I say “debate” because that which follows is part of a discussion/debate derived from a blog that I used to run wherein I had originally posted the essay, Speaking of Assiduous Absconders…Yet Again, Vox Day Challenges PZ Myers to Debate (see my debate section in general for more).
Not content to let the facts speak for themselves an atheist came to the rescue of their cult of personality’s cenobite.
Much was discusses yet, I want to focus upon the aspects of the conversation in which we considered morality.
From the get go, you could tell that the discussion would, not surprisingly, be heavy on emotive assertions and light on substance. This was the kind of guy who basically performed anti-Christian related internet searches and then copy and pasted whatever came up. And so not only is Vox Day, according to this atheist’s estimation, not worthy of having PZ Myers coming down from his lofty imitation-ivory tower but why not take a swipe at his father, while we are at it:
Tell you what…we’ll take Myers and the other godless sciencebloggers, and you can keep Vox Day, and his crazy dad!…
there’s a reason why Myers calls Vox Day names…he deserves them.
Amongst other things, I noted,
You end up proving my point about “their fans who follow behind cleaning up their messes and excusing any and everything”…
By the way, you only quote Vox Day from one of his own websites/blogs once, the rest are from secondary sources (out of the 18 hyperlinks that you provided). That does not necessarily mean that he has been taken out of context or misrepresented but it makes one suspect that you are not reading the originals for context but relying on someone else to tell you what he says and what he means when he says it.
Ok, so, let us get to it as I stated,
I agree that “religious belief has been responsible for killing people for century after century” please inform me as to how you condemn these actions.
By the way, see Find it Fast – Fast Facts: on religious wars and Is the Atheist Argument from Religious Violence Cogent? for details on this issue.
So, how does he condemn these actions?
Here is the entirety of his answer,
Easy. I condemn them. I thought that context was easy enough to see. I guess not.
Well, obviously, or so I thought, anyone can inhale and cause the oxygen to be exhaled through their vocal cords whilst intonating moral condemnations. That might, at some level, answer “how” he condemns it but it is not exactly what I had in mind and so I thought to elucidate:
I stated and asked, “I agree that ‘religious belief has been responsible for killing people for century after century’ please inform me as to how you condemn these actions.”
Your answer was, “Easy. I condemn them. I thought that context was easy enough to see. I guess not.”I guess not as well. I do not get your point unless it is that you condemn them because you condemn them.
Does an atheist condemn certain actions because they are immoral or are certain actions immoral because an atheist decided to condemn them?
This last line is also what I asked as part of my opening statement in my formal debate with an atheist on the issue of morality. Here is a sample (you can watch the entire debate at this link):
We will consider his response in the next segment.