Anencephalic atheism

Looks like John Loftus is off his meds again. If you see him wandering around the neighborhood in his institutional PJs, please report him to the authorities, so the men in white coats can return him safely to his padded cell.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/05/slavery-no-waynone.html

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/05/gloves-are-off-now-slavery-no-thousand.html

At the risk of interjecting a modicum of reason into his hysterical conniption fit, a few points are in order.

1.Always remember that all this moralizing verbiage is coming from the lips of John-nothing-is-intrinsically-evil-Loftus.

If atheism is true, then Southern slavery was amoral, just as everything else would be amoral if atheism is true.

2.You notice that he doesn’t carry on this way about social Darwinism, even though he subscribes to naturalistic evolution. And that’s because it’s quite a trick to condemn social Darwinism and commend evolutionary ethics at one and the same time.

3.He also talks about the pain and misery suffered by slaves. Again, though, this is just so much folk psychology. Where does that fit into a consistently physicalist philosophy of mind?

4.He also trots out his hobbyhorse about social conditioning to explain why smart people believe dumb things. But if that’s the explanation, then why doesn’t he treat social conditioning as an extenuating or exculpatory circumstance? Wouldn’t that appeal either mitigate or absolve one of guilt?

5. Then there’s the very revealing way in which he lets the Southern slave-masters off the hook. They were slaveholders because they didn’t know any better. It was all a misunderstanding, you see. If only God had been more explicit.

So Loftus will exculpate the slaveholders in order to inculpate God. His acquittal of Southern slave masters says a lot about his scale of values (or lack thereof), as well as his naiveté.

BTW, why this fixation on the Southern institution? What about slavery in Africa, Asia, and the Mideast?

6.Speaking as a Christian, my interpretation of their motives is considerably less charitable. The slave masters were blinded, in part, by economic self-interest. In addition, it was very convenient to have one’s very own harem.

7.Loftus’ argument, if you can call it that, is also lame-brained to the point of vegetation. Does he really believe that if only the Bible were more explicit, that this would prevent slavery of the antebellum variety?

Isn’t it pretty apparent that many men and women do many things explicitly forbidden in Scripture? How dumb does Loftus need to be to miss the obvious?

For example, Scripture does condemn sodomy as a complete abomination. Does that, of itself, prevent homosexuals from committing immorality?

8.And, no, “slavery” is not a “complete abomination” since “slavery” can denote a number of different things. For example, is indentured service a “complete abomination”?

9.Finally, he attacks the Christian faith because it supposedly necessitates intellectual suicide. Yet the same could be said for evolutionary psychology. So why does he sacrifice his intellectual before the altar of Darwin?

Maybe it’s because, in his case, intellectual suicide is not much of a sacrifice. His brand of anencephalic atheism has nothing to lose.