21 October 2006

If you're against us, you're purely negative

A common feature with apologetics is to cry that atheism is just parasitic on, or a negation of, "Christianity." Consider this page:

"atheism" comes from "a" the negator and "theos" (God in Greek).

...or perhaps rather "male god"? The alternative is made unspeakable by the handy definition. (The fact that you can even make the argument in the first place appears to be connected to "negative singular existence".)

Of course, to the believer, God just exists. Whereas to the atheist, God is something that exists only because people believe in it; in fact, something that is purely a belief.

So the believer reads it as "denying God", and the atheist reads it as "not believing in this 'God' character" — a shining example of a clash of worldviews. (Of course, estimating other viewpoints is difficult when your perspective absolutely must be true.)

This is perhaps also the reason why believers are so keen on wanting non-believers to profess "agnosticism": a statement of "gosh, I guess we don't really know" gives them less of a case of cognitive dissonance.

(A related case of political narcissism on the form "anyone who disagrees with me is just being negative" can be found here, if you have the stomach.)

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