Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Clarification

Here are a few of my favorite theist arguments, and my usual rebuttals. Please feel free to point your favorite theists to this post when they utter one of these gems.

"Atheism is a belief."

I do not believe in Atheism.

Atheism is not a belief or a belief system. It's not a matter of faith, it's the lack thereof. As a matter of fact, for me, it isn't even just the lack of faith or belief. It's a matter of following the evidence. It's critical thinking.

Put simply, my lack of belief is a direct result of there being no magic sky genie in which to believe.
For further evidence, see the rather profound fact that despite my long-running Atheism, no god has seen fit to smite me for not loving him.

Atheism is a belief like clear is a color.

"If my faith is a result of geography, and you're in the same geographic location, how come you're an Atheist and I know the truth?"

I love this one. First of all, you don't know the truth. You have a belief founded in an extraordinary claim, backed by precisely zero evidence. Nada. Zilch. Not half a fucking iota. This extraordinary claim would require extraordinary evidence to even be considered a viable hypothesis. You, being the claimant, are under the obligation to provide same, where as I, the person to whom you're trying to show the light, am obligated only to take the evidence provided, and weigh it objectively.

I can objectively say that your extraordinary lack of evidence leads the clear-minded, critically thinking person to one provable conclusion: it's bullshit.

"A few hundred years ago, you wouldn't be an Atheist."

A few hundred years ago, you'd have burned me at the stake for heresy. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be an atheist, just that I wouldn't be loud about it.

"Science can't explain everything."

Despite the fact that science hasn't explained everything, everything does in fact have a scientific explanation. The amazing thing about science is that it's a method for knowledge seeking. It seeks to find the truth, not justify what's convenient. To put it more succinctly, science is the way we find the answer, not the answer itself.

I hope this clears up some things for you people out there. Please, if you have any questions about Atheism, or you're a "closeted" Atheist looking for support, don't hesitate to contact me.

I don't always know the answer, but I do know how to get it.

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting.

    1. Atheism is a belief - it is the belief that there is no God. I'd agree that it's not a matter of faith, even that it's not a belief system, but it is a belief.
    If your Atheism may be a direct result of there being no god, but the verity of that statement requires proof, and logic keeps us from proving that God does not exist.

    2. A potential alternative answer: It's not just physical geography, but temporal geography as well. Like the next question states, 200 years ago you would "not have been an Atheist" and I would "not have been" agnostic.
    Our current time and location requires tolerance of people that believe and live differently (for the most part) than "we" do.

    Also, you are making a claim - God does not exist. You must be held to the same expectations you hold the believers to, and you can't, thanks to (again) logic.

    Lastly (on question 2): Your objective statement is quite subjective as it assumes that people who don't come to your conclusion are not clear-minded or capable of critical thought.

    3. Covered in 2.

    4. I liked this very much. However, to be a pain in the ass, I will point out that while it is logically likely that everything has a scientific explanation (due to the amount of things that science has explained compared to the amount of things that we know of which have not been explained), until everything has been explained (understanding infinity we must accept that this is an impossibility) the premise cannot be true.

    I very much liked and agree with "Science is the way we find the answer, not the answer itself".

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