Young Australian Skeptics

At least, that’s how I presume people like Charlotte Allen see us, what with our having no moral grounding we surely must be having alcohol and drug fuelled orgies between plotting to take over the world and smoking fine Cuban cigars.* But no — it turns out that as opposed to being the crazed unrestricted free spirits one would imagine, we atheists are boring.

“I can’t stand atheists — but it’s not because they don’t believe in God. It’s because they’re crashing bores.”

Charlotte’s opinion is noted, and stupid. Presumably she won’t spend the entire article talking about how boring we are then — after all, that wouldn’t be particularly interesting, would it?

“Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, “Faith, Reason, and Revolution,” take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”) and political journalist Christopher Hitchens (“God Is Not Great”) for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can’t prove something, it doesn’t exist.”

If that is indeed what Terry Eagleton’s new book is about I certainly hope he doesn’t mind getting critically spanked until he can’t sit down for a week. It’s generally a bad idea to attribute simplified and incorrect arguments to people you disagree with, especially when they’re as vocal as Dawkins and Hitchens…indeed, I wouldn’t want to be on the bad side of Hitchens ever and I imagine beating up strawman versions of his opinion would be a quick way to get on his VERY bad side.

“My problem with atheists is their tiresome — and way old — insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What — did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?”

Far from it — indeed, I pay good money to have my behind flogged with a bible and the suggestion that I do it because of some deep seeded sexual neurosis harking back to Sunday school days will be considered and duly ignored: I do it because I’m Jewish and kinky. Having dealt with that egregious error, would someone please point me in the direction of all those prominent atheists who are wasting their time nitpicking the bible? Indeed, most of them seem more fascinated with the way Christianity and religion in general can be taken seriously when it is so patently absurd.

The problem with Charlotte (one of many, anyway) is that she doesn’t understand that we don’t just disagree with the fine points of her religion — we deny the very basis of her faith on the quite reasonable grounds that it’s batshit fucking insane. The existence of god is not a ‘fine point’ of Christianity, it’s one of THE points; just because she doesn’t have a decent response doesn’t mean she can automatically label the debate as tiresome. She can concede if she wants, of course…but if she does it’d be nice if she’d shut the hell up about it.

“Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris (“The End of Faith”) and Daniel Dennett (“Breaking the Spell”), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as “God Is for Suckers,” “God Is Imaginary” and “God Is Pretend”), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse — again and again — the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.”

Well, in a surprising twist, Charlotte actually got something right! Sadly, it was only that there really are blogs out there called “God Is for Suckers/Imaginary/Pretend” — which, really, isn’t that big a surprise…

Of course, then she hops right back on the dumb train — yes, there are some topics that atheists discuss more than others. “Does god exist?” is one — big surprise. But then there is a great deal of discussion (and indeed, disagreement). Some feel that religion is an active force for evil in the world, others believe it is passively neutral; some tackle the arguments for god head on, some propose arguments for god’s non-​​existence; some believe that science and religion are reconcilable, others see them as separate issues, and yet more see them as diametrically opposed.

Of course, most atheists write about more than JUST atheism and religion. Dawkins and PZ Myers are both evolutionary biologists, with Dawkins having written a number of popular books on the subject and PZ having a somewhat well know blog. Hitchens writes for Vanity Fair, covering a number of topics aside from atheism. Sam Harris is involved in neuroscience research, and is probably a personal favourite of mine to read (if only because I disagree with many of the things he writes — a challenge is better than a yes man anyday). One could be forgiven for thinking that Charlotte hadn’t done even cursory research into what these prominent atheists do outside of the few popular books they have written!

“First off, there’s atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us ‘cuz we don’t believe in God.”

A stereotype you’re doing your darndest to preserve, evidently…

“In his online “Atheist Manifesto,” Harris writes that “no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that … God exists.” The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six — count ‘em — states barring atheists from office.”

Quite aside from the scary fact that there are six states in the USA that haven’t bothered updating their consititution to allow atheists to hold office (not that such clauses would stand up to a legal challenge), that’s hardly all the evidence that an atheist couldn’t hold public office in a great deal of the United States. After all, the problem isn’t so much that they aren’t legally allowed to — the problem is that no one would vote for them. Given the publicity various polls on the subject have been given, I find it incredible that someone as clearly well informed as Ms Allen could have somehow not seen it…

Skipping past a few paragraphs of inane whinging about how mean particular atheists are (I can’t believe he’d treat a cracker like that!) we come to this:

“Another topic that atheists beat like the hammer on the anvil in the old Anacin commercials is Darwinism versus creationism. Maybe Darwin-​​o-​​mania stems from the fact that this year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, but haven’t atheists heard that many religious people (including the late Pope John Paul II) don’t have a problem with evolution but, rather, regard it as God’s way of letting his living creation unfold? Furthermore, even if human nature as we know it is a matter of lucky adaptations, how exactly does that disprove the existence of God?”

See, this sort of uninformed crap just makes me angry. Congratulations for you if you managed to take off your bible-​​blinkers for just long enough to figure out that evolution actually exists and that you’d be a moron to argue with it — even if you then do revert to the thick as bricks ‘goddidit’ excuse straight afterwards. But, quite frankly, when it comes to evolution — note, not ‘Darwinism’ — versus creationism, we really couldn’t care less about what you may believe about god. There are people out there who are actively trying to push a religious agenda in schools, and one way in which they are doing this is by attempting to teach creationism is science classes.

Over the years the tactics have become shadier and slimier — once it was out in the open for everyone to see holes in the argument big enough to drive a tractor through; then they adopted the ironically named ‘Intelligent Design’, dressed creationism up with some big ol’ fancy words and hoped that no one would notice;** at the moment they’ve had to resort to standing on the sidelines and trying to weaken the amount of evolution that can be taught in schools and the language used to do so. They are, however, still an active threat, and just because watching someone get their neck kicked*** by people who just bloody know more makes you uncomfortable isn’t a reason to shut up and let them indoctrinate a generation. I would place a bet that if Muslims in America were forcing schools to teach that Allah is the one true god you wouldn’t shut up and let them do it, no matter how many battles you had to fight.

Not understanding the concept of quitting when you’re behind so far, Charlotte continues to display a first grade level of reading comprehension:

“And then there’s the question of why atheists are so intent on trying to prove that God not only doesn’t exist but is evil to boot.”

This, of course, would be a valid question if that was what anyone was doing. It’s not though — what Dawkins and others point out is not that god doesn’t exist AND he’s a jerkwad; it’s that god doesn’t exist and if the god of the bible existed then he’d be an egocentric, genocidal, vain, jealous, schizophrenic and downright evil jerkwad. The god of the bible is hardly an endearing character, though I wouldn’t tell him that unless you wanted to receive a serious smiting.

“The problem with atheists — and what makes them such excruciating snoozes — is that few of them are interested in making serious metaphysical or epistemological arguments against God’s existence, or in taking on the serious arguments that theologians have made attempting to reconcile, say, God’s omniscience with free will or God’s goodness with human suffering.”

What freaking twaddle. First off, a number of prominent atheists have advanced arguments against God’s existence, and moreover there hasn’t been an original argument for the existence of god for at least over a century. I mean, seriously — if you want to engage in some kind of a debate it would befit you to start finding arguments that weren’t so phenomenally flawed and overdone. Second, fantastic for theologians if they’ve managed to reconcile the concept of an omniscient god with free will or a benevolent god with human suffering…but it all comes to nothing more than pseudo-​​intellectual babble if there is no god to begin with. I mean, I’ve got a mad argument that reconciles the existence of ninja-​​unicorns with Miley Cyrus…but it doesn’t mean that ninja-​​unicorns are real.****

“What primarily seems to motivate atheists isn’t rationalism but anger — anger that the world isn’t perfect, that someone forced them to go to church as children, that the Bible contains apparent contradictions, that human beings can be hypocrites and commit crimes in the name of faith.”

Again with the sanctimonious idiocy. They should have titled her article “I’ve never met an atheist: Stereotype, ahoy!” — at least that would have been honest.

Yeah, sometimes atheists do get angry. But the anger does not motivate the atheism — the anger motivates the activism. When we see lies and dogma being promoted as truth, especially when it is used to supplant large chunks of our accumulated knowledge about the world, we get angry and we react — though not by killing those who disagree with us, or censoring them in the press. No, instead we combat these lies and dogmas with the truth. We fight with science, we fight we reason, and if it seems we fight with anger you’d be damn right — the idea of another Dark Age does not appeal to us one little bit.

I can give a list of things we’re not angry about though. We’re not angry that the world isn’t perfect — hell, we’re generally not even surprised, especially with morons like Charlotte getting space in major newspapers. We’re not angry that we were forced to go to church as children — indeed, for a while it was me who brought my mother back to the Synagouge (although that’s another story for another time). We’re not angry that the bible contains apparent contradictions — though we are amused by the fact the the bible contains some quite real contradictions, and occasionally frustrated by the constant twisting and obfuscation that people like you use to claim that such contradictions are only ‘apparent’. And we are most definitely not angry at god: A claim often made, yet one so stupid that I can only be amazed that such people who make it can chew gum and walk at the same time.

“What atheists don’t seem to realize is that even for believers, faith is never easy in this world of injustice, pain and delusion. Even for believers, God exists just beyond the scrim of the senses. So, atheists, how about losing the tired sarcasm and boring self-​​pity and engaging believers seriously?”

I’ve got no problem with that. Hell, to get the ball rolling I’ll even ask you a basic opening question: Who or what is god, and how do you know he, she, or it exists?

I figure once that one gets answered we can move onto the meatier questions you seem to desperate to tackle. Let me know when you have an answer — I’ll be here waiting.

* Now that I think about it, that doesn’t sound too bad…
** They did.
*** It’s hard to kick butt when the victim’s head is permanently rectally positioned.
**** It goes a little something like this:
(1) Everything that exists has its polar opposite. (2) Miley Cyrus is the worst thing that exists. (3) Ninja-​​unicorns are the best thing that can be conceived of. (4) One of the properties of being the ‘best thing’ is existence. (4) Therefore, ninja-​​unicorns are the best thing that exists. (5) Therefore, ninja-​​unicorns exist.

Tags: atheism, charlotte allen, unicorns

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Atheist, Religion, Richard Hughes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.