I am looking for the most irritating, sinister or downright funny example of the ever-popular "but atheism is a faith position too" move. Any more entries...?
(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen...
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Logically, you cannot have a "lack of belief in". What you have to do instead is "believe in the lack of" deity. If you want to be agnostic and simply say "I don't know if deity(ies) exist or not", then do so. It is easier, and better, to change your label than to try to change a definition all of us are using to try to communicate better.
I submit that atheists are so busy trying to change the definition is because they do recognize that they are making a statement of faith, but don't have the courage to acknowledge it.
P.S. Why always the horrendous grammar? :(
To give you just a taste, take only the concluding three points:
There really is no reason in the general nature of reality why "Mere Christianity" or any other view should or should not be true. This constitutes what older thinkers used to refer to as the "antecedent credibility" of Christianity (or other views).
Thesis: Most of 'the faith of unbelief' that exists today in the concrete form of individual personalities is morally irresponsible—because not rationally sustained—and would be recognized as the superstition it most often is, but for the fact that it is vaguely endorsed by the intellectual system. One might be rational, as above defined, and not believe, in my opinion. But I think this is highly unlikely, and am sure it rarely ever actually occurs. (This opens up another set of issues about belief in relation to evidence.)
If, now, one says that current belief is just as morally irresponsible as current unbelief, or even more so, we can only ask: "And how does that help?" Do we not, whoever we are, owe it to ourselves and those around us to be serious about questions of major importance to human well-being?
Imagine electing to do study philosophy and ending up in his class!
Excellent prize though!!
This is the premise behind why we here at AtheismsFallacies.com think that Atheism is a religion. The term atheism comes from the Greek word atheos, meaning godless. Atheos is derived from 'a', meaning "without," and 'theos', meaning "deity". Simply put Atheism literally means "no god". But the problem is that Atheists don't leave it at that. They promote the idea and come up with a belief system to try and prove that there is no god. In fact Atheists by their own admission adhear [sic] to a set of doctrinal beliefs!
If you are posting to attack the author, website owner, or what we believe then don’t waste your time. You won’t change my mind so don’t bother trying.
And we're the dogmatic ones!
I know this is not an original thought, but it just struck me afresh reading BB's quotations.