Here’s a quick response to your typical HuffPost Yay Science! Boo Religion! blog post. I mean, really, these Ph.D.s are so ignorant of basic philosophical difficulties that it’s amazing they can get published.
Mr. Stenger is so blinded by his *own* system of beliefs that it makes my molars ache. In this very article, he condemns “greed” and “unscrupulousness.” Well, that’s very Victorian of him. What magical scientific instrument did Stenger use to discover and measure “scruples”?
If Attenborough is right, and we’re just a plague on the Earth, then what’s up with the Rev. Stenger here telling us how to live and think and treat each other? If people want to live under the motto “YOLO,” why is he all tied up in knots about it? Stenger is the worst kind of fundamentalist: the kind who has the strictest “fundamentals,” but who will never admit to them.
I will now apply methodological rules and formulate a model to describe my observations: Physicists evidently aren’t required to take philosophy in college. If Stenger had, perhaps he would have stopped himself before posting an article full of such hackery and quackery.
![](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8539/8749976645_4d74bfa19a_b.jpg "Poor guy. Every time I see this sign out of the corner of my eye, I think it says "Comic Sans MS."")
Well said. It appears that Stenger’s ignorance and arrogance have some kind of symbiotic relationship, enabling both to grow unchecked.
One really doesn’t need to read past the first sentence in the second paragraph: “Faith is belief in the absence of supportive evidence and even in the light of contrary evidence.” While there may be some or even many religious that cling to that misguided understanding of faith, it is far from the Christian faith as taught by the Bible. Only a uninformed, dishonest or highly biased reading could lead to Stenger’s definition.
I suppose I can see where he is coming from. If I were to write a critique of atheism, I suppose it would make my job a whole lot easier if I simply define up front an atheist as a person who believes only irrational ideas. With that opening, why the rest of the critique practically writes itself!
Excellent observation, Jon- guy’s a nut.
This reminds me of a High School experience (when I was a fundamentalist). I wrote a biology paper in support of creationism or evolution, but I tried to be objective–I wasn’t trying to argue creation over evolution, I just did. I tried hard. My teacher’s comment was: “It’s hard to be objective when you’re dogmatic.”
Now that I’m an atheist, I try to keep that advice close. It’s as easy to be a dogmatic atheist as a dogmatic creationist. It’s always bad to let one your beliefs cloud your arguments. It’s even harder when you’re an atheist, I think. This fellow doesn’t succeed.