Friday, 17th of November, 2006

I’ve seen this incredibly stupid article linked from a couple of blogs recently — it’s called “It’s not easy being an atheist”, and it’s by Pastor Steven W Cornell, a man who clearly prefers not to think too hard about worldviews other than his own.
Anyway, go and read it for today’s dose of supreme wrong-headedness, and then, via the always-reliable PZ Myers, you can read Southern Fried Skeptic’s response: “It’s not easy being a christian”, which pulls Cornell up for misrepresentation and use of straw men and does a beautiful job of rebutting each of Cornell’s points with a matching Christian straw man.

The trouble with someone like Cornell writing about what it must be like to be an atheist is that he’s categorically unable to break out of his own blinkered world-view, and therefore everything about life gets defined in a Christian’s straightjacketed way - morality cannot exist without god/faith, existence is a miracle, life without god must lack “ultimate” purpose… But hey, c’mon, there’s more craziness than that in the guy’s article, if you’re up for it:

The atheist must also deny the validity of historical proof. If he accepted the standard rules for testing the truth claims of historical documents, he would be forced to accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The account of Jesus’ resurrection is strongly validated by standard rules for judging historical accuracy. The extensive manuscript evidence of eyewitnesses to the resurrection is presented in an unbiased, authentic manner. It is the atheist’s anti-supernatural bias that keeps him from allowing history to prove anything.

Never mind all of the inconsistencies between the different gospels’ accounts; it’s presented in an “authentic manner”, folks, so that’s all there is to it!
Oh, and before that, there’s “The atheist must also suppress the demands of logic”, which turns out to just be the usual simple-minded intelligent design crap.

Getting back to blinkered worldviews, the most interesting thing about these kinds of people is how they couch everything in terms of “denying” god, being “biased against” god. Sorry mate, the thing is, you have to have a pretty good reason to get god into the discussion in the first place. As I’ve mentioned before (I think), many of us atheists (yes, I have the grammar right there) do not consider our position a rejection of theism/deism/religion as such at all. Ours is the natural way to understand the world — there just isn’t any good reason or need to introduce some kind of supernatural, transcendent element.
Of course, you can have a transcendent experience within the physical world; after all, we are finite beings. But there’s no good evidence to suggest that the universe isn’t finite too, albeit very large. Very, very large. Immense, in fact. Sorry. But yes, experiences that take us out of our normal embodied/constrained mode of perception, experiences that seem to touch on something far greater than ourselves — sure. What makes you think you’re touching on something infinite, though? What reason do you have for declaring that it’s something radically other, something non-physical, not itself constrained to the laws of the universe?
You have no reason. When you realise how massive, powerful, powerfully creative, and complex the universe as apprehended by science really is, you simply have no reason.

(PS Please don’t be offended by this post’s title if you’re religious yourself; I’m not necessarily talking about you, but jumpin’ jehosophat, this guy really is an idiot!)

3 Responses to “It’s not easy being an idiot”

1. Chuck says:
   November 18th, 2006 at 10:55 am

   I can come up with no examples of “massive, powerful, creative, complex” entities occuring without source of even greator magnatude.

   If it were so you could come up with an infinite number of examples of the perpetual motion machine. Either mechanical or organic.

   So far, not one result has EVER had a smaller, less powerful, less intelligent source. Not one.

   Its a Scientic fact. And a Biblical one also.

2. Peter says:
   November 18th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

   Hello. Welcome person who doesn’t understand evolution. *sigh*
   Evolultion, since you don’t seem to realise, is a long-established way in which less complex entities give rise to more complex ones.

3. MrSnerg says:
   November 22nd, 2006 at 4:13 pm

   I like the example from Chuck. Mainly because it is recursive. If everything created requires a source of even more complicated magnitude, then surely any deity equally so. Therefore, every God has an even more complicated creator ad infinitum.

   I am a little unclear though why chemical reactions are a perpetual motion machine.

   As for an example of something increasing in complexity over time without intervention, try wine.