Rocks and Dogs, Really?
The following video was sent to me by faithful, long-time reader Alice. It is a brilliant and logical lecture on the fundamentals of atheism and related beliefs, well worth our while. I admit, it put things in a new perspective for even me.
Excellent. My favorite line is “Those who can’t approach discussion with a basic level of intelligence and maturity shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously.” That should eliminate about nine-tenths of the opposition, I would think. I also loved the bit about why atheists are fervent. So true. So true. I will have to check out the rest of their videos. Thank you, Alice.
Ah hell! I just had to throw this one out there too. What a great evolutionary primer.
Damn! I like that guy! Go look. There are many more in a similar vein.
Well spotted Alice, but… Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to post that on my site! Does that mean I have to actually wrote something instead? Oh, [censored]!
Here’s Greta Christina on belief, and why we should avoid using the word.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/148555/is_atheism_a_belief?page=entire
And I’ll throw in the amazing AronRa.
Ahh–you posted before I did! I got interrupted twice by kiddies. Good thing I didn’t mention AaronRa (I figured you would:)) AaronRa *rocks*!
Aw, thanks! I just thought it was so clear, and cuts through to the bottom line in an easily understandable way.
Also, I couldn’t help but enjoy listening to that voice..
Beauty, Alice! It seems like I’ve run across that video recently without actually watching it. Thanks for posting it here, KK–a pithier statement of Atheism would be hard to find, I think. And in precisely ten minutes, too:)) I like the same line, KK–and the graphic of the Strong Atheist and the Unconvinced simultaneously popping theistic bubbles… I half expected a giant foot to come crashing down amid raspberries at that point.:))
Did anyone watch the response-video?
watch?v=2dAqVzKRK6I&feature=watch_response
Same old muddying the waters approach. It starts off with Atheism *can* be defined as the belief that no gods exist, or as the lack of a belief in gods, then goes on to restate what I call the Ford cars fallacy: If Ford make cars, then all cars must be Fords.
Here’s a question for everyone. In most cases, do you get the impression that theists are being deliberately dishonest, obtusive, etc, in debate, or that they honestly have no idea of the logical fallacies they spout?
I think in most cases they have no idea, because of what you might call mirroring. Is it just my imagination, or have the names of logical fallacies recently gained greater currency than the number of college graduates would suggest? Suddenly, everybody seems to be familiar with “circular argument”, “ad hominem attack”, “straw-man argument”, and so on. The (relatively) recent proliferation of books, websites, and articles in popular press refuting the theist position correctly using those sorts of logical arguments, has, I think, led to an attempt by those of the other side to use the same kind of argument by logical fallacy to refute the arguments by which they themselves were lambasted.
This is also known as the “Know You Are But What Am I” argument. It tends to go round in circles.
The ‘official’ names of the fallacies are better known, but I’d say most people already knew what they were without being able to name them.
My question was meant to address specific cases like conflating evolution with the big bang, trotting out the Hitler/Lenin/Mao/Atheist argument, the good old ‘why are there still monkeys?’ and so on. Admittedly I didn’t say so. My bad.
Given that some of the people who come out with these things seem erudite, intelligent and at least averagely well educated, I just can’t see how they couldn’t know that they’re spouting rubbish. The alternative is that they’re deliberately trying to shift the argument away from hard to answer questions about the actual existence of the god they worship, the inerrancy of their book and so on.
I think it’s hard to say whether the ducking and weaving is deliberate or not. I usually prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and say that that kind of obfuscation is not consciously deliberate. It’s possible that we should be encouraged by the decibel level of outcry against the atheist position–I think it means we’ve hit a raw nerve and there are actually many more doubters out there than we thought. Especially, I would say, people with doubts they’ve been hiding from themselves. My guess is that that’s where the “protesting too much” and the frantic attempts to shift the argument, as you say, from the hard to answer questions come from.
“Those who can’t approach discussion with a basic level of intelligence and maturity shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously”
Don’t forget the important role played by ridicule – for which a certain amount of immaturity helps (always best when based upon intelligent logical arguments, of course)!
I love these videos!
Re atheism not being a religion: I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it serve our purposes better if we said that it *was* a religion? Bear with me a sec…
If we claimed atheism was a religion, we could get back our rights that have been taken away by the theocracy supporters, claiming what *they* have crowbarred into laws is against *our* religion.
For example, in Colorado there is an amendment to the constitution proposed for this election that says a fertilized egg has the same rights as a human. This is Amendment 62, which is a repeat of Amendment 48 that failed in 2008. If passed, it would make it illegal for a woman to use birth control pills, or even to end a tubal pregnancy, or any other life-threatening zygote.
BUT!
If I claimed amendment 62 was against my religion, then I can sue the state for denying me my rights under the US Constitution, and the state would have to find a way for me to have access to my beloved little pills (and if necessary, medical procedures to save my life).
Or as another example, it’s against my religion to pay taxes that go towards teaching creationism in schools, or to provide fire and police service for churches. It’s against my religion for them to force the word god into the Pledge of Allegiance, and instead the original Pledge must be the one recited in school.
It’s just something I’ve been playing with for a couple days. Something along the lines of – if atheism is a religion, then I have First Amendment rights to the things the fundies are trying to take away from me.
What do you guys think? And why are atheists so against atheism being called a religion?
It is a seductive idea, isn’t….*sigh* I don’t think it would work though:(( I think it would eventually backfire–if the Atheist position were labeled a Religion, then the secular position we espouse as the only appropriate manner for the Public Sphere, would automatically lose it’s “secular” status and gain “religious” status. Then how does anyone behave in public? How do you decide what gets taught in school? If Atheism is declared a Religion, we lose the ability to say that our view is the one that can be applied Universally, and is therefore appropriate in schools and in public.
If Atheism were declared a Religion, religious warfare would likely be the result. We’d be right back to the 30 Years’ War and worse. All we can do is keep insisting on separation of church and state, and keep reminding the religious that that particular bit of the Constitution benefits them too.
Bum–because I can totally see the contrarian appeal of your idea:))
Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t work. I guess we’d lose more than we’d gain.