Myth: Atheist Critiques are Simplistic, Don't Understand Sophisticated Theology
Saturday April 28, 2007
Whenever atheists criticize or attack religion, religious beliefs, or theism, religious theists of course seek some way to respond. Sometimes they may able to show that the atheists' arguments are unsound in some manner, but very often they have to acknowledge the validity of criticisms of particular religious beliefs and doctrines. At this point, it becomes common to argue that atheists are attacking only simplistic versions of religion, not the "real" and sophisticated versions.
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I note that similar problems exist across the entire field of nonsensical belief systems.
For example, a Neo-Pagan colleague of mine, made a point of publicly disassociating himself from the “casting of spells, black magic, and all that sh*t”, only to replace such discredited nonsense with some yet-to-be-discredited nonsense: his belief in “auric fields”, “quantum energies” in humans, and other psychic phenomenon.
I call such disassociations from already discredited nonsense the “residue fallacy”:
In an attempt to disassociate themselves from discredited data, arguments, or concepts, religionists, psychics, and pseudoscientists may abandon 99% of the above because there still remains a 1% residue of unexplained cases which indicate the presence of a real phenomenon. However, if 99% of the data is bad, what is there to suppose that the 1% residue is of any use either?
There is no reason to believe in imaginary phenomenon dressed in the language of quantum physics, any more than black magic, or magic wands, yet some people believe that they “know” that a supernatural presence exists, but that they cannot adequately explain it, often due to the “limits” of science, philosophy etc. Instead, they “approximate” with “there must be something” ideas about “mysterious energies”, failing to realise that made-up ideas continue being made up, regardless of how one tries to recycle pseudo-mysteries into yet more versions of the same concept. I personally like Daniel Dennett’s explanation that ideas, like organisms, evolve characteristics that are variants of the same theme.
“Sophisticated” theists might well admit that there is no big daddy with a white beard in the sky, but until we have a reason to suppose that an “infinitely simple, uncaused, transcendental quantum-mechanical-like process” exists, the so-called “sophisticated” (or is that sophistical?) conceptions of theism have all the credibility of Thor, Wotan, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.