I can’t even count the number of times I’ve debated and reasoned with atheists who adamantly and passionately insists that atheism in not a religion. It’s not a religion, unless, of course, it appears to have benefits. The more and more I looked at atheism the more and more I see a handful of options made to order.
“Today I’ll have my morality include…stealing is wrong with a side of a problem of evil.”
It’s inconsistent. On the surface, these look and feel like solid arguments, worthy of building a worldview upon. But they are filled with contradiction. Tell me, atheist, when you chose that stealing should be immoral for you, did you also choose for me or, am I free to steal from you? I promise to do it under the cover of darkness so as to not be caught. Is that wrong? By what standard? Tell me, atheist, how is evil a problem if morality is subjective?
….
More inconsistencies! Every argument, every appeal, every aspect of atheism is a superficial argument. It’s covered in a wrapper labeled “worldview” but inside is emptiness, un-thoughtful, meaninglessness. Tell me, atheist, what do you make of the trees and the rocks and the seas? Do you have evidence of them erupting from the depths of nothingness or did you formulate an opinion based on what you know and choose the one you wanted, the one that felt right to you? Tell me, atheist, are you so whimsical that your worldview is mere happenstance? Does your worldview have such control that it chooses you and you have no choice in the matter at all? Tell me, atheist, what evidence to you have for a godless universe? Tell me, again, how you appeal to science—the study of order, repeatability, and structure—to draw the conclusion of evolution—random, non-repeated, mutations. Your worldview is hypocrisy.
The more and more I examine atheism, the more and more the inconsistencies surface, the more and more atheists continue to ‘have it their way’ is the more and more I foresee the demise of the worldview. Atheism is unhealthy, it has no substance, and it only offers the illusion of nourishment. How fitting, and somewhat ironic, that Burger King and atheists are ultimately selling flame-broiled products.
Perhaps it’s time, my atheist friends, we stop having it our way and start looking for nutrients that do not lead to death. Wide is the path to destruction, but narrow is the gate that leads to life. This imagery provided by Jesus implies that the narrow road is not one to stumble across but one to seek and find. It’s easy to run through the drive-through and pick up a whopper and some fries. It’s just as easy to pretend I don’t need God to live a life free of problems. The problem is, eventually, you need nutrients not just food. The problem is, eventually, you need Jesus and not just atheism.
— Roger Browning, A Clear Lens, Atheism is the Burger King of World Views, December 7, 2016
OMG, the stupid, it hurts………….. Can we not live and let live? Evidently not.
That’s your brain exploding… Sometimes I wish I could bitchslap the stupid outta people hahha
Who is this guy? Is he preaching stupidity to parishioners? His dumbassness was so evident..
Last time I lost this many brain cells I was watching jersey shore…
What this guy does is turn his own incoherent approach to the world and superimpose his distorted view of atheism on to it.
Every argument he uses is actually the reverse of why atheists hold the view they do, but exposes his own poorly considered views. The stealing example is a case in point. ‘I’ don’t decide anything when it comes to stealing. What happens is that, as groups, we discover that if we steal from people then they steal from us, and so ultimately there’s no benefit to anyone. It doesn’t happen overnight, and the manner in which Browning presents his reasoning simply creates a strawman.
Then he reverses the basis on which science works and uses it as an attack on atheism. He suggests that science believes in rocks, and structures, and evolution, without evidence. Or rather, he is saying that science makes assertions about how these things work and exist but does so without evidence. He doesn’t attempt to see that it’s the other way round; science accumulates the evidence and then assesses a conclusion that best fits that evidence.
His own worldview is one in which evidence is of no purpose, harmful even, in that it leads him from conclusions he’s already drawn. He has become so absorbed in this narrow, and mistaken approach, that he can’t understand when others see the evidence differently. The trouble is that many will read and accept his silly nonsense without criticism.
He blames atheism for not being a solid religion that he can attack. There is nothing to attack and it scares him. Because atheism/agnostism simply places a questionmark at many sprititual questions instead of providing answers, he can’t truly engage with it.
I thought my chickens were dumb but this guy! Astounding, deeper than a watery pancake!
The overall problem presented here, if I read it rightly-like, is that Roger’s brain still appears to allow him to write words (albeit random words) even though he is clearly a dill pickle from the neck up! Somebody should study that kind of thing… Reminds me of a bully RC who had to beat me up when we were kids before he could be friends with me! Is that a religious thing too, Roger?
It is the emptiness they fear. I had a little discussion about this on patheos yesterday and tried to explain it like this, because I too sometimes still fear the emptiness, the great unknown, though it is also exciting.
I’m just going to quote myself here, ’cause it’s easier 😉
“It’s the loss of this powerful being, whoever they may be, that I still find hard sometimes. That there was a plan, however flawed, but at least some plan, some control, felt safer somehow.”
“Perhaps that’s one of the things that has changed for me: so many things like the Unknown did have agency and were either positive or negative, i.e. brought by God or his opponents. Now I lean more towards absurdism, the little that I know of it anyway, that there is probably no ultimate meaning but most humans do need to live that way regardless, mostly to keep one’s (my) sanity.
I think the universe/nature is indifferent and we add the value to it ourselves, as in determining beauty or calling natural disasters evil. They just are, they simply exist and happen to be about; we place the meaning onto it ourselves.
Basically before my deconversion everything was filled in, like a picture book all colored in; nothing needed from me at all, no input required, which was stifling and led to questions such as ‘why is that blue instead of green? I’d choose red myself,’ but now what I have is a completely empty book with solely white pages and everything is up to me, nothing is already pre-decided; it’s the opposite of stifling, but it is scary and quite literally (still) empty too.”
Especially that last bit: going from an entirely fixed, until the final dot pre-decided faith and worldview to a place where YOU get to decide, all by yourself, is a huge step. He doesn’t like that, of course, he wouldn’t: it is blasphemy. It is Goliath mocking God. It’s putting humanity, being a human first, saying what humans want is more important than God’s will!
So when they say atheists are arrogant, they are quite right. They are. What’s even worse, they may even be proud of it 🙂
Atheism doesn’t offer the illusion of nourishment. That’s a projection coming from himself. He needs to see atheism as illusory nourishment. The truth is even worse. Atheism doesn’t offer nourishment at all. It offers emptiness, which can be seen as freedom. It offers a world devoid of divine rules.