Graceful Athiest – What If I Grant You That? (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Graceful Athiest – What If I Grant You That? (2016)

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1 pointlogicprog8 comments

I'm a Christian but this is a particularly well thought out and fair anti-apologetic piece. I thought it would be interesting to see what HN thought of it (as a long-time lurker :)

In fairness of disclosure I'm not a Christian or an Atheist but I think it's ironic every Atheist's argument I've read so far uses the exact same dubious logic, unscientific reasoning and cherry picking of facts that they criticize Christians for.

argument for what?

Check out the article.

I did but you said every atheist, not the author. So what argument are you talking about

I did not say every Atheist. I said every Atheist's arguments I've read so far which, so far, fall victim to the same logical fallacies they argue against. I'll try cover some of the broader points I keep seeing repeated without writing a book here.

1. Assuming all Christians believe the same thing.

I'm Irish-American, my father's side of the family are Catholic and my mother side are Protestant. I can tell you from first hand experience "Christians" don't agree on crap when it comes to Christianity. And the author leaves a telling clue to this towards the end when they mention most of their experience is with Evangelicalism. The Evangelicals are a small minority among Christians worldwide, and most mainstream Christians think Evangelicalism is way out in left field. The author makes no effort to address this issue but instead builds their arguments off assumptive axioms without explanation or clarification.

2. Christians aren't the only people who believe in the Biblical "god"

The author again homes in on specific cherry picked tenants of Christianity, specifically the question of the divinity of Jesus, as an argument against the existence of God. Jews and Muslims don't share that belief. Hell, not even all Christians agree on this point. In fact, the first schism of early Christian church was over the question of the divinity of Jesus. Why is this never addressed?

3. Skepticism = Science

This is another common fallacy I keep coming across. Skepticism itself is inherently unscientific and attempting to contort science to fit an opinion is equally unscientific.

4. Science is an opposing view to belief in "God"

The author attempts to make this same core argument I see used repeatedly. That belief in "God" comes from ignorance of science and rejection of rational thought therefor believing in "God" is unscientific and irrational. This argument is just illogical. If this were true, we should be able to deduce that most scientist are also Atheists but we know that's simply not true. Even Einstein believed in God. One doesn't negate the other. Again this is never addressed.

.....

You'll have to excuse me if that was disjointed and doesn't cover everything. That's off the top of my head, I wasn't expecting to get into this today. And look, as I mentioned before, I'm not a Christian or an Atheist and if you're an Atheist, that's fine. I'm not criticizing you for what you think or believe, but as an outside observer, I don't see much difference in the arguments the author makes and the particular "Christians" they single out to refute.

That's fine. But you know, Einstein didn't believe in god. That is a lie spread out by Christians probably to refute the same point you're trying to make. Also most of the modern scientists (the ones that know or knew about big bang, evolution, etc) also don't believe in god. I bet they don't even call themselves atheists. Today we are reaching a post-theistic stage in which people don't want to waste their time thinking in religion or stuff like that. I personally hate the "atheist" title. Is ridiculous, just like it would be ridiculous to have a name for someone who doesn't believe in ghosts or goblins.

Finally, any serious person that knows about science and philosophy of science knows that religion and science have nothing to do with each other. You can perfectly be both. What you can't do, is call yourself a person of science, and don't accept scientific evidence for something that was scientifically measured.

> Einstein didn't believe in god.

"I am not an atheist" - Albert Einstein

> Also most of the modern scientists (the ones that know or knew about big bang, evolution, etc) also don't believe in god.

Who? Research it, their views pretty much run the gamut like anyone else's. For example:

"Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point."

- Werner Heisenberg

Pascual Jordan was Christian, Enrico Fermi was Agnostic, Max Born was a Jewish Lutheran but was just completely apathetic to organized religion while Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman and John Bell were self avowed Atheists. Schrödinger called himself an Atheist but had a strong affinity for Eastern spiritually and Oppenheimer was into Hinduism. And if you want to get into some really weird stuff, look up Jack Parsons, founder of JPL at NASA.

Scientists are just people like the rest of us and grapple with the same questions in life all of us do.

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