In this video, I survey five rhetorical categories of comparison that village atheists/new atheists make with belief in God. And I explain why each one of them is little more than an ignorant attempt to poison the well.
village atheism
On Richard Dawkins and His Many Gods
I just set out to tweet on Richard Dawkins’ new book Outgrowing God. My quick comment became several tweets and I decided to repost those tweets here. And so, without further ado: The first chapter of Richard Dawkins’ new anti-religious screed is titled “So many gods!” And it points out that — wait for it […]
God and the Tooth Fairy
Two days ago, I posted the following tweet: “Every time I hear an atheist compare belief in God to belief in the ‘tooth fairy’ I get more evidence for my observation that atheists don’t even understand what they are rejecting.” The tweet elicited several responses. Predictably, those included responses that defended the analogy by insisting […]
God sacrificed himself to himself, blah blah blah
Here’s another retweet from Jeff Lowder at Secular Outpost. (And keep in mind that retweeting is not endorsing.) This one perfectly illustrates the problem I highlighted in my previous article “On Scientific (and Philosophical and Theological) Ignorance“: https://twitter.com/LindaBeatty/status/806997788768620548 This is one of the more persistent atheist memes that trade on bracing theological ignorance. Indeed, I […]
Village Atheism and Appalachian Snake Handlers
There are two billion Christians on earth. And in the wilds of Appalachia a handful of those Christians form a tiny Pentecostal sect known as the Appalachian Snake Handlers. Given the minuscule size and fringe nature of the group, they don’t tend to come up in regular conversation. Indeed, the only time I ever hear about […]
One person’s wrestling with tales of mass murder is another person’s belly laugh
I owe this quote to the prolific Edward T Babinski who commented in response to my article “The Bible and Violence: A Biblical Bibliography“: “Randal, One person’s ‘wrestling’ with tales of mass murder in their ‘holy book’ is another person’s belly laugh.” I really enjoyed this quote because it concisely summarizes a village atheist (or village […]
Why more atheists need to speak out against village atheism
Over the last five years that I have been blogging I have noted the extensive presence of village atheism within the infidel blogosphere. While the blogosphere also has its share of “village Christians”, what is particularly ironic about the proliferation of village atheism is the fact that the online atheist/skeptic community persistently tries to brand […]
John Loftus defends Boghossian’s “rhetoric” because the man has found “the truth”
Imagine that a Christian — let’s call him “Pastor Bob Gossian” — were to write an evangelistic manual on how to convert atheists to “the Truth” titled A Manual for Creating Christians. And then imagine that an atheist were to write a review in which he critiqued the definitions Bob Gossian offers for terms like […]
Leprechauns and God
The village atheist rejection of God is hugely dependent on an argument from personal incredulity. Such was the essence of Curt Cameron’s interesting leprechaun response to my analysis of protest atheism. The logical structure of these “arguments” is rarely if ever articulated explicitly. But so far as I can see the argument proceeds like this: (1) The idea that p’s […]
