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Saturday, January 31, 2009

Foot-in-Mouth Disease

Jason Streitfeld says he's a proud atheist.

But that's meaningless.

He says the term 'God' is meaningless.

He says that even to say that 'No knowledge presupposes God' is to say something meaningless, so he denies it.

But, 'atheism' states that God does not exist, or that one lacks a belief in God.

Both those claims, according to Streitfeld, are meaningless. Hence, atheism is meaningless. He must reject the claim that he is an atheist.

Also, if he rejects the claim that 'No knowledge presupposes God' because 'God' is a meaningless term, then he must also reject the claim that 'God is a meaningless term.' Atheist Theodore Drange states, "[theological] noncognitivism declares atheism to be flat-out meaningless."

But a key premise of one of his "devastating" arguments against theism was this:

[The Devastator] "Atheism may here be defined as any explicit or implicit denial of the existence of God. Thus, if one presupposes the existence of God in an argument, one begs the question against atheism."

But he must deny these statements! All statements that say 'God' in any way (atheism or theism) are meaningless.

In fact, if Streitfeld is right, he should never have written his post. He should stop blogging. He can never mention the word 'God' again otherwise that means he will have to "reject that claim," because he told me that he "reject all claims that have the word God in them."

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Formal terminology? Paul... Paul... Paul you are a silly septic (I mean Sceptic). Do me a favor and don't quite your day job.

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  3. Doesn't the whole "God-talk is meaningless" idea go back to logical positivism?

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  4. Mathetes,

    It does, but others have tried to say it is meaningless for other reasons, a la Flew and the falsificatioonist challenge to Religious language.

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  5. "Foot-in-Mouth Disease"

    After having read a number of these comments by Jason Streitfeld, the conclusion plainly and fairly reveals a one word summation of the source data concerning Jason's arguments and intelligence:

    Stupidity.

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  6. Seen this from Loftus?

    http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/01/calvinism-is-bullshit-and-god-wanted-me.html

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  7. Victor?

    Why? We've already responded to each and every one of his links. He also is quite emotional, viz., "I hate that theology with a passion." Furthermore, I generally don't take anything Loftus says as a serious threat to Calvinism or broader evangelicalism in general.

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