Are Atheists using Intellectually Dishonest Arguments?

[wiploc]

So, last week I was browsing the internets and came across a blog post by Eve Keneinan entitled "Intellectually Dishonest Atheists." 

I clicked the link hoping to find an article which would make some significant points and perhaps challenge me to become more intellectually honest. I was sorely disappointed. The article did not challenge me at all. Well... maybe a little bit... but for the most part I felt like I didn't get my money's worth (and keep in mind the article was free to read online.)

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"

When I want to capitalize, I tend to use Jehovah's name.  If I don't want to capitalize, I use "god."  Christians often try to prove a god, and then make a logical leap, assuming that the god they have "proven" is Jehovah.  (See the first cause argument.)  As a way of coping whith the confusion which that move causes, I try not to capitalize the word "God."   

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.

People who identify as atheists generally use the word to refer to all non-theists.  Nontheism is the default position.  When Keneinan says that atheism "means the negation of theism," she's using a different definition of "atheist."  If we define atheism her way, then atheism obviously isn't the default position.  And we don't claim that strong atheism (the belief that gods don't exist) is the default position.  

I have trouble believing that she made that misrepresentation accidentally.  And if it was an accident, she's in no position to be carping about people who have trouble distinguishing "god" from "God."  

A persistent inability or refusal to distinguish God from a god or gods. This is a distinction 3 or 4-year-old children can easily grasp, so any atheist who claims not be be able to grasp it is either severely intellectually impaired or lying.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a contradiction.  Nobody can understand a contradiction.  Not 3 or 4 year old children, and not adults with advanced degrees in theology.  If Keneinan is a Christian, then she's totally out of line for making fun of people who don't comprehend nonsense that she can't understand herself.  

Why do I feel that this article, in the course of criticizing intellectual honesty, is it itself intellectually dishonest?

It's clear that she's lying.  [/quote]