2/26/09

stooooopid arguments


I cannot be bothered with YouTubes ridiculous 500 character limit here on GREAT ATHEISTIC QUOTES [their caps, not mine].

In spite-bite after spite-bite, a Christian pseudo-apologist regurgiquoter deludes herself into thinking that she is refuting atheism.

First, let us be clear. Atheism is simply lack of belief in gods. Incredulity comes in slightly different official degrees, but one either believes (despite lack of evidence) or one disbelieves (because of lack of evidence).

We all fail to believe in a great many things – such as purple people eaters – but atheism specifically rejects all the claims about a variety of supernatural deities.

If people would desist from believing in supernatural deities – and particularly from making claims about the existence of such imaginary entities, and especially from attacking the lives or rights of others on the basis of ancient scriptural dogma – then atheism would evaporate as a movement. Lack of belief in supernatural deities would, of course, persist because that is the only rational position in light of the utter lack of evidence or evidence that cannot be better explained otherwise.

AnnaAgainstAtheists – how imaginative! – has poured out fallacy after fallacy in a vain attempt to make her case. Mostly, she resorts to fallacious ad hominems that appear to originate in her unwarranted and obvious arrogance. I won't bore you with all her regurgiquoted fallacies. Suffice to say that there is not a single cogent argument amongst all her verbose outpourings.

I thought that I knew where her quoting an American court decision** was going, but I asked for clarification just in case I was doing her intellect an injustice.

I was not.

Anna was probably relying on the possibility that tuber have not done their homework. She was going after one of the currently too-popular tu quoque equivocations. Anna also loves the typical religionist ploy of assuming that uppercase will make her nonsense TRUE.

"That LACKBELIEFS claims by atheists are nonsensical because Atheism has been legally recognised as an alternative (Godless) religion, and that atheists who fail to recognise this are worryingly incoherent and insincere with themselves and have lost the place in life and need to pray to God to find their way again, and tthat's my point."

The case? In essence, federal inmate "Kaufman's argument that the prison officials violated his constitutional rights when they refused to give him permission to start a study group for atheist inmates at the prison."

It transpired that the court decided that Kaufman's First Amendment Rights had indeed been violated.

So what?

Legal definitions have zero to do with the truth value of any of the beliefs in question. Period.

Neither do dictionary definitions of religion inform about the truth value of religions. In the court case, the broadest definition of religion was employed, rendering the question of atheism's being a "religion" virtually meaningless.

This still has zero to do with questions concerning the truth value of atheism or of theisms.

In short, it's yet another stooooopid, theistic tu quoque ploy.

It has also been my repeated observation that theists care nothing about truth, and little, if anything about morality. Moralistics, yes. Morality, no.

Anna has clearly lost her way in a rational sense. Whatever her education, she flunks Logic 101.

Despite all her rantings against atheism, she seems oblivious to the fact that preaching that atheists ought to pray to an Imaginary SkyPoppa are both pointless and circular. She seems unaware that most atheists are better educated than she. Anna is also unaware that her ridiculous arguments have been repeatedly refuted in the comments section.

However, the first essential of being a true believer is to eschew all sense of reality.

Go back to Chapel, or wherever, Anna! You are wasting your time and ours.

Except, of course, for the fact that I enjoy refuting religionist illogic.


**An excerpt:

"The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a "religion" for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, most recently in McCreary County, Ky. v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., ___ U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 2722, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2005). The Establishment Clause itself says only that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," but the Court understands the reference to religion to include what it often calls "nonreligion." In McCreary County, it described the touchstone of Establishment Clause analysis as "the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion." Id. at *10 (internal quotations omitted). As the Court put it in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S.Ct. 2479, 86 L.Ed.2d 29 (1985):
7
At one time it was thought that this right [referring to the right to choose one's own creed] merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.
8
Id. at 52-53, 105 S.Ct. 2479. In keeping with this idea, the Court has adopted a broad definition of "religion" that includes non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as theistic ones. Thus, in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 81 S.Ct. 1680, 6 L.Ed.2d 982, it said that a state cannot "pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can [it] aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs." Id. at 495, 81 S.Ct. 1680. Indeed, Torcaso specifically included "Secular Humanism" as an example of a religion. Id. at 495 n. 11, 81 S.Ct. 1680.
9
It is also noteworthy that the administrative code governing Wisconsin prisons states that one factor the warden is prohibited from considering in deciding whether an inmate's request to form a new religious group should be granted is "the absence
from the beliefs of a concept of a supreme being." See Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 309.61(d)(3), cited in Kaufman v. McCaughtry, 2004 WL 257133, at *9. Atheism is, among other things, a school of thought that takes a position on religion, the existence and importance of a supreme being, and a code of ethics. As such, we are satisfied that it qualifies as Kaufman's religion for purposes of the First Amendment claims he is attempting to raise."

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