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.

"I do not agree with his conclusion. It is equivalent to me stating that Godel's proof is false because of "spelling" errors. Godel's proof is true.(or technically, valid)"

There is definitely NO such "equivalent".

The idea that we can have inerrant "COPIES" of the original autographs is held by no one....other than perhaps the King James Only crowd.

But of course, skeptics are welcome to send suggestions on how such a process would be accomplished.

What are your unique "process" suggestions, other than those that have already been addressed in the commentary linked above)?

"...many believers today have a view of inerrancy that could not possibly have been that of that of the writers of the Bible. They fail to account for differences in the way ancient persons thought, acted, or perceived the world. At the same time, Skeptics, too, have the same sort of misconceptions, basically these: That, as one writer puts it, inerrancy means that God preserved the text through the ages and through translations inerrantly. This is held by no one I know of other than perhaps the King James Only crowd. That "error" is judged based on 21st century standards of what constitutes a mistake - when in fact, we ought to judge by the standards of the day in which the Bible was written. ....

The question that must be asked is, "Would this be regarded as 'inerrant' by the standards of those who originally wrote the text?" The answer in every case I have found so far is NO -- and the difficulty is increased because inevitably what the ancients regarded as a form of narrative art -- within which precision could acceptably be compromised -- is regarded as an "error" today.

....it is plain that neither the Bible nor a belief in inerrancy is required to be a Christian. If this were so, then skeptics like Frank Morison or C. S. Lewis, who believed in the historicity of the Resurrection but not in the inerrancy of the Gospel reports of it, would never become Christians. People behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains would never have become Christians in times when the Bible was forbidden in those countries and they often had no more of the Bible than a few pitiable verses handwritten on a paper towel.

Finally, ... literacy would be a prerequisite for belief, which would be absurd being that the Bible was written in a time when up to 95% of the given population was illiterate. .......Moreover, given the circumstances, it is clear that "the Word of God" for most people was not what was written on paper, but was the original idea (what I have called the "home office" copy) recorded on paper. Few could have appreciated the significance of a written, inerrant original document.

....When discussing Biblical inerrancy, it is important to remember that ONLY the original texts of the Bible are claimed to have been inerrant. Furthermore, one might suggest that the "original" text was in something of a different format. How? Take the book of Ezekiel as an example. Zeke certainly didn't bang out all 48 chapters of his book in one sitting; his oracles were composed over his lifetime, and were collected together at a later date (by him, or by one of his students; it makes no difference), when - presumably - they were put together into the unified whole like that we now have. But did the collector of this material leave everything "as it was"? In all likelihood, yes, given the reverence held for the work of a prophet; but this would not necessarily prevent the addition of transitional phrases needed to make the oracles into a sensible whole. Skeptics will throw up their hands at this and ask how we can therefore believe accept our present text, since any number of errors could have crept in.

At this we should reply with: The OT is 95% accurately transcribed; the NT, 99%. That means (in a Bible without any commentary) 50 pages of your OT and 3 pages of your NT may have been fumbled by later writers. Since most of the "errors" critics harp on turn upon no more than one or two letters or words, those 53 pages give us plenty of room to accept intellectually the idea that the original texts were inerrant! ...... Skeptical obfuscation in this area, however, abounds: One 19th-century Skeptic said that there were "150,000 blunders in the Hebrew and 7,000 in the Greek." That sounds bad until you remember that these "blunders" consist for the largest part of JUST ONE LETTER OR NUMERAL spread across multiple copies! Thus, if a letter is put 26 different ways in 26 different manuscripts, that counts as 26 "errors".

Let's keep things on perspective, here! It should be obvious that since many of the "errors" in our Bibles turn on single letters, numbers or words, no doctrine of Christian belief is the least bit altered by any questionable reading in Scripture.

Nor does salvation require a functional belief in inerrancy; indeed, if it did, those who were illiterate or did not have a Bible in their own language could never be saved. The number of horses in Solomon's army, the name of Saul's daughter who had no children - these things should be recognized and corrections noted, but they should be no cause for shipwreck of anyone's faith or an excuse for disbelief in the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ.

....No convinced skeptic will turn to Christ simply because we explain why Chronicles says Ahab's bathtub held 75 gallons while Kings says 85. Their reasons for disbelief are beyond that. ....."

He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

and in context it reads

12After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.
13And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them.
14Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.
15And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
16He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

God has clearly said -- believe and be baptise and you shall be saved. If you don't believe, then baptism can't help you and you shall be damned.

But the clear point is you believe then you get baptised.

These are the words of Christ.

Baptism sans belief does not help, but Christ says believe and be baptised -- it is if you do A (believe) then get B (baptism) done. If you don't do A, then B has no point. This does not mean that B is not necessary, just that it does not stand on its own.

For the Lord says, ‘Except a man be baptized of water and of the Spirit, he shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven.’

Remember that the Apostles right from Acts take the very words of Jesus Christ (above) and believed in them. They did not use human logic to deny what He said.

Paul only elaborates past the simple message of Christ.:

Acts 2:38,

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 22:16;

16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.

Rom. 6:1–4;

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

1 Cor 6:11,

11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God

1 Cor 12:13;

13 For we were all baptized by[a] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Gal. 3:26–27;

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ

Eph. 5:26;

to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word,

Col. 2:11–12;

11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh[a] was put off when you were circumcised by[b] Christ,
12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Titus 3:5;

5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,

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