Doubting Marcus

To the Faithful: When You Wish Upon An Atheist

We are stubborn, want to sin and blind to the sight of faith. We are denialists who lie about what we know is true to justify our behavior. We are immoral and hopeless, an angry assembly of deviants. We are militant and hateful, a legitimate threat to society. We think we know everything and claim science knows the same. We know there can be no higher power because we treat ourselves as gods.

In truth atheists are simply unconvinced. Baseless speculation and accusations about the motivations behind the conclusion that atheists have drawn gets you no closer to understanding what atheists believe and why or demonstrating the truth of your religion.

If you want to know what atheists really think, just ask. It’s not hard and doing so will quickly clear up all of these myths. So the next time you are tempted to tell an atheist why they don’t believe or how we all behave, don’t.

You Couldn’t Prove Your God Even If I Assumed A God

Even if I granted the universe was created by an intelligence on purpose with the intent of forming life, I still don’t think theists could prove their claims. Given even all these unsupported assumptions we still wouldn’t know if it was a single or collective intelligence, whether that intelligence cares or knows about the affairs of humans or even if that intelligence still exists.

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy exposing the flaws in apologetic arguments for god many of which, even if accepted, only end with the conclusion that some vague creator designed the universe. The hard work of proving that this creator still exists, is omni-anything, desires a relationship with humans or ghostwrote any of our books would still be ahead of the theist in order to justify their beliefs.

I don’t see how you can logically go from “there is a god” to the truth of any prominent religion. Moreover most popular god concepts are either unknowable or impossible by definition. So here’s the challenge to the apologists of tumblr and elsewhere: Prove me wrong. Show me the evidence and rational steps even from this generous starting position to the conclusion that the creator is in fact your god. If you admit outright that it can’t be done, then you admit that there is literally no reason to accept your god claim over any other.

Are God’s Powers Magic or Supernatural?

Many religious people hate it when nonbelievers compare the supernatural abilities of their god(s) to magic but if you actually look up ‘magic’ the definition that would apply here is most often defined as something akin to ‘the ability to produce supernatural effects.’

So here’s my challenge: If there is a difference between magic and supernatural abilities, what is it?

The Bible says its true… Therefore its true

If “this book says it’s true, therefore it’s true” were a valid reason to believe a document any writings which claimed to be true would have to be hailed as true. This would literally include every theory ever proposed which purports to it’s on truth from 12 foot tall blood drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids have been secretly dominating the world for millennia to the Nazis secretly had a moon base. Therefore accepting “this document claims it is true therefore it is” as a standard of truth would lead to obvious contradictions. The problem is the mere fact a document or a claim purports to its own truth is not evidence of anything except of that very fact and this is highlighted when two truth claims contradict each other.

Further it must be acknowledged that the religious person who advances this claim (or the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita said its true version), is obviously not concerned by the fact that there are other religious texts which claim to be true and yet they do not claim that every religious text is true and they all couldn’t be anyway. To put this circular reasoning in perspective I’ll just say you can trust that I’m right about this. Why? Because this post is infallible. How do you know this? Because this post claims to be infallible. How do you… ahh forget it you get the point.

_____________________

Last Edited 4/6/12