ChristianPost blogger… Azeusist?
I have until the timer goes off to write an entry. Spaghetti will be done then!
I just read a bunch of posts from ChristianPost.com blogger: Randal Rauser: http://www.christianpost.com/blogs/books/2009/07/atheism-as-a-fad-and-a-worldview-21/index.html (for example).
He makes a number of fairly bold claims about atheists and atheism. For starters, he claims that being an atheist is necessarily making a knowledge claim about nature and reality — and thus, is required to have evidence in support of this belief in order to be rational. Agnosticism, by his definition, is a claim about whether it can be known that there is a god or not — and has come down on the side of ‘no’. He adds that the agnostic is a person who makes a claim that neither theists and atheists are correct — that the most rational stance (says the agnostic) is to be an agnostic.
I left a few comments on his posts, to really flesh out what he means by the idea that atheists have to provide evidence in support of their idea that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant a belief that a Jewish carpenter flew into the sky 2,000 years ago and watches over us currently. I asked him about Zeus. The god that no one* believes in anymore.
What kind of evidence does Randal suppose works to support his knowledge claim about reality (ie that Zeus does not exist?)
Well, he first brushed off my question with: 1. care a lot about zeus, eh?. 2. I see no evidence in support of the panoply of gods that Zeus is said to exist with — therefore Occam’s Razor (he spells it Ockam) says ‘no belief’.
It’s almost as if the default position should be skepticism toward claimed gods — and that evidence should bring about the belief. Hmm…
I stick with Zeus becuase I feel that if he cannot bring evidence to meet his own standard for Zeus what he thinks that "an atheist ought to be able to do to be a rational atheist vis a vis God"; then he might be forced to reconsider his position.
What do you think?
(Done! 8 minute entry — apologies for any typos!)
What about Vishnu? Shiva? Ganesh? Do they get a free pass? And what about that legendary entity, the Holy Ghost? How can he possibly accept it without evidence? These spiritual beings all have large followings. I think he’s a hypocrite if he cannot apply his own standards about his particular g0d to a very prominent deity of the Western World.
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Surely the important point here is the fact that his “evidence” argument can be used to dispatch any God that is worshipped on the back of faith, including his own. I personally take exception to his claim that an atheist is necessarily making a knowledge claim about nature and reality. An atheist makes no real claim about the way nature and reality is, merely that some explanations for it…
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…don’t stand up to scrutiny. As an atheist I don’t have to provide an explanation for the way grass grows, but I can still claim that existing explanations are wrong or violate known laws of science.
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I think the FSM will smite you all with his noodly appendage.
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I have to agree that agnostic is the most rational stance, because I am one. haha. I don’t know why believers demand proof from atheists though — the atheists aren’t really making their own claims, they merely doubt the claims of others. Doubting another man’s claim doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making a claim of your own.
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