JaeIsGod

Someone pointed me to an article with evindence for Exodus on www.bibleandscience.com .I was looking there I saw a link named "Does God exist". I gave it a quick look out of boredom and I stumbled upon this little pearl.

"Most Atheists come from a family where the father was missing, dead, weak or abusive. Paul C. Vitz has written a very interesting book entitled Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism (Spence, 1999)"

So now you know it , your father is missing, dead, weak or abusive , thats why you dont believe in God.



:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Derec

Actually that would fit better for Christians.

After all, their heavenly father (i.e. god) has been missing for 2000 years, grows weaker with time (compare OT miracles (the flood, Soddom and Gomorrah) with NT miracles (water to wine) with modern miracles (the odd faith healing and some Jesus/Maria images in tortillas) and we can see that the magical powers of YHWH are vaning), is presumed dead (see Nietzsche) and is the very definition of an abusive father (again, see OT and Revelation for plenty of references).

UMoC

Rusting Car Bumper

I've read criticisms of his book. I thought it was on the secweb but I cant find it.

Basically, he distorts a lot of facts and comes to lots of silly conclusions. For example, some examples of poor fathers include father who simply did poorly in business.

I wish I could find the review because it thouroughly trashed the book.

DC

JaeIsGod

Haha , nice stuff , UglyMan

Roland98

Doesn't that hypothesis go back much further than Vitz? I've also received links to "psychology" like that but thought it greatly pre-dated 1999.

But yes, his scholarship is incredibly shoddy, and it's been skewered all over the web.

Tom Sawyer

It all depends on your definitions.

If you define an "abusive father" as someone who brings a chld into the world who becomes an atheist and will therefore burn in hell for eternity, then it's a very accurate statement.

On the other hand, I think that anything on a website that uses both the words Bible and science in it's URL should be ignored on general principle.

MortalWombat

Doug Ittner reviewed it in the American Atheist magazine in the Spring 2000 issue, but the review is not online. Anyone have a copy of that issue?

pz

My father was quite dedicated to his family. He was there for us all the time.Well, now he is. He died when I was in my middle thirties.No, that's not my father -- he was a burly, muscular guy with a curmudgeonly attitude, and very vocal about expressing his opinions.Nope, never raised a hand against his kids or my mother.That's about as wrong as it gets.

Veovis

I posted a thread about it here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=57493

Striel

Well now that makes me wonder what supposedly screwed me up into being agnostic? j/k

Seriously I think it is ridiculous that people are attempting to make it appear as though there is something wrong with a person if they are atheist.