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.

What is common sense?

How do you define it?

It is basically logic or math. It is the ability to add one and one together and get two. Like I said, try it sometime and you might like it.

Other than Alinskyite auto-fellation, 'and' It's funny how atheists suck themselves off over their superiority:

Is that infantile projection on your part? Or latent homosexual desires? Inquiring minds want to know : )

and then resort to trivial bullsh*t to avoid answering similar questions on their *own* behalf.

I answered your question. You are the one projecting your own inadequacy when you claim that I didn't answer it.

You are more of a hypocrite than the Christians, for they at least can claim mercy from God; but there is NO mercy from the brights for intellectual failure or inconsistency.

Let me rephrase what I think you said. Christians can lie, cheat, steal, murder and be hypocrites because they can claim mercy from Jehovah or Elohim?

And because I might make a mistake I am condemned?

That seems suspiciously like you are saying that you can't sin because you are saved. I have met your type before : (

Common sense is NOT logic or math.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have had any disputes between flat-earthers and round-earthers.

And Aristotle's De Caelo would never have been written.

Is that infantile projection on your part? Or latent homosexual desires? Inquiring minds want to know : )

Neither one. It's an accurate depiction of the attitude of atheists.

I answered your question. You are the one projecting your own inadequacy when you claim that I didn't answer it.

Vague generalities are something you never accept from your disputants. But you are perfectly willing to proffer them without details, as though the airy toss-off is sufficient.

This is intellectual hypocrisy on your part.

Let me rephrase what I think you said. Christians can lie, cheat, steal, murder and be hypocrites because they can claim mercy from Jehovah or Elohim?

There is (in principle) according to Christian theology, hope even for a hypocrite to attain true repentance and forgiveness.

But in the purely intellectual realm, their is neither expiation nor anyone qualified, nor acknowledged in common by all "brights" to pronounce remission of intellectual sin.

And because I might make a mistake I am condemned?

According to the strictest dictates of the scientific method, yes. Try reading C.P. Snow's The Search.

That seems suspiciously like you are saying that you can't sin because you are saved. I have met your type before : (

No, you're putting words in my mouth. That's not my type.

Troll.

So you do believe in a transcendent God? If you do not believe in God why do you complain about something which does not exist?

I don't believe in Allah either. I poke fun at you and them because you attack us. I didn't start this thread. This thread was started by a born Againer attacking Atheists.

Morality,....in the atheists' world cannot be accounted for. If so, justify immorality/morality in a Godless world.

Morality without God is easy to account for. It is the Prisoners Dilemma. The basic idea is that if you help others and work together you will be much better off. That is the basic "moral" principle that underlies all morality. In other words it is simply selfishness coupled with the understanding that helping and cooperating with others gets you more of whatever you want. That is why it is immoral to lie, steal, murder, etc. Those are all uncooperative acts, hence immoral.

Usually the man with the biggest guns' idea of morality prevailed, until a larger gun comes along.

Might makes Right violates the principle of cooperation, sadly it is often correct. Elohim gives many examples of that principle in his book, where he employs it against his enemies. Might Makes Right is obviously the premier Christian and Muslim morality.

Have you actually read the book and the theories that you are desperately trying to defend? Morality doesn't come from there.

Let this serve as a notice to let you know that what you opine from my referencing of that video, is in error. I do not affirm the existence of any deity simply because I am referencing its qualities and attitudes as accepted by the believers in such deities. My point in referencing that video was just this - to bring to light the morality of the deity under question - as to how a child-killing god can be moral. That is all. This should have been abundantly clear and your extrapolation is not only strange, but self-defeating as well. It brings to question whether you're capable of interpretation and comprehension at all, quite frankly. Now why don't I accept deities as entities that cannot exist? Let us look at the First Cause argument - one of the cornerstones of the "explanations" given out for why a God must exist. What should the primary quality of such an entity be? It should be timeless - that is, time has no influence on it. What else? It cannot perform an absurdity that contradicts itself. So, assume you have this God who always existed. How does this God, from its vantage point initiate anything if it has no reference to anchor that initiation on? What did God do to begin its first act? God existed before God began its act. Next, we have the impossibility of a God which orders sequential events (create Universe, then destroy it, think of Creation, then go about to initiate it, etc - things that require a separation) to be outside the realm of time. If no time existed for God, then two events initiated by God would happen simultaneously - thus, God would have not yet created and created the Universe at the same moment. This is an absurdity. Lastly, it's funny to see how anyone can assume that David's illegitimate child, made to suffer for a week with agony, and then have its life snuffed out of it, can assume that the child ascended into "heaven". This is what the Old Testament has to say about bastards: "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." - Deut. 23:2

First Cause is an interesting subject.

The Cosmological arguments are a family of arguments that seek to demonstrate the existene of a Sufficient Reason or First Cause of the existence of the cosmos. Defenders of First Cause have been Aristotle, Plato, al=Ghaziali, Maimonides, Anselm, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke and many others. The arguent can be grouped into 3 basic types; the kalam cosmological arguments the Liebnizian cosmological argument from Sufficient Reason, and the Thomist cosmological for a sustaining Ground of Being of the the world.

Now, I will not go into other of these explainations but will deal with your narrow application of the cosmological argument supported by Einstein, Wilson and Penzias, Eddington, Smoot, WMAP, the second law....all pointing to a beginning, which is what I believe you were referencing. All of these scientist, and many more point to an undeniable conclusion that the universe BEGAN. Moreover they point out that the universe came to be from nothing. The Law of Causality which you reference states, "Everything which begins to exist had a cause. At that point of singularity, (that moment of beginning which we can take back to Planck Time, demand an answer as to what WAS that First Cause which gave rise to matter, energy, space, and time. What was prior to time which could be that first cause to bring forth the universe (approx. 10 seventyfifty subatomic particles) out of nothing. Remmeber Aristotle, upon asking 'what is nothing", he replied....."Nothing is what rocks dream about." In other words..no thing...no matter,...no space, to time,...no energy. Nothing! Well, using logic and reason we must conclude that something made a decision to bring something into being out of nothing, and therefore a personal decisionf was made (Persons make decision, not molecules) Something must have been incomprehensibly powerful to create the univere from nothing. Something must have been incredibly intelligent to have created order out of caos of that origin. Something must have been timeless to have existed outside of time (prior to the existence of the creation of time), or some would describe as transcendent of time. Now, I have not described these 'qualities', as you describe, from Biblical descriptions. These are characteristics derived from the conclusions from the studies of Einstein, Eddington, even Fred Hoyl, Wilson and Penzias, COBE, WMAP, Smoot, Jastrow, and many others. It is interesting to point out that these characteristics describing that FIRST CAUSE are the same characterics which Christian theologans have described for 2 centuries.

Regarding your question regarding the notion what God always existed. You must remember that time did not occur until that singularity. Prior to that singularity, and thus prior to time, God existed timelessly. Now, whether you subscribe to A-theory of time or B-theory of time the principle holds.

Now, I will concede that I am somewhat limited in my ability to understand with the comprehension which you demonstrate in your questioning. All I can say is I try to tell you the truth. I do find humor in one of your last sentences where you affirm the absurdity of how God would have created or not created the universe, while in the same breath denying his very existence. You might want to look up the term - ABSURDITY.

I'll go slow. You said it is easy to account for morality apart from God.

And I did account for morality apart from God. I also saw no refutation from you.

Then I said, Please account for morality in a physicalists worldview episemologically and ontologically.

No at the same time you asked "I am asking you to justify warranted true belief." Those are contradictions, you are obviously confused. I can't help you when you don't understand what you are asking. Why don't you define "Morality" and we will go from there.

Based upon evidence, as you say account for origen of the universe ontologically. Take it all the way back to it beginning and explain how.

Now you want to know how the Universe began? This must be your lucky day.

In the beginning was waves of nothing. Four waves to be exact, the strong wave, weak wave, electrical wave and the magnetic wave. These waves became a singularity for an instant and the resultant explosion was what we popularly call the Big Bang. After a few nanoseconds of inflation, the universe was created.

I even have a bonus answer for you. Since I can read your mind, you are going to call hogwash on the waves of nothing. But I assure you it is true, all matter is essentially waves of energy (Einstein showed that) and Schrodinger figured out how the wave functions collapsed. Q.E.D.

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