Biff

Hi, guys. I'm curious what you think about this article?

I've had a few email exchanges with this "Christian Libertarian". He seems to be well read, but more ideological than well-reasoned. Any thoughts?

Biff

DMB

It is full of the usual threadbare arguments. Science does not involve faith. Ethics aren't viewed by anyone as a myth, although we may view the theistic base of some ethical systems as mythical.

He seems to be taking the dubious position that any religion is better than none as a basis for ethics.

The serious point he doesn't address is truth. What use is an ethical system based on the untruths of religion?

Yahzi

Do you suppose he throws salt over his left shoulder? Avoids walking under ladders and crossing paths with black cats? Spills a bit of wine on the ground for Zeus, Odin, or Ra?

The irony of a man who dismisses all other religions as superstition, while making fun of people who dismiss his religion as superstition.

This is the opening freaking sentence, and already I think this guy is a pretentious fool.

Oh and then he goes on to blame Voltaire for the "murderous excesses" of the French Revolution. As if the royalty who mercilessly oppressed the peasantry had nothing to do with it.

That's the second paragraph.

The third paragraph he claims science is just faith. As if the replicabilty of scientific expierements were indistinguishable from the effects of prayer.

If I wrote a column this hostile to religious people, even atheists would denounce me. But because he's writing from God's Love, it's ok.

Autonemesis

And so the Christian can conveniently shrug off the consequences his actions by claiming he was only following the Bible, or the gospel, or the commandments of God, or whatever works.

And the Christian isn't borrowing his? Did Vox Day himself bring the 10 Commandments down from Mt. Sinai, or did he buy into a story about Moses borrowing them from a burning bush?

Christians also engage in post-facto rationalization, pointing to scripture, or commandments, or faith to justify what they have done after the fact. This is nothing less than shirking responsibility and denying there is any need to explain oneself. Proposing a "poorly formulated utilitarianism" or "altruistic self-interest", while admittedly post-facto, at least acknowledges that the actor is responsible for his actions, and for explaining and justifying them. Vox Day shrugs off this obligation by contemptuously waving a book or a stone tablet at you.

I think all morality is post-hoc or ad-hoc rationalizations. Religious moralizing differs from areligious moralizing chiefly in that it tries to hide its ad-hoc-ness behind a cloak of ultimate authority.

lpetrich

Voltaire was not an atheist, he was a deist. He commented:

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Robespierre was the main author of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. He had a "Festival of the Supreme Being", and claimed:

Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is an idea of the people.

Eventually, his colleagues got suspicious of him and he joined his numerous victims in being guillotined.

Also, Vox Day seems to endorse the royal-lie view of religion, the view that inventing fictional cosmic bogeypeople is necessary for making people virtuous. However, this argument says nothing about the truth of this or that religion.

Anti-Creedance Front

Guy needs to change his name and hairstyle. And join the witness protection program. Cause I'm going to give him the biggest wedgie ever if I meet him.

ShadowF0x

Even without the threat of you wedging him, he still needs to get a new hairstyle and name.

Pretty much all I was going to say was posted by previous posters........ :notworthy

Biff

I just got a note about this essay, at the About Atheism site. Seems like others are arguing with Vox Day as well.

Biff

Harumi

When I first read 'Vox Day' I thought it was some kind of holiday.

The poor kid, he must have been beaten up at school everyday...

Mediancat

My guess is that "Vox Day" = "Vox Dei," aka the voice of God. Either this is a pseudonym or his parents loathed him.

Or possibly both.

Rob aka Mediancat