Too stupid to be real

Well, from the department of the ineducable idiocy, I have found a blog which I don’t for one second think is a legit creationist / theist blog. I refuse to accept that anyone can be as stupid as this person, yet still be able to breathe unaided. Seriously. Still, it has given me a chance to rant about a few topics which have been annoying me lately.

The blog in question is called “Atheist Stooges” and, from that name alone, you just know it is going to be full of juicy idiocy. In this instance, the idiocy is so bizare I can only assume (hope?) that this is a wind up. Can people honestly hold to ideas like this and still function in society?

The blog has an article called “Enter the excavation” which really does hit a new nadir of nonsense. The basic crux of what is a long, wordy and badly written, post is that because you can not pin down a point in time which some human invented Atheism it must be sent by demons. What wonderful logic. There are so many fallacies in the post it would take months to unravel them all. This tends to happen when you take a false premise and try to make conclusions based on it though.

The opening paragraph sets the tone:

Do you know that if you make an endeavor to find out when and by whom atheism was authored you will not be able to find such information from any source? Not even the most “educated” atheists – particularly those associated with the most elite universities throughout the world can truthfully inform you when and by whom atheism originated. They can enlighten you as to who were its main perpetuators in different cultures; but they cannot identify its founder and when it actually originated.

Yes, well… Sadly, through his devout ignorance (or desire to wind up others), the author ignores the basic situation. People are born not believing in Gods, which is a concept we (in modern times) have named “atheism.” This means it is not a religion which can be “authored” in the manner of Christianity, Judaism etc.

Amazing this seems a very difficult concept for theists to grasp. The web is full of examples of people who genuinely think “Atheism” is a religion which teaches a doctrine in which there is no (usaually Christian) God. This is infuriatingly flawed logic, although thankfully some theists are able to move beyond this nonsense, not many do.

Atheism has no “doctrine.” It has no priest hood. Atheists are not required to agree on things, nor can it be assumed they have any shared thinking — other than not believing in the existence of Gods. The debate over terminology can go on for ever, and for some it is important. Some see “not believing X exists” as the same as “believing X does not exist.” I do not.

For me, the second sentence implies X exists and the person chooses to believe otherwise. This presents an a priori assumption about X and also implies that the person will maintain their belief about X in the face of genuine evidence. I am the first to admit that if God appeared in the heavens I would instantly accept his existence as real. I don’t believe Santa Claus exists reads (to me, this is my blog remember) differently to I believe Santa Clause does not exist.

Evidence is key. It can be argued (and has been by much better people than myself) that evidence undermines faith and belief, as they are based on assuming something is true without supporting evidence. When we see evidence, we see a fact. This may well be the case, I am unconvinced at this time. In my life, I have yet to encounter any evidence that any deity exists. Theists point to a variety of “proofs” that a Supreme Being exists, normally based on the theist not knowing any science, which even if taken as real proofs go nowhere towards identifying which deity exists.

Out of sheer mischievousness, we can modify Pascals wager. There is either a deity or no deity. This gives us a 50:50. Seems an even bet. However on the “is” side, is an infinite set of possible deities. Some of which will punish you worse for worshipping a false god than worshipping no god. The chance of the deity you pick being the correct one is around 1/∞. Would you take a bet on those odds? 🙂

Returning to the main topic for a second, if you haven’t already done so, check out the Atheist Stooges site. It is full of posts which have nothing but nonsense and woo in them. It is amazing someone has spent the time required to type all that up…

[tags]Atheist, Atheism, Theist, Religious Nutter, Religious Fool, Idiot, Idiocy, Nutcase, Crackpot, Woo, Insane, Creationism, ID, Intelligent Design, irrational, religious-delusion, religion, religious-intolerance, ranting-christian-fool, logical-fallacy, creationist-idiots, creationist-fools, creation, crackpottery, crank, society, Pascals Wager, Pascal, Deities, Infinity[/tags]

9 thoughts on “Too stupid to be real

  1. Oh, yes, he really *is* that stupid. Check out this MySpace page that someone created to help teach this wacko a lesson: myspace.com/atheist_stooges

  2. Oh goodness. This atheist stooges guy is quite stupid. Of course no one can say who the first atheist was. It was probably some prehistoric guy. He acts as if atheism is some organization that needs a founder, when it’s simply lack of belief in a deity.

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