The intersection of Atheism and autocracy, I would suggest, is unlikely to be incidental. In a world in which the machinations of man are thought to be determinative of whether or not "progress" (as conceived by any particular regime) goes forward, the advocates of such "progress" are highly prone to fly into homicidal rages at the refusal of any person to accept their view. Unbelievers are seen by the regime as hideously retrograde, subversive and opposed to all that is right and good --in short, fit for reprogramming or killing. Hence the reeducation camps of the Maoists, the prisons of Siberia, the South American "Disappeared Ones," and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. We see this pattern repeated in every secular, Atheistic ideological regime, because all of them believe their program is the hope of the human race, and so it justifies whatever evils they have to do to bring it about. This phenomenon is so common that coincidence is unlikely. However, you may leave that point aside if you don't agree.
A grossly wild and preposterous assumption to make, IC. Irrational in what sense?
Irrational in that no set of reasons would ever be sufficient to justify Atheism's basic claim. I mean "totally irrational." And it's no assumption: it's easily verifiable, even to a thinking Atheist. Unfortunately Atheists generally tend to reserve their cynicism for other systems and rarely take their own critical tools to their own worldview. Of course, you may not be of that sort.
That the inception of the Universe cannot be explained supernaturally? As opposed to God made the Universe? Back to the old humdinger, what created your God? You will no doubt claim that no thing created God for God by his definition in infinite and omnipotent. But surely one can applied this argument to the Universe. How irrational is it for me to claim that no thing created the Universe for it is infinte? In rationality stakes, this trumps your claim because I am one less removed in terms of causation.
The Universe *can* be explained supernaturally, Aiddan...in fact, it's the *only* way it can be explained, either by Theism or, ironically, by science.
Let me explain briefly, if I may. One of science's basic presuppositions is that things that happen (i.e. phenomena) have causal explanations. If some new phenomena is observed, a gues or a superstition may claim it "just happened," or "was caused by magic," but science goes looking for a causal explanation, involving material laws, physical dynamics, etc. However, science cannot do this indefinitely, because doing so posits a causal chain, and causal chains need a beginning. Thus, whatever began the universe, scientifically speaking, had to be something prior to every other cause, larger and outside of the physical laws upon which science itself depends (since it has to be the explanation for those very laws), and not itself dependent on any other causal explanation. But definition, then, it had to be "super-natural," in the sense of being larger than, and beyond the causal chain that science itself can track.
However, your rejoinder is no good. There is no scientific evidence for an eternally-existing universe, and a whole ton of data for a linear one. However, what there are are a a few speculative "models" (i.e. speculations), on how such a universe, if ours were such a place, could exists. Obviously I won't deal with all of them here, but let me point you to my response to "Nonsense on Stilts" (article in last month's PN) to suggest why I think things like "multiverses" are mathematically and rationally absurd. Or for fun, go read "Hilbert's Hotel," which is a philosophical reflection on the nature of eternal chains of causes. Or read one or two of William Lane Craig's excellent treatises on the subject. Skepticism of the "eternal chain of causes" is not just a Theist phenomenon, you will find; a great many Atheist scientists also claim to find it irrational.
Now to your "humdinger".
Who made "God"? That's a silly question, and easily refuted. "God" is analytically the name of the Uncaused Cause. So ironically, the answer is, the same person who "made" the uncaused cause science posits at the beginning of the chain of causality -- in short, no one: you don't "cause" an "uncaused cause." Uncaused, by definition, means "uncaused." It means "eternal." It means, "beyond science". It means "supernatural." What you haven't yet realized is that science requires an initial uncaused cause just as much as Theism does. So your explanation isn't "one step closer" to anything.
I wrote: "People who do not believe in gods" is only a way of saying they don't believe "right now," and that other people might just as well believe in gods of all kinds, assuming their experience is different and their evidence satisfies them.
You responded: This is a dangerous argument to make, and equally unenlightened. Islamists use this type of rhetoric to say that everyone is actually a Muslim, they just don't know it. With one fell swoop, this kind of statement completely disregards the intelligence of the human race and its capacity for reasoning based on evidence. It is this medieval ignorance which has spawned the pernicious religious fanaticism that plagues much of the world today, and with it the obliteration of reason.
No, you're completely off my intention, Aiddan. I'm not saying "All Atheists are closet Theists." And you're wildly off if you think I'm positing anything like the Islamic view of "reversion." I'm doing a much more simple operation than that.
What I'm pointing out is how very weak and pathetic the "slim" version of Atheism really is. Skip thinks it offers some sort of protection from criticism, some sort of flexibility and openness that might deliver Atheism from the usual charge of dogmatism; but what he is not yet seeing is how his sort of description just renders the Atheistic position trite and impotent. For if "Atheism" means no more than "I don't believe in God," then it only amounts to a strictly a one-person confession of ignorance. It does not suggest "Other people cannot know what I do not know." In fact, it does not even succeed in defending the "Atheist" of that sort from being eventually converted to Theism, since it leaves open the possibility that the Atheist would be open and interested in new evidence, if such should appear -- in which case, assuming the Atheist in question were a rational person, of course, his "I don't" would simply turn to "Now I do".
So the "Skip" version of Atheism, what I'm calling "Slim Atheism," is *too* slim. That's all I'm saying. No more.
As for your last two sentences, good heavens man; you don't need to overreact. You don't need to call people "medieval" or "fanatical" just because you don't presently understand their view.
In any case, we know each other at least well enough not to suppose the worst of each other, I trust.
