1. If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold

Comment #81836 by Extropian on October 25, 2007 at 9:08 am

As a professional musician, I guess I refute the idea that the godless have no appreciation or love for music. I most certainly do and there are a lot of other musicians who are atheists who feel the same way. This argument tells me more about the theist advancing the argument than it does about the likes or dislikes of atheists.

I view poetry, music, literature much in the same way as ice cream. I like vanilla, chocolate not so much and am ambivalent in regards to strawberry. Others reading this may differ with my views. :) The interesting thing is that I don't have to consult an external authority to validate or confirm my likes and dislikes as being "correct" or to determine what the correct "meaning" is of a piece of music, good book or my life overall. I determine what I like (duh), be that Bach or Benny Goodman, and I determine that on the basis of the merits of the particular work and it's effect on me. It is all internal and subjective and a function of one's specific history and inclinations. The theist is assuming that no one, atheist or not, is sufficient in and of him/herself to make that sort of determination without an appeal to an external authority to validate that opinion and declare it the "right" one to have regarding the work in question. "Well, GOD says......!" and that is the end of that.

How many times have you raised a question to a theist about whether a certain activity is permitted only to get the response, "I'll have to ask my pastor about that..."? For a theist, all authorities are external; remove that authority and they are unable to figure out if they like something or not or whether it is okay to perform a certain act or not. Pretty sad state of affairs. Now, excuse me while I go eat my ice cream. :)

2. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #81494 by Extropian on October 24, 2007 at 8:41 pm

I've dealt with some apologists who have used this line of argument. In my experience the argument was presented in a slightly different way than described at the top of the page.

The main thrust of the argument thrown at me was that I, as the atheist, assumed the existence of God in order to disprove God's existence. Pretty nifty, that. He/she will go on to explain. Incidentally, the best response to this initial claim is to raise one's eyebrows and ask, "Really. How so?". Since I utilized logic and reason, my assumption was that these faculties are accessing an external standard of truth by which our respective arguments could be judged. Without this external standard, the best I as an atheist could hope for was a sophist's victory. By definition, this external standard must exist outside and over the realm that it judges; not a problem for a supernatural believing theist as they posit the real existence of this external standard (a Platonic Ideal would be the best description of their understanding of what this standard is)and posit God as the ultimate guarentor of this standard (since he created it and sustains it and all truth/standards). This argument can appear as a real logical problem for a thorough-going naturalist (such as myself) if one has not examined one's presuppositions thoroughly and has this sort of argument thrown at them without any preparation or background on it. So goes the argument as I have met it in the trenches.

In short, it is an argument focusing on one's presuppositions and most folks really don't look to hard at their own presuppositions. In fact, this whole genre of apologetics is called Presuppositional Apologetics. It comes out of the Calvinist side of things and is the apologetics of the modern-day Christian Reconstructionist Movements. Cornelius Van Till is the intellectual father of the movement and more recent authors include Greg Bahnsen, Gary North and RJ Rushdooney and those authors are great primers and will allow one to see all the flavors of this style of argumentation.

3. CNN Request for 'I-Reports' on religion

Comment #65455 by Extropian on August 24, 2007 at 9:05 am

My post:

If you mean by "living by faith" I use iron-age mythology to understand the workings of the world then I am not someone who lives by faith. I trust in reason and science, as does every "believer" who uses modern medicine, the internet, electricity, etc.

Religion has lately come under the spotlight of critical examination by reason from various quarters. it is interesting how that examination is perceived as an "attack". The only other groups of people who feel threatened by such examination are con men. They don't want you to look closely at their claims; they just want you to believe what they say and trust in them as they know what is best for you. Sound familiar?

4. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60233 by Extropian on August 1, 2007 at 11:02 am

Throwing a book into the toilet is intimidation? 'socratzsche' got it right; its an act of contempt. If Muslims, Odin worshipers, or anyone else wants to chant their innermost desires into the night sky and hope that a magical being, whatever the name, might grant those wishes, they are free to do that. Everyone else is free not to do that, and more importantly, we are all free to expound our reasons for not doing so in a public or private forum. If I want to throw a book in the toilet, I can do so at any time or for any reason. Apparently, these sorts of freedoms are not compatible with being a Muslim. And, what is also apparent is, if they come to power in the United States as they would wish, they'll be sticking their heads in a lot of toilets. Just checking for acts intimidation, of course. As for me, since childhood I have lived my life under the assumption that its not my head that belongs in the toilet nor does one intimidate anyone by throwing a book in there. :) Now flying a plane into a building, THAT's intimidating.