Friday, February 09, 2007

Stefan Molyneux on Strong Atheism

Weak atheism, strong atheism, what's the difference? Why say that God does not exist when you can merely say there is no evidence for him to exist?

Stefan Molyneux attacks this topic at his blog, Freedomain, with a tall glass of cold logic. You definitely should go read the whole thing, but I want to highlight a choice paragraph here:

If gods are subject to physical laws, then religion makes no sense whatsoever, and praying to gods makes about as much sense as worshiping a black hole, begging the Sun to grant you favors, or circumcising your son to appease the speed of light. If gods are not subject to physical laws, then the concept of “gods” is synonymous with the concept of non-existence, which makes religion even more deranged. Then, rather than praying to the moon, you would be in fact praying to the empty space between the Earth and the moon.


The italics are mine.

Stefan manages to make the logic of strong atheism engaging, and he has a clever way of pointing out the ramifications of silly god-based premises. Go check it out.

8 comments:

vjack said...

This looks good. I'm off to read it now. Thanks for sharing the link.

Aaron Kinney said...

Youre welcome! Stefan also has some nice podcasts about libertarianism :)

Anonymous said...

I want to vomit. These people are completely immoral by my lights.

Anonymous said...

That is why I am a STRONG atheist.

Thanks for the link!

Ed said...

Thanks for the link!

My Blog: In Defence of Reason

Jason McLaughlin said...

A nice find. His argument against agnosticism and for atheism is also detailed in a 2-parter in his podcast series (episodes 502 and 511 at freedomainradio.com for those who are interested). It's entertaining stuff.

My blog: Ibidus

Anonymous said...

funny how often atheists refer to God.

Anonymous said...

Bollocks.

St. Augustine solved this one centuries ago and modern day boffins, presumably non-religious types, tip their hats to him. As I understand it, God exists in the eternal present where it is always 'now' and never '5 minutes ago' or 'tomorrow'. This is eternity; more always than infinite.

Time is the byproduct of the inter-relationship of matter. Matter does not exist in the eternal present dimension and is thus subject to physical laws, e.g.: time.