Having written a little essay about atheism offsite at www.creation.com/atheism I have encountered certain comments that have been made about it and I thought that it may be interesting to consider, and respond, to them.
Let us consider comments posted to Apologetics 315, comments posted to RichardDawkins.net’s forum (who were kind enough to besmirch it), comments posted to Free Republic (who were kind enough to link to it), comments posted to the essay itself and a comment posted to the essay which was followed up on the Arizona Atheist blog.
Apologetics 315
Brian, Apologetics 315’s administrator, put it well when he stated that the comments section to his reference to my essay got weird really fast. Note that I will remove the names/pseudonyms for all comment wherever they were made (except for Brian’s) as they did not comment at Atheism is Dead.
Indeed, it did get weird very quickly as the very first comment stated,
Asking creationists to tell “All About Atheism” is like getting the truth about Christianity from Sufi Muslim. Disappointing post of ad hominem and strawmen links from Apologetics315.
I would imagine that they did not read the essay but commit the ad hominem in presupposing that since I am not an atheist my content is fallacious. I wonder if they would write to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, et al and tell them that “Asking an atheist to tell “All About Theism” is like getting the truth about Christianity from Sufi Muslim”?
Of course, Brian asked the logical question,
Please let us know what the ad hominems and straw men are; and explain how your comment is not an ad hominem itself.
The next comment was even worse than the first, to which it referred,
I’ve not read the pdf [Brian provided a PDF file] yet so really cannot comment, but it looks like [name removed] said it before I did anyway :-)The blog “Atheism is Dead” is a poor place for discussion in my opinion, but maybe it has changed since.
Let us review: they did not read the essay, they recognize that they should not be commenting but they know that the criticism is accurate. This is an argumentum ad gut reactionum.
Atheism is Dead is a fine place for a discussion yet, I personally had to go from responding to everyone on everything to focusing on writing posts and caring for my growing family. Yet, this itself is an ad hominem as they discount the contents of the essay by making a point about the blog to which its author posts.
Again came Brian making sense and everything—how bothersome!
Sure would be nice to hear some engagement with the content instead of prejudicial ad hominem statements. : )
The next comment attempted to provide actual arguments from the actual essay yet, I am afraid that they may have been employing dictionary definitions of logical fallacies while not really knowing how to employ them, as they write:
argumentum ad hominem = “argument against the man”From the article:Christopher Hitchens, … asks the philosophically naïve question,[Dan Barker’s] “reasoning” [why is that in quotes?]
Let us understand that an ad hominem is not merely making a statement about, or to, the hominid. It is making a statement about the hominid while ignoring the hominid’s argument. You could say, “The Christian from Atheism is Dead wrote an essay about atheism, so that essay is a priori discredited” this would be an ad hominem. But if you say “The Christian from Atheism is Dead wrote an essay about atheism, Christianity is poppycock and the blog is a poor place for discussion but I read the essay and it is wrong because…” this is not an ad hominem.
Now, what if Christopher Hitchens asked a philosophically naïve question? Can we not state that it was so? We can if we also respond to the naïvety. His question was “Who created the Creator?” which is indeed naïve (and which I dealt with in the parsed essay On the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorns, et al.).
And what about those quotes? Now this is a good question.Firstly, I should note, for what it is worth, that I did not write that Christopher Hitchens “asks the philosophically naïve question.” This was quoted from the little caption-like boxes that were placed around the essay and authored by I know not who; they are not quotes from the essay (which someone who read the essay would know).
As for Dan Barker, why is it that I quote “reasoning”? Well, some context would have been nice as it answers the question:
With regards to Dan Barker, let us lastly note that he also argues that rape is not absolutely immoral. His “reasoning” involves a hypothetical scenario in which malevolent aliens from outer space attack Earth.
Since in order to justify his particular, and peculiar, take on relative ethics he must remove himself from reality and concoct scenarios involving aliens and rape he is “reasoning.” I wrote quite a bit about this in the parse essay Dan Barker and the Alien Rape Voyeurs.
The commentator continues:
The article is more about atheist comments not about atheism with compulsory Stalin reference.Mariano runs several hate blogs (ad hominem blogs) against prominent atheists Dawkins, Harris and Barker. Links to those sites are on the front page of atheism_is_dead blog.BTW, have you notice that creation.com always uses agry [sic] face picture of Dawkins. I guess they want him to look bad… [ellipses in original]
I thought that all atheism was is atheists commenting about atheism. Is atheism not in the eye of the beholder? Pop-New Atheists argue that the only thing that atheism is and that atheists have in common is a lack of belief in god(s). The superfluity which follows in what the individual atheist then goes on to make of their particular lack is that which “atheism” mostly consists: commenting about their atheism.
I am not certain what is wrong with noting the atheist Joseph Stalin when discussing atheism and the New Atheist tendency of attempting to re-write history as recent as the last century (see my Essays Particular to Nazism and Communism).
I am also not certain how they define “hate” as my blogs are about polemics and we have already seen this person does not seem to understand ad hominems. If they define criticism as “hate” then they must be very hateful. Note that this is a near ad hominem as I may be very hateful indeed but this would not make me a priori wrong.
Another near ad hominem is criticizing the usage of angry Richard Dawkins pictures on the website that hosts the essay. I have actually not ascertained the percentage of angry face photos but one thing is certain, Richard Dawkins does a fine job of looking bad all by himself.
Next the logical dissection continues:
A straw man = “misrepresentation of an opponent’s position”From the article:“atheists define “evil” based on personal preferences. This means that they cannot logically formulate an argument for the problem of evil without first providing an absolute definition of evil.”
No need for “an absolute definition”.
This is actually the entirety of the statement which was commenting on the section creation.com/atheism#problem-of-evil. This is a case of wanting it both, or various, ways: we want to besmirch Christianity for “evil” done in its name, we want to excuse atheism for “evil” done in its name, of course we want to blame God for all “evil” in general but we have no need for an “an absolute definition” of what that “evil” may be.
Yet, if your personal preferences based definition of “evil” conflicts with mine then the only way that you can in any way beyond merely expressing your personal preferences condemn my “evil” without an absolute definition would be to appeal to your personal preferences—and now we are arguing in a circle.