RE: Are Atheists using Intellectually Dishonest Arguments?
March 7, 2018 at 11:34 pm
(This post was last modified: March 7, 2018 at 11:35 pm by Whateverist.)
(March 7, 2018 at 7:27 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Keneinan made three main points, each divided into various subpoints:
1) Atheists often suffer from a "persistent inability or refusal to distinguish God from a god or gods"
I agree with your dismissal of this point. Furthermore God, gods and god are all to poorly defined terms.
(March 7, 2018 at 7:27 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: 2) Atheists often presume "belief in scientism, the logically incoherent claim that 'only scientific knowledge is valid/real/genuine knowledge'"
In my experience this is her best source of criticism. Some atheists, upon leaving a religion, do seem to over react in this direction. Some of us will claim they will only believe that for which there is adequate evidence, when no one can live a life that way. Some seem to expect science to rule on all questions, when science is not germane to answering all questions.
(March 7, 2018 at 7:27 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: 3) Atheists often engage in "persistent use of the burden of proof fallacy, that is, the rhetorical trope which combines an argument from ignorance (“my position is the default position,” i.e. “my position is true until proven false, so I need not argue for it) with special pleading.
She gets no traction here and it makes me wonder if she defines atheism as holding the positive belief that gods do not exist, as if we actually understood what "gods" refers to. No one owes anyone an explanation for why they do not take the question of god belief seriously. Until terms are defined and reason provided to think the question matters, meh is a perfectly reasonable response.