Saturday, November 12, 2011

A must see!

http://www.uncommondescent.com/philosophy/they-said-it-atheism-is-simply-the-absence-of-belief-that-any-deities-exist-a-fatal-worldview-error-of-modern-evolutionary-materialist-atheism/#comments

There's no need to read gordo's drumbeat repetition of the same old insane shit, but the first two comments are a must see, and hopefully there will be more like them. The one by Jello made me laugh so hard that I have tears running down my face. Thank you Jello.

Here they are in case they get deleted by UD:

1
Jello
November 13, 2011 at 12:13 am

Dawkins – Check!

Lewontin – Check!

dfCSIOMGWTF – Check!

Bullet Points ad infinitum – Check!

Red Fonts for EMPHASIS – Check!

Links to his own website – Check!

Plato – Check!

Perhaps you should nail this oft repeated rap-sheet to the door of the NCSE, for truly it appears you can do no other.

END

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And thanks to eigenstate too.

2
eigenstate
November 13, 2011 at 12:17 am

kairosfocus,

1. Consider breaking down your posts into manageable bits. This is either by design or accident a disingenuous post in that doesn’t even make a passing effort to consolidate a manageable number of points for consideration. It isn’t even so much being overlong, but being all over the map, wandering hither and yon on complex, diverse subjects.

2. Atheism isn’t a worldview. Naturalism may be a worldview you want to assess/attack, or maybe you’d prefer to go after humanism or materialism, or other “isms” that are holistic frameworks through which one develops an interpretive grid for the extramental world. I forget who said it, but here’s a useful nugget to keep in mind:

Atheism is a religion in the same way not-collecting-stamps is a hobby.

That is not a matter of shirking any burden of proof or dealing with difficulties. Every atheist has an interpretive grid that bears defense, scrutiny, analysis. It’s just not “atheism”. Atheism is an “umbrella class” that aggregates many diverse worldviews, which are mutually incompatible in some ways, but which are all unified by a shared lack of belief of in God or gods. I realize that may be frustrating, but if you want to “go after” a world view, or a positive belief framework, you’ll have to go past the “umbrella” of atheism and deal with the various species of atheist-compatible worldviews that exist as defensible in positive terms.

3. You are way out to lunch on the meaning and significance of Lewontin’s “divine foot in the door” comments. That’s not particularly surprising or problematic, but I’m just noting that you’ve been presented with more than ample and substantive corrections on this, more than once now. This is not a demand that you agree with Lewontin, but rather that you be corrigible with respect to simply UNDERSTANDING Lewontin. The eschewing of the supernatural is a methodological necessity, not a philosophical a priori. If you abandon that restriction, even just a little bit as a methodological matter, practical scientific epistemology gets annihilated, and science gets busted down to being theology. A mark of skill and integrity in philosophical debate is demonstrating both awareness and understanding of the various positions in play. This is a fair expectation up front, but in your case, you refuse to go there, even when you are politely and cogently corrected about your ignorance on this issue.

4. The “highest might is right” is not entailed by moral relativism. Neither is amorality. “Highest might is right” is a concept conservative Christianity needs to own, as this underpins the voluntarism like that advanced by William Lane Craig’s defense of the Old Testament genocides, discussed here recently, IIRC. If God created the universe and controls it all, then he can do as he pleases, and is just in doing so, whatever that may mean, goes the Christian rationale. If you are really troubled by the concept of “highest might is right”, you need to look at the folks wearing the same Jesus jersey as you.

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How long will it take for gordo to take "due notice", "for the record", and trot out the usual Plato, Alynski, more Lewontin, and "distractive red herring issues, led out to strawman caricatures that are soaked in ad hominem smears and set alight through incendiary rhetoric that then clouds, poisons and polarises the atmosphere" in "the teeth of correction" BULLSHIT? If he already trotted out that shit, well, I didn't read everything he barfed. I was too busy laughing at how he got pwned by Jello and eigenstate. Besides, gordo always spews the SAME OLD SHIT.