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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LAST UPDATED: 7 September 2009

PREFACE: The following article was originally published in three different places, two which died internet deaths and one that still exists as an inactive blog. [1] Shortly after publication it caught 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 site, who published an excoriating and profoundly inaccurate review thereof. [2]

I invited Cline to interact with me on the subject because I intended to compose a rebuttal and wanted his input before publication; I also asked if he would be willing to provide a link to my rebuttal. On both counts he refused, and with some rather insulting remarks. So I had to complete my rebuttal without any input from Cline. Unfortunately that rebuttal was published at one of those now-dead locations, a web site that died when my hosting company went out of business.

I am republishing the original article here along with a new rebuttal against Cline (which I will finish by this weekend) for the thoughtful consideration of our readers and members. Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on my original point, on Cline’s review, and on my rebuttal.

Original Article (27/Jan/2005):

The really frustrating thing about most atheists, at least those who enjoy debating against Christian theism, is that they presuppose the truth of their system of belief and then tacitly insist their Christian opponent work within the framework of that system. In other words, the Christian is expected to provide arguments in defense of Christian theism which accord with the atheist’s epistemology in particular and world view in general. This is implicitly demonstrated in challenges such as, "Provide evidence that God exists." The relevance of evidence, and even what constitutes evidence, are defined by his system of thought.

However, if it is permissible for the atheist to presuppose the truth of his system of thought and expect the Christian to work within the framework of that system, then it is also permissible for the inverse of that situation. Otherwise, the atheist would shoulder the epistemic responsibility for explaining why the only presuppositions permitted in the field of debate are his own—and I would not anticipate a rational argument for that.

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