Bi-Weekly report: John Loftus edition

It looks like John Loftus (the person who runs the Debunking Christianity blog, among other things) has written a new book:

Shadow to Light: Another Bold Gnu Prediction

AFAICT, his argument boils down to this:

          * God is no different from a fairy
          * There is no philosophy of fairies
          * Therefore, there should be no philosophy of religion

The guy actually wrote a whole book built on this false analogy. Anything to squeeze another dollar out of the Gnu community, I suppose

Peter Boghossian, the atheist activist who has also made this argument (and wrote the Manual for Creating Atheists, of course promotes the book with a blurb:

          “Unapologetic offers the philosophy of religion the swift, ugly end it has
            long deserved. This single book will cause the death of a discipline
.”
It seems that those two work together. Three years ago, Loftus recommended Boghossian’s book on his blog:

Debunking Christianity: Boghossian is a Serious Crusader

Loftus seems to think that religion is a mind virus:

Since religious faith is a mind virus that can infect others in our society, then in order to help get rid of it we must get serious about containing it as we try to eradicate it.
Joe Hinman did a blog entry about this here:

Atheist Watch: Atheists Call for Eradication

Here is what Joe said about that comment above:

”Containment?” That has a pretty ominous ring to it. One question up front if you have to create atheists that means they are not atheists already right? So they are advocating manipulation and doing the same kinds of things they accuse Christians of doing. What makes them any better? Well, we Christians don’t talk about containing any group of people What does that mean? Let’s see…

By the way, “mind virus?” Is that a technical term? What psychiatry text book did he get that term from? Is it an actual germ? It’s funny when I have argued that atheists use the concept of “meme” to accuse their opponents of being diseased they deny that it’s that kind of model.

Check out the comments section for the above articles. In the one for Loftus’ entry, Valerie Tarico and the wonderful Papalinton (or Papa Plagiarizer. He’s a dolt that comments on Im Skeptical’s blog) made a comment. For Joe’s entry, I put a link to the two-star reviews of Boghossian’s book on Amazon.

One more note: Since I only post bi-weekly, this will be my last post until after the New Year (Jan. 3rd). Enjoy, and have a blessed day!!







Comments

my quote, last lie "opponents of being deceased they deny that it’s that kind of model." should say "diseased" not deceased, sick not dead.
Anonymous said…
OK. I fixed it.

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