Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them

I’m going to comment on a recent screed at Debunking Christianity:

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-i-hate-christianity.html

Loftus has semiretired from blogging–or so he says. This post I’m quoting by an anonymous contributor. The blogger says this about himself:

I have been a professor of philosophy and religion for over 14 years, and have taught in some of the best universities in the United States.

http://aisforatheist5760.blogspot.com/p/about.html

So the blogger is a “thinking man’s” atheist. Not only of those village atheist types, but an intellectual. Keep that in mind as we assess the quality of his arguments, which remind me of a quip by George Orwell.

Why I HATE Christianity

By A is for Atheist at 5/25/2012

 

There are many reasons why I hate Christianity--and yes, I do literally hate Christianity. Why?--because of the negative doctrines it promotes, and the resulting "moral laxity"--which the Christian philosopher Pelagius pointed out long ago. Let me explain by offering the following analogy.

Of course, an obvious problem with this allegation is that many atheists espouse moral relativism or moral nihilism. So he should hate atheism.

The following would be a life situation for many, and is analyzed from a Christian perspective:

 

Christians believe they are born bad, and cannot help but to do bad things because they are "born sinners." (Original sin)

From Christian perspective, original sin is counterbalanced by regeneration and sanctification.

Now, a Christian man who says he loves his wife still beats her because she doesn't do as she is told. She forgives him for hurting her every time, because that is what her religion tells her to do. The man beats her because the same religion tells him he has authority over her, and he cannot help but to do bad things, so he does them thinking he can't help himself--but it's ok, because his god will forgive him. Until one fateful day when a beating ends in death, and he kills his wife with his bare hands.

i) I don’t think the Bible teaches unconditional forgiveness.

ii) This isn’t Christian theology or Christian ethics. Rather, this is the antinomian heresy.

iii) The Bible teaches Christian husbands to love their wives.

iv) Conservative Christians generally believe in the right of self-defense, including the right to bear arms. If a battered wife shot her husband dead, and I was on the jury, I’d vote to acquit.

v) From a secular perspective, the wife is just a primate. Male primates naturally dominate female primates. Boys will be boys, and chimps will be chimps.

vi) To my knowledge the rate of domestic violence is far higher among cohabiting couples than married Christians. The live-in boyfriend is far more likely to batter the girlfriend than a husband, much less a professing Christian husband. Yet cohabitation is the secular alternative to the quaint Christian tradition of monogamous marriage.

THIS IS WHY I HATE CHRISTIANITY. I hate the fact that this religion tells people they are EXPECTED to behave badly. I hate the fact that there are NO CONSEQUENCES for their bad behavior in this life or the next for believers as long as they sincerely say "sorry" to Jesus. What about the victims?? What compensation do they get under the Christian system? None. There is no justice for victims of Christian crime--unless it is through secular laws. Therefore, Christianity in and of itself is IMMORAL and UNJUST. This is the biggest reason why I HATE Christianity.

 

If people believed they could do the right thing the first time, and took responsibility for their own actions instead of having "Jesus" do that for them, the world would be a much better place to live in.

If that’s his biggest reason for hating Christianity, then he should redouble his hatred towards atheism. Consider the ethical consequences of atheism. And don’t take my word for it. Here are what a couple of atheists have to say:

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life? Doesn't the appropriate response to 4,000 children dying everyday as a direct result of poor sanitation involve despair at the relentless misery of the world as well as some effort to improve things? Sometimes life is s**t and that’s all there is to it. Not much bright about that fact. Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/09/life-without-god-bleak-atheism/print?fb=native

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

 

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1723345/posts