Christian Freethought

Narcissism and Adulthood

2012-01-08T19:34:00.001-06:00

The holiday break is over, so I'm back to writing semi-regularly now.

I stumbled across that cartoon above the other day, and thought it summed up pretty well the cultural shift towards narcissism in America. If you think that cartoon is a bit of an exaggeration, then watch the video below, but be warned that it does involve some violence (someone punches someone else in the face).

If you don't want to watch that video, or if you don't understand what's going on, then let me explain: we have three important characters in that video. One is the younger girl who is a student, who apparently has been caught smoking weed, presumably amongst other bad behaviors. The older lady who is farthest right is the girl's teacher, and the older lady in the middle is the girl's mom (grandma?). The teacher is complaining that the young girl is smoking weed, so the girl's mom/grandma comes to her defense by punching the teacher in the face....pretty hard too.

That cartoon at the top of the post is a good parallel for what's happening in the video. Right down to the smug attitude of the student as their parents stand up for their poor behavior.

If you're a normal person, you're probably wondering why the mom/grandma would punch the teacher instead of getting mad at their child. There's a term for what the mother did to the teacher: narcissistic rage. The mother isn't defending her child out of some misguided love. It's more likely that to the mother the child is nothing more than an object which reflects on her self-worth. So when the teacher "insulted" her daughter/granddaughter, the mother defended her own self-worth the only way a narcissist knows how: violence. But it's important to remember that these parents aren't acting this way out of love. Narcissists care only about themselves, and their children are nothing more than an extension of them (as far as the narcissist is concerned).

Anyway, neither that cartoon nor the video are the subject of this post. They are, however, a good segue into an article that I found about two days ago written by an "unemployed" man in his thirties. You'd never guess this guy is in his thirties if you read the article. It's written with all the mental sophistication of a 13 year old.

The article is called "Against Adulthood", and it explains at length why marriage, children, jobs and adulthood in general are all things we should do away with, since they contribute nothing to our self worth. The author writes this article as if he were a narcissist, which would seem at least somewhat excusable if he was still in his 20s. People in their 20s usually are shedding the last of their childhood narcissism. However, the author is 30 years old, and should be so wrapped up in the responsibilities of adulthood that he's forgotten how to care about himself.

But that doesn't seem to be the case.

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If You're Reading This, Then Chances Are You Trust Rapists More Than Atheists

2011-12-09T17:34:00.001-06:00

Would You Trust This Guy More Than An Atheist?

No, you don't really trust rapists more, but some people think you do. This article actually isn't really about atheists or rapists, it's about how the media is stupid. It's also about how people can use scientific data to believe and say stupid things.

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The Witness of the Holy Spirit, and What is Rationality Anyway?

2011-11-17T17:58:00.001-06:00

"Christians aren't rational! They deny reality and believe in magic..." And so on. Find me an atheist on the internet who hasn't typed something similar to that quote and I'll find you a unicoon named Mr. Frumples.

Mr. Frumples

Let's get serious for a moment.

Atheists love to accuse Christians (and other theists) of being irrational. This can be somewhat intimidating for Christians, if said Christians don't have a solid foundation for their beliefs. The goal is to put the believer on the defensive. You're expected to explain exactly how you're not irrational, which is a game you can't win because the atheist will force you to play by their rules. I don't like being on the defensive, and so for the purpose of this article I'll put the atheist back on the defensive.

What does the witness of the Holy Spirit have to do with this? Well, keep reading to find out.

[edit: If this post seems a bit rushed, then it probably seems that way because it is. I'm on limited time, so this isn't my best writing. Hopefully it's good enough. I'll give it a day or two to spot check any errors in organization or clarity, but I wanted to post something without having to spend too much time on it.]

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Hiatus

2011-11-14T19:11:00.001-06:00

I'm not dead, but I won't be writing much until mid December as I have some job training which will be eating up most of my time. If you're checking this site out and you like what you see, unfortunately you may be waiting a bit to read new content.

Hopefully I can at least squeak out a couple of short posts on the weekends.

Good bye -- for now.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T19:22:00.003-05:00

Or, for those of you have objections to the holiday, happy end of October day.

I don't really have anything to write. I'm just wishing everyone who reads this a fun and safe night.

I have a busy month ahead of me, so I'll try and get another post or two in in the next few days. Until then....

Positivism - Interacting with Atheists

2011-10-29T13:37:00.000-05:00

See if you can spot the problem with this picture

I was perusing Debunking Christianity - John Loftus' blog - the other day and got caught up in a discussion about whether this quote by Christopher Hitchens above is valid or not. You can read the discussion here.

I pointed out that the principle quoted in that picture above is contradictory, since Hitchens asserted without evidence that we can dismiss anything asserted without evidence. I also pointed out that it would invalidate metaphysics of all kinds (thus rendering even atheism false), moral reasoning, science, and more. It was pretty similar to the case I laid out here.

I figured it would be pretty open and shut, but I guess nothing is ever that easy. Since I'm one of the few Christians posting on an atheist's blog, things kind of got away from me quicker than I expected. Some atheists defended Hitchens' statement, and for simplicity's sake, I figured I would respond here instead of responding one by one on the blog.

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Comments

2011-10-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

It was brought to my attention that comments weren't enabled. I don't know how I managed to overlook that, but they should be set up and good to go now. Whenever you open a post, it should auto open the comment boxes. Alternately, on the main page there will be a link saying "0 Comments" or whatever. Clicking that should open the comment dialogue as well.

Feedback is welcome, and I'll make an effort to read and respond to all of it.

(If you know me in real life, and you read this, then all I ask is that you not reference our relationship (for privacy and other reasons) in your post. Basically, write your comments as if you were writing them to a stranger. Thanks!)

Militant Atheists and a Lesson in Empathy

2011-10-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

Zazzle.com Poster

There's a reason that the New Atheist movement has been so popular, though the movement has lost some steam recently. New Atheists are brash, in-your-face, and spectacular in a sense. They don't hold punches, they mock, ridicule, and dehumanize their opponents. In other words, they're exactly the sort of anti-intellectual movement that draws attention in America. Yes, you can read a well thought out treatise on philosophy and theology by scholars, but that's boring. Reading something like that requires brainpower. It's much easier to read a book by Richard Dawkins that angrily condemns the people you disagree with.

This really doesn't have anything to do with intellectualism, though, because reading a book by Richard Dawkins allows you to do something much easier and much more comfortable than shutting down your mind: It let's you shut down your empathy for those you disagree with. Understanding and empathizing with people you view as the "Other" or as an enemy just doesn't come naturally for some of us. This, sadly is why the New Atheist movement is so popular. The New Atheists allow non-believers to feel more secure about their own beliefs by objectifying and dehumanizing their opponents - in this case the religious.

This post isn't really about atheists, it's about empathy. I'm using atheists as a foothold to get my example across, but I think this is a lesson that people on any side of any issue can bear to keep in mind.

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How Hawking, Dawkins, Krauss and other Atheists are Helping to Destroy Science, Part 5

2011-10-25T13:00:00.000-05:00

This is part 5 in a series examining how some atheists are destroying science. Part 1 is here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

Here's the video I'm critiquing in this part and part 4.

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How Hawking, Dawkins, Krauss and other Atheists are Helping to Destroy Science, Part 4

2011-10-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

Stephen Hawking

This is the 4th and (almost) final part of an ongoing series examining atheists who, by trying to conflate science with atheism, are damaging science. Part 1 is here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 5 here.

I've written directly or indirectly on this topic here and here and elsewhere. It's about time to move on...

This is the second half of my critique of Stephen Hawking's philosophy. In this half, I'll examine Hawking's metaphysics on a Discovery Channel show called "Curiosity" about the creation of the universe. Here's the video:

Normally I would recommend that you watch the video I'm going to critique, but in this case there isn't much to see. The video involves only the most basic science, and the rest is either a reinterpretation of history through an atheist perspective, or philosophy passed off as if its scientific.

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Atheist Richard Dawkins Explains Why He Won't Debate Philospher William Lane Craig

2011-10-22T00:37:00.001-05:00

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

Richard Dawkins is a biologist who helped spearhead the so-called "New Atheist" movement with books like The God Delusion. For a while now, there's been a lot of buzz about a possible debate between him and William Lane Craig on the existence of God. Dawkins is, perhaps, one of the most recognized names in science and atheism. Craig is considered to be one of the foremost apologists for Christianity, in addition to being an eminent philosopher. Who wouldn't want to see that?

In the quote above we see him admitting that, because he's an atheist, he doesn't believe in good or evil. The universe just is, and good and evil don't enter the picture. I found it curious then that his explanation for why he will not debate Dr. Craig is that he essentially thinks Dr. Craig is evil.

Moreover, Dawkins' whole explanation reveals a lot about Dawkins' character and frankly I'm disappointed, but not surprised, at the shallowness of his excuse for not debating Craig. Let's take a look at that link above.

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Atheism or Religion in the Classroom - Pick One

2011-10-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you're an atheist and you're reading this, get ready to be really angry. A public High School History teacher blatantly told his students that believing in God makes sense, and atheism is "nonsense".

Aristotle … argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course he's right. I mean, that’s what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, since we don't know what created God, the universe must've created itself.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic...The other possibility is, the universe was created since we know it had a beginning...Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is nonsense.

Are you mad, atheists? Do you think we need to legislate this kind of speech right out of the classroom? You're wrong.

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The Forced Vaccine Narrative - Pick a Side

2011-10-13T13:42:00.000-05:00

Vaccines. What else needs to be said?

Vaccines have become part of just one more cultural narrative. Narratives, of course, are those pesky abstract cultural phenomena that force you to discard rational evaluation of an issue. Instead they force you to "choose sides", because otherwise you might run the risk of inadvertently agreeing with your enemy on the other end of the issue. Remember, someone has to win a battle of ideology, so we don't have time to ask if the battle should be fought in the first place.

This post is not about Jenny McCarthy. It's not even about Michelle Bachmann who had this to say about the HPV vaccine:

I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Fla., after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.

Ah, case closed. We can tell the scientists to stop sciencing because Bachmann has it figured out.

But no, this isn't about the people who are against vaccines in general, this is about an issue of vaccines that may hit closer to home.

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How Hawking, Dawkins, Krauss and other Atheists are Helping to Destroy Science, Part 3

2011-10-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

This is what model-independent reality looks like

What does that picture look like to you? Probably reminds you of molecular diagrams which you'll remember from your high school or college chemistry courses. Of course, the reason it's so fuzzy is because this isn't a diagram, it's an actual image of an actual molecule...sort of. Yes, it turns out they "look" just like the diagrams in your school textbooks. Ok, it doesn't really look like anything, because you can't see it with your own eyes, but you get the point.

Here is a picture of a diagram of the same molecule, which is a model similar to what you may have seen in high school or later:

If you're a nerd, like me, then that first picture is pretty mind blowing. Like me, you may have thought that the models of molecules in your textbook were just a way for us to think about molecules, even though they weren't really representative of reality on the microscopic scale. In fact, those models were very true to reality. Or maybe it didn't blow your mind considering similar technology has been around since about the '70s.

But that's not the only lesson that can be learned here. The other lesson that we can find in these two pictures is that Stephen Hawking is a bad philosopher, even if he is a brilliant physicist.

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Christopher Hitchens' Latest Public Appearance

2011-10-11T10:31:00.000-05:00

Yeah, two posts in one day. Who has time for a life?

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PZ Meyers Gives Atheists a Chance to Explain Why They're Atheists

2011-10-11T10:06:00.000-05:00

I am an atheist, in short, because I am a rationalist and a scientist. I am an atheist because of reason – because of a simple love of the power of reasoning and rational thinking to bring real clarity, resolution and a grasp of the closest thing you really will get to get to real ‘truth’ while living out your lives on this pale blue dot.

Which is weird, because I'm not an atheist for the very same reasons.

What I quoted above is part an anti-testimony by Heather Dagleish, explaining why she is an atheist.

Now I don't want to get too psychoanalytical in this post but I can't help it. Notice that none of what she wrote in that paragraph necessarily has anything to do with atheism. She's not describing what atheism is all about, she's describing herself. She wants you to know that she's a pretty great person, that she's rational and loves the truth. Maybe she is all of those things. We'll see. You are not who you say you are, you are what you do. Let's see what she "does".

PZ Meyers has started a new daily series on his blog Pharyngula where he allows his readers to explain why they are Atheists. That quote has been pulled from the very first entry in the series. I wanted to at least respond to the first one. As a sort of anti-testimony, I think it comes off as very magical and deep, until you really critically examine what she's saying, of course.

As far as these sorts of anti-testimonies by atheists go, atheists will probably find this sort of thing inspiring. Christians on the other hand may be a little intimidated by the appeals to rationality and reason and science as justification of atheism. They're both wrong. Me personally, I find them revealing. These sorts of things are like a cross-section of atheist thought, and so they're ripe for criticism.

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How Hawking, Dawkins, Krauss and other Atheists are Helping to Destroy Science, Part 2

2011-10-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Everyone who isn't abusing science to promote their unscientific ideology step forward. Not so fast, Atheists.

This is part 2 of a series explaining how certain Atheist scientists are helping to destroy science. How are they doing this? They're promoting their unscientific philosophy as if it had the authority of science, which cheapens science and promotes a culture of ideological bickering.

There are three different kinds of people who do this: 1). Creationists who claim that science can prove not only that God exists, but that the Bible is literally true word for word. 2). Atheists who claim that science is capable of proving that God either doesn't exist or isn't necessary for our existence. 3). Eastern philosophers who usually claim that Quantum Mechanics somehow validates their philosophy (like Deepak Chopra). All three of these groups are just as bad (for science) as one another, but I'm focusing on Atheists because currently they seem to be given the most scientific credibility. If Atheists who poison the scientific well are the most credible of these ideologues, then that makes them the most dangerous.

Part 1 of this series is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here.

The rest of this post will reference the video above, however you should not need to watch it to understand what I'm criticizing...I hope.

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The OC Atheists Have a New Billboard, It's Also Ignorant

2011-10-06T15:42:00.000-05:00

I wrote about these guys before, when they ripped apart Bible passages they found objectionable. These guys demonstrated that they aren't exactly the pinnacle of genius, so to speak, because they ripped apart Bible verses based on a misunderstanding of what was in them. Their prior publicity stunt (ugh) demonstrated a sort of ignorance on their part, and this one is no different. Here's the full story...

This time they put up a billboard that says....well I'll just put a picture of it up because it really doesn't say anything.

They also put out a press release and...well the mistakes in their reasoning are numerous and awful. Worse than this, attention seeking billboards like these speak poorly of the modern state of atheism as I'll get to below.

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How Hawking, Dawkins, Krauss and other Atheists are Helping to Destroy Science, Part 1

2011-10-05T14:38:00.000-05:00

Recently on the Discovery Channel's new series "Curiosity", Stephen Hawking narrated an episode entitled "Did God Create the Universe?" Watching this video inspired me to do a series on atheist scientists who have intertwined their philosophy with their science. I'll embed and respond to the whole episode of Curiosity in a later post in this series. For now, I want to set the stage by examining the recent work of other atheists.

Specifically, I believe that it has been a trend amongst so-called popularizers of science like Dawkins and Hawking, and even average-Joe Atheists who follow their lead, to do something akin to what creationists do by promoting their unscientific metaphysical views by making them look like they have scientific authority. Dawkins, Krauss, and even Hawking have all contended that science is equivocal to atheist philosophy. That is, they believe that science disproves God altogether, or at least makes God's existence extremely unlikely. This is a bad thing, but probably not for the reasons you're thinking.

(I apologize for the length of these posts, but this is one of the central theses of my blog and so I want to do a thorough treatment. I'll try and split it up into smaller chunks.) Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here.

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Sexism, and the Preference for Political Correctness over Science

2011-09-27T19:58:00.000-05:00

Dr. Greenfield: Is this the face of a sexist?

Recently, the issue of sexism in professional careers fields (in this case medical) was brought into the spotlight when a renowned (male) surgeon wrote a Valentine's day editorial about the supposed emotional benefits of semen for women.

The controversial editorial, written by Dr. Lazar Greenfield, was about the biological basis of coupling and bonding between male and female members of certain species, including humans. After elaborating on research which implies that college-aged women who had unprotected sex experienced lower levels of depression (offering contact with semen as a possible reason for this correlation), he concluded by saying, "So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates." Get it?

This editorial caused a large backlash amongst female surgeons in particular, and reached the national media around the time Greenfield was 'forced' to resign. If the editorial upset you, then chances are you're missing the real tragedy of what happened here.

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Masculinity, Pick Up Artists, and Even More Narcissism in American Culture

2011-09-23T17:36:00.000-05:00

If you aspire to be a pick up artist, you may want to consider what that really says about the kind of person that you are. I recently addressed a similar topic, except from the perspective of a female author. This post, however, is about the phenomenon of male pick up artists, or rather the men who idolize them.

While browsing Fark again, I came across a Salon article about Simple Pickup. Simple Pickup is a trio of 'Bros' who make weekly how-to videos on Youtube explaining the ins-and-outs of getting a woman's phone number, and ultimately getting her in bed.

This is a bad thing, though not for the reasons you may be thinking.

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Richard Dawkins and the Magic of Reality

2011-09-20T20:22:00.000-05:00

Richard Dawkins is set to release a new children's book which will teach children about the magic of ~~science~~ atheism.

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Atheists Protest Their Own Ignorance

2011-09-18T15:54:00.000-05:00

I've been getting a few alerts about this news story since the other day. Some atheists gathered the other day to photocopy and rip apart some bible verses they don't know anything about, but find objectionable. It's an otherwise harmless demonstration, but some things about it stuck out to me.

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Dating, Sex, and Narcissim in American Culture

2011-09-08T16:13:00.000-05:00

I was browsing Fark the other day when I came across an interesting article about dating in New York City, or rather the supposed problems associated with a lack of dating in said city.

I'm writing about it because there's an apparent rise in narcissism, or at least narcissistic traits, in America. If you don't believe me, do a google search on America + Narcissism.

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Why Won't Richard Dawkins and other Atheists Debate William Lane Craig?

2011-08-22T07:16:00.000-05:00

So Fox News interviewed William Lane Craig about his UK tour, and asked him about his troubles in finding an atheist opponent for debates.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/19/christian-pastor-atheists-debates/

The problem isn't that these atheists don't exist - especially in a country which is far more secular than America - it's that they are apparently refusing to debate Dr. Craig.

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