Gods of atheism: Ignorance

I hosted a small LAN party for my birthday and invited a friend over. Yeah, sure, it's not much of one, but at least we used actual computers (as opposed to gaming consoles, which, unlike what you may think, do not constitute a LAN party). Now, this friend in question is an atheist, and playing games with him is quite revealing as to how he deals with issues.

He seemed to be excessively sure about things when the tables could turn. To be honest, most of the time, he was. He did a trick in capture-the-flag matches, though. When we both had each others' flags, and he was in the lead, he would stay at his base, and assumed that the bots on my team were not able to hunt him down. But then I found out that you could mark a waypoint, and hey, they went for it. Point it to his base, and sooner or later he gets munched, the flag gets returned, and I score.

Fortunately, this isn't an incredibly serious issue for him, as when I'm beating him, he doesn't complain, he just keeps calm. However, I do recall an occasion where he "cracked", and there was nothing truly ignorable; it had nothing to do with the game in question. (Although I think he was really tired at the time, too.)

Now, in terms of religion: he seems to just know the "fact" that "there is no God", because the Bible is just so full of mistakes. And he just seems so sure that evolution (as a creation theory) is reliable and has standed the test of time. On my old blog [warning: coarse language - this was started when I had a strong pottymouth] (which ironically is now run by someone who is somewhat atheistic), I did a rant about atheism [same warning] (another is about atheists on youtube and another is about hippies, but we're talking about this one). Let's copy-paste the point here (post made 30 Nov, 2008).

9. "Evolution has survived the test of time."
150 years. While being changed, of course. DNA, as we know it today, was discovered in 1953 [citation given], which would make that about 55 years. And how long has the Bible lasted? Thousands. Yet people still believe it.

There's evidence pointing away from evolution, and to provide evidence for evolution, some people have gone so far to mix fossils to create intermediate species of their own. Ray Comfort's book "God Doesn't Believe in Atheists" mentions several of these, including one which involved a few bones and the rest made from plaster-of-Paris. On top of that, while that bit of ground is shaky, there's a gravitational pull, and there's nothing directly below that ground. He believes the big bang theory to be merely a placeholder, hoping that there will be a better theory. Of course, there's a better theory by my terminology, but not by his.

Now, whenever an atheist says that there are just so many contradictions, I ask them to supply examples. In the last opportunity I had with this guy, he was too tired, so no contradictions were given. Last opportunity I had with another atheist, however, he provided a couple of cases, one I could clarify, and the other where he didn't supply the contradictory phrases, so that case is still in limbo, although I have a feeling that it has been covered and solved before. Atheists tend to be quite ignorant about the fact that their proposed contradictions have been busted many times before.

Time for some miracles. It's about time I posted this one on this blog, as I think I've mentioned it before...

Easter 2009: A girl who went to the easter camp I went to this year had broke her glasses on Saturday. Her eyesight was so bad that her glasses needed 3 lenses. The next morning, her friends prayed for her, that God would heal her eyesight. She opened her eyes and... it was still fuzzy. But a while later, she went back to her tent, and her friend gave her a book to read.

She could read it.

My atheist friend whom I mentioned at the start approached this one by denying that it ever happened. If I ever get a photo of the girl in question holding her broken glasses up, I'll be keen to post it if I can. (In fact, I may have a photo of her from Bus Tour last year; I'm not sure if it's her, though. I'll have to ask her if I can put it on anyway, just to be fair.)

To sum it up:

GM: "It doesn't work from an atheistic point of view."
A: "That's the problem."

Hang on. Did I just supply compelling evidence of a miracle? I think I did, didn't I? Albert Einstein, whether he was consistent or not, was dead right when he said that either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle. Now, why would you want to ignore that? Oh yeah, it then shatters your illusion of a world where there is no God, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

Here's the other response I have heard: a scientific study on miracle healings... apparently the body can heal itself incredibly fast. Two problems. Firstly, why doesn't this happen every time one is injured? Why is it on a "rare" occasion? And secondly, are you disregarding divine intervention in place of a natural cause? From my point of view, God has clever ways of implementing miracles.

Why is ignorance so vital for the survival of atheism? Because if you could accept just one miracle, it would imply that there is something not naturalistic which breaks naturalistic theories.

Professor Richard Lewontin sums this up quite nicely:

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen."

There are people who, in order to teach certain sciences, must hold a suspension of disbelief and teach evolution in order to teach the whole course. In other words, to teach the course, they have to lie to their students, as explained here (comes with a complete article on the subject! Great fun! A+++++++ WOULD BUY FROM AGAIN.)

Now, what if, all of a sudden, it were completely evident to all that there was a God? I believe that it will happen one day. Unfortunately for some, that day is called Judgement Day, so I cannot use this for my idea. But what if something happened before that?

Quite simply, science as we know it would change, and there would be requirements for at least some scientists to learn some history (SCARY O_O). Many, many textbooks would become invalid, and printing presses could go out of business. While the change would be quite shocking, I believe it would also be quite recoverable, although scary nonetheless.

Kinda like my life and my reluctance to give my life to God. When I finally did, a lot happened, which I'm sure I've explained earlier: I ate less, stopped being hateful, could look people in the eye, became less ashamed, stopped being such a perv, stopped drinking alcohol, and stopped being such a pottymouth (although such words do still come out, I don't really feel a need for them). And all the while, I was afraid of losing control of my life. I actually have more control over my life now.

Ultimately, I worked out that my life sucked as it was. If I had continued to ignore that, who knows what I would be?

I'm running out of ideas, and it's only 7:45pm. So yeah, let's end it here. Any questions, post them. I have probably missed things.