***THORAN***
Oh boy
Hear that sound? Like shuffling wheat? That's a million straw-men coming a mile away.

***YOU***
In a chapter titled, "Clarifying Our Concepts," Fr. Dubay writes:
"Everyone is dogmatic.

***THORAN***
Projecting!

***YOU***
The statement may startle, but it is easy to demonstrate. We human beings differ not as to whether we consider ourselves infallibly right about this or that

***THORAN***
Yes we do. You think you're infallible, whereas I am self-aware.

***YOU***
but as to what this or that may be. ... All of us have dogmas, some with good reason, some without."

***THORAN***
This is a mental disease.

***YOU***

This is similar to a line in G.K. Chesterton's Heretics, which indicates: "Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. . . . Trees have no dogmas."

***THORAN***
Bullshit.

***YOU***
A bit later Dubay states:
"Yet despite this confusion [brought about by relativism] there lurks in the human heart a deep need for what we shall call objective truth and the secure possession of it."

***THORAN***
You contradict yourself. Either you think you know everything because you're insane and/or stupid, or you are intelligent and seek knowledge. Which is it?

***YOU***

Simple enough, but also profound. Those statements came to mind when I stumbled upon a piece on ScientificAmerican.com titled, "Rational Atheism,"

***THORAN***
I'm losing track of the number of other articles you're referencing. Can you just write the article you're writing please?

***YOU***
which is "An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens," written by Michael Shermer. Shermer is publisher of Skeptic and author of Why Darwin Matters (Henry Holt, 2006). He is not too taken with the often harsh and sensational methods of attack sometimes employed by the best-selling authors he addresses his letter to; he pleads for a more calm and reasoned approach that stresses positive thoughts and action: "I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher..." And:
"Promote freedom of belief and disbelief.

***THORAN***
We DO promote freedom of belief. The only ones saying we don't are Theists.

***YOU***
A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others."

***THORAN***
Stop preaching at US about Freedom! WE hate YOU because YOU want YOUR religion to be imposed by law on everyone else! This reminds me of a debate tactic described in Thank You For Smoking: you strawman your opponent by bringing up freedom and rights for no reason asif they just said no one should have rights. It just complicates the issue needlessly, forcing your opponent to say "that's not what I said!" Rather than moving the debate foreward.

***YOU***

A higher moral principle....but based on what? He refers to the "golden rule," which is, if I'm not mistaken, a religious principle made famous by Jesus Christ.

***THORAN***
Yeah but pretty much every belief system has a similar rule worded differently.

***YOU***

Shermer ends his letter with what can only be read as an overt dogmatic statement: "Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion."

***THORAN***
Are you saying that you disagree with freedom?

***YOU***
I find it interesting how some atheists tend to find something out there and above us that is providing objective guidance—a "principle" in this case—but don't imagine it could be a personal Creator.

***THORAN***
It's called Abstract Concepts you idiot.

***YOU***
For example, Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith, writes that there “is no reason that our ability to sustain ourselves emotionally and spiritually cannot evolve with technology, politics, and the rest of culture. Indeed, it must evolve, if we are to have any future at all.” If that isn’t an overt statement of dogmatic faith—in the necessity and inevitability of some sort of evolution—what is?

***THORAN***
What are you talking about? The Moral Zeitgheist is not a matter of faith, it's observable fact. Hell, I've heard you guys complain about it! "You can't even spank your kids anymore" etc.

***YOU***
Harris's book is a rather fascinating read. Unfortunately, good reason and reasoning are rarely found, as Harris's favorite argument against "faith" and "religion" (mostly Christianity and Islam) is that religious people and beliefs are ignorant, foolish, backwards, insulting, intolerant, violent, insane, etc., etc. Every religion, he writes, “preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable. This puts the ‘leap’ in Kierkegaards’ leap of faith.” And: “Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.”
In glancing through The End of Faith once more, I noted how much it resembles a bad magic act, with the magician (the atheist author) trying to confuse the audience with a flurry of clumsy distractions (name calling; straw men; rapid fire accusations; emoting; whining)

***THORAN***
Ok, if you are distracted by name-calling, that's your problem. You are a whiney little bitch that needs to grow some fucking balls.

CORRECT:
"1 +1=2 you idiot!"
"Checking a calculator.. oh yeah"

ALSO CORRECT:
"1+1=4 you idiot!"
"Actually it's 2."

ACCEPTABLE:
"1+1=4 you idiot!"
"It's 2 you fucktard!"

WRONG
"1+1=2 you idiot!"
"Idiot? IDIOT? Did you just call me an idiot? Oh merciful heavens! You called me an idiot! How dare you call me an idiot! Don't you know that hurts my feelings???!!!"

MAN THE FUCK UP!

***YOU***
so they won't notice how poorly he performs the "trick" (makes God disappear). It is curious, for example, that a 336-page book with extensive endnotes, written by someone with a degree in philosophy who supposedly relies occasionally on philosophical arguments—and which describes Catholic doctrine and beliefs as "suggestive of mental illness"—does not contain a single reference to Thomas Aquinas. Or John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Paul Claudel, Josef Pieper, Han Urs von Balthasar, Mortimer Adler, Hans Küng (a man I often criticize, but who wrote an 800-page book titled Does God Exist?), Romano Guardini, Richard Swinburne, Karl Rahner, William Lane Craig, Michael Novak, etc., etc.

***THORAN***
Why would any of these idiots matter? They are so special that they should have been braught up how?

***YOU***
Augustine is mentioned a few times, but mostly to call him an anti-Semitic "sadist." Of Blaise Pascal: "That so nimble a mind could be led to labor under such dogma [regarding the divinity of Jesus] was surely one of the great wonders of the age."
Imagine if a theist wrote a book titled The End of Disbelief and failed to mention, say, Hume, Voltaire, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx, Comte, and Sartre, with only passing reference to Darwin, Freud, and Singer.

***THORAN***
Why would anyone be under any obligation to talk about all of them? Not all of us respect Nietzsche, and Marx sure as hell doesn't speak for all of us. (You left out Ayn Rand, by the way. I'm not a fan of her either, but she counteracts Marx.)

Actually, I noticed you mostly listed philosophers not Scientists, to the point that Darwin and Freud actually stand out. Why is that? Why are you obsessed with philosophy and not Science?

And is it my imagination or did you intentionally leave out any philosophers that ts you chose to list have been known to disagree with. Maybe you simply never heard of Rand or Kant, or maybe you left them out on purpose because mentioning Marx and Rand or Zietzsche and Kant in the same sentence contradicts your belief that all Atheists believe the exact same thing.

(I trust you see the irony here)

***YOU***
It would be roundly and rightly criticized...by Christians!

***THORAN***
Wait... why does it matter if christians complain that someone left out a bunch of obscure philosophers in a book against Atheism?

***YOU***

Equally revealing is this passage by Harris:
"Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century. The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarrass even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know about God."
Here, again, it is the omission that stands out, especially from a student of philosophy. What are the famous words of Socrates? "Know thyself." Harris is so fixated on scientific and technological achievement and knowledge that he ignores the perennial greatness of self-examination and knowledge of man—who he is, how he thinks and feels, how he lives and should live, how he should treat others, etc. That is what the well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century knew far better than the average, self-absorbed, unthinking denizen of the Information Age.

***THORAN***
So... the hypothetical 14th century Christian WOULD know nothing of modern Science but everything about God. This contradicts Harris, how?
And I think you missed the point entirely. Religion just doesn't do Scientific research. There have been NO advances in our understanding of Jehovah in centuries, while everything else has progressed.

***YOU***
Of course, Aquinas spends much time in the Summa Theologica considering the nature and existence of God; but he also focuses on the nature and meaning of being human, the meaning of life, the goal of life, the what and why of ethics, and so forth. It is one reason that even non-Christians generally recognize him as a philosophical/theological genius (even if Harris is unaware of that fact).
As Fr. Dubay points out, there are three untenable conclusions "that necessarily flow from the atheistic choice."

***THORAN***
*rolls eyes*
Here we go.

***YOU***
They are the belief in blind chance "as the origin of an unimaginably complex universe";

***THORAN***
*FACEPALM*
See? THIS is why christians have a reputation for being stupid.

***YOU***
atheism's "lack of rationality

***THORAN***
You guys are the ones with "Faith". We have Skepticism.

(By the way, notice how I didn't get my panties in a twist over a vicious insult, because I'm a man.)

***YOU***
and the ultimate nihilism to which it necessarily leads the consistent mind";

***THORAN***
Bullshit. Also, you just said we "lack rationality", therefore "consistency" is irrelevant. Which is it?

***YOU***
and, to the point I've just made, atheism's "inability to explain men and women to themselves."

***THORAN***
What? What are you talking about? Explain what to ourselves? Explain how sex works? I'm pretty sure Science covers that.

***YOU***

Atheism, especially the popular sort offered by Harris, tends to spend much time explaining what it doesn't believe and why it hates Christianity. That might be enough for some people to live on intellectually and otherwise,

***THORAN***
You honestly think internet debates is all we ever do, don't you? This isn't Tron. We do leave computers sometimes.

***YOU***
but it's not enough for folks who are really grappling with the mysteries of life and reality.

***THORAN***
That would be US. That's what Science is for.

To claim that it was "a religious principle made famous by Jesus Christ" is not only bad history but purposefully disingenuous.

And when you entire premise is based on an easily refuted inaccuracy there is really no point in reading the rest or the post.

Sometimes the clanger has a poignant point...

Daddy, daddy, if we evolved to be caring and kind to each other, why are there still Republicans?

The population of LUCAs possessed exactly the same DNA which is why it is irrelevant which of the specific samples of the bacterium-like creature is the specific antecedent of you or I or Tiktaalik. It is even possible that the very earliest speciation events might have arisen from different LUCA individuals. It is irrelevant because it is the specific DNA of the LUCA that is the real antecedent of all living things.

quote: 'To date no living thing has been found that does not appear to be LUCA's descendant. A population of LUCA's would have existed.' -- but LUCA is said to be the 'descendant' of ALL living creatures! quote" 'a population of LUCA 'would have existed' -- another 'guess answer' or 'just so' stories or 'it just happened to be there'!

Eventually!

The real shock is that someone may have the clear intention of remaining ignorant, the intellectual equivalent of the dipsophobic.

"tell me how many different kinds of fishes evolved from LUCA?"

To date no living thing has been found that does not appear to be LUCA's descendant. A population of LUCA's would have existed.

LUCA is not the start of life but represents a genetic bottleneck that appears to exist, implying that other organisms functioning in some less efficient way, became LUCA's breakfast or at least, breakfast for LUCA's evolved descendants.

quote; '"if we descended from apes why are there still apes" -- that's why evolutionists have hard time to explain these simple questions. tell me how the 'population' is able to evolve, and why?

that's why i ask you how many LUCA were there (population)? before one LUCA is able to evolve into mud fish and other animals, trees, plants? it was not explained by evolutionists..maybe 'they happened to be there'

quote: '"most likely" is an honest and measured statement in the context originally used. These other phrases you quote could mean a lot of things out of any context as they are and so remain useless in our discussion.' -- nope, they just don't know the answer. a computer maker can easily explain how the computer is created, and how it works. he never say 'most likely' , etc.

If you lead a horse to water and it doesn't drink does that make it unintentionally thirsty ?