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.

A Response to Forbidden Fruit

Forbidden Fruit,

I came across your video yesterday on reddit’s /r/atheistvids and was a bit surprised to see an objection to this post from Ed Brayton on FTB: “Atheists, please stop saying these things”.  I considered what Ed said to generally be pretty sound, and effectively it’s an appeal to be more philosophically nuanced in our critiques of theists.

I disagree with almost all that you said in your video, and for whatever reason I felt compelled to write up a response.  I apologize for not doing a proper video reply, but work and family really get in the way of me doing videos right now.  

I’m writing this to try and convince you why I think you’ve got these things wrong on most of these issues, largely because we’re on the same team.  Like Ed I don’t like seeing atheists make these arguments either, and I don’t want to see people “on my side” make arguments that can be dismissed by apologists who can see the same flaws I do.  Hopefully we can come to some agreement here.