“Human life has no particular meaning or purpose and there is no real basis for ethics, love or even logical thought.”
Apparently being a theist doesn’t preclude one from writing strawman arguments (above).
Or hasty generalizations (the entirety of Section 3 Why Atheism is chosen),
Or the fallacy of equivocation: “We are born knowing nothing at all and must be taught, and later take it upon ourselves to learn, anything and everything that we will ever know to believe, including atheism.”
“Although, perhaps we could grant the claim: if atheists want to argue that atheism requires no more intellect than that which an infant can muster, why should we argue?”
Even after having previously drawn distinctions between strong and weak atheism [b]in the same article[/b]!
Then there are flat out ridiculous statements like this one:
“Atheists make epistemic statements about morality but do not provide an ontological premise for ethics.”
How about reality?
“That is to say that they can muse upon issues of morality and come to any conclusion that they please.”
So can theists. It doesn’t make all of the conclusions correct though.
“The first problem of evil, as far as atheist/theist debates are concerned is the fact that atheists define evil based on personal preferences.”
Another hasty generalization/strawman argument.
The most serious problem with this article is that it *constantly* claims both that atheists can reach many different conclusions about epistemology and ethics, and then cherry pics a few examples of a few atheists and then claims “atheists also believe X”.
That’s flat out a pair of mutually contradictory statements.
As far as I can tell, you have not provided a coherent argument for any of your positions.
We are born knowing nothing at all and must be taught, and later take it upon ourselves to learn, anything and everything that we will ever know to believe, including atheism.
Blank slate theory alive and well? What a crock.
Jason Kauppinen misrepresents the article and keeps complaining ex nihilo about the fact that the article states the following in the “Natural Born Atheist” section:
Although, perhaps we could grant the claim: if atheists want to argue that atheism requires no more intellect than that which an infant can muster, why should we argue?
Jason comments,
Even after having previously drawn distinctions between strong and weak atheism [b]in the same article[/b]!
Yet, he, for some odd reason, fails to note that that section begins by stating the following in the very second sentence,
In part this is incumbent upon which definition of atheism we are employing.