This is the last time I’m going to officially talk about this because it’s been such an utter waste of my time. In the last couple of posts that I responded to Stan, it became quite clear that he wasn’t interested in an honest dialog, he just wanted to claim his superiority and ignore anything that proved him wrong. He’s certainly not the first theist to do so, nor the last I’m sure, however he may be one of the most ignorant I’ve run across.
Many theist apologists play the “stupidity” card. Most aren’t really playing it, they really are stupid. I’m not trying to say that in a mean or cruel way, necessarily, but there’s really no way around it sometimes. Most theists operate on blind faith. They adopt a position, demand that it must be true, and anything that disagrees must, therefore, be false. They don’t bother to check out either side fairly, they don’t look for evidence, they don’t think about them critically, they just assert and believe.
Now while that’s a sad way to live one’s life, it gets downright stupid when one starts arguing that something is wrong, just because it disagrees with one’s beliefs. It’s particularly bad when one starts claiming some sort of expertise or experience with that “wrong” position, as a means of holding themselves up as an expert to convince others. That’s what Stan has done in claiming to have been an atheist. Certainly, I’m not arguing that he wasn’t an atheist, he certainly could have been. In fact, since every single person is born an atheist and only later gets indoctrinated into religion, there’s no human being in the history of the planet that has never been an atheist. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god. However, he says he was an atheist for 40 years, and while I’m not disagreeing with him, just judging by his statements on the subject, he must never have progressed far beyond the default atheist position. Perhaps he never encountered the concept of religion growing up, or maybe he never took it seriously. I know of a lot of people who have reached their 30s and 40s and have never embraced a religion. However, I don’t know a single person anywhere who has reached that ripe old age and never given religion a single coherent thought.
Apparently, that’s what Stan wants us to believe about him.
That’s not really intended to be an insult, but clearly Stan has never really thought about atheism, he’s never studied religion critically, he’s never examined the evidence, evaluated the claims or been a rational, critical or logical human being in regard to his beliefs. This is painfully obvious from reading anything he writes on his site. As I’ve posted elsewhere, but I like the imagery, it’s like claiming to have been a doctor for 40 years, yet all you complain about is the amount of witchcraft and satanic rituals that go on in operating rooms. Um… what? Clearly, one’s statements deny one’s supposed expertise when the claims don’t match up to anything resembling objective reality and that’s exactly what happens with Stan. He says things that anyone, having spent a second or two thinking about it, would leave you scratching your head.
The saddest part is that Stan doesn’t even have a clue what atheism is. What he’s arguing isn’t a definition that makes any sense to anyone but a fundamentalist wingnut. That right there is enough to make me question whether Stan was ever an atheist because if so, if he truly believed the things that he spouts now when he was a supposed atheist, I fail to see how he could have survived.
In fact, one of his biggest arguments is that atheists can have no morality. If that’s so, then how did he survive for 40 years without being in prison the whole time? After all, he couldn’t have known right from wrong, why didn’t he rape and murder and pillage and all the things that theists pretend can’t happen without God? Clearly, if he was this atheist and he believed the things he says are true about atheism, then he must have been an amoral son-of-a-bitch. If he wasn’t, then all the things he claims about atheism now are patently false and he ought to know that from personal experience!
Of course, the reality, more than likely, is that Stan is just lying about being an atheist for 40 years. It’s not unusual for theists to play sock puppetry of this sort, I’ve seen it many times in the decades that I’ve been debating theists, since the time I was a theist myself. But I never, for a second, prove that my claimed theism was bogus by making claims about theism that are demonstrably untrue. In fact, I know more about religion than most theists do, certainly more than someone like Stan does, and better yet, I know how to critically analyze both atheism and theism and make determinations based on evidence, critical thinking and logic. Stan is sitting around acting like “I’m a lumberjack and I hate the outdoors” makes any sense whatsoever.
And so, it was with evidence like that of absurdity that I gave up on Stan, as I’ve given up on several other theists recently, because it’s like debating with a brick wall. Actually, the brick wall is probably more cognizant than the theists are because even after explaining the problems with their positions, they just keep repeating the same old argument over and over again. That proves that either the theist is downright stupid or just inherently dishonest. It reminds me of the old creationist debates back in the late 80s, where Duane Gish was proven wrong about his claims regarding the bombadier beetle. Wrong. Absolutely, demonstrably, without a question wrong. And he admitted it. Then he went right back to making the same claims because he figured the religious audience he usually debated in front of wouldn’t know any better.
I’m not going to accuse Stan of lying but certainly, if he was an atheist, he was never an informed atheist, never an intellectual atheist, never an atheist that came to his disbelief through rational means. As such, he was never an atheist that I’d admire or applaud for their stance, not that I think he’d care. In fact, the kind of atheist he describes, the kind of atheist he comes off as, is an ignorant, irrational and unbelievable sort. Maybe that’s what he was. Maybe it’s all an act. It doesn’t matter anymore because he’s just not worth my time.
It’s sad that there are so many theists who fall into that category.
