qualified evidence. You have to do the work to conjure "sense" out of the evidence. And then find the language to express it, in a manner intelligible to others.

Contra your view, my understanding is that Christ is the Word of the Beginning, and Final Judge of the End. He is Son of God, Alpha and Omega. He is the foundation of Truth, from first to last — and all the "in-between." He is First and Final Cause — and Implicit Cause of all that evolves in between them.

I have to get off now: Hubby needs to communicate.

I'll be back soon.

(1) empty tomb only means that a body was removed. How was it removed, I don't know; you don;t know either. (2) the eyewitness account are notoriously unreliable.

1 - an agreed upon fact - the tomb was empty. But then were the disciples in any shape to 'steal' the body. No, they were hiding in fear of their lives. Would they willingly die for a testimony that Jesus had supernaturally risen? Hardly kosta because they knew it was a lie.

There was no motive for Jesus' enemies to remove the body. When the teaching of the resurrection began - they could have easily provided the body and killed the new church there and then.

2 - Yet eyewitness testimony cannot be written off so easily kosta - it is considered reliable in our courts today. But it doesn't stop there for you kosta, this same Jesus was observed and spoke to these disciples on numerous occasions and up to as many as 500 at one time. So the eyewitness testimony of the empty tomb must also be matched up with other events.

This is how myths and legends are created, G. In less than a century it can become a dogma.

I don't accept fatima as an actual event - it was most likely a group hysteria imho. But you are correct - 100 years for the development of a myth to dogma. But in the case of the NT kosta - even you know that 1 Corinthians is believed to have been written 50-60 AD, making it less than 30 years after Jesus. It refers extensively to living witnesses. A parallel would be if someone constructing the idea in the 1990's that Kennedy never really died after the Dallas shooting, but the whole thing had been faked by Hollywood. Too many eyewitnesses still living that could contradict it. Myths can't develop into dogma in that short of time under those conditions kosta.

As for "nothing else explains the phenomena of the Church", G, it was Emperor Constantine, not Jesus and not Paul, who is responsible for the phenomenon of the Church.

Old whipping horse time eh kosta. The phenomena of the church predates constantine kosta. Its first century expansion and development in the face of persecution and its maintenance throughout the second century persecutions and external attempts to co-opt and corrupt it. The Church would have continued to exist inspite of constantine.

The number of Christians, contrary to popular opinions, appear not to have been really very high before that.

And that is the phenomena kosta - it grew and prospered in-spite of that.

Again, neither of us are eyewitnesses, nor do we have any definitive evidence one way or another that God exists.

The definitive evidences have been cited - you choose to ignore or try to explain them away.

I don't think may people say that nowadays. And back in the day when such things were said, no one knew Christ, or of Him

That's irrelevant, bb. It's the statement "without doubt (my deity) exists" that is questionable. If you told ancient Greeks that their God will be replaced, they would have probably chased you from their forum (the real one, not virtual!). Two thousand years from now, some believers may say the same thing about Christ that you said about Zeus "I don't thin many people say that nowadays...our God didn't exits then."

To us, a Christiain God is all we know, just as the Egyptians knew only their gods for just as long, and probably would told you their gods are eternal. But that's a false sense of reality. My older daughter is often amazed when we talk about the 60's and 70's. That's the kind of reality she can't relate to. Think 2,000 years from today.

Again, I will not, because I cannot, "prove that God exists." To subject Him to a "proof" is to misunderstand Who He Is a priori. Such a proof would then be worthless.

Proving that God exists wold not be worthless, bb! It would be the greatest discovery known to mankind.

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