TheCreature

Hi, guys! I'm kind of new here. I got a question for all of you:

Is that or is that not a strawman argument? I think so, but the guy on the other forum (thread in question: http://www.angelroms.com/forums/show...=&threadid=827 (down at the bottom)) says that "that is something he gathers from the research he has done thus far on the mind of an atheist or non believer."

Now, not being an atheist myself, I don't really feel qualified to lecture him on the subject.

penumbra

Can't get to the posted thread, but right off hand, I'd say he's projecting his view of one lonely atheist onto all of us. Uh, we really aren't all exactly alike. Geeeeeezzzzz..........

PJPSYCO

Yes, it is a strawman.

He is using his own prejudice versus animals and combining it with the fact that atheists support evolution. He then obviously doesn't understand, for whatever reason, evolution, and has confused "fittest" with strength, and does not understand that individuals do not evolve, populations do.

He is making a logical fallicy in addition to a strawman called poisoning the well. Where he attacks us with his own prejudice instead of speaking positively of his own position. He is most likely doing it specifically for the downplay of atheism as a valid disscussion point. I don't know his motivation, but I susspect it is emotional. Lecturing him would probably be futile. Being emotionally connected will cause a verbal dispute where he will mearly talk past the other individual unless they agree with him.

TheCreature

You can't? Sometimes the VB board "shortens" the url when it converts it into a link. http://www.angelroms.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=827

I don't know if it's emotional or not. He claims to have be an ex-atheist, then he converted to Christianity 'cause he "saw the light of truth" or something.

Man, I don't know what to do. This guy agrivates me so much, and I can't stop myself from gettign into arguments with him. Although I kow this is pointless, he has planely illustrated that hes mind is locked air-tight, he's dense, and his sense of logick is shoved so deeply up his ass, there's no retreaving it (pardn the metaphor). It's just when he posts something like this, I just have to replay... Grrrr! :banghead:

lunachick

Hi, The Creature, and welcome to here.

Try inviting him over to Internet Infidels to see for himself how different atheists think. He can engage in debates of that nature and get a great many, and varied, replies.

He can lurk on the boards to see how we interact with each other in the different fora if he is unwilling to participate. I'm sure he will find many, many atheists who do not fit his view of what an atheist is.

beyelzu

TheCreature,

I know of very few atheists who have converted to xianity. Mostly its the other way. Many if not most of the people here used to be christian. If you grow up in america you are bound to be xian as a child, unless you parents are very secular. But I dont think that being an atheist is any lonelier than being a xian. I personally have more friends now than when i was xian as a kid, but that has nothing to do with my atheism.

long winded fool

quote:
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In the atheist's worldview, we are reduced to mere animals and there would be no need for such things [as pure heart and caring for others] at all since who the strongest survive and who cares about others if they are getting in your way of supposedly evolving.
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This is not necessarily the case. Humans seem to be the only animal capable of ignoring instinct. If not the only, they're the best at it. Though we have strong instincts for personal survival and propogation of the species, we have the ability to reason and conclude that things like a kind heart and a self-sacrificing mentality can relsult in a better environment for our species as a whole, even if these things go against our natural instincts. We may be essentially evolving away from instinct and into reason. Therefore, maybe the species fittest to survive isn't ultimately the strongest, it's (hopefully) the species with the weakest instincts and the highest intelligence. (Our instict for propogation is still going strong of course, to the dismay of those in areas with no food.)

The atheists' logic and reason seems to serve the same, or at least a very similar purpose, to the Christians' laws and commandments. Both frown on giving in to basic instincts. Logic and reason tell us why we ought not do this. Religion just commands us not to do it. Like the self-absorbed child kept in line by his father's strict commands grows up to see the wisdom and necessity of those commands, maybe religion was meant to keep us in line with fear and maybe scientific logic and reason are the reasons why we need to be in line? The new covenant from God? Ya never know...

Mageth

That post was by:

SoulDoctor
Defense lawyer for Christ

Something about being a "lawyer" (if he is one) and when he says "that is something he gathers from the research he has done thus far on the mind of an atheist or non believer" reminds me of some theist that has (or does) participated at II. I just can't place who.

Mageth

His argument's also an Appeal to Nature, or Natural Law fallacy:

Logic FAQ

because he's arguing that, as atheists, we limit ourselves to the laws of nature (e.g. "survival of the fittest") and must therefore logically act only according to the laws of nature. As pointed out by long winded fool, this is not the case.

theyeti

Yech! That's worse than a strawman. Let's take this one step at a time...

In the atheist's worldview, we are reduced to mere animals...

This is an emotional appeal that requires equivocation of the word "animal". There is a biological defintion of "animal" that we humans fit into no matter what your world-view, and then there's the defintion that equates "animal" with "savage" or "primative". The intent is to make people think the second, even though very few atheists actually think this way. Obviously an atheist is only beholden to the first definition of "animal", but why is this a bad thing? Do we somehow automatically reduce the status of eagles, lions, or dolphins simply because we acknowledge them as "mere" animals? Of course not; we judge these organisms by their own individual properties, regardless of what label we choose to slap on them. The same is true of humans too, whether we're labeled as animals, plants, or the fallen image of God -- it doesn't change our essential characteristics. One can believe that humans are great or that humans are shitty regardless.

...and there would be no need for such things [as pure heart and caring for others] at all...

Depends on what is meant by "pure". Dickering over what is meant by "pure" can devolve into a semantic argument with no way out, and is pretty meaningless. What matters is that from an atheistic point of view, there are many reasons -- some self-motivated, some not -- for caring for others. As it turns out, these tend to be the exact same reasons that theists have, other than the purely authoritative (and generally useless) argument that it's right only because God says so. Furthermore, going back to the whole labeling-us-as-animals thing, many (non-human) animals are extremely caring and nuturing of each other, so it in no way follows that being "mere animals" would lead one to be uncaring.

And further still, it's not even clear what this person is arguing for at this point. Is he saying that because human beings care, we can't be mere animals, or is he saying that if we believe that we're mere animals, we'll quit caring? The first is pretty weak and was dealt with by the preceding paragraph, and the second is simply the consequentialist fallacy. Even if it were true that believing us to be animals would cause some sort of harm, it is entirely irrelevant to the truth of the proposition. It might be better for me if I believed that I really didn't cause a crime that I'm guilty of, but it wouldn't change whether or not I'm guilty. But of course there's no reason to think that the premise here is true anyway. The idea that atheists are somehow less caring than theists can be empirically verified at least in part, but I am aware of no evidence that this is the case. If this guy has some, let him present it.

...since who the strongest survive and who cares about others if they are getting in your way of supposedly evolving.

This is a pretty bad misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolution is a population level phenomenon; it's not possible for an individual to evolve. We're stuck with the genotype that we're born with. Also, saying that only the "strongest survive" is not correct. Genes which are good at reproducing themselves will spread the most, but these quite frequently do so not by lending "strength", but by cooperating with other genes. On a less reductionist level, humans and other animals quite often succeed by being socially inclined, which means caring and sharing and such. Brute force may be one, but it is certainly not the only (and arguably not the best) path to success from an evolutionary point of view.

Even worse though is the assumption that evolution automatically has moral imperatives. Like all scientific theories, evolution is amoral (at least in my opinion). It is merely descriptive; it is not prescriptive. In other words, it only tells us how things are, not how things should be. It does not at all follow from the mere fact of evolution via natural selection that we should want to evolve any further, much less the idea that evolving in one particular direction is somehow preferable to evolving in any other. Nor does it even follow that because natural selection shaped us to behave a certain way, that the right thing to do is to emulate that kind of behavior (this would be the "naturalistic fallacy"). We might decide that human nature is "bad" much of the time and thus choose to do what we can to ameliorate the situation.

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Perhaps the biggest fallacy in this whole screed is that of begging the question. Even if we accept the premises and conclusions of his argument, I'm left thinking, so what? Saying that being an atheist leads one away from "pure heart" and caring (especially if one uses some sort of an "ultimate, greater-than-man" defintion of these things) just begs the question of why these things matter in the first place. Obviously if an atheist really is without "pure heart", whatever that's supposed to mean, he's not going to be swayed by any argument which automatically assumes that it's an important thing to have. Any defense of this assumption will almost invariably come from an assumption of theism itself. Such apologetics have little value to those who are not already forceful believers.

theyeti