10 Myths About Atheism

Oh yeah, forgot all about the Crusades. Good thing you reminded us.

“In the name of creating their version of a secular utopia, Hitler, Stalin and Mao produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.” (from a printed source)
But these ideologues were not an example of all atheist dreamers – there are liberal ones as well.

As for the crusades, wikipedia calls their number uncountable, then presents a countable list of them, all within the period 1095 to 1291.
(But I think warriors loved war more back then. “War is the flower of manhood,” and all that. But that might be for a different topic.)

One teacher I heard posited that only spirit and not matter brings unity; and Plato said that every two things that are together are bound by a third.

I think if atheists and theists are at contraries within their genus (religious belief), they will have to be brought together by something that is not religious belief – like being in the same state, or acceptance of humanism. (But the state is only one because of something like ideology too… But that might be for a different topic.)

So natural selection is analogous to artificial selection, even though artificial selection is performed by an intelligent agent whereas natural selection is not?

What an absolutely ridiculous argument. If natural selection is analogous to artificial selection then intelligent design/directed panspermia is the most supported theory of life on earth, not evolution. Of course, that would involve the people writing this argument actually giving a damn about proper enquiry, rather than starting with a conclusion and working backward (which is what Dawkins has ALWAYS done). He is not even a good scientist, let alone a good model for secular prophets…

Dawkins CV isn’t terribly bad:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … &DB=pubmed

For a list of some of his publications.

But I do agree that he spends too much time writing books and not enough at the bench to be anything other than a pop-star.

That argument is fine, taken as it is meant to be taken. Looking at artificial selection, we see that selection can be used to alter properties of an organism over time, and we can see that this is done by breeding a certain member of the species with another, selecting the partners based on their attributes. Then we ask: don’t certain properties influence the likelyhood that an animal will reproduce in nature? Isn’t that selection similar to artificial selection, in that it will influence changes in the morphology of the offspring, and that those changes will then affect how likely the offspring will be to reproduce in turn. It is the same principle, without the intelligent guidance. Certain elements carry over in the analogy, others do not. That’s how analogies work.
And Dawkins was raised Christian. He’d be a quite different sort of pundit if he had “always” argued for a conclusion.

This is true of any argument.

i.e. without the very thing that makes artificial selection what it is.

That’s how spurious analogies work. Consider this: if natural selection involves no intelligence, no intelligent direction, then how did the process produce beings capable of artificial selection, i.e. intelligent design? A miracle? In the absence of any explanation, this is no different to saying ‘God did it’.

As with 99% of militant atheists - he is rebelling against his parents, but hasn’t the balls to admit that so he dresses it up as a rebellion against religion. In fact, I’d say this is true of 100% of militant atheists that I’ve met in person.

Argued from a conclusion…

Now that is a foolish position to take. What is wrong with simply admitting ignorance? You don’t want people to work backwards from conclusions, but at the same time restrict their ability to explore by denying them the ability to admit that they simply don’t know.

That’s my #1 pet peeve with most philosophers – they are unwilling to admit or accept an argument that involves unknown variables. Oftentimes we do not know how something works (you could argue that we never do, and I know you love to do just that), but we can quite convincingly know how something doesn’t work.

SIATD, your objections now are quite different from your previous objection. You might not agree with the intended conclusion, but it’s a perfectly functional analogy.

As to your question, three words: Argument from Ignorance.

Not really, if one considers the existence of God an argument from ignorance (as Carleas implies).

In this case, that’s like saying ‘what’s wrong with fallacious arguments?’

Well, nothing if you don’t give a toss about anything. In the realm of advancing theories of, just for example, the origin of life on earth, alleging that the origin of life is an unintelligent process of adaptation that produces life capable of intelligent adaptation of other life is bizarre in the extreme.

A computer, left to its own devices, will not intelligent adapt other life forms, yet it has intelligent design. Yet a human, who has no intelligent design (or whatever phrase takes your fancy), can make and adapt a computer. This seems to me like witchdoctoring.

Dawkins doesn’t admit that he doesn’t know, he offers what he takes to be a valid explanation. If he wrote a book saying ‘I hate my parents, sorry, religion, but I don’t know anything’ then no one would buy it.

It’s hardly an unknown variable, it’s the essence of the argument.

A is B
C is not B
A produces C

How is this even a remotely sensible argument?

Not according to western epistemology. Going back to Plato we can find the crucial argument that if we cannot tell the difference between what is true and false then we know nothing. Now, this isn’t the be all and end all, but it’s pretty crucial to the scientific method, falsifiability and so on.

I have no problem with someone saying that they don’t know. I have every problem with someone advancing a theory, selling a book describing that theory, but there being massive gaps in their explanation, which is meant to serve as the refutation of another explanation.

Like I say, if evolution is an unintelligent process then the fact of humans being intelligent (e.g. being capable of artificial selection) is evidence for intelligent design or directed panspermia or some other theory whereby an intelligent agent is involved in the origin of life. From the premises, to the conclusion. That’s usually how logical arguments work. Not from the conclusion, back to some premises, over the gap with a neatly-hidden leap of faith, back to the conclusion.

‘Perfectly functional’ - how so, when it ignores the definitive virtues of the first thing in order to use is as an analogy for the second thing?

This would seem to me the opposite of a perfectly functioning analogy.

My objections are different because I’m elaborating on my position. My conclusion is still the same, that the analogy is hokum.

No, my argument is

If evolution is an unintelligent process
AND humans are intelligent, capable of artificial selection and intelligent design
THEN evolution cannot account for human life as we know it
AND intelligent design/directed panspermia/even creationism offer better explanations

There is an implicit premise, that an unintelligent process cannot produce intelligence, which is up for dispute. But it does seem odd that painting a shed yellow would make it turn blue. That’s an analogy.

d0rkyd00d, valuable post.

Going a little off topic here, this article makes me wonder if there is anything good in atheism that was not prior in religion. For religion, atheism provides a service of knocking quasi-Gods (thereby knocking false gods), and showing humanism and charity functions without being explicitly theological (which shames wicked religious persons). But you can find these things in the writings of the more intellectual saints first.

So on what basis does one decide between humanistic atheism and humanistic religion if they have so much in common?

SIATD,

If building a car is not a process that can travel at 100mph
AND cars are capable of travelling at 100mph
THEN car building cannot account for cars as we know them
“AND intelligent design/directed panspermia/even creationism offer better explanations”

This parody illustrates a few point:
-You are comparing a process with a thing (evolution with a human). It isn’t clear that intelligence is a characteristic that can be applied to evolution. What would intelligence even mean, in that context?
-It is not clear that an attribute of what is created must be a attribute of what is creating. There are many attributes that are part of the creation and not part of the process used. If you want one that is more topically relevant, look at computers: they have rudimentary intelligences (the ability to spell check, recognize paterns, solve simple problems, etc.) that the machines building them do not have (because they simply follow a set pattern of steps). Or how about the fact that birth is not an intelligent process (development in the womb is chemical and physcial), but clearly produces intelligence.
-Regardless of these problems, the fact that your conclusion explains car creation as well as it explains evolution should raise a flag. An explanation that explains too much with so little real meaning or understanding is dubious. I know it’s a cliche accusation, but you really are just deferring to the outdated hypothesis that “god did it”.

While I understand where you are coming from, I think this position is flawed in the modern dialogue. When I say, “I don’t know” usually the next step is to start trying to fix that. When I say, “God did it” the discussion usually ends there or veers into thought experiments, which, while interesting, are ultimately meaningless if there is nothing to back it up. The notable exception to this would be applied natural theology, whereby the religious individual attempted to understand the nature of the Divine via experimentation. However, even in that case, the scientist has to view God in light of their discoveries and not vice-versa.

Let’s suppose for a moment that the scientific community accepted the Creation-theory of the Primogenote (the first organism). Research more-or-less ends there. How can we re-create an act of the divine? Furthermore, since this creature arose ex nihilo, there isn’t really any fruitful research to be had in that area anyway.

Alternatively, if abiogenesis is accepted by the scientific community, we have first a lot of research apportunities in aqueous-phase organic chemistry, trying to see how the building-blocks came to be. Furthermore, we have a lot of work to do regarding ribozymes (and deoxyribozymes), which in turn should lead to the discovery and recognition of ribozymes that remain with us (they are rather difficult to detect, largely because we know so little about them). And we may even answer a few other questions, like how viruses relate to the rest of the Tree of Life.

Once again, you seem to assume that we know more than we do. We simply don’t have enough evidence. Once again, you are largely retreating into the world of thought-experiments and analogies. While that is all well and good for starters, you have to then apply those and see how they work out. Otherwise it is just mental masterbation.

Look at what we can accomplish with directed evolution. While we are living in the post-molecular biology revolution, indeed, we are living in the Genomic era, designing and inserting functions is still a terribly difficult and, ultimately, inefficient way to go about creating new functions. Far better is to manipulate the environment and let natural selection take its course. So, while it is possible to then argue that God is manipulating the environment (given how wonky our research into meterology is, I might be willing to give you that one :slight_smile:), I would have to ask whether adding God atop that makes any sense. Even if it is ultimately correct, the results are the same. And by understanding the environment (rather than leaving it be as a holy mystery) we can gain understanding in other areas.

Actually, in the God Delusion, he does mention that he can’t be sure on a lot of what he is saying (abiogenesis, that there is, indeed, no God, ect.). Granted, he a propagandist, so he couches it . But that is to be expected, he is a propagandist, after all. I’m not defending Dawkins here.

Nice thought experiment, but it goes against the data that we have. In order for that argument to work, your Ipod would have to have vacuum tubes attached to it. Some of them wouldn’t work anymore, but remain, while others would perform vital functions. These would then feed into the computer-chip, and so on. Life is structured very differently from buildings and to relate the two is an anthropomorphic (biomorphic?) fallacy.

Edit: Here, I think this Coleridge quote helps elucide why a computer isn’t like an organism:

“The form is mechanic, when on any given material we impressive a predetermined form, not necessarily arising out of properties of the material;-as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it develops, itself from within, and the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms;- each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within – its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror . . .”

While needlessly flowery and somewhat dated, I do think that it hits onto why a computer is so unlike a life-form. We don’t plant computer seeds, after all. Nor are completed flowers able to be assembled from their component parts. If we smash a bunch of cells together, all we’ve got is a clump of cells. There is a degree of networking that occurs as an organism develops that, at least presently, we are absolutely unable to even come close to replicating. And, more importantly, even if we could it would remain more effective to simply grow the organism and allow it to develop as opposed to computers, which cannot grow.

We will, one day soon, be able to grow a whole new SIATD or Xunzian from a drop of blood. We already can create new life from one simple fusion of two haploid cells. I cannot create a computer from a piece of chassis, nor from a fragment of its microprocessor. While the parts work together, they are independent of each other. That is very much not the case with biological life.

So, I think that your premises are flawed with respect to that argument.

/edit

First off, you are equating evolution with abiogenesis. That is wrong. They are different. Evolution can exist quite happily without abiogenesis.

And I agree with you about how we can determine ‘true’ and ‘false’, but the only way we can do this is by experimentation. And then you’ll go off on Hume.

You are also assuming that there is a hierarchy and that intelligence rests above unintelligence.

Why?

While we haven’t replicated the creation of intellect yet (so perhaps it was a divine spark), we have managed to model many other things quite accurately using natural selection. Why would intelligence be any different? It certainly could be, but I think it is safe to say that the chances of such are incredibly remote. It is possible that everybody but me is an emotionless robot, it is possible that the car I saw this morning never needs to fill its tank, but why should that be? Does it not make a great deal more sense to say that, once we have a mechanism that works for most things of a kind, that other things of the same kind would most likely be governed by that very same mechanism? It is always possible that it is an exception, but highly unlikely and there is certainly no experimental suggestion for any other mechanism.

Once again, you are putting logic before experimentation. That is backwards.

Xunzian

This is interesting to me for an important reason. Let's add to this hypothetical the further stipulation that Creation theory of the Primogenote is [i]true[/i] (that's actually what happened). What position does that put science in? Would this be something then that they are incapable of discovering, or obligated to deny if they did discover it, or what?

Ucci,
An interesting point. First off, there is an undeniable bias against theistic explanations in science, so I imagine it would take the community a generation-or-so to accept that finding. There would be a flurry of research trying to disprove it . . . but if it withstood that scrutiny, then it would have to be accepted. Woese’s Tree of Life was originally quite controversial, and that was in the early '80s, now it is a standard part of every freshman biology course.

So, if they tried to disprove it and failed, science would be forced to either accept that conclusion or to cast aside the basis upon which it rests and garners its authority from.  I also think that SETI would get a huge bump in street-cred as atheist scientists put their hopes in finding alien life so they could re-define the Creator along those lines.  

Personal bias would creep its head, but it isn’t like all scientists are raging atheists, so I think that the Creation theory would be accepted and it would be recognized that the Creator was, quite possibly, God.

I think it would be a bitter pill for many. But a pill they’d have to swallow.

The actual form of the car/computer, which makes it what it is and do what it does, is in the mind of the man who invents it applied to material resources. These machines, however, work passively and not on their own initiative – so we say they are neither living nor creative.

I think this is a very good point. And I guess the only real answer is that the distinction is a normative one. We certainly don’t consider Kant’s philosophy a new religion, yet it has a metaphysical grounding that is pretty far out.

Ok, Xunzian, so scientific bias against theism or supernatural conclusions is because of who is doing science, and not because of the nature of science itself? You still made a minute little skip over my question- I’m not so much interested in how the scientific community would respond to the finding, I’m interested in whether or not the scientific process is capable of making such a finding in the first place- which is important, since “Science can never discover it” is not the same thing as “false”.

And, some atheists are pretty dogmatic about how ridiculous they find these claims. :laughing:

One thing is for certain: it is a myth that atheism is a religion.

Though many fundamentalist Christians claim that their battle with atheism is a battle against a religion, a claim they utilitarianly make in hope that atheistic ideas won’t make their way into federal law by appeal to separation of religion and state, these claims are simply in error.

Atheism doesn’t have a tenet of “souls” and before/after life. Thus, by encyclopedic definition, it isn’t a religion.

Amusingly, the big contention between Christians and atheists – the existence of God – is immaterial to the matter of a “religious” battle, as God and religion are simply not mutually inclusive.