Fair warning, this part is going to be long because it’s an extended look at “local atheism” and that will take up the next three parts of this look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on atheism and agnosticism.

So let’s get to it. This time, I’ll look at the introduction and first part.

We’re starting off with a question. “How do you argue for local atheism?” I don’t know that it’s really a problem to address, given what I’ve said about it previously, but we’ll take it as it comes.

“The sort of God in whose non-existence philosophers seem most interested is the eternal, non-physical, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent (i.e., morally perfect) creator-God worshipped by many theologically orthodox Muslims, Jews, and Christians.” That seems to be problematic right off of the bat. I’m not interested in proving the non-existence of anything. As I said, my atheism, and the atheism of the vast majority of atheists I’ve ever talked to, isn’t about proving anything. It’s about evaluating claims to see if they stand up to any critical scrutiny. I don’t care what you claim, I care if what you claim is rationally justified.

I think that shows the approach here is misinformed. Personally, I don’t go looking for fights. I just take on what comes to me, which is a lot of really terrible religious arguments. I don’t have a vested interest in proving anyone wrong. I only care if they can be proven right.

“It is often claimed that a good argument for atheism is impossible because, while it is at least possible to prove that something of a certain sort exists, it is impossible to prove that nothing of that sort exists.” Which is why atheism isn’t a positive claim. You only have to argue for positive claims. “I don’t believe you” isn’t a positive claim. It’s an invitation for better evidence to be presented. A lot of philosophers and theists will say “you’re not an atheist then!” My response is simple. Fuck you. Nobody is obligated to go along with your definition of the word. That’s just playing the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. You don’t get to define me, only I do.

“Many attempts have been made to construct such arguments. For example, it has been claimed that an omnibenevolent being would be impeccable and so incapable of wrongdoing, while an omnipotent being would be quite capable of doing things that would be wrong to do. There are, however, sophisticated and plausible replies to arguments like these” Except there aren’t, that’s where the problem of evil comes in. Now I’ve never really been a proponent of that argument, it deals with the arbitrary characteristics that the religious staple onto their god beliefs, not with anything demonstrably real. However, there can’t be anything sophisticated or plausible to do away with these arguments since there was never a viable claim made in the first place. The problem of evil is just pointing out how badly the religious mindset fails out of the gate. “How  do you know that?” goes a long way.

“More importantly, even if such an argument succeeded, omni-theists could plausibly claim that, by “omnipotent”, they mean, not maximally powerful, but optimally powerful, where the optimal degree of power may not be maximal if maximal power rules out possessing the optimal degree of some other perfection like moral goodness.” That’s just a word game though, which describes most of what the religious have to say. “I don’t mean X, I mean Y” doesn’t help. If you mean Y, say Y. Stop saying X. Mostly, the religious have backpedaled to Y because X has rationally failed any rational evaluation. It wasn’t a willing move, it happened because we pointed out how ridiculous it was.

“Similar problems face attempts to show that omni-theism must be false because it is incompatible with certain known facts about the world. Such arguments typically depend on detailed and contested interpretations of divine attributes like omnibenevolence.” But isn’t that the thing? Once you just arbitrarily staple all of the omni-properties to your deities, properties that can’t be demonstrated, nor can they explain how they have objectively  come to that conclusion in the first place, then they can just invent an explanation for anything. That’s called bald rationalization. Again, we’re not trying to prove them wrong. We’re waiting for them to prove themselves right. It seems like it’s going to be a very long wait.

“A very different approach is based on the idea that disproof need not be demonstrative. The goal of this approach is to show that the existence of an omni-God is so improbable that confident belief in the non-existence of such a God is justified.” That’s still a complete waste of time because, whether anyone likes it or not, atheists are not required to prove the religious wrong. Atheism, again, isn’t a positive assertion, it’s made in response to the unjustified claims of the religious. We don’t have to prove anyone wrong. We simply haven’t been convinced that they’re right.

Therefore, the next two sections are going to be supposed arguments for positive atheism, which, as I keep saying, isn’t really a thing. It’s the same reason why people who don’t believe in Bigfoot don’t have to prove that Bigfoot doesn’t exist. We just aren’t convinced that it does. I think this is really why this article is such a problem, it’s proposing that atheists need to do something that the overwhelming majority of atheists don’t see the need to do. We don’t have to prove a thing. If that’s a problem for philosophy, then maybe that’s where the problem lies. It certainly doesn’t lie with atheism.