The intellectual poverty of modern atheism? Really?

First of all, yours truly wishes to apologise to friends and followers for the lack of posts during the week, I have been quite busy with building the nation, though I did manage to visit most of your blogs.

I need not introduce our resident apologist, Debilis, though he hardly honours us with a visit who has made it his blogging profession to erect strawmen of atheists and New Atheist, whoever they are, whom he then manages to convince his followers that he has made a sound against the claims of atheism. In this post, where, they have a long discussion with our friend the Ark, he sets out to tell his readers that atheists are intellectually poor.

He starts by telling us

Every reason I’ve ever been given to reject the arguments for theism rests on one of two demonstrably false assumptions:

1. That nothing exists other than the physical, or

2. That there is no way of knowing anything except via the senses (including science, of course).

Let us ignore, who has told him this and look at his claims. I would like him to prove the existence of anything else, other than those things, which are evidently the creation of our imagination or are the result of our interactions with one another then we will have a conversation. I would want him to show me and you, dear reader, any way of knowing, whatever he means by that, that excludes the senses. What are these things he knows without experiencing, excepting concepts which are creations of our imagination and history which we read?

Our apologists continues in the same vain to tell us

Those who demand evidence for theism are, so far as I’ve experienced, never open to non-sensory evidence. And those who attack the Bible as being bad science generally aren’t willing to acknowledge that it wasn’t written as science in the first place.

Let us say we are open to non-sensory evidence, which are these and would you be kind to enumerate just a few. And no, this is a strawman, we don’t claim the bible is a science writ. All we have said it was written by ignorant goat herders over a long period of time. It makes claims about the cosmos that aren’t true such as we are told in Joshua 10

“Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.

Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. 14 There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel.

unless of course our apologists wants to pretend that this is not a claim about cosmology which is a science or Balaam’s talking donkey or making wine from water.  So we grant him the bible is not a science book, neither is it a revealed word of deity, simply because such don’t exist, especially so the one claimed in the bible.

In defending his absurd position, our apologists writes

The first view is properly called “metaphysical naturalism”, “physicalism”, or (more casually) “materialism”. To believe this, one has to believe that nihilism is true, that thoughts are never about anything, that there is no reason at all why science works, that you can’t trust your own logic, and that you (in terms of your own inner life and personality) don’t actually exist.

Sad as it maybe for our apologist, life is its own meaning. To expect that there is more to it, some cosmic meaning is a fools dream. If you find nihilism too much to swallow, you are in the right profession, that of supporting superstition for fact. Here, I agree with Camus, who asks the million dollar question, what does one do after finding out that life is absurd? Does he commit suicide? He says no, rather he lives by rebelling against the absurd. He creates meaning in his life. The second claim about thoughts doesn’t make sense. I have read the post which is linked in the OP and, yours truly, was not able to make sense of it. He makes claims about free will which are absurd and nonsensical, the rest of his arguments are of like manner.

He then continues to say

This is the view that, while there might be more than the physical, we should only believe what we can test for scientifically.

which I don’t think is true. The requirement is as Hume said, not to believe anything for which we don’t have sufficient evidence and as Carl Sagan later said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So offer this evidence and we are good to go.

The first thing we should note here is that many of the same problems arise. This idea would force us to reject the idea that we have minds, that our morals are rational, and that our thoughts are either about anything or base their choices in logic. It is also deeply problematic that the basis of science itself is rejected by this view. “Science alone”, if one follows the logic, means “not even science”.

Minds are brain states. Unless of course the apologist thinks the mind is separate from the brain, our morals are rational because we are rational beings though this isn’t the case for a great majority of the human species and our thoughts are given by experience though we are also capable of abstract thought. And lastly am never sure what he means when he writes science. He leaves his claims so open such that it is impossible to identify what one is arguing against.

There is nothing to say about a claim such as this.

The second thing is that this view also contradicts itself. After all, there is no sensory evidence for it. So, by its own standard, it should be rejected.

Having created strawmen, he finishes by writing

The only way that modern atheism can hope to escape the absurd conclusions mentioned here is if it could offer an attack on the arguments for theism that doesn’t rest on one of those two assumptions.

which is another strawman, simply because atheism is only a claim about the existence of gods. The rest are philosophical positions which merit a different discussion each on its own to prove their falsity or truth value. The atheist says he has seen no evidence for the existence of gods, and that the theist has not proved his case sufficiently. He has no reason to provide any argument beyond that.

Some one please tell me am dreaming or I am reading what our christian want us to believe.

After years of encounters, I’ve come across no such thing. This leaves the arguments for theism on the table, with the attempted refutations having been shown to be circular reasoning.

Why are there still atheists? All you of you atheists should pack up your bags and identify a church to join, you are all wrong, the apologists have carried the day!