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.

nekidchickens (12 Nov 2009) RichardDawkins.net Forums

The entymology of ‘atheism’ is incorrect and incomplete (although completely dishonest). The privative ‘a-’ … expresses negation or absence; ‘theos’ means god; ‘-ism’ is a suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, doctrine. Put ‘em together!

Perhaps this fellow should have done the math himself before making a public spectacle of his ignorance, wherein he ended up proving the truth of the very thing he was attempting to argue against. If we do the math he asked us to, we find:

(‘a-’ + ‘theos’) + ‘-ism’ = godless action, or godless state, or godless condition, or godless doctrine.

In short, it does not produce “lack of belief in gods”—confirming Thiefe’s very argument!

The etymology that Thiefe reproduced from credible sources was in fact correct and complete—and entirely honest. The term being negated is theos which, very simply, is ‘God’ and therefore translates into English as ‘godless’ or without God. There is nothing incorrect about this. And adding the suffix ‘-ism’ does not prove any incompleteness (or dishonesty), which the math above showed. Fundy atheists say the darndest things, don’t they?

(Note: This fellow was objecting to an article written by Chris Thiefe at EvilBible.com [1] who impolitely but nevertheless accurately attacked the painfully common butchering of the term ‘atheist’. And the title of this FASDT is a play on ‘entomology’ which pokes fun at his incorrect spelling of ‘etymology’.)

Ace (2 Oct 2009) AtheistForums.org

All gods from all religions are the same … All that is different is the name and definition.

Umm, if they are different by definition, then they are not the same! Perhaps this atheist is not aware that x and y are identicals only if x has all the same properties as y and vice-versa. If x has some property different from y or vice-versa, then they are in fact two different things. (The God of Christianity is a trinitarian union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whereas the Allah of Islam most definitely is not trinitarian. Same deity? Hardly. Q.E.D.)

Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things:

Shane5 (24 Aug 2009) From the Comments section to a CBC news report about "Malaysian escapes caning for drinking beer" (pg. 8 of comments)

… the basis for respecting a person is one thing, but the basis (or lack thereof) for respecting a view held by a person is quite another. This difference is especially poignant if beliefs are supported by nothing other than dogma, are devoid of any firm rooting in evidence, or are shielded from the scrutiny of open discourse and skepticism.

I want the readers to pay attention to this belief expressed by Shane:

“[Beliefs are unworthy of respect when they] are supported by nothing other than dogma [and] are devoid of any firm rooting in evidence.”

His belief here is supported by nothing other than sheer dogma, being devoid of any firm rooting in evidence. Gentlemen, that is what critical thinkers refer to as self-stultifying nonsense, a proposition that defeats itself by failing to satisfy its own criteria. I guess what we can take away from this is that Shane cannot respect his own belief.

Someone might indicate that his statement referred to religious beliefs. That, however, would not provide any help for his statement because it would then be a fallacious case of Special Pleading (i.e., beliefs that are not supported by evidence are okay—unless they are religious, in which case they are not okay).

Shane5 (cont’d)

A cold virus is considered a separate matter from the infected individual. The computer virus is an object of study quite separate from the underlying PC platform on which it ‘runs’ … [In the case of human beings], religious beliefs fail to qualify as ideas deserving of respect by rational thinkers. Needless to say, religious people, being affected by the meme, tend to object strongly to this relegation of their core beliefs to something akin to a virus that fails to qualify for respect.

It is now clear that religion is a ‘meme’ or mind virus that is very effective at spreading through human populations—through childhood indoctrination, alpha-male worship, rejection of outside ideas, and in-group/out-group mechanisms, among others.

Religion is a nefarious ‘meme’ or mind virus, he confidently asserts, a belief for which there is not one shred of empirical evidence. It is pseudoscientific twaddle he has swallowed from Dawkins and his ilk, who have not “empirically proven the existence of discrete memes or their proposed mechanism, and memes (as distinct from ideas or cultural phenomena) do not form part of the consensus of mainstream social sciences.”

It is not a scientific discipline. It is an elaborate fiction, a myth told in scientific jargon that recalls to my mind a rather salient point made by Michael Shermer, who said that “you can actually just b.s. people with scientific language without bothering to use the scientific process.” This gets to the very heart of defining what pseudoscience is, he said, which is “the intentional misuse of scientific jargon in order to portray oneself as having some scientific perspective or taking a scientific approach.” It is this age of science we live in that has led people to realize “that to be taken seriously, they at least have to appear scientific.” (Taken from an interview with Michael Shermer published in The New Individualist on 25 Feb 2007 by The Atlas Society.)

Shane5 (cont’d)

These recent books put the phenomenon of religion into clear and objective perspective:

• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith
• Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell
• Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

Objective perspective?! Hahahahaha!! …<falls off chair>

Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things:

Dotard (12 Aug 2009) AtheistForums.org

You will always place your God outside scrutiny. Your God is outside science, logic, observation, testability—you name it, your God "transcends" it.

1. Are not science, observation, and testability all members of the same category? Crowding a statement with superfluous nouns does not add anything to it except linguistic incontinence.

2. That God is outside scientific observation and testability—which is a better way for it to be phrased—is not an ad hoc move of convenience but (i) a logical consequence of God being the Creator of the universe and (ii) part of the monotheistic metanarrative for thousands of years. Whereas the subjects of scientific observation and testability are by definition phenomena in nature, God by definition as Creator exists logically prior to and outside of our space-time manifold.

3. God is never placed outside of (or said to transcend) logic. Although anecdotal evidence may prove that individual Christians utter such nonsense, one should be suspicious of philosophical illiteracy and hesitate to take them as representative of Christian scholarship on the issue, of which there is no shortage.

(On a related point, it is a revealing inconsistency for atheists to require qualified or expert opinions on other matters but conveniently abandon such standards when confronting Christian philosophy.)

When I decided that I wanted to start a new series called Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things (FASDT), evidently I neglected to anticipate the sheer volume of material that would fill it. I mean, I should have known but at the time I was not thinking about that. Furthermore, I realized that some people might need a brief explanation for why this or that statement is so retarded. Since I want to cite and attribute each and every quote plus provide a short explanation for why it is retarded, it quickly became clear to me that having a single web page for FASDT material is simply not workable.

Consequently, the solution I have chosen is to create a brand new category at this site under which all FASDT material will be published. So under the Categories section on the right, just under the calendar, click on Fundy Atheists Say and the site will display all FASDT posts.