Ray on Occasional Days: 8:6

Onto the last stretch of The Atheist Starter Kit:

8. Deal with the threat of eternal punishment by saying that you don't believe in the existence of Hell. Then convince yourself that because you don't believe in something, it therefore doesn't exist. Don't follow that logic onto a railway line and an oncoming train.

Let me answer your analogy with another analogy, Ray.  If we were standing on a busy railway line with a train approaching, you would be quite correct to flail your arms like a lunatic, screaming that we're going to die unless we get off of the tracks.  Happily, we're actually standing in the middle of a grassy field with no train, or even train tracks, in sight.  You are still madly flailing, foaming at the mouth, insisting that we're in imminent danger of being hit by a train.  We politely ask the crazy person exactly how he comes to that conclusion, and you reply that we actually do know that the train is coming, we just don't want to have to move off of our nice, comfy patch of grass.  We politely ignore you and finish our picnic.

And this is why Christians should stick to respectful discussion, without devolving into condesending mockery of atheists' conclusions.  We can make fun of Christian beliefs too, and frankly, it seems that we're better at this game.

9. Blame Christianity for the atrocities of the Roman Catholic church--when it tortured Christians through the Spanish Inquisition, imprisoned Galileo for his beliefs, or when it murdered Moslems in the Crusades.

Wow, we really love the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, don't we, Ray!

The Roman Catholic Church and Christianity were synonomous until just a couple hundred years ago.  What does Comfort think happened between 100 AD and 1517, when Martin Luther puked forth the Protestant Reformation?  Did Christianity simply not exist during this time?

Also, again, Protestant denominations have been no less bloodthirsty, simply on a somewhat diminished scale (and this due to comparative lack of numbers and resources, obviously not a difference of ideology):  The "hunting" and slaughter of "witches" with massive bodycounts, Oliver Cromwell, institutionalized slavery, or one could actually read the writings of John Calvin or Martin Luther (or Adolf Hitler, who admired Luther a great deal, without reservation).  Protestants are certainly no strangers to atrocities.

I find it telling that a Protestant's complaints against the Catholic Church, such as those above, are so strongly supported by a biblical ideology. The root conflict, as a Protestant claims, is that Catholics don't follow the Bible strictly and to the exclusion of all other factors, yet out of all the actions committed by the Catholic Church, on any scale, the persection and slaughter of heretics is perhaps the easiest to justify with explicit Biblical scripture.  It's very entertaining that guys like Comfort, who wish to distance their own religion from the atrocities committed by others of that same religion, must resort to criticizing those horrifying actions on some vague humanistic basis.  Do they realize, on some level, that you simply can't condemn discrimination and even genocide against any variety of "unbeliever" on a strictly scriptural basis?

10. Finally, keep in fellowship with other like-minded atheists who believe as you believe, and encourage each other in your beliefs. Build up your faith. Never doubt for a moment. Remember, the key to atheism is to be unreasonable. Fall back on that when you feel threatened. Think shallow, and keep telling yourself that you are intelligent. Remember, an atheist is someone who pretends there is no God.

Again, this is hilarious.  The massive irony here is that The Atheist Starter Kit is posted on Ray's website/blog; Atheist Central.  The vast, overwhelming majority of atheists that have read this Starter Kit are visitors to a blog all about how stupid atheism is!  Ziztur and I are always up for dialogue with a theist; we consider such discussion to be the very best and most entertaining type of conversation there is.  We go to a different church each week, for fuck's sake!  We read Comfort's blog and his books (obviously), we listen to Bott Radio 91.5 FM, we read every apologist book that we can get our hands on.  Both of our libraries are stocked with Lee Strobel.  Our next piece of meat is C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.  I have several friends who believe in God, and we talk about religion all the time.  If atheists so desperately need to only hang around and listen to other atheists to cling to their shallow belief system, we are obviously failing miserably to disbelieve the way we should.

Apparently, we atheists have to be so unreasonable to maintain our lack of belief.  If this is the case, then how is it that virtually all arguments for the existence of God rest on logical fallacies?  Why can every such argument be easily shown to be invalid when applied to other situations?  If atheism is so unreasonable, then why can't anybody seem to show what's wrong with it?  I hope, Mr. Comfort, that over the course of your latest book we've demonstrated pretty conclusively how flawed your beliefs are.  We don't tell ourselves that we're intelligent, we strive to improve our thinking by rigorously testing our conclusions and discarding those that fail.

Again with the "an atheist is someone who pretends there is no God" shit.  Okay, listen.  Here's my question about this, Ray.  You insist that we actually do believe in God.  If we did believe in your God, then shouldn't it be obvious that we've broken his law with rampant sin?  If we did believe in your God and the Bible, then we would also believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we're sinners and are going to hell.  My question is; why on earth would we then reject your god, and Jesus?  The reason you always give for our rejection of your god is that "we want to remain moral free-agents."  If our motivation really is completely selfish, as you insist, then there's no conceivable way we would reject Jesus and go to hell.  Your whole assertion makes no sense.

The simple fact that we do reject Jesus should demonstrate conclusively that we don't believe in your god, or his moral code, or his threat of hell.  It's obvious why a person would believe in your religion, even if they turn out to be wrong; it could give them comfort regarding their own mortality, or it could be nothing more than an evolutionary by-product of pre-human societies.  We can accept these explanations of your beliefs, while still concluding that those beliefs are mistaken.  You cannot do this; your Bible insists that everyone has a knowledge/belief in God, so that's what you claim, but it simply makes no sense at all to insist that we believe in your God and Bible, and thus in your god's morality and hell, but that we still reject him.  The only this could possibly make logical sense is to claim that we have a terribly misguided moral principle that causes us to reject your God, even if we sacrifice ourselves in hell to stand up for that principle.  However, you then go on and on about how we only reject God out of pure selfishness.

It's just staggering, Ray.  The sheer breadth and depth of your worldview's logical failures astounds me.