atheism.
The author of this post has committed herself to convincing their audience that atheists, not Christians, have blind faith.
She claims
[..]indeed, for consider that while the Christian may have an ‘unknown but justified faith’ where he (the Christian) might not know how God, say, created life or consciousness, he (the Christian) is justified in believing that God could do so given His omnipotence
which makes several assumptions atheists doesn’t make. In the part quoted, she claims to know the universe was created, except how it was done, claims to know god is omnipotent and so on. I, as an atheist, readily admit that I don’t know how life began, that is, if it had one, or even if the universe came to be or always was.
The apologist who conceived of god as having omni-powers made this god an impossibility. Can an omnipotent god create a mountain without a valley? Or to put it differently, can an omnipotent god make 1+1 not equal 2? Or are its powers constrained by laws of logic? Can omnipotence make a triangle where the sum of all its angles are >180deg? I digress.
Back to the post, she continues on the attack
and yet the atheistic-naturalist, by contrast, has an utterly blind and unjustified faith for not only does the atheistic-naturalist not know how, on his worldview, life came from non-life, or rationality from irrationality, or consciousness from unconsciousness, the atheistic-naturalist does not even know if they could arise on naturalism
and one wonders how it would be construed as blind faith to admit ignorance? I am confused when she argues life could not arise naturally and so on. I don’t think the naturalist makes any claim other than that, all we know are natural events. It is possible there could be other causes, but we have no way of knowing them.
When she writes
for he has no idea if natural forces have the causal power to make these things come about, and thus the naturalist
I am sure she doesn’t understand naturalism. I don’t know what she has been critiquing all along. For what else is naturalism, if not that Nature is an efficient cause. That no other forces operate in the world. How nature does all this may be forever locked to us, but while it is good to speculate some other being or alien could be responsible, it is always prudent to remember this is speculation and not fact.
On a related point, where do these apologists learn writing skills?
Science has unraveled a great many mysteries that were all formerly attributed to gods of one sort or another.
Why on earth would the current crop of theists believe it won’t unravel more ”god attributes” in the future?
They truly are so very silly.
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Silly, I think, is an understatement.
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Yes to lack of writing skills generally. Needs to be aware of gender neutral pronouns specifically. Given that presumably ‘she’ is a Xtian, yet refers to them all as he. Nice way to marginalise more than 50 per cent of Xtianity.
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I hope I didn’t commit that mistake. If there is one thing I have learnt from you is to be more aware of my use of pronouns.
When I read your comment on MMJ ‘s post and the post itself, something came to light that is mostly ignored. When people insult each other, generally they refer to women. It’s like it’s bad to be a woman.
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Struck me as silly that a woman referred to other christians as he. But that’s their mentality. I think I have written about swearing and referring to women … It’s not ignored. Just dismissed.
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Hey friend,
I have a question. Most times women are referred to as weaker or fairer sex. Is this demeaning to the sex?
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I would say yes. Others would say no. Do you want the reasoning behind it?
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Yes please.
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Two ticks pls.
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Okies.
Basically weaker and fairer is a stereotypical definition that defines women according to a patriarchal standard (sorry for the jargon), or rather, how men, as ruling members of society, think women *should* be and how they want them to be.
The definition of ‘weaker’ puts women in the role as something to be ‘protected’ by the stronger species. Weakness ie lack of strength can be the obvious physical one (which to be fair, is usually, accurate), but also intellectually, economically, and lacking any ability for independence. It implies that women have an innate and essential dependence on men.
Looking at ‘fairer’, this adjective implicitly concentrates on appearance, so perpetuates the myth that women should be judged on their appearance, which again looks towards reinforcing the idea that women should make themselves as attractive as possible in order to attract a mate (in order to protect her, back to weaker).
Less physically, it may also refer to the concept that women are ‘fair’ in their nature, ie nurturing, caring, giving, blah boring blah aka doormats. Which also ties in with the ‘weaker’ sex concept.
Overall, I would regard these as gender constructs for what a woman *should* be, according to the patriarchal norm.
But, you will find different answers elsewhere.
PS I also consider it patronising and condescending.
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Thanks so much rs. This answers my question. When I think of another, I will ask.
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In fact, she is the one having ‘blind faith’ following her own arguments, for she assumes knowledge she can’t account for. Atheists are guided by evidence, which is the opposite of blind faith.
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Maybe she has redefined blind faith
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Some Christian blogs have candid and honest authors who are worth making the effort to engage with.
That one is not one of those….
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The author claims to be doing investigative apologetics whatever that is. One would expect something substantive from them.
I haven’t seen you in the interwebs for quite a while, hope all is well with you
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Yeah, apologetics does seem to have a few words that hover about it that only serve to obfuscate.
Thanks for missing me, I’ve been a silent observer for some time, I’m trying to change that this year. Life goes on and has its challenges, I’ll survive 🙂
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Good to know you are keeping well and wishing you the best in the new year
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Apologists like this woman get their writing skills from a timeless, spaceless, limitless realm where cookies don’t make you fat and the temperature is always a pleasant 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Hope this clarifies things for you. Remember, when in doubt as to a correct answer, always use the one I gave above. You can’t argue with such perfection.
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You, my friend, are godsend 😄
Thanks for the clarification
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I visited the site and enriched the visits on her stats. I honestly don’t know how you slosh through it all. I didn’t wade in very far. I have blind faith in you to decipher it. 🙂
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You are justified in having blind faith in me 🙂
How does one write such a long post without proper punctuation. To read it, one needs to be on a bike since it feels like work.
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I know I’m guilty of poor punctuation. But when you write poems people expect that. 🙂 You can get by with anything in a poem.
Maybe she should format it in lines of poetry, then folks like you who go snooping around would go “ooh and aah and hmmm. Very interesting”
I think that’s what you do with my poems. lol
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I swear I read your poems faithfully.
They are usually just long enough for my attention span and I feel I can relate to most of them.
If this author tried poetry, they would stop writing on Atheism. They would be required to think much harder
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I think people get mixed up on the meaning of the word “faith.” It means slightly different things in different contexts. One block away from me, there is a very busy corner which I have to cross frequently. When the light show I can go, I go. I have “faith” that people driving cars will obey the traffic light and not run me over, that the people turning will give me the right of way. This is not the same meaning of the word “faith” that people mean when they say that they have “faith” in God. If we take other related words, it becomes obvious. They are “faithful” to God. Pedestrians are not “faithful” to the motorists.
The other matter is faith without proof. The writer is partly right in that atheists assume, when confronted with questions about the natural universe we can’t answer, that there will be a naturalistic explanation. I would concede that this does involve some level of “trust” or “faith,” thought in this case the words might be closer in meaning to “expectation.” However, it’s really a linguistic game to call that “faith.”
In any case, I’m never quite sure what the end goal is. It reminds me of when I concede that I am not one hundred percent sure that there are no gods and the theist proclaims, “Aha! So you’re an agnostic.” But the theist generally does not want me to be an agnostic. He or she wants me to agree with whichever religious traditions he or she follows and they haven’t gotten in the least bit close to that.
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Many times when I conceded to not knowing how something came to be or what it is, the theists have always insisted they are way ahead because, guess what, the bible. It has all the answers or so they say.
On naturalistic explanations; I think given that all the explanations we have so far for phenomena are natural, it is likely that those things that we can’t explain presently may have natural explanations. Had it been that we have a mixture of natural and non-natural explanations, one would be justified to allow for the possibility of different type of explanations
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The atheistic-naturalist does not even know if they could arise on naturalism
Well, evidently a science-illiterate apologist here.
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Science illiteracy is the least of her problems.
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LOL
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Blind faith is believing a Bible which contains stories like the Garden of Eden, the flood of Noah and the Tower of Babel. If all the reputable evidence points to these events not having occurred then to still believe is blind faith indeed.
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It also contains
Jonah eating a whale, sorry a whale offering Jonah taxi services.LikeLike
The thing about Jonah and Noah and adam and Eve is that Jesus implied they were real events so it is hard for Christians to explain them away as mythical.
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Maybe the should ditch them and use them as metaphor
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You know when I read this sort of drivel, it always seems to me they go to great lengths to say something like “circles have no edges therefore god.”
It reads like someone grasping at straws, the whole time thinking they are on to something. Ridiculous really.
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This is beyond ridiculous. It’s crazy and they have followers on WP!
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Unfortunately delusion is contagious.
Would you like to meet my invisible squirrel? He has all sorts of magical powers, and claims to have created the universe. He told me so… He also told me he had a squirrel son that sacrificed himself to a hawk to save us all!
Please won’t you all think of the squirrels? The magic squirrel put me in charge of donations, please respond quickly! And with much $$. The more $$ the more likely the magic squirrel will bless you!
All donations are to be sent to http://www.Shelldiggers.Squirrel.org
Your life/afterlife could depend on it!
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What currency does the squirrel take?
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Well being this is an upstart outfit, hickory nuts and sunflower seeds to start. Soon after, it might move up to actual animal sacrifices such as chickens and such. The Shelldigger can’t live on hickory nuts alone, and should be properly compensated for his dedication to the almighty squirrel. Sooner or later though, after a good following develops, Im sure we will be forced to move to more common currencies. There will need to be churches of the squirrel built, and any upstart religion will tell you it takes more than knumbskull followers to make a religion flourish.
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Haha. Are there openings for prophets and prophetesses
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Sure! We could use prophets with great wisdom to obscure, I mean properly explain away the silly questions people tend to ask.
I could use help on the commandments too, so far all Ive got is “Thall shalt not covet another squirrels acorns” and “One should never shit in ones own nest”
Isn’t delusion fun?
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Instead of going that long route, we may think of an injection to spread the religion of squirrel. The vial should contain all the dogma you need for the duration of your miserable religious life
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Hey I like that idea. If there is any way to make this permanent then we don’t have to worry about any backsliders. No apostates and no vaccine for the stupid makes for a very long lived Church of Squirrel.
Make it so sir prophet Mak!
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Will work on it
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Is prophetesses a word Mak? The unusually English nitpicker anal retentive need to know 🙂
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If it ain’t a word, we shall make it one. In the byebowl, prophet almost always referred to a man
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Well that seems unfair, but certainly not uncommon.
Funny how the men behind the writing of their magic books managed to write themselves in as superior beings, to be obeyed.
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I think it is unfortunate that they failed to recognise half the human race and we have been working overtime to rectify this
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