Let’s Stop Calling New Atheism, “Atheism,” and Start Calling it What it is: Anti-Theism

[wickerwoman]

177. Look,

I think it's pointless to continue this discussion if you can't see the qualitative difference between scientific evidence and belief/"say so". That is what I was trying to demonstrate with my earlier example. There are literally hundreds of other examples of scientific theories challenging religious dogma where the scientific theories can be, for all intents and purposes, "proven" and where any thinking and intellectually honest person would need to accept the scientific theory as superior to belief/"say so".

There is a process for establishing facts, evidence and proof which has given us modern medicine, computers, spaceships, agriculture, civil engineering, and on and on and which saves literally millions of lives every single year. We can apply that process to theology whether we happen to believe in God or not. And when we do, the weight of the evidence strongly suggests that God does not exist or if something like a god exists it is in a form so abstract that praying to it or worshipping it is meaningless.

1. God exists. Is supported by historic texts written by people X number of years ago asserting that divine truth has been revealed to them. Is supported by witnesses claiming to have experienced miracles. Is partially supported by the difficulty of human understanding trying to grasp the complexity of the universe.

2. God does not exist. Is supported by the fact that no one can prove they have ever seen or spoken with it. Is supported by the fact that prayer cannot be reliable and repeatedly shown to work. Is supported by myriad logical, factual, and textual inconsistencies in the sacred texts and the fact that many of them can be shown to be drawn from earlier myths or to be self-serving constructions of institutions. Is supported by thousands of scientific discoveries and observations that have disproven explanations provided by sacred texts. Is supported by the fact that sacred institutions have changed their position on a number of points repeatedly despite claiming to be repositories of divine truth and, in the case of the Pope, to be the infallible spokesperson of God. Is supported by the impossibility of logically reconciling human suffering with an interventionist and benevolent deity.

Good people, in the name of religion, have done good things. I am not disputing that. People take comfort in the idea of God or heaven. Fine. As long as they do not assert that they "know" there is a God or try to stop other people from questioning because "we'll never be able to understand" or "one belief is as good as another". If we all accepted that we'd still be sitting in huts dropping dead of the flu, malaria and polio by the millions and waiting for the next earthquake, flood or plague to wipe out our crops and houses.

We are discussing theism vs. anti-theism. Theism is defined as "belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures." As I have demonstrated in earlier posts an interventionist God cannot be logically reconciled with human suffering or numerous natural phenomena. I am anti-theist in that I oppose 1.) anyone asserting that divine truth has been revealed to them in a way that is not repeatable or demonstrable to others 2.) anyone asserting that the "big questions" are unknowable and we should be content with "belief" instead of striving to answer them 3.) praying to an interventionist God that causes or allows things like the Holocaust, crib deaths, severe birth defects, devastating natural disasters, etc. in order to "teach us lessons" 4.) worshipping/praying to a non-interventionist god to convince it to intervene when clearly it either cannot or is unwilling to (or does not exist).