Oh, I know that this could be a long running series but I only intend to make this one post. I think the video says all you need to know when you understand that this is the kind of stuff you say when you’re higher than a kite. We tend to forgive people for stuff they say when they’re high because we know that their brain is not working as it should and the owner of that brain is enjoying the malfunction. If this guy claims he’s not high you can go ahead and laugh at him because he’s clearly stoned out of his mind.
Wait a minute, this bag of flatulence is allowed to vote. Seriously, why do believers wonder why non-believers laugh at them and want them locked up?
If you believe in the same book and the same god as this jerk (see what I did there?) could you please explain what is wrong with him? What exactly did he read in your holy book that tells him this stuff?
I found this post and almost got some drool on my shirt from the jaw dropping open. No, this is probably not good enough to make the evening news but it will do for here. The Author, Kevin we’ll call him, clearly thinks that this post of his is clever. I say that because it sure makes him sound smug. Kevin, you see, has a way with words. He also has a way with presuppositions. Let’s see what he has to say about my god.
The entirety of his post follows with some commentary:
“Well, I don’t believe in God,” a man told me one day.
“How did that happen?” I inquired.
“I did a lot of reading and came to the conclusion that God is not real and the Bible is a book of fairy tales.”
Well, this seems fairly benign, something that might happen anywhere at nearly any time. How does Kevin respond? Why, as a theological authority of course.
“So, you placed yourself as your ultimate authority in all things spiritual. Do you realize that you have made yourself your own god?”
Kevin seems to believe that his god is real no matter what the evidence does or does not say about the matter. To him there is no choice as to whether his god is real. He also knows that those other gods are false gods. He asserts that making a decision about whether his god is real or not means that you are usurping his god’s power and rightful role of dominance over each and every human. We are not to use our free will to make any decisions about the god. No. This is not permissible.
“Never thought of it that way.”
The reason that he never thought of it that way is because it is convoluted thinking. Stupid thinking. There are billions of people who think Kevin’s god is false yet they do not think they are their own god. They already have a god (which is not Kevin’s god) to worship. Surely Kevin doesn’t think he made himself his own god by deciding that all the gods which are not his god are false gods. None of that stops Kevin from continuing to assert that deciding a god is false necessarily means you are placing yourself in the high position of that god. You know, just like thinking a politician sucks at their job makes you a politician or not believing in the Easter bunny means you have to deliver all the eggs. Wait, maybe he’s on to something there? Maybe that thought is worth a bit more thinking?
“Can you save yourself from hell? Do you heal yourself when you are injured? Do you have control over the weather? Can you answer your own prayers?”
Here we go. Kevin wants to know if you can do all the things he thinks his god can and does do. Of course he has no evidence to support these beliefs, no evidence for hell; no evidence that his god heals the sick; no evidence that prayer works; no evidence that his god controls the weather; no evidence at all. None of that stops him from making unfounded assertions though.
At that point, he got mad at me. But he had something to think about. By being his own god, yet without Godly attributes (all-knowing, all-powerful and present everywhere) he isn’t being very wise. The reality is that self has limited knowledge, limited power and is limited to being in one place at a time. Self is a pretty weak god in actuality.
There it is. Deciding that a god does not exist when you don’t yourself have godly attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience means you are not wise. This, he says, is because humans are not god-like. Clearly he believes that to make such decisions a human must have the arbitrarily defined attributes of his god. Not even Zeus is capable of making such decisions about Kevin’s god. No mere mortal can make such a decision about Kevin’s god without presuming to be a god themselves. See the logic there? You can’t say Santa Claus does not exist without being an actual Christmas fairy. You would be unqualified to say that leprechauns do not exist unless you are an actual leprechaun.
You can’t argue with Kevin or change his mind. He is fully convinced that a god, his god, exists. Any belief otherwise simply means you are a fool. To Kevin, it’s plain as day and if you can’t see it you’re defective and headed for hell.
Atheists are nothing more than fools fooling themselves – according to the verse below. But, as a Christian I know that I can do the same thing. I claim to believe in God, but my behavior reveals the opposite. I put more faith in myself than I do in God and I let myself down. How foolish!
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:22.
Wait. Did he try to redeem himself in the end? No. He is saying he is fooling for not having more faith in his god which simply makes the atheist even more of a fool. Kevin, like most believers, likes to quote mine. That quote above seems pretty apropos for the post but let’s look and see what Paul was really talking about in this passage:
Paul’s Longing to Visit Rome
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.9 God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,[d] that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,[e] just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”[f]
God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
And there it is. Because these people did not believe in Kevin’s god, Keving’s god made them murderous, lying, homosexuals… among other things. Without belief in Kevin’s god you are less than human in his eyes. When Kevin and his ilk say atheists are ‘fools’ that is just jesus-speak. They really mean that you are less than human, vile, evil, deserving of hell. They hold you in great contempt. Their polite words are drenched in pride, bigotry, and boasting.
Read verse 22 AND 23 in its entirety: This is not talking about atheists but Kevin doesn’t want you to know that part. He thinks atheists can’t read his holy book … apparently.
Kevin and his ilk think themselves wise yet they would never dare question their god or their holy book. For them Wisdom hit its peak about 2000 years ago. For them there is nothing more, no more wisdom, no more knowledge, no new ways of solving problems.
I am sincerely offended by the tyranny of theistic belief. Theists can only go so far before they should expect a response.
Pot, meet kettle.
Fight fire with fire, get the marshmallows out, let’s watch the world burn, Pornography for pyromaniacs of thought.
They burn all that encroaches on their monolith, striking jawbone with stone axe to resolve the merest insult.
Apes using fire and brimstone to create a heaven on Earth in the belief that forging fires make steel, not realizing that wild fires of unconscionable belief simply raze the forests of reasonable existence. They are certain of their belief and profoundly unaware of their unthinking push to have us again living in trees.
Stupid is as stupid does. Education is the answer until you have to implement it at the end of a gun. Just pull the trigger and let the world burn!
The question then, is how do you teach a bigot to love? Especially when he is the representative of god on Earth?
#Fuck The Pope is what Mr Deity has to say, and I agree with him.
There is one thing that Mr Deity forgot. ‘The Pope’ at various and numerous times in history has been one of the most vile creatures to walk this Earth. To even speak as though his religion is a moral podium is to mock everyone of no faith and everyone who has died at the hands of religion.
Okay, maybe not. I think that to answer the question “what is the meaning of life?” we should start with “what is life?” I’m going show you something. Something they don’t want you to see. I don’t know the future but I know what’s happening now. I know where we’re going.
I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you. — Neo
From the perspective of the universe (should it be conscious) this is your life and what it means:
Watch it closely. What do you see? Give up? No idea? Remember that video as you listen to Sean Carroll explain it.
What is the meaning of life? To dissipate energy. To push the universe closer to heat death. Nothing more, nothing less. A quick ride on a burning match and snuffed out. That’s life. Enjoy it, the ride, for all you can.
I was thinking about this tonight and something twitched in me. I thought about what this might mean. Someone helped me find my car keys, as in some human, means that I was weak and unable to remember where I put them. I was at fault. I was failing at life. I needed help to do what normal people do every day. I was failing to be normal. So when a believer claims that their god helped them do something normal….
What they are saying is that they were unable to be normal, that they were failing at being normal and needed help. Further, and most astoundingly, they claim it a miracle that their ‘god’ helped them to be normal.Think about that for a minute. Go on, I mean it.
Yes, believers are saying that they need help to be normal and better than that they are claiming a miracle for it. It does not matter whether it was finding the car keys or that their sports team won, the point is they are claiming the need for help to be normal and declaring it a miracle. Every thinking person who hears such flotsam should rightfully shove these claimants into the mud and explain exactly how ignorant they are. There is no excuse for it. To think that an unexplained god gave them the power to be normal for a minute is the ultimate admission of ignorance. Whenever you hear this kind of stuff please explain to the claimant how utterly ignorant they are. It would be doing all of us a favor, including the claimant.
The never ending discussion on the compatibility between science and religion asks if they can get along and coexist. The argument, no matter how it is stated, comes down to this: Science has facts, religion has faith. As long as religion has faith it will remain incompatible with both science and reality. Believers might argue that their faith is compatible with science yet they will not allow for someone else’s faith being compatible with their own. When believers can’t even get their ‘faith’ coherent but decide to disagree with the best method we have of knowing the world around us then it is completely incompatible with science.
A religion that is not incompatible with science would be one that requires no faith. Would that be a religion?
Can’t we all just get along?
NO, we can’t as long as you are unwilling to be a full participant in reality.
Before anyone thinks I’m calling all believers stupid, just stop. This is a reaction to the discussion of compatibility and not simply your particular point of view. That said, if you want to feel offended, that is your prerogative, just don’t expect an apology.
It’s no surprise that Mr Hart is a theologian. Fide begins with:
In context, I found this a deeply penetrating statement about the condition of the current discussion between theists and materialists. What is that context? I highly recommend the full talk, but it can be summarized as follows:
It was, in many ways, understandable that Enlightenment thinkers would believe that a society liberated from all belief in transcendence would achieve new heights of prosperity and morality–that enough education, or the right social programs, would do what religion could not.
What he left out was the undeniable idea that religion has had its chance and created nothing but bloodshed, pain, and anger. There is no point in mentioning that because it kind of ruins his post. There is no reason to believe that a world bereft of religion would be a wonderful place with no problems but there is plenty of reason to think that a world without religion would be a better one than the world we have now.
Now that we are living in the wake of the bloodiest century in all of human history, it takes a deep lack of curiosity (or downright willful ignorance), to believe that a godless society is the unqualified good to be zealously persued.
This guy has clearly not acquainted himself with the work of Steven Pinker… he should.
He points out that Nietzsche’s fear of the “last men”–of those who have no deep truth to speak, no rational basis for morality, and therefore no meaning in their lives–now seems rather quaint. This idea has gone from a horrific and seemingly wild proclamation to a banal, almost tedious, observation the facts.
Yes, because without religion the world will crumble to one huge Mad Max film set. This kind of thinking gives zero credit to human nature and the idea that we are all basically good, willing to help, compassionate and often going well out of our way to help others. To such apologists as Fide these things are to be ignored or blamed on the remaining shards of religion in the world. This cynical denial of human nature is, at its root, disgusting in as much as it denies any goodness in any human except that they believe in a god.
The fact that so many, from the New Atheists to an all-too-large group of theists, have such a distorted, shallow view of what it is that Christianity actually claims is only the most recent evidence that ours is an age which has become so used to living without transcendence that far too many of us don’t even understand the word.
It is fair to say that IF non-believers have a distorted view of what Christianity claims it is because the claims are distorted and shallow. Many new atheists are reformed Christians who know all too well what Christianity claims and offers. To deny this is to simply ignore the facts and that is generally thought of as telling lies.
We can’t, of course, correct the problems sparked by the naivety of the Enlightenment thinkers simply by insisting that their view of reality was perfectly correct. And, whether they realize it or not, this is exactly what Dawkins and his fans are doing.
Right! Because nobody alive today has had a new idea or learned from past mistakes. Again, this intolerance of the idea that humans by nature are good and industrious as a group is disgusting. It denies all that is good in the world except that which is borne of religion. This is patently untrue and even this forked tongue apologist will admit that many atheists are good and that human nature is good but it doesn’t stop him from spouting just the opposite to make claim to righteousness and moral high ground.
I, for one, think there are very good reasons to dismiss materialism as false. But, if it is true, it is a catastrophic truth–a bearer of meaninglessness and death. Those who speak as if it were, in some unspecified way, a glorious triumph have simply ignored the facts.
Here he speaks as if he ‘KNOWS’ that there is meaning to life and that there is more than death at the end of each human life. There is no evidence offered to support the claim and he further claims that the ‘facts’ do not support materialism. The trouble is that the facts do support materialist views. Non-materialist views have no credible evidence to support believing there is more to live than what materialism has to offer in that respect. This is presupposition pretending to be rationality. Pure bunk.
Admittedly, the title on this one will be a bit misleading. I found a post by Pastor Rick Henderson called “Why There Is No Such Thing as a Good Atheist” on the Huffington Post. It’s not my normal reading, but the title got me interested.
The article seems like he thought it through but he missed a couple of truly important points. I’m not going to defend atheism as I’m wont to here, rather I’m going to talk about why anything else is unnatural. By that term I mean things that go against or in stark contrast to the natural order of things in the animal kingdom – what we call life on this planet Earth.
Below, I quote the article… but not verbatim. I’ve shortened some of the post without trying to change the original intent or content. I apologize if anyone thinks I’ve changed the content of what the pastor was saying in my paraphrasing. The content I quote/paraphrase appears in quotes but I urge you to read the linked article if you do not find my use of content earnest.
The pastor claims there are three affirmations for atheists beyond a lack of belief in gods or the supernatural and I’ll grant that these seem very reasonable.
1. The universe is purely material. It is strictly natural, and there is no such thing as the supernatural (e.g., gods or spiritual forces).
2. The universe is scientific. It is observable, knowable and governed strictly by the laws of physics.
3. The universe is impersonal. It does not a have consciousness or a will, nor is it guided by a consciousness or a will.
He continues on this thought by thinking it through, so it would seem
Denial of any one of those three affirmations will strike a mortal blow to atheism. Anything and everything that happens in such a universe is meaningless…
A good atheist — that is, a consistent atheist — recognizes this dilemma. His only reasonable conclusion is to reject objective meaning and morality. Thus, calling him “good” in the moral sense is nonsensical. There is no morally good atheist, because there really is no objective morality. At best, morality is the mass delusion shared by humanity, protecting us from the cold sting of despair.
What he has done here is impose his version of morality on the discussion by using an undefined version of moral in saying that calling an atheist good is nonsensical. That frames the rest of his article, how atheists compare under his version of morality – not objective morality, but his own version. I can fairly call it his version because he continues to describe why atheists are not ‘moral’ in the sense that he understands it. His assertion that morality protects us from despair shows he does not understand what morality actually is and why it will not protect you from existential despair. He’s using fool’s logic here.
To keep things tidy he wraps the discussion up in a black and white, on or off kind of way:
Based on the nonnegotiable premises of atheism, these are the only logical conclusions. But I’ve never met an atheist who’s managed to live this way. All the atheists I’ve known personally and from afar live as if there is objective meaning and morality. How is this explained? In a Hail Mary-like attempt to reconcile the inescapability of objective morality and their assurances of atheism, two possible answers are launched.
Yes, there can only be two answers. There is no room for a third or a combination of the two or anything else. Therein lies the strawman he begged we not torch. (read the article).
1. Morality is the result of socio-biological evolution. This is a two-pronged attempt at justifying moral claims. First, a sense of morality evolved to ensure human survival. … Morality, in this view, can only mean those actions that are helpful to make more fit humans. It does nothing to help us grapple with the truth that it’s always wrong to torture diseased children or rape women.
Second, morality was developed to ensure the success of societies, which are necessary for human survival and thriving. Like the rules of a board game, morality is contrived to bring us together for productivity and happiness. If this were true, there is nothing to which we can appeal when we find the behavior of other societies repugnant and reprehensible. Because morality is the construct of a social group, it cannot extend further than a society’s borders or endure longer than a society’s existence.
Furthermore, within our own society, the most immoral are not merely the ones who transgress our code but the ones who intend to change it. This would make those fighting for marriage equality the most immoral — that is, until they become the majority and institute change. I suppose they then become moral, and traditionalists become immoral. But it’s the math that determines rightness or wrongness of a side, not the content of any belief or argument.
So this view of morality does nothing to provide a reasonable answer for why it would be objectively wrong to torture diseased children, rape women or kill those who don’t affirm a national religion. It only provides a motivation for continuing the delusion of objective morality.
This is certainly part of the subjective morality of our species, our genes and hormones work to push these priorities on our lives and societies… this is not morality, though could be said to be a foundational basis for morality. We do not choose these things, our hormones do. Where society is concerned, survival requires cooperation for survival and to complete the need to procreate safely. We are driven genetically to support these directives.
2. Morality is logical. Atheists who take this route start in a position of checkmate without realizing it. First, the temptation is to pervert this conversation into a debate about whether atheists can be moral. Of course they can. That is not the question. The question is how we make sense of moral claims if we play by the rules that atheism demands.
Morality may be logical, but logic does not equate to morality. The only way to make a logical moral argument is to presuppose morality and meaning to start with. Try making a logical argument that slavery is wrong without presupposing morality. It is impossible. A woman wrote to me with her attempt at doing just that. Her claim was that slavery is logically wrong because it diminishes other human beings. The problem is that that argument presupposes human dignity. In the strict framework of atheism outlined above, what reason is there to ever assume human dignity?
On face value this actually seems reasonable, so why is it that we might presuppose human dignity? He continues:
All logical arguments for morality assume that human thriving, happiness and dignity are superior to contrary views. The strict framework of atheism does not allow for those starting points. So any person arguing for 1 or 2 would not be a good atheist. That is, he lives in contradiction to the mandates of his worldview.
He has missed a couple of things here in this conclusion. In his effort to divide the issue into two halves he can argue against, he presumes that human thriving is not biological in nature. Clue, it is. To show that it is not he would have to show that all animals do not show a drive to this end. The contradiction he sees does not actually exist. I can tell you why, because it takes only one example to disprove his assumptions.
Conclusion
Intelligent people ask serious questions. Serious questions deserve serious answers. There are few questions more serious than the one I’m asking.
That sounds reasonable, no? He followed it with this:
How do we explain objective meaning and morality that we know are true? If a worldview can’t answer this question, it doesn’t deserve you.
To rephrase: What can we say that explains what we ‘KNOW’ without evidence to support what we know? That in itself is a pretty damn good question. He continues:
One sign that your worldview may be a crutch is that it has to appeal to an answer outside itself — becoming self-contradictory, unable to reasonably account for the question. Any atheist who recognizes objective meaning and morality defies the atheism that he contends is true.
Here we can assume safely that he believes that a book and a supernatural deity are not outside of his worldview. If god is his worldview then he’s got a lot of explaining to do when he relies on science to tell him what the weather will be today, among other things. He regularly goes outside of his worldview to get through his day but doesn’t see that as a problem.
If your worldview can’t makes sense of the things that make most sense to you (like objective morality), then it’s not worth your allegiance. This new reality may launch you onto a journey of reluctant discovery. Whoever you are. Wherever you are. Whatever you believe. You deserve a foundation that is strong enough to carry the values that carry you.
Clearly, only objective morality makes sense to him. He is not even attempting to find out why others feel as they do, simply arguing to prove they are not correct because they don’t believe in an unsupportable theory like he does.
You might wonder how I would refute this, aside from the division to create two strawmen. If some of the very stuff he claims as part of his objective morality is shown to be a natural part of the animal kingdom he’d have to explain why animals show the very kind of morality that he claims is objective and applicable only to humans.
Enter my pitbull … he’s awesome. Then meet my cat, also awesome. My cat is more than 15 years old. I’ve known him for 15 years and I know he was alive and well for years before that. Initially the two of them did not get along… most of the problem being on the cat’s inability to make friends with something that big that does not pet him. Well, he’s old now and doesn’t clean himself well, gets a bit sick now and then. He’s effing old. I have two dogs, the 55lb pitbull and a 20lb Mexican sausage dog (chiweinie I think). All of them are rescue animals, cat included. We keep them separated most of the time, mostly to keep the Mexican sausage from becoming a Mexican bowling ball at the expense of the cat’s food budget. So when I go to visit the cat every day I let the dogs tag along.
Surprisingly this is not an invitation for disaster. As I groom the cat the Mexican lends a hand and licks and preens the cat along with me. The cat seems to enjoy it, purring strongly. The pitbull isn’t so ‘caring’ but has offered his friendship as he is wont to do, showing no aggression, only passivity, trying to curl up and ‘cuddle’ with the cat using a very submissive and skittish behavior and his characteristic tongue cluck (roughly translates to love, peace, and harmony – used in context, means I’m friendly, won’t hurt you, how are you, let’s be friends) to assure the cat that all is well.
These behaviors do not prove moral behavior, but they do show that what looks like moral behavior is merely natural interaction. To not rape women, kill the sick, torture others… it’s not human nature, it is animal nature. It is demonstrated over and over again that such ‘moral’ behavior is part of the animal kingdom and when I hear people spout off that morality is the sole purview of humanity I want to kick them in the head and ask how it feels. If my pitbull can be gracious and kind to the elderly and diminutive, and my Mexican sausage help to preen the same … and of a different species, then it is no surprise that humans do so as well. It should only surprise us when humans do not do so… and that brings us back to believers… their dogma is not kind to other species… only to humanity. Think that through for a minute. Only humans are saved by their deity. Only humans have morality. Only humans are worthy. When you get that part down you’ll understand why morons like this pastor can’t understand morality in atheists…
The truth is that they don’t understand morality at all.
Existential driven morality is different, and I think Blade Runner summed it up perfectly…
As for his conclusions, he’s wrong. I do live consistently with my understanding of the world and for having done so I’m convinced that my pitbull knows more about morality than this cognition ‘challenged’ pastor.
Do you have any animal morality stories to share? I’d love to hear them.
I am known to occasionally stroll around various topics of wordpress and there I sometimes find the strangest things. Case in point is this snippet from a Christian apologist:
“As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
So even those who scream that there is no God also have the need to discover something more than a life of mere materialism. Even they seek to transcend the mundane world they find themselves in. While shaking their fists at God, they give the game away by imitating religion.”
As for the first assertion listed, that must mean mass killings exist to fulfill the desires of mass murderers? Buildings exists to fulfill the desires of arsonists? What a steaming pile of logic that is. We are born with desires because of how our brains work and how it interacts with the trillions of cells that make me me and you you. Desire is the drive to increase pleasure/safety and reduce harm/fear. Our brains calculate the risks and possible actions like a chess computer millions of times per day. To say that a satisfaction must exist for any given desire a creature might have is to confuse things beyond repair. It is to say that you cannot desire that which does not exist, yet people desire the impossible, the improbable, and the non-existent all the time. This logic fails miserably yet believers buy into it because of the really super good examples of sex and water.
Then he jumps into something stupid.
So even those who scream that there is no God also have the need to discover something more than a life of mere materialism
I cannot explain how CSLewis concludes that I have a need to discover something more than a life of mere materialism. I’m actually pretty fucking happy with a materialism, monism, mechanical atheism, nihilism and so on. To me it explains how the world works, and so far I don’t need to invent anything to complete that explanation. Yes, I know that there are a lot of things that still need explained, but these things are so far beyond what religion and deities explain in the first place that to include them in such a discussion warrants being slapped very hard with a frozen fish.
CSLewis continues:
Even they seek to transcend the mundane world they find themselves in. While shaking their fists at God, they give the game away by imitating religion.
Apparently this geezer has never met me. I do not imitate religion, and won’t, until religion starts making fun of religion like I do then there might be cause for confusion. I do not seek to transcend the mundane world, as he calls it, because to transcend it is to ignore it and this world (mundane or not, your call) is all we have. If you talk to many of the popular speakers for astronomy etc. you’ll find there is plenty of reason to think this existence is not mundane at all.
This is a picture of what exists in a very boring and mundane black section of the night sky. If you look long and hard enough at that black emptiness you will find millions of other worlds. Mundane? I think not. CSLewis was an idiot apologist. People who quote him are following in his footsteps. Nature abhors a vacuum I am told, but I am befuddled what is between the ears of those who quote CSLewis as if he has something useful to say.
To be fair, it’s not that bad of a quote mine for a response to the ‘atheist church’ thing… just not well thought out. It relies on the notion that religion invented social interaction and the social parts of religion come only from religion. Society existed long before religion as did atheism but you can’t convince a believer of that because it means they have nothing worth anything except their crusted and dusty beliefs that have no credible supporting evidence. It also relies on a characterization of atheists as all being the same. We’re not. Hell, we can’t even agree among ourselves what we’re supposed to be or do… other than the fact that we don’t believe in the supernatural.
Summary: Quoting CSLewis makes you look as stupid as CSLewis. Nuff said.
myatheistlife 