(via)
(HT: Luis Dizon)

I wish I could say that Justin at Consider Atheism has posted some more of his thoughts on the Problem of Evil and how to refute my defeater of it, but unfortunately they are the embarrassingly weak responses of Dawson Bethrick. I suppose that is at once both good and bad. On the one hand, it is good that such a train wreck didn’t come from his own brain. But it is bad, on the other hand, that he didn’t approach the problem with critical thinking of his own, despite my hope that he would, choosing instead to publish Bethrick’s response (but mostly in Justin’s own words).

Originally Bethrick tried to save Justin’s argument by using Isaiah 45:7 to prove that evil is indeed something God creates. Justin was rather enlivened by this passage and brought it to my attention in the comments area of my first article. And I proceeded to show him why he should probably not get too excited about arguments that Bethrick uses by showing him what the passage is actually talking about. And as to be expected, Bethrick responded (at Justin’s site). I was going to send Justin a private email about this and tell him that he would score critical thinking points if he could identify what was wrong with Bethrick’s response. But it seems I didn’t get off work soon enough, for by the time I got home Justin had uncritically regurgitated the train wreck in a new blog post, so now this gets to be done in public instead. Readers of the Aristophrenium know that I don’t mind dismantling logically bankrupt arguments from atheists who pretend to esteem reason—to put it kindly—but I was really hoping to save Justin the embarrassment because I like him. “Before you invest yourself in Bethrick’s response,” I was going to write him, “evaluate it critically for logical flaws.” Anybody can teach people what to think, but I want to teach people how to think, and few things achieve that goal quite like learning how to critically evaluate an argument.

But if he wishes to do this publically, I’m willing to oblige him. Let’s have a look.

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Justin, a young man from Canada, started a brand new blog called Consider Atheism. Although I don’t remember how I stumbled upon his blog, it has garnered my interest for two reasons: he is Canadian and purports to defend Atheism. (And there is also the fact that he is young, which means he is still teachable.)

One of the first posts to elicit a response from me regarded the Problem of Evil (which most people know is my favourite subject). The following is the sum of our discussion.

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Over at a blog called An Atheist Debater is an author who attempted to tackle what he thoughtfully considers to be “one of the most useless and easily refutable” arguments for the existence of God: the Argument from Design. According to this gentleman, the teleological argument “is so ridiculously fallacious it’s laughable.” What I intend to explore here are two things. First, did he succeed at proving it commits a fallacy? And second, did his own argument commit a fallacy?

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Dear Lord,

So far today, I’m doing all right. I haven’t gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, nasty, selfish or self-indulgent. I haven’t lied, complained, cursed, had lustful thoughts or invoked anger in my children. I haven’t been prideful, worshipped other gods, desired worldly goods, misused your name, stolen anything or given false testimony against another.

But I will be getting out of bed in a minute and I think that I will really need your help then.

Amen.

www.answersingenesis.org

Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things

“You don’t seem to get it. Atheists don’t assert a positive claim, so they don’t shoulder any burden of proof.”

This is true—and it is false. It depends on what the person means because it is actually an incomplete sentence: a positive claim about what?

If this is said by an agnostic atheist and what he means is that his view does not assert a positive claim about the non-existence of God, then in that sense the statement is true. But in a more important way the statement is false because for all atheists (including agnostic ones) a positive claim actually is being asserted: that “God is not required.” And so when an atheist is being asked to shoulder the burden of proof (i.e., to show the proof or rationale for atheism), that’s the positive claim he’s being asked to defend. He is not being asked to prove that God doesn’t exist—unless he makes such a claim—but he is being asked to prove that God is not required; i.e., that things like truth or knowing or morality, etc., can be comprehended intelligibly under a godless framework while corresponding with and explaining the facts of human experience .

But it’s also amusing to note that both “assert” and “positive claim” actually mean the same thing. It is actually an awkward way of saying that atheists make no assertions (e.g., “Atheists do not assert an assertion”)—which is how he ought to phrase it, because then the inherent problem with this objection would be more apparent to the atheist, one would think.

Usually I don’t bother paying any attention to The Bahnsen Burner, a blog run by an Atheist named Dawson Bethrick, and it would take less than five minutes at his site for a person to see why. It has almost nothing to do with the actual merits of his arguments and everything to do with the fact that locating and identifying an argument within his landslide argumentum verbosium is just too laborious a task. I share the same view as Joshua Whipps over at Choosing Hats: until Bethrick decides to express arguments or criticisms with succinct perspicuity instead of proof-by-verbosity, [1] I simply can’t be bothered to engage his material. It requires more time than I have available.

The only reason that I am even aware Bethrick had recently tackled my “Arrogance of Atheism” articles [2] is because one of our staff members, Mathew Hamilton, directed me to it. I would have otherwise never known. And so for Hamilton’s sake alone I have reviewed Bethrick’s piece, shouldering the laborious task of locating and identifying his arguments in order to respond to them. I shall not repeat this endeavour (even though Bethrick will probably be unable to resist carving out an entertaining albeit verbose Chewbacca Defense), as this response will suffice to demonstrate that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the bankruptcy of Atheist objections.

And no, Bethrick, our staff will not publish your loquacious tomes in the Comments field to this (or any other) article. Comments must be composed with succinct perspicuity. If you want to do a verbal dump, there is always The Bahnsen Burner—where no one has to see it unless they masochistically want to. I will return to ignoring you, although you are free to continue directing traffic here by writing about our articles.

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Several years ago, long before this site ever existed and once hosted somewhere long since dead, I had written a very pointed and brief thought-piece about “The Arrogance of Atheism.” It had garnered the attention of Austin Reed Cline, a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of the Atheism section of the About.com web portal, who had published an excoriating and profoundly inaccurate review of my article. Some time last year I decided to resurrect that piece and republish it here, and to include not only Cline’s rebuttal but my response to him as well.

Around that same time I extended an invitation for Cline to interact with me on the response I had composed. His response can be found in the comments to the relevant article at his portal here, and the remainder of this article is my answer to him.

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