A Lone Thought

I just stumbled upon an interesting article from the "Institude for Creation Research". I was looking for someone else in Google, but this page caught my interest. Let's do a line by line analysis of it, shall we?

Atheism is a worldview

Atheism is not a worldview.

in which there is no God.

'There is no belief in a God.' I like it how they spin it so that the opening sentence instantly gives the impression atheists are evil bloodsucking heathens. Get the point out early eh?

Adherents

I do not adhere to anything! This makes it seem like it's some sort of doctrine or dogma. A dictionary has "supporter or follower" as the definition for adherent, so okay you can have that one.

believe that life sprang from natural forces, not intelligence

That sounds more like a naturalist than an atheist to me. Nothing in atheism specifies it had to be natural. It is simply a lack of belief in a god. Raelianism anyone?

and that the cosmos made itself--or at least organised itself out of raw materials that were just there.

Quite honestly the cosmos looks anything but organised. Also, no-one is suggesting it simply "made itself". And strictly speaking - materials = matter = WRONG. Energy on the otherhand...

"New atheists" include Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion; Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; and Sam Harris, with The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Their bestselling books are characterized by vitriolic disdain for those who believe in God.

Disdain? Well, I don't think I would go that far. Furthermore, I'm quite sure that these books don't target specific individuals, rather the ideologies themselves. Hitchens is particuarly scathing in God is Not Great, so it's likely he probably did target specific individuals (I've forgotten - but I'm quite sure he does).

The new atheists do not restrict themselves to passive disbelief.

I'm still not sure what is so 'new' about it. Regardless, damn right it's not a passive disbelief. With crackpot organizations like this guy's no wonder we're up in arms about religion!

Rather, they actively admonish others to not believe in God, and take strong steps to rid the world of its "contemptible" acknowledgement of any deity, and especially of theism.¹ As Dawkins said, "I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself."²

Right. So he warns them. That's not trying to 'rid the world' of it. I could have a problem with anyone who didn't warn people against faith. I hate that word - the pure ignorance people express by holding onto it oh so tightly - it drives me nuts! I wonder if this quote was taken out of context too.

An ironic feature of new atheism is its strong faith in the inferiority of having faith.

OF COURSE IT IS HOW CLEVER OF YOU!!! Now say hello to my little unicorn.

Before they attack it, new atheists first redefine faith to mean "belief without evidence."

1. Go to dictionary.com

2. Type 'faith' in the search field

3. ????

4. PROFIT!

Then they limit evidence to that which can be tested through empirical science.3

Well, if you have a better way of ascertaining knowledge with a relatively high degree of knowledge that is better than the current system we already have, please! Leave a comment!

This is absurd, like requiring an experiment to prove a father's love for his children.

Great analogy. Who care! Let's run with it! By measuring the activity in certain areas of his brain we would be able to get an indication of how much he loves his children based on how much the pleasure/love/etc senses heat up. If a husband kills his family, he might say he did it out of love. He was only trying to protect them, perhaps. Love comes in many shapes and sizes. This guy would probably argue the father did not love his children, otherwise he wouldn't of committed those atrocities. Nice try but no.

Just as we use our senses, logic, and circumstantial evidence to deduce the truth of a father's love, we can discover God through non-empirical means.

Through...perhaps...faith? OH SHI-

New atheists believe that empirical science is the true path to understanding.

More of this 'dogma' rubbish. While that view may or may not be consistant with atheism, atheism has nothing in itself to lead to such an opinion.

However, since the very concept of "empiricism"--that science is the only way to "know" something--is not itself a product of any scientific experiment, it distills to a faith after all.

The methods we use have self evidently shown to be an effective means of gathering and understanding data and information from and about the real world. This is not faith. If you see a flower grow in front of you - is that faith? No. You have good reason to suggest what has happened happened.

Faith is not "belief without evidence," but rather a decision to reckon as true (actual or real) something that is not visible. Empiricism is an idea. Ideas are not visible. New atheists therefore have strong faith, though not in God.⁴

Great reasoning. A decision to reckon as true something that is not visible. Well...most of the EM spectrum isn't visible, so I guess I know most of that because of faith...? Or perhaps this guy is just trying to reword "belief without evidence" into a less obvious form. Ideas may not be visible, but the atoms on which they rely are - as are the actions that are performed as a result of them. And regardless of this, it is a complete non sequitur. I have good reason to know whether my ideas can be reliable or not - based on my past understanding and experiences of the real world. I might get an idea to jump off a cliff - does that make it a good idea?

Many popular philosophies are self-refuting

Omnipotence omniscience - oh wait that's not a philosophy. Damn! Can the Bible be a philosophy now? Can it can it please? Atheism isn't a philosophy though - thanks for the sraw man!

which means that they do not meet their own standards and thus self-destruct.⁵

Wouldn't they be self refuting if they just contradicted various things they stood for, making it internally inconsistent, like much of Christianity?

One example of a self-refuting claim is the common statement "all truth is relative."

Who is making that claim? True in what sense? I don't think I would make the assertion all truth is relative. Logical absolutes for example, are always true no matter what. That's an example of a "truth" per se. Another good example is what Dawkins brings up in The God Delusion. You could not get out of a court hearing when asked if you were in Chicago at the time of the killing by saying "well it depends what you mean by the term 'in'. In a certain culture you are not truly in a place unless you are the lead elder and entitled to do something with a goat" to paraphrase obviously.

This cannot be. If all truth is relative, then the supposed truth that "all truth is relative" would itself be relative, and therefore not true. Consider the assertion "we cannot ultimately grasp meaning in an absolute way." If that were true, then one would not be able to grasp the meaning of that very statement.

A good way to deal with self-refuting truth claims is to ask honest questions about them. For example, a response to the assertion "all truth is relative" could be to ask, "So, is that relatively true?" Likewise, one who denies that truth is knowable could be questioned with, "How can we then know for sure that truth cannot be surely known?"

Well I don't really accept the relative truth premise in the first place, what's more I'm not really equipped to argue against that as I don't know that much about it.

Empiricism is also self-refuting, and therefore should not be believed.

*Accepted

Its essence could be stated as "experimental science is the only way to know something for sure." We might then ask, "What was the scientific experiment that demonstrated that experimental science is the only way to know something for sure?"

It has shown to be a successful way of gaining knowledge over and over and over again, without fail. As I've already said, if you have a better system please feel free to comment, explaining how it achieves the goals the current method does - in detail, as well as how your method is better.

In contrast to the self-refuting doctrines that atheism must hold to

THERE IT IS HE SAID IT! ATHEISM HAS NO DOCTRINE!

theism is aligned with the reality of a transcendent and necessary Being; not, as new atheists claim, with a fairy tale.

You have made an assertion. Congratulations. Please demonstrate your assertion or else your claim will have just as much evidence as a fairy tail.

Biblical theism begins with the sensible concept, assumed in Genesis

A sensible concept in Genesis. Hahaha!

of an infinite Creator who formed a finite creation

Who was clever enough to fill in the loophole by positing he can be infinite, but his creation can't.

Knowledge of our holy God

Holy? Are you kidding me! Have you even read the damn thing! To be fair though there are multiple definitions of holy, and I just used the 'deserving of special respect' one, so I guess I could let that one pass.

HOLY?!

is generally available through our observation of the natural world.

This reminds of me of Ray Comfort's apologetic where he says 'if you put a painting in a room with a bunch of scientists and leave them in there for a while, you could be sure enough that they would come to the conclusion it needed a creator!' Nonsense! The only conclusion they could possibly come to is that the painting was there when they got there. They have no idea who or what made it. They might also have an opinion on how good a paitning it is... but the point remains. The painting is not proof of the painter - simply the painting itself. In the natural world I see the natural world. Can't see any references to the supernatural though.

This is enough to reveal man’s sin-induced separation from Him.⁶

Not this shit again. Ironically a week or two ago I was talking with my religion teacher about Genesis and she asked me if I thought anyone took it literally - I said no - to which she replied 'of course not it's just for interpretation'. And yet you see asshats like this running around spirting crap like that out. Adam and Eve never existed.

However, only the Bible reveals that He has performed the necessary work to reconcile us back to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ

Only the Christian Bible. Jews don't believe that shit.

and for His glory.⁷ So based on the evidence of what He has made and done, we can believe in and know Him.

I like it how he references a Bible verse for this - as if that makes it any less credible. How can you 'know' him from seeing his creation! I can tell you right now I don't know Bill Gates or Steve Jobs at all. I think I'm getting ripped off!