Prescriptive Oughts and Atheism: Round 3

Sometimes I miss comment replies for a while.

Then I will notice them and note that I should write something in response, but life happens and I forget.  This is one of those times.

I was having an enjoyable exchange with apologist Maverick Christian (referred to as MC), and his last comment on that thread was left unanswered.  Since the exchange is interesting I've decided to put another actual post on the topic up rather than leave good content buried in a comment thread.

I actually hope that MC doesn't mind my responding so late in this fashion, and I apologize for there being such a delay.  That all said, lets begin.

Outrageous Statements and their Defenders

Note: This post has been updated, per the request of John Loftus to include an additional exchange.

With a title like this, you'd think I was going to have a rant about a shitty Christian apologist making outrageous claims about atheism.

Except I'm about to go on a rant about two atheists that I'd otherwise admire making outrageous and indefensible claims about theists.

I'm talking about David Silverman and John Loftus.

There's been some buzz because Justin Schieber publicly criticized this meme from David Silverman's book Fighting God, which was created by Dr. David Madison:

#atheism #secular #humanism #atheist #humanist

More than 200 titles in the Cure-for-Christianity Library: https://t.co/cSHRx0cdz3…/ pic.twitter.com/HP69Gp5Ehq

— David Madison (@DavidMadisonPhD) July 22, 2017

This prompted some rather astounding defenses of Dave Silverman on Twitter from one John Loftus:

Yep. Honesty requires atheists to tell the truth, not placate them, no more than doctors with patients. @MrAtheistPants @RealAtheology https://t.co/Yr2QlFMHxX

— John W. Loftus (@loftusjohnw) July 23, 2017

We're not saying the same thing. Think again. https://t.co/wvpejos2Ta

— John W. Loftus (@loftusjohnw) July 24, 2017

So rather than go back and forth with John Loftus on Twitter, I had a brief window of free time to give a full treatment to the criticism of this idea.

Are Atheists celebrating Intellectual Regression?

I had shared the following atheist meme on Twitter, which prompted some reaction from some theologians/apologists I follow.

"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions." - @DanBarkerFFRF pic.twitter.com/Ko0ub12CAc

— Atheist Republic (@AtheistRepublic) July 14, 2017

The strongest reaction coming from Randal Rauser who penned a post about the topic which reveals more context to the quote which I wouldn't endorse.  I'd recommend reading his article.

I posted the following as a comment on his blog, but I liked the themes here so much I decided to include it as a post of my own so as to not lose it. Hopefully it's helpful to others who can strongly relate to the meme, as I do. 

Randal, Reductionism, and Something About Mary

So I was having a pleasant little bit of a Twitter back and forth with theologian and apologist Randal Rauser on philosophy of mind.  Then I went about part of my holiday weekend and when I checked Twitter again I had my mentions blown up and saw that our exchange had attracted some others and got more than a bit testy, and I think confused.


Bad things happen when you try to discuss something like philosophy of mind on a platform like Twitter.

Randal then wrote a blog post regarding the discussion with others on Twitter, which prompted me to finally make good on my comment to Randal about writing my own post about why I thought reductionism wasn't all that implausible.